01 Sep Jeannine Yoder on Becoming a High Level Coach and Teaching Others to Surrender to Receiving

Anne Mandler Talks One on One with Jeannine Yoder in the Premiere Fall 2015 No. 1 of ANNE

JEANNINE: Hi Anne, everyone!

ANNE: Yes, it’s wonderful to have you. Jeannine Yoder, I would like to introduce you and just thank you so much for being here. We are doing the premier issue of A Magazine, and I’m just thrilled to have you.

JEANNINE: Thank you, I’m so excited for this magazine and you’re vision for it and that the premier is here. So, it’s such an honor to be a part of this big opening for you and for all of the viewers, so can’t wait to see what we dig into today.

ANNE: Alright, me too. You never know what’s going to happen. So, what I would like to do is introduce you, Jey, and many people know you and your work, but I would love to just give a little introduction, and also have you talk a little bit about what it is that you do.

Jeannine Yoder is a New York Times featured Business and Goddess Lifestyle Coach for Coaches. She is a Broadway Starlet and founder of mentormasterclass.com, where she helps women go from best-kept-secret to embraced as the next celebrity life coach with the support of a soul-powered sisterhood. Yay! You can visit jeannineyoder.com to get free instant access to Jey’s morning success ritual that will help you heal all visible and invisible blocks because we all have those keeping you from your true potential.

So again, welcome. You know Jey, I would love to hand it over to you for a second and just give folks an idea, for those people who don’t know you well, what it is that you do and what you enjoy doing most?

JEANNINE: Beautiful. Well, I guess I’ll just start with a quick reason why I do what I do because I think as coaches and as thought leaders that’s what people really are drawn to, so I’ll share that as the first tip.

You know, it’s not what we do, it’s why we do it, so the reason is I grew up with both of my parents were heavily addicted to drugs, and very early on they got into recovery, and I have this view of life where I saw some people choose such horrible ways of coping with the world and themselves and emotions, and then there are other people who create extraordinary lives and do incredible things, and I thought what is the difference because do we all have access to that.

Am I going to be stuck in this story or lineage that I’ve seen passed down along my family or is there a way that I can learn to become a better version of myself and do I have access to those resources to have that kind of life? And as I watched my parents go through recovery, I learned that community support and resourcefulness and spirituality are some of the access points to include in understanding our own brain and addictions and patterns to being able to become more.

So, really young I became super passionate about tools and techniques and books and community and the resources, and I thought my dream was to become a Broadway star. I loved performing. I loved theater and the arts. This is kind of how I felt most expressed and most authentic and connected to other people, and I used all of these personal development resources and this passion for tools and techniques my whole life to pursue that really challenging career.

And then when I got to the top, I actually made it to Broadway, and I discovered there was more to me. There was more to my life’s purpose, and I really was missing this desire to be of service in some way, and that’s when life coaching came into my sphere.

I started recognizing there’s this career called life coaching and there’s this business called becoming a life coach, and I thought, “That’s who I am.” That’s what I’ve been doing my whole life long for myself, and it was my passion with everyone I knew to just share tools and techniques. So I pursued training in becoming a life coach, and through that I discovered that my deepest passion is actually teaching the tools and techniques.

And through that New York Times article that you mentioned, women from all over the world were coming to me saying, “I feel like this is my purpose. I would like to become a coach and I’m really nervous,” or “I don’t know how. What does it take?” because really early on I had created a successful six figure coaching business and had a really loyal tribe of followers.

So now, what I do and what I created through that self evolution process of discovering what is my purpose, how do I really desire to serve, what’s the way that I want to serve in the world, and then working through all my fears and blocks to do that, I discovered that there was no life coach training program out there that I felt gave all the tools and techniques, all the personal development you need in your own life and the kind of community and sisterhood that women need to really be able to launch a successful business, and who I love working with is women who are waking up to this calling of feeling that they have a desire to be of service, that they want to or have naturally been coaching other people, that they want a lifestyle of freedom and time location freedom so they can live their best life, and so I help women do that through my program Mentor Master Class. I lead retreats and women’s circles around the world and that helps women learn how to take the stage.

