The Scenic Route with Victoria Steward

Victoria Steward
  • 5.0 (3)
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What if the detour was never a wrong turn? We get handed one map early on: the superhighway. Pick the career, hit the milestones, stay in the fast lane somebody else drew for us. And one day a lot of us look up and realize it's been heading somewhere we never actually chose. This is a show about the people who got off it. I'm Victoria Steward. I spent 20 years as a federal civilian engineer/project manager before I left on a gut feeling and started taking my own scenic route. Every week I sit down with interesting people who made a change, sometimes sudden, sometimes so gradual they almost missed it, that sent their life somewhere they never saw coming. The kind of stories that inspire you to start dreaming into your own. If you've started to wonder whether there's a different road available to you, you're in exactly the right place. ✨ New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss one.

  1. 1d ago

    Aerospace to Neuroscience: Giuseppina Derudas Is Building on Her Own Timeline

    At nineteen, Giuseppina Derudas left Sardinia for London with an acceptance letter and English good enough to pass a test but not good enough to follow an aerospace engineering lecture. She had wanted to be an astronaut. Fifteen years later she is formulating a sleep supplement. The route between those two points runs through Lockheed Martin, a merger that dissolved the plan she had built her future on, and a question at thirty that has no engineering answer. It also runs through her mother, who could not sleep. She is still consulting full time, and that is deliberate. She is funding all her startup costs herself and refuses to ask a brand-new business to keep her financially afloat while it is still in its infancy. We talk about the years she spent stuck, the trip that unstuck everything, and why she will tell you plainly that there is no rush. Chapters 00:00 Welcome to The Scenic Route: meet Giuseppina Derudas 01:18 From Sardinia to London at Nineteen 06:39 Lockheed Martin and the Leadership Development Program 07:55 When a Merger Dissolves Your Career Plan 12:00 The Identity Crisis at 30 13:17 Depression, a Breakup, and the Meditation That Helped 20:06 Going Back to University for Neuroscience 24:18 Her Mother, Xanax, and the Problem With Benzodiazepines 27:00 She Dreamt Again: the first sign it worked 32:36 Stuck in European Red Tape 33:45 The Miami Decision: launching in the US instead 34:59 How to Build a Company While Working Full Time 37:53 Why She Will Not Let the Business Pay Her Bills Yet 43:36 There Is No Right Path 45:01 Planting Seeds and Letting Them Grow ABOUT GIUSEPPINA DERUDAS Giuseppina Derudas is a systems engineering and project management consultant with a postgraduate degree in applied neuroscience from King’s College London. She is the founder of Amreeta Health and the formulator of Sleep Magic, a sleep supplement launching in the US market in fall 2026. Keep up to date on Amreeta and Sleep Magic: On Instagram Join the Waitlist! ABOUT VICTORIA Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route. Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call. RESOURCES The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap The Engineer’s Exit Decision Toolkit The 5-Minute Grounding Reset Website: FOLLOW On LinkedIn On Instagram 🎙️ This show is recorded with Riverside, the easiest way to run a professional podcast and livestream simultaneously. Thinking about starting your own show? Try now.

    Aerospace to Neuroscience: Giuseppina Derudas Is Building on Her Own Timeline

  2. 4d ago

    Stephanie Jones on the Self-Care Trap: It’s Not You, It’s the System Making You Sick

