Transcript Interview Episode with Jackie Cote
Updated: Feb 7
[00:00:00] Jackie: And here's something that came up for me when you were talking about that. It's the easy part. We like, we tend to wanna like resist the easy. So, when something gets too easy, it must be wrong cuz it's not a struggle. It's not hard, it's not like, and and we were tell like, it's gotta be hard to do stuff. When things fall into place, like let it, like let yourself receive the easy and that was hard for me. But let the easy be easy.
[00:00:33] laurin: Hello friends, and welcome to Curiously Wise. I'm Laurin Wittig, your host, and today I have Jackie Cote with me and we're gonna talk about freedom and a whole bunch of other things. She's a great coach and I'm looking forward to having this conversation with her. I think I say that every time I bring on a new guest.
I'm looking forward to this conversation just cuz I love a good, deep, juicy conversation. And I know we're gonna have one of those, but let me just read you her bio first. Jackie Cote is a freedom mentor, a speaker, an RV Adventurist who helps hyper driven successful people who already have money and success but don't have a life they love. After working with Jackie, they learn how to awaken, empower, and own the powerful leader within so they can create the life they truly desire of freedom, adventure, and love, and fit the money and success into that life.
I love that. Jackie is a Jersey girl at heart and comes with 30 years of leadership management experience in the restaurant industry and has helped over 300 people move to higher levels in their career and life. Jackie took the leap into entrepreneurship by creating a fully virtual coaching business and is now living out her dream of freedom and adventure by traveling the country in an RV with her man and two pups, meeting virtual friends, and changing lives on her terms. That sounds like a fabulous life.
[00:01:58] Jackie: It really, really is.
[00:01:59] laurin: Welcome, welcome, welcome.
[00:02:01] Jackie: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Laurin, and thank you to your audience for paying attention to this time that they're spending with you and your podcast. It means the world to us.
[00:02:09] laurin: Yes, it does. It does indeed. All right, so let's start with where you started. You and I kind of bonded when we first talked because we both loved the restaurant business. You were in it far longer than I was, but it was really my first career as you know, if you can call it a career when you're a cocktail waitress in New Orleans.
[00:02:29] Jackie: Now that's career. Everything's compressed timeframes in New Orleans.
[00:02:34] laurin: Yes, that's true.
[00:02:35] Jackie: You get a lot real quickly in New Orleans.
[00:02:37] laurin: Yeah. So, tell us about, what part of that work in the restaurant business you have brought forward into this the rest of your life.
[00:02:44] Jackie: Yeah. You're right. I loved it. And when it comes to how I got into the restaurant business, it all started like early on when I was like 15 and I started getting my first real job. Cause I think we all made money early on doing random stuff, selling flowers from the neighbor's yard to the next person, which I don't tell, never told anybody about that.
But I, I, I went, walked into this bakery and within like a month they were like, all right, here's the keys. You're gonna run the joint. And so, from that point on, like I realized that one of my gifts was leadership, was leading others, getting camaraderie, getting people to like, you know, go together and on a mission.
And, but I didn't know that at 15, and it was illegal at 15 to give me the keys, but it was a whole lot of fun. I look back and now I'm like, wow. $3 under the table, 15. Hmm. But it was a mom and pop, you know,
[00:03:31] laurin: Yep.
[00:03:32] Jackie: That kind of got in my blood and I, but I went to college, did the thing you're supposed to do and got a real job.
God teaching was in a year of teaching. God bless the teachers, but it wasn't for me like I was, I was out. And so, I ended up traveling and so you can see like interweaved into my entire 30 years of the restaurant business. I always tried to find a way to be freer in my being freer in the choices of time, location, you know, all that stuff.
And so, the restaurant business snagged me up at that point. And I went through, I traveled the country through the restaurant business. It helped me go to Arizona for a couple years, went to California a couple years, they transferred me back to East Coast. And the whole time I was in a leadership role just managing and helping people with that gift of belief, you know, that we talked about holding that gift of belief for them, helping them get to where they wanted to go and next levels.
And so that's really what I've taken into this business. And it was funny when I started my coaching schooling, my life and health coaching schooling to get my certification. I, so I said, oh, I'm new at this. And one of my friends whipped her head around and was like, no, you're not. You've been doing this since you were 15.