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Rebekah Jenkins joins Joey on the podcast today to talk about how if you turn your life upside down, you might just find what you’re looking for.
Rebekah Jenkins is an Antalya, Turkey-based lifestyle model and blogger and the owner of Modern Consulting Services, a company that helps businesses become more successful through better use of social media.
A former tennis director at Crosswhite Athletic Club in Lynchburg, VA, she was the winner of the 2018 United States Professional Tennis Association’s MidAtlantic Under 30 Coach of the Year Award.
She’s also Joey’s sister.
In late 2019, Rebekah left the comfort of rural Virginia to move to Antalya, Turkey to pursue her multilingual marketing dream. Her company now operates in three languages – English, German, and Turkish and her clients are from all over the United States and Europe.
@beksflix Top 5 WORST habits of ##quarantinelife 😲 Which one are you guilty of? ##quarantine ##keepingbusy ##quarantinetings ##happyathome
♬ The Lazy Song – Bruno Mars
Mentioned in this Podcast:
Hosted by Joey Phoenix, The Chaos Within is a podcast celebrating the weird, the wild, and the creative – featuring makers, doers, artists, and oddballs exploring the unknown and tapping into their creative energy.
The Chaos Within is produced by Creative Collective and is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The Logo was designed by Anton Presents, the intro music is by Paul Senn (psenn@thetau.io) using the Theta-U Creative Circuit System, and the outro music by Chris Wilson Sound using one of Joey’s maternal Grandmother’s haunted music boxes.
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Transcription: The Chaos Within Podcast – Episode 6 – Turn Your Life Upside Down with Rebekah Jenkins
Joey Phoenix 0:05
The Chaos within is a podcast celebrating the weird, wild, and the creative, featuring makers, doers, artists, and oddballs exploring the unknown and tapping into the creative energy. The intro music is by Paul Senn and the outro music is by Chris Wilson Sound. In the beginning, there was chaos. I’m your host Joey Phoenix.
Joey Phoenix 0:28
Rebecca Jenkins is a lifestyle model, vlogger, and the owner of modern consulting services, a company that helps businesses become more successful through better use of social media.
A former tennis director at Crosswhite Athletic Club in Lynchburg, Virginia, She was the winner of the 2018 United States professional tennis associations MidAtlantic under 30 Coach of the Year award.
She’s also my sister.
In late 2019, Rebecca left the comfort of rural Virginia to move to Antalya, Turkey to pursue her multilingual marketing dream. Her company now operates in three languages: English, German and Turkish, and her clients are from all over the United States and Europe. She joins me today to talk about taking huge leaps of faith and how creative living is about choosing to do something rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. Welcome, Bekah. How are you
Rebekah Jenkins 1:17
Hi, it’s good to be here.
I am, I’m good. I have my black tea here sipping… it’s the evening where I live in Antalya, Turkey.
Joey Phoenix
What time is it there now?
Rebekah Jenkins 1:32
Right now it is 7:11. What time is it there?
Joey Phoenix
I have no idea. I don’t keep clocks in my house.
Yeah, so what are you doing in Antalya, Turkey and what inspired you to take this huge leap of faith to cross oceans and pursue this dream?
Rebekah Jenkins 1:53
Well, that’s a that’s a really loaded question, Joey.
I feel like I feel like that a lot has brought me to where I am now and Antalya like there’s so much that’s gone into the last four months. Currently right now in Antalya, I have a marketing company, a social media marketing company and consulting company. And it’s called Modern Consulting Services. And the purpose of starting this company last year was one I really have a big interest in marketing and I was doing a lot of like side hustle, education online and you know, really trying to like hone my skills because I have actually have a degree in psychology. And I wasn’t really wanting to go the psychology route, and I was working full time as a tennis director.
And I was feeling like I really wanted to go a different direction. So I started this journey and studying online to get the skills I needed to help people with their social media. And actually back in 2015/2014/2015, I got a job in Florida doing… it was athletic coordinating, but it was primarily marketing for, like social media for different like sports in this like major sports Academy. So I started my journey back then with a job. And then some things happened. I moved to Virginia, and then I got back into tennis, which I had been a tennis player for pretty much my whole life. And so that was scary in itself like, okay, I have over 20 years under my belt, being a tennis player, and then it went into being eight years of being a tennis coach. And now okay, I have a degree in psychology, but I want to do marketing.
