Thriving with Purpose | Jeanne Omlor

True success is not about status or accumulation, but about using discipline, faith, and stewardship to help people build purposeful lives that truly thrive.

Jeanne Omlor’s life does not read like a conventional success story. It reads like a series of reinventions forged under pressure: from fashion and acting to Paris, Wall Street, single motherhood, coaching, and private advisory work for high-performing professionals and ultra-high-net-worth clients. What makes her story compelling is not the range of roles she has held, but the through-line beneath them — a hard-earned conviction that success is not about status, but about building a life of purpose, structure, and responsibility.

From Creative Beginnings to Wall Street

Her path into this work was anything but conventional. “I started off as a fashion designer,” she says. “I wasn’t a business person. I was more creative.” That creative instinct led her not only into design, but into acting and eventually into a life abroad. She lived in Paris for six years, where she worked across a surprising range of roles: acting, food design, translation, and teaching English to children.

When she returned to the United States in 1998, she moved to New York to pursue acting more seriously. Somewhere along the way, almost accidentally, she entered executive recruiting and found an unexpected talent. “I accidentally became an executive recruiter for Wall Street,” she says. “I was really good at it.” She eventually became a top recruiter there, primarily placing investment bankers.

But the more defining pivot came later, under pressure. After a difficult marriage ended, Omlor found herself needing to build a life and an income on her own while raising two very young children. That season seems to have stripped away any romanticism about success. “I ended up having to create a business with a one-year-old and a four-year-old in tow, on my own,” she recalls. Coaching, she says, was something she had always been naturally good at, so about fourteen years ago, she made it official.

What emerges from her telling is not the language of self-invention as performance, but of self-invention as necessity. She does not romanticize struggle, but neither does she speak of it as misfortune alone. Instead, she treats it as a refining force.

Entering the Family Office World

That same mix of providence and practical necessity appears in the way Omlor entered the family office and ultra-high-net-worth world. It began through a mentor — “an older Irish woman,” as Omlor describes her — who was already serving senators and wealthy individuals at the highest levels. This mentor saw in Omlor a rare fit for the work and told her so plainly: “You’re one of the only people I’ve ever met that could actually do this level of work with this high level of person.”

The mentor’s logic was moral as much as professional. As Omlor remembers it, her message was straightforward: “These people need your help, because people with this money, influence and power that don’t know what they’re doing, they should be using that to help the world.” Omlor took that point seriously. For her, this work was never chiefly about prestige. It was about stewardship.

That conviction helps explain the deeper logic of her career. Asked about her “massive transformative purpose,” Omlor does not answer in market terms. “It is to help people to thrive,” she says. That is the broader frame into which both sides of her business fit: helping coaches and consultants thrive on one hand, and helping powerful people clarify how they live, what they serve, and what they leave behind on the other.

She speaks about that purpose with unusual clarity. “My goal and my purpose, because more than a goal, is to help people to thrive in all ways,” she says. The ambition is broader than business alone. It is about building lives of meaning and directing influence toward something larger than self-interest.

Human Thriving, Grit, and the Discipline to See Opportunity

There is a widening seriousness in Omlor’s thinking. She is concerned not only with high-level clients, but with the ordinary person trying to navigate a rapidly changing future. The rise of AI has sharpened that concern. “I’m very concerned about just average people and what they’re going to do,” she says. “How are they going to thrive? And I’m not there yet, to be honest.” Even so, she keeps returning to the question, convinced that if you keep asking it honestly enough, “ideas come in, and then you figure out other pathways.”

That expanding concern has not softened her view of what a meaningful life requires. Omlor’s philosophy remains unsentimental. “You have to have a certain amount of grit and discipline,” she says. “It just is non-negotiable.” She is skeptical of the modern fantasy that meaningful success can be detached from effort. “I have never met a highly successful person that did not do some hustling at some point,” she says. “I don’t buy it” when people suggest otherwise.

At the same time, she is careful not to confuse hard work with self-destruction. “I’m not advocating hustle and burnout and ruining your health and not seeing your family,” she says. “That’s not right.” The point is not exhaustion; it is disciplined effort in service of something worthwhile.

Just as important as effort, though, is perception. Omlor sees critical thinking as one of her greatest strengths. “Critical thinkers always have their eyes open for opportunity,” she says. “I might hear something and go, Wait a minute, that’s an idea, and investigate it and create something out of it. Somebody else in the same room might hear it and it might go right over their heads.”

