My adventure in business has been long, weird and fraught with peril.
(Okay, peril might be a stretch, but I did just watch How to Train Your Dragon, and the drama may be contagious.)
What’s absolutely true is that I’ve certainly invested a galactic sh*t ton of money, time and energy into becoming the coach, creator and business catalyst I am today – and all of it is poured into the IMPACT membership.
I thought it might be good to acknowledge and celebrate the efforts and energies that have poured into my journey and even put a price tag on them. I don’t know how this will turn out, but let’s give it a whirl.
🎓 Formal Education
- Started out in Business and ended up with Bachelor’s Degree in English Creative Writing (via a “college without walls” while working full-time and running a business) – $18,000
- Studied philosophy, psychology, and literature because I couldn’t help myself.
- Sparked a lifelong obsession with how people think and the stories we tell.
📝 Writing & Publishing
- 10 years in Millrock Writers Collective, and multiple Writing Marathons
- One fully edited memoir, two drafted novels
- Learning to kill my darlings and edit with love – $6,000
- Thousands of hours writing = priceless
🎧 Wedding DJ Business (15 years!)
- Ran a 6-figurel wedding entertainment biz with my ex-husband
- Learned content marketing, sales psychology, networking, automation, and customer delight
- Cost in gear and music: $20,000
- Cost in (literal) sweat equity and wedding-industry anxiety: dealing with negative online reviews, getting bashed by competitors, praying the guests would dance
- Bonus: Java the jungle cat, our trust-building sales mascot
💻 Digital Marketing Training
- SEO, email marketing, Facebook ads, sales funnels, product launches, project management, hiring and firing virtual assistants
- Technical rabbit holes I was completely unprepared for and somehow managed to resolve
- Easily $40,000+ in courses, experiments and advertising expenses
- 💡 Coach & Consultant Business Building
Multiple online businesses (some flopped, some flew)
- Learning to only work with people I love on things I care about – after many misfires and misalignments
- Paid my dues in customer service horror stories, negative SEO attacks from “mentors,” and sleepless nights fueled by raw cacao and adrenaline
- Cost: acid reflux and workaholism
🎓 Coach Training & Mentorship
- NLP with Tad James, Supercoach Academy with Michael Neill
- $60,000+ in certifications, supervision, and practice
- Coaching hours? Thousands. And counting.
💫 Spiritual & Personal Development
- At least $4,000/year in events, retreats, and travel
- Always seeking the deeper truth
🧙♂️ One-on-One Mentorship
- A year = $40,000
- Weekly coaching, in person intensives, deep transformation
- My life was completely disrupted. Possibilities infinitely expanded.
🗣️ Finding My Voice
- 217 daily emails in 2025 alone
- Years of fast-feedback content creation on Facebook
- Market research, testing, tweaking, refining
- The invisible labor of love to discover a voice that feels like me
Grand Total = Over $200,000 (And that’s conservative.)
What does this mean for you?
When you join the IMPACT membership, you get the distilled brilliance of all that experience, heartbreak, sweat, and joy—without having to live through it yourself.
You get:
✔️ Messaging magic that lands
✔️ Client creation that feels good
✔️ Offers that sell (without feeling salesy)
✔️ A spiritual, creative approach to business that leaves room for play, peace, and your real self
But mostly, you’ll find what I discovered:
Your business can be a work of art and an instrument of transformation.
You don’t have to suffer to profit.
Joy is the best business strategy.
This July in IMPACT, we’re exploring “Unapologetically You” and continuing the 90 Day Money Game—a playful, profitable way to discover what’s possible when you create from truth.
Come get the gold (without the acid reflux):
https://www.theawakenedbusiness.com/impactinvite/
Yours in love and play,
Steph
