[WHITNEY OWENS]
Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. I’m your host Whitney Owens recording live from Savannah, Georgia. I’m a licensed professional counselor, group practice owner, and private practice consultant. Each week through personal story or amazing interviews, I will help you learn how to start, grow and scale your practice from a faith-based perspective. I will show you how to have an awesome faith-based practice without being cheesy or fake. You too can have a successful practice, make lots of money, and be true to yourself.

Welcome back to the Faith in Practice podcast. It’s Whitney Owens here in Savannah, Georgia. I loved this episode that I did today. So I’m excited to introduce you to Jane Carter. So I want to tell you a little bit about her, and then I want to share a little bit of how her words just have really impacted me. So Jane Carter, for those that don’t know her, she’s a counselor and a business coach. She’s committed to helping therapists and solopreneurs have more money, fun and freedom in their businesses. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, one of my favorite places to visit, and she loves the outdoors, food and wine lover, coffee-shop connoisseur. You can check her out at janecartercoaching.com. You can get a free consultation with her.

So I want to share a little bit of how this episode just really spoke to my heart, made it come alive. You know those times when you’re talking to somebody and you just feel so good listening to them talk, but at the same time, so challenged by her words. So you’re going to really benefit from listening to this episode today. And as she talked, she talked a lot about the importance of taking risks in your business and how God shows up when you take a risk and it’s through these risks that I think she talks about it being the worms coming out of the ground. So you have to listen for what that is all about, but our junk comes up, basically. I think God uses that His kindness to transform us more into who He is.

So I have been praying and thinking a lot about hosting a conference for the Faith in Practice community and I have been nervous and excited and in a lot of prayer about that. Just to kind of, to share with you, I had reached out to multiple locations thinking about what this would look like, because we need a place for our community to gather. It’s not necessarily a conference just to talk about integrating faith, but it’s not just a conference to work on our business, but it’s how do we make God a part of running our business? And I haven’t known a conference out there that’s really doing that, so if one, let me know. But as I was planning this I had a hard time getting in touch with people. I came up to a lot of roadblocks, even with the dates, a lot of roadblocks, and then finally I said, “Okay, I guess I’m going to do this,” even though there was something about it that just feel quite right. I had originally wanted two dates later in April, and those were just not coming around.

So then as soon as I start talking about the conference and selling some volunteer tickets, I get a call from the lady in charge of the hotel that says, “Whitney, I’m so sorry those dates are not available anymore because we’re having construction on the hotel that we were not planning.” I was like, what? I thought, God, what is happening? This is what I thought you were directing me into and now it’s not working and what’s going on here?” And then she said, “But we had another hotel just open up. It’s about a half a mile down the beach.” I said, “Oh, why haven’t we talked about this yet?” She was like, “Well, I didn’t really think it would be right for your meeting because you said you wanted three rooms.”

Well, what she didn’t know is I was already thinking about maybe breaking it down into two rooms and I had been praying about that decision when this was all happening. And I said, “Oh, well, I think two is going to be just fine.” Even in the beginning I had told myself, my goal was a hundred people, that I wanted a hundred people at this conference for a first time conference. And then she says back to me, “But I want to make sure the limit in this building for a meeting space is a hundred people.” I said, “Okay.” In my mind, I’m like, Lord, all the things that I had prayed about, thought through prior to this boom, boom, boom. She’s saying all of them. And then I say to her, “Well ma’am, if we’re going to change the location are the dates in April that I originally wanted available?”

She looked it up and she said, “Definitely these three dates are available.” So I’m saying all that to say, you will understand what I mean when you listen to the episode about how Jane talks about just the transformation in our spiritual life, how we step out and take risks. And I just kept thinking about how I had just made this decision. We just signed the contract on the space and the room block and everything. And it’s a big risk, but I am trusting and I know that these rooms are going to get filled and that people are going to come and they’re going to really benefit and grow their businesses. But not just that; really grow in their relationship with God and with one another.

