Pivoting Towards Success  – ep.143

This week I am joined by success coach, speaker and career marketer Stephanie Vedder as she shares key factors to achieve your career goals, offers her advice and best practices to build confidence to pivot careers and overcome barriers that prevent women from reaching their career potential. 

As a results-oriented marketing professional, Stephanie has always been passionate about helping others achieve their goals for growth. With over 20 years of experience in sales and marketing, Stephanie has achieved the highest honors in her profession and built an extensive portfolio of dedicated WOW Clients. 

Stephanie reached Diamond Elite status, top 5%, at a billion-dollar media company and maintained President’s Club level many years in a row. She managed millions in revenue while helping her clients increase revenue by millions.

Working with the More Business More Life® team, Stephanie was able to quadruple her revenue which more than doubled her income and built her business around her life in her role as a career marketer. 

Even with her success, she was envisioning a life where she could make a greater impact on those she serves while spending even more time in her role as a mom, with even more control of her calendar. More Business AND More Life!

After 5 years of transformation as a client, she joined award winning marketer, best-selling author and business mentor Steve Napolitan and team as a Success Coach. Stephanie knows personally the struggles a home-based working mom faces as they strive to build a happy, healthy family while maintaining a successful career.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/stephaniemichelle143/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanievedder/

Melyssa Barrett:  Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melissa Barrett. This podcast is for those who are interested in the conversation around equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each week I’ll be interviewing a guest who has something special to share or is actively part of building solutions in the space. Let’s get started.

Welcome to another episode of the Jali Podcast, where we celebrate stories of empowerment, innovation, and the pursuit of equity. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett, and today we have an inspiring conversation lined up for you. Our guest is Stephanie Vedder, a dynamic marketing expert, million dollar sales achiever, mother and success coach with a passion for helping mompreneurs turn their dreams into reality. Stephanie’s journey is one of resilience, determination, and deep commitment to lifting up women, especially those balancing the demands of motherhood and entrepreneurship. In this episode, we’ll explore her path to success, the challenges she’s overcome, and her insights on how women can break through barriers in both business and life. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, Stephanie’s wisdom and experience are sure to leave you motivated and ready to take on whatever comes your way. So let’s dive in and hear from a true trailblazer in the world of marketing and beyond.

This week, I again, am excited. I know I took a little bit of a break on y’all, but this week I get the extreme pleasure of talking to Stephanie Veder, and she is not only a wonderful friend, fellow success coach, but she has been just all over in terms of her own growth and trajectory in her career. So I really want to talk a little bit about how you got to where you are today, your journey to success. You are of course, an expert marketer as well as a million dollar sales achiever. So can you talk a little bit about your journey and maybe some of those key milestones or challenges that shaped you?

Stephanie Vedder:  Yes, of course. Well, thank you. I’m so excited to be here finally on the Jali Podcast. We’ve been talking about it for a while, so it’s long overdue and yeah, I just want to say it’s just always so fun to hear, not fun. Such an honor to hear how someone else introduces you. And I am just always touched by that, so thank you. And I just feel so much love for you too. So more than words, but yes. Let’s see. Where to start. I guess my career as a marketer was sort of an accident. I think a lot of people would just fall into things. I had done a semester abroad and I came back and I was like, well, I better find a real job. And I went into sales doing roller skate sales. So I actually was selling roller skates to people all over the world.

I started out in admin and then there was a position in sale. There was a wholesale company, and we did, we worked with roller rinks and skate shops and had to learn thousands of parts and all the things, and it was super fun. I loved it. It was great. Did it for five years. And one of my counterparts there, she was in the marketing department. We also did novelty products. She left and she went to a company called the Penny Saver, which you’re in California, you probably know of the Penny Saver. And so she was like, it’s great over here. You’re outside sales out and about just meeting the folks, working with business owners. And so she recommended that I come over and I did. And so I just loved it, loved marketing. Right away it was direct mail, all kinds of direct mail, but there was a creative aspect, and then there was a relationship aspect working with business owners, and I just loved not being in a desk all day.

