How to Leave Corporate and Build a 7-Figure Business With Stephanie Cartin

Heather Monahan [0:00] Welcome back. I'm so glad you're back with us this week. This week, we have a friend of mine. Oh, wait a minute. And I'm actually in this place to ride it. There we go. We have a friend of mine who I have known for years. And I'm so excited to have her on the show today. Stephanie Carton is an award-winning entrepreneur, community builder, author, podcast host, and co-founder of Entrepenista. a leading media platform and membership community dedicated to empowering women founders. She has scaled multiple companies, including co-founding SocialFly, an award-winning social media marketing agency recognized on the Inc. 5000 list — amazing — and building entrepreneurs into a community of over 4,000 ambitious founders that reach millions of women every month. Passionate advocate for increasing women's access to capital, Stephanie also co-founded Pearl Influential Capital, which was acquired by Cherub. She openly shares her personal journey with multiple sclerosis, infertility, and complicated pregnancy that was featured on the Today Show. Using her story to inspire and support other women navigating life's challenges. Stephanie, thank you so much for being here today.

Stephanie Cartin [1:06] Heather, thanks for having me. So excited to chat.

Heather Monahan [1:09] Oh my gosh, it's so exciting. OK, so for all my people listening right now, I love a good had the courage to leave corporate America story and start your own thing, much less start your own thing and then sell the thing and do so well with it. You started another thing.

Stephanie Cartin [1:32] You bet. So, I feel like, first of all, I was just a born entrepreneur, as we say, but I went down the whole path of working in the corporate world first. And advice a lot of times I share with, you know, the younger generation right now is. working full-time at a company can be a really great experience if you can learn from that experience what you would want to take from that to bring to your own company, or what you would want to leave behind, and that is exactly what Courtney and I experienced. So, I'll give you the quick backstory for your listeners, Heather. So. Um, myself and Courtney, we actually met through a mutual friend who is also an entrepreneista as well, and Courtney and I became fast friends, and this is going back now to, uh, 2010, and we're in 2026 now, so 16 years ago, but it actually feels like yesterday. So we met, we became fast friends, and I had wanted to start a social media agency, and Courtney and I became friends, and I started basically pitching to her why we should start this company together, and we got very lucky in the sense that we had. completely opposite skill sets, but we were very vision and mission aligned, and again, we were young. We were in our early and mid-20s at the time, 16 years ago, and we decide to just start working together to test it out, working nights and weekends for about 10 months together on the side of our corporate jobs until we said to each other, and I still remember the moment we were. at the Sports Club LA on the Upper West Side at the time in New York City, and we were sitting there working on a Saturday afternoon, and we were like, you know what? If this is going to be an actual business, we either just have to take the leap and go all in and do it, or not do it anymore. So we decided to quit our corporate jobs on the same day. It was May 4th of. 2012, and we never looked back, and that's how we initially got our start.

Heather Monahan [3:23] OK, this sounds so courageous to me because all I — I was a lot — I was 43 when I actually left corporate. So I was — the problem — and this is why for everyone listening, if you have an inkling like Stephanie and you're like, oh, I would love to go on my own, do it younger, I think. Because it's harder — the more money you make, the more accolades you get, the more you find yourself locked into thinking this is all you can ever do and only seeing that opportunity in front of you. So if you have that calling on your heart, make that leap. I had it when I was younger. I ignored it. And I kept just running up that ladder. And gosh, I look back now and I'm like, I'm so proud of you guys for making a leap. When you made that leap, how did you start figuring out? Because I remember as an entrepreneur in my early 40s trying to figure out, okay, where are my revenue streams coming from? What systems do I put in place? What's working? What's not working? What about pricing? What's needed in the market? How did you kind of figure that out or did you just trial and error it?

Stephanie Cartin [4:12] Yes. So, a little bit of both. Okay, so I'm going to take you back to those early days again, and again, I love the advice you just shared about if you can do this when you're young, before you have, you know, a lot of other commitments and life responsibilities, children, other things, it definitely is easier because. the income you need to replace isn't as large as it is later on. Like, you grew your corporate career making, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not more, you know, dollars, and now you have to figure out, you have the golden handcuffs. How do I actually leave that? It's so much harder. But what I don't want to discourage women doing from. Who are farther along in their careers or in their lives is saying, okay, it's just too late now because it's still never too late. We have so many women in our community that are starting something on the side still while working in their corporate jobs right now and getting the business to a certain point where then they can replace that corporate salary and look, even sometimes you might not be able to replace it entirely.

