Episode 6: From Teacher to Marketer: A Journey of Resilience with Jennie Bellinger
What Moving Every Two Years Taught Me (And Jennie) About Resilience
I was chatting with Jennie Bellinger on the podcast recently, and something she said really stuck with me. Jennie grew up as an "Air Force brat," which means her childhood was basically one long series of packing boxes and saying goodbye.
It got me thinking—how does that constant shifting shape a person?
We talk a lot about "transitions" in a business sense—selling a company or retiring—but Jennie lived it viscerally every two or three years before she was even a teenager. It’s funny, she told me she was 11 or 12 before she realized the whole world didn’t just pick up and move all the time.
The Emotional Tug-of-War
When you’re moving that much, how do you handle friendships? Jennie was pretty honest about it. Back then, her parents focused on the logistics of staying in touch, but they didn't really have the tools to talk about the feelings part of it. I suspect a lot of us grew up that way—just grit your teeth and get on with it, right?
But those emotions don't just disappear. They stay under the surface. It wasn't until things like Facebook came along that she could actually bridge those gaps and reconnect with the people she’d left behind decades ago.
Is Resilience Just Muscle Memory?
Jennie thinks all that moving made her more resilient, and I’m inclined to agree. When "change" is the only thing that’s constant, you get really good at walking into a room where you don't know anyone and finding your feet.
But here’s the question: Is it resilience, or is it just being used to the discomfort?
She took that "new kid" energy into her career. After facing 18 job rejections while trying to get back into teaching, she didn't collapse. She pivoted—hard. She ended up in direct sales and entrepreneurship because she’d already learned how to hear the word "no" and keep moving.
The "So What?" for the Rest of Us
Most of us aren't moving houses every two years anymore, but we are moving through life stages that feel just as jarring. Whether it’s leaving a career you’ve had for 30 years or realizing your identity is shifting as you get older, the lessons are the same:
Connections matter: Don't let the "logistics" of life stop you from actually talking to people.
The "No" is temporary: Rejection is just part of the transition process.
Adaptability is a superpower: If you can get comfortable with being uncomfortable, you’re ahead of the game.
I’m still figuring out my own next steps, turning 73 makes you realize there's way less life ahead than behind but hearing Jennie’s story reminded me that we’ve all been practicing for change our whole lives.
I’m curious, have you ever had a major "move" (physical or otherwise) that totally changed how you see the world? I’d love to hear about it.
Transcription:
Introduction:
Welcome to the Long Strange Trip. I'm Josh. the host of the show. We're going to dig into six areas together, finding real work-life integration. Instead of that brutal 9 to 5 5 split too many business owners to live with. We're going to approach retirement as an actual reinvention. Rather than just stopping work. and we're facing death honestly, and avoiding PTSD around it. We're also building resilience, when life throws us curve balls. We're sharing wisdom across generations.And finally, we're understanding the patterns that show up in all our transitions. I'm not coming at this as an expert I'm a fellow traveler figuring this stuff out in real time.
Especially now as I navigate my own dual cancer diagnosis at 73.
Welcome to the Long Strange Trip. I'm glad you're here.
Josh Patrick (00:00.952)
Hey, how are you today? This is the Long Strange Trip podcast. I'm Josh Patrick. And my guest today is Jenny Bellinger. Jenny is a badass marketer. At least that's how she talks about herself. So let's assume she's a badass marketer. But we're not going to really talk with Jenny about marketing today. We're going to talk to her about all the transitions that she had in her life. She's had a really interesting life, both professionally
and personally as a child. So let's bring Jenny on and we'll start the conversation. Hey Jenny, how are you today?
Jennie Bellinger (00:37.65)
I'm fantastic, how are you?
Josh Patrick (00:39.59)
I'm doing well, thanks. It's very nice up here in northern Vermont. We had rain all day yesterday and today we're back in the sub-zero area.
Jennie Bellinger (00:48.638)
fun. gonna say, it was nice and warm here a couple days ago and now it's like, yeah, below freezing.
Josh Patrick (00:54.88)
Yeah, so that's how it is. So Jenny, you grew up as, you know, as people might say, an army brat. I'm not sure I love that term, but...
