The Scenic Route with Victoria Steward

What happens when you do everything the right way and still burn out? You try again. And again. Until you finally stop trying to fit yourself into someone else's blueprint.Katie Fortunato is a Licensed Professional Counselor and EMDR therapist who built her practice the way she was told to... and hit the wall every single time. School counselor. Pivot in an unplanned direction due to COVID. Air Force Academy position. Group practice. Private practice. And at every stop: burnout, because the model she was handed wasn't built for her.In this conversation, Katie and Victoria talk about what it actually takes to build something sustainable: starting with what you need (not what someone else did), figuring out your real number before you set any goals, and why the identity shift from clinician to practice owner is the part nobody warns you about.If you are a therapist thinking about private practice, this one was made for you. And if you are not a therapist but you have ever tried to build something using someone else's rules and wondered why it kept breaking, this one is for you too.CHAPTERS00:00 Welcome and introducing Katie Fortunato00:41 Who Katie is now: LPC, EMDR therapist, and coach for therapists01:14 Where it started: the straight-line plan and the first detour03:19 Five years as a school counselor: the promise vs. the bureaucracy04:19 Selling everything in February 2020... and then COVID happened07:17 The scenic route to private practice: Air Force Academy, group practice, and the moment she finally said yes10:07 Knowing what you are worth and refusing to accept less12:13 Year one of private practice: why the model she inherited nearly broke her15:21 Her methodology: why the number has to come from your life, not from industry averages18:27 Therapist pay, martyr culture, and the internal message that says you don't deserve more22:03 The group program: building with a cohort instead of building alone31:02 What she wishes she had told herself at the start: vision first, build second37:11 The founders cohort: what is open, how long, and what founders get38:31 Where to find Katie and wrapABOUT KATIEKatie Fortunato is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) | EMDR Therapist | Group Practice Owner | Coach for Therapists Building Private PracticesLearn More:Instagram: @katiefortunatocoachingFrom Clinician to Practice Owner: Build, Launch & Grow for Therapists Facebook GroupTo Learn More About Katies Group Program: Book a CallABOUT VICTORIAVictoria Steward is a Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach who helps senior women in tech and engineering build the financial clarity and career confidence to leave corporate on their own terms. After 20 years as a civilian engineer for the U.S. Navy, she took the scenic route to get here... and she's been reaching a hand back ever since.On LinkedIn: @victoria-steward-coachingOn Instagram: @victoria.steward.coachWebsite: victoria-steward.com🎙️Record your own podcast with Riverside.

Leaving corporate and building your runway number: why knowing it isn’t the same as feeling ready to go.You’ve run the numbers. You have the savings. And somehow, you still don’t feel ready to leave.That’s not a math problem. That’s a missing system.Victoria Steward, Financial Empowerment Coach and former 20-year Navy engineer, shares why the number alone doesn’t create financial safety, what happened when she left corporate with $100k and no cashflow system, and the one shift that moves you from financial anxiety to genuine delight in paying your bills.This episode is for you if you keep telling yourself “one more year” even though the math already says you’re ready.CHAPTERS00:00 Why Your Runway Number Isn’t the Finish Line01:00 The Debt Cycle: Why Getting Out of Debt Can Feel Unsafe02:30 Why Having Your Runway Number Can Feel Terrifying03:30 Left the Navy With $100k and Still Felt Like Freefall06:00 What “Going on Vibes” Actually Costs You07:30 The Number Is Information, Not Safety09:00 Giving Every Dollar a Job: What a Cashflow System Does10:30 From Braced to Neutral to Delighted: How Money Shifts11:30 Why Victoria Pays Her Bills With Genuine Delight12:30 Shelby Herber on Money Stress and Everything Else14:00 How Long Is Enough? Why Your Runway Number Is Personal16:00 Could You Have a Million Dollars and Still Feel Unsafe?17:30 Know Your Number Masterclass: Friday May 1CURIOUS TO KNOW YOUR RUNWAY?Register for Know Your Number Masterclass: Friday May 1, 2026 at 12pm ET: 3 Strategies to Leave Corporate & Start Your Business.About VictoriaVictoria Steward is a Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach who helps senior women in tech and engineering build the financial clarity and career confidence to leave corporate on their own terms. After 20 years as a civilian engineer for the U.S. Navy, she took the scenic route to get here... and she’s been reaching a hand back ever since.LinksWebsite: victoria-steward.comInstagram: @victoria.steward.coachLinkedIn: @victoria-steward-coachingYouTube: 🎤 This show is recorded with Riverside, the easiest way to run a professional podcast and livestream simultaneously. Thinking about starting your own show?

