We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessie Ellertson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jessie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you get your first job in the field that you practice in today?

When I decided in 2018 that I wanted to become a life coach I knew that I wanted to attend The Life Coach School to receive my certification. That training represents a significant financial investment and time investment, so I really wanted to make sure that coaching was the right thing for me before I enrolled. I knew I needed to get some experience and practice coaching people and decided that the best way to go about doing that would be to put together two of my favorite things: coaching and feeding people. With that, my life coaching dinner parties were born. I started to reach out to my network letting them know I was entering the world of coaching and needed their help to get started. I did one dinner party a week and sold 7 seats for each party (my dining room table sat 8 and one of the seats needed to be for me). Some people came alone, some people brought friends or a date, some people came only one night, some people came back multiple times. I advertised it as a date night out for yourself, good food good friends, and coaching. Life coaching dinner parties consisted of my preparing a delicious meal, enjoying the meal and getting to know everyone, then moving into my living room to participate in a group coaching session. Group coaching means that I coach people one on one but in a group setting so that the group gets to watch and learn as we work on whatever the problem is that the person has brought to the coaching session. This is such a valuable experience because our problems often parallel each other (in that the circumstances and details are different, but the root issues are the same) but when you watch someone else get coached on a parallel problem to something that you deal with as well it can be actually easier to learn and apply the things that will help you in that particular problem because you aren’t as emotionally involved with what they are talking about. I often compare group coaching to a call in radio or talk show the way it is very interesting and helpful to hear other people discuss their problems and you can often relate to what they are going through and use the same advice to get unstuck in your own life. Anyway, I love food, I love cooking, I love feeding people, and I love hosting. Combine that with how much I love coaching and you can see why dinner party days were my favorite days! I would spend the day cleaning my home, setting up for the party, and preparing food. Some of my favorite meals to serve at my dinner parties were salmon and risotto, taco bars, chicken alfredo, fajitas 3 ways, and pesto chicken with mashed potatoes. I made sure to have a good selection of chilled beverages ready for my guests to choose from on a drink cart in the corner of the room. During dinner we would take turns introducing ourselves and answering ice breaker questions like “What do you hope to gain from tonight?” or “What is your biggest pet peeve?” or “What is something about you that surprises people?” or “Describe your favorite vacation or somewhere you dream of going on vacation?” This first hour of the dinner party was always so fun and a great opportunity to really warm up to each other and enjoy each other’s company before we started the group coaching session. If anyone was feeling nervous to be there, usually after the dinner portion of the evening they weren’t anymore. Upon moving into the living room for the coaching portion of the evening I would have the attendees grab their name tag from dinner that told them where to sit and throw it into the bowl if they were interested in being coached. I usually had about 4 or 5 people put their names in. This was helpful because then I knew who wanted to get coached and then no one had to volunteer to go first. It’s also important to note that I always had a dessert bar ready for this portion of the evening that my guests could enjoy throughout the rest of the night. For the next hour and half I would usually be able to coach 3 or 4 people and we worked on problems as light as “I’d like to stop drinking soda” to as heavy as “I’m not sure if I should stay married.” For anyone that put their name in the bowl but didn’t get coached I would set up a follow up zoom call so that they could still get coached. I always ended the evening by gifting my participants a fresh baked homemade mini loaf of whole wheat bread with a request that if they enjoyed their experience to go leave me a review on Facebook. I hosted these dinner parties every week for about a year, but registered for The Life Coach School after only 2 months of doing the dinner parties. I had so much fun with them and they were incredibly effective at accomplishing what I set out to accomplish which was to get experience coaching and build my coaching practice. Pretty much all of my original clients came from these dinner parties. After a year, I decided to be done with these awesome dinner parties because I was ready to focus on coaching my clients one on one, but I’ll never forget how I became a life coach.

Jessie, 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?