Jennie Bellinger (01:03.67)
Yeah, it was actually Air Force. Growing up, my dad was, he joined the Air Force before I was born and he retired the month that I turned 21. So it was literally my entire life, yeah, growing up.
Josh Patrick (01:17.421)
Wow.
And he was a doctor, correct?
Jennie Bellinger (01:24.148)
Yeah, yeah, because back in the day in the the 70s in order to get med school paid for if you wanted the government to pay for med school, you signed a contract for 20 years. And so he he signed the contract. Yeah.
Josh Patrick (01:38.734)
Really? A friend of was a dentist, had signed a contract for five years, in the Air Force. I wonder what the difference is. at any rate, how often did you move as a child?
Jennie Bellinger (01:52.777)
Every two to three years. The longest I stayed anywhere up until my dad's retirement was four years, almost four years. Yeah.
Josh Patrick (02:04.206)
So what kind of challenges did you have as a kid?
Jennie Bellinger (02:08.418)
Ooh, I would say the challenges really came with, you know, knowing that we weren't gonna be here in a few years, you know, once I got old enough to really like understand what that meant. So the challenge came with, you know, how do you really go through and go through life?
Josh Patrick (02:24.149)
Yeah.
Jennie Bellinger (02:35.53)
where it's like that, making friends. And this was back in the day before. Many people had computers in their home. And even if you had a computer in your home, you couldn't communicate with it necessarily unless you printed something out, stuck it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and mailed it somewhere. So with many of my friends, when we left, unless my mom was friends with their mom,
Josh Patrick (02:54.072)
Yeah.
Jennie Bellinger (03:04.49)
that person like was gone, you know, in the childhood belief system, you know, like I knew they were still there, but they were somewhere else and they weren't necessarily still in Omaha, Nebraska. They might've moved to California or Japan or wherever, because most of my friends were also military, surprise, surprise. So yeah.
Josh Patrick (03:08.833)
Alright.
Josh Patrick (03:26.99)
That makes perfectly good sense. So, what did your parents do to help you getting past all these sounds like about 10 moves?
Jennie Bellinger (03:41.524)
Yeah, there were a lot of them. We talked a lot, especially as I got older, it was harder, you know, because, you know, when you're really young, you're very family centric. And then as you get older, you're much more friend centric. And so there was a lot of conversations around the responsibility of like staying in touch with friends and being able to...
We didn't have a lot of conversations about processing emotions, because I'm not sure that my parents knew how to do that back then. I was born in 77.
Josh Patrick (04:19.437)
When were you born?
Okay, yeah, well that was back in the time when parents weren't very good at processing emotions.
Jennie Bellinger (04:29.098)
Yeah, not so much. it's not a blaming piece. It's a statement of fact more than anything. But we definitely had conversations around long distance friendships and how to stay in touch. And amazingly, I've gotten back in touch with some of my friends from when I was my youngest, that's thanks to the internet. Yeah, exactly. And also,
Josh Patrick (04:36.941)
Yeah.
Josh Patrick (04:52.84)
really?
Josh Patrick (04:56.685)
How did you go about doing that? Just out of curiosity.
Jennie Bellinger (05:00.246)
Yeah, well, there's a lot of friends that really, their names and who they were stayed with me. And we luckily, like I said, if my mom was still friends with their mom, we still got the Christmas letters every year. And so we were able to kind of stay in touch that way. So then when Facebook became a thing, I started looking for my friends and some of them have very common names. So it was really hard to find the person who was actually the person that I knew.
Josh Patrick (05:13.728)
Right.
Jennie Bellinger (05:29.97)
assuming they were even on Facebook. But yeah, I've been able to reconnect with a few of them. I wouldn't say all of them, but a few of really major ones I was able to connect with. Yeah, and it's been fun seeing how they turned out versus how I turned out versus how my siblings turned out and their siblings turned out. yeah.
Josh Patrick (05:41.857)
That's cool. That's cool.
Josh Patrick (05:53.743)
So moving this much, does it generally have a detrimental effect or not on children?
Jennie Bellinger (05:56.064)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie Bellinger (06:03.413)
I personally think it made us more resilient.
