Jamie Saunders shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Jamie, we’re thrilled to have you with us today. Before we jump into your intro and the heart of the interview, let’s start with a bit of an ice breaker: What do you think others are secretly struggling with—but never say?
Not being Enough. It is an epidemic
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Jamie Saunders a Certified ICF Business, Mindset, and Real Estate Investing Coach who helps entrepreneurs reclaim their power, make confident decisions, and run thriving companies. As a fractional COO, I partner with business owners to create structure through systems, SOPs, hiring strategies, and financial clarity all while helping them lead from a place of strength and authenticity.
As a Business and Mindset Coach I have rebuilt my life more than once, and I’ve turned every one of those rebuilds into a roadmap for others to rise stronger than ever.
My journey has spanned decades of entrepreneurship from opening one of the first specialty coffee shops long before they were trendy, to managing a real estate investing company, and now coaching business owners and real estate investors across the country through my company, Jamie Saunders Coaching. Over the years, I’ve led more than 9,000 coaching sessions, helping people master strategy, strengthen their mindset, and lead both their business and life with clarity and confidence.
What I’ve discovered through the highs and lows of business and life is this our failures often teach us more than our successes ever could. I’ve walked through deep betrayal and disappointment, and while those experiences could have hardened me, they became the foundation of my growth. Healing didn’t come through anger; it came through compassion for myself, for the lessons, and eventually even for the people who caused the hurt. That’s where empowerment begins in choosing peace, not pain.
That philosophy is at the heart of my work. Whether I’m teaching a real estate investor how to analyze a deal or guiding a CEO to lead from emotional strength, my mission is always the same: to help people reconnect to their inner power. It’s not just about building wealth or growing a business it’s about trusting yourself again. Once you do that, everything else starts to fall into place.
My approach blends practical business strategy with emotional and spiritual empowerment a combination that’s rare but deeply effective. Clients often come to me looking for clarity in one area and end up experiencing a complete life shift. We talk cash flow, hiring, and profit and loss statements… but we also talk energy, boundaries, and alignment. Because if you’re not aligned with your decisions, you’ll keep sabotaging your own success.
When I look back, what I’m most proud of isn’t the businesses I’ve built or the challenges I’ve overcome it’s that I’ve learned how to love myself through all of it. I’ve built businesses, lost everything, started over more than once, and somehow turned pain into purpose. And that’s what I want for every client I work with to stop second-guessing themselves, to stand in their power, and to know that no matter what they’ve been through, they can create something extraordinary from it.
If you’re feeling stuck, uncertain, or ready to redefine what success means for you, my advice is simple: start where you are. Trust your next step. You don’t need to have the whole plan you just need to say yes to yourself.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
The part of me that has finally served its purpose and that I’ve released is the version of me that was loyal to everyone but myself.
I’ve always been loyal to a fault. To people I loved. To companies I worked for. To friends and family who needed me. Loyalty was my identity it was who I believed I was supposed to be. But what I didn’t realize, not really, was that the one person I was not loyal to… was me.
I didn’t fully understand this truth until I lived through one of the most painful chapters of my life a betrayal so deep it forced me to see myself with new eyes.
In 2005, I received a phone call no one should ever have to hear. On the other end of the line was a man who said, “Your husband is having an affair with my wife.” That moment shattered my 20-year marriage and the life I had built. It took me years to rebuild my confidence, my business, and my sense of self. I thought I had learned my lesson about self-worth and boundaries.
But almost two decades later, in 2025, I found myself facing an even more devastating truth. I had fallen in love again. He was the first man I had lived with since my marriage ended. I gave up everything to be with him my furniture, my home, my sense of security because I believed in the future we were building together.
Then, one day, when we were ending our phone conversation, he forgot to hang up the phone. And I heard him walk into a hotel room with another woman less than two months after I had moved in. It was the kind of heartbreak that makes your head spin. The kind of story that sounds more like a Netflix special than real life.
Losing him wasn’t the hardest part. What gutted me was realizing I had lost myself again my voice, my intuition, my boundaries. I had repeated the same lesson from 20 years earlier, just in a different form. This time, though, the universe wasn’t whispering it was shouting:
“Be loyal to YOU first.”
I believe that’s why the situation had to be so catastrophic. Because I hadn’t fully learned the lesson the first time. I had to be brought to my knees to finally stand in my power.
And that’s what I teach now not from a place of theory, but from lived experience. Healing didn’t come from anger or revenge. It came from learning to send compassion first to myself, then to the experience, and finally, even to the man who betrayed me. Not because he deserved it, but because I do.
Letting go of that old version of me the woman who over-gave, over-trusted, and over-loved has been the most liberating act of my life. Now, my loyalty is sacred. It starts with me.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering taught me something success never could. How to come home to myself.
When life was going “right,” I equated success with forward motion hitting goals, building businesses, helping others grow. But when everything fell apart, when betrayal cracked me wide open, I was forced to face something I had avoided my entire life: that I had been giving my power away by not being loyal to me.
In those moments of pain when I could barely breathe, when everything I thought I could trust vanished I began to understand that the real work isn’t external. It’s internal. No business success, no relationship, no amount of money could give me what I had lost: self-trust.
