Episode 01 - My Story & How God Led Me To Start The Mompreneur Mastermind Show​

01_My Story & How God Led Me To Start The Mompreneur Mastermind Show​
In Episode 01 of The Mompreneur Mastermind Show I'll share my story with you... how I went from corporate America, to a top 1% network marketing professional, to a female entrepreneur success coach. How my life was transformed and in my most painful moments - my truth was born. I'll also share how God led me to create this podcast to pour into YOU. To help and guide mamas to step into their greatness and harness the passion that's been placed on their heart. Enjoy.

If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to follow the podcast so you can be the first to know when a new podcast drops!

Praying love and light over you,
Stef

Listen & Subscribe on iTunes!

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Full transcription available at the bottom of this blog post. ​​

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​FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

What's up. Mama boss. Welcome back to The Mompreneur Mastermind Show. I'm Stefanie Gass, success strategist, and passive income queen creator. If you're ready to step into your God led potential, create profits from your passions and capture the success that is already yours. This podcast was made for you as always. You can find out more and connect with me over stefaniegass.com. Grab that cup of coffee or fill up that glass of wine. And let's dig in to today's show. Hey, what's up everybody. This is officially the very first podcast. Oh my goodness. I'm just super excited. I'm extra nervous kind of overwhelmed because truly I had no clue what I was getting into when I was like, yo, I'm going to start a podcast. So here I am. Again, I'm Stephanie gas and welcome to episode number one today. I'm going to share with you ladies, my story and why God has led me to start this podcast.

So really excited to dig into that with all of you today. And I definitely want to start with a massive disclaimer. All right. This podcast is never going to be perfect. So if you're looking for a business like automated podcast, that's not me. You're always going to get, you know, the truth with me. You're going to have some reality. My girls call it ranty panty when I go off. So good luck with that. And I have kids, I have a dog. And so y'all, you know, this isn't going to be perfect, but it is going to be full, full, full of value for you. I'm going to pour my heart and soul into this podcast for you. And I really have asked God to lead me in a massive way when it comes to sharing my truth, my heart, but to inspire all of you to step into your God led potential and to create the life that you were truly destined for.

So let me first start by just saying I am so excited to be with you. I am, like I mentioned, I'm a wife, I'm a mama. I've got two little crazy minions under five. It's wild up in here. Let's see. I'm an overachiever as I'm sure. Many of you are obsessed with my planner, obsessed with checking the boxes, right? With organization with planning, like that's my jam. I love to do. And I'm a doer. I'm a leaper. I never sit on things when I get inspired to take action. I just freaking jump. Okay. Because I figure I would rather fail forward than say I have never tried it. I was scared to try it. I was held back. I didn't know how that's not me. That's not what you're going to get with me. Okay. I am a coffee, self professed coffee addict.

All right. I love me some coffee. I drink way too much of it. Okay. And I will always do my best to have a lots of coffee before this podcast so that I can amp you up and you can be excited with me. So I run a coaching business called success with Stephanie and you know, I've really gone through a lot, a lot, a lot of transformation in the past two years. I call it the journey to finding my truth. So let me rewind back even further than that, to just share with you how I got to where I am today and why the heck you're listening to this podcast right now. So I actually have a master's degree in accounting, like no offense accountants, but I went out there, got the degree, okay. Which is nothing wrong with that. And started off my life in corporate America.

I joined or not joined. I was hired on with a financial firm at a very young age, 18, 19 years old and quickly became assistant research director for that company. Learned all about stocks, all about retirement planning. So, you know, we'll have some of that in this podcast as well, but it was really, really awesome. However, it just wasn't feeding my soul. You're going to hear that quite a few times in this story. And I went on figured, you know what? I need to work for a bigger corporate company. You know, I'm going to focus on climbing the corporate ladder at the age of 25. I got hired on with a solar company and as an assistant financial analyst. Okay. And within three to four years, I don't know exactly, but it was a pretty short amount of time. I went from assistant financial analyst to financial analyst, to assistant controller all the way to the top of the finance department, which is the controller of the entire division.

