Meet J.A. Stein

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful J.A. Stein a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi J.A., really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

When I was a kid, I was blessed with the opportunity to try many things. And try them I did. Dance, swim team, band, 4-H, all kinds of outdoor activities. There were a lot of things I liked, but nothing that really consumed me. I was going through the motions, and my parents wouldn’t let me quit once I started something, so I had to push on. Then I finally got the opportunity to ride horses. I was fifteen years old, and I finally talked my parents into letting me get a horse. From there, it was all consuming, life changing, the discovery of a passion. And just riding wasn’t enough. I wanted horses to be my whole life. I worked at the barn, and eventually I went to college to study riding and teaching. By the time I’d graduated and started my own business, I was living in one of those moments in life where I was 100% certain I had found my purpose, to share these incredible animals with the next generation of youth. It took a lot of exploration, tears, and pushing away the nay-sayers to get there, but I got to do what I love and was born to do for over fifteen years.

The thing with purpose though is that it can shift. And I think we need to find grace to allow ourselves to let it shift. Instead of the Covid era killing my business, it exploded. Everyone had time to ride, which was something “safe”, outside, and socially distanced. I was so busy, so in the thick of it. The whirlwind of those years came to a crashing halt as I lost my favorite horses one after another to various freak things. They are only flesh and blood, and they don’t live forever. Not only did I grieve them on a personal level, but I had to grieve the loss of the students that I had been watching grow up for years, as I now had nothing for them to ride. Those holes left me questioning everything. Did I still love horses? Was this still what I was meant to do? Was this still the one thing that drove me to get out of bed every morning, that gave me purpose?

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in the crux of a shift. During my “down time” during Covid (did you know normal people only work an 8 hour day, not a 12 hour one?), I had gone back to another passion, writing. I’d had a novel sitting on my laptop that I’d worked on sporadically since high school. Well, it was time to get it out. I finished it, self published, and then held my breath. This could go one of two ways. Everyone could make fun of me and never read anything I wrote ever again. Or maybe, just maybe, they’d like it. Well, turns out they loved it, and my readers, many of which were total strangers, pushed me to write more. Now, just three short years later, I have four novels published and a new purpose, to put the dramatics of life and the resilience of humanity onto paper for others to enjoy.

I am still teaching riding. I have also mentored a few other writers, as apparently that drive to share what I’ve learned and love is engrained deep within me regardless of the subject matter. As all that goes on, I once again find myself restructuring what my purpose is, as now, less than a year after the birth of my son, life has shifted yet again.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I have been in the horse industry for over fifteen years now. In 2022 I published my first novel, Knightess, and thus let my “alter ego” shine through. It has been so much fun to get to live both of my passions. I now have four novels out and have somehow managed to do so while still running my boarding, teaching, and training facility. It’s amusing now to think that I was so tight-lipped about my book when I first published. I wrote under a pen name and didn’t tell anyone, but my adoring family was so supportive they put it on Facebook, which blew my pen before I ever got a chance to hide behind it. I guess that was a good thing, since clients turned out to be some of my biggest fans. I still attempt to keep my identities separate though, since I do teach kids and my Swords of Resilience series in NOT for kids. Definitely adult content. This morning one of my teenage students was begging me to let her read it, and I said “not until your thirty”, ha. The Last Farm is safer for a wider audience though, and I intend to write more that are a bit less intense like that one. My newest novel, Patch Town, is going to release in spring, and that is along the lines of The Last Farm. I am so excited for this one. It is based on a true story from my Dad’s hometown, this little coal town called Mary D. The story is set in 1938, during the depression when work was scarce and yet the town basically put their foot down to defend their property from the coal company. I got to blend my historical writing, which I love doing, with a local story, which I hope fans of The Last Farm will appreciate.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Definitely time management. Having a genuine passion for what you do. And yes, I am very grateful for the foundation my college degrees instilled in me. For clarity, I double majored in Equine Business Management and English. Even back then I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go. It’s funny, because I’ve been self-employed since I graduated, so on one hand I never really “needed” my degrees. And yet the skill sets that higher education instilled in me I use on a daily basis. My English profs held me to a higher standard with my writing. My equine classes gave me the broad foundation to deal with a variety of situations and horses. And people. People are the hardest part of any industry, I bet.

To develop time management, think of how you are using your time. You can’t make more time, but you can save time. I got rid of my social media, which as a business owner and writer was risky. I don’t regret it. Little trims like that can combine to give you hours back in your day.

Find your passion.

Further your education. Even if it’s not college, find an expert in your field and try to mentor with them, like an apprenticeship. Even if you end up branching out to do your own thing, you never know what tools you’ll later have in your toolbox for unexpected situations.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

Well, in business school they taught us to go all in with what you’re good at.

I have always had different interests, different things I’m good at, so being “all in” has always been hard for me. In college I double majored. When I teach riding lessons, I don’t have one discipline that I stick to (I do primarily dressage but I also do western and have dabbled in almost every discipline). When I write, now that I’ve finished my medieval series, I’ve branched off into contemporary fiction and my next book is in the 1930’s. Perhaps all this is to my detriment, that I won’t be the very top of anything. Or perhaps the versatility is what keeps me fresh and keeps me from burning out and quitting altogether. I’m always trying to improve weaknesses. But I’m also trying to improve my strengths. And I’ve learned over the years in business to not try to be something I’m not. If someone asks me to teach a jumping lesson, I’m clear that that is not my specialty, and I tell them exactly what I can help with. I think when we work within our limits it allows us to showcase our strengths.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.authorjastein.com
• Youtube: @AuthorJAStein