You know that feeling when everything looks right on paper but something keeps trying to get your attention?For Shelby Renae, that “something” wasn’t subtle. It showed up as seizure episodes before she left for the Philippines. As a nervous system that never fully settled through two years in the Peace Corps. As a conservation job that matched her degree perfectly and slowly wore her down anyway.Shelby did what a lot of us do: she kept pushing through. She was good at it. And her body kept escalating.In this conversation, Shelby and I trace the whole scenic route: the travel bug that lit up in eighth grade, the marine science degree, the Peace Corps assignment to the Philippines (where a volcano eventually made the decision for her), and the long, winding road back to herself through holistic health, Ayurvedic medicine, and eventually the money framework that gave her and her partner the runway to leave the States entirely for six months in Mexico.What I love about Shelby’s story is that none of it reads as a detour. Every chapter taught her something she now brings to the women she works with: heart-led practitioners and wellness entrepreneurs who are incredible at what they do and exhausted by what money stress costs them. She built a life by learning to listen. Now she’s teaching others to do the same.This one is for you if you’ve ever felt your body trying to tell you something your plans weren’t ready to hear.WHAT YOU'LL HEAR ON THIS EPISODE💫The eighth-grade trip to Poland that planted the travel seed Shelby is still following today💫How Shelby kept overriding her body’s signals to make it to the Peace Corps in the Philippines, and what two years there cost her nervous system💫The volcano evacuation that ended her Peace Corps service and the holding pattern in Manila that forced her to figure out what came next💫How her cycle disappearing for over four years became the clearest feedback system she’d ever had💫The compound path from naturopathic medicine to Ayurveda to life coaching school to Profit for Keeps®, and how each step built on the last💫Why Shelby believes money stress is often the root that holds everything else back💫How the PFK® framework gave Shelby and her partner Dan the runway to leave their jobs, travel Mexico for six months, and build toward what’s actually nextCONNECT WITH SHELBY@shelbyrenaewellness on InstagramShelby Renae on LinkedInBook a Clarity Call with ShelbyRegister for the Masterclass Replay: Why Does Money Feel So Hard in a Heart-Led Business?About VictoriaVictoria Steward is a Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach who helps senior women in tech and engineering build the financial clarity and career confidence to leave corporate on their own terms. Want to get clear on what your runway? Join Victoria for her free masterclass on May 1st: Three Strategies to Move From ‘Just One More Year’ to Your Real Runway.masterclass.victoria-steward.com LinksInstagram: @victoria.steward.coachLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/victoria-steward-coachingWebsite: victoria-steward.com