Josh Patrick (06:08.478)
interesting. I would think that would make sense.
Jennie Bellinger (06:11.669)
Yeah, it's, I can understand the desire to want to keep kids in the same place to keep stability. But for me, that was all I really knew. I think I was like 11 or 12 before I realized the whole world didn't move all the time. You know what I mean? Like, cause you know how it is when you're, when kids are really young, they don't, we assume that our experience is everyone's experience. And so,
I remember hitting middle school age and being like, wait, farmers don't move. my God, farmers don't, my God, there's people who live in the same place their whole life. To me, that was the weird thing because that was not my experience. And it's still to this day, I'm in a house right now where I'm recording this with you where I've owned this house for over 20 years now.
Josh Patrick (07:10.414)
That must feel weird for you.
Jennie Bellinger (07:10.837)
and it is so weird. And every once in a while I look around, go, there's too much stuff here. We need to get rid of stuff.
Josh Patrick (07:18.766)
You should see my house. You have seen my house because you've been on calls where the green screen is up.
Jennie Bellinger (07:21.354)
my gosh!
Well, you know, growing up and having all those moves all the time meant that we were regularly having garage sales and paring things down and you really got to know, okay, this is something I'm not using. Someone else can use it. Put it out on the driveway.
Josh Patrick (07:49.358)
So did you find it was easier or more difficult going through the transitions every time you moved?
Jennie Bellinger (07:58.774)
It got, it was harder and easier in some ways, you know, harder because like I said, as, as I got older, I was more friend centric. And so, you know, I was really sad to leave friends behind. It was really hard, but by the last time that I moved with my family, I had done it so many times. was like, okay, here's, here's how this goes. Like there were no.
Josh Patrick (08:02.999)
Okay.
Josh Patrick (08:10.147)
Yeah.
Jennie Bellinger (08:28.469)
You know, yes there are unknowns, but there weren't unknowns. You know, it was familiar.
Josh Patrick (08:33.166)
Right. You knew you were going to move. You knew you had movement, moving. And then you got into what we call passage of the messy middle. So how long did it take you, know, on average to get, you know, through passage, meaning you went from where you were moving and you're comfortable with where you moved to? Was it?
Jennie Bellinger (08:39.914)
Yeah.
Jennie Bellinger (08:44.563)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jennie Bellinger (08:58.805)
When I was younger, it was a lot faster.
Josh Patrick (09:01.646)
I would assume that would make, well, you weren't really trying to create a new life.
Jennie Bellinger (09:08.137)
Yeah, no, for sure. I would say the last time that I moved with my family, it was between my sophomore and junior year in high school. And that one, that probably took me two to three months to get acclimated to the new space, to get to know new friends. Emotionally, that one was the hardest one because I had,
Josh Patrick (09:17.709)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie Bellinger (09:36.468)
you know, my best friend back in Indiana and I had a boyfriend when I left. So, you know, we broke up because I was like, I'm not coming back to Indiana anytime soon. So why are we going to do this? You know, so there was all of those emotions that went along with it. So the emotional piece took me a little bit longer than, you know, getting my bedroom set up in the new house, you know, and
Josh Patrick (09:42.082)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Patrick (09:49.932)
Right.
Jennie Bellinger (10:04.977)
School didn't start for about six weeks. No, it was about a month, a month after we got there. So it took a while to get to know new people, because in my neighborhood, I was the oldest kid. So.
Josh Patrick (10:16.238)
Yeah. Did you live on bass or off bass?
Jennie Bellinger (10:19.889)
we lived off base most of the time. the, the last, the previous two bases before we got to the St. Louis area, we did live on base, but most of the time we lived off base. So we, we did a lot of the house hunting and, and then having to sell a house and get a house prep for sale. And so, but the, the last place before we moved to the St. Louis area, not our house, didn't have to worry about it. So.
Josh Patrick (10:31.682)
Okay.
Josh Patrick (10:38.99)
Yeah.
Josh Patrick (10:47.022)
So let's make a little change and go into your business now. What was your first business?
Jennie Bellinger (10:49.769)
You know.
Jennie Bellinger (10:57.354)
My first business was a direct sales jewelry business.