I always felt so confined by that. It was really difficult for me to be there. And even though I had some fun with it, it was hard. So yeah, I loved being outside. I loved going into a business and being able to see them week after week, and we would talk about their ads and they would say, oh my gosh, I got seven new customers this week. And that was just so fun for me, and I felt like I was talking with people who were in the community. They were making a difference. They were excited about their business, and they were just doing what they love. And so that was always inspiring to me. And so that then led into social media, started to become a thing in the two thousands, and I started working on websites and then got into digital marketing, Google ads, and that was kind of it. At the time, it was like Google Ads was what it was. Transitioning from print to digital was Google Ads, and then it turned into so much more. So yes. Yeah, just kind of took off from there.

Melyssa Barrett:  Nice. So you said you went to school abroad?

Stephanie Vedder:  I did a semester abroad in Italy, yeah. Oh,

Melyssa Barrett:  Nice.

Stephanie Vedder:  A dream just through the local community college. Spent four months over there in Florence, took a couple of classes, and then traveled on the weekends. So went all up and down Italy, went and spent spring break in Ireland and Amsterdam, and yeah.

Melyssa Barrett:  Nice.

Stephanie Vedder:  Very fun. Very blessed to be able to do that.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah, sounds like it. So in terms of some of the challenges that you’ve seen in your path, can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges you’ve had now you’re this wonderfully balanced wife, mother, or success professional?

Stephanie Vedder:  Sure. I sure am.

Melyssa Barrett:  So tell me a little bit about some of the challenges that you had, if there were any.

Stephanie Vedder:  Oh, yeah. I mean, who doesn’t? Challenges along the way. I think I had a lot of fun with that. I was in my early twenties at the time getting started, and was lucky to be mentored by some incredible people. But yeah, I think I struggled a lot along the way at the time, I think I was excited about marketing and felt like, okay, this is what I really like to do. And so I thought I would give a real try at school. I hadn’t gone to college and graduated previously, did the semester abroad through the college, but that was about my extent of my college career. A couple of classes here and there. I floundered a lot before I found a marketing, so I feel like it sort of saved me in some ways.

But so I decided to go back to school at night. So I was going to school three nights a week doing homework outside of that, trying to go during the day. And I felt like I just needed that to define me for some reason, that college education, I just thought it was something that I had to have, but it was really hard. I did that for a year and a half and still didn’t finish that. I found that I was learning more just in what I was doing in the field than I ever did at school. And I know you asked me about challenges. I think probably they were more recent. There was a lot early on, and then things kind of were chill. It grow slowly over time, and then more challenges recently. So I guess which would you like to hear more about more recently?

Melyssa Barrett:  Well, and we can talk about, because I think your journey to success is kind of interesting to me because you have this kind of balance between motherhood and your career. And so when I know for me, the balance of family and career, you always end up with the whole mom guilt thing. And there are times in my past where it’s like I went back to school and I will never forget my husband telling my kids to leave me alone so I could study. And it so hurt my heart because it was like I knew I needed to study and I needed to be focused, but I also had this desire to be with my family. I was commuting four hours a day. And so it was really a struggle for me to even figure out how to do it. And I’m so grateful that I had a husband that could kind of tell when I needed some time and when I didn’t. And he was a true partner in that sense. But I’m just trying to figure out how do you even balance it all?

Stephanie Vedder:  How do you now that’s true. Okay, so scratch all that. I said that wasn’t really a challenge. That was part of the journey. But yeah, I think more of the challenges. So well, after I met our mentor, Steve, I started to have a lot of growth in my business. I was doing pretty good at the time that I met him, maybe seven years ago, I had grown to maybe a quarter million dollars in ad campaigns that I was managing every year. And through our work together, was able to quadruple that within two years time and increased my income. And that all happened when my daughter was pretty young. She was under three, I think. And so I had really learned how to do that. And then I started growing and having consistency and was able, to your point, do over a million dollars, think even 1.2 for a couple of years in a row.

In the midst of that, my son came, but I was having all the success. And so the company did start to notice a little bit, and we’d had merger after merger and then became part of this huge billion dollar media company. And they had asked me to step up into leadership. And so I went back and forth about it, but I am all about people and relationships, and I loved the people that I was working with. And I was like, well, if they think this is good for me, I should do this. But it was the complete opposite of what I had been doing. I had really learned how to build my business around my life. I was walking my kids to school. I had nights and weekends off, and I just was really able to be present and do both have the whole more business, more life philosophy.

