Episode 183: Your Challenges Are A Detour, Not A Stop Sign With Stephanie Valenti
Navigating organizational shifts and personal transitions requires a strategic approach to change management that balances business objectives with human-centric leadership. In this article, B2B sales expert and VP of Sales at BILL, Stephanie Valenti, joins Amy to explore her unique journey—spanning her upbringing in a creative family and life as a young parent to her path into successful sales leadership. Beyond her professional milestones, Stephanie discusses how she guides teams through transitions using the change curve model while addressing key industry challenges like the impact of technology on the accounting profession. She also gets candid about her own experience with burnout, sharing how she learned to prioritize joy, set boundaries, and focus on self-reflection to build resilience. From the value of due diligence in professional partnerships to realigning your career trajectory, this conversation offers a powerful roadmap for building a more sustainable, fulfilling future.
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Your Challenges Are A Detour, Not A Stop Sign With Stephanie Valenti
Introducing Stephanie Valenti And BILL's Financial Automation
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs, where I interview Stephanie Valenti. She has over fifteen years of experience in B2B sales and operations. She is a four-time executive operator across multiple industries. Stephanie is at a public company with a focus on driving innovation and leadership into the sales organization at BILL, an innovator in the fintech space.
Stephanie has a passion for scaling teams, building processes, and cultivating a winning culture. Her executive roles at three record-breaking companies have achieved triple-digit growth. She’s also a Creator and Facilitator of executive-level courses at Pavilion, a leader for a 2,000-plus member CRO group, and a Startup Advisor for Hatchet Ventures.
She stands for people-first leadership through accountability, transparency, and humility, and mentors the next generation of leaders enterprise-wise. She lives in Dallas with her husband and three children and enjoys listening to books and hitting the food scene in her spare time. During my interview with Stephanie, she shared her personal and professional journey.
She also discussed her path to a successful career in sales and leadership. She spoke about her approach to change management, and we talked about a change management curve model to help teams navigate transitions. Stephanie also reflected on her work-life balance, talking about how she’s learned to prioritize joy and set boundaries.
The conversation has covered challenges not only in her own journey, but also in what she’s observing in the accounting profession, the impact of technology, and the importance of self-reflection in your own career development. There are so many insights in this episode that are going to be greatly helpful for those of you in the middle of innovation and transformation.
I want to thank BILL for sponsoring this episode. Accounting firms need a financial operations platform built to help them move faster, strengthen controls, and better protect client payments. BILL helps firms streamline AP and AR, manage spend, reduce manual work, and stay in control from one place. See what BILL can unlock at your firm at BILL.com/For-Accountants. Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate that you follow this show. You’re going to get a lot out of this conversation with Stephanie. Enjoy.
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Welcome to this episode of the show. I am here with Stephanie Valenti. Do you want to get started and give a little intro of yourself?
I’d love to. Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.
Thanks for being on.
I work at BILL. Some call it BILL.com. I am the VP of Sales here at BILL.com. My responsibility is supporting our accounting channel as well as our direct sales organization and our partnerships motion here. A good amount of scope across the board. Ultimately, if you don’t know what BILL does, BILL is a financial automation platform that focuses on AP, AR, spend and expense, and general financial operations. We focus on how we do that work for you efficiently. I love the company. I’ve been here for about two years. I’ve got the opportunity to help so many accountants build their business and help so many small businesses become more efficient.
Thank you so much for being on. I’ve got a long-standing relationship with BILL. I started using it when it first started decades ago. It has been a great product and a great relationship. I appreciate all the support of the work I do, but also the accountants do and the profession. To get started, I like to go all the way back and get out of our everyday rules. Maybe you can share where you grew up and what your parents did. Give me a little background of yourself.
I’d love to. I was born in Valparaiso, Indiana. My family lived there. My mom grew up in Indiana. My dad grew up in Chicago. We moved to Valpo. I only lived there for about 2 and a half or 3 years, and they moved us down to Naples, Florida. We were not as wealthy as you would expect when you hear Naples, Florida. I use a caveat when people are like, “Where are you from?”