Whoa. I was making over six figures by the age of 27. And Holy smokes was it weighing on me? I had a massive, massive toll on my health. You guys, I don't know if any of you have been there, I'm sure that you have mama bosses, but I was living from my Blackberry phone emails all day, all night. I worked late evenings, weekends. I did a ton of travel for this business. And so I was in Germany sometimes in Spain. And while that's amazing, it was so tiring and it wasn't the lifestyle nor was it the line of work that was feeding my soul. I was drained. I was exhausted. I was living off of processed pretzels, no joke. And it was an unhealthy way to live. Now, the money was wonderful. However God went ahead and stepped into my life at that moment. And he introduced me to my husband. This is not a joke. When I tell you he was the auditor for us.

Oh, awkward. Regardless.

Plus that is where we met now. Thankfully he had a girlfriend at the time. So, you know, we weren't able to unethically begin dating while he was at the company. But that is where I met this man. He was just adorable and walked into my life at exactly the moment when I think I was ready to make a shift in my career and in my life. So roughly, you know, late twenties, I decided, Oh my gosh, you know, I want to get married. I could start to really feel into, I think I want to have children, you know, and I no longer was happy money can only get you so far. I had lost many of my relationships because of my job, you know, I was ready to spend time with this new guy that, you know, we were recently engaged fast forward a year or so.

And so what did I do? Well, God walked on in. It's so interesting how this happens over and over again, ladies. And we find ourselves in these periods of transition that are painful. But when you look back and you realize, Oh my gosh, that wasn't actually pain. It was the good Lord from above stepping in to say, I'm going to redirect you. And we get so focused on these, this earthly moment, you know, where am I right now? What am I doing right now? But it's my comfort zone. And we stopped trusting that there is a, a bigger directional pull on our lives. So whenever we find ourselves struggling, I'm frustrated in pain. I don't have a job or I lost this opportunity or one door slammed shut in my face. I can guarantee you another door is opening. I can guarantee it. And the pain that we feel and the struggle that we feel is simply a period of growth. So there you go, soapbox on that because I found myself in that place. Long story short, got introduced to network marketing. How many of you mama bosses are in network marketing? I bet whoever is listening on the other side of this podcast is probably either been in network. Marketing is a network marketing or it's part of your brand umbrella brand, right? So many of us get introduced to entrepreneur nor ship through that vehicle. So that was me. My mom actually got started with the company, recruited me in an, Oh my goodness.

The beast was born.

I saw the entrepreneur lifestyle and I realized that's what I was made for. I was made to run my business, make my own schedule. I'm a doer, I'm an actor. I can act. You know, I love sales. I love marketing. All of that stuff. Lights me up. So got into this network marketing organization and you know, I didn't know how to market. Oh my gosh, never been in sales. I was a finance person. So I listened to the upline. I did everything. They said I had multiple parties over and over people's houses, knocked down doors. I had that list of 100. Not only did I have a list of 100 people, they were highlighted. They had stars by their names. You know, it had how many times I had banged on their door to join my opportunity with me. I mean, ladies, I was crazy.

I was gonna make it. I was gonna make it. I had only one thing on my mind making it to the top. I didn't care who I stepped on. I didn't care who I was bothering. I didn't care who was in my way. I was going to make it to the top of this company. I was going to make the most money. I was going to walk the stage. It was about me, me, myself, and I, and I did it. I earned the car bonus within six months or eight months, something like that, got a paid for car. I recruited all of my high school friends into this business network. Marketing was still pretty new and fresh at the time. So they were all in it, you know, and as much as I can say, I helped people with my fingers in quotes right now.