But when I stepped into leadership, that all flipped and completely changed. I had kind of been left alone to do things my way when I was just in the business development side of things. And then I kind of thought, okay, this is my chance to show people how it can be different to how to actually lead a team and show that it doesn’t have to be this way. And I didn’t realize how much from the corporate level people were dictated of how they had to run their businesses. Even though we worked for this company where employees, we were entrepreneurial. It was ours to run our days where to run our own, our clients were to choose. The growth potential was unlimited based on us. So for about a year, it got to that point where I was on Zoom meetings all day every day, and then at night I had to do the work.

So my son was really young, and my daughter used to sit behind me when I was in my little desk in my room, my bedroom, and braid my hair and wait for me patiently to be done with emails. And even I would put my to-do list on my desk, and she would write into it, put your kids to bed, or read to me. And it was painful. I just couldn’t, it hurts. That mom guilt thing is so real, and you work so that you can provide for your family, but when you’re at work, you’re thinking about the family. And when you’re with the family, you’re thinking about work, and it’s like this tug of war completely, and we’re doing it for them, but it also takes us away from them. So it was making no sense, but I just felt really stuck in it. I didn’t know how to quit, how to leave. I felt really committed, really loyal to my team, and I was sort of praying for an answer a way out. And then one day I got called into a one-to-one with my director, and HR was there. So I was like, uhoh, you know what this means?

Melyssa Barrett:  Anytime HR is present, there’s something going on.

Stephanie Vedder:  And in a surprise fashion, not the invite, not like, hello. Oh, gosh. I mean, I had let people go. So I knew that what was going to happen, and my team had been asking me, we had this horrible second quarter, so even though my team was thriving and we were kicking butt, they were like, oh my gosh, are we going to get laid off? What’s going to happen? I was like, no, we’re good. We’re doing great. And I was like, oh, that’s me. That Friday I was, I was the new guy. And so 400 people got laid off, and a lot of people think that getting let go is a bad thing, and certainly it was scary, but for me, it was the best thing. I was like, oh my God, thank you. I was so relieved because I would not have left. I would’ve just stayed in the pain, even though I knew there was a different way to run things. Anyway, that’s a long answer, but that,

Melyssa Barrett:  No, I think it’s so interesting that you say you would’ve stayed in the pain. I think a lot of people, you kind of get into that comfort mode where you’re kind of comfortable. It’s kind of like the devil versus the devil. You don’t, and so you’re like, I can do this job and I can, maybe there’s a pathway here or there or whatever, but sometimes it takes a little push out the door to make you engage into the life that you really want. So it’s interesting that you talk about being laid off as a good thing. Most people probably may not agree with you.

Stephanie Vedder:  One think that I know. Well, it was scary for sure, and I think one of the reasons I didn’t leave why I just was staying in the pain was because I was the breadwinner in the family. And so the life that we had built really relied on what I did with my day, at least in that role. And, and then, yeah, so that was a big piece of it for sure.

Melyssa Barrett:  So what was it like? I mean, I think in being the breadwinner, I think there are a lot of women that kind of fit into that role where, I mean, we want to support our husbands. Maybe in some way we end up making more than them at some point. But I think I’ve learned at what a true partnership looks like, no matter who makes what, but a lot of times it’s a lot harder for the male in the relationship. But we see a lot of men now that are truly supporting women. And I’m not talking financially, I’m talking all the other and all the other ways that they support. And so I know for my family, I look back and it’s like, oh my God, thank God my husband had a lot of flexibility and this, that and the other. But do you think there are some barriers that women face when we’re talking about whether it be empowering women in the business world? Because I think it’s trying to collectively overcome some of those barriers. If you’re maybe the only woman in the room or somebody is mansplaining to you, it’s kind of like, how do we deal with some of the barriers

Stephanie Vedder:  Just as women in the role of a mompreneur kind of thing or just in general? Yeah,

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah, absolutely.