Heather Monahan [5:01] Never.

Stephanie Cartin [5:18] But if you're able to take that time that you would be spending in the corporate to actually go in on your business, you might be able to get there faster. So I don't want to discourage anyone from thinking it's, like, it's too late. It's never too late, you just need a plan. So I'll take you back to what our plan was. Um, and again. Our plan was very simple. We need to get a certain number of clients, and we need to figure out how to charge a certain amount each month, and then we can make sure we're each making a couple thousand dollars a month. Because back then, again, it was a service-based business. And a service-based business, and especially in today's day and age with AI, right, it's very easy to start up. There's not a lot of startup costs that are involved. It's really just your time. So what service can you create and what price point can you charge? And can you start getting some early traction and early customers? So that's how we figured it out. And Courtney had a whole backup plan. And you know the two of us. we're vision-mission aligned, completely opposite skill sets, but she's very practical with everything, and I'm like… I go on feelings. I feel like this is right, we're just gonna go out and do it, and I had no backup plan. Courtney had her whole backup plan figured out if it didn't work, but I said. There's no way this is not gonna work. It's gonna work. The reason why it works, Heather, so early on is because the first piece of advice that we got when we started our business was to join a networking group in New York City, and we were based in New York City at that time, and that very first group that we joined. led to all of our first clients, all of our first referral partners. We learned how to, at 7am every Tuesday, get up there and speak about our business confidently, how to build meaningful relationships, how to refer business to other business owners, and we saw so early on. How business behind closed doors with a group of people that were aligned and wanted to grow their business, like how business was actually getting done. And we, I don't use the words anymore, the phrase like we got lucky. We put ourselves in the right situations and environments and we went all in and we focused on building and we had all of the. excitement and the motivation, and there was nothing that was gonna stop us from building this business.

Heather Monahan [7:27] And so when you sold that first company. take… take us back to that moment. Did you know that was gonna happen from the jump? Were you like, I'm sure this… we're gonna kill this thing, we're gonna sell this thing? Or were these things, yet again, that you kind of came… came to you in the moment, and you figured out as you… as you went along?

Stephanie Cartin [8:01] But we were always open-minded to learning. We never thought or wanted to be the smartest people in the room. We knew what we didn't know, and we were always hungry to go find the answers and find someone who could help us. And what we realized very early on is. So many people were willing to have a conversation with us or help us. And look, at the time, right, we were social media experts. So people wanted to talk to us and we had something of value to offer too. So when we met with, you know, the SEO agency who was part of our group, their specialty was not social media. Our specialty was social media. So they gave us advice in the early days on what we needed to be doing on our website. Again, we're going back to 2012 right now, how we needed to rank number one on Google. And they did a whole audit for us, and we followed that audit and created content in line with what they shared. Well, guess what? Within two months. We're number one on Google for social media agency and influencer agency in New York City. These two women who had just started their business because we sought out the advice and then we became a referral partner with that SEO agency and they ended up getting a ton of business through us. So when everyone can come together to share their learning, share their, you know, offerings, and genuinely want to support and help each other, there's enough business to go around for absolutely everyone. So that then led us to a speaking engagement. We then got introduced to our mentor and dear friend of ours now, Carrie Kirpin, who was the owner of an agency called Likeable Media. And we got a meeting with Carrie, and she took us under her wing. She told us in that first meeting to read a book called Built to Sell. And that was when the light bulb went off for us. We had no idea we were building an asset that was sellable. We were two women who just wanted to replace our corporate income and build a business and do something that we were passionate about and loved every day. And now we realize we're the seven-figure agency. We can actually build something that someone might want to acquire that we can sell for life-changing money and still change lives of our employees and other businesses. But it was all from continuing to meet with new people and continuing to learn.