So you will hear more about the conference as I plan it. I don’t have a ton of details yet to announce, but I wanted to share with you that story. And I’m going to guess, as you listen to that, there’s got to be something within you that you’re feeling called to reach out on or do in your business or maybe in your personal life and you’ve been scared to kind of let go of the edge. So as you listen to this episode, spend some time contemplating, what is God calling you to do as you listen? And if you are interested in coaching, I highly recommend Jane. I think the world of her and when I’m in her presence, I just feel God’s peace, joy, and love. So you’re going to really enjoy listening to her. So we’re going to go ahead and jump into the episode. So this is episode number 103, and it’s going to be Jane Carter talking about the spiritual journey of owning a business.
[WHITNEY]
Well today on the Faith in Practice podcast, I have my friend here, Jane Carter. Welcome to the show.
[JANE CARTER]
Hey. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad to be here.
[WHITNEY]
Yes. So Jane had reached out to me a couple of months ago and she also was kind of on my radar, but didn’t know she was on my radar. So when she emailed me and said, “Hey I’d love to come on your show and chat about God, faith, business,” I was like, “Wow, you’re an awesome person to have on the show.” I was so excited that she reached out. So we connected, we had a little long Zoom date, a few months back and now we get to hang out on the podcast. So thanks.
[JANE]
I know. So excited. I love that we were sort of circling each other. I always think it’s like, we’re always, like life is just being at the lunch table in high school and looking at like, “Can I sit at your table?” “Oh my gosh, I wanted you to sit at my table.”
[WHITNEY]
This is really fun.
[JANE]
It’s really fun that we were able to connect.
[WHITNEY]
I’ll be taking that with me. Well, great. Well, Jane, can you share a little bit about yourself and kind of how you got into the coaching biz?
[JANE]
Yes, so, well, first of all, I’ve been a therapist for 20 years now. Oh gosh, I can go on about that whole journey. I will in a minute, but about seven years ago I went into private practice. So I guess I will back up, I worked primarily in a college setting. I worked at a couple of different Christian colleges and at some point it was just time. I had been there too long. I knew I wanted to go into private practice. So in going through that process, I learned a lot about, obviously about the business side of things and I had my own coach. I was really blown away by some of the concepts that I was learning, not only business strategy, but especially the mindset side of things and so much of it aligned with the process of being a therapist.

I mean, so much of it is an emotional process and that just blew my mind. It was so fun to think about that. And I started helping friends and colleagues and kind of doing this out of fun and then I thought, “Gosh, I’d really like to do this and get paid for it too.” So I initially started coaching by trying to start in this like big scaled membership program, kind of went way too big because at the time everything was start your internet business. It’ll be super easy. That was not a good fit and shockingly didn’t thrive overnight and kind of out of the ashes of that, I want to call it a failure, but in a lot of ways it wasn’t a failure. It was just a learning experience. Out of the ashes of that I had a bunch of people that had paid me for the scaled program that wasn’t going to happen and I thought, well, maybe I can give them some one-on-one coaching to make up for that because I literally had no money to give them.

So I started doing one-on-one coaching and realized, oh my goodness, this is what I love. I love this. And I realized it also kind of, it was using a lot of the same skills that I used as a therapist. So that’s where I just found my passion for coaching. I call it my Goldilocks experience. Like I was staying too small in the college setting and then I went way too big and then I kind of found that middle ground just right. So I do individual coaching work, but I do have a community component to it, but my main focus is the one-on-one coaching.
[WHITNEY]
Are you doing any therapy at all anymore or when did you stop seeing clients?
[JANE]
I have my very private practice. It’s small. I see clients one day a week. I love the work of therapy and so I didn’t ever want to give that up completely. And it’s interesting too, because it still kind of feeds the coaching business in a way. It feeds that deeper side of things and the coaching business in some ways keeps me stimulated and creative, which then feeds my therapy work.
[WHITNEY]
Yes, I totally feel the same way about the consulting. It helps to never give up the practice. I just, you just lose that. I don’t know that connection piece there. That’s so important that fuels each, each business fills the other.
[JANE]
Right. Being a therapist makes me a better coach and being a coach makes me a better therapist and I feel really grateful for that.
[WHITNEY]
Yes. Well I’ve had a couple of coaches come on the podcast and they’ve definitely gone through the gamut of how to create a coaching business and given tons of quality information. But then when we were talking about you coming on this show, I loved this idea of putting the spiritual spin on it and what is it like to create a business, run a business, the daily grind of a business, but making God and your spiritual life a part of that. So that’s what we’re going to be kind of talking about today. So if you kind of want to jump into it, like, what was that like at first, when you were starting your business and how was your spiritual life, your faith a part of that?
[JANE]
Well, first of all, what I’ll say is that I am not an, like as a coach, I don’t say, “Oh, this is an overtly spiritual God involved process.” I don’t market myself as like a Christian coach. In fact, a lot of people aren’t aware that that’s part of who I am. Not that I’m trying to hide it, but it’s more along the, and in the same way as a therapist, you know I do work with Christian clients, but I also work with clients of all backgrounds. But I would say that my spiritual path and my relationship with God absolutely informs who I am and how I show up as a person and how I see the process of change. Does that make sense? It’s not so much a, I’m not trying to hide that I’m a Christian.