Stephanie Vedder:  Yeah. I think I was blessed too, to have a husband who was a partner and just took on a lot of that stuff so that I could kind of grow and do my thing. Because when we first got together, it certainly was not that way. I was more lacking and he was really carrying us. And then it just kind of changed. It just morphed over time to where I had this big growth and I had this big drive and all this ambition, and I see it a lot. I am in a lot of Facebook mom groups in my area. I felt that was going to be my way to get connected after I moved to kind of see what was going on. And I know that there’s a lot of women who are not supported by their partner. They get the opposite. They don’t get that love, and it really keeps them down. And it is a big piece of it, especially when you have a family. You have to have a partnership. And I was just at a wedding this weekend, and it was my cousin, and it was her brother that was marrying them. He was the officiant. And in his speech or his sermon, he talked about how it’s never 50 50 in a partnership. Most of the time it’s like one person’s giving a hundred percent and the other person is receiving,

Melyssa Barrett:  Giving zero.

Stephanie Vedder:  Yeah, exactly. And then it flips. It’s not usually everybody shows up 50 50, it’s like some percentage, but usually you’re having to overgive and then just wait for your turn to receive. And so I think that could be a huge barrier, whether it’s just being a woman and like you said, being the only woman in the room or being the mom and being treated as fragile maybe. Or as someone who’s like, oh, but she’s a mom. She can’t have both. And I think I even let that be a thing for me for a long time. Oh, I have to choose one. Can’t actually have both, but it really is everything to do with who you surround yourself with. If you’re getting that, you got to find a new room or find a new partner or whatever that is, because we don’t do it alone.

Melyssa Barrett:  I know you mentioned earlier that there were probably some women who inspired you along the way, and you had some great mentors. You want to give them some love?

Stephanie Vedder:  Sure. Yeah. Lots of women. So in the early days in marketing, a lot of my friends and a lot of the people who inspired me in the office, there was 30 of us when we were selling Penny Saver ads, and the women in management were just in suits, like powerful, getting things done. I remember this one woman, her team was just always crushing everybody else in terms of revenue numbers, and I just looked up to her. I had never seen a woman be that way. This is in the early two thousands where I was like, oh my gosh. And I think that’s what just showed me early on that I can have that too. And I think she blame her for going into management. I was like, she made it look so cool back then. But yeah, I certainly was shaped by her. And then even some of the other women who were on my team who were peers to me, they were out there just getting it done and showing up. They were ethical, they were professional, they were achievers, they were driven, and they just, I don’t know, it was awe inspiring. I was like, I can do that. They can do this, I can do that.

Melyssa Barrett:  Well, and I think it’s so interesting that you say that because I think people downplay representation and you hear people say representation matters, but it really does because your mindset, I mean, a lot of times we have to overcome our own mindset. Mindset in terms of what we think we can do and what we’re capable of, usually us that are our biggest critic. Right?

Stephanie Vedder:  Absolutely. Wow, that was a quote I even heard her say at that time. Whether you think you can, you think you can’t, right? Yeah,

Melyssa Barrett:  Absolutely. Wow. So then in terms of, I mean, reaching a million dollars, you said 1.2 million in sales is obviously an incredible achievement. So what are some strategies, mindsets that you attribute to that success? And are there ways that other women can maybe replicate those kind of results in their own careers?

Stephanie Vedder:  Yeah, I think that anybody could have that wanted to. It does have, I guess it’s a couple of things for sure. You have to want it. You have to be driven. You have to have that goal of getting out there and having that success. But also, I think it was having a mentor changed it for me really showed me that I could work with clients of my choosing. Prior to that, I was just working with anybody who wanted to work with me, whether they saw my value, whether they had the appropriate amount to invest or whatever it was, I was just jumping through hoops and going above and beyond for people, whether they were the right client or not. So it had a lot to do with finding the right client and knowing that I could choose. And so it had a lot to do with the mindset piece, knowing that really my day and who I worked with was a choice for me.

And then also just having the support. I went out and I did at the time being in sales, I went out and I just found more rooms with people who were on the same mission as me. People who supported me gave me that confidence. I feel like it was like this tied team of having my mentor, having a more business, more life approach to things, but then also having the people around me that just made me feel comfortable because in sales, you get a lot of rejection. You get a lot of, no, you’re out there all the time. You have to have a thick skin. And it’s funny, you wouldn’t think I would’ve chose sales. I’m actually quite sensitive, and I get my feelings hurt really easily.