I’m like, “Naples.” They’re like, “Must be nice.” I’m like, “No. We didn’t live by the beach.” Mom and dad got a divorce when I was about six. Mom was an architectural renderer. She was self-taught, back in the days when you had the drafting boards and used markers and actual pens to draw the homes. My dad worked at his father’s small business, which was a signing shop.
Are you an only child, or do you have siblings?
I have a sister from my mom and dad, and then both my mom and dad got remarried. Both of them had children. They’re both boys, so I have two half-brothers who are 10 and 11 years younger than me. I am the eldest. My sister is what we call the middle child because we had those two other half-brothers there in the family.
It gets confusing. I always get confused with the half, the step, and who’s who.
I’ve got a step in there, too. I know. There’s a total of five of us. One step, two halves, and one real. I’m the oldest.
You’ve seen everything then. Why did you originally move to Naples? Was it because of the family business?
Early Family Life, Roots, And Grandparent Influences
Yes, and my grandfather. My mom, my dad, and my grandparents on my dad’s side were all very close. They moved as well. He started his business down in Naples. He moved it from the Indiana area and moved it down to Naples. They got a condo. We got a condo right next to them is how it all started. No one lives there anymore. Everyone has moved. We were there until I was about fourteen, and then I moved to Colorado Springs for the rest of my high school days.
I love to hear when the grandparents are close. It’s like this extended family. That’s a big deal for them to pick up their life to follow down to Naples. Why was that? Why did they make that decision to pull away from whoever they were close to in Indiana? I’m sure they had been there for a very long time.
My dad, to this day, is very close with his parents. He worked in the same business. There’s him and his sister only. His sister is close, but not as close as my dad was. He’s always close with them. What that led to for me is unbelievable relationships with my grandparents. I would be spending weekends with them. I have all of these unbelievable core memories growing up with them, almost as second parents.
When my parents got divorced, they were young. My mom had me when she was eighteen. My dad was two years older. They were following parents as a young married couple, separating, and then finding themselves, honestly. I look back and realize it as a child. Looking back, they were being young adults for the first time. A lot of the core memories as a child weren’t with my mom or my dad. It was more with my grandparents. I’m thankful.
What are some of those memories with your grandparents that stick out to you?
There are almost too many to count. One of the big ones is that my grandfather is brilliant. He taught himself to paint. He got so proficient that he was featured in art galleries. He taught himself to be a photographer. He taught himself to be a chef. He taught himself piano.
Without YouTube.
He still used a flip phone. He wrote a biography about himself. They used to take me on vacations, just me with them. He’d take pictures and then paint them. I got to be a part of that experience. One of the biggest core memories for me is that he would always pick me up and put me on the counter next to him while he was cooking and make me try things. They were things you wouldn’t try when you were little, like capers, anchovies, peppers, and stuff. To this day, I say I have a great palate because of my grandmother.
That’s awesome. Were they immigrants? Had they lived in Indiana their whole life?
They were from Chicago. My dad’s side lived in Chicago. At the time, they were more on the South Side of Chicago. To give you even more of an understanding, I am the first person in my entire family to ever go to college, graduate from college, and work in corporate. I worked that mold a little bit. My grandfather came from nothing, started his own sign business, painted paper signs at Walgreens in red paint, and grew it from there. That’s probably why I have so much love and admiration for my grandfather because I saw what he did to change his life in a positive way.
That’s amazing. Your dad followed in his footsteps or had the same skills. How did they end up doing the business together?
He worked for him. My dad is more musically inclined and artistic. He would do all of the artistic work at the sign shop and then play in bands on the side. He plays guitar, sings, and draws cartoons and stuff. He was more on that side of the house from a creative brain, as opposed to a business brain.
Does he still play in bands?
He still plays in bands.
That’s awesome.
I went to him, and we’re all in his general living room area. He was like, “I’m going to play you some guitar. You sit there and listen to it.” He loves it. You can see the passion in his face.
It’s cool they were all so creative and had those outlets. You learned that young, exploring what your talents are. What was your talent?
I do sing. Still to this day, I’m a singer. I’ve played multiple instruments. I was always a great writer. In school, I always did speeches. I do competitive speaking. What was it called? The Optimism Award. I would do public speaking, theater, singing, and anything on stage. I have no idea how I ended up with those talents.