What if the version of you who doesn’t know what comes next isn’t lost... she’s just between chapters? My friend Chetal Patel has lived her life in eight-year cycles. Eight years on Wall Street. Eight years teaching English to immigrant kids in NYC public schools. Eight years raising her children, including twins who came after a long and hard infertility journey. And now: a fourth cycle, a certified health coach who specializes in change itself, sitting in the in-between and letting herself not know yet what comes next. We met in Emily Fletcher’s Evidence of Magic community, and the way Chetal talks about her own life stopped me the first time I heard it. Not because she made dramatic leaps, but because she has this uncanny ability to feel when a chapter is truly closing and to trust that signal, even when everyone around her is asking why she would walk away from something good. In this conversation, we talk about the moment 9/11 planted the first seed of “what am I actually doing with my life,” leaving six figures for a classroom because a cousin asked the right question at the right time, what postpartum depression taught her about the difference between the life that looks perfect on paper and the life you can actually live in, and why sitting in the unknown is still the muscle she is building, even now. This one is for you if you know something is shifting but you don’t yet have a name for what comes next. Chetal makes that space feel a lot less lonely. What You'll Hear On This Episode🌟 How 9/11 cracked open the first real question Chetal had ever asked herself about her own life, and why it took years for that question to actually change anything🌟 What it felt like to leave a six-figure Wall Street career in her mid-20s when nobody around her understood why, and how her husband’s support made the leap possible🌟 The pivot muscle: why her first career change was the hardest and every one after that got a little more familiar🌟 What she discovered about herself inside the isolation of motherhood, and how therapy and meditation became the foundation for everything that came after🌟 Why she’s deliberately sitting in uncertainty right now, not building the next thing yet, and what that is teaching her about modeling a different kind of life for her kids🌟 The deathbed question she has always used as a quiet gut check, and why it keeps pointing her toward what’s true🌟 Her reminder that you are not carrying skills from the past into an empty future: you are integrating, not replacingConnect with Chetal@chetalppatel on InstagramFIND VICTORIAVictoria Steward is a Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach who helps senior women in tech and engineering build the financial clarity and career confidence to leave corporate on their own terms. After 20 years as a civilian engineer for the U.S. Navy, she took the scenic route to get here... and she’s been reaching a hand back ever since.Register of the May 1st MasterclassThree Strategies to Move From “Just One More Year” to Your Real [email protected] on Instagram@victoria-steward-coaching on LinkedInvictoria-steward.com

The output still looks fine from the outside. She is still delivering, still the reliable one, still showing up.But inside, she is hollowing out.In this solo episode, Victoria Steward talks honestly about what that actually feels like: the Fridays that feel impossible to finish, the weekends that are just recovery, the exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. She went to the doctors. The labs came back normal. And somehow that was the most disorienting part of all.Because it's not a body problem. It's years of misalignment that only gets louder once you get still enough to hear it. And the first thing that actually shifts it isn't a system, a spreadsheet, or another certification. It's a practice for figuring out what you actually want... when you've spent so long doing what you were supposed to want that your own desire went quiet.Victoria walks you through an abbreviated version of the five-senses visualization of your post corporate future she uses with every coaching client, and explains why spending time in the life you're building is the first step to making it feel safe enough to move toward.If the version of you that keeps showing up is getting smaller... this one is for you.WHAT YOU'LL HEAR:The exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix... and why the labs coming back normal is the most disorienting partWhat it actually looks like when your output still looks fine on the outside, but inside you are hollowing outWhy you keep delivering, keep showing up, keep being the reliable one... and why that makes it so hard to name what's wrongWhat happens when you've spent so long doing what you thought you were supposed to that your own desires have gone completely quietWhy spending time in the life you're building teaches your brain it safe to move toward itRESOURCES MENTIONEDZiva MeditationLayla Martin VITA Coaching Methodology: laylamartin.comRegister for my Masterclass on the 1st of May: Three Strategies to Move From 'Just One More Year' to Your Real RunwayDownload My 5 min Grounding Reset: reset.victoria-steward.comFind Victoria:On Instagram @victoria.steward.coachOn LinkedIn @victoria-steward-coachingWebsite: victoria-steward.com 🎤 This show is recorded with Riverside: the easiest way to run a professional podcast and livestream simultaneously. Thinking about starting your own show?

What if your body already knew the way... and the work was just learning to listen to it?In this episode, Victoria sits down with her friend Abigail Morrissey: holistic RN, yoga teacher, postpartum doula, Vital Mind Reset Coach, twerk therapist, and author of Shattered to Shine: You Put Yourself Together Again. Abigail grew up on what looked like a very clear path: Catholic school, nursing, marriage, family. What she discovered instead was that the plan she'd been handed had almost nothing to do with who she actually was.What followed were three major pivots that each cracked something open: a broken arm at 25 that introduced her to Eastern medicine and the mind-body connection, a global pandemic that made her question everything she'd been taught, and a marriage that ended and brought her face to face with herself. Each one felt like a 180. Each one brought her deeper.Now Abigail works with women to address period pain and other physical symptoms by going to all three layers at once: the physical, the mental, and the emotional. And twerking, it turns out, is a key part of the practice. Not for Instagram. For moving stuck emotions out of the body.If you've ever been really, really good at not feeling your feelings... this one's for you.Find [email protected] on Instagram  |  Victoria Steward on LinkedIn  |  victoria-steward.comFind Abigail MorrisseyInstagram: @shinewellnessllcCommunity: Inner Light Temple (free Skool group)Book: Shattered to Shine: You Put Yourself Together Again & Shattered to Shine Journal🎤 This show is recorded with Riverside — the easiest way I've found to run a professional podcast and livestream simultaneously. Thinking about starting your own show? riverside.sjv.io/PzzkY