It’s more like, I don’t mean to sound defensive with that, but it’s more like I do see building a business as a spiritual process, whether you name God or not. What I mean by that, I’ll go into that a little bit, so when we are starting a business and, you’ll pick up from this that I’m very much into the mindset side of things? Yes, I do love to give people the steps and the strategies, but along the way, I think that our business transforms us and our business is here to grow us. How do I articulate that? I used to be better at articulating this —
[WHITNEY]
No problem. I’m already writing down what you just said. Our business transforms us. That was good.
[JANE]
Yes. Our business is here to grow us. I say that a lot, but I think that it’s true. And another way of saying that might be that that is one arena or sphere through which God is growing us. In some ways it’s all semantics but if you are stepping into this new skillset, this new arena, you’re taking a risk. You’re suddenly dealing with, well, how do I feel about money and what I charge? How do I feel about putting myself out there and being seen? What’s my purpose here? Is it just to make money and have an easier life or is it based out of how I want to serve people? Then the whole process will show us where we’re out of balance, where we’re in balance, it’ll show us, I’m going deep right away, but like, even like, I was talking on another podcast recently about money mindset. I was like, oh, and how you deal with money will tell you what you believe about the world and about God. Like, is God good? Can I trust abundance? Is God out to get me? Is life out to get me, is my business out to get me and just be a source of stress? So I’m going there right away. But yes, our business, I mean —
[WHITNEY]
That is so true.
[JANE]
Yes. So how that might show up again, like in the most basic sense you might have someone who’s new in private practice and he’s about to walk into the room at a networking event. And we may think, okay, I’m just going to a networking event. But I talked to people where that brings up so much fear and it brings up all of that stuff around, “Well, am I good enough? Am I likable? Am I acceptable? Are other people good? Are they going to be out to get me? Are they going to judge me? Who do I want to be in the world?” You don’t want to be in this room. And when we bring up all that stuff, when it’s, I’m very visual and this is a weird, I’m known for coming up with weird analogies on the fly, but it’s sort of like, we just had a rainstorm outside and like all the worms come up. And when all your stuff comes up, because now you’re taking these risks and doing these new things, and it’s bringing out all the stuff that you didn’t even realize that you had to deal with, then it allows you to go in there and go, “Oh, how do I want to deal with this? What do I need to heal? What beliefs do I need to heal, again about myself or about God or about all of it so that I can function in this business and serve the people I want to serve?”
[WHITNEY]
You know, it’s a little bit of like, God’s kindness. I think there’s a verse about His kindness leads us to redemption or something like that. So it’s God’s kindness, that He shows us that junk when we walk in.
[JANE]
Well, yes. So I’m going to misquote Dan Allinder. I went to a workshop many, many years ago and he said, okay, so there’s the verse about God being both strong and loving. We always, as Christians, we often like to think about God being loving and Teddy bears and puppy dogs and he’s like, but God is strong and God will kick your butt until you learn to accept being loved by Him. God will kick your butt and knock you down until you really learn how to be compassionate to yourself and to other people. So your business will do that too. Again, it’s just one more tool, to work out our stuff.
[WHITNEY]
I love that. Yes. I would love to hear if you’re comfortable sharing a little bit of what that’s been for you. Are there things that you found when you came into the room, they came up and you were like, Ooh, and it’s really helped you grow a more successful business by making some changes and just having a better life?
[JANE]
Yes. Oh gosh. Where to start? I mean, it kind of happens every day. It will even kind of, I’ll go back to that failure. I’m using air quotes because now I can look at that moment and say that was a learning experience. That was tuition. You know, the pain was tuition for learning something really beautiful, but I had wrapped kind of a lot of hopes and dreams around I want this thing to succeed. I need this thing to succeed, to feel significant, to feel like I’ve accomplished something meaningful. And it just bombed. I had this moment where I was like, “All right, I need to make a decision today,” and I did a lot of journaling and I did a lot of crying and I was kind of weeping and driving and I was like, “All right, I’m going to go get myself a coffee and a donut.”

