Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenny Baird.
Hi Jenny, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
From the time I was a little kid, swinging on our backyard swingset with my sister and singing my lungs out, I have always loved to sing and loved music. That love of singing deepened in high school when I started taking voice lessons. When I listened to the music of Jennifer Knapp and Rebecca St. James, a dream started to take root in me. As I listened to their songs on repeat, I thought, “I could do that. That’s what I want to do with my life. I want to write my own songs.”
That thought, that moment, has truly defined the rest of my life to date. While I never did go to Nashville or New York to try to break into the music industry and become the next Taylor Swift (my FAVORITE artist), songwriting and sharing my own voice simply wouldn’t let go of me. After graduating college with a degree in Commercial Music Technology, I found myself working all sorts of jobs to pay the bills so I could pursue music: bookseller at Barnes and Noble, piano teacher, wedding photographer, and eventually receptionist at a mega church.
Being the receptionist at my church turned into an 11-year career that spanned roles from answering the phones to communication coordinator to administrative manager and eventually manager of a team of 250 volunteers. And while I loved so much of my job, I could never shake the sense that I wasn’t fully doing what I was meant to do. Even though I loved my work and got to volunteer as a singer and worship leader with the band (singing for hundreds and sometimes thousands of people), my heart still felt like it was suffocating. I just KNEW that if I wasn’t sharing my own songs with the world, I wasn’t living my purpose. (Although I did manage to release a full-length album during this time, my ministry work just always seemed to crowd out my own music, and my pursuit of it was inconsistent at best).
This thread weaved its way through all 11 years of my career in ministry. At one point I even moved to North Carolina for a few months to try to launch something musically, only to end up back in Ohio, back in ministry. The four years after I moved back were some of the toughest I’ve experienced. I was still inconsistently pursuing music, and when I turned 32, I remember thinking, “That’s it. You know what they say, ‘If you don’t have a record deal by the time you’re 32, you’re done.’” Between that and some other heartbreak in my personal life, I felt like my future had evaporated in front of me. I felt hopeless and essentially decided (subconsciously, I think) that if I couldn’t do music the way I wanted to, then maybe I could create a calling from my job at the church and be happy. And in a lot of ways, I was.
And then 2019 happened. In January 2019, I met a singer/songwriter named Jae Jin. He was a two-time cancer survivor who had quit medical school and an MBA program to travel the world on his own, singing his songs. All I could think was, “I want his life.” As I sat in a friend’s living room and listened to him play his songs and share his story, I knew I couldn’t stay the way I was. I felt like I had been slowly suffocating, and suddenly, my calling as a singer and a songwriter was yelling in my face. Meeting Jae and hanging out with him and being challenged by him to go after my dreams, felt like getting hit by a hurricane and then gasping awake from a drugged sleep. And I KNEW I couldn’t go back to sleep, ever.
So, I made a ridiculous amount of goals for my life and committed to them. They scared me, honestly: could I really play shows in 50 cities in one year? Could I really travel to 5 continents? But I was finally dreaming again, and despite my fear, I was all in.
January of 2019 also brought a change in my role at the church, one that took me out of the creative department I had previously loved working in and into a different management role. I quickly learned that leading at that level was all-consuming. And since I refused to give less than 100% to my work, I slowly found all of the things I was most passionate about fading, including my goals and my music.
I visited my sister in DC that July and had a major meltdown right on her balcony while we were supposed to be enjoying breakfast. We talked for hours (yes, my sister is a SAINT) about my stress, my goals fading, and what I should do. I knew that something had to change.
I didn’t know what to do, but when I got home, I met with a trusted friend who was also in ministry (and whom I had been confiding in and sharing about my goals with). She looked me in the eye and said, “I NEVER say this to people, but I have such a strong feeling God is asking you to quit your job and do music.” I knew she was right, and I only needed to hear her say it to realize it was time.
I went back to work and told my boss I needed to leave ministry. Two months later, my replacements were hired and trained. I decided to become a temp to pay my bills – that way, I could get a breather, decide my next steps, and also leave work at work and put all my energy into figuring out how to make music my life. And in November of 2019, again at a house concert where Jae Jin was performing, I made another decision: when my last temp job ended on February 1, I would stop taking temp work and only rely on music for my income. I would perform and teach voice and piano.