Nurturing Creativity, Passions, And Personal Expression
We’ll get to it. Do you do anything now?
I’m working on it. I have three kids. I’ve been super career-focused. At one point, on a podcast, someone had said, “What are your hobbies? What do you do for fun?” I was like, “I don’t have anything anymore.” I don’t have that stuff because I’ve been so focused on others and my career. There’s only so many things you can have at once. I’m getting there. I’m getting better.
I’m sure that fills your cup. When you don’t have it, it’s noticeable. I’ve been through that period. Your mom must have been creative, too, if she was an architect. Is that what you said?
An architectural renderer. She is pretty good at color selection and stuff like that. She did that with a friend. She got remarried. She moved to Colorado, which is why I moved to Colorado. She ended up working in more program management. She’s been sectioned out and worked for the Home Builders Association, running Parade of Homes, managing the White states, and things like that. She did that for fifteen years after that architectural rendering stint.
Did your dad stay in Naples when you moved to Colorado?
He did for a while, and then he picked up with my grandparents and moved to Tennessee. They live in Hendersonville, Tennessee, which is near Nashville.
Was it hard to leave them with you being right next door?
As I got older, I stayed connected to my grandparents, but my dad and I drifted a little bit. I always say my dad is very much like my sister. My mom and I are more similar. Our relationship was that I would go over there every other weekend. He didn’t give me mentorship and guidance, per se. It was more like, “Go when you visit.” He’s like a big kid. It was fun. I would go down and spend my summers or spring breaks to see him, but when I moved, I was full into my teenage years. I was fifteen years old. You only want to be with friends at that point. It was probably a good move moving to Colorado as I look back.
When you moved, that was still a hard age to move from middle school to high school, making that transition. What do you remember from that stage? Were you excited to move, or was it something where you had to figure out your way of how you were going to navigate a new life, or both?
Probably both. I’ve seen this in my entire life. My personality is that I love big life changes. I thrive on those. Every 2 or 3 years, I get an itch if I need something to change because I feel too mundane in my life. I was excited. I was extremely, and still am, very extroverted. I didn’t have a problem making friends.
I immediately joined the cheerleading team and yearbook. It fell right in. It took me a minute to find the right friend group. I had to make sure that it was appropriate. In high school, it’s so clique-y. You find the right group for you that aligns with your beliefs, what you enjoy, and what you’re doing and not doing. I found that fairly quickly. I was very thankful for that.
It’s an important observation when you look at shifting things of how you get involved and how you dive in rather than wallow in the change. We’re going through lots of change. In our personal life, it applies as well because it’s easy to isolate yourself in those situations, too.
It’s interesting. Now that I’m in a more mature corporate world, I can look back on the way that I handled change curve behavior and be like, “I went through that one fast or I maybe didn’t handle that one so well.” I lived in that detractor space for so long. We’re going through so much of that here. I work on it with my team. I’m like, “This person’s stuck. This is where this person is on their curve. How do I bring them through with information?”
What did you call that? A change curve?
Navigating Organizational Shifts With The Change Curve Model
Yes. I’ve been in senior leadership for over ten years. There’s so much change I’ve lived through, whether it be COVID, recession, or AI. There’s always been something I have to lead something transformative through. I did a lot of self-education on change management. The change curve almost mirrors a grief stage motion of like, “How does this impact me? I’m angry. I’m in word.” What’s the word where you don’t believe it’s going to happen? It’s all these things. I self-assign people to a stage. Everyone goes through it. It’s about how fast they go. People who love change and are fine went through all the thoughts, but they did it rapidly.
What do you do with people who are stuck at certain points of the curve? How do you approach that as a leader?
First, I educate everybody. The minute we’re going to go through a change, I always start out by saying, “Everyone has the right to feel a certain way. I’m not here to control your feelings. I’m not here to control your thoughts.” I educate everyone on, “Here’s what a change curve looks like.” I show them all of the stages, and then I say, “Some people go like a roller coaster over this thing, like it’s zip zap. Some people go, and then they get stuck in stages. You are allowed to feel these ways. However, if you get stuck at stage 3, 4, or 5, I need you to raise your hand and tell me you’re stuck. Generally, you’re stuck because you’re not being listened to. You need more information, or you need to vent and get some things out.”