I pulled into my favorite coffee shop and I decided, all right, I’m letting it go. I have to let go of this thing, of course, I’ve put all of this time and effort and money into and ego and significance. And a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in a while was there. She’s a colleague and it had been months since I’d seen her and she saw my face and she just was like, “Come here. Give you a hug. You’re having a rough day.” I kind of poured my heart out to her and she said, “Oh, Jane I had to have a big failure. I had to let go of something.” She had moved across the country for a relationship and she’d closed her counseling practice and said goodbye to everybody and terminated with all of her clients and then the relationship didn’t make it and three months later, she turned around and came back and had to start from scratch.

I mean, first of all, it just felt like it was such a God thing that she was there. It kind of makes me tear up a little bit, that she was there and I needed to hear that story. I needed that compassion and she said, “Oh honey, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re allowed to fail. You’re allowed to make mistakes.” And just to receive that compassion from her, and I literally, it’s so funny, I look back on that moment too, about an hour later, someone had already scheduled a one-on-one consult with me. I was literally sitting in my car face all puffy and crusty from crying my eyes out but I put on my professional voice and I had this awesome coaching session with them.

I can look back now and go, oh, of course it was going to be fine. But so a big moment like that was kind of part of my signature story, really, that this failure was leading me to something that’s become very meaningful. You know, that was an encounter with God. That was one of those moments of, okay, I am loved, my ego and my effort and all of these things, this story can be redeemed and can be folded into something bigger. Even this experience is teaching me something. It’s not a big waste. And frankly, we’re all human in this process and if we try to just sort of plug into the formula and assume everything’s going to be easy, okay, that is a fool’s errand. If your heart is in your business, your business is going to break your heart sometimes and that even like learning that that’s okay.

I have to learn that all the time. I mean, gosh, I had a big cry, I don’t know, three weeks ago. I have business friends and coach friends, and sometimes we just will call each other and say, “This is hard and people are difficult,” and things, sometimes it’s, “Yay, things are going really well and other times it’s, I was like, I’m just going to go back to having a therapy practice. This is really hard and everybody hates me. Nobody loves me.” And we’ll just lean on each other and again, sort of bring in that compassion and bring in that honesty and that learning how to be present so that the pain can be transformed into something. That’s a big level.
[WHITNEY]
I was listening to you.
[JANE]
I can just go on and on. I don’t want to just, I’d love to hear your thoughts on things too, but, and again a smaller example, and as I was telling you before this, I didn’t prepare a bunch of examples of notes and stories like I normally do. I really am coming into this podcast recording very much kind of seeing, this is an experiment. What do you like? What comes to mind? So getting on a clarity call with a potential client, I try to take a few minutes to kind of take a few breaths and get clear on not just, how do I want to show up on this call, but what is my purpose here again, because it’s so easy and this can be true if you’re in private practice doing a potential client call, or if you’re a coach who’s wants to sell a coaching package to kind of go straight into who will buy these packages? I really hope they buy. I really hope they sign up with me. Because we get into our like needy ego, just want to pay the bills, kind of scarcity stuff. So even just the five minutes of, can I check in with myself and say, what’s my best intention for this person? What do I want to accomplish for them? I see that as a spiritual practice, as well as a business practice, and it completely changes how I show up on that call.
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[WHITNEY]
Yes, that’s humility considering others better than yourself, otherness instead of centralness or however we want to call it. And I can really empathize with you on that. Like, when I first started consulting, I’d get really anxious on every call. Honestly, that was so self-centered, like it’s about me and I have to hit these points and say this thing to get this person to sign up. And finally, I just was like, what am I doing? Like, who cares? And if they want to sign up, sure, I’m going to help them with their business and I’m going to be excited and I’m going to love it. But it’s no point if it’s not beneficial for them, not helping them, like you said, grow in their relationship with God as they do their business in the world. And once I’ve let that go and started really focusing more on their needs, like you just said, I feel like my experience has been better.

I’ve actually had more people sign up than before. I’ve a story here to share with you. I have this one girl and she, I mean sometimes you get on the call and you can tell they’re ready. They want to work with you, or they’ve been following the podcast or whatever and we got on the consulting call or the pre-consulting call and I just didn’t think she was ready. I didn’t think that consulting would really help her and I was truly honest with her and said, “I just don’t think now’s the time to start your practice. I really think you should do this, that and the other..” she was like, “Oh, really?” She was surprised and I said, “Yes, this is what I really think.” A lot of times the Lord kind of directs these calls and she goes, “Okay.”

