Podcast Episode #60
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Extraordinary Life Podcast from the creator of the Extraordinary Life Tribe, Crystal Obregon the self-development podcast propelling you forward toward your goals, using science backed high performance habits. Reach the next level in your physical and mental health. See new heights in your relationships.
[00:00:18] Gain clarity on your purpose and live your extraordinary life. Welcome your host, writer, speaker and coach, Crystal Obregon.
[00:00:30] Crystal: Hi there. This is Crystal from Crystal Obregon Coaching with Episode Number 60 of the Extraordinary Life Podcast. This week I'm interviewing Jenny Roth. Jenny is a personal trainer, but not just any personal trainer.
[00:00:46] Her business, Coaching Character is an unconventional coaching business born from the radical belief that you are the expert of your own body. I met Jenny just over four years [00:01:00] ago at an event a mutual friend was hosting. She led us through a few exercises during a break, and I absolutely loved her. She kept us laughing the whole time.
[00:01:13] Since then we've crossed path often. We're members of a women's networking group. I will let her share about her journey. So let's get started. Welcome. Jenny, would you like to tell my audience a little bit about yourself?
[00:01:29] Jenny: Absolutely. Well, first off you can hear that I'm an interrupter. It's a very important thing to know about me.
[00:01:35] It's one of my core values. No, um, So crystal said, my name is Jenny, which is correct. I am a strength coach and I grew my business out, it grew out of many things, but one of them was as somebody who worked in the personal training field. And in a lot of gyms, I watched young people in particular [00:02:00] dismiss the complaints or the concerns or the experience of
[00:02:06] older women in particular, but older men as well, uh, when they would talk about their bodies and how things felt. And I remember having this moment of like the, the sheer a and, and I was guilty of it as well, but the sheer audacity of, of me to think that I knew more about somebody's body than they did their own lived experience within that body was.
[00:02:26] And I started to look at the way that I was trained as a coach to position myself as an expert at all costs. And to dismiss what someone else was saying, if it came up against what I had programmed for that day, or what idea I had come up with about them instead of listening to what they said, and then adjusting what I was coaching specifically to each person.
[00:02:53] And as I started to shut up and as I started to believe people. [00:03:00] It greatly transformed, not just how I coached, but how I connected. And it allowed me to create these relationships with my clients that were yes. About your bodies and yes, about getting stronger and meeting these goals, but also about giving people the experience of having been heard by someone who is a quote unquote professional.
[00:03:23] That often led them to empowering themselves when speaking with their doctor or a lawyer or their husband or their children's teacher. And so what I began to see is the way that the way that working with your body can change how you show up in the world and the way, that, which really supporting people to be themselves and believe themselves to be more themselves
[00:03:51] allowed them to show up in the world in a really different way also. And so that is kind of how. How I became, uh, who I am [00:04:00] today, which is Coaching Character.
[00:04:01] Crystal: I love that I had one experience just a couple years ago. I think when I went with my daughter, we joined the gym. I came with a complimentary session with a personal trainer and I have knee issues.
[00:04:17] I know that I have knee issues and he glossed over what I was telling him. And I was kinda like, well, I. I could run down hill, you know, I could do all these things that I wasn't thinking about limitations that people older than me had, or that I would have later.
[00:04:38] Jenny: Well, and there's a way in which there's a way in which women in particular get dismissed.
[00:04:44] Right? We are called hysterical. We're called dramatic. We all there's much language around. Women in particular and dismissing our experience. And I think that men experience it as well. It's not to just say women do it. I think men experience it around weakness, right? Anything where you're being weak or you're being [00:05:00] a baby, it's kind of the same thing.
[00:05:02] And. In that industry. So much of it does come from these systems, these systems that are inaccurate, these systems that kind of overlay over our whole society, which is around supremacy and patriarchal. And you know, all of these things, but what happens is you don't wanna look like you don't know what you're doing.
[00:05:19] So if you come to me and you say I've got knee issues and I go, well, I don't know what to, I don't know how to help her. It's easier for me to dismiss it and be like, well, you're probably just overreacting. Or if you just do some of these movements, then it will feel better as opposed to leaning into like, tell me more about it.