My name is Jessie Ellertson and I am a mother of 6 and have been a military wife for 15 years. I am a life coach for military wives who want to improve their deployment experience. I have been coaching since 2018 and got started after working with a life coach during my husbands deployment the year before made such a huge difference. I certified at The Life Coach School in 2019 and that’s also the year I started my podcast. I am passionate about helping these awesome women take control of their lives and use their mindset to create the life of their dreams even when they are going through some of the hardest parts like deployment. Next to coaching, one of my favorite things I do is my podcast and I’m so proud of it. I love the concept of a podcast because it is so accessible. It’s a free resource that can start helping these women before they even work with me. I love that a podcast can reach you wherever you are, no matter how low you are, desperate you are, busy you are, or in survival mode you are. You can always make time for a podcast.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Using the concept of delivering results ahead of time, meaning the people who are drawn to what I’m offering feel an improvement in their mindset and life before they ever start paying me. The main way I do this is through my podcast. Simply listening to the free and accessible resource will already make a huge difference in the life a military wife who is struggling. For some, that’s all the boost they need. For others they want more and then they reach out to me and we start working together. I love this concept of knowing I’m helping people that aren’t even my clients yet. In fact, I like to think of all of my podcast listeners as clients. Another reason this method is so powerful is when they have already started to feel shifts and create change in their own lives after listening to my podcast, then when we start working together they are already sold on their ability to improve their own life. They are also already familiar with my coaching techniques and my personality and who I am as a coach. It saves us a lot of time in those first sessions and increases my confidence that our working together will be a great fit for everyone. I’m not for everyone and that’s ok, but if you’ve listened to my podcast and you’re loving it and it’s helping then you can be fully confident that our working together will be a great match.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I am a stay-at-home mom and have been for 16 years and I absolutely love it! Seriously, it’s my favorite. However, I have always been drawn to working, business, and specifically being an entrepreneur. When I was pregnant with my 4th I decided it was time to start a business and answer the call of that inner business woman inside of me. I started Squeaky Shoes For Tiny Tots, buying toddler squeaky shoes/sandals/boots wholesale and selling them retail in a booth at fairs. It was SO fun and a lot of work! As I grew and my 4th child was born, I quickly figured out that if I wanted to keep being a stay-at-home mom (and I did) that I needed to move this business online. That helped so much and I worked that business for years (in fact, I just decided to be done with this business this year so I ran it for 11 years). It wasn’t long before my inner business woman started calling again though, just a couple years after starting my squeaky shoe business. An opportunity came up to receive a military spouse grant to become an accredited financial counselor and it immediately spoke to me. My bachelors degree is in finance and I was raised by an accountant who was raised by an accountant so money and numbers are my jam. This felt great as the next endeavor for me because while selling squeaky shoes was fun and taught me a lot about growing a business, anyone can sell squeaky shoes. Becoming an accredited financial counselor was something that I was interested in, I had experience in, used my degree, and would still give me the flexibility in my schedule that I needed to keep being a stay-at-home mom. Plus, if I was awarded the grant, then completing the certification wouldn’t even cost me anything. I applied for the grant and did not receive it. I was discouraged but decided that I would wait a year and then apply again. I did and this time I was awarded the grant. The day I got all of my text books in the mail was so exciting! This was my next big thing and what I was meant to do. The classes and course work were online and I moved through those pretty quickly, enjoying what I was learning and doing well on the tests. I had one test left and had begun accruing my practicum hours by volunteering for an online organization that offered free financial counseling (communicating that they were working with students in this program). I was a little confused and discouraged because as I began working in the field, even though I was still just training, it wasn’t quite what I thought it would be and wasn’t tapping into my passion for this area like I thought it would. I didn’t want to talk to people about how they were spending their money and teach them how to budget. I realized that I wanted to talk to people about why they did what they did when it came to money and help them understand they relationship with money. I grew up in a home where money was very open and straight forward and unemotional. I had no idea this was a unique relationship to have with money. Most people feel emotional about money and it becomes a very dramatic presence in their lives and then they either try to ignore it or they react/spend it emotionally, both of which reek havoc on a budget or savings plan. Anyway, I kept going thinking I could figure out how to implement those pieces as I built my practice after getting my accreditation and getting my own clients. Anyway, I had 3 years to complete all of the course work and the practicum hours and I had no idea I was about to experience the hardest 3 years of my life. My husband left for his first year long deployment when I was still completing the course work and tests. I had one test left when I slipped in the snow and broke 4 bones in my leg which required multiple surgeries and months of physical therapy, all with 4 small children and my husband in a different country. Seven months after my husband returned from his deployment, I was 5 months pregnant with our 5th child who passed away inside of my and was delivered stillborn. Each time another challenging thing happened it wrecked me and we had to rely on survival mode to get through. Then I would recover and heal and we’d pick up the pieces and then the next thing would happen. Needless to say my Accredited Financial Counselor program got pushed to the back burner of my life over and over and before I knew it my 3 years was up. I even applied for a time extension which I was given and I was still unable to finish getting my practicum hours even with more time. I was so disappointed and discouraged. This was going to be my thing and now it was over and it hadn’t worked. I didn’t know what was next for me, but I moved forward knowing that at some point I would figure it out. A few years after that, my husband was preparing for his second year long deployment and we now had six kids. I was low and discouraged and not sure how we were going to make it a year without him, but I knew we just had to. It was at this time that I started listening to awesome/uplifting/inspiring podcasts and working with my own life coach. It was a complete game changer! I couldn’t believe how by focusing on my mindset and my attitude, my life could have improved so much even though none of my circumstances changed. It was then that I knew that being a life coach was what I always wanted to do. Everything that I had done in business and in education up to that point had prepared me to launch into this world of being a life coach with full confidence. It was amazing to watch the pieces click into place in a way that I could never have predicted. I went from dreading the deployment and planning to go into survival mode to get through it while my kids and I barely hung on to getting a coach, getting a nanny, traveling, starting my business, and going to the life coach school to become a certified life coach, all while my husband was deployed in a war zone. One fun thing to note is while I coach people on anything and everything, I get to coach people on their relationship with money now and it’s one of my favorite topics. I’m so proud of myself that I kept going in my entrepreneurial journey even when I was confused and discouraged and experienced set backs.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.simplyresilient.net
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Image Credits
Laura Affleck Photography