Melyssa Barrett:  I would’ve never known that.

Stephanie Vedder:  Really?

Melyssa Barrett:  No.

Stephanie Vedder:  Oh, that’s funny. It’s interesting. See, I do hold some things close, but yeah, so I just started spending time with people who were smarter than me, had more experience than me people, and just got vulnerable, was willing to ask questions, raise my hand, and just to learn, just to always be learning.

Melyssa Barrett:  What was that transition like though going from working from, because I mean a lot of people, I mean, I worked corporate for decades. I didn’t necessarily have a choice of clients that I could go, that I could say, no, I’m not working with you. I’m working over here. What was that like?

Stephanie Vedder:  I mean, it took a little bit, once I learned that that was something that I could do, that I could choose my clients, it was empowering. I was like, oh, I don’t have to work with these clients that make me cry. There was this one client that used to make me cry every week. He was really mean, but he was one of my largest advertisers, and so I felt like I had to work with him. And so letting that go, it just was like a weight off your shoulders just carry around your backpack full of bricks, and it affects your confidence, affects your ability to want to put yourself out there in a greater way. So if we have that kind of toxicity in our lives, we’re going to just bump up against those barriers. You said we’re not going to be able to have growth.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah. That’s interesting. When you say confidence, I think back to a particular time in my career where I had a manager that literally knocked the confidence out of me. I mean the most intense micromanager I have ever had in my life. And you start to question everything. What am I doing? I mean, it’s like literally if somebody’s watching you for so long, they’re going to just pick at every little thing. Why do you walk that way? Is this done? Why wasn’t that done? How come you didn’t do it this way? You know what I mean? And it becomes so mind blowing because then I feel like you have to get your entire mindset back when you are shaken like that. But I love to hear that you could literally let go of one of your biggest clients and be like, okay, this is fine. I mean, if I recall, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, I recall you had an 86% close rate or something like that.

Stephanie Vedder: Yes, I did. For the last couple of years. That’s certainly what helped me get over there to over the million dollars. And yeah, it was,

Melyssa Barrett:  Which is phenomenal. I mean, I have not heard anybody in sales with an 86% closing rate.

Stephanie Vedder:  It might’ve just been for that year. I don’t think it was lifetime, even

Melyssa Barrett:  Don’t, just out the achievement

Stephanie Vedder:  Doesn’t feel real to hear that. But yeah, I mean, when you don’t have to convince people, when you don’t have to chase people down when it’s the right client, when you’re not just bending over, that’s not a way to say it. When you’re not just taking abuse from clients who don’t respect you, then you’re sort of free. And that micromanagement, I’ve had that a lot over the years as I had a revolving door of managers, people who were just all up in my business. And it definitely takes away your freedom to choose to try new things, to make mistakes because there’s someone watching and judging and criticizing. And so maybe it was the lack of management, to be honest. There was a period where I just didn’t have a manager for a year, and I feel like that’s when my biggest growth came because I got to just go do it my way. And yeah, it was better.

Melyssa Barrett:  Wow, that’s awesome.

Stephanie Vedder:  Not that management is bad, but

Melyssa Barrett:  No. So I mean that whole shift in mindset is such a big component, and I know you’ve done some work with neurolinguistic programming and stuff like that, so I know there is truth to getting insight and really relying on yourself to make decisions in your life. So then as a success coach now, what are some of the key principles that you talk to your clients about, particularly women, to help them achieve their goals and kind of break through some of those glass ceilings?

Stephanie Vedder:  Yeah, thank you. I feel really passionate about it now as being someone who’s sacrificed either what I felt I needed to do to stay true to myself as a woman, as a mom, I sacrificed that for whatever reason it was at the time. And so now I’m really passionate about helping other mompreneurs out there know that they don’t have to do it the way that they’ve been told or the way that they think they do. And so the first thing that we start with as a success coach is we work on mindset and we work on the experiences that we want. And so if your experience is that you want to walk your kids to school and you want to volunteer in class and you want it to be done by 5:00 PM, it’s like, okay, we start with that and then we figure out how do we build our business around that? And we have to be smart. We have to be efficient, we have to be focused, but it can be done and it can be done in a really good way where you can have both at the same time.

