Jessica Rueger
Jessica Rueger. Madison Krupp

For Jessica Rueger, becoming a coach wasn't a calculated career move. It was a natural evolution from decades of curiosity, grit, and relentless self-discovery. With 18 years of experience as a professional coach and more than 30 years immersed in personal development alongside her own mentors, Rueger's journey is anything but conventional.

"I've had over 40 different job roles," she reminisces, a statement that might sound chaotic to some but speaks volumes about her drive to understand people, systems, and herself. "I've been a babysitter, worked in food and beverage, in dental, legal, medical, events, finance, retail. You name it, and I've been there, each time, I've learned something new about people and what motivates us."

This culminated in a serendipitous gift, a community coupon publication handed off by an acquaintance, that launched Rueger's first true entrepreneurial experience and laid the foundation for the coaching empire she would eventually build.

Years ago, Rueger took over a local advertising publication company that reached thousands of homes. With no formal training in media or business ownership, she accepted. " I had to figure it out on the fly," she recalls. "It was a crash course in entrepreneurship: paying the printer, hiring graphic designers, tracking return on investment for local businesses, selling ad space, and a list that kept on adding with time."

Through this grassroots endeavor, she found herself in the rooms of small business owners: the decision-makers, the visionaries, the doers. She listened. She learned. And most importantly, she connected. "I was learning what made people tick, what their blocks were, what helped them thrive." This deepening connection to human behavior and her long-standing work with her own coaches led her to a new calling.

Rueger was working in a downtown retail store when it happened. A woman, whom she barely knew, approached her, asking: "Would you be my teacher?"

It was neither her sales pitch nor was it planned. But it was everything Jessica had been preparing for. "That was back in 2008. I'd already been running women's groups, helping people navigate relationships, emotional triggers, and self-worth," she says. "This was different. It was one-on-one. And it was the beginning of my professional coaching career."

Since then, Rueger has refined her work into something deeply personal and highly intuitive. She doesn't follow a rigid curriculum. She customizes every session to the individual, relying on decades of emotional, spiritual, and somatic intelligence to guide people through powerful transformation.

Rueger's methodology blends emotional intelligence, energetic awareness, and somatic release. "When a client comes to me, I don't hand them a five-step plan," she explains. "I meet them where they are. I tune in to their energy, their language, their fears, and we go from there."

Whether in private virtual meeting sessions, her seven-week women's groups held in her living room, or virtual cohorts like the Energetic Mastery Collective, Rueger helps people identify the unconscious beliefs and emotional blocks that hold them back. Then, she teaches them how to shift those patterns by actually feeling them.

She describes the process of energy work in terms of physics. "Energy can't be created or destroyed, only transformed," she says. "When you sit with your emotions instead of resisting or suppressing them, you alchemize them. You shift them from dense, trapped states into lighter, more expansive ones."

In the early days, Rueger admits to struggling with self-doubt. "I used to worry if people liked me, if I was doing it right," she recalls. "That impostor syndrome is real, especially in this work."

But with every session, every breakthrough, every return client, Rueger grew more grounded in her practice. She studied from three different coaches, pulling pieces from each one: from spiritual awakening to manifestation, and emotional mastery to somatic release. But the biggest shift came when she stopped trying to 'get it right' and started trusting her intuition. "Now I lead from that inner knowing," she says. "I let the energy guide the session. I trust the client's own wisdom. I'm just the facilitator."

Rueger's sweet spot? Working with risk-takers and high achievers: the 'jump out of the plane and build the parachute on the way down' type of people. "They already know how to succeed," she states. "But they might have one area where they're stuck, because there's emotional weight, resistance, or limiting beliefs tied up in it. I help them apply the strengths they already use in other areas of their life to the places where they struggle." For this coach, transformation isn't about adding something new. It's about uncovering what's already there.

A hallmark of Rueger's work is the sense of safety she brings to her sessions. Whether one-on-one or in a group, clients often arrive in states of deep emotional distress. Some are embarrassed. Some are scared. Some are just exhausted. But she's been there. And that matters.

"I had to learn how to work on myself before I could hold space for others," she says. "Now, I can sit with people in their darkest moments, not to 'fix' them, but to be there in support of them moving through it. That's where the healing happens."

She compares the process to parenting your inner child. "When we're triggered, we're not reacting to the moment but to stored emotions from our past. When we meet those emotions with presence in spite of the fear, they shift. And we shift."

Nearly two decades in, Rueger's mission is expanding. She continues to coach, lead women's circles, and guide virtual groups. She is devoted to helping people let go of who they were taught to be, to become who they have always been. "Looking back, I can see how every job, every coach, every conversation prepared me for this," she says. "I might not have taken the traditional path, and I now know I took the right one."