    One of Stephanie's first clients was a fifteen year old who had just picked up a stack of legal charges. It was her first week out of grad school, and nobody had finished training her. She figured it out, but there were consequences. Twenty years later she is a licensed clinical social worker and a clinical consultant, and when people ask her who her client is, her answer is unexpected: her client isn't a person, it's a system. Which sounds abstract right up until someone hands you a bubble bath and calls it a solution to what is happening day after day, month after month. We talk about what happens when a group practice scales and starts to feel like profit first instead of team, why an outside consultant gets heard saying the same things staff have been saying for years, what a trauma-informed workplace looks like in actual policy rather than in a values statement, and the thing Stephanie calls a trap that almost every exhausted professional has been told will help. Chapters 00:00 Meet Stephanie Jones, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Clinical Consultant 01:34 She Thought She Would Be a Lawyer: How She Found Social Work Instead 02:44 First Job Out of Undergrad: Inside a Residential Group Home for At-Risk Youth 05:23 The Supervisor Who Changed Everything and the Gift of Being Told You Are Doing Fine 06:33 What High Acuity Means, and Why New Social Workers Get the Hardest Cases 09:05 Why an Outside Consultant Gets Heard When the Staff Never Did 11:36 When a Group Practice Scales: How Profit First Replaces Team 13:57 My Client Isn't a Person, It's a System 17:12 Trauma-Informed Workplace Design 18:30 Secondary Trauma, Transparency, and Water Cooler Anxiety 21:11 Layoffs, Moral Injury, and Why Baseline Anxiety Is Everywhere Now 24:06 Maslow at Work: Why Collaboration Is What Makes People Stay 28:06 How Practice Owners Rebuild the Hierarchy They Left 31:23 Staying in Your Values and Still Making Money 37:54 The Self-Care Trap: What New Social Workers Are Never Told About Stephanie Stephanie Jones is a licensed clinical social worker and clinical consultant with more than 20 years of micro and macro social work experience, helping agencies and group practices build trauma-informed workplaces. Website Follow On LinkedIn Follow On Instagram Mentioned: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman You Need A Budget, YNAB.com Profit for Keeps® is registered trademarks of Amber Dugger LLC. ABOUT VICTORIA Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route. Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call RESOURCES The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap The 5-Minute Grounding Reset FOLLOW On LinkedIn On Instagram

    Stephanie Jones on the Self-Care Trap: It’s Not You, It’s the System Making You Sick

  3. Aug 12

    Magnolia Cloyd Is Building a Life First Business in the Margins of Her Day

    Magnolia Cloyd wanted to be a chef. Then she heard that only one in four restaurants makes it, decided she would be one of the three that fail, and went to study marketing and entrepreneurship instead because it felt safer. Fifteen years later she runs her own design studio. She is building it in the margins of her day, around homeschooling two children and a husband who works ten to fourteen hour days. Which sounds like a limitation, right up until she does the arithmetic out loud. We talk about the planner she made for herself in the middle of young motherhood, the three words she built her whole studio around, why she spent years afraid to name the clients she actually wanted, and what it takes to keep going when growth is slow and gradual. CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome to The Scenic Route: meet Magnolia Cloyd 03:14 She Wanted to Be a Chef: the plan before design 04:08 The Statistic That Changed Her Mind About Restaurants 05:04 Teaching Herself Graphic Design on the Job 06:26 Coming Home in 2020 06:55 The Planner She Made for Herself 09:41 Where Beauty, Strategy, and Ease Came From 14:40 Catching Yourself Forcing It 20:41 Why She Was Afraid to Name the Clients She Wanted 24:57 Regret, and Every Earlier Version of Herself 29:29 Building in the Margins 36:14 Building in the Quiet Before Anyone Is Watching 42:43 Be, Do, Have 44:41 How an Hour a Day Compounds 46:29 Building a Life First Business LEARN MORE ABOUT MAGNOLIA Her two signature services: The Grace Edit, for books, devotionals, journals, and planners, and The Strength Edit, for brand design for founders and nonprofits. Get Magnolia's Freebie Here!! Website In the Margins with Magnolia on YouTube On Instagram On LinkedIn ABOUT VICTORIA Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route. Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call. RESOURCES The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap The Engineer’s Exit Decision Toolkit The 5-Minute Grounding Reset Website FOLLOW On LinkedIn On Instagram 🎙️ This show is recorded with Riverside, the easiest way to run a professional podcast and livestream simultaneously. Thinking about starting your own show? Try Now!