[00:05:37] Or maybe I need to learn more or let me look into it. One of the best things I learned as a coach was when somebody would ask me a question to tell them, I didn't know, but I would find out, I don't know what, I don't know the answer to that, but I can find it out for you. And then my job was to go learn.
[00:05:55] And it built trust and it allowed people to like, again, be [00:06:00] heard and feel like they could bring their real selves to me and then get stronger and build confidence and change how they viewed themselves and their body and their capacity in the world, because they were really being addressed. As the individual that they are.
[00:06:18] Crystal: As I've been trying to get fit again.
[00:06:21] And, and I have a reasonable level of fitness because my son is so into biking now and I used to be really into biking and I have these ideas in my head about what I should be able to do. Do you have many women that are like that, that are really bumping up against their heads telling them they can do things their bodies can't do anymore, or vice versa?
[00:06:44] Jenny: The, the short answer is yes. And men and women show up. I wanna say yes and. Us humans show up with our bodies and often with a memory of what we were capable of doing that we haven't done for a while. And then when we can't do it [00:07:00] right away, the feeling is that we failed or we start to hear those things
[00:07:06] we've heard about old people. I'm using little air quotes here. You guys, you can't see it. Cause this is a podcast. I forgot. What about being old? And somehow we're supposed to just hang up the bikes, hang up your running shoes, hang up, your swimming cap, whatever. But the truth is so yes, everyone shows up with an idea of where they should be.
[00:07:24] And almost nobody shows up with an idea of where they should be. That is in alignment with where they are or with a kindness to themselves. If you start to think about, should you know, people talk about shoulding on yourself, right? You're often coming with this idea that you are either too much or not enough.
[00:07:42] It's never that you are who you are and isn't that delicious and perfect. And just where you should be. So for someone like you, Crystal, who's saying, gosh, I wanna be doing these things with my son and I'm feeling like maybe I can't do the same things I used to do. I would say like, not today. [00:08:00] Not today.
[00:08:00] You probably can't keep up with your son, but what does it look like if you biked three times a week for the next year, then could you guys do the long ride you want? There's a lot of ways in this world that we have this all or nothing thinking, and the truth is. If you want to be really strong, if you wanna be independent as an older person, if you wanna reach these goals you have around your body, around your mind, around your work.
[00:08:26] So often it's these very, very boring things of exercising regularly. Not extraordinarily, not amazingly, just trudging along with your regular exercise and then sleeping. My friends, please, please sleep, please. please let your bodies rest and heal and recover and eating and like, are you eating enough? And are you for the most part, putting food in your body that helps it to feel better.
[00:08:57] And those three boring, boring, [00:09:00] not Instagramable at all, super unexciting tenants are what will actually build you into the person that you wanna be. I don't think there's an age limit around it. I watch women at the gym in their eighties do deadlifts, which is if you don't know an exercise where you pick a barbell up from the ground, but they started just by showing up every day.
[00:09:20] And I think that that's the, the horrible, awful, no good, really bad truth is it's about showing up and anything and anything. Oh, it's so tedious and boring. It's like my least favorite thing ever. That the idea is that we're just supposed to keep going regularly. It's so. Non fantastical. I really wanted it to be juicy and different.
[00:09:44] I wanna have secrets for you guys. I wanna tell you about a special cream or like if you grow your own tomatoes, that this is what'll happen, but unfortunately it's the most awful boring stuff, which is why as a coach, I have a coach. Because I need [00:10:00] somebody to remind me to just show up again and again, so that I too can meet my goals.
[00:10:05] Crystal: Could you tell me a little bit about your path to becoming a coach? How did it come about.
[00:10:13] Jenny: With joy in my heart. Here's the thing that happened for me. I've always wanted to be really strong. The women who have big muscles has always been something that I personally have desired. I don't think that that needs to be anyone else's desire.
[00:10:29] This isn't me pitching that as a general theme. It's just as an individual, I have always kind of liked that, which was a bit unusual. In my twenties, I started going to the gym regularly and exercising. Before that I had done some sports, but, um, I I've always been athletic, but I was not an athlete per se.
