Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jennifer McClain. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jennifer, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

I had a friend who has a business and I really liked her company name so I asked her how she came up with her name. Her response was that she thought about the type of relationships she wanted to have with her clients and the goal/impact of them working together. I took my time coming up with the name of my company because I wanted to make sure the name reflected not only what the company does and the impact it creates—but also the values I bring to the work. I named my company Mission ENSPIRE because as a life and leadership coach and a strategic consultant and facilitator, it’s my mission to help my clients Envision New Solutions and Possibilities that Inspire Results and Empowerment (ENSPIRE).

Jennifer, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Jennifer McClain and I’m the Founder & CEO of Mission ENSPRE. My desire to launch Mission ENSPIRE grew from the coaching and training I’ve been fortunate to receive during my career in the nonprofit sector. I’m a single mother of two young adult daughters, a woman of faith, a Senior Director at a national nonprofit and I also run my own business. I understand what it means to wear many different hats and not really spend a lot of time on myself. That’s the profile of the women that I work with. They wear many hats to support others and tend to not prioritize focusing on themselves.

My success and career trajectory would not have been possible without meaningful coaching, training, and leadership development opportunities. And now I am determined to pay it forward. I founded my purpose-driven company, Mission ENSPIRE, LLC, to provide coaching, training, facilitation, and consulting services to help clients achieve success and fulfillment in their personal and professional lives. My primary audience is women, particularly those in the nonprofit and/or faith communities. I help professional women prioritize themselves so they can lead impactful lives without sacrificing their own personal growth.

Through Mission ENSPIRE, I create space for clients to overcome doubts or insecurities, define their purpose, and operate at their fullest potential. Like me when I started out, many of my peers—particularly women and people of color—have a strong desire for personal or professional coaching services but struggle to connect to the right resources. This may stem from a lack of awareness or access to services, or the lack confidence to invest time or money into their own self-improvement. This last barrier is acute among many people who work in the nonprofit sector or in faith institutions, and who prioritize service to others. They may, at times, place their own needs on the back burner. I created Mission ENSPIRE to fill this gap, by helping clients to prioritize “self” and strive for greatness.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Since my company Mission ENSPIRE provides life and leadership coaching, training/facilitation, and consulting services, I was fortunate that I didn’t need a large investment of capital to get started, the way a restaurant or manufacturing business, for example, might. I was able to start small and build my business out gradually. Part of my full-time day job in the nonprofit sector involved supporting financial coaching and asset building programs, so through that work I had a good knowledge of what I needed to do—in terms of saving, budgeting, and building a solid credit score—to establish a foundation in my personal finances that would help support my business. I’ve also continued to work in my day job, so that’s been helpful to supporting my day-to-day financial stability while the company grows.

But even launching a less capital-intensive business still requires capital—for things like my website, graphic design for my logo and resource materials, expert advice with branding and marketing, etc. Especially in the first year after launching the company, I focused on reinvesting my revenues back into the business, to further build my brand and profile. I’m also a firm believer in investing in myself and the learning, development, and networking that can help take a business to the next level. Too many of us, especially women and those in service-oriented careers, struggle to make time or financial commitments necessary to fulfill our personal or professional goals. We hesitate before hiring a coach. We hesitate to enroll in a training. If we don’t invest in ourselves, how we can expect others to? The investment has a visible return. I strive to lead my clients by example on this one. For instance, I participated in a leadership development program with Black Woman Leading that was transformational in helping me launch and expand Mission ENSPIRE, and I continued to build my network this past spring by connecting with other leaders and entrepreneurs at the first Black Woman Leading LIVE summit, where I learned so much and came home energized and inspired to keep growing my company. (And because I love sharing resources and knowledge with my community, I recapped some of the most insightful lessons and powerful moments of the summit on Mission ENSPIRE’s blog – Flourishing Fiercely -when I got home.)

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve built a successful full-time career working in the nonprofit sector for over two decades, pursuing graduate degrees along the way, seeking out mentoring, training, and other lifelong learning and growth opportunities, and moving into leadership roles that involve setting strategy and building and managing teams. As part of this work, I even got trained in coaching and facilitating and trained others to coach and facilitate—yet I still let that inner critic get the best of me when it came to taking the leap to launch my business.

My inner critic loves to play the comparison game. She tells me “Look at what so and so is doing, she is so much further ahead than you.” The way that I push past what the inner critic says is by recognizing that she exists, then remembering who I am, my expertise and the impact that I’ve made thus far. I use scripture to help remind me what God says about me. I also use affirmations. I also have to remind myself that my journey is mine exclusively; leading me to eliminate comparisons I make with myself and others.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.missionenspire.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferdmcclain1998/
• Other: https://missionenspire.com/blog/