I give permission to the entire team, like, “I want you to raise your hand. My calendar is your calendar. Schedule time. Let’s get through it together.” I normally like to roll out a big change over a course of 2 or 3 months. By the end of this project, my hope is that we’re all on that positive side. We’re all champions of the new change. There will always be a couple that can’t get out of their own way. How do you raise one-on-one conversations after all of that? Get on the bus or don’t. That’s okay. You’re an adult. You get to make those decisions for yourself.
Do you feel like people do raise their hand?
It’s all about the trust you create in your org. In my direct org, I’ve had a lot of great experiences with people raising their hand and sharing that they’re not quite there. I don’t ultimately take that responsibility on my own. My directors, my managers, and people that are closer to working with that every day are also responsible for having those conversations and pulling people through. In big changes, I even keep a, “Here are my champions that I’ve identified. Here are my contractors. Here are my people in the middle.” I have them track them and watch it over a period of time so I can see how many we still have pending across the org, and I can proactively do outreach if need be.
That’s good. We ignore it happening or try to do a one-to-many approach, which is how most people approach change management. They’re like, “This is what’s happening. This is what you’re doing,” and then people don’t feel part of the process, or there’s something else holding them back that’s not apparent in their behavior. You don’t know that unless you nurture people one by one. What happens is if they’re not talking to you, they’re talking to each other.
That’s right.
It doesn’t mean it’s not happening and it’s wasting time. It draws energy all the way down.
You said something important. Making them a part of the process is also something I learned throughout my career. It can’t be a change that comes top-down. You have to make people feel like they’re involved. Sometimes, that change has already been decided. We don’t all have the luxury of constant collaboration on decision-making.
Change Management: It can't be a change that comes strictly top-down. You have to make people feel like they're genuinely involved in the process.
Some of the things I’ve done are I’ll have fifteen-minute meetings with every single person in the org and say, “If you could fix one thing, what would it be?” Ultimately, they know what the things are to fix. Generally, the change that I’m going to propose is something that can address that, so they are a part of what pushed that change. There are a lot of things you can do there, too.
There are decisions that are made, but sometimes, when you get feedback, there are little tweaks along the way that make people feel heard. You can’t do everything. You’re never going to make everybody happy. That’s so important. I got sidetracked on that, but that was good. When you were in high school, what did you imagine you were going to be one day? What did you think?
If we go back to what I said about my parents, no one ever went to school. There wasn’t this drive in the house. I didn’t necessarily get guidance like, “You need to go to college. You need to go to SAT prep.” It was on my own a little bit. I was a social butterfly and in cheerleading. Social meant more to me than anything else.
I got good grades, but, “I’m going to be like this when I grow up,” wasn’t what I thought about every day. I originally wanted to be a pediatrician who focused on kids with disabilities because I did a lot of volunteering with an autistic class within the school. I had a knack for building trust and building those relationships there, so I thought that’s what I was going to do.
Overcoming Early Adversity And Defining Career Drive
Since you didn’t have examples in your family, was there anyone that you can think of that you were modeling after or started seeing, and you were like, “I want that. How do I get that?”
Interestingly enough, it came later. It didn’t come in high school. I find this with a lot of women that if they don’t have the upbringing, it comes with tragedy often. Maybe not tragedy, but trauma, or something happens that triggers, “Now, I’m going to change.” Mine was more there. I was going to go to school because I got into a university, and I ended up having a child instead. I was nineteen. I didn’t know what I was going to do. What I did know was that I was not going to be a stereotype, and I was going to change the outcomes and the lineage of my family moving forward. That was the big trigger for me.
I want to pause you there on why you thought that, because your mom was eighteen when she had you. You having a child at nineteen is a generational pattern at that point. It’s not like you would have been like, “I need to change this.” Why did you feel that way?
The only thing I can pull it back to, and maybe not even in a good way, is that it was competitive. I was always competitive. I was not going to do it. I was going to lead a different life. It was all self-centric. I’m like, “I’m going to change the way that I live.” Some of it was material. I was like, “I’m going to have a nice life. I’m going to send my kid to college. I’m not going to be scrounging for money. I’m not going to do it.”