So, on February 1 of 2020, I became an independent musician by trade. It was going pretty well, too. I had gone to an entrepreneur retreat in January and hired a business coach, and I was so excited to be finally living my calling and working on my mindset. I had my next few months of performance gigs lined up and a few voice and piano students.
Then, in March, the COVID-19 lockdown hit, and all of my streams of income vanished. No more performing gigs. Only one of my students stuck with me on Zoom. I remember laying on my bed asking God if I should just go get a job as an Amazon driver; it seemed like that’s what everyone else was doing. And I so clearly felt words drop into my chest, “Just because the circumstances have changed, doesn’t mean your calling has changed.” So, I chose to trust and stay the course.
My life became a blur of anxiety, live streaming for tips and trying to reach out of the fog of my existence and promote myself as a virtual music teacher. Then, when my business coach, Aaron Velky, challenged me to find a way to simply add value and help all the parents and kids stuck at home, I launched Rockstar Camp, a free online camp for kids to learn music and perform with confidence. And suddenly, I found something that filled my heart as much as my songwriting and singing did. Coaching. I was watching kids’ confidence change right before my eyes. Kids that were the most shy during the first round of camp came back in for round two and started not only raising their hands first but also being encouraging to the other kids. I had parents texting me telling me they couldn’t believe the difference in their shy kid.
Between Rockstar Camp and being coached by Aaron (which was a completely transformative experience), I found in myself a new desire to make Coach one of the main roles I played for the world. As lockdown faded and I began to get more and more music coaching students, I started to understand that, yes, my job was to teach my students music, but more importantly, I was helping them to see themselves in a new light. Helping them to become more THEM.
As more women started coming to me for vocal coaching, I realized that I was really actually coaching them on life. Showing them how to show up in their world and confidently find the voice that had been buried and use it not only for singing but to change any environment they encountered where anxiety had previously held them back. So early in 2023, I got certified in Integrative Change work (coaching the unconscious mind through hypnotism, trance and nervous system regulation), and launched my Integrative Life Coaching career.
And while I now see that life coaching is also a key calling of my life, music still hasn’t let me go. Sharing my own voice with the world in the form of songwriting is inextricable from my work helping others to unlock their own voices and their own truths. So, I’ve been in the recording studio for the last six months and will have an announcement to make soon on that front.
It is strange to say it, especially in a culture that tells us we’re behind if we don’t have life figured out in our 20s, but at 39, I finally feel like the most vibrant part of my life is beginning. I’m finally coming into my own and living into my dreams: the old ones and the new ones.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest obstacles I have faced, other than COVID-19 lockdown, have been in my own heart and mind. Anxiety and fear were my most constant companions the first few years of launching out on my own. Anxiety kept me stuck and frozen so much of the time that it feels miraculous to me that I have been successful. Learning to quickly regulate my nervous system out of that anxiety has been life changing.
Another challenge of being an entrepreneur is the constant uncertainty. There is never a guarantee that any one action I take will have any effect whatsoever in bringing clients to create a life-giving business that will help others and support me. Learning to hold that uncertainty and move confidently around inside of it may just be the work I will never stop doing.
And then there have been the challenges of my faith. In the midst of launching a music career turned life coaching career. I began questioning everything I ever believed and deconstructing my evangelical Christian faith. That process was lonely and terrifying, as I ended up leaving the faith community that my whole life was wrapped up in. But that process also allowed me to find my own voice, truth, and authority again, which is now a key part of what I do for others as a life coach, reconnecting them to their own wisdom.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m a Singer/Songwriter, a Vocal Coach, and an Integrative Life Coach.
As a singer/songwriter, my work is to tell the truth as only I can tell it. My work is to believe that I matter enough to overcome the fear of putting my music into the world. My work is to believe that my story will be what someone else needs. My work is to keep creating even if I can’t see the impact of my work.