Melyssa Barrett:  I love it. Well, and I know we can also hear you on another podcast, so how can people get more information about what you do?

Stephanie Vedder:  Well, yes. I am very fortunate to be a co-host of the More Business More Life podcast with yourself and with Steve Napan. He is our visionary. He is the creator of More Business, more Life, which is our trademark and our program. And then Giovan Giovanni is our other success coach, and he’s kind of the man behind the scenes that makes it all run smoothly, so we can just show up and do our thing. But yeah, we talk about how to have both that podcast every week.

Melyssa Barrett:  I love it. So what practices have you found the most significant for you when you think about work-Life integration.

Stephanie Vedder:  Yes, integration. That’s such a good word. I think people, when I tell them what I do, they say, oh, balance and not though we don’t want to be having the same exact amount of work in life. We want more life. So it is how do we integrate that to both? Yes, please. We’ll take that. And it really starts with how we plan our day, and we tell this to our clients all the time. We have a philosophy that has worked very well in my own business, and it’s something we teach our clients, and it really allows them to have change, and we call it Plan tomorrow today. And it is key. I think if we just do that, if we just spend time every day, not only planning and writing at our schedule for the next day, but really having that reflection daily on how did our day go today?

What worked well, what didn’t go well? What can I eliminate from my schedule? What can I automate? Who can I delegate to? We have to get really smart, and that daily reflection is really important. And then the other side of it is what are we going to do tomorrow? And how do we start that with our one thing to win? What is the thing that we’re going to do every day that’s going to get us closer to our big goal? So we have to know what our goal is, whether it’s a monthly goal, a more bigger, more macro goal. What is the thing that we’re going to do every day to get us closer to that? And then we can’t sacrifice on that. We can’t book over that. We can’t fill in our day with checking emails and responding to people. We have to be really intentional about how we spend our time every day.

We got to know going in that does a couple things. This is a long answer, but it allows us to, once we reflect on the day and then we plan for the next day, allows us to leave work at work, which I think for being a mom is really important. I would get up from my gig and before I had this little tactic and it would just bleak into my family life, I’d be thinking about, oh, I forgot that one thing. My mind would in the background still be running on. The work program would still be running in the background. So even though I was there with the family, this was still happening. And so with our plan tomorrow today approach, but there’s a lot more to it, we do a lot more with it. It allowed me to really leave work at work and then just be more present at home. So for a mom, that’s vital. If you want to have that integration.

Melyssa Barrett:  I always say being present is a gift, and sometimes we don’t take the gifts that we are given. So that’s awesome. So then if, for those women who may just be starting their careers or maybe they’re looking to pivot, there’s a lot of folks looking to pivot these days. What advice would you give? Or maybe how can they build the confidence and skills they need to thrive? Because it’s such a competitive environment these days, especially in sales. I mean, my dad was a sales guy. He could literally sell you the shirt off your back to you and sell it back to you. And my sister is in sales. I mean, they love it. They loved it. I have never been a salesperson. And so sales, I think to a lot of people are like, yuck. Yes. Right. So it’s talk a little bit about how do you build the confidence and skills you need in such a competitive environment?

Stephanie Vedder:  Yeah, great question. I think for someone who’s starting out, you have to figure out what you want that experience to look like at the beginning. You can’t just go, okay, I’m going to get out there. I’m going to hustle, I’m going to drive. I’m going to build this business and just put everything else to the side because that doesn’t work. It’s not sustainable. So you have to figure out what you want, what you want it to look like when you’re at work, what you want your family time to look like, what you want the experience to be for your clients. Really have to figure out what you want the experience to be for everybody at the beginning. And then you figure out that’s the foundation, and then you can figure out how to build it from there. So if you’re passionate about something and you’re out there, sales is just making connections.