    Magnolia Cloyd Is Building a Life First Business in the Margins of Her Day

  4. Aug 7

    Justin Anderson on the Fantasy World Where Mental Health Is the Magic, Not the Villain

    Justin Anderson knows that trade or setting aside a part yourself, especially the creative side. He spent years as a network engineer, keeping systems running to precision, while the writer in him sat in a drawer next to grief he had been taught to keep silent. When he finally started writing again, something he expected to be a little side income, it cracked that drawer open. Sixteen years of suppressed grief came up through his characters. And instead of choosing between the engineer and the writer, the logic and the imagination, he built a world big enough to hold both. That world is the VaelorinVerse: a dark fantasy universe where mental health is the magic system, not the villain. Justin built it for everyone carrying an invisible weight nobody else can see. The caregiver grieving someone who is still alive. The first responder who cannot show a crack. He did not build it to fix them. He built it to provide a place where they feel seen. In this conversation Justin and I get into why so much of what we are shown about mental illness is wrong, the two doors of grief, and why building something real takes longer and looks less dramatic than the quit-your-job-and-go-all-in story we keep getting sold. CHAPTERS 00:00 Meet Justin Anderson and the VaelorinVerse 03:48 The Kid Who Dreamed of Being a Psychologist and a Writer 06:20 Why Algebra Ended the Psychology Dream and Engineering Won 11:24 Coming Full Circle Back to the Mind and Writing 13:50 Why Movies and Books Get Mental Illness Wrong 15:24 How Writing Surfaced 16 Years of Suppressed Grief 24:40 The Toxic Writing Group That Sent Him Back to Therapy 28:32 Building a Fantasy World Where No One Feels Alone 32:41 The Invisible Weight First Responders and Caregivers Carry 34:33 Grieving Someone Who Is Still Alive 43:32 Four Doors Into the Same House: Making Help Accessible 47:53 Why You Do Not Have to Quit Your Job to Build Something Real 54:51 Therapy Is Not One Size Fits All 58:54 The Two Doors of Grief and Why Externalizing Works EXPLORE THE VAELORINVERSE The VaelorinVerse (novel, audio, folklore, memorial wall, shop) On LinkedIn On Instagram On YouTube ABOUT VICTORIA Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route. Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call RESOURCES The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap The 5-Minute Grounding Reset FOLLOW On LinkedIn On Instagram Website

    Justin Anderson on the Fantasy World Where Mental Health Is the Magic, Not the Villain

  5. Aug 6

    Jo Bee on Getting Out of Her Own Way: The Only Thing Stopping Me Was Me

    Jo Bee had been teaching dance for twenty years when she started noticing something on her birthday. Not New Year, her birthday. Every year the same question would arrive: what happens now? She was good at her job. She knew she was good. She also knew, in a way she had never said out loud, that she had spent two decades adding a "but" to the end of every sentence about herself. Yes, I teach dance, but only in schools... yes, but. Then one birthday she stopped adding the but. What Jo describes in this conversation is not a career change. She did not leave dance; she asked dance for MORE. She started an Instagram account. She went back to being a beginner in someone else's class. She told a stranger she could choreograph, and when the choreographer dropped out, she choreographed a short film that screened in New York! None of it required her to be the best. That is the part she wants you to hear. Somewhere in the last three years she worked out that she does not have to be in order to be good at this, be successful at it, and love it. CHAPTERS 00:00 Meet Jo Bee: Dance Teacher, Choreographer and Founder of Jo Bee Dance 01:22 Twenty Years of Teaching Dance in Schools and Wanting Something More 02:42 Why Her Birthday and Not New Year Became the Reset Point Every Year 03:14 The Only Thing Stopping Me Was Me: Naming the Real Obstacle 03:38 Starting an Instagram and Deciding to Shoot Her Shot Everywhere 06:17 How Minimizing Your Own Achievements Keeps You Exactly Where You Are 07:39 Going Back to Class at Pineapple Studios and Ending Up Teaching There 09:11 Choreographing a Short Film That Screened in New York 12:00 I Was Not Unhappy, But There Was an Itch: Is There More Than This? 14:17 Why Dance Belongs in the Wellness Conversation Next to Yoga and Pilates 16:26 You Do Not Have to Be the Best: The Realization That Set Her Free 18:13 Teaching a Room Full of Corporate Women in Suits How to Dance 24:54 What Is Next: Wellness in the Wild, Corporate Wellbeing and New York 29:43 If You Do Not Ask, You Do Not Get: What Jo Wants You to Take Away LEARN MORE FROM JO BEE Jo Bee is a London based dance teacher and choreographer, and the founder of Jo Bee Dance. Want to join Jo Bee in person join her at the Wellness in the Wild Festival in Suffolk. Follow on Instagram Website ABOUT VICTORIA Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route. Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call RESOURCES The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap The 5-Minute Grounding Reset: https://reset.victoria-steward.com FOLLOW On LinkedIn On Instagram Website