You can't see actually, you know, I really feel that drag them along with me, that I pushed people that I told them. And I, I spoke into them that this was the only way to be successful. This was the only way they could make it. The only way they could work from home. And at the time I think I did believe that I was drinking the Kool-Aid. I was mixing the Kool-Aid. Yeah. And then serving it on a silver platter. Right. So everybody, me and I believed me. I didn't know any differently. So I kept going. I kept pushing. I kept networking. I kept working endless hours on my phone. My phone was always attached to my face. My husband was like, are you ever going to take a break from that? Like I still don't see you. You quit corporate America to join network marketing.

And you work more than you did in your corporate job. And I'm like, but I got to make it to the top. You know, you don't understand I'm going to have true residual income. When I hit the top of this company, insert chuckle. Right? So went ahead and worked my patootie off. I earned three or four free, all expense paid vacations. I had a team internationally different countries and the icing on the cake one day, it was the end of the month. I had $115,000 in volume. I had to get to 150,000 in order to hit the top rank of this company. So wake up. I mean, the belief in me was higher than it had ever been. I was going to do this. I was going to do it. If it killed me, called the upline, we strategized called the downline. We strategize. I'm like you guys, we have one day to basically come up with over $35,000 in sales and we're going to do it.

I mean, I was so convicted. My belief was at an all time high. I was going to make this happen. I was going to achieve this goal. It was going, going to happen for me. So I set out, I worked those phones. I created promotions for my team. My upline was in there, they were working it. They had these incentives hanging over me. Like we were going to do this. And I tell you, ladies, I can barely believe that I, that it happened by midnight. That night I ended the month with 150, $2,000 in volume in one calendar month. Oh my goodness. I had done it. There were tears streaming down my face. My team is jumping up and down, like hugging my husband. Like I made it right. Like I did this thing. A month later, I walk across the stage at the convention.

There's 15,000 people cheering. I've got this $20,000 check in my hands and I'm walking across the stage. I was at the height, the height of that business. I had a $17,000 month that month I went, we spent thousands of dollars in Vegas. It was my 30th birthday party. We did a, a pool party throwing out the bills, you know buying thousand dollar bottles of vodka to celebrate. Like I made it. And I will tell you, and some of you have experienced this and some of you haven't, but I will tell you very soon after that was a massive, massive transformation and a journey to finding my truth. I think why I went through that experience was so that God could redirect me and show me, it's not about what you want. It's not about your truth. It's not about earthly possessions, but it's about my truth.

It's about what I want for your life. Right? So soon after, within 12 months of attaining all that success, everything started to fall apart. My organization started to leave for different companies. My customers were falling off left and right. I couldn't work hard enough to replace the people that were leaving in my organization. And so before I knew it, my business was cut in half. And I think this was just a very soft kind, love filled reminder that that wasn't my purpose. And I wasn't helping others. It was all about me. And that's a hard lesson to learn.

I think we all learn it sometimes
Over again in our life because it's easy to get off track and focus on me because this earth is always about us, right? We are, we are, it's fed into us to be entitled. What are you going to do? How much money are you going to make? What's your career going to be? You can stand up for who you are. You can be whoever you want to be. And yes, it's true. It is true, but that is such an earthly focus. And sometimes we have to take a step back from that and realize it's not what I want. It's not my decision of how to craft my life. That comes from above it's the Lord's decision to direct me because I'm part of his ultimate plan, right? I'm part of doing something to further the world and make it a better, happier, more faithful, more spirit led place.

