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

Tori, appreciate you 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.

A huge defining moment came in my career when I just knew deep in my heart and soul I wasn’t really doing the work I was meant to be doing. I’d been working in Human Resources for many years and it was a great career. I had a wonderful boss at a large company, but something was missing. I knew it wasn’t my purpose though I was very good at it and I had done a lot of work to get promoted as a manager in my department.

It sent me on a journey to figure out my path and purpose so I could really love the work I was doing. I nearly became a lawyer, but luckily I followed my heart to help people and that didn’t seem aligned for me. I already had a bachelors degree in Psychology and knew I had skill there, I’d always been good with people. My Mom always called me her “little counselor” so I decided to go to graduate school to get my Masters in Psychology.

During this time I discovered the world of high performance coaching as well, so I decided to become a coach in 2010 and and ended up getting my Masters Degree in Psychology with a secondary specialization in Transformational Coaching to really help people become the best version of themselves. My graduate school was very holistic and I’d found clinical Psychology was so focused on what’s wrong with people, and how to diagnose them and I really wanted to learn how can I help people thrive, do work that they love, and build the confidence to make those things happen. I’ve now been doing that work for over a decade and I’m proud to work with amazing people worldwide. I have clients in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Dubai and more.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Yes, I’d love to tell you a bit more about myself. Today, I am a Transformational Success Coach helping leaders and entrepreneurs heal psychological blocks so they can create more success without sacrificing what truly matters in life.

The path to getting into this industry was not a planned one by any means! I grew up in the Seattle area under very challenging circumstances, and that led me to be interested in people, and what makes them the way they are. I also have a very creative side, when it comes to beauty and fashion and even worked as a makeup artist, but as I went through university, I decided that psychology would be my major.

However, due to my background, I really craved the stability of the business world, so I ended up in human resources. During my time in human resources, I learned a lot about business, leadership, and what it takes to be successful within an organization. The company I worked for was very large, so working with thousands of people helped me learn and grow quickly.

At that time in my life I had ticked a lot of the boxes that you hope to check by the time you are 30. I had the college degree, house, car, but something was missing. I was determined to figure out what I was really here to do so that I could do work that also fulfilled me at a deeper level.

Toward the end of my career in human resources I had a coach to help me with my leadership, and that was interesting to me, but I didn’t think much about it as I was determined to be a lawyer at the time. Luckily, I realized, with her help, that law wasn’t really for me. I decided to go back into the psychology world as that’s what I loved and after completing my masters in psychology and coaching I started my own coaching practice in 2013.

I now work with individuals and groups to help them find their purpose, create financial abundance, and heal the parts of themselves getting in the way of them of them doing that! So much of success is actually about healing the past, so it no longer affects our present confidence and what we believe is possible. Too few people understand the psychology of success, and I think that’s what sets me apart from others.

I take a very holistic approach to success. I am trained in western psychology, yoga, meditation, energy, psychology, and so much more. I really work with the complete person to help them create success, mind, body and spirit. I think this is a huge issue, people don’t know how to create sustainable success. They don’t understand that their own Psychology blocks this from happening. They think they always have to work hard, can’t do what they love and so much more.

I am most proud of the years of intense training I’ve done to help my clients get results, but what I think is most interesting about me is my own story of struggle. Many people are surprised to learn that I was born to a single mother, who struggled with addiction, and that created a lot of challenges that were not easy to overcome. I am the first person to graduate from high school and college, yet alone get a masters degree in my immediate family. I have overcome many incredible, traumas and challenges and that’s what actually makes me so good at what I do.

What I teach people is not just from what I read in a book, it’s the exact steps I had to take to heal myself and create a life that is beyond what was possible for someone from my background. If you would’ve told me as a child that, I’d one day be living in Beverly Hills California doing work I absolutely loved I would never have believed you. My only hope as a child was to hope to get a job and maybe one day have a home, as we moved around a lot when I was a kid, so that was a big goal for me to achieve. I’m proud that I reached a lot of goals. My hope is always that my story inspires someone to see that anything is possible, no matter what has happened to you or where you come from.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start?

When it came to funding my business, I wish I knew more about funding before I began my practice! I really boot strapped it. I didn’t know much about entrepreneurship and my only plan was to replace my income. However, that didn’t happen as quickly as I hoped!

In the first two years, while I made a profit, I’d not replaced my six figure income by any means. I blew through my personal savings, 401k, and racked up some credit card debt but I did it. I paid off the debt and eventually started learning how to invest back into my business in a sustainable way. I’m grateful I didn’t have to take out a bunch of loans but if I had to do it all over again, I’d have saved up a lot more money to fund the business and maybe even worked part-time to build it on the side.

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

Resilience feels like my middle name, I’ve overcome a lot in my life, but I’ll share a snippet from the years I began my business.

My older sister passed away suddenly in 2012 and it was part of what inspired me to leave my corporate job. It reminded me that life is very short and I didn’t want to waste anymore time. However, I didn’t know what was in store for me.

About a year after I opened my practice my mother passed away suddenly as well. She didn’t have any resources so it was up to me and my husband at the time to take care of everything financially. Not only was I trying to build a business, I was managing the loss of my sister and my mother within nearly a year of one another.

Then, my beloved grandmother passed away as well. For the first five years while I began my practice I lost almost every member of my family. Even my brother, who I am closest to in the world, got very sick and I was afraid I was going to lose him too!

All the stress led to health challenges and I can’t even honestly tell you how I made it through all this, but I leaned into everything I had learned in the years before this to help me. There was so much emotional devastation, financial strain and difficulty but somehow because I was doing work I loved so much, and had so many tools, it helped me push through.

This is why I’m so passionate about helping people find their purpose, learn stress management and healing tools and how to create the financial abundance that will support them even when life gets really hard because I’ve experienced it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.torijenae.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manifestsoulsuccess/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/manifestsoulsuccess
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/tori-jenae-ma-psych-a6051766

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