Heather Monahan [10:10] I mean, that's incredible. I know that people listening right now are saying, well, how do I get in a room like that? Because people always think, I know I do this too. Well, that worked out for you at that point in time where you stumbled across the right opportunity. How can someone strategically that's listening, who knows where in the country right now or in the world. How can they find their circle of people?

Stephanie Cartin [10:32] So what we did was after we sold the agency, we created that because we saw what it did for us being able to, you know, organically find our network of the right people and bring people together. And Courtney and I were always, you know, out and about running around New York City at the time. creating events and bringing people and bringing women together. And what started to happen was, as we were building the agency, because of the quick growth and success of SocialFly, so many women started reaching out to us literally every single week, just wanting to pick our brain or wanting to go out to coffee, wanting to hear how we did it. and that's all we wanted to do. We wanted to just share and help everyone and share how we did it, and we were like, wait a second, you know, we need to be able to do this at scale, and going out to coffee one-on-one is not going to be what solves this problem. We need to create it. So, uh, we started our podcast called Entrepreneista back in 2018, but then when the pandemic happened in 2020. we were getting even more messages at that time from our listeners and followers, hearing things, I'm sure you hear these things too, you know, I lost my job, I want to start a business, can you help us? I need to pivot, can you help us? And we're like, we want to help everyone, but we were so focused on still growing our agency, and we knew we were going to sell it at that time. So, Courtney and I actually worked with a business coach, and we always. Even the most successful people are working with coaches and advisors and investing themselves. We always worked with a business coach and Leslie helped us make a whole plan so we could divide and conquer, so we would be able to sell the agency and start building Entrepreneista. So that's what we did. We wanted to build the community and the platform to give all women who want to build, grow and scale a business access to everything. that we had learned over the years, but then putting together all of the right founders inside the community who also want to share their advice at scale and everyone can support each other. So now what we were able to essentially piecemeal and do for ourselves over the course of a decade, now a woman can join the community and get access to everything that she needs to grow and scale her business and the community and the support. on day one of starting her business, or in year five, or in year ten, because it doesn't matter when someone gets access and joins the community where they are in their journey. We've created all of the opportunities and resources that everyone needs right inside.

Heather Monahan [12:43] So again, this is what I find so interesting. You were running a successful company, looking at potentially selling it, trying to figure that piece out. And while you were doing that, you were presented with an opportunity because of pain points other people had. And you kept noticing. On repeat, I'm watching the same questions come in over and over again. And that triggered you to say, wait a minute, this could be a business. Why don't we turn this? Now, when you step, go back to that version of yourself, when you remember being in that situation, did that feel risky to start that business or did you know to have clarity, oh, this is something that needs to happen and it's going to work?

Stephanie Cartin [13:21] Uh, I would say both. It went both ways. So, I knew that we could build something that was going to be massive. However, I did not know the exact path to get there because… but I knew we could do it because of how we built SocialFly. So I knew we were light years ahead in terms of just the experience we now had over. We had been building businesses for almost a decade at that point when we first started it. So we just knew so much more, and we already had our network that I knew I could go to someone and say, hey, we're building this. I need to talk to whoever is an expert at, you know, online marketing for communities, or I need this type of business tool, and I was able to just get to all of the right people and resources faster. But in terms of figuring out, you know, the exact financial model for the business and what our pricing model should be, like, I hadn't done that before. I… we built a social media agency, and. we knew how to build incredible social media strategies for clients, but I had never built a media company, I had never built a community as a business company, but I knew we were the ones to do it, and I knew we could figure it out from what we had done previously.

Heather Monahan [14:27] It's incredible. I recently went to one of your events, and I have never seen such a large, hyped-up group of women who are hugging on each other, supporting each other. I mean, it was — it really blew me away. What do you think? is different about the community that you created and getting these people to show up for these events?