I actually connected her with someone I knew that had a practice that was looking to hire. So she got a job with this person, it was so crazy, and it went really well and then all of a sudden, six months later, she signed up for my mastermind group without me calling her, without talking to her. And I was like, “Oh, goodness, where’d you come from?” She was like, “Well, ever since we connected and then I worked for someone else and that went really well and then I had all these people start reaching out for counseling in a different state.” Because she was helping someone at a practice where she was, but she was planning to move somewhere else. People started reaching out to her for counseling without even setting up her practice and it was just like, God gave her abundance. So it was so cool how now she’s come back and I just love how I chose to kind of honor God and honor her and how it came back around and how beautiful that was. So now I get to work with her. So that’s really fun, too.
[JANE]
Awesome. Yes, people feel that when you are coming from a place of service. And it’s that thing where when we’re grabby, when we’re in our ego and when we’re grabby and just coming from that place of fear. That’s where we really take ourselves in the butt. It’s when we surrender, it’s when we say, okay, I truly am going to come from a place of service. I’m not going to be focusing on my ego and am I good enough? Or am I too good or whatever? That’s when things actually start to work because yes, people can feel it. They can feel your sincerity. I tell my coaching clients all the time when they get so kind of tightly wound about marketing, especially as therapists, when we here the M word, you know marketing. We just get all wound, that’s going to be sleazy.

So if you can reframe it as basically, you’re just trying to get the person you want to serve closer to you, like where they’re more likely to encounter the help that they need. Or you’re doing marketing in a way that is already serving them. Even writing really good copy on your website, it speaks to their pain and helps them understand, oh, this is something that other people experience that could be helped. You know, that’s a service. And just connecting with people. All of that is marketing. But when we put the word marketing on it, now it feels kind of gross for whatever reason. So really what it really comes down to is serving, serving, serving and just helping and serving and really enjoying the process. And I keep saying this, but like getting out of our ego and just kind of like, can you, and I’m talking to myself as much as anyone.

I have not solved this yet, I promise. I haven’t fixed this in myself completely, but like, can you just kind of get over yourself and let go of your stupid fears that are just talking shame into your ear and just focus on how can I be serving these other people? Why am I doing this? I’m doing this because I want to help people live out their purpose. And I want to help people. As a coach, I want to help people live out their purpose so that they can do in therapy or whatever industry with the people that they need to serve. So a story is coming to mind, actually. So certainly I think it’s obvious with therapists. We want them to get clients so that they can change the world one at a time and help people live better lives and have better relationships and heal their trauma and all of these things.

I was talking to an artist. I have a client who’s a painter and she was like, “How do, I’m just painting pictures. How do I market that or make that interesting?” I was like, “Whoa, beauty is healing. God created arts and God created beauty.” I mean, when I think about myself, when I go to church, I’m an Episcopalian and I go to this beautiful old church with this huge organ and the architecture is amazing and I never listen to the sermon but when I hear that organ, I mean, gosh, post pandemic, the first time I heard the organ, I just started weeping because it was just such beautiful music. And like, I experienced God through music and art and architecture.