So I’ve kind of married my passion and skill set from Broadway and theater with coaching to help women learn how to tell their stories and take the stage with their message, and then I lead a mastermind called The Sisterhood Mastermind, where I really explore goddess archetypes and healing because I believe in this form of work for women who want to transition out of the masculine hustle way of doing things and into a more feminine approach to their business. So I kind of surge through those three avenues, the life coach training program, the Mentor Master Class, the Mastermind, and the retreats, and then I work with women one-on-one.

ANNE: That’s great, and I am so thrilled to hear a story that you and, I guess, me and there’s other people out there who were children reading self-help books, because I kind of jumped on that bandwagon early myself, and I was like looking at other kids going, “Hmm, is this bizarre? Am I the only one doing this?”

But I think that no matter when that manifests for you, it is a life changing thing, and it can certainly take you places, and especially when you get started early and realize that and then not know what to do with it, people can come to someone like you and take it to a different level.

JEANNINE: I love hearing that, Anne, because one thing I believe and see in women when they come, is I love hearing those stories because I believe our soul has an idea of what it’s come here for and that, if we are really open and inquisitive and question that of ourselves we will discover little signs, like the fact that you were one of the kids growing up doing this is no coincidence, why you’re now leading this magazine and stepping into this part of your purpose, and there’s a reason why you were different or why that was natural to you.

And I think it is so fascinating when we really think about that, and I think everyone has a version of this in their story, and that’s why it’s so important to be in that space of inquiry and to ask what is it, what is your unique thing, what separates you, and then you start to discover what that’s leading you towards. That’s really exciting to hear that from you and connect the dots as to why it is you’re doing exactly what you’re doing now.

ANNE: Absolutely. Thanks. And I’m sure that’s one reason that you and I get to talk as well. I think those little synchronicities really draw people together, and that’s really what this magazine is about. It’s about being able to not only attract the right tribe, because that can be somewhat of a lip service, but I think it’s also, it’s a very real thing to be learning and growing and developing yourself with a group who is like-minded and has the same aspirations and has the same conscious living type of goals.

JEANNINE: Absolutely. That’s what I’ve learned through Sisterhood. Often the biggest thing is we tell ourselves these stories of how dramatic our story is or how limited we are or how challenged we are, and then you get into a community of like-minded people who are on a shared mission and you see, “Oh, I’m not that crazy,” or even down to the limiting beliefs we have like, “I have nothing valuable to say,” or “Who do I think I am that I could become a coach?” and you hear other women be vulnerable enough to share that they’re going through that too and then you start to recognize, “I’m not crazy. There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s not that I’m not good enough, this is just what people go through in an evolutionary process to do something bigger with themselves.”

And then you pull together as a community to work through that and to go after what you really want. I think it’s so important, like you said, that we share these little pieces of our story so those connections can be made so that we can rise out of these parts of ourselves or these stories or limitations that just aren’t serving us.

ANNE: Agreed. The other thing I think that I’d love to hear from you Jey is since you have been doing this for a really long time, I think it’s really valuable for people to know the number of years that you’ve been doing what you’re doing and to kind of forecast a bit. Like, what do you think our industry looks like in ten to fifteen years? What sorts of things do you see evolving?

JEANNINE: Yeah, so I’ve been doing this about, well since I was young, but officially about 6 years, and it has changed so dramatically. I mean, when I started, the New York Times featured me because they thought it was so shocking that someone was young, I was 27 at the time, and they thought it was so shocking that someone that was young could be a life coach, and what is this whole life coaching thing, and the title of the article was “Should a Life Coach Have a Life First?” and it was controversial, and for therapists back in that time they were really like, “This is ridiculous,” because their job was now being threatened with this whole new emerging industry that was a part of personal development, and therapy and life coaching is different.

So what someone would go to for a therapist a life coach is not going to provide that same service, but it was new and a lot of people in the comments section of that article I remember were like, “What is a life coach?” and as I’ve seen it evolve, there are so many more people of all ages desiring to be life coaches, and it’s become more mainstream, where you see it in the movies now, you know, “The Real Housewives,” they all have a life coach.