Stephanie Cartin [14:51] So, what our community tells us, because I, you know, people always ask me, there's so many, you know, women's entrepreneurial communities out there, like, what is different about it? And it's really just the women that are inside the community, and our members tell me all the time, they're like, well, Stephanie, it starts at the top, it's from what you and Courtney created. And really the ethos of Entrepreneista is collaboration over competition. There's enough business to go around. And when we show up and we ask each other, you know, how can I help you? Everything always comes back, you know, full circle. We're all about we give first and then we're able to grow together. So we only attract people to join the community who are like that. We don't attract people who are just there to like take or not to do the right thing. That's just not the type of woman that we attract in Entrepreneista. So then when you come to our events, when people haven't been to them before, they're like, oh my God, is everyone really this nice? Like, is everyone really this amazing? I'm like, yes. Because we share upfront in how it is at Entrepreneista. No one needs to be a taker. No one needs to be in it for themselves. There really is actually more abundance and more opportunity when we have conversations with each other and say, what are you working on? where do you need help, here's what I'm working on, here's where I need help, who can we introduce to each other, and how can we help each other?

Heather Monahan [16:12] It's such a refreshing approach, because as you know, you know my story, being fired by another woman, and it's so nice to see in the entrepreneurial world, it definitely doesn't feel as cutthroat backstabbing as it did back in corporate America.

Stephanie Cartin [16:25] Yeah, it doesn't need to be like that. It really doesn't. And again, you know, we were put ourselves in the right rooms and in the right groups and invested. And when I tell you, Heather, we really invested in ourselves and our business early on. We had no business spending over $2,000 the day we went full-time in our business to join a group, but we did, because we got advice, just invest. If you invest in the right things, and you really believe you can build this, the money will come, the business will come, if you are serious about doing this. So we did, we put it on a… Got a business credit card, we put it on a business credit card, and that was the, that was the first step. And all of the people that we met were like how Courtney and I are. You know, we, everyone wanted to help each other. So we came from this world, this entrepreneurial world of just seeing people. collaborate, and refer business to each other, and help each other, and pick up your calls at 11PM when something is going terribly wrong, and we're just there to support each other.

Heather Monahan [17:26] Ugh, I love that. It's such a nice feeling to know people have your back, and not only do they have your back, but they can add value to you in the same way that you're actually adding value to others, and I know you see this a lot online, especially. People want to take, and they want, want, want from you, but there's really… you're saying to yourself. Wait a minute, but you want to give to people where you can, but you also are running a for-profit business, and you need to drive value, drive dollars, and drive revenue because we all have families to take care of. It's interesting to me to see that difference because I definitely saw it at Entrepreneista.

Stephanie Cartin [17:55] Yeah.

Heather Monahan [18:00] everybody wanted to… who can I connect you with? Who can I help you? You know, I'll try to help you get clients here or there. I have an idea for you. And it's that add value and add value recipe, which is incredible. Okay, so you talked about Courtney, and I think it's important for myself, for everyone who hasn't had. a, you know, a true partner in business who's been doing things on their own or been doing things on the side, how do you make a decision, okay, this is the right person to partner with, this is how we're going to define roles, this is how we're, this is, you know, how does it work when you truly have a partner and you're not just the only one making the decisions?

Stephanie Cartin [18:37] So, the first step when deciding if you should go into business with someone is to make sure that, one, you can absolutely trust the other person 100%, and that you are vision and mission aligned. The one area where I will use the word that. I got lucky or we got lucky was just in that first meeting that we met together because we became first. Like we got lucky that the two of us just became friends and clicked. Everything else from there was work, right? It was really figuring out, dividing out our roles and responsibilities, getting really clear on that. I mentioned our business coach, Leslie, that we worked with for many years. We called her like our business relationship coach because a business partnership really is a relationship that you have to work on. And you need to be able to have conversations, and we call them, like, tough or fierce conversations, and not be afraid that the other person is going to get, like, upset or offended or be like, I'm leaving the business. Like, we know, and again, we've worked together now for, you know, a decade, almost, we're getting closer to two decades now than one decade. Um, so we just, like, know how we operate and how we are, but in those early days, we didn't have the ways to know how to communicate together. We hadn't been business partners for a long time, so we invested again and worked with our business coach, Leslie, to really help us. you know, define what these roles were, what these responsibilities were, and then again, as you see from our, you know, trajectory, like, the business has evolved. We've sold businesses. I was in, you know, I was on bed rest for 6 months and out of the office for 6 months, and that was all obviously chaotic in the business, and Courtney's now having to carry the business, so… These are all things you have to talk about and you have these hard conversations up front. You know, we worked with a business attorney and we put together an operating agreement a couple years into starting the business because we didn't know when we first started to get an operating, have an operating agreement. But that's something I advise founders now to do is when you're first starting a business, if you're going into business with a partner, you want to make sure you have an operating agreement for all of those. what-ifs and worst-case scenarios. And if you can't talk about those what-ifs and worst-case scenarios up front when you first start building the business, you're gonna have a lot more trouble when something actually happens.