So I’m talking to this artist and I was like, “You’re healing people. They look at this piece that you’ve done for them, or that spoke to them for some reason at a gallery and it’s changing them. It’s softening them. It’s saying life isn’t just about achievement. It’s about pausing and taking in beauty.” So to be able to help someone find that purpose, and again, I really 100% believe what I’m saying to her. I talked about how, I read her a passage about how Italians don’t care about having corrupt politicians, but they just get up in arms about bad art, because they realize that sometimes art is the thing you can trust. Beauty is expressing something much deeper and more important. So again, yes, we’re doing business, but business is about something much deeper. It’s about fulfilling your purpose and helping other people fulfill theirs.
[WHITNEY]
So I’ve just got to share something. I love it. I got to share something with you though. So when I went to Traverse City years ago, by the way, if you’ve never been there, it’s gorgeous there was a psychiatric ward. You could take a tour. They have these underground tunnels. So they were like kind of creepy and they had them there because the buildings in the winter, they need the patients to be able to get in, staff to get from one place to another and everything’s going down. I think it also had to do with the filtration system. But anyway, so the man that started this facility or the doctor, that was Dr. James Munson, and he believed his quote beauty is therapy. So the patients instead of the traditional drug therapy, so they did a lot more with kindness, comfort, art. They didn’t wear straight jackets, which back in the early 19 hundreds, this was unheard of. So anyway, when my husband and I went and took a tour in the gift shop, they had wine glasses and they said, beauty is therapy. And you better believe it now, it’s sad to say it broke at some point, but beauty is therapy and I just love that. So you’ll have to share that with your art client.
[JANE]
Yes. If anyone listening, ever listens to On Being with Krista Tippett, it’s a podcast. It’s sometimes it’s on NPR stations. She did an interview with John O’Donohue, the Irish poet and kind of Celtic spirituality person. Unfortunately he died a few years ago, but it’s the best episode. It just will blow your mind. He was talking so much about landscape and how beauty heals us and beauty is one way that God heals us. He has this beautiful Irish accent. So I can’t do it justice here, but just please listen to it. It’ll just blow your mind. But yes, beauty is healing.
[WHITNEY]
Can I ask you a question while I’ve got you here? I’m curious what you say to your coaching clients. So we didn’t prep this, so you can take a second to think, but when your coaching clients come to you and they have lots of ideas, because this is how I am, I have so many great little, I could consult on this, that, and the other. You’re talking about membership communities and all of this. There’s so many ideas. So thinking through what is my idea and what is God asking of me and like, where do I come alive, so I was curious if you had anything that you kind of go to with your people when you’re coaching them to help them figure out what should I do when I have all these ideas?
[JANE]
Oh, that is such a good question. So that happens all the time. I mean, I attract clients who have lots of ideas and they’re kind of overwhelmed and they start a lot of them, but don’t finish a lot of them. I mean, I do have some people that are like, yes, I just want to start a thriving private practice, but often they also have lots of other ideas. I’m the same way. I always have ideas. So usually the process that I usually go through is just first of all, just jot them all down. Have somewhere to put them even if it’s just a legal pad or a note on your phone or something on your computer, where as soon as you get an idea, go ahead and write it down so that with all the things you’re already doing, your brain, isn’t also having to noodle on that.

And also because yes, we can’t do all the things. We just don’t have the brain capacity for it. So having somewhere to put it kind of helps them calm down and go, “Okay, it’s not going to go away. I can come back to it later if I want to. I have somewhere that I can look at the ideas and kind of ponder them and see which ones kind of rise to the top.” I mean, this is my mindset focus, but I often will say, well, let’s see what your gut is telling you. Now, if I put that in a faith context, as I’ll often say to counseling clients, like, I think that God gives us our intuition. I think it’s a tool that we have. Sometimes it’s a still small voice. We can call it the holy spirit. We can also call it like, just what’s going on in your intuition?

I love the Joseph Campbell quote, follow your bliss. I think sometimes if we look at all these things, you follow your bliss and doors will open that wouldn’t have otherwise. From a faith perspective, I think God gives us our bliss. Like this is the thing that’s really giving me a spark. But again, I don’t necessarily use that language with all my clients, because that may not be the framework they’re coming from, but either way, I’m like, let’s pay attention to what’s lighting you up. Because often too, I’ll say, all right, when you look at all these ideas and all of these possibilities, is there one that you really want, but you’re just afraid to say it? Because that happens a lot too, where sometimes people have ideas. It’s more like, “Well, I really want to do this, but that’s not realistic. So what if I just did this, this or this?”

I’m like, “Is that the one that you’re really excited about?” Well, no, but that other one’s really terrifying. Or I feel like I’m too unimportant to do that, or I’m not ready for it, or whatever. So I think paying attention to like, even like physically, when you look at different ideas do you notice a change when you look at a certain one, does it let you up more, or are you kind of happily squirming more? Does it give you that little flutter in your heart? Does it give you that zing and can you pay attention to that and can you trust that and can you trust that it’s okay for this to be fun? It’s okay to get what you want, because I will say particularly in the Christian world, we can have this thing of, well, but I’m not allowed to actually have fun.

It shouldn’t involve some suffering if it’s worthwhile. But sometimes, I mean all business is going to have its moments of suffering. I’ll pop that bubble, but overall can we trust that like, hey, I think God’s okay with us having fun too? And if you’re like, man, this is the thing I really want. Can you give that some attention and let yourself play with that and see what happens? It might fail by the way and that’s okay too. Like there’s no guarantee that just because something gives you a flutter that that’s going to work or it’s going to be the thing, but I still think we should follow it because again, I mean, I was following a thing and I got totally derailed, but I got derailed into what I was, the thing that did light me up.