Her experience as a solo mother only intensified that discipline. She speaks about single mothers with admiration and realism, but also with the authority of lived experience. “We have to do better, because our kids’ lives depend on it,” she says. “There is no questioning of doubt. You can’t doubt. If we doubt, the kids don’t eat.” In that sense, motherhood did not simply deepen her resilience; it trained her to act with urgency, clarity, and purpose.

Faith as Strategy

Yet for all her emphasis on grit and critical thinking, Omlor does not describe herself as self-made in the usual secular sense. Faith is not decorative in her framework. It is structural. “One of my strategies is prayer,” she says. “That’s a strategy.” The phrasing is striking because it sounds almost counterintuitive at first, but for Omlor, prayer is not passive sentiment. It is one of the ways clarity enters.

She believes life is filled with noise, distraction, and missed signals. Prayer, for her, is part of learning how to notice what matters. “I always pray for clarity,” she says, and prays “to not miss a trick.” What she means is not merely comfort, but direction.

She recounts one moment in particular: waking up at 54, broke, in debt, and raising children on her own, when she heard the words, “If not now, when?” She understood it as a wake-up call. “That was divine intervention,” she says. “Bang, wake up. You’ve got to do something now.” She acted on it, and that action positioned her online just months before COVID, teaching coaches and consultants how to make money online. Had she moved later, she believes, the consequences would have been far worse.

In her telling, faith is not passive reassurance. It is responsive obedience. Omlor does not speak of prayer as a substitute for action, but as the source of direction that makes action meaningful. She also insists that gratitude completes the cycle. “You are then creating your reflex of prayer, answer and gratitude,” she says. Repeated often enough, that rhythm becomes a way of life.

The Real Measure of a Life Well Lived

The spiritual and practical threads in Omlor’s worldview come together most clearly when she speaks about both success and remembrance. Her answer is not centered on achievement, visibility, or influence, but on generosity. Not public generosity for appearance’s sake, but quiet generosity expressed through time, attention, resources, and real care for what is truly good for another person.

“I want to be thought of as somebody that actually cared about other people,” she says, “and cared about other people in a way that was beneficial for them.” She wants to be remembered as someone who “cared about our souls, cared about our thriving,” and not merely about appearances or outcomes detached from real human good.

That may be the most revealing idea in the interview. In a culture that often treats success as accumulation, Omlor speaks of it more as responsibility. In a business world that often rewards performance, she is more interested in alignment. For her, thriving is not a slogan but the standard.

She puts it most simply when she speaks about generosity: “When you leave this earth and people say that was a truly generous person, I would love if some people said she was truly generous.” Not generous because it looked good in public, but “truly generous in private, with time, with intention, with money, if possible.”

Her own life, with all its detours and demands, suggests that the truest measure of success lies somewhere between grit and grace. More than that, it suggests something harder and more compelling: the point is not simply to succeed, but to become the kind of person whose success can be trusted.

 

Interview Transcript

Alan Olsen:
Welcome to American Dreams. My guest today is Jeanne Omlor. Jeanne, welcome to today’s show.

Jeanne Omlor:
Thank you for having me.

Alan Olsen:
You have a remarkable career path. For our listeners, can you share how you arrived at where you are today?

Jeanne Omlor:
Okay, I’m going to try to keep this brief and not go off on tangents.

Let me start with where I am now, and then I’ll backtrack. One part of my business is that I’m a coach for coaches and consultants. We help high-achieving consultants and coaches build very sustainable, manageable, high-ticket, high-profit businesses without a lot of nonsense.

I also have another part of my business where I do private-label advisory for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, founders, and former founders to help them find their purpose, define their legacy, and create the life they want. It’s very much a bespoke VIP experience where we’re using intuition and order to create a life of meaning and purpose.

So those are the two parts of my business, and I’m very passionate about both, even though they serve two different markets.

How did I get here? Well, I started off as a fashion designer. I wasn’t really a business person — I was more creative, and I wanted to be in a creative world. So I started off not being very business-minded. Then I ended up becoming an actress. I traveled around the world, and I lived in Paris for six years. While I was there, I worked for a chef doing food design, did some translating, taught English to children, and did all sorts of things.

I moved back to the States — even though I grew up in Australia, I’m American — and I returned to the U.S. in 1998, moving to New York to give this acting thing a try. Alongside that, I worked in other areas too, and I accidentally became an executive recruiter for Wall Street. I was really good at it, and I became a top executive recruiter on Wall Street, mainly for investment bankers.

Then from there, I got married. It wasn’t great. Things happened, and I ended up having to create a business with a one-year-old and a four-year-old in tow, on my own. So I decided, what can I do? I had always been really good at coaching, so I formally became a coach about fourteen years ago.

