The Scenic Route with Victoria Steward

What if the thing standing between you and the life you actually want was never the number in your bank account? Jessica Kleine is a money coach for women, and she will be the first to tell you that the numbers have almost nothing to do with it. She has watched clients double their income and walk straight into problems twice the size. Six and a half years in, she is clear that the math was always...

John Petrozelli has built his whole life around one rule: before you make a big move, prep the ground, study the risks, then leap. He learned it as an Air Force intelligence officer, sharpened it across seventeen years and five different roles in the FBI, and carried it into a career in cybersecurity. So what happens when a man who plans everything tells you about the one time he leapt without a p...

It’s 2am. You’re three videos deep into someone promising the one protocol, the one supplement, the one secret that big pharma has supposedly been keeping from you. And here’s the part that stings: at 2pm you run a team, read the data, command the room. So why does the magic-bullet pitch land so hard at midnight? That question sits at the heart of this conversation with Rachel Smith, DNP, FNP-C, C...

What if your most devastating breakup was actually the moment your real life began? Sarah Curnoles thought she’d found her person. Five years together, talking about marriage and kids and growing old. Then one day he said: “I love you. I just don’t see a life with you anymore.” And standing at that crossroads, Sarah made a choice she’d spend the next several years helping others make too: I’m not...

What happens when you get everything right on paper... and still feel like you are running on fumes? Michelle MacNeil is a Systems Business Coach® running her practice from a small hobby farm in rural Alberta, Canada. She works with small business owners who are doing well by most traditional measures: billing is solid, clients are happy, and on paper things look fine. But “are too successful to q...

Have you ever been doing exactly what felt right... and had everyone around you tell you it was a mistake? My guest this week is Leslie Ellen Mathews: therapist, divorce and relationship coach, MBSR teacher, podcast coach, and one of the most multi-passionate humans I have ever had the pleasure of sitting down with. Her path has included neuro speech therapy, neuroscience research, law school, a m...

Most people leave the 9-5 one of two ways: they quit in a blaze and figure it out later, or they stay until they burn all the way down. Abi Majekodunmi found a third way. She ran the numbers. Abi is the founder of Freedom Runway™ and a former senior tech marketing manager... a mom of two boys who looked, from the outside, like she had it all handled. Six figures. Good reviews. The promotions. And...

There’s a version of high-achieving where you absorb everyone else’s everything and call it being chill. There’s a version where you give every part of yourself to your career, and then one day notice the same pattern playing out in dating, in money, in your body, in your business. “A pattern is a pattern is a pattern,” Lilli Bewley says. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Lilli is a Dating Coac...

What does it feel like to check every box, reach every milestone, and still feel like something is deeply wrong?   Coco Duan was a senior leader at a Fortune 500 company, earning over $400k a year, doing everything she was supposed to do. On the outside, high performance. On the inside, running on empty, living in low-grade anxiety she didn't even have a name for, and giving everything to everyone...

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 F...

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 h...

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....

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 cert...

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 bac...

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, marr...

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 wer...

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 l...