I was like that in high school, too. The minute I turned sixteen, I got a job. I did it because I was like, “I’m going to buy the things I want to buy. I will go and do the things I want to do.” I don’t know where it came from. The only thing I could think of is my grandfather because he was so driven. Maybe there was some of that in there for me, but I do think it was more situational for me. Something woke me up in having that first child.
This might be a little deep, but I do feel that we’re born with a soul. There are things we can’t explain sometimes that happen in our lives. I had lost everything financially when I was sixteen. I couldn’t go to school. I had a bad breakup with a boyfriend who had to go to jail. It was the whole thing. I went into depression, but I remember every morning saying, “You’re going to be successful one day.” I don’t know why I was telling myself that. There are some things that are unexplained. I know for me, I look back on that all the time and think to myself, how fortunate am I that I had that soul that was whispering that to me every morning.
That’s amazing. You don’t know where it comes from, but it’s there. It’s always been there for me. Sometimes, other things in your life open it up even more and accelerate it. I had a couple of those moments, and I am thankful for them. I wouldn’t change them for anything.
How did you manage having a child? When did you end up going to college?
I didn’t stop. I kept going. I worked three jobs. I went to school. I did it all at once. I didn’t sleep. I remember almost falling asleep at the wheel, driving from one job to another. I remember doing homework online on the weekends. It was exhausting. I missed some of those amazing times when my child was young, but I knew I was building the future for him. That’s what I did. I had some help, but not a ton. My grandparents helped. I moved back to Florida at that time and got some support there. I had to send him to daycare. I had to pay for that daycare. I had to go to school. I had to do all these things at once. That’s what I did.
The father didn’t end up helping?
Absolutely, but there was work there, too. We shared those shifts and then sent him off to grandparents when there was overlap. It was a huge balance, for sure.
It’s so strange because the last episode that will be coming out before you has the same story. She’s a partner in a CPA firm. She never stopped. She never took a pause. She took her baby to class if she needed to. It’s amazing.
I’m in a lot of female executive groups. It’s either you grow up with a very healthy family, and everyone has always gone to school, or it’s the complete opposite. It’s never in the middle. You don’t have the middle. You either are trauma-induced, or it’s lineage. Having child young is not trauma, but at nineteen, it is.
My oldest already graduated from college, is in corporate, and is doing amazing things. My middle one is in college. I’ve changed the story for our family. It will never go back. I know all of that hard work, all that push, all those missed opportunities with family because I prioritized work, and all that stuff paid off because I changed our family’s lives forever.
I was having a conversation about this because I was talking about my kids and how happy it makes me to watch them have a normal college life. As far as their social life, they’re not stressed about having to do all of those things while they’re in school. Even my older son has had a couple of years still with roommates. That time period was the means to an end to get working, stop working three jobs, and so forth. It makes you feel full. You feel happiness when you see that your kids are able to achieve that.
No doubt. I agree.
What did you end up deciding to do in school? Did you start out wanting to be in medical school?
Pivoting From Pre-Med To B2B Sales Excellence
I did. I was like, “I’ll still do it,” and then realized that my personality, even in entry-level jobs, is that I would get the first task, perfect it, and want to learn the next thing. I realized quickly in medical that I was going to get shut off unless I went all the way to be a doctor. That would become frustrating for me. I ended up graduating in business communications, not knowing what I was going to do with it.
I knew I needed the piece of paper. That was my goal at that point. Communications was always a strong suit for me. I knew I was going to be a leader. That’s something from a young age, being captains of teams. I enjoyed supporting and helping others. That’s why the doctor, but I was going to do it with a different lens. I thought comms was probably the right thing.
What did you end up doing with that degree when you graduated?
I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I was working on the side doing restaurant as everybody does. Immediately, they asked me to be a manager, and then they promoted me to the corporate office and asked me to be a management recruiter. I realized I couldn’t do a management recruiter job. I was in a cube, and I was asking people the same questions all day long. I couldn’t do it, especially from running a restaurant, and you’re doing all these things.