So am I glad that I pursued this huge membership program? Yes, even though it was a hellish experience in a lot of ways, because it’s the thing that led me onto the path that was supposed to be on. So yes, there are bigger things happening than what we can control. So I’m going to say what I just said, and I’m going to flip it on its head a little bit. So if you’re like, well, here are all these ideas and here’s the one that really lights me up, but I don’t think I’m allowed to do that, who are you to say that you can’t do that? That’s one place where the ego gets in the way where I’m like, “Well, but what if God wants you to do that? What if that’s what you’re being called to and that’s the way that you’re going to serve the world? Who are you to say no, no, no, no. It’s not going to be me. No, that’s a little bit of that Moses experience or like, no, no. Not I. But you might be being called to that and it’s fun. So what could be a better combo?
[WHITNEY]
Well, Jane, I feel like I just got a good coaching session here. I just have to do something right now.
[JANE]
Oh man.
[WHITNEY]
This has just been so great and, just some of the things you’ve said, I just really resonate with so much of it. And I feel like if boy, we lived in the same town we’d be doing coffee every other week.
[JANE]
Oh, we absolutely would. Well, come to Asheville. I’ll show you all the great coffee shops.
[WHITNEY]
Oh, I know I got to get up there hopefully in the fall. So unfortunately, I do have to bring this to a close though, even though I could talk to you for a long time. Tell me if people want to get in touch with you and let’s say, someone’s listening and they’re like, “Man, I really want her to coach me,” what can they do?
[JANE]
They can go to janecartercoaching.com. I have some free resources. I mean, there’s a tab that says free resources. So if you, part of that is I do free Q&A calls once a month for people who want to get a taste of coaching or maybe get a question answered. If you’re here in Asheville, I have a mastermind that I do for free. But anyway, I have a few resources people can get and they can also schedule a free clarity call with me if they’d like to do that. So yes, that’s the best way to reach me.
[WHITNEY]
Great. And we’ll have all that in the show notes. So tell me, like I ask everyone that comes on the show, what do you believe every Christian counselor needs to know?
[JANE]
Oh man. I knew this question was coming, but I mean, I feel like I already said a lot of what I want to say, but okay. So I want them to know that this can be fun, that this process of building a practice can be fun, even the hard parts. And what I mean by that is if you come into it knowing, okay, yes, of course there are going to be challenges and I’m going to get my butt kicked occasionally and I’m going to cry myself to sleep occasionally. But knowing that, okay, that is all part of the process and every challenge is here to expand you and every positive thing, every fun part is also here to expand you, if you can just be present with the process instead of trying to conquer it or be safe in it, I don’t think God wants us to just play it safe all the time. And again, our business is one arena for practicing, like prying our fingers off of the edge of the left and going, “Okay, I’m not going to be safe. I’m going to take risks.”

But as you, maybe you’re falling off that cliff can you say weee, as you go. The positive side is that often when you take the risk and you pry your fingers off of the edge of the cliff and you’re weee, you discover that the cliff was only 10 feet deep. It wasn’t actually all that scary. So that was a long way. I’m a little long-winded, but I’m excited to talk about something, but it’s a long-winded way to say have fun, love the process, love what is, be present with it. And I think that that is a spiritual experience. Mic drop there.
[WHITNEY]
That’s wonderful. Well, you have been a pleasure and I feel confident that I will be going back and listening to this podcast episode when it goes live. I’ve been like writing all these Jane Carter quotes here on my notepad. So I’ll have them to refer back too. So thank you so much for taking the time to be with me today.
[JUNE]
Well, in the spirit of the show, let’s celebrate fun. This was really fun. Thank you so much for letting me be here. I really enjoyed this.
[WHITNEY]
We want to thank our sponsor Brighter Vision for this episode. I want to remind you the Fall Into Cash offer. Head on over to brightervision.com/joe, to earn a $49 a month website for a whole year. That’s over $200 in savings on your new website with Brighter Vision. So to get that deal, go on over to brightervision.com/joe.

Thank you for listening to the Faith in Practice podcast. If you love this podcast, please rate and review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player. If you liked this episode and want to know more, check out the Practice of the Practice website. Also there, you can learn more about me, options for working together, such as individual and in group consulting, or just shoot me an email, [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

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