Meet Jennifer Bateman

We recently connected with Jennifer Bateman and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jennifer, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

I truly believe good work ethic stems from passion. When we find that thing in life that sets our soul aflame, we put our entire heart and soul into what we do. Working for yourself does come with difficulties, but when you are making a living off your passion, nothing can stop you!

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

When I was nineteen, I applied for a position at Webber’s Per Supermarket in Northern Virginia. I have always been a huge animal person, so I figured this would be a fun job until I figured out what I wanted to do for my career. Little did I know, I had just found my forever family. I ended up managing one of the shops for over thirteen years, studying and helping customers with pet nutrition and training. I was in love with my job, but deep down wanted to pursue making art. The owner of the shop suggested I put some of my art in one of the corners to encourage me. I am forever grateful to her for this. This is how it all started! She believed in me, and wanted to support my passion.

I quickly built up a fan base for my art, and started doing shows on the weekends. I opened up my own business in 2011, and from there my passion for art kept growing!

Eventually, I met the love of my life at a friends birthday trip, who lived in upstate NY. We did long distance for a year, but long distance is incredibly difficult. In 2023 I made the decision to move in with her, leaving everything behind. Moving to a new state so far from home was more than challenging. I left Webber’s, my family, my friends, my favorite hiking spots, and my clientele. I was going to have to start life over from scratch.

I took the first couple months off to grieve, explore the area, and adjust to my new surroundings. Then I got to work. My in person clients were all nine hours away now, and if I wanted to continue with art, I needed new clients fast. I did some shows in the area, but people up here didn’t spend money the way they did back home. This is when I decided to try Etsy. I spent days upon days researching SEO, how to gain Facebook followers, and how to build a business online.

After a few months, my online business took off!! I couldn’t believe it! I am now selling more art than I ever have in my entire life. Each day, I drop 5-10 items in my shop, and each time drop sells out within minutes. I have a steady income doing what I love the most! Words can’t express how grateful I am for the people who support me, cheer me on, and are inspired by my passion.

Last year, I started teaching online art classes for my followers. I had many friends reach out warning me not to share the secrets of my technique, because I could be copied and it could hurt my business. However, I don’t believe copying is a concern in the art world. Art is for everyone. And isn’t all art inspired by other art in some form? They say those at the bottom compete, and those at the top collaborate. I have found this to be true! Not only has teaching classes not hurt my business, it has helped me to expand!

For my next step, I would love to get into coaching. I have figured out what works in the art world, and I can’t wait to start helping others achieve their dream careers. My whole life I’ve studied mindset coaching, psychology, marketing, self help for fun. I truly believe this knowledge is why I am where I am today. I am ready to share this with others, and watch artists dreams come true!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I will now share with you three things that have been the most impactful for me on my journey. Practice, self help, and embracing my feminine side.

Practice is an obvious one. Rarely people are born with a skill. We get good at something because we practice over and over again. We must love what we do, or we get bored before we excel. When we find the one thing we’re truly passionate about, we do it for fun whether we’re good at it or not. In return, the result is we become a master at our skill!

When I say self help, I don’t mean taking baths while eating ice cream (though this is never a bad thing). I mean really digging deep down into your subconscious mind to find traumas that block you from reaching your fullest potential. Everyone has fears. We fear putting ourselves out there due to judgment, failure, and sometimes we even fear success! Learning to recognize our patterns of self sabotage and retrain our brains to allow us the be our best self is key! This took me years of work, and I am still working on it today.

Embracing the feminine side of ourselves is key in running your own business. I’ll try to keep this short, but I could write an entire book on this one! What I mean by feminine is not the way we dress or act, but in more of a spiritual sense of the word. We live in a highly masculine driven society that tells us to work hard, grind, and produce blood sweat and tears for our jobs. These things are definitely beneficial, but they are not the overall key to success. Our feminine side allows, she takes breaks and naps, she works smarter not harder. She treats herself with kindness and compassion, and she sits back and allows success to come to her. Regardless of your gender, each person possesses both feminine and masculine traits. Finding a balance of these is key. If we only work from the masculine we burn out, we cap our income, and we become tired and sometimes grow to hate what we do. When we balance hard work with the intuitive self care of the feminine, we ease up on ourselves. Working is fun, easy, and abundance comes to us. An example of this would be taking a break. This past Christmas I was swamped with custom orders, at times overwhelmed and my productivity levels were getting lower as I tried to push myself through it. Counterintuitively, I took days off. My brain would fight me on this. I had so much to do before the deadline, and I didn’t have time to take a day off! But working from the feminine means you take that day off anyway. I’d spend the day hiking, watching movies, reading, or anything that made me happy that day. The next day I would come back to work with a completely different mindset, and I was able to work at more efficient speeds with ease! This is what it means to work from the feminine. Less pushing, more allowing your passions to flow freely.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

There are so many good books that have helped me with my journey. But if I had to pick just one, it would be “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle. I have probably read this book twenty times or more. Anytime I am facing a challenge in life, I go to this book, and it applies to the current situation. It is all about ego, and getting out of your own way. I highly recommend this book no matter what your story is!

Contact Info:

• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/SimplyJennuine/events/?ref=page_internal&__nodl&wtsid=rdr_0pZETm8LRdTouDpr2
• Other: Etsy link :

  https://simplyjennuine.etsy.com/

Image Credits

Jennifer Bateman.