I went and did that again at another restaurant. Someone looked at me. It was a customer. They looked at me and said, “You should probably be in sales.” I’m like, “I’m passive. I don’t like conflict. I don’t know if that’s for me.” I put my resume together. I put it on the old Monster.com, if you remember that era. The rest is history. I got recruited into an outside sales role that was B2B. The minute I got into that role and realized the harder I work, the more money I make, I was hooked. It was over.
Change Management: The minute I got into outside sales and realized the harder I work, the more money I make, I was hooked. There was no way I was ever going back.
There was no way I was ever going back.I got into management pretty quickly. I’ve been at Fortune 100 to $300 million to $400 million companies to a COO at a $30 million company and a COO in healthcare. I’ve done a little bit of everything. There were good positions and bad positions. There were crazy founders.
There were amazing experiences because I failed and recovered so quickly. BILL has been a light for me the past couple of years. I couldn’t have asked for a better stop based on where I am in my career. For a while, all I did was chase the title and then realized, “I’m here. Is this what I wanted?” I was able to ground on what I wanted, and BILL has checked all those boxes for me.
We talked a little bit about internal change, but since you are in a customer-facing role, what are you seeing as some of the challenges that you’re trying to coach your team to coach the profession on?
If you’re not comfortable with change, back to what we talked about, and taking a long time to go through your curve, or you are a late adopter, it’s going to be challenging for you. We do accountant road shows across the country. We happened to have one in Dallas, so I got to speak. Someone in the audience, a cast leader, had said, “I’m running my firm. Customers are challenging me on our retainer fees because they think things should be faster. Thus, things shouldn’t cost so much.”
A lot of the heads in the audience were nodding. That is the pivot. That is the change. I think back, and there are adjacencies here. I led a services-based business in marketing. It was marketing services. I had client services. It was at the beginning of AI when it was writing, and blogs were a big thing. You don’t need “copywriters.” I went through the same thing in the business I was leading. Where do you add value?
How do you take the hours in which you were doing tactical and move them to that more advisory space? Offering more solutions and taking on more of the work that costs organizations time and money. I’m so glad I’m working for the business I am because it helps push that forward, but there are people every day, both on my direct side and on my accounting side, where I’m listening to calls and reviewing customer conversations, and people are still adverse in getting rid of that pen and paper, relinquishing some of that automation. It’s going to cost them if they don’t accelerate.
Embracing Technology And Modernizing Client Advisory
It’s something we’ve been talking about for twenty years with the Cloud coming. You make a good point about how if you’re a late adopter, that’s a problem. You can’t be, with the speed that things are going. I would compare it, though, from all the interactions I’ve had the last couple of months being out on the road.
One of the things you said was, “I don’t like the repetition. I needed a job that wasn’t going to have that repetition. If I do like repetition, and I do like the way things have always been, and now you’re going to tell me I’ve got to be in a space where it doesn’t come naturally to me, it’s not that the work gets done that I like to do, but I’ve got to solve problems with clients. I need to have conversations with clients, and that’s not something comfortable for me to do. I don’t even want to learn it.” What do you tell someone as far as that?
It’s so challenging because you’re changing the way people work. People are creatures of habit. I do a lot of mentoring, both in BILL and outside of BILL. I have a lot of people come to me in these challenging moments of their career. It’s like, “I used to always do this. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know what to do.” I always gave them a tactical exercise, like, pen and paper. Don’t type it. Think of your job now. What are the things that you love doing? Write them down. Tasks. Not generalized, but deep, double-click tasks.
I go over and am like, “What are the things that you are good at and you like doing? What are the things you’re good at, but you don’t like? What are the things you hate?” You don’t like it, you’re not good at it, and you’re stuck. Spend some time on that piece of paper. Generally, I always say write it down because your hand has a hard time lying to you.
It has been eye-opening because maybe it’s not that they can be customer-facing. Maybe they have a career pivot. Maybe they can find something repetitive where they can check off a task list. Maybe what they find is, “I don’t have a problem with customer-facing and solving problems. I have a problem with conflict.” That’s a solver. That’s teachable. Once you’re in the situation, you can teach people around it.
It’s an eye-opening exercise for anybody. I do it with myself. I write them down to make sure I’m still in the right role for myself. If you’re doing a lot of that bottom half of the matrix where you’re doing a lot of what you hate, but you’re good at, or what you enjoy, you’re going to hate your job, even if you like it. I encourage that exercise, for sure.