Josh Patrick (11:00.77)
That's why you were in multi-level sales, right?
Jennie Bellinger (11:05.245)
Yes, yeah. So, and that came about because I had been a middle school science teacher for a number of years. And when I left teaching to have my first child, you know, my thought process was, it's teaching. I can go back any time. But that was in 2008 when my baby was born. So, what we didn't know at the time, because my crystal ball quit working in 1977.
was that there was about this recession that was about to happen. so by the time I was ready to go back into teaching, which was around 2010, the recession had really hit here in the Midwest and trying to find a teaching job as a teacher with experience was really hard. I went on 18 job interviews and heard 18 no's and
you know, by the 18th one, was like, Hey, it's now August school has started. Schools are not hiring any longer. So I have to wait until next spring when teachers get their next, you know, their, their letter of intent to stay or go. so I knew I was going to have to wait. So, so, okay, universe, if I'm not supposed to be in the classroom this year, where am I supposed to be? And that's when I got invited to this direct sales jewelry thing. And I,
walked into the event planning to help my sister-in-law get her business started and by buying something sparkly and pretty and make me feel better because, you know, I just heard my 18th no. And while I was there, they made the offer to get started. And I was like, I was willing to give 60 hours per week to other people's children.
Josh Patrick (12:45.888)
Right.
Jennie Bellinger (13:02.812)
I could work this business from home.
Josh Patrick (13:05.037)
Right.
Jennie Bellinger (13:06.876)
So that's where my brain went was I may as well give this a shot because I asked the universe and it plopped this down right in front of me.
Josh Patrick (13:16.601)
So let's talk a little bit about the 18 rejections because that requires, mean, getting three or four rejections doesn't require a lot of resilience. But getting 18 rejections requires an incredible amount of resilience. So how much that resilience came from you moving around the country 10 times?
Jennie Bellinger (13:22.292)
Mmm.
Jennie Bellinger (13:41.927)
I would say a lot of it, a lot of it came from that because the rejections weren't rejections of me as a person because every single principal said, we love you, we think you're fantastic. We just can't afford you. It had nothing to do with me as a human being. It still sucked. Don't get me wrong. I still was upset because I wanted to get back to teaching. I loved teaching.
Josh Patrick (13:44.495)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jennie Bellinger (14:12.542)
but the military moves, was just like, well, there's something else out there. There's another place to go. There's another, there's something out there. This just isn't what's for me right now. having gone through that so many times as a kid made it like, okay, well, here we go.
Josh Patrick (14:32.825)
Yeah, that seems to be a kind of a theme in your life so far that we've been following. You said you really needed a lot of resilience growing up and you needed a lot of resilience as an adult because the universe told you what you wanted to do you were not likely going to do. Then you go into an industry which in my opinion may be the toughest industry in the country to get started.
Jennie Bellinger (14:39.442)
Yeah.
Josh Patrick (14:59.983)
and one that requires, again, a lot of resilience.
Jennie Bellinger (15:04.532)
Yeah, big time, big time. You really gotta get used to hearing no if you're gonna be in multi-level marketing for sure.
Josh Patrick (15:07.372)
Yeah, yeah.
Josh Patrick (15:12.631)
If you're going to be in sales, have to get used to living. The thing about multi-level marketing versus other types of sales is other types of sales, salespeople can crap themselves along with saying, well, I'm going to do this kind of marketing campaign and my phone's going to ring, and blah, blah, blah. But until you actually pick the phone up and you call somebody and ask for a sale, you're not a salesperson.
Jennie Bellinger (15:41.428)
Right, right, exactly. So, yeah.
Josh Patrick (15:46.49)
So what lessons did you take from your earlier life into the multi-level marketing world, including your teaching career? Because I think there's some of a, there's probably a pretty good crossover there.
Jennie Bellinger (15:55.188)
Mmm.
Jennie Bellinger (16:00.147)
Well, yeah, definitely, because in the world of teaching, mean, you have kids for a year and then they move on. mean, unless you're in a school system where you're progressing with your students, which is fairly rare, know, those kids come and go. So you have one year, nine months, 10 months maybe to make a difference, to...