It’s not a question of what is it anymore, so I find that fascinating because when I was starting my business and saying, “Would you like to try a life coaching session with me?” they were like, “What is that?” you know, and when I look at the future of this, I still think that we’re in a new paradigm. I really think we’re shifting out of a paradigm of hard work and just following the mold of society to fall into a career and choosing careers that other people say are successful and having that list of five like, “I could be a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer,” and now people are actually starting to shift into this new paradigm where they’re wanting to look at what is the lifestyle that I want to live, and what do I uniquely have to offer the world, and more people, I think, are becoming conscious people. They have more of a spiritual approach to their life and to themselves, and we’re being open to that even more and more in society, and I think that that can be a Pandora’s box.

I mean, there’s so much that can come out when you start to ask those questions, so a life coach role becomes more important when more people start diving into that because it’s a co-creator to help you work through everything that you’re going to discover in that process, and with that being said, I also think coaches will have to do that for themselves.

So, not just the paradigm shift that’s happening in our world, but if you’re going to choose to be a life coach, I think some people have the idea like, “Oh, I’ve been through a lot or I have a traumatic story and I learned from it, so I can be a coach,” and I just think that that is shifting where people try it out and then they realize, “Oh, there’s so much more to this coaching thing. I actually have to have a skill set.”

I need to be trained and know what I’m doing, so that when people come to me with these deep questions or unlocking these parts of themselves I know about the brain and the neuropathways, and I know about the energy systems in the body, and I know about taking care of yourself and health, and I know about the effects of relationships.

So, I think we’re going to see a shift from people just like, “I’ve read a lot of, you know, coaching books for myself and so therefore, I’m a qualified coach,” and they’ll be much more opportunities to get high level training and much more research in the future and much more of an open mind and proof around how these things work and help people create better lives, so coaches will need to be more trained, and as a result of that, I also think coaches have to walk their talk at a higher level, meaning really work through their fear and be doing the personal work in their life, so they have to be highly resourced.

So, I think you’ll see an increase in our industry a support for coaches as well, so that we can help expand these leaders so those leaders can help expand this new paradigm shift, where we live in a society and a world where people are doing jobs that are fulfilling and they’re doing work that is an expression of who they are rather than just showing up to a job to make money, and all of that is really connected. So, I’ll start with that. There’s so much more that goes with it but…

ANNE: No, it’s great. I think all of those are just really applicable, and I love the forecast because I agree with you. I think that it’s only growing and growing in a positive way, and yes there are a bazillion life coaches, but I think there is starting to be kind of a weeding away in a sense, a good way, where people are either finding their own niche and they can be a little bit more targeted, or they’re finding that maybe it wasn’t what they thought it would be and they’re going into other areas, so I think we’re seeing the credibility and just the quality of coaches naturally select I guess is a good way to say it, but in a really positive way. You know, I think all industries go through that, and one thing that you were talking about that reminded us of a story that Elizabeth to a story that she had told as well. So another thing I would like to ask a little bit about is specifically there is a ton of tools that you offer the people that you work with within in your master class and the other things that you do, do you think that there is a tip or two that you could give people and it can be anything Jey, just something that would be a help or a little piece of advice, like a day-to-day tool that they could use?

JEANNINE: Sure. Just any one, or do you mean like people considering becoming coaches?

ANNE: I think since you work with coaches, like a tip for coaches would be great.

JEANNINE: Yeah. Well, I’ll just share kind of the cornerstone of Mentor Master Class because I think these are the key points that I believe in and what I teach the women that go through my training. The first is you have to walk your talk. You really have to make space in your life to receive support and to dig into your own blocks. Because if you’re going to be in a thought leadership position, you should be a magnetizing example of how these tools work.

So there should be space in your life to truly practice them with integrity and authenticity, and so I think that takes at first working through your money fear. I think every coach should have a coach first. It’s really hard to go into this industry and to say, “Oh, it’s so powerful to have a coach and you’ll get so many changes,” and then to not be experiencing that for yourself. So, one of the biggest game changers for me has been investing in mastermind experiences where I’m really up leveling my resources and getting the support I need to look deeply and to work through my blocks. I usually have two coaches at a time. I have a spiritual coach that I do archetypal healing with and a business strategy coach, and really looking at your capacity to surrender to receiving. Because if you’re going to be a thought leader and hold so many other people, then you’ve really got to learn how to take care of yourself and receive the support that you need.