Heather Monahan [20:46] It's so interesting. I have a good friend who's been in a business partnership with another woman for many years, and the partnership just fell apart. And when you look back, and I remember I know both of them and friends with both of them, and they're very successful people. But I remember starting to notice that communication was faltering. They lived in different parts of the country. They didn't see each other very much anymore. One person felt that they were carrying the weight. The other one felt that they had come with the idea first and that it was warranted. how were you able to not allow, you know, a bad feeling or a word that wasn't shared or communicated to start snowballing the way that I saw just happen with somebody else?

Stephanie Cartin [21:31] Ultimately, it's the vision for what we're building long term and just knowing we're going to have disagreements and we both know the ultimate goal. We do not always agree on the way to get there because our brains work differently and our creative brains work differently, our financial, everything works differently. But we're willing to let each other test and figure things out, and not try to, like, harp on everything over and over again. So, it's really just that communication, and you really have to work on that. It's just like any type of relationship. And you have to be okay, and you have to have those conversations up front, like, we're probably not going to agree on everything. If we get to a point where we don't agree, what can we be doing in those moments together to have these conversations so they don't feel uncomfortable? The other thing I would say, too, is. You want to make sure that you're going into business with someone who also is emotionally regulated. I think a lot of the challenges that I see are when people are working with someone who does not have, uh, a great experience at regulating their emotions, because. You're like, I am someone. If someone was, like, screaming and yelling at me all the time, like, that just would not work for me. Like, Courtney and I don't communicate that way. Like, we're never screaming at each other. We're never yelling at each other. We'll, you know, share our points and be really clear about something, but we're never going to, like, disrespect each other or yell at each other. That's just not how we communicate. There's a lot of people out there that communicate like that, so you need to decide early on, is this someone I can really communicate with and build a strong foundation and relationship with?

Heather Monahan [23:10] And that goes the same for in corporate America, for who you're going to work for, and like you said, looking at the top of the company, too, because it is a top-down dictate mentality, and if people don't realize that, oh my gosh, pay attention to culture beyond just the person you're going to work for, because it will filter in and affect.

Stephanie Cartin [23:14] Yes.

Heather Monahan [23:30] everyone. And there's a lot of people, like you said, that yell and are not emotionally regulated, and it is… that is not a fun ride, that is a toxic.

Stephanie Cartin [23:30] Yes. No, and I want no part of any of that.

Heather Monahan [23:41] No, I'm with you. That's I mean, that's that's why I think when I look back, that's why I didn't go back. I initially wanted to go back, but then I remember thinking the only way I'm going to be able to ensure that doesn't happen is if I'm the one driving the ship. And, you know, it's just once you start.

Stephanie Cartin [23:54] Yeah.

Heather Monahan [23:58] Taking the action steps, figuring out the problems you can solve, figuring out what you can charge for, like you said, figuring out along the way, what could you package? What could you sell? How can you drive value? And then how can you replicate that at speed and in a systematic way? It starts coming together, but it definitely doesn't happen overnight.

Stephanie Cartin [24:03] Okay. Absolutely.

Heather Monahan [24:16] Okay, so let's go down your health journey because it is such a big part of your story. It is so powerful, and I know that my audience will love to hear about it.