[00:10:50] Most of the school sports require a certain amount of resources from your parents in the form of time, capacity to drive you, funding, et cetera. And that was not my [00:11:00] experience. We didn't have that as a family, which was fine. We had a lot of skateboarding and running about in the hills and being wild feral children.
[00:11:07] So in my twenties, I started working out for the same reason I think most of us do, which is to gain value through being more attractive. I wanted to look better so that I would be hotter so that I would have a better chance of meeting a partner. And I went to the gym and I had a lot of fun. And after a while, what I started to notice is in general, I just felt better.
[00:11:29] I treated people better. I felt better about myself. I have a family that suffers from a variety of depressions and some drug addiction and they just have some different things going on. And I found that I wasn't experiencing those same things. Some of the life experiences that used to cause me to feel really stressed or to kind of spiral stopped showing up that same way.
[00:11:56] And I had a lot more mental and [00:12:00] emotional resource and the only real difference between myself and my family is that I was exercising regularly. And at the time I was also working with children with autism and I was looking at becoming an occupational therapist. And what I was learning is that you can move your body and that can
[00:12:20] kind of hijack your mind. So I started looking at the ways that exercise affected your neurology. And that was when I fell in love. At that point, I wanted to become a coach, not because I cared if somebody had a six pack. And not because I felt like people who are fit are better people or anything like that.
[00:12:43] But because what I had found is a sense of confidence and peace and self-assuredness that I wasn't finding other places. And I really wanted to give that to other people. I wanted to be there for people who also wanted that. Maybe didn't like exercise, maybe didn't [00:13:00] want a beach body. Maybe didn't want the new year, new you kind of thing, but wanted to show up in their life in a different way.
[00:13:08] That was my beginning. I will say I went to become an occupational therapist. I had done all the prerequisites. I was ready to go to the school and they changed what it was required. And I called my husband crying. We had two kids at the time. We still do, but they were little and he said, you gotta pivot.
[00:13:28] And so I took a look at what I had done for my degree, and I said, okay, I can go to kinesiology and I can graduate in the next six months. And that's what I did. And that was kind of what sent me on my strength coach path, as opposed to occupational therapy.
[00:13:45] Crystal: Wow. That's amazing. My son's looking at kinesiology.
[00:13:49] As a possibility
[00:13:51] Jenny: It's juicy. I mean, I, I love it. There's a lot of options. There's a lot of opportunity.
[00:13:58] Crystal: And as you did become a [00:14:00] coach, and you've been running your own business, what has that taught you that maybe you think every person should learn at some point in their life?
[00:14:08] Jenny: Mm, what a great question. I mean, immediately, I wanna be like, what it's taught me is that I am atrocious at accounting.
[00:14:16] That's what has really taught me is, and so I guess if that, I'm only thinking that, because just today I did my accounts receivable and I was like, you should really collect money more often. These poor people. I love what I do. And I often forget, like, I'm like, oh, I missed a billing cycle. Let me go call that person.
[00:14:34] But I would say like, what have I learned that I think most people need to know. What I tell people often is there are no rules and we all know that that's not totally true. Right. Everyone loves to argue that, like there are rules, there are rule. There are, there are choices and consequences. Most of the rules that we follow in our life about
[00:14:55] how we get to be and who we get to be, which looks like when you're old, you [00:15:00] don't do X, Y, Z, or dressing appropriately, or boys do this, or girls do that or whatever. All of these kind of unspoken rules we've agreed to. We're generally just made up by somebody that if you met them, you wouldn't like them or cared what they thought about you.
[00:15:15] So the thing that I have enjoyed the most about running my own business is really getting to push back against what are the rules of business? I was taught so many things as a baby coach about what I could and couldn't do with clients. Never have a personal relationship. They should never be your friend in any, they don't know what they need.
[00:15:43] They need your help to figure out what's wrong with them. These kind of weird. They gave me the heebie-jeebies. I hated these ideas. And as somebody who has run her own business, what I have found is that I get to show up exactly as I am, and I get to let other people do that same [00:16:00] thing and I can not know everything and that doesn't make me lose a client.
[00:16:04] It often makes them gain confidence in me because I'm honest. And I don't know how to be in relationship with someone around their body, in exchange for money and not create deep relationships with these people. I want to know about their families. I wanna know about their work. I ask questions about where they came from.
