Mortgage professional Jennifer Bennett and professional coach Shelly Smith share a powerful story of resilience, mindset transformation, and business growth through coaching. Bennett discusses rebuilding her career after a difficult divorce and personal setbacks, revealing how limiting self-talk, stress, and a lack of control were holding her back from regaining top performance in sales. With Smith’s guidance, she learned to reframe negative thoughts, focus on what she could control, and intentionally reshape her mindset to overcome adversity, improve productivity, and rebuild client relationships. The conversation highlights the critical role of coaching in personal development, the impact of mindset on sales success, and how shifting from fear and scarcity to belief, focus, and gratitude can drive both professional achievement and personal fulfillment.

Catalyst podcast. So, Jennifer, I want to start with you. Can you just tell us just quickly a little bit about yourself, and then how did you come to hear about Southwestern Consulting?

I've been in the mortgage business for about 25 years, and early on in my career, I was, you know, it was a pretty straight trajectory upward, and I had a lot of early success in the business, and I went through a series of life events, one of them was a very difficult divorce after 20 years, and was just struggling to reinvent myself, and one of your representatives from Southwestern came to our office and made a presentation, because I just had - I somehow had some barriers I just couldn't get past personally to get my business back to the level that it had been at prior to my life events, and so I just, you know, basically just relinquished that I needed help, I needed somebody to give me guidance, and that's kind of how it got started.

So, Shelly, what were some of your first impressions like when you first met Jennifer? What did you think, or what did you notice, or what hit you when you first started talking with her?

Well, she's obviously already been very successful and knows the business backwards and forwards, and was extremely motivated, and the timing was perfect. So it was, she was ready. Sometimes when people get into coaching, you can tell they're ready to change, they're ready to do it, and even when we went over what was going to be hard about it, she was ready, and she.. I could tell right away, talking to her, how mouthful she was about her business and how good her relationships were with her client, but in her.. so I guess the first thing I noticed that gave me kind of a glimpse of the path we were going to be on was a little self-talk things, little ways that she would talk about herself or talk about stress or talk about things being crazy that I could tell were just embedded early on we started catching them and saying, okay, well, we don't want things to be like that anymore, so we need to change how we're thinking about them and how we're talking about

them, and that was a huge part of, we've revisited that so many times, it's a part of every single thing that we talk about, probably.

I've been in sales for so many years. What's so interesting is, you know, when you're, when you're trying to build back from, you know, a major loss, and you're, and you're in sales, it's almost impossible to hide what you've got going on in your life. You know what I mean? You have to literally almost put on an act in order to get yourself past a certain stage when you're dealing with so much adversity outside of work, and I think that self-talk was for sure the biggest factor that continues to be.. I mean, I feel like I've made night and day difference in the last year, but I truly didn't realize I was doing it, and it's what we think I think it's what we go into as humans when we just go into survival mode, and we're trying to survive, and we get up every morning, and we tell ourselves what we have to do, but then we have all this adversity going on outside of work, and when you're in shale, very difficult to have an extensive amount of adversity

going on, and the talks I had with Shelly, it just got me so grounded. So every two weeks I got to just share with her what was going on professionally and personally, and she was able to just redirect my focus and slow me down and figure out exactly she would reach, she would go back over the things I was saying, and she'd say, "Okay, Jennifer, let's recap all the things you just said, and we're going to practice rephrasing, we're going to practice rephrasing them. It was really, truly the most formative. Thing that I've had happen, you know, because I just didn't realize how many things I was telling myself quietly.

Yes, so Jennifer, so, and this is great. I think anybody who, anyone can relate to just their running sales talk being things are crazy, I'm too busy, I'm too stressed. Things are crazy. That person's crazy. This person's against me, because if you're in this thick of it, it just seems so real. But you're, I think, also we just don't realize that we could be creating it with our thoughts. If you think crazy things are happening, then you're looking for crazy things, or you're maybe you're attracted into your life, or whatever it is, or drama that you don't need to pay attention to, but you're so used to just wrapping around you like it's just been a part of your life that you can't escape, and being able to imagine alike where that isn't there, and for Jennifer, what she did so well was she was in the thick of some crazy drama, and for her to focus on the fact that half that drama at some time in the near future was a different life, and that she had to

believe that it was there the same way you believe if you go over this mountain there's going to be a river, you know, she had to believe that and hold on to it and realize, like, it was crazy, it is now, but it won't be soon, and I need to start believing it and acting as if it's not already, and then I can start acting like people trust me, I can start acting and believing that I'm back where I was, and that I'm successful, and that things go smoothly, and that everything's worked out, and and that was just holding on to a belief for her for a while, because in the midst of what she was going through, I can see why it would be really hard.