Josh Patrick (16:06.147)
Yeah.
Jennie Bellinger (16:27.238)
make that impact and help them to learn and grow, not just in the subject that you're teaching, but you're also working with them on life skills during that time as well. you know, being able to, knowing that, you know, having grown up and saying, okay, I've got two years here, maybe three, possibly four, but most likely two to three years, you know, what am I going to do here? How am I, you know, who's going to be my next friend kind of thing?
but then certainly taking that into business, you know, you know, especially a party plan style business, you know, because with jewelry, was very much, you know, you would meet someone somewhere, they'd find out you're in jewelry, they'd invite you into their home to have a party with their friends. I had two hours to educate, make a difference, help these ladies find a thing that would
Josh Patrick (17:18.031)
you
Jennie Bellinger (17:27.43)
make them feel more confident, comfortable, that could be used to add to their wardrobe for, whether it was work or going to a wedding or buying a gift for a sister or a friend, know, something like that. You know, it really, the lesson there was we only have so much time to make an impact, you know, to...
because things are not, it's not, you know, I'm not at somebody's house for 12 hours. I'm not at somebody's house for a month. You know, I'm there for two hours. So making that impact is important.
Josh Patrick (18:05.643)
Right.
Josh Patrick (18:14.192)
So when you were, there's two sides to multi-level marketing. There's obviously the product side, which you're working for a company that sells a product. And then there's the recruiting side, which is where the success happens. And if you can't recruit in multi-level marketing, you're not likely to be successful. So how did you learn how, what was the transition you had to make from teacher to recruiter?
Jennie Bellinger (18:18.387)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie Bellinger (18:25.949)
Yes.
Yes.
Jennie Bellinger (18:42.835)
Well, they're very similar, actually, because in the recruiting piece, there's a lot of education that comes along with that, helping people understand what it is that you actually do for that particular business. In the marketing piece, on the sales piece, in the recruiting piece, helping people. Recruiting is just the first step.
of the team building process. The leadership is what comes along later. And, you know, I, I was lucky. I, my father being a doctor in the air force was an officer. So there was a lot of leadership and there were a lot of lessons that came from watching him and hearing him talk about, working with the people under his command. and then turning around and taking some of those things and being able to apply them to my working with my
Josh Patrick (19:13.914)
Right.
Jennie Bellinger (19:41.288)
the ladies who worked with me and a few gentlemen too, over the course of years to help them build a business. the resilience definitely came in and helping people understand that they're not telling you no, Josh. They're not into jewelry and that's okay, right? There were a of the education around resilience, a lot of the education around
Josh Patrick (20:02.5)
Right.
Jennie Bellinger (20:11.155)
being persistent and consistent in business was a big part of helping my newer team members.
Josh Patrick (20:23.194)
So persistence and consistency is really, those are two of my favorite words actually. Because if you don't have them, you're not going to be very successful. I don't care what you go into. And just out curiosity, when you were working with your recruits, did you work through questions or lectures?
Jennie Bellinger (20:28.339)
Me too.
Jennie Bellinger (20:36.539)
Agreed.
Jennie Bellinger (20:52.339)
Mostly questions. I mean, I started with my first few recruits probably doing more lecturing than questioning and then learned over time to do a more questioning style. And I think that's what led to my team's success was because then I as a leader understood their motivations for doing this because
that they weren't doing the business for me.
Yeah, they were doing it with me, but they weren't doing it for me. So understanding why they were really doing it and really digging into the seven levels of why. I was taught that by one of my coaches and so turned around and did that with a lot of my team members after that. really digging into, excuse me, getting into that.
Josh Patrick (21:28.002)
Yeah, and...
Right.
Jennie Bellinger (21:55.739)
that motivation for them to continue doing it and knowing it wasn't about the paycheck.
Josh Patrick (22:01.84)
So what you became, essentially, and I know this is my band with this podcast, is that you became a transitions expert.
Jennie Bellinger (22:13.864)
Yeah.
Josh Patrick (22:14.708)
And the way you help people through transitions, by the way, is... It's also my experience of how you successfully do that is through questions. I mean, we may have an idea of what should happen or what is going on in their mind, but until we ask, we really never know.