Rebekah Jenkins 4:04
So that there’s a lot of things working against me in where I wanted to go with my life and what I wanted to do. But I really felt that I was a super creative person. And I really liked social media. And I felt like I could do a lot with my creative abilities and my ideas that I had for social media marketing. So that’s why I started to do studying online for that, kind of like at night, and on the weekends. You know, when I was working my full time tennis directing job, fast forward like a year of doing that, I decided that I wanted to take the leap and start like this business.
So my target market turned into businesses that have like already developed business, and they have clients but they just want to scale especially with their audience online and they want to look better online. They want to be able to communicate on the day different platforms that are offered Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever.
So that was the primary focus of that business, but it really hadn’t taken off. Like I’ve just been doing freelance stuff. And you know, the struggle is real, like trying to get clients as a freelancer in the creative world. So I felt like I don’t know I-I started this business and I was kind of getting discouraged because I wasn’t getting any clients. And I’m in a marketing business and it should be that’s like my job to help people get clients. So I felt like what the heck is going on?
I was invited to this business event in Las Vegas in July 2019. I was not going to go and I was really like, on the fence about it because I would take a whole week off of work and I work as an independent contractor. So if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. So I was kind of having this internal battle. whether I should go on this Las Vegas trip or not. And so I ended up just deciding that I was going to go because I felt like it was going to be a good opportunity for me to meet people and possibly grow my business. So I took the leap of faith and took a week off work, made no money, and actually ended up meeting some really key players in my business. And one of those key players is now my business partner.
So when I was in Las Vegas, I met someone who was launching a health company. And the health company was something I was super interested in because it was a startup kind of thing, but they wanted to go global and they needed someone to do all their marketing. And they were looking for someone to do all the branding and all their social media and help them present the product and also someone who could be that the product like in front of people like talk on stage and be the product essentially, that was super appealing to me.
And so we started this like, back and forth talking about like a potential partnership with my business and his business. And there’s a couple different people involved. And my mom and I ended up scheduling a second meeting with him and his partners in Amsterdam. Like, I think it was a month or two after that. So we went to Amsterdam, we had a follow up meeting and everything just seemed to fit. I definitely like at that point, like made a decision like, Okay, I think I’m going to… I think I’m going to move to Turkey and I think I’m going to like literally leave my life behind and like work with these people.
So I made the decision. Okay, I’m going to… I’m going to come in December, and we’re going to start working in December of this year. And that was in September, October, I forget exactly when, but in May of 2019, I had quit my job, technically, okay, I told my boss, I didn’t want to be a tennis director anymore. I wanted to, like have my own company and like, do my own thing.
And that he needed to find someone to replace me like as soon as possible. They didn’t find someone to replace me until like six months after I quit, which is crazy, which is like the exact time where I made my decision in Amsterdam to leave it was like around like within a two week period, they found someone to replace me and I made a decision to move, but I also feel like I should mention something which is my brother, our brother, Dusten – He, he actually was calling me last year like off and on and I was really like battling internally because I felt like I was really stuck in life. Like, I was going through this like, really tough like situation with my husband, my ex my ex husband.
And I was sure I was struggling with like feeling stuck in living in Lynchburg for 10 years. And I was also struggling with feeling stuck in my job because I felt like I had, like no other option to like, get out of that. And I told him, I was like, Dusten, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what to do. And he said, Well, Bekah, you know, you need to make a decision. Because you can’t just go on like, with your life feeling like you’re stuck. And I said, Well, if I do that, like I potentially could turn my life upside down. And then he proceeded to tell me Well, if you turn your life upside down Bekah, like you might actually find what you’re looking for. And I was like, Mind blown.
Rebekah Jenkins 10:01
So, I know that him saying that was a big part of me, first taking the leap of faith to leave my job. And then after that, you know, after several months, like taking the leap of faith, to leave my relationship that really wasn’t working for me and my mental health. And from there, another leap of faith to literally take a job in Turkey, which I didn’t even know where Turkey was on the map, to be honest.