    Jo Bee on Getting Out of Her Own Way: The Only Thing Stopping Me Was Me

  6. Jul 29

    Julie Harris Oliver Waited Until 50 to Give Herself Permission to Want More

    What if the exit you keep rehearsing is one you could actually negotiate Julie Harris Oliver was walking into the building to quit her job with no plan, phone pressed to her ear, when her mom said the words that stopped her cold: too bad you can’t negotiate your exit. Julie’s answer, to herself, was instant, "But I can." That reflex, catching the permission a half-second before she could talk herself out of it, runs through her whole story. Julie arrived in Hollywood as an acting major and left 25 years later as a finance leader who had run a $2B book of business. She was the accidental expert who once got hired by writing a ten page email to a boss who assumed the word ACTING on her resume was a acronym for accounting. Victoria and Julie talk about negotiating an exit instead of just leaving, why burnout recovery takes far longer than anyone admits, and the thing Julie now sees in nearly every client: a buried mission that will not shut up. CHAPTERS 00:00 Meeting Leadership Coach Julie Harris Oliver 01:50 From Acting Major at NYU to Behind the Camera in Hollywood 04:15 The Bookkeeping Job That Launched a Finance Career 07:27 When Her Boss Thought Her Acting Degree Said Accounting 11:15 Realizing the Struggle Was Systemic, Not Personal 14:12 How She Negotiated Her Exit Instead of Just Quitting 16:38 Why Burnout Recovery Takes Longer Than You Think 19:36 Inside a DEI Team Led by Women of Color at Warner 24:23 The Broken Wrist and the Signs She Kept Ignoring 25:20 At Fifty She Decided Now Was the Time 26:50 Saying No to the Deal and the Relief She Felt in Her Body 30:08 The Two Kinds of Clients She Loves Coaching 32:35 There Are No Rules Anymore, and What That Makes Possible 39:43 Her Podcast Deep Work Out Loud and the Cohort She Is Building Learn More from Julie: Website Book a complimentary consultation Deep Work Out Loud: YouTube, Apple Podcasts Instagram LinkedIn ABOUT VICTORIA Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route. Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call RESOURCES Monthly Masterclass The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap The 5-Minute Grounding Reset FOLLOW LinkedIn On Instagram

    Julie Harris Oliver Waited Until 50 to Give Herself Permission to Want More

  7. Jul 22

    Multipassionate and Done Apologizing for It: Lizbeth Marquez on Following Every Aha

    What if the path that looks like you can’t make up your mind is actually the most honest thing about you? Lizbeth Marquez has started more things than most people try in a lifetime: a hair care line born in an oncology ward, an events business, a brand strategy practice, a high-ticket sales career, and now a podcast she co-hosts with her best friend. For years she carried all of it like a flaw. She figured she was scattered, maybe had ADHD, couldn’t settle on the one thing she was supposed to pick. This conversation is about the moment that story flipped. Victoria and Lizbeth, two podcast hosts who each spent two decades in one world before following a feeling into another, get into what it actually takes to trust the next aha: how Lizbeth knew when to move, why she never leapt without building a bridge first, and a hard-won lesson about choosing a business partner that cost her more than money. CHAPTERS 00:00 Meet Lizbeth Marquez: Podcast Host, Brand Strategist, Former Medical Professional 02:38 Falling Into Medicine at 15 and the Creative Dreams She Set Aside 04:37 Pregnant at 18 and Choosing the Safe Path 05:33 The PA School Dream and Three Rounds of Rejection 09:18 From Oncology to Entrepreneurship: The Patient Who Sparked a Hair Care Business 12:52 Starting an Events Business With a Partner 15:16 What Multipassionate Really Means and Why It Is a Strength 16:13 How She Knows When It Is Time to Pivot: Following the Aha 22:33 Why She Did Not Quit Her Job to Chase the Business 23:44 Using High-Ticket Remote Sales as a Bridge Out of Medicine 27:53 Why She Started the Work Drama Podcast 34:09 How Free Headshots Led Her to a Podcast Studio 37:05 Do Your Due Diligence Before Taking on a Business Partner 42:53 Trusting Herself Again and Starting Over at 39 LEARN MORE FROM LIZBETH Website FOLLOW On Instagram Work Drama Podcast On TikTok Apple/Spotify ABOUT VICTORIA Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route. Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call FOLLOW On LinkedIn On Instagram RESOURCES The Engineer’s Exit Decision Toolkit The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap The 5-Minute Grounding Reset Website