[00:16:27] Sometimes we talk about what shows up on the gym floor, because we're feeling bad about ourselves that has nothing to do with the weights or your strength and has everything to do with a cruel comment from a classmate or a mother years ago that stayed with you. And so I think the, what I've learned the most is that there are no rules that you can make your own choices, both in your business and in your life.
[00:16:55] And the reason that I chose the name, Coaching Character was, [00:17:00] was because I wanted you to know that like characters is who we are, right. It's us doing our best, but it's also who we are at our silliest, like to be a character and to have character are both so important to a life well lived. And so I am not just trying to get you to be your best,
[00:17:22] I'm trying to, to learn who you are because who you are is the best.
[00:17:27] Crystal: What's one thing about your business that you didn't expect?
[00:17:31] Jenny: That's such a good question. I don't know the answer to that. It's I, I mean, I think I didn't expect it to be so hard. I mean, honestly, it's a lot of pieces. There's a lot of pieces to it and, and I think that in some ways I didn't expect there to be so many moving parts, you know, you're really good at a thing that does not make you good at all
[00:17:55] the other things. Although it has strengthened my ability to ask for help and to [00:18:00] know when to outsource, which is a life lesson that you can just take to the bank for eternity. The other thing that I learned that was unexpected and I had a hunch about it, and I had hoped that it was true, but I didn't know is that you can
[00:18:20] work outside of the market value and still make lots and lots of money. I have written into the value statements of this business that I don't turn anyone away for a lack of funds because I don't think money should gate keep fitness and I have been warned by so many people, uh, during the pandemic, I did pay what you can classes online.
[00:18:44] I have almost always offered some sort of pay what you can or come talk to me and we don't pay. And I've had so many people warn me. Like people will take advantage of it and that's not a good business practice. And all I've ever received from it is [00:19:00] really dedicated clients. And even people that have heard that that's what I'm doing and then paid extra, cuz they were worried
[00:19:06] maybe I wasn't making enough because I was helping people for free. I was hopeful that that was what could happen, but I was surprised at the generosity of people and the, the loyalty of clients who see you out in the world, doing your best by each person.
[00:19:29] Crystal: I guess that was probably one of those rules made up by the patriarchy. I'm just guessing
[00:19:35] Jenny: I think that you may be right. I mean, I, one of the joys of working for other people is you can learn so much and, and some of what you can learn is how you don't wanna be, what you don't want to do. And being in more traditional gym settings and having to turn people away who really wanted it.
[00:19:53] Not only did they want to be working out, but they needed the personalized approach of a coach and they couldn't [00:20:00] afford it. And watching those people slip through the cracks was really sobering and difficult for me. And so it's been a, one of the greatest joys of this business for me is to not have to follow those rules.
[00:20:14] And I think it pleases my family that I could not follow those rules into the poor house. I'm sure they were like, please don't give everything away, mama.
[00:20:22] Crystal: How do you balance the work that you do with your family?
[00:20:27] Jenny: I don't think that you can balance it. Honestly. I think that I personally am a batch worker, which means that I will not do something for quite a while.
[00:20:38] And then I'll do all of it at once. If you're not someone who knows what batch working is, it's, you know, working in chunks. When my family's needs are high. Right now, I have a daughter who is a senior and a daughter who is in eighth grade. Everyone's kind of chill right now. And so that means that I can put a lot of time and energy into my business. When things are [00:21:00] more difficult, I will let my business go on autopilot
[00:21:04] to some Extent I'm not gonna be growing. I'm not gonna be marketing. Everybody already has their programs. And because I own my own business, I've built into it that I am a human and I am a mother and I have priorities. And so some days I just take days off and some days I need to get someone to school and I'm not gonna come and coach you that day.
[00:21:26] So one of the things that that I did in this business was normalized that people miss coaching. Either you'll miss it because you're an actual human with a real life or I'll miss it because I'm also an actual human with a real life. And that there is space and tolerance and even that's even welcomed.
[00:21:46] And so I think that's the best way I've been able to actually balance it is in being really fastidious about telling the truth about that we are all humans and that we, each of us needs the ability to sometimes show up and sometimes [00:22:00] not without punishment or reprimand. If I don't show up, I mean, obviously you're gonna get a warning, but if I need to shift something in my job to accommodate for illness, my children, a vet visit, that that will be accepted.