So, I went inward. I started doing deep, dark meditation the kind that brings you face-to-face with your own shadows. I began Craniosacral therapy, and during one session, I experienced something so profound it felt like a spiritual transfusion as if the energy of disempowerment was being pulled out of my body and replaced with light. I cried for hours afterward because, for the first time, I understood that healing isn’t about fixing what’s broken it’s about remembering who you are before you forgot your worth.
Suffering stripped me down to nothing, but in that emptiness, I found my truth. I learned that peace doesn’t come from control it comes from surrender. That love doesn’t mean losing yourself to prove your devotion. And that power doesn’t come from being strong for everyone else it comes from being loyal to yourself first.
Now, when I coach my clients, I don’t just teach business or mindset. I teach alignment. I teach what it means to rebuild from the inside out to find stillness in the storm, strength in vulnerability, and clarity in the dark. Because that’s where the real success lives.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. Is the public version of you the real you?
Absolutely. The public version of me is the real me BUT it’s not all of me.
As a coach, people often expect me to have it all together. To have the perfect mindset, a thriving six-figure coaching business, and an empire of real estate. But the truth is, I’m human and just like many of the incredible professionals I coach, I have my own seasons of growth, doubt, and reinvention.
I know over a hundred coaches, and here’s something most won’t say out loud: even the best of them wrestle with imposter syndrome. Many are brilliant at strategy, business, or real estate yet the greatest coaches I know are the ones who understand that mindset is the real game changer. They help their clients see that it’s not the market, the team, or the timing holding them back it’s the beliefs beneath it all. When a coach can shift mindset, everything else begins to grow.
I’ve owned a lot of real estate in my life. After a 20-year marriage, I walked away from all of it NOT because I didn’t know its value, but because I needed to be free from the pain attached to it. I’ve built businesses, sold business and walk away from businesses, and I learned more through those experiences than any classroom could ever teach. I understand SEO, marketing, systems, and operations. And yes, I coach many business owners and real estate investors who, on paper, might be more “successful” than I am.
But that’s the beauty of coaching. A great coach isn’t defined by their resume or portfolio they’re defined by their ability to see the person in front of them, to hold them accountable, and to guide them toward clarity and confidence. When I’m on a coaching call, nothing else matters but the client. Their success, their growth, their breakthroughs that’s my purpose.
So yes, the public version of me the coach, the mastermind facilitator, the woman who shares stories of empowerment and truth is the real me. But there’s also the private me, the one who still meditates through the dark nights, who still works on trusting herself more deeply, who still learns every single day.
And that’s what makes me real. I don’t pretend to have it all figured out I teach from the middle of the journey, not from the mountaintop. Because that’s where life, and leadership, are most honest.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What do you understand deeply that most people don’t?
What I understand deeply and what most people don’t? Is that mindset is everything.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO, a small business owner or a real estate investor, your success, your growth, your ability to take risks and create impact it all starts in the space between your right and left ear.
I’ve coached thousands of people over the years, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that mindset is the quiet force behind every decision, every deal, and every breakthrough. You can have the best business plan, the perfect marketing strategy, and all the funding in the world, but if your mindset is rooted in fear, self-doubt, guilt, or comparison your growth will stall.
Most people don’t realize how subtle these thoughts can be:
“I don’t want to fail I’ve worked too hard to mess this up.”
“If I take time off, my team will think I’m lazy.”
“I can’t raise my prices my clients will leave.”
“Other people are already doing it better than me.”
“I need to be involved in every decision or it won’t get done right.”
“I’ll rest when the business is more stable.”
“Who am I to call myself successful?”
These are the thoughts that quietly sabotage growth. They look like strategy problems on the surface, but they’re mindset problems at the core.
I’ve watched clients transform their lives not because they changed their business model, but because they changed their thinking. One of my clients had built a thriving company with a strong, capable team yet every morning she sat at her desk, tabs open, pretending to work. She felt guilty stepping away while her team was hard at work, so she stayed glued to her computer out of obligation, not necessity. Through our coaching, she realized that leadership isn’t measured by hours at a desk, but by the trust you place in the people you’ve empowered. Today, she works about ten hours a week, fully confident in the team she built and I now coach both her and her second-in-command as they lead with balance, trust, and freedom.
That’s not a business problem that’s a mindset problem.
I understand that mindset isn’t about toxic positivity or pretending everything’s fine. It’s about awareness. It’s catching yourself in the pattern before it repeats. It’s realizing that your thoughts are the invisible ceiling to your success. The moment you change what’s happening between your right and left ear, everything around you changes your team, your clients, your results, your peace.
When I work with clients, we don’t just talk strategy; we talk self-worth, identity, and inner dialogue. Because you can’t build an extraordinary business from an ordinary mindset.
Mindset isn’t just part of the work it is the work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jamiesaunderscoaching.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamiesaunderscoaching/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiesaunderscoaching/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JamieSaundersCoaching/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jamiesaunderscoaching
- Other: If you’d like to get a feel for how I work with clients and the results they’ve experienced, here’s a link to my Google reviews:
https://www.google.com/search?q=jamie+saunders+coaching&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS1135US1135&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ebo=0&mpd=~2405485115024245894/customers/reviews
Image Credits
Jeff Stemmerman Photography