Alan Olsen:
What led you into working with family offices and high-net-worth individuals?

Jeanne Omlor:
Well, it kind of happened by accident. I was already coaching coaches and consultants, and I met a mentor. She worked with ultra-high-net-worth individuals, senators, and all sorts of people. She really liked me — she was an older Irish woman — and she said, “Jeanne, you could do this. This would be really good for you. You’re one of the only people I’ve ever met who could actually do this level of work with this level of person.”

And I said, “Really?”

She said, “Yes. You’ve already been coaching for years, and these people need your help, because people with this money, influence, and power who don’t know what they’re doing should be using that to help the world.”

And I thought, well, that makes sense.

So she mentored me, and that’s how I got into it. Also, when you are intentional, you energetically attract certain people. I just started meeting people, and they would ask what I did. I would tell them, and they’d say, “We’ve never heard of anybody doing this at such a VIP level.”

So that’s how it happened — somewhat randomly, through meeting somebody who charges a million dollars per client and who just took me under her wing and said, “I’m going to mentor you for this.”

I did it on the side at first because I had my other business, so it wasn’t like I was all in from the beginning. Slowly, I started meeting people, and I became a little known in the family office world for doing this, because a lot of their clients need this kind of support.

Alan Olsen:
So when you work with your clients, what is your massive transformative purpose?

Jeanne Omlor:
My massive transformative purpose?

Well, generally, we’re all doing our business, and it’s working, and we’re in it every day. But at some point, you have to take a step back and say, “Okay, wait — what is really going on here? What is my massive transformative purpose?”

And I realized it’s not just to help coaches and consultants. It is to help people thrive.

I thought, okay, that’s my purpose. At the moment, I’m helping coaches and consultants, so that’s part of it — they’re people, right? Then I thought, if I work with people at a higher level, or people who have more power, they can help more people. So I can be instrumental in helping them create more purpose, and then I’m just a conduit.

So my goal — and really, my purpose, because it’s more than a goal — is to help people thrive in all ways. How do I do that? I do it in my way, and I’m also working out some other ways, especially with AI.

I’m very concerned about average people and what they’re going to do. I’m trying to figure out how to help people who aren’t consultants and coaches and who aren’t wealthy. How are they going to thrive? I’m not there yet, to be honest. But I think in life, if you keep asking that question over and over again and talking to people, then ideas come in, and you start to find other pathways.

Alan Olsen:
What do you feel has really helped you be successful as you’ve gone on your journey through life?

Jeanne Omlor:
Well, I do believe you have to have a certain amount of grit and discipline. It’s just non-negotiable.

I feel like there’s a lot of media noise telling people you can just be lucky, that you don’t have to do the work, that you don’t have to hustle. But the fact is, I have never met a highly successful person who did not do some hustling at some point. I’ve never come across that myself.

So I’m a little bamboozled that people are being told you don’t need to hustle at all and that loads of money are just going to drop on your head and you’ll be an influencer and change the world. I don’t buy it.

What I do buy is that after hustling for a while, you can get help. Then you don’t need to hustle as much, because you have more support and you’re delegating more.

So I believe I truly do have grit, and I’ve always been a hard worker. I’ve always realized that if you really want something to work, you need to put intention, work, and grit into it. That applies to everything.

Now, I’m not saying burn out and don’t look after yourself. We do need to preserve our health and our lives along the way. So I’m not advocating hustle and burnout and ruining your health and never seeing your family. That’s not right.

The other thing is critical thinking. I believe I’ve developed that over the years. Critical thinkers always have their eyes open for opportunity, and they’re creative about it. For example, I might hear something and think, “Wait a minute — that’s an idea,” and then investigate it and create something out of it. Somebody else in the same room might hear the exact same thing and it goes right over their heads. They won’t see the opportunity in it.

So I do think I’m a critical thinker.

The third thing is that I’m a solo parent. They’ve done studies on solo moms and single moms — we have to do better, because our kids’ lives depend on it. There is no room for doubt. You can’t doubt, because if we doubt, the kids don’t eat. So there’s a certain urgency there. It’s just, “Nope — I have to do this.”

I think a lot of people have the luxury of deciding whether to do it or not. But if you can choose whether to go all in or not, then you might not go all in. So personality-wise, I’ve always been gritty, a hard worker, and a critical thinker, and I’ve tried to develop those traits over the years. Then there’s also my circumstance: single moms are fierce. They just do the work.

Alan Olsen:
They keep moving forward whether they want to or not. Life goes on.

I’ve always admired single parents because not having that help or safety net at home — not having another person there — really adds an extra burden in life. But when they keep moving forward and the kids are responding and thriving, it’s such a great example of perseverance and of making a difference in the lives of others.