Joey Phoenix 10:30
It’s a really beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that. You’re welcome. Thanks. think one of the biggest things is that people have difficulty getting started and they had like an idea or a dream, but they have no idea where to even begin and you wanted to change something you didn’t know where to start. And yeah, sure you had some people that helped you along the way but you were the one that got on that plane and left and since then, you have started this thing and this thing and are making content and how do you stay so motivated, especially now in our current climate?
Rebekah Jenkins 11:09
Ah, I’m really trying to like stay, you know, lively during this during this time because everything is so dead and like down. I was in Virginia I was super depressed because of God knows what reason I mean I’m sure there was a lot of reasons: my relationship, my job, my thinking my mentality of who I am and my life. And I, I really had to remove myself from the situation and get around other people. I think that was a huge thing because now with my business partner with these people in Turkey and in Germany, I’m going back and forth for business purposes… That was before Corona…
The people are so positive and they’re so encouraging and I didn’t realize how negative my environment was until I literally just exited the room and put myself in a better situation. I think that was a key thing for me for my for my mental state, because I’m a super creative person, but I wasn’t creating in Virginia. I wasn’t motivated in Virginia, because I felt like constantly being like, pushed down by this, like this negative pressure, which, which had, there was a lot of moving parts behind that, you know, I had, I knew something had to change because my mental health was so horrific that I knew that something was not right.
And I had to, I had to get out. So when I left the situation, and now it literally has taken me three or four months, I feel so much more clear in the head, like I can think clearly and I’m motivated and I’m, I feel inspired. And I’m like wow, like all of these thoughts and all these inspirations and creativity is like coming back to me. Whereas before, like, all of my energy was being spent on just like surviving, you know, like all of my energy was spent on just trying to, like get through each day. And I had to be honest with myself and say, Bekah, I think, even though like in your heart, you feel like you need to be with these people like you love these people. So it’s not good for you to be with these people. So I made the decision to leave and to get in a positive environment with positive people who are going to encourage me. And that really made the difference in me being able to do more stuff in my area of what I’m passionate about.
Joey Phoenix 13:41
So environment plays a huge role in how you perceive yourself and what you’re able to do. What would you say to people that are wanting to change but are afraid to leave their current environment?
Rebekah Jenkins 13:55
I think you have to have emotional intelligence and look inside yourself. And say, okay, is this working for me? Yes, then stay and keep grinding, okay? Because it because there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, or look inside yourself and say, Is this working for me? No, I’m… my mental health is struggling, I’m not happy. I’m not I’m not going anywhere in this this career with where I want to be in my life, then you got to make a change, you have to do something, whether that’s move to another location whether that’s get out of your current relationship.
It could be it could be a break, it doesn’t have to be like you know forever but you know make make different changes look at look at yourself and your life and take note of what is working what what is positive and what is helping you and is building you up. And what is is not helping. You know, you get to where you want to be with your career, and really more and more importantly in your career, your happiness and your life. Honestly, that’s what I’m chasing. I’m chasing happiness. And even though that seems to be like a mythical thing, like a fantastic fantasmic thing, fantasy thing, I don’t know, whatever you call it. I think that’s a really good, really good. I keep saying the word thing. But happiness. Happiness is a really good thing to chase after not necessarily, like money or a career that’s glamorous or whatever, it should be something that you want to do, and that you that makes you want to get up in the morning and do stuff. And have, you know, have fun.
Joey Phoenix
So, yeah, do you feel like happiness is a choice?
Rebekah Jenkins 15:44
Happiness, I don’t think it is a choice. Like I think it’s, I think it is a result of your environment and your actions.
I think it’s something that like you can’t just wake up one day and be like, I’m happy. Like, you know, you can have like you can have a good like positive mentality and be like wake up in the morning, look yourself in the mirror and say you’re awesome and like speak life into yourself. But I don’t think happiness is something you wake up with like I think it’s something that is is a is a result of your surroundings.
Joey Phoenix 16:23
The Chaos Within is produced by Creative Collective. Creative Collective connects creativity, community, and commerce across the North Shore as a collective of creative professionals, small businesses, organizations and individuals.
They coordinate a series of events, traditional and non-traditional marketing, resources and best practices to define why creativity matters and all aspects of life. In the beginning, there was chaos. Then you make it yours.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