The experience I was going through with just a complete lack of control, and also just a real sense of desperation that I was never going to have my life back, and I was never going to have peace in my life again, and this problem I had going on was just never going to end. Those are things that are so easy to tell yourself, you know, because it felt so impossible when it was all happening, and what I didn't realize was just how powerful that thought process is, and how counterintuitive it is to successful business. I somehow just had to block it out, and I did have to start believing in my heart that it was going to be over soon, and that I could, and that I was going to be able to get back to how it was, but I think it's just the, it's the continuous, you know, getting up every day. Oh my gosh, How am I going to do this? How am I going to get through the day? How am I going to pretend like I don't have all this going on behind the scenes, and be a

salesperson, and be shiny and happy.

And I hear this a lot from coaching clients, is I hear like there's no times I don't have time, it things are crazy, and I don't have any time, and everybody needs me all the time, and no one's helping me. I'm doing it all by myself, and I'm starting from scratch, and it's scary, so words like scary, and I don't have time, cravings about lack and frame is about fear, and, and about lack of control, and maybe people being against you, or people trying to sabotage you, and that's some scary stuff, and so we would always kind of, whatever the saying was, we would get to, you can only change to, you can either change the physical thing that's happening, like, can you move away from that person? Can you not go to that meeting? Can you ask that person not to do that? Like, can you physically change it, or you have to change how you're thinking about it. And those are really the only two things that that did, that we're not, you know, no matter what it was about. If it was

that a client, if it was that a pile of paperwork, if it was about the relationship, if it was about anything, it would, we would, you know, what, what can you actually change about this in reality, but decide to do that and hold you accountable to it, and then the other thing is, what can you change about how you're thinking about this, so one of the things I do a lot in the highest, and I'm pretty sure we did this exercise. It kind of, do you remember, Jennifer, when we slowed down your self-cock and walked through your day like everything was okay? When you hear somebody stressed out talking, they're usually talking really fast, and their breath is really short, and they, you know, and then they come, and they suffered, and I just can't, you know, and even just getting this exercise, this exercise of just tell me that story again, really slowly, as if everything is okay, their brain is responding to the panic in their body and. And so getting her to say I've got plenty

of time and I know what I'm doing and I'm good at planning things, just saying it as slow as possible, and she would say it as slow as possible, and it calms down your mind.

It was unbelievably impactful, and just the simple, the simple words of what are you actually trying to control here? Because I think that's what most of us are trying to do. We're trying to take whatever adverse situation we have going on in our life, and most of our frustration is just stemming, stemming from a lack of control, and it's.. it sounds so silly that she had to say to me, "Hey, Jennifer, what is it that you are exactly trying to control here? And can you? And that's what was so magical, and that's what really started to turn my thinking around, was just realizing, "Okay, I can't change, I can't change this right now. I can't. There's a lot I can't change about the paradigm, but I can change how I'm reacting to the situation. I can change how I'm thinking about it, and it was almost instantly, you know, that my business started to improve, because it was almost like I was just able to let go of it and release all of that inner conflict

that I had with myself, because I kept thinking, well, my business isn't going to get on track until I have all this conflict out of my life, but the truth was I wasn't in control of when that conflict was going to end, so I think the result was I just had the confidence to go and start forging the new relationships that I needed to forge, and I had to just, in the face of what I was dealing with, I had to just figure out what I had to do to get to the next level, and I had to quit wallowing in what I going on, and what I, and what I found, and what I found when I got back out there is, I had there was almost like it was the, it was a newer, better version of the old successful me, because I had more, I had more empathy about life, I had more empathy towards my clients, more empathy, empathy towards my potential new business partners, because I'd gone through this tremendous life experience that just left me, you know, feeling more attached to life and the struggles that people

go through. Whereas when I was a young successful professional, I just, you know, I was on fire and there was nothing that could stop me, you know. And then life just kind of sneaks up behind you and throws you a curve ball.