    Multipassionate and Done Apologizing for It: Lizbeth Marquez on Following Every Aha

  8. Jul 15

    Maren Londahl-Smidt on Money, ADHD, and Designing a Business Around Your Capacity

    Maren Londahl-Smidt did the in-between. She built her private practice while she was still working her hospital job. First clients on two evenings, then a third day, then a fourth, waiting until she knew her practice could provide the revenue she needed before she let go of anything. She did not leave until the runway had cured. When people ask her when the right time was, she says there is never a perfect time and you will always be scared, but there is a better time, and there is a better way. Maren is a therapist, a cash flow strategist, a fellow Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, and she was my very first PFK® practice client. She has ADHD, and instead of fighting it, she built a whole coaching business around it. Her guiding question is not how much can I push myself to do. It is what is my actual capacity, and how do I design the money and the work around that. In this conversation we get into the money anxiety that hit the moment she went full-time on her own, why she fired a nine-hundred-dollar-a-month accountant who would not even tell her what to set aside for taxes, how Profit for Keeps® finally connected her personal and business finances, and why designing around your real capacity is not lowering the bar. It is how you keep showing up for the people you serve. CHAPTERS 00:00 Meet Maren Londahl-Smidt, Therapist and Money Coach 02:15 From Horse Shows to a Grad School She Found Online 03:43 The ER, the Burnout, and the Income That Never Added Up 05:20 Why Private Practice, and the Insurance Trap She Left Behind 10:39 The Strategic, Staged Exit: No Weekends and No Leap 12:45 Never a Perfect Time, but a Better Time and a Better Way 13:52 The Money Anxiety That Hit the Moment She Went Solo 14:48 Firing the Expensive Accountant and Finding Profit for Keeps® 17:49 How a Coaching Business Was Born From an Offhand Question 23:50 Niches, Profit for Joy®, and Learning Her Real Capacity 28:12 Finding Her People: Therapists With ADHD 33:27 What's Coming Up LEARN MORE FROM MAREN Join the Predictable Pay Challenge: 5 days, July 27-31, 12pm EDT, for therapists with ADHD or ADHD tendencies. Learn more about the ADHD Practice and Profit Cohort with Amber Dugger: 6 months with built-in rest weeks, limited to 24 people, kicks off August 10. Follow Maren for More On Instagram Join her Facebook Group: Profit for Keeps for Therapists ABOUT VICTORIA Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit & Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, and their own timing. Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call. FOLLOW On LinkedIn On Instagram RESOURCES The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap The 5-Minute Grounding Reset

    Maren Londahl-Smidt on Money, ADHD, and Designing a Business Around Your Capacity
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

What if the detour was never a wrong turn? We get handed one map early on: the superhighway. Pick the career, hit the milestones, stay in the fast lane somebody else drew for us. And one day a lot of us look up and realize it's been heading somewhere we never actually chose. This is a show about the people who got off it. I'm Victoria Steward. I spent 20 years as a federal civilian engineer/project manager before I left on a gut feeling and started taking my own scenic route. Every week I sit down with interesting people who made a change, sometimes sudden, sometimes so gradual they almost missed it, that sent their life somewhere they never saw coming. The kind of stories that inspire you to start dreaming into your own. If you've started to wonder whether there's a different road available to you, you're in exactly the right place. ✨ New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss one.

Information

  • Creator
    Victoria Steward
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    25
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Victoria Steward