What would you do differently if you realized the life you've been living was partly scripted for you before you were old enough to choose?Dianne Tremblay is a number one international bestselling author, entrepreneur, and strategic growth advisor who has spent her career at the intersection of health, technology, and entrepreneurship. But the real turning points weren't the credentials. They were the quiet wake-up calls she almost missed: a $40 hat that stopped her cold, a brain tumor diagnosis that arrived like a voice asking if she'd finally pay attention, and the slow recognition that some of the patterns running her life weren't even hers.Her forthcoming book The Inheritance is about exactly this: what we absorb from our families and ancestors without ever consciously choosing it... and what becomes possible when we finally stop and look.If you've ever wondered how much of your life you're actually living on purpose, this one's for you. ✨WHAT YOU’LL HEARThe birthday hat vs. the apartment building: the moment Dianne stopped on a street at 40 and made a vow she'd never told anyone... until nowThe brain tumor diagnosis that arrived like a voice saying: "are you going to pay attention now?"... and what she said backHow a 14-day whitewater rafting trip through Nepal cracked something open, and why sometimes the shift comes before you understand itWhy she went from "I don't want to write a book" to writing 10 in a webinar chat and buying in on the spotThe patterns we inherit from our families and ancestors without realizing it, and how to start seeing the water you're swimming inAI as a tool for self-discovery: why Dianne sees it as a relationship, not a search engineThe question she leaves every listener with: what are you doing on autopilot? What if you lived fully awake?Find Dianne Tremblaydiannetremblay.com@diannetremblayyDianne Tremblay on LinkedInStart Over: Turn Any Loss Into a Sensational Comeback (Volume 9)The Inheritance : releasing June 2026.Stadium GamesBioInsightsNational Foundation for Integrative Medicine (NFIM)Find [email protected] Steward on LinkedInvictoria-steward.comCan I Pivot Yet? Calculator 🎙️ Recorded with Riverside

What do you do when you’ve done everything right... and everything still feels wrong?In this first solo episode of The Scenic Route, Victoria Steward shares the real story behind why she left a 20-year career as a civilian engineer for the U.S. Navy: not because she had a plan, but because her body and her nervous system finally said enough.Victoria talks honestly about the burnout that didn’t look like burnout from the outside: the $120k salary she somehow couldn’t hold onto, the Fridays she couldn’t finish, the weekends spent in recovery mode instead of living. And the one thing that finally started to shift it: a simple meditation practice that made the signal louder than the noise.This is also the story of what happened after she left: the detours into Reiki, sound healing, and animal communication; the slow realization that none of it was a wrong turn; and the winding scenic route that eventually brought all the parts of her back home.If you’ve ever felt like you’re on the right path but it doesn’t feel like yours... this one’s for you.What You’ll Hear in This EpisodeWhy a $120k government salary didn’t feel like financial safety... and what was actually going onThe burnout that didn’t look like burnout: Fridays that felt impossible, weekends built entirely around recoveryHow podcasts first cracked open her curiosity during COVID... and why that’s partly why this show existsFinding Ziva Meditation with Emily Fletcher: the first thing that actually shifted somethingWhy the signal got louder in the stillness... and why that felt more frustrating before it felt freeingLeaving the Navy in October 2023 with a gut feeling and no plan (and what happened next)The scenic route that followed: Reiki, sound healing, animal communication, PFK® coaching, VITA(TM), and finding her way back to the middleWhy none of it was a detour... and why the engineering brain was never the problemResources MentionedZiva Meditation with Emily Fletcher: zivameditation.comProfit for Keeps® Coaching Certification: Amber Dugger LLCFind Victoria: @victoria.steward.coach on Instagram · Victoria Steward Coaching on LinkedIn · Website: victoria-steward.com