And the second core value I think that would help, there are four, I know you asked for one but I think they’re so important, so I’m going to do these four. So the second one is when you’re beginning you have to be practicing the tools and techniques that you’re learning, so don’t to try to just do this without getting some kind of life coach training. You know, really look into a school or a training system where you can learn neurolinguistics programming and all about the study of the brain and our habits and patterns, so that when you go into a client situation you’ll feel confident about how to help them navigate what their going through and you feel skilled. Because if you’re not confident, you won’t put yourself out there. You won’t do the prospecting that’s necessary. You won’t be able to figure out your target niche and area that you really want to serve in, and you won’t be able to charge the rates that you’re worth because you’re going to feel some sense of insecurity about it and you’ll be subconsciously avoiding putting yourself out there.

I tell coaches in the beginning get really great training and make sure that you’re practicing and doing it with people, that you’re sharing these tools and you’re coaching right away. Don’t get into a training program that says you have to wait three years and get all these certifications. There is no certification for life coaching, so it’s all about you and your confidence and your research that you’ve put in to learning these skills and techniques. So, the passion at the beginning is the most important time when you have that, so don’t prolong it. Really start coaching right away, and then the third is prospecting. You want to start figuring out who are you uniquely meant to serve, like you mentioned, and when we try to serve everyone, we can’t become an expert, but when you start to narrow in, “I really love talking about health,” or “I really love focusing on relationships,” and I’d get the tools and techniques there. I’d understand the problems that exist in that area or career or you know, you can get so specific in coaching it can literally be down to like, autism. Like, you can narrow it in. So really when you’re prospecting, start to identify who do you feel called to serve. Like for me, I realized I loved tools and techniques and women who want to become coaches, so it’s a very specific group of people, and it’s a very specific way that I desire to teach, so I teach the training to become a coach, and that’s who I’m calling in, and then finally marketing. Really indulge in marketing. We live in an every evolving society, you know, technology. There’s so much changing every day, and if you really honor that educational process of becoming a coach, it’s going to help you to create a business, which for most of you, if you’re doing coaching, it’s because you want to be able to have time and location freedom.

You want to make great money doing something that you love, and if you take time to master marketing and get education around it, that’s going to serve all the other most important values that you have for your reason for becoming a coach. And so those are the four things we focus on in Mentor Master Class, and I’ve noticed it’s what takes women from just feeling like they don’t even know if they want to do this to being really confident, successful business owners who are living a life they love and doing work in the world that they love.

ANNE: Love it! Thank you.

JEANNINE: Yes.

ANNE: I want to respect our time Jey. I could probably have a part two and part three with you because I love talking to you, but just to respect time, maybe there’s a parting thing that you can give to people. I know that within the magazine actually as part of the lower half of your write up and the piece that we’re doing with you there’s a free gift that you’re offering, and if you want to talk about that, that’s great, or also, if you want to talk about another little piece of something that you can offer people or you’d like to gift people, I’d love the hear that.

JEANNINE: Sure. So, yeah, The Daily Ritual, I offer that as a gift to people because it’s a way to start with when you’re saying okay how do I start walking my talk, how do I start taking care of myself. Whenever you watch interviews with really successful people who have done incredible things, the one thing I started to notice when they were asked, “What is it that makes you successful?” is they talk about their ritual, their morning routine, and I started to be fascinated by how so many people that were very successful have this thing in common, and I started to research what is that about.

And it’s because we can’t just wake up on auto pilot and trust our human body and system because there are so many challenges we face or blocks that we’ve accrued, whether through our personal life experience or our family ancestry. There’s so much working against us that it’s a beautiful space to create for yourself to clear, to decide how you’re going to show up to your day, to be in the driver’s seat.

So, I started researching the simple tools and techniques and thought how can I make this into a fun ritual that we can personalize that works through your specific blocks and helps you start your day empowered, so you can move toward those bigger things you want in your life. So, that’s what The Daily Ritual is. I think all the info is there. You can go to jeannineyoder.com you’ll get the first three days of creating your ritual free, and I highly recommend it. It will change your life.