Jennie Bellinger (22:24.243)
Mmm.
Jennie Bellinger (22:35.251)
Yeah, and like I said, one of my favorite quotes is, crystal ball quit working in 1977 because I can't predict the future. can't read people's minds. so, having been through so many transitions in life and shifted things up so often, I don't mind having the harder conversations because...
Josh Patrick (22:42.607)
Yeah.
Josh Patrick (23:01.977)
Yes.
Jennie Bellinger (23:04.379)
If I can survive all the moves that I've been through, I can, if I, you know, I have survived, we all have survived 100 % of our worst days, cause we're here, you know, then hearing no is not the worst thing on earth or hearing that someone was stepping back from the business was not the hardest thing for me. Cause I was like, for me, the important piece was maintaining the relationship.
Josh Patrick (23:13.264)
Yeah.
Josh Patrick (23:31.502)
Yes. So after your first ride into MLM world, what was your next stop?
Jennie Bellinger (23:33.041)
So.
Jennie Bellinger (23:41.487)
Yeah, the next stop was coaching. Which, had you told me, you know, even the year before I got into coaching that I was going to get into it, I would have left you off the face of the planet because I honestly believed coaches stood on sidelines with whistles and clipboards and yelled at athletes.
and got them to do things that I didn't realize there were business coaches and life coaches and health coaches and financial coaches and all the different kinds of coaches that are out there now.
Josh Patrick (24:11.6)
There's like a coach for everything in the world.
Jennie Bellinger (24:14.3)
I, Brie, you say that jokingly and I'm pretty sure you're not wrong. Yeah.
Josh Patrick (24:19.468)
No, I'm not joking about that. actually serious. It is a joke, but I'm serious about it also.
Jennie Bellinger (24:24.804)
Right, yeah. So I got introduced to the idea of coaching because for my jewelry business, I had joined an organization called BNI, which is a networking referral organization because, you know, before I got into business, I was a stay at home mom for two years. My network was like this big. You know, it was itty bitty. I for as many people as I knew, I didn't know enough people to keep my business going. And
Josh Patrick (24:35.642)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie Bellinger (24:53.938)
So when I joined BNI and started getting to know other businesses and that really helped me understand to treat my business like a business instead of this thing that might or might not work or whatever. And through BNI, I started meeting different kinds of businesses and eventually I started meeting business coaches because it started.
growing in popularity to become a coach and to be a coach and help others. one coach in particular that I had a conversation with, so by that point I had met a few coaches and sat down in my meeting with them and I said, so you're a business coach? And he goes, nope. okay, so you're life coach? Nope.
Josh Patrick (25:47.92)
you
Jennie Bellinger (25:49.207)
Okay, health coach? Nope. All right, I give. What kind of coach are you? And he said, I'm a whole person coach. I don't coach certain areas of life. I just do these, you know, I work with the human. And I was like, I like that. Because.
Josh Patrick (26:05.553)
Right.
Josh Patrick (26:12.12)
I just have to interrupt you here because this is a good story and there's a really big piece I don't want us to miss. The first type of coaches you all mentioned were specialists. Those are expert coaches. They know a narrow area and they can coach really well with their expertise in that narrow area. The coach you talked about last is what I call a generalist coach.
Jennie Bellinger (26:20.678)
Okay.
Jennie Bellinger (26:26.716)
Yes. Yeah.
Jennie Bellinger (26:36.05)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie Bellinger (26:40.934)
Yes.
Josh Patrick (26:41.674)
And a journalist coach, in my experience, is way more valuable because they have, they may not have the deep expertise, but frankly, do we need it?
Now, so what we do need is we need someone to look at us as a whole person. And that was, you know, I just want to make sure that we don't miss that in that here at the Long Strange Trip, we're on the trip of a generalist, not a specialist. In other words, we're looking across six different areas and we're not looking deep really. Well, we are looking deep, but we're really looking to say how these six areas interplay with each other.
Jennie Bellinger (26:57.894)
Yeah, exactly.