And so I was, I was checked, I was brought to my knees because my entire identity was rolled into this network marketing business. That's all I thought about. It's all I did. All of my, all of my worth was tied into the money and the recognition that that business brought to me and I am so, so grateful. And I pray, thanks over the fact that it was taken away from me. And, you know, I had to realize that there's a bigger purpose for me and a selfless purpose for me that I am not fulfilling. And I'm hurting people along the way and it's just not right. So I realized I'm going about this thing entirely the wrong way. And I had to, at the time, cry, a lot of tears, do a massive inventory over my life and realize, you know, I didn't even realize I was like,

The heck am I doing here? You know, what should I do? Everything's falling apart. We can't afford anything. Cause y'all

And you making $17,000 a month. What do you do? You up your living, you up your whole way of living. Right? So spending money in Vegas, we upgraded, we got an art, an expensive RV, you know all of this stuff. So the lifestyle was elevated at the same time as a transformation was happening in my heart and the money started to fall away. Ouch. And I was like, what am I going to do? Not only that I was pregnant with our second child. I was 60 pounds overweight that came from, I think, focusing on the wrong things and not the right things like health, mindfulness and spirituality. I had fallen away. We weren't going to church at the time. Everything was just really wrong in my life. I also had some really negative relationships, people that call themselves my best friends, but it was really a one-sided relationship that I was pouring into and not receiving anything in return, very toxic, very toxic in this period of my life.

So oddly enough, very oddly enough, a new friend walked into my life and I have to say, ladies, whenever you're going through a period of pain and a period of transformation, a new relationship will tend to walk in. It's just crazy. So this new friend walked in and this new friend rocked my world. She was basically like, what are, what are you doing? What are the things you love about network marketing? What can you take from that? Because maybe it's not network marketing, you should be doing anymore. And I'm like, Ooh, blasphemy. Like no more network marketing, like that's who I am. Right. But that idea started to manifest in my brain. What is it that I love about it? It was inspiring. It was motivating others. It was leadership. It was helping my team attain stuff that they didn't think they could do. And yes, it was the recognition.

And yes, the money was nice, but that's not what was feeding my soul. The stuff feeding my soul was so much deeper than that. And I had to have a come to Jesus, a literal come to Jesus moment with myself and say, what are you doing? You're not doing the right thing for your clients. You're not doing the right thing for your team. This isn't the right vehicle for everyone to make money. This isn't the right product for everyone. There are endless opportunities for women. They can do any and everything. Everybody's gifted with these different talents, with these different passions, these different zones of genius that light them up inside. You need to help them understand what those are, lift them up, fill them with desire and passion, and then give them the tools. Because I knew the tools, I know marketing and I knew sales, and I knew how to get to the end of the rainbow, but getting women to see their own potential was what was missing.

That's when she said, have you ever considered, Whoa, I thought to myself, coaching, gosh, no, I don't. You even know what that means. Right? So it was about a year long journey. Ladies transitioning out of network marketing, as far as actively working that business, I actually started blogging and through blogging, I was led to some people that said, Hey, do you coach? I'm like, Oh my God, gosh, what is happening? This is so creepy. It's crazy when God starts working in your life and you open your heart to the next step opportunities and abundance start to be served to you on a silver platter. And I forgot a very important pain point. That happened to me. The money got so tight there for a minute. Ladies that our cashflow just
Hit the wall.

There was a month where we had to borrow $2,000 from my son's savings account just to pay our monthly expenses. And
That in that moment,

I'm like, I think that was the deepest Memorial. I just dropped to my knees. I'm like, show me, show me, you know, this isn't about me anymore. This is about my family. It's about making an impact. It's about receiving abundance through the right vehicle for my life. And it's not about how much I can get and what, how I can grow and the business that I should start. It's about helping other women really grow into what I did in the past two years. Like I know how to, how to create success. I know how to get him out of my own way. I want to teach other women to do that. So God help me please. Right? Like Jesus, show me, Jesus,

Take the wheel. That's The moment I had. And so that's when he introduced me to coaching and ladies, I was able to, you know, start slow. I, these people were coming and knocking on my door. Hey, do you do coaching? And I'm like, I guess,