If we move forward from there, what role have faith and your beliefs played in your life?

Jeanne Omlor:
It’s vital. It’s not an add-on. It is vital.

One of my strategies is prayer. That’s a strategy. People don’t usually think of prayer that way, and it sounds almost cold to say “prayer is my strategy,” but prayer is absolutely part of my life strategy.

I know it’s not just grit. There’s also divine intervention — the Lord saying, “Pay attention to this,” because we have so much input coming at us all day long, and we can miss things. I think divine intervention is often exactly that: “Pay attention to this.”

I always pray for clarity, and I pray not to miss something important. If we miss things, they can go right over our heads. As I said, it’s not just critical thinking. It’s also spiritual direction.

There are certain circumstances where that became very obvious to me. I remember waking up one morning when I was broke, a single mom, deep in debt, and fifty-four years old. I woke up and heard a voice say, “If not now, when?”

I thought, whoa — that means take action now.

That was divine intervention. I didn’t just wake up and suddenly hear a voice for no reason. It was like: bang, wake up. You’ve got to do something now.

And it was timely, because that wake-up call really was a wake-up call. I said, okay, I’ve got to take action. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was messy. I thought, I’ve just got to climb that hill.

When you take on a new project and you don’t know what you’re doing, there’s a lot of pain involved. It’s hard. But I did it, and I positioned myself five months before COVID. If I had not positioned myself online, teaching people how to make money online as a coach or consultant, I would have missed that boat, and I would have been in much deeper debt.

So that was extremely providential.

And if you have faith, you’re still going to have hard times, but you know everything will be okay. That is what I knew to be true. When you know everything will be okay in the end, you may be in pain, but deep down, you’re steady.

Alan Olsen:
I love that. And I also love the fact that you bring out that it’s not just about prayer. It’s also about receiving answers to prayer. It’s personal revelation.

Sometimes prayers are offered, but it’s almost like the number is dialed and then immediately hung up. It’s about listening for answers and responding. Sometimes answers come when we’re not expecting them — like “If not now, when?” God knows what we need. We just have to be prepared to listen.

I agree. So thank you for sharing that.

Jeanne Omlor:
You’re so welcome, and I do agree with that.

It’s also important to recognize when that happens and to make a big deal about it, because then you’re creating a reflex of prayer, answer, and gratitude. And once that cycle begins, it builds on itself.

If you don’t have gratitude for that, it’s probably not going to happen again in the same way, right? And I feel that even if gratitude doesn’t come naturally, just going through the motions of it builds muscle — like everything else we do.

Alan Olsen:
I often get the question, “How do I know when God is talking to me?”

And I say, well, part of it is a gift. There are people who can hear the voice of God more easily, while others have to work at it. But nevertheless, God will respond to every one of us in a way that we will understand.

The key is to keep praying. The answers will come.

Jeanne Omlor:
I agree, and that’s what I mean about building the muscle — even when you don’t feel like it.

Alan Olsen:
So, Jeanne, at the end of life, how do you want to be remembered?

Jeanne Omlor:
I was just thinking about this the other day.

I made a random donation recently. Sometimes I’ll hear something and think, “Hey,” and I’ll send money to somebody. And of course, the person was like, “Oh, I don’t want to accept this.”

And I said, “Please, please accept it. You’re actually doing me a favor.”

When I put it that way, she said, “Okay, then.”

And I thought, you know, I want to be thought of as somebody who actually cared about other people — and cared about them in a way that was beneficial for them, not just helping them with things that aren’t good for them, because people do ask for the wrong things.

I want to be someone who cared about people’s souls, cared about their thriving, cared about them being able to put food on the table.

I believe that when you leave this earth and people say, “That was a truly generous person,” that matters. I would love it if some people said that about me — not because it looked good in the eyes of other people, but because I was truly generous in private, with time, with intention, with money when possible. That’s important.

Alan Olsen:
So, Jeanne, if a person wants more information on your services or wants to reach out to you with questions, how can they contact you?

Jeanne Omlor:
They can always email me at jeanneomlor@gmail.com. I don’t mind getting random emails. They can also find me on LinkedIn.

And of course, you can include my Private Label Advisory link in the show notes if somebody’s interested in taking a look at that.

Alan Olsen:
Okay, all right. We’ll be sure to post how to reach you in the show notes.

Jeanne, I’d like to thank you for being with us today here on American Dreams. You’re very inspiring. And I appreciate what you shared about moving forward with faith and with the foundation of belief that things will get better — but always remembering to include God in prayer in what we do.

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