Stephanie Cartin [24:28] Oh my goodness. So I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was 27 years old, and it was right around the time when Courtney and I were first starting our business. So I was actually diagnosed when I was still working full time for another company and trying to start our business. Business on the side and I remember when you know I first heard the words from the doctor that you have MS one I didn't even know what it was I literally had to go on Google and start learning everything about it and what helped me was actually finding community and back then it was. Through Facebook groups, which years later, when I went through my infertility journey, was where I found, you know, other people with, again, common challenges that I was going through that I could actually connect with and learn from. So for me, it's like everything I've gone through from. building businesses to my health journey, really everything, everything has come back to who can I connect with and find support and learn from, and then how can I help other people and, you know, pay it forward to continue to share to help other people. But what I. really learned from going through all of my health challenges is, you know. Mindset. Mindset is absolutely everything, and it is hard. If you don't feel well. It is very hard to, you know, stay as positive as possible, and you hear people say online, like, just be positive! It's like, it doesn't work like that, right? But it is really… it goes back to business, too, like, just having this vision and staying so focused on. what that end goal and end result is, and what are the little steps I need to do each day to get to that end result. So I always say that running a business prepared me for my complicated journey with infertility, and then my even more complicated. pregnancy journey, but everything has been, like, solved, and I've gone through everything because of community, and my daughter, who just turned 7 a little over a week ago, would not be on this earth if it were not through community and sharing on social media, because through other women, that's how I found. the support and the doctors and the information that I needed to bring her into this world.

Heather Monahan [26:39] Which is incredible, biggest blessing. And happy birthday to her. I'm so excited for you guys. OK, so you mentioned mindset with health. And I totally agree with you. I've had a couple of my best friends in the past month have had major surgeries, unexpected, not great things that they're dealing with.

Stephanie Cartin [26:42] Yep.

Heather Monahan [26:57] So, as you watch people in life, and you, I mean, you were still young at 27, and that's shocking to have that happen. How do you even process something like that? I'm sure there had to be levels of anger and upset, and like you said, when you're just not feeling well, like, how do you get back up the next day and say, I'm going to keep moving forward?

Stephanie Cartin [27:16] I think for me, I've just always had this like life goal and vision. Like I, and I was, I had a lot of challenges, health challenges when I was growing up as well. So I was like used to always being the one that was like getting sick and not feeling well. And my diagnosis, I think finally explains a lot for me as well. But I've also always been a problem solver. So, I've always looked at everything as just this challenge that I can get through because I have this ultimate vision for what I want my life to be. So, I'll take you back, actually, to when I was inpatient at Columbia Presbyterian, where I spent 11 weeks inpatient in the hospital when I was pregnant with my daughter and did not know whether she was going to survive. For me, what I did was I did visualizations every day, and just visualized what it was gonna look like a year from now, when… on her first birthday, and what it would look like when I would… we were gonna take her to Disney World, which we ultimately did, and I would just visualize that every day, because even that practice. a visualization, it just does something to your body and can really help you, like, feel and relax and get through. Uh, I also had positive mantras that I would just tell myself every day, even if I didn't, like, believe them in that moment. When you speak things out loud, I just learned that eventually your brain does start to believe them if you say them over and over. So I would say to myself, every day pregnant is a good day. Every day pregnant is a good day. Like, she's still at a heartbeat, I'm still here. Like, every day pregnant is a good day. and I would write. Like, for me, I was writing out my journey, I was writing out how I was feeling, I was writing letters to my daughter in a notebook that I've now, at 7 years old, I've read to her and showed her, and I just kept my mindset as strong as it could possibly be, because in my mind, I'm like, I have no other option. I can either do the best that I can do to stay strong and do what I can do to bring her in this world. My other option is to give up, and that's not an option.

