We were lucky to catch up with Jen Steele recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jen, thanks for joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

You know that Friends episode where Ross just keeps shouting, “PIVOT!”?

Yeah? That was kind of what my defining moment was like.

I was an elementary school teacher–I had been teaching for 8 years and I knew I was leaving the classroom for a period after my second daughter was born. Just before I had gotten pregnant with her, I ran the Chicago Marathon, my third marathon. It was the first time I ever used a run coach. I am not a fast runner. Back then, I was someone who was barely finishing races before the dreaded race cut-off times. My first marathon took almost 7 hours to finish.

In that training cycle, I struggled to get all the workouts in. What took a faster runner around an hour to do, took me closer to 90 minutes. While I was teaching full time and a new mom, it just wasn’t doable.

But working with a coach had so much other value outside of the workouts she wrote — the nutrition advice, the help with mindset work, the preparation for a big race, it was so helpful.

After that race, it kept coming up for me that everyone needs a running coach. If we’re spending countless hours training for a race, we should enjoy it, be knowledgable, and have all of that other advice a coach can give. AND it should be able to fit into the schedule of anyone, no matter their pace.

I dedicated the next 2 years to learning about coaching runners and eventually opened my own coaching business. Instead of teaching reading and writing, I now teach running and body awareness!

Jen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Jen, founder and coach behind Misadventure Coaching, a company that helps women love running. I’ve found that most people who want to achieve run goals struggle with finding it too hard, whether that’s too hard to run, too hard to stay consistent, or too hard to fit it all in. Misadventure Coaching makes the running plan meet each runner where they’re at–both in their fitness level and in their day – to – day schedule, so they accomplish their goals and love the process of getting there.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest lessons I’ve had to unlearn is what makes a job. And there’s obviously a lot to that story or lesson right? In the last year or so, I realized one of the biggest stories circling around my head is this idea of a job and what it is that makes something a job versus a hobby. And not just a job for someone else, but a job for me.

This gets into a lot of backstory about my parents, both middle working class who worked incredibly hard, and their beliefs about jobs and making money. It was a story I grew up with that for us, for our nuclear family, a job was something you did to make money so we could do the things we needed and wanted. It was never something that was going to make you rich or that was for the love of the work.

It has taken a lot to untangle their beliefs from what I now believe as an adult and what I want for the rest of my life.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

Be willing to fail. As a very type a personality, I struggle with this one a lot, but I have also gotten a lot better at it since becoming an entrepreneur. It is almost impossible to figure out what is working and what is not, what you enjoy and what you don’t, how to grow and scale and where you want to keep things small, if you don’t let yourself fail every once in a while.

In application to running, you have to be willing to show up to the scary workouts and just see what happens. You might bomb the entire workout. But you did it. And you learned from it. You also might absolutely crush it. Either way you’ve grown and are further on the path to where you want to end up.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.misadventuresofamarathoner.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/misadventuresofamarathoner
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/misadventure-coaching-carlsbad?utm_campaign=www_business_share_popup&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=(direct)