Meet Jeanette Harrison

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeanette Harrison. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeanette below.

Hi Jeanette, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I’ve experienced a lot of challenges in life. I was in foster homes as a child, and I believe that helped me learn resilience. Foster care taught me to adapt to situations quickly, which is part of resilience. I had to learn new rules in a new home very quickly and understand the people where you are living. That also gives you insights into human nature. When you have good foster parents like I did, I also learned hope and faith. I saw a life that maybe I wasn’t living as a child with my bio-mom. That taught me to have vision. So, I would say from a young age, I learned the key components of resilience. Adaptability, understanding others — which goes beyond empathy, being insightful, having hope and faith, and creating a vision for my life.

Another key component of resilience is understanding that situations are temporary, good or bad. For example, I experienced homelessness in my 20s after college. For some, they may have viewed that as the “end of the world.” But, I learned to view it as a temporary situation. It wasn’t who I was or what defined me. It was something that happened in my life. That ties back to having hope. I wake up every day hoping something wonderful will happen and making a plan to make my life better. No matter what is happening in my life.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I started my life over during the pandemic. After my 12-years relationship ended, I was forced to leave my home. I didn’t have a job because I was furloughed from the pandemic. I packed what I could and shipped what I could afford half-way across the country from Missouri to Idaho. I arrived in Idaho with two suitcases and my little dog. I had a few boxes waiting for me when I arrived. Friends shipped what little items I had left over the course of the next three years. I didn’t have a job, so I was applying for so many positions. During my down time, I was not getting interviews. I did gig work until the furlough period was over from my part-time employer. After being in Idaho a year, I started a business called, How Healthcare Works, LLC.

How Healthcare Works, LLC, was based on a blog I had created as faculty member. I had the idea from a lot of women’s business books I had been reading. I’m not only a writer; I’m also a big reader. I believe that reading opens up doors and opens your mind to new ideas. So, I had the idea to start a business from one of the books I read. I had a vision of sorts because I knew what I wanted to do, but I wasn’t sure how to get there. I had initially planned my business as a professional development business for healthcare leaders, especially since I had written, “Cases for Developing Healthcare Leaders,” in 2017 after teaching at the collegiate level as an adjunct faculty member.

I started to see a concept developing during the pandemic, and I unraveled those thoughts during the pandemic. I wrote my guided journal, “Bragging About You,” which I had started working on during the pandemic. I took notes here and there and compiled them into book. To date, “Bragging About You,” is my best-selling book. And, I’ve written seven books. Three nonfiction books, three poetry books, and a children’s book. “Bragging About You” is a guided journal to help people realize how awesome they are. I found not only did I need that, but a lot of people needed that. As a nation, people were feeling like they were constantly humbled, and maybe they needed a reason to feel good about themselves again after the pandemic… or good about themselves in the first place.

After publishing “Bragging About You,” my business took a turn I didn’t expect it to go in. I became more of a wellness, lifestyle and self-care strategist than the healthcare administration faculty turned consultant than I had been before. My business became more about business development, professional development, and personal development, and that really resonated with so many people in our country. I wasn’t a talking head telling them they were awesome, I was reminded them to tell themselves that they were. That it was okay to be proud of yourself.

My business floundered for a while. I had to work low-level jobs to stay afloat and support myself, so my business took a back seat. While I was working these low-level jobs, I had the idea to write a walking book using the walking program I had created for myself. Again, I wasn’t expecting anyone to jump on board with it, because I actually was made fun of by some people about it. I’m an overweight middle-aged woman, and they acted like they couldn’t believe I would be writing a book about walking. They even said to me, “How you can be writing about fitness?” I went ahead an wrote the book, and I self-published, “Get Your Walk On: Go From 2,000 to 10,000 Steps in 8 Weeks.” It was a #1 New Release on Amazon the month it came out.

“Get Your Walk On” is about getting active and staying active. It’s about feeling motivated and understanding that walking or moving your body is for anyone at any age or any fitness level. People felt like they could relate to me more than a typical “fitness expert” because they can tell I’m just a regular person like they are. I’m out trying to live my life and share my experiences with others. I took to social media and amassed a greater following than I thought I would have. I even have people saying, “Why do you have so many followers on LinkedIn” or “TikTok” or “X?” And, I guess it’s because I inspire them in some way. That if I can do it, then maybe they can to.

Over the past year, I’ve had more clients than before. People continue to buy my walking book and a few have signed up for my walking, lifestyle coaching, and gratitude courses. They are rough because I do everything with just my iPhone SE, a selfie stick, and my Chromebook. No fancy equipment. I’ve also provided some business development consulting. I’ve loved every minute of it. I’m still in the startup phase, but I am so beyond grateful for all the recognition and the incredible market reach I have had. I get asked a lot if I have so many followers, why am I struggling financially? I was told that will come later, and I use my hope mindset and hang on to the belief that it will.

Right now, I am in the process of writing my next book, “Keep Walking, Keep Moving: How to Keep Going When Life Gets Hard.” What’s it about? Walking, of course. It’s about keeping moving after you reach your goals or when you feel like life just gets in the way. I don’t know about you, but when I get stressed or depressed, my exercise routine is the first thing that goes by the wayside. In reality, that is just what I need to start feeling better. Once you start fixing one area of your life, it has a ripple effect and the other aspects of your life start getting better, too.