But let me offer you something else because this is something I do personally, and I know everyone can do in their life now. Maybe it’s not always easy to make this happen, but I encourage you to really consider it. So, I noticed that I had a pattern of hustling and powering through, so I had this idea that the way that we become successful is to figure things out for ourself, to push ourselves really hard to do what we think we should do because this is what all the other people are doing, and that if I did that I would find success, and it worked for me when I was growing up in an unsafe environment, but now in my life that story and that approach isn’t serving me anymore, and I bet that’s true for most of you because you’re a well resourced adult and you have a lot of education. You have a lot of intelligence and brilliance behind you. You’ve already faced so many challenges in your life that you’ve overcome, and so you don’t have to choose to do that alone anymore, and you don’t have to be hustling so hard.

There’s a way that you can relax and surrender into, for women I’m speaking to, your feminine power, and that looks very different then the masculine powering through, and so I just want to share with you one way that you might start to explore your feminine power and not powering through by yourself but how you can do this with a support system.

So, I learned about sisterhood. I learned that we are more powerful in numbers. You know, we used to live in tribes. We weren’t behind four wall doing all of these roles that we play as women by ourselves. We were in community and we were supported, and when we needed to fall down to our knees, there was someone right there to pick us up, and so I want to encourage you to try to create that in your life, to stop hiding behind your four walls, behind your dreams, and open up to a sister circle.

So, how I’ve done this is I found a like-minded group. I found it by Facebook. You can find so many groups on Facebook and then reach out to someone personally. You can get to an in person event that is catered around a topic that you’re interested in, whether it’s mothering or marketing or cooking, you know anything that you’re really passionate about that you would want to find other women that are, and then put yourself out there to say, “Hey, do you want to start a weekly circle?”

So what I do, I have friends that I’ve met from around the world, every Monday at 4:00 p.m. we hop on the phone. There’s five of us. We have a little sister circle, and how it works is you get 20 minutes each to just share all the shit that’s coming up for you. Sometimes it’s just to celebrate, sometimes it’s to vent, sometimes it’s to ask for specific support, and that’s what you have to learn. You have to learn to say this is where I need support, and that is so hard for people to really learn to admit and then to open up and say, “Help me,” like I’m here for your resources.

And then on that call those four other women rack their brains, bring their hearts together to just be there for me for that 20 minutes and then I give back to them, and we each have a little and we keep it really tight, an hour and twenty minutes each time, and we show up every week because you want to hide and you want to say, “I’m not in a good mood, so I can’t be there for someone else right now,” but this teaches you that you don’t have to hide. You don’t have to power through, and it’s so much easier. The support that you get it’s like a huge weight lifted off of you, and suddenly the resource that you need or the emotion that was keeping you stuck and boggling you down is lifted, and it’s that easy of just having one consistent time every week. So, I know it takes a little bit of work to start, but once you do, it’s so easy. You’ll just have that call and it’s a life changer, so I encourage you to really consider how can you pull together a little circle of sisterhood that you can keep consistent and challenge yourself to switch out of this powering through role and into surrender to receiving, and if you can do that, I know that your life would be changed forever, so I offer you all that. I invite you to try that out.

ANNE: Beautiful. I love that, and again, I think that it’s so helpful to hear that from other people. As you may know, I run a circle myself, and it’s within the same realm of just a place, as safe space for people to be, a community.

JEANNINE: And if you don’t have a community or you don’t desire to be in circle with the current people that your with, because often times we’re trying to switch out of an unhealthful habit, there’s so many women that are leading these circles. I’m leading them. You’re leading them Anne.

Like, look it up online and you’ll find someone who will be the facilitator of bringing a like-minded group together for you. So you don’t even have to do that on your own. You can literally find someone who will say, “I will bring the kind of women and support you need.” All you have to do is open your heart and look for it and say yes to being a part of it.

ANNE: Absolutely. Well, Jey thank you so much for being here. I think that everything you added was just on point and really about what we’re all dealing with now, so it was a gift and thank you.

JEANNINE: Thank you, Anne. Thank you and everyone good luck and enjoy the magazine and enjoy the launch of it Anne, and I’m so excited.

ANNE: I am too. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

JEANNINE: Thank you. You too.

Jeannine Yoder is a New York Times Featured Business & Goddess Lifestyle Coach For Coaches, Broadway Starlet, and founder of MentorMasterclass.com where she helps women go from best-kept-secret to embraced as the next celebrity life coach with the support of a soul powered sisterhood. Visit www.jeannineyoder.com to get FREE instant access to Jey’s morning success ritual that will help you heal all visible and invisible blocks keeping you from your true potential.