[00:22:18] And that if you wake up and you're tired or you've got somebody visiting, or you forgot, you wanted to go to the beach that day, that you can also call me and we can rearrange that plan without you being reprimanded for it.
[00:22:31] Crystal: Nice. That's rare. I would say.
[00:22:35] Jenny: It's rare. It's rare, but here's what I'll say. It was terrifying to do this.
[00:22:41] It was terrifying to show up. I have not only do I have great clients that I love and adore, but these clients are, you know, they're real professionals, they're lawyers and doctors and accountants, and they work for Netflix and Roku and all kind. I mean, these are a real deal. People with kids and jobs.[00:23:00]
[00:23:00] Things going on and to have corporate Americans as your clients, and to say, I'm not gonna do anything by the rules is very scary. But what I find time and time again is it is a, it's a relief to be able to be seen as a whole person to again, let yourself be who you actually are and where you actually are.
[00:23:26] So if you are tired, I need to believe you. I don't need to tell you, like we never skip a Monday. Skip all the Mondays who wants to come to the gym on a Monday. Ew. At the end of the day, what I want is like autonomy for myself and for everybody else. I want you to make the choice that is right for you.
[00:23:47] And I wanna be able to do that for myself. And so while that's terrifying as a business owner, cuz we have all these secret special rules were supposed to follow. If that's my real end goal. [00:24:00] Then I have to live it.
[00:24:01] Crystal: I have a feeling that I already know the answer to the second part of this question. I'd like to ask you, what's your biggest challenge right now?
[00:24:10] And what tool or tools are you using to help you through it?
[00:24:16] Jenny: My biggest challenge in this business is always everything that's not me in front of a person. So if it's me and you coaching, I'm having the time of my life. All of the things that happen behind the scenes of a business are challenging to me.
[00:24:36] They're not necessarily hard. Yes. I understand how to do most of them, but setting, set aside the time and prioritizing them, or even getting them done tends to be really difficult. My favorite greatest tool is asking for help. I will take help from anybody. I will ask my children, if they'll fill in my schedule for me, if I send them a [00:25:00] screenshot of what it should look like, will you go online and do it?
[00:25:03] I will ask people that I know. And I think we all now know people who are doing graphic design or people who do accounting or whatever. So I go to the people that I know, and I ask if I can pay for their brilliant services. Sometimes that can be expensive, which is okay. Then I look at like, can I get another client so that I can then pay for someone else to do this?
[00:25:23] Because it is not my forte. It's great to know your weaknesses.
[00:25:27] Crystal: I tried to pay my daughter to do my social media and it didn't really work out...but
[00:25:33] Jenny: Social media is so tricky. That's just such an interest. I mean it's so in it's first off, it's new. Those of us who've had businesses. Like, I mean, my business grew up in social media, so I feel pretty okay with this.
[00:25:45] But people have had their business for 20 years have had to bring it in. You've had to learn some whole new system of marketing and reaching out. And it's, it's just such a, it's such an interesting [00:26:00] platform. It requires personalization or else it's easily ignored and it also demands your time. So. I'm gonna pray for you.
[00:26:11] I think social media is so hard.
[00:26:13] Crystal: It's a lot different than, you know, in the old days you had to pay more money, but you'd send a bunch of mailers out or send, right.
[00:26:20] Jenny: Or you'd be the email list. Right? Weren't you aren't you of the email list like yes. One email you sent it to everyone. All you had to do is catch one.
[00:26:28] Also the email. Ugh. Now I'm supposed to look cute on camera. That's exhausting.
[00:26:33] Crystal: This is one that I like to ask everyone, especially since you have two daughters, if you could go back and give your young adult self one piece of advice, what would it be?
[00:26:47] Jenny: I would have her budgeting earlier, but I get, I need to give that a caveat because I am somebody who went to therapy really young.
[00:26:59] If [00:27:00] you're here listening and wondering what successful business women should do, it's go to therapy. That was my number one thing. You need to have somebody that's in your corner that can tell you the truth about you with no ulterior motives. However, since I was in therapy for many, many years, I would've asked my younger self to budget earlier. To learn how to look at and navigate her money.