I love that. What tasks are you good at that you love doing, you’re good at that you don’t like, and you’re good at that you hate? I would say also things you’re not good at that you hate doing, too.
It’s a four-box. You draw that box right there.
People don’t understand that part that you are going to hate some things of your job. You’re never going to find 100%. When I’m coaching people, if you like 60% or 50% of your job, you are the gold star on the job you have because it’s impossible. It’s also good to understand what your future goals are. I’ve had that, too, where someone’s doing tasks that they don’t like, but when they think about their future goals, they’re like, “If I do this, even though I don’t like it, it’s going to help me get here. If I can stay focused on that, then it doesn’t make it so bad.”
You’re 100% right. Sometimes, too, we fall into this moral of, “I’m not good at that,” but the job you want in the future requires it. I had a leader once look at me and said, “Get comfortable being uncomfortable because that’s the point of growth.” That means I forced myself to stretch. Maybe not in front of everybody, but if I wasn’t great at math and Excel, I had to go teach myself that.
Change Management: Get comfortable being uncomfortable because that's the point of growth.
I can’t be a VP or an executive somewhere if I am not strong in statistics, Excel, and analyzing data. I had to teach myself to do that so that I got comfortable. That’s the other thing. We will sit there and be like, “I’m not good at it, so I’m not going to do it.” We can be good at anything. We have to push ourselves into that uncomfortable space.
I want to go back to the beginning. You had made a comment about not having time for your hobbies. I’m going to push you a little bit on this interview. One of the things that we’ve launched at the B3 Method Institute is the Fulfillment ROI Model. At the base, the foundation is, “Do I have purpose and mission in what I’m doing in order to self-actualize to get to work-life harmony at some point?”
One thing I uncovered about myself, going through this and going back through my story, is that when you are in those moments of no money. You’re working three jobs, you start creating a habit in yourself of overwork because you don’t know what that means. A lot of our readers are in that, not necessarily because of trauma, but might be because they were taught to work 55 to 60 hours a week. That’s normal, and they don’t know how to work a 40-hour week.
Often, we’ll find the things in our life to say, “This is why,” until we look internally and say, “I’ve built a bad habit in myself that I can’t put the boundaries I have in place.” I would love to hear your perspective on that yourself since you were in that position of trying to survive. How do you shift that mindset to know you’re still successful but don’t have to live like that?
Beating Burnout Through Intentional Work-Life Integration
We could have a whole other hour. I’ve struggled. You pinpointed it exactly. I got to a point where it’s a reward system. I’m like, “I work hard. I get recognition. I get reward, which is compensation. I feel self-sufficient. I want more.” That’s what I did for the past couple of years. I had a CRO role at a PE-backed company. There were challenges in that organization. It broke me. I ended up having autoimmune stuff. I triggered it myself.
I worked. I wanted to fix it. I had something to prove. I realized at that time when I left that organization, and I wasn’t working for a short period of time, and I gave myself a moment that I didn’t have anything but work. Nothing. When I thought about, “What do I want next?” Instead of, “I’m going to go chase this title or chase this specific amount of money,” it was, “What brings me joy?” I say balance integration. How do you balance some of yourself? Is that important to me? For the first time, it made it on the list.
I created a scorecard. I was so picky. I have a whiteboard right here. I created a whole whiteboard scorecard on, “What are the things that are important to me when I join this next company?” Financial gain was there for longevity. I’m in my 40s. I pay attention to that. It was also like, “What is the product and mission of the organization? Who is the leader I’m going to be working with? Am I traveling a lot? Am I working from home? What does my team org look like? What is my support structure?” I took all of that into consideration. I never did that in the past.
Since I did that, BILL has been great because I went from leading every department in the company and running around like a chicken with my head cut off, making everything work, to, “I’m going to go back to my roots and lead sales. I’m going to do it for a founder that’s fabulous.” Renée is special. I was like, “I am going to do it where it’s a bigger company, so I have the support structure in place. I’m going to build my leaders up. I’m going to trust them to do their work, so I don’t have to get involved in everything. I’m going to support them, develop them, and have cross-functional support. We’re going to do great work.”