It’s just finding the match to your puzzle piece. And it can feel yucky for sure. And I think sales gets a bad rap, but sales makes the world go round. We don’t have a business if we can’t do sales. And there’s a really good authentic way to do sales that’s not yucky. You know what it feels like when you’re being sold? It’s awful. It’s so transparent, especially nowadays. You’re like, oh my God, you’re just trying to get me to buy something and you’re not even listening to me. And so if we know who we are and we know what we offer and we know what experiences we want, we can go out there and we can talk about it, and the right people will sort of rise to the surface. And then it’s like we just have to know how to ask them the right questions so that we can give them what they want.

Melyssa Barrett:  Well, it’s so interesting because I think sometimes people focus on, I mean, it kind of assumes that you’re in the job you really want to be in. And I think what happens is you get a job and then the job changes, and then you realize you don’t really like it anymore. But it’s hard to just like, okay, I got to get a new job. You know what I mean? So it’s challenging to kind of make those pivots in your career, but I know we’ve spent a lot of time talking about this before. A lot of times you end up eliminating clients, and yet it opens you up to receive so many new clients that are way better,

Stephanie Vedder:  Way better. I know it can be scary for sure. And yeah, I think that was so true for me. I was stuck in a job that changed and I didn’t know how to get out. And when you said, oh, most people wouldn’t think it’d be a good thing to get laid off, and it normally isn’t right. But I was very lucky and that I had a severance to sort of bridge the gap for me to move on in that way. But still, I think it’s possible if you’re in a job that you hate, it is slowly chipping away at you. And so maybe it’s not tomorrow that you could get up and leave, but you could start making a plan for how to make that happen.

Melyssa Barrett:  I think people look back at their careers, but I often think we don’t look too far ahead to understand what we want. And I know you talked about knowing what you want and figuring out, designing your life around what you want. Are there things that you want to leave in terms of your own legacy when it comes to your contributions?

Stephanie Vedder:  Not thought a lot about that, but I guess this is my sign to do more of that. I think for me, I mean, I definitely have dreams of having a lot of clients in a room, and whether it’s a lot of women, a lot of moms who are just excited and who are thriving, I mean, that is one of my, well, that is my core purpose, sort of getting reignited since being a success coach is just to help working moms thrive. And so I guess my big dream is to just start to make a visible impact, whether it’s in my community, and then having that sort of expand out nationwide and beyond. I want people to be able to have this, to know that you can have both, and it’s not going to hurt. It’s actually going to help. Because yeah, when everybody’s winning, it’s just okay.

Melyssa Barrett:  And there is room for everyone at the table.

Stephanie Vedder:  There is so much for everyone. We are not, just because we are winning doesn’t mean that somebody else we’re taking away from someone else. It’s like Steve always says, just because we are getting some of the sunshine doesn’t mean we’re taking sunshine away from someone else unless they’re standing behind us that we’re casting a shadow. But there’s enough for

Melyssa Barrett:  No shadows. No shadows,

Stephanie Vedder:  No shadow. There’s enough for all of us to have that abundance, and it’s that abundant mindset that we can all have and grow together, and it’ll be better that way.

Melyssa Barrett:  I love it. I love it. Well, and it’s so exciting to see so many women coming together these days to create different networks. I know you just did a networking event up in your area to kind of help people understand what more business, more life is and how they can tap into it, which is truly exciting. I think anytime I talk to somebody about more business, more life, they go, I want that.

Stephanie Vedder:  And then they say, well, that sounds nice, but I can have that. You’re like, yes, you can. And we can all have that

Melyssa Barrett:  Do it.

Stephanie Vedder:  Yeah, it’s really achievable.Melyssa Barrett:  I love it. So I’m so grateful to you for all the work you’re doing in the world to help people experience their best life and create their best life. So I just want to thank you for joining me on the Jolly Podcast. And so I’m excited. Hopefully we’ll have many more conversations. But for all the listeners, you can also hear more from Stephanie by tapping in and subscribing not only to the Jolly Podcast, but to More Business, more Life Podcast. Podcast as well. And you also are available on LinkedIn and social media. I know as well. Yes. Not as active as I used to be, but I’m there. So definitely tap into Stephanie. I look forward to having many more conversations with my friend, and I will see you guys next week on the Jali Podcast. Thanks for joining me on the Jolly Podcast. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. See you next week.

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