Josh Patrick (27:22.512)
And I hate to be on this little ramp, but I'll finish it in a second. You're going to see, as you heard on this show, just this episode, we've talked about transitions, we've talked about resilience, we've talked about doing business differently. These are three of the six areas we've talked about. And what we're really talking about is how did Jenny
Jennie Bellinger (27:27.09)
Bring it. Your show, my friend.
Josh Patrick (27:50.997)
add to her wisdom along her life. So as you see, you know, we're as a general, it's really taking a lot of wide look. And thank you for letting me go on that little rant. So.
Jennie Bellinger (28:03.613)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, and what attracted me to that idea was, you know, because the other coaches that I had met were the specialists that you talked about, the expert coaches. And so with being in MLM, at that point I had been in for about six years, I recognized how much of the direct sellers business life and personal life were
were intertwined because they don't, when you're in MLM, when you're direct sales, when you are in network marketing, any one of those three categories, you're doing business from home 99.99 % of the time. And so your whole life bleeds together. And by the time I met this gentleman, I had already hired a coach to help me in my business.
And she helped to an extent that she was able to because what I wasn't sharing with her was at the same time, my marriage was falling apart. But in my head, she was my business coach. So I wasn't sharing the personal life piece. So then when I met Tim and I saw this whole person coach, was like, that's what I needed.
Josh Patrick (29:14.608)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Patrick (29:19.024)
Right.
Josh Patrick (29:22.489)
Yep.
Jennie Bellinger (29:32.454)
That's why my business didn't go to where it was, because I couldn't share the whole person side of the personal side of me with my business coach, because categorized, compartmentalized, like business coach, right? And so that took me down a road mentally of this is what more people need is someone who can help the human, but
Josh Patrick (29:56.686)
Be a boob.
Jennie Bellinger (30:00.914)
have the aspect of business or whatever it may be to be able to help in those other areas if necessary. And so for about three months after I had that meeting with him, I could not stop obsessing about how to become that kind of coach like Tim was. And so finally I called him again and said, can we talk? And it was literally, we met at this time,
eight years ago to sit down and have a meal at the end of December. And I picked his brain about how to become a whole person coach like he did. And I ended up going to the same school he did to get my certification. And so that was the transition from MLM to coach because I wanted to help more people. And as much impact as I knew I could make in MLM, I knew I could do more. I felt
Josh Patrick (30:55.29)
Cool.
Jennie Bellinger (31:01.361)
called, and I mean that in the most woo woo sense of the word, that this was my next, okay good. But I say that on purpose because I can't explain where that came from, but it was just that inner knowing that this was the next step for me.
Josh Patrick (31:02.351)
Yeah.
Josh Patrick (31:08.132)
Okay, that's fine. You like woohoo here.
Josh Patrick (31:23.92)
Yeah. So Jenny, unfortunately, we are, we're actually passed out at times. Yeah, surprise, surprise. We can continue on. If somebody wanted to have a conversation with you, how would they go about doing that?
Jennie Bellinger (31:29.609)
surprise, I know.
Jennie Bellinger (31:39.185)
The easiest way is talkwithjennieb.com if they would like to have a conversation to know more or go to my website badassdirectsalesmastery.com. There's ways to get a hold of me through that as well.
Josh Patrick (31:54.032)
Great, well thanks. If you like this podcast and you have good stories that you think you would make good for our audience, why don't you send me an email at jpatrick at stage two that's number two solution. That's singular solution.com jpatrick at stage two solution.com. I'll send you a link. We'll have a conversation and we'll see if you'd be a good guess for the long strange trip. So thanks a lot for being with us today.
I really appreciate you showing up and listening or watching or however you consume this. And this is Josh Patrick and we're with Jenny Bellinger and this is the Long Strange Trip in Boys It Strange. Thanks a lot.
Outro:
Thanks for spending this time with me today. I really appreciate you being part of this journey.I'd be grateful if you leave an honest rating and review. It helps other people find these conversations. Lets me know what's landing with you and what isn't. If you love this show, give us five stars, and if you hate it, give it one star and I'll just cry a little bit.
Keep asking the hard questions, keep being honest about what's difficult, and remember. We're all just trying to figure this out together.
I'll talk to you next time on the Long Strange Trip. Thanks for stopping by.