First of all, she really wanted to change the thing, like if she was very frustrated with any, any mortgage person can relate to the idea of getting everything they need. It's just a very common frustration, like these people don't get it, they don't give me everything I need, and they, that they're lonely because you know they don't get it, and so there's, you know, taking that little nugget and going, okay, well, why don't they get it? Because they're not a mortgage professional, so it's your job to explain it all to them. And then the other thing is, is how can I be in their sink from their viewpoint? So, what can they do about it? What can I think about it? And then we practiced that, so we would take just one little nugget at a time. We would take working with her assistant, we worked with that little nugget, what could we change, what and what we do, and she was always willing, even if it was frustrating, she was always willing to like practice it

and accept the changes. She didn't fight it the way some people do, some people go, oh, that sounds feeling she would work through it, and go, and she really wanted it to be better. She didn't want to say she wasn't wanting to hold on to it, she was wanting it to change. So I'm sure there are clients that I've had that in a part of their identity was being a workaholic, and so the fear of facing what am I like if I'm not a workaholic, they can't, they, because they don't understand what they're going to look like and be like, and how the center could accept them if they're not a workaholic anymore. They kind of hang on tightly to workaholic habits, or people don't think of me as being competitive, or people think of me as competitive, and I don't want to be competitive anymore. What are people going to see? Like, well, who cares if it's a healthy direction for you to go right now? But that is a scary thing, because their identity is wrapped up in our occupation. That a change is

scary thing, like, what are people going to think about me if I do things a different way, or if I'm not a third, back and call, if I create boundaries around what I will and will not do, so that I'm running my highest and not my client.

You know, I just.. I think we come into the with so many preconceived ideas about who we are and what we are, and that's what I needed help breaking down, I. Needed somebody to help me break down me and the barriers that I was putting in place in front of myself that I didn't even know I was putting there, and so my biggest obstacle through this whole process wasn't my circumstances or what I had going on, it was me, and I just needed to face that fact, I needed to face that. Okay, I'm not 25 and a top producing loan officer anymore. I'm scratching my way back, and I don't work with all my close friends anymore, and I'm not getting all the awards anymore, and I'm not in the, you know, the inner circle like I used to be, which was a really tough adjustment coming back when you're used to being an elite producer, you have to let go of the past. So I think the biggest is, and I know that's a general answer, but the biggest thing I've had help with is just

somebody breaking down the every aspect of how I'm approaching my business and my life and the things I'm saying to myself that were creating obstacles to my own success.

I want to go back to Shelly, and I want to flip roles for a second. You know, thinking through the time of you kind of watching Jennifer, what would you say is the biggest thing that you've learned from from her?

Well, I think she has such amazing resiliency, and what's been amazing is watching her realize what I've learned is if you believe it long enough, all of a sudden you don't have to talk yourself into it every day. Eight or the first maybe two months of trying to believe that your life is going to change every day. You just have to just believe it, and talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, believe it, and maybe you're just sort of believing it. But then one day you realize, like, oh, I have a great life now, and we kind of shifted to gratitude at some point. We started realizing we weren't striving for it anymore, we were living in it, and then we went from living in it to being grateful for it, and being.. and lately you've just been so about the gratitude and about jumping to the mindset, like you're now forming the habit, like I've watched her, I've watched her climb that mountain man, I've watched her numbers just go up, and she has a really cool life,

like an enviable life set up by many measures, and it's just getting better.

You're gonna have to fight for it, and you know, unfortunately, in this life, you know, there's there's not going to be anybody that comes beside us in that tremendous time of need, you know, of course, we all have friends and family, but you know, my greatest advice is just decide in your heart that you're willing to fight for whatever it is you're trying to get back in your life, and just don't give up, make that your, your focus, that you know, whatever your goal is, that you're just not going to let anybody or anything stop that, you know. I couldn't have done it without Shelly. I needed somebody to analyze everything I was saying and turn it back around, because I just literally.. I mean, sometimes you can be really successful that you just don't have the tool to change around, you know, things that you've been telling yourself for 15 years, or whatever you have going on in your life, and so it's been a tremendous help for me.

I just appreciate both of you ladies so very much, and Jennifer, I wish you the best. You know, best to you both.

Thank you.