Heather Monahan [29:15] Oh my gosh, that is so powerful. I'm so proud of you, because I know that is discipline, that is not easy, but as you said, the power of the tongue, there is nothing stronger. And visualization, I was just watching the NBA Finals last night, and Wemby talking about the amount of time that he spends visualizing the game ahead. I mean. It goes from professional athletes to speakers to a mother in a hospital. I mean, visualization works when you work it, and I'm so grateful you had that tool. You said something funny that I know you'll think this is funny. You said that you're a problem solver, and it's interesting. Yesterday, my son's leaving for college. He's leaving for Europe for the summer first, and then he's leaving for college. And people don't talk about this enough, or I wasn't listening when they would talk about it. You feel like you're grieving a loss. It's a strange thing. I can't explain. I've never gone through it before. This is the first time. so I'm a rookie at this, but, you know, all of a sudden you'll feel sad, or all of a sudden you feel upset, or all of a sudden you get concerned about your future, and it's… nope, he's healthy, everything is great, like, all you want to do is get your kid to graduate, you know, to go to the next level in life, and now when you're living it, it feels like everything went wrong. It's very tricky mentally. So I went to Claude yesterday because all of a sudden I just felt sad out of nowhere. And I don't get sad often. So I went to Claude. I didn't like it. And I said, Claude, what does this mean? Feeling erratic, out of control emotionally, wondering about your future and. feeling sad that your son is graduating and doing well in life. What does this mean? And so Claude went on to tell me. This is very normal. This is all part of the process. People tell you to be celebratory and proud of them, but the reality is you know that person's leaving your whole life and your identity is going to shift and change and you begin to grieve before they've actually left, which is an interesting concept I hadn't.

Stephanie Cartin [30:59] Mm-hmm.

Heather Monahan [31:06] Thought about it that way. And so I said, oh, OK, great. Now, how do I accelerate this grieving process and fix the problem? And Clyde came back to me and said, Heather, you focus on problem solving all day long in your business, and you're trying to apply it to your mindset. And I'm going to recommend that you do not try to do that right now, but instead sit with it. I was like, oh my gosh, this is not the advice that I wanted. Right. But it was interesting. So often when you just see things through the lens of you, which is like, okay, I got to fix the problem, then let's fix it. But even sometimes the answer could be to maybe sit with it for a little bit. um, choose to see it differently. I'm choosing to see it now as another identity shift, like leaving corporate, like getting divorced, you know, like whatever the thing could be, like being a single mom raising a child, that this is, you know, version 2.0, 5.0, whatever it may be, and getting excited about that, because.

Stephanie Cartin [31:44] Hmm.

Heather Monahan [32:00] Wow. It's a wild thing. I mean, you've got a few years till you're in this.

Stephanie Cartin [32:03] Thank God, because I can't even, I can't even think about it. My heart just, like, pounds, even the thought of, the thought of her not being under our roof anymore, but it's like, you will, like, you love watching them grow up, but then it's like, okay, now? No, what do you do? But… and you know what my mind goes to as you're saying that? I'm in my brain problem-solving for you as you're telling my class, and I'm like, here's what I want to do.

Heather Monahan [32:30] No, because we are that same way that we want to identify the problem, solve the problem, and then keep moving forward. So hopefully we'll get this solved. Make sure you give me all cliff notes that you have. I'll test and try anything, and hopefully we will get through this in the best way possible. Okay, so when you look back on everything, what are those big moments for you that you can see that juxtapose? Like what I was saying, for me, it was leaving corporate and.

Stephanie Cartin [32:34] Yes. Yes.

Heather Monahan [32:58] You know, writing my first book, like when I finally knew I was going to stick with the program or even this moment right now, my son's graduating, I'm calming myself down and I'm going to start doing some bigger things with my business now. Like, when are those big moments that you've had that you're like, I am really proud of me?

Stephanie Cartin [33:16] Oh my gosh, I feel like there's actually a lot of those moments, and something I talk to our members about all the time is, like, remembering to actually celebrate those moments, because we're all, like, on autopilot, just going about building our businesses, building our lives, and sometimes we forget to just sit back. and be like, wow, I did that, that was amazing. And this, Heather, was actually advice that someone in one of our groups gave to us years ago, because we were, like, just going on autopilot in our business, building, building, building, and I remember this moment. We were sitting in our SocialFly office, and Courtney and I were in the back of the office, and we had created an office just like our mentor, Carrie, that had these glass walls, because all we wanted was to have these glass walls so we could see everyone in the office. We never wanted to be isolated from everyone. And we were sitting back there, and we were looking at, I think we had about 20 employees at the time, just. looking out at everyone, and I remember we sat there, and we were like. Wow. We did this. Like, we were just these two young women saying, with this dream and this idea to build this agency, and we sat back, and this was probably about 5 years into the business before we actually had that moment. and looked out at everyone, and I still remember from that point on, Courtney and I are very intentional now about celebrating and talking about all of these great things, wins that are happening in our business, wins that are actually happening for our members. We have a Slack channel at Entrepreneista that's called Member Wins. where anytime we see our members having wins in their business, we share links and we post about it in our, you know, employee Slack chat channel, because we are just so excited to see how everyone else is growing their business. It's why we created this. So I feel like now I'm in this place and space where. We're literally just celebrating women and women business owners in our community every single day. And it feels so good because like I said, and like you know, it's so easy to just go on autopilot and not give yourself credit and not take the moments to celebrate everything that we are all building and doing.