I started in the accountant channel in the beginning for the first year, and I learned to love that business and love the work we were doing. That was it for me. That transition was so good, and I’m still so happy. There’s change. There are hard pieces because of the AI era we’re in, but they’re fun problems to solve. I can sleep at night. I can read.
You’re in your wheelhouse.
Do you know what the biggest thing is? I stopped saying yes to everything. That’s the biggest one. I used to say yes to everything, like extracurriculars, running communities, and mentoring people, both paid and for free. I used to say yes to everything. I didn’t protect myself. I have now learned that it’s okay to say, “No, not right now.”
If that’s innate in you, it’s hard to say no, so what do you tell yourself when you say no?
“It’s okay. The world’s going to go on. This person that asked me for something is going to find another person.” They do. It took a lot for me to change that. I wouldn’t take it back the way it happened because if I didn’t say yes in early career, I wouldn’t be where I am now. There was that breaking point.
Change Management: When you say no, remember: the world's going to go on, and people will find another path forward.
Rapid-Fire Reflections On Family, Boundaries, And Priorities
That’s what we’re trying to push forward. Burnout is real. Even if you’re not burned out, that doesn’t mean you won’t hit that breaking point. What are the things that you can do so that you don’t hit it? If it’s possible. What I’d like to do is do some rapid-fire questions that I like to do at the end. You get to pick a category. Family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.
Let’s go for family and friends.
Things or actions that I don’t have that I want to have with my family and friends.
I don’t have a huge or even an intimate circle of girlfriends. I want to establish that for myself within the next year.
Things or actions I do have that I want to keep.
My husband and my children are fantastic. They’re healthy. We’re all loving. It’s a great family. We worked hard for that, and I’d love to make sure we keep that.
That’s awesome. Things or actions that I don’t have that I don’t want to have.
I don’t want relationships that are draining or they’re work.
Last one. Things or actions that I do have that I don’t want. I want to release it around my family and friends.
Feeling like I have to be in charge or responsible for everything. That’s a me problem. That’s not a family problem.
That’s your yes problem.
I’ve learned it at work. I haven’t learned it at home. A work in progress.
New goal, yes. As we close up, I appreciate you sharing your story. There were so many great learnings there. Is there anything you want to make sure we close out with or that you reiterate before we close out?
Everybody has challenges and things that come up in their life that can stop you from hitting your goal. It always is a detour, not a stop sign, so continue pushing on. Ultimately, at the end of the day, as you’re looking for an organization to partner with, as you’re looking for an organization to work at, as you’re looking for an organization to purchase something from, do your homework. Do your research. Take the time because it matters. It impacts your health. It impacts the success that you can have. It’s important. Do the due diligence.
Mindful Moments: Unlocking Creativity, Leadership, And Transformation
Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. I know our audience is going to get a lot out of this conversation.
You are so welcome. Thanks for having me. It was a good chat.
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Now, for my Mindful Moments with this interview with Stephanie. There were so many great topics in this. We started out talking about the importance of the relationship she had with her grandfather, understanding the creativity that he had, and discovering that in herself. When other people around us have creative talents, we start looking for what the things are that align with us as far as our creativity.
It’s not always the same thing. A lot of times, people say to me, “I’m not creative,” or, “I can’t do art. I can’t do music,” but haven’t truly immersed themselves and explored. There are so many different ways to play music. There are so many different ways to paint, draw, and all of those things that we have in that creative category. What we have to find is not perfection, but where we get some peace and time disappears. That’s what’s important about learning that.
She said that through that, it helped her understand how to be creative and have creative thinking, critical thinking, and all of the things that have helped her in her career as she’s matured through it. She was also inspired by her grandfather because he taught himself how to do all these things. Even thinking back at that time, there’s no YouTube to teach you. You’re trying to figure out those things on your own, and where you have possibilities. Inspiration is so important.
Stephanie was the first person to go to college in her family. I’m always so inspired by that kind of story because when we don’t have examples in our life of people that have gone to college, it’s sometimes hard to imagine what it’s like, what our goals would be, and what even comes out of it. What she learned over time was that by getting a college degree, and it didn’t matter what, that was the way to get her career started. By looking around at other people who had success, she saw that they