At the moment, I am trying to raise capital for my business and myself (since I am an entrepreneur, business is personal) I also am planning on increasing my course offerings to include more health education and one on one lifestyle coaching. I’m not a fitness coach. I’m just here to help you make the most of the life you are already living. I am hoping to participate in more expos and fairs with my business and my books. Ultimately, I would love to be able to travel and do my walking videos, on location. In fact, one of my new personal goals is to do the Camino del Santiago. That’s part of what “Keep Walking, Keep Moving” is about, too. Sometimes, we set goals and achieve them and become complacent. It’s about setting new goals and creating a new vision.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I’m not a religious person, but I am a spiritual person. One of the three things that really helped me on my journey is having a tremendous faith in God and feeling like God had a plan and a purpose for my life. I felt like so many times God was watching over me. An example I like to use is when I moved to the New York City area at 22. I had just graduated from a small private college, Graceland University. Graceland had 1,000 students on campus and was in a small town, Lamoni, Iowa. Lamoni’s population was less than 2,000, and that included some of the students at Graceland. I went from Lamoni to New York City area in a month. I moved to New York with two trunks, my backpack, $50 in my pocket, and a job as an athletic counselor at a camp. I moved there without knowing anyone or having ever been there in my life. A lot of people have stories about the crimes they experienced in New York. I don’t. Nothing bad happened to me — not really. The worst thing that happened is that someone stole the money out of a cab driver’s hand once when I was getting into a taxi. And, I was walking around the streets of New York City alone. I say that was God watching over me.

One thing I learned from that experience and throughout my life is to listen to good advice. Not all advice is good, and it is your job to determine good advice from bad advice. But, I was given advice about how to survive in New York from native New Yorkers. And, they were right. It worked. I loved living in the New York area, and I consider it one of the high points of my life, even though I barely had two pennies to rub together most of the time. Actually, I still don’t. However, the important quality in this story is learning. Life itself is a learning process, and you have to be willing to learn not only about what you read, but about other people, the world around you, and your environment. That’s how you adapt.

I also learned that all things are temporary. When your life is constantly changing like mine is, you learn that the only constant is change. That can be good or bad. I would have loved to have stayed in New York, but my family convinced me to move back to Iowa, which ended up in me experiencing homelessness only a year after living in New York. But, through foster homes, college, living in New York, and being homeless, I learned that everything is temporary. I had to deal with the situation in the moment. While I was dealing with the situation in the moment, I also was creating a vision for what I was going to do next to build on that moment or not let those hard experiences define my life.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

The number one obstacle I have had in my life is financial stability. As a foster child, I didn’t have much. Children are shown today with carrying trash bags of clothes, and I don’t even remember doing that. I remember having all of my things in a big box when I was sent to live with my adoptive family at age 8. I didn’t have much financial support for college. I self-financed almost my entire education, and I am still paying on my student loans. That put me at a tremendous financial disadvantage to my peers because I left school broke and in debt, and they left school with less debt and with parents or families who backed them financially. I didn’t have that. I mostly lived on my own since I was 18. People helped me here and there. They gave me a place to stay when I needed it for a few months and a group of church members bought me a car for $2500 once. However, I never had any kinds of substantial savings to go on. When I moved to Idaho, I had $2400 in my pocket, and my rent was $1000 a month. I’m sure you know that money didn’t go very far — even though I was told I was “blowing” through my savings like $2400 was a lot of money in 2020. It wasn’t.

Because I’ve never had a solid financial footing or financial backing, getting and staying financially stable has been challenging for me. Starting my life over with only $2400 and then just trying to survive every day after that has been beyond stressful. I am constantly scrambling just to stay afloat, just to stay housed, just to put food on the table. I’ve had to take low level jobs in Idaho because those are the only ones available to me.

Today, I am worried about how I am going to pay my utility bills after just losing my day job because I had pneumonia. I don’t have health insurance. When I did have insurance, I used it mostly to pay for a therapist to help treat me for my PTSD. I currently have a GoFundMe campaign, and I have had $1,500 donated and half of that came from one donor. That barely pays for a month’s rent. Yesterday, I went to the food pantry and stood in line for an hour to get a week’s of groceries.

If I could have a wish it would be to have the financial backing I need to sustain myself and my business for at least a year. That way I could really focus on my writing, my business, and being an influencer — those are the things I like doing. Instead, my time is split scrambling for dollars every day and trying to figure out how I’m going to pay my rent. I have had eviction proceedings against me multiple times over the past two years, and I received a three-day notice earlier this week. The three day notice is the beginning of eviction proceedings. Every day I stress about money, and I know I don’t have money to pay for more than my basic bills. I don’t even have a car right now. Christmas weekend 2022, I had a car accident, and I couldn’t afford the repairs. I had the car voluntarily repossessed in June 2023. Now, I walk, rideshare or take the limited public transportation to get everywhere. People say “I would help you but…” or they outright say they won’t help. That’s one thing I’ve learned to that to get past survival you have to figure out how to be there for yourself. So, when people wouldn’t give me rides home from the bus stop or I didn’t have money for a rideshare, I would walk home on the very trail I wrote “Get Your Walk On” about. I told myself that I would be out there walking anyway, so I may as well do it now and just enjoy the moment.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.howhealthcareworks.net
• Instagram: @howhealthcareworks @jrharrison2014
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJeanetteHarrison, https://www.facebook.com/Howhealthcareworks/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jeanetteharrisonmph, https://www.linkedin.com/company/how-healthcare-works/
• Twitter: @jrharrisonmph
• Youtube: @howhealthcareworks2777
• Other: TikTok @howhealthcareworks

Image Credits

All photos were taken by Jeanette Harrison, MPH (me)