And I started slow, but Wildly enough, God placed his hand upon my life and pushed me into this new direction of being a female success strategist and really helping women monetize their passions and get out of their own way. Conquer their fears, realized that their mindset was what's holding them back and then give them the tools to be successful. As a female entrepreneur, working from home, balancing a family, bouncing kids, balancing their husbands, finding that their gray spirituality and prayer and health should be at the top of the list. And amazingly enough, amazingly enough, within 12 months, I was able to create a coaching business that was lighting my soul on fire and still is, I am so blessed. I am so fulfilled and I just feel this massive shift and this massive pull on my heart to do more
Of that. So I found myself

From the last few months just being lit on fire. Whenever I'd have a one-on-one call with a client, you know, I do these 20 minute mini sessions. We're just having breakthrough after breakthrough, after breakthrough. It's crazy. I am just having clients come to me. My courses are going amazingly well. And I'm like, how and what is next? How can I scale this? How can I move this to the next level? Not as far as income is concerned because I feel really comfortable where we're at there. It's how can I scale this in the amount of women in lives I can touch. And so crazy. Shout out to my girl, Angie Lee, I hop on her podcast and I hear just the right podcast that I needed to hear. There were, you know, five takeaways I learned from that podcast. The first is that I am needed now more than ever before, to pour into women, to teach them how to profit from their passions and that they can monetize whatever their gifts are.

Number two is that my audience consumes audibly, right? Y'all aren't watching the video, you're doing dishes, right? Yeah. And now you're doing laundry right now. You're driving. So to be able to listen to what I have to teach you was really, really important. Number three, three, was that why fricking not like fail forward. We have got to start leaving, being into the unknown as female entrepreneurs. We have to start taking the bull by the horns and saying, Oh yeah, I don't know how I'm going to figure that issue out. God's got my back. Right? So that was number three. Number four was that I felt I can't reach enough people on a one-on-one basis to make a massive, massive impact on the world. I can help, you know, a niche, a small amount of people. But if I want to pour into this whole dynamic that's needed.

And then number five is that there wasn't a Christian mentor business mentor out there, a faith-based business coach, pairing business and faith. So I was like, all right, God, I hear you, boo. I hear you. You calling out to me right now. So I decided I'm going to start a podcast. And a second, I said those words out loud, ladies, I am not joking you. I had over 200 ideas come to my mind of topics. I wrote them down. I mean, within 45 minutes, I'm staring at this paper with like 200 topics in the areas of online marketing advertising sales, how to market in an authentic way, being in line with your truth, how to find your God led calling, finding balance, speaking positivity over your children. I mean, the list goes on and on and on and on living fearlessly belief, gratitude, Oh my goodness.

Money, mindset, vision, goal setting. What? Like it was just pouring out of me. And that's when I knew this is bigger than me. I need to do this. So here we are. Anyways, mompreneur mastermind. The mompreneur mastermind show has officially been born. And that is why. So I just pray that through this podcast, you find the faith to believe in yourself. You find the motivation to live fearlessly in pursuit of your ultimate dream. They're able to figure out what your God led calling is and, and jump into that with vigor and with balance and realize that you can freaking habit. All we can have business. We can have success. We can have spirituality. We can be amazing mothers and wives, and we can do it all through Christ who strengthens us.
Can I get an amen? Right. So

That's why this podcast is here and I'm going to be pouring into you every single week. I cannot wait to just kick off our very first session next week. I hope that you're excited as I am. And I can't wait to learn more about you and to connect with you on the other side. So as always, I want to leave you with an abundance prayer. I pray so much abundance over your life. I pray that you have unlimited time to accomplish all the things you need to accomplish in your day and with your family and in your business. I pray for clarity over you in whatever you are struggling with right now. And I pray that God finds you in a massive way and helps lead your heart in the right direction for you

Life. So signing off love and light Steph, Hey mama, real quick. Before
You go, if you found value in today's podcast and you learn something new, if you'll take a quick minute, head over to iTunes and leave me a review and subscribe to the channel, that Would be awesome. And I Want to connect with you head over to social media and find me. My handle is @stefaniegass. I'll see you next week. Praying, light, love and abundance over you until next time.