[00:27:27] To face it and not, uh, internalize it as some sort of failing or shame. I would've had her read some more books about capitalism and then I would've had her budgeting at a younger age because that has been, uh, one of the few places as an adult that, that I continue to, um, not to struggle, but to need to.
[00:27:49] It's long lasting. You know, if you don't budget at a young age and you get older and then you look, oh, this opportunity I could have taken or that opportunity I could have taken. I think that that's what sits with me the [00:28:00] longest. Everything else, I know. I ha I came from a chaotic upbringing and I created a wildly delightful life.
[00:28:08] So there's not that many places that I feel like she needed support that I didn't give it to her. Younger me really needed to stop treating herself so often. Just put some of that money in the bank, kitten.
[00:28:20] Crystal: You mentioned your chaotic upbringing. Could you tell me about one or two of the most influential people in your life and how they impacted you?
[00:28:30] Jenny: Yes, happily. It's funny. I've had, so, uh, I did have a chaotic upbringing and then I had so many little communities in my time growing up. I mean, I. I'm a product of a village. And, uh, and I deeply believe in community and, and continuing to have that village available for young people. And for, for all of us, really, I think about that a lot. But in my family, [00:29:00] I think, uh, my grandmother has of great influence to me.
[00:29:04] I adored her. We were very close when I was older. She wasn't fond of young children and I can't really blame her. But she was a really, really bright, brilliant woman. And she did some things that I had never heard of. And I think that she gave me a lot of both, uh, my pragmatism. Is that how we're gonna say it?
[00:29:24] Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be good enough. So my grandmother's name was Allie and when she was young and she was married, obviously, so she, she was a nurse in the war and she married my grandfather. Her and her mother had sat down and chosen him out of a list of suitors. She did not wanna be married. She wanted to go to college and become a writer, but she had a job cuz it was the fifties.
[00:29:48] So she gets married and she has her children and she's very unhappy. And she goes to a lawyer and she says, I'd like to file for a divorce. And the lawyer says what's happening. And she. I'm [00:30:00] I'm bored. And the lawyer says ma'am, there are people abusing children and wives and real violence and neglect, and you are wasting my time asking for a divorce because you're bored.
[00:30:10] And my grandmother says to the lawyer, I'm willing to die from a lot of things and boredom isn't one of them. And I would like that divorce and she got it. And there was all kinds of things that she did throughout her life, but she was like that. She was matter of fact, and she was not gonna waste her time on here.
[00:30:27] And she understood it was finite. And, um, and I just, that always stuck with me. She's also the person that told me your girlfriends will save you, that you can love whoever you love, that's fine, but upkeep your friendships because those will save your life and she wasn't wrong. And because of her, I have.
[00:30:47] A lot of my humor came from her. The fact that I am matter of fact, and pragmatic about the world that we live in and the things that I want to do, some of my rebeliousness around rule [00:31:00] following and my deep, deep love of my girlfriends all comes from her. And those things really helped to make me who I am. And I would say, well, there have been a lot of people who have influenced me positively throughout my life.
[00:31:12] The other one who stuck with me was my dad. He's not my birth father. Uh, my dad came into my life when I was eight and he and my mother were together approximately a year. But he said, you kids are my kids, my brother and I, and he adopted us. And that was it. We were his children for life. He didn't miss a game.
[00:31:32] He didn't miss a play. He didn't miss a art exhibit. I mean, he was there for all of it and he used to tell me if you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly. In this world, it was like the nineties and everyone was against enabling and everybody was against, uh, obsession. You know, it was like, it was kind of like these trigger words and he would get so upset and he would say, get obsessed, get obsessed and stay obsessed.
[00:31:56] He's like, do you think Madonna's not obsessed? Do you think Benjamin [00:32:00] Franklin wasn't obsessed. Do you think Steve Jobs isn't obsessed. He's like the people who change this world are obsessed. Like if you want a life worth living, get obsessed. And, uh, and that just always stuck with me. Uh, he also did things the way that he wanted to and kind of disregarded rules.
[00:32:18] And I think that my willingness to take chances. The way that I do in this life are because I had the two of them paving that road for me.