As a Vocal Coach, my work is to help my clients unlock their voice AND their confidence. A person’s voice, especially their singing voice, is one of the most vulnerable things they can share with others. And it is something that feels so connected to our worth. So, my job is twofold. 1) Give my clients the technical skills to sing with the voice that THEY KNOW is inside of them – truly, singing is not magic; it’s just a few skills. 2) Do the work in the unconscious mind to understand that “your enoughness is unchangeable and solid. End of story.” Without fail, the thing my clients are most afraid of is failing on stage in some way. And without fail, we find that when they unlock just how ENOUGH they already are, they can take any failure or fear on stage and turn it into connection with others. They can remain confident and steady and sing from a place of already being worthy. A fun twist in working with me as a vocal coach is that I also utilize my training in integrative hypnotism to help my clients quickly unlock barriers in their physical voice that feel totally immovable. For me, the best moments in vocal coaching come when a client sings something differently for the first time and in shock they say “Is that MY voice?”
As an Integrative Life Coach, I work with my clients to help them access their unconscious mind and unearth the wealth of wisdom there. While much of the life coaching world centers on cognitive thought work (change your thoughts, change your life) as the basis for its success, I begin with the unconscious mind (neuroscience-based hypnotism and trance). My clients learn how to reconnect to the signals their bodies are always sending them to discover that the answers they need are probably already inside of them. The number one thing I do with my clients is cut through confusion. The conscious mind offers us all sorts of conflicting thoughts: “What if I do this and I fail?” “Come on, stop being scared, just go for it.” “But what will they think of me?” “Why do you think ANYONE would care what you have to say?” “Yeah, but aren’t I enough?” “I KNOW I shouldn’t be feeling this angry about something so dumb. I’m so mad that I can’t get a handle on my emotions.” But when you’re sitting in my coaching space, we use practical neuroscience to ease that anxiety, that whirl of thoughts, and we go underneath the storm to find clarity. I also know some pretty sweet trances that are mind blowing, from goal setting magic to psychedelic trance (without the drugs). My favorite thing to hear from a client is, ““I didn’t know that I could believe that I’m enough just the way I am. I didn’t know I could REALLY BELIEVE that I don’t have to fix myself. My anxiety is so much better, and the baseline of my life just feels so much more calm and steady.”
We’d love to hear what you think about risk-taking.
Phew. Risk. Since I launched my career as an independent musician in 2020, it feels like my life has been nothing but one big risk. When I left the world of W-2s in 2020, I didn’t do things the “smart” way. I had no savings. I just had a three-month runway to get enough gigs on the calendar and enough music students to pay my next set of bills.
And then when the pandemic happened, I took the risk of staying the course instead of getting an Amazon job.
And even this past year, when my finances took some major hits, I once again felt strongly from the spirit, “the money is not yours to worry about”. So, I keep going.
Not everyone can take the same kinds of risk though. I am single with no family to support, except a dog and a cat, so if I fail, I’m the only one who crashes and burns. I also knew myself well enough to know that I would never feel ready; if I was going to do it, I just had to do it.
Someone who has a family to support may not find the kind of risks I’ve taken acceptable for their lives. They may actually need planning and a real financial runway to ensure their risk is a protected one. So, everyone has to evaluate the KIND of risk they want to take.
One thing that has been true of the way I’ve taken risks? I’ve hit major burnout TWICE. And I’ve had to stop and rebuild the foundation of the way I think and operate. I had to learn the hard way about frying out my nervous system.
And I don’t regret it AT ALL. Because taking the risks to follow my dreams has not only brought my heart back to life, it has UNMADE everything I thought I was and brought me home to all the parts of me that were buried under the rubble of living life according to everyone else’s expectations.
So, I say, FIND A WAY to take the risk. If your heart is suffocating, find a way to take the risk. Learn how to regulate your nervous system and create safety in your body, and make a plan to take that risk. You deserve to feel alive, and the people you love need you to be fully alive.
Contact Info:
- Website: jennybaird.com
- Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/the.jenny.baird/ - Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/thejennybaird - Youtube: https://www.youtube.
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Image Credits
Anna Rochelle