Heather Monahan [35:21] It's such a great reminder for everyone listening right now. Celebrate the small wins that you have. I mean, I know for sure I just steamroll right over them because there's always some bigger goal you're chasing down that you haven't achieved yet. And it's funny, of course, in the season that I'm in right now, the other day. Someone needed me to email a PDF of my books to them for another concept that we're working on for my business. And so I hadn't pulled up my books in a couple of years, right? And so I pulled them up and I looked right quick to make sure I had the right PDF. And when I went to the first page, it was a dedication. Both of my books, and I'd forgotten I had done this, I dedicated to my son. And they were very different messages because they were a couple of years apart. And it was wild because my son at that time has been an NBA fan his whole life. Played basketball like a maniac his whole life. But my first book I wrote 2019 and obviously now it's 2026 and now he's going to college to play basketball. And it was so cool. Like I was so proud of him. I was so proud of me that I dedicated both of my books to my son. Like I had him come out and like read the dedication with me, which. Of course, I'm sure I read some years earlier, but it's never too late to celebrate it when it's never too small to recognize that. And especially when you stop like what you've been doing in the Slack channel and you praise and acknowledge what other people are building and let them do that publicly. I mean, there's a lot of pride around that and it also inspires other people. hey, I can do that too. If you were able to do that, then I can do that too. And there's… there is just a flywheel effect when you start getting people sharing their wins and congratulating and supporting one another.

Stephanie Cartin [36:54] Yes. Yes. Absolutely. We have that channel inside our community as well, so members are all celebrating and sharing their wins too, and then we take that and we share it out in our newsletter as well to make sure everyone sees that on our entire list as well, because what's the point, right? If we're not celebrating and we're not enjoying what we're doing, what's the point of everything?

Heather Monahan [37:22] If we're not having fun, we're off on something. We're missing something. There's something that we're not seeing. Maybe we need the partner. Maybe it's a person or a system or something that we're missing, but life is meant to be joyful. Yet again, that's another thing I love about entrepreneurial communities is that most people are doing something that they really love versus I didn't really feel like everyone in corporate America was necessarily doing what they were put on this earth to do. And for anyone listening right now, stop playing small. If you've got a calling on your heart, pursue it. Even like Stephanie said, if you just do it at night and on the weekends at first. Do it until you get that momentum so that you can make that leap. Stephanie, what's a business lesson and a teaching that you can leave with the listeners today?

Stephanie Cartin [38:00] Yep. You do not have to navigate business alone. There is community and support for you. You just have to reach out and join, or ask for that support and help, and people will show up and be there for you.

Heather Monahan [38:20] The problem is so many people don't ask for help. They think that's a sign of weakness when, in fact, it's a sign of strength.

Stephanie Cartin [38:25] Yes. Ask for the help. People will show up, people will be there for you, and then you'll eventually pay it forward as well.

Heather Monahan [38:33] How can people find out about entrepreneurs that they want to look at joining the community? Where do they go?

Stephanie Cartin [38:39] You can head over to entrepreneza.com/join to join the Entrepreneza League. And feel free to reach out to me personally everywhere and anywhere on social media, on Instagram @stephjelcartin, C-A-R-T-I-N. and Stephanie Carton on LinkedIn, and you can find us on Entrepreneistas all over social, everywhere, at Entrepreneistas, with an S at the end on social.

Heather Monahan [39:03] Thank you so much for all you're doing. Thank you for all the transparency, for all the teachings, for all the success that you created, and for… doing it unapologetically, because I love the attitude, and I appreciate you.

Stephanie Cartin [39:16] Thank you, Heather.

Heather Monahan [39:17] All right, guys, until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know I will be.

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.