[00:32:27] Crystal: I wish I could have met your grandmother.
[00:32:30] Jenny: Oh my God, I wish I could meet her too. I miss her so much. She was so fun. She was also a mean Yatzee player. She made a great Irish coffee.
[00:32:39] She didn't go to a restaurant that didn't have a full bar. I mean, Ugh. She was great. so fun.
[00:32:47] Crystal: What's one question that you wish that I'd asked you as we're wrapping up and how would you have answered?
[00:32:53] Jenny: I, uh, I wish that you had asked if there was anything else that I did. And I would've told you [00:33:00] that I also run an online course called Grace and Grit, which is a peer supported accountability course.
[00:33:09] Essentially what you do is, it started with fitness, of course, as all things do in my life. But it has morphed into, we all have something that we keep telling ourselves if we could just start doing that thing again, our life would be better meditate, ride our bike, go to the gym, whatever. And so you bring whatever that is, budgeting cetera to the group.
[00:33:32] And you say, this is a thing I'm gonna be working on. And for 12 weeks, you have a group of women who are checking up on you and are supporting you and are cheerleading for you and are asking you how it's being done. When we meet, we talk about what's working and what doesn't and how to get the baby steps necessary to stay consistent.
[00:33:53] Because like I said, at the beginning, unfortunately, the way that we change our life is through these very, very boring [00:34:00] steps of being consistent and resting and nourishing ourselves.
[00:34:05] Crystal: Do you have a 12 week session coming up?
[00:34:09] Jenny: There'll be another session of Grace and Grit coming the end of September, the beginning of October, we typically do it through the holidays because often we need a soft place to land during the holidays, as we are inundated with the ways that we should be walking through this world.
[00:34:24] And as we are rubbing up against our family of origin, which is sometimes sweet and sometimes sour and sometimes just needs a little break. So typically we do it through the New Year's as well. Because it feels really good to already be on your way to your goals when that new year comes and just pop champagne and celebrate and not look back and write a list of the things you didn't accomplish that year as your new set of resolutions.
[00:34:49] So that will be coming up. You can find that on my Instagram, which is at Coaching Character, that's where I do all of the marketing for it. And, locally people [00:35:00] who want to be strength training with me, have that opportunity. And if you're not local, I also have an app that I use and we do check-ins to have a coach.
[00:35:10] If you're a person who feels like you're self motivated enough to do it through an app, which. Sometimes I am. And sometimes I'm not, I understand it's not for everyone.
[00:35:17] Crystal: Can my listeners find you also on your website or is your Instagram the best place?
[00:35:23] Jenny: They can also find me on the website. They can also email me directly.
[00:35:27] Jenny @coaching character.org. You can reach me Jenny or at coaching character on Instagram or at the website, which is www coaching character.org. So all of those places are great.
[00:35:44] Crystal: I'll make sure that all of those are included in the show notes.
[00:35:48] Jenny: Excellent. Thank you.
[00:35:50] Crystal: Is there anything else you would like to share?
[00:35:53] Jenny: I don't think so. This was very fun, Crystal. Thank you for having me.
[00:35:57] Crystal: I've been wanting to have you for a while [00:36:00] because you're a lot of fun and I feel like you have a lot to offer.
[00:36:04] Jenny: Thank you. Well, I think that I've just offered your editor a lot of work, cuz I'm a long winded child, but other than. It's been really fun to be on here with you.
[00:36:14] And I appreciate the opportunity and I hope that your listeners enjoy it and that they are out in the world breaking rules and just being themselves. Cuz boy, do we need more people being themselves?
[00:36:25] Crystal: Thank you Jenny, for taking the time to share your story with me and my listeners and have a great rest of your day.
[00:36:34] And I will see you in here next week. Bye for now.
[00:36:40] Thank you for listening to the Extraordinary Life Podcast with writer and coach. Crystal Obregon. We'd love to connect with you outside of the podcast, too. To find more helpful insights, show notes and more about Crystal, go to Crystal Obregon.com o B R E G O N, where you'll also find info for the Design Your Decade Workshop.
[00:36:59] This [00:37:00] workshop will help you to stop drifting and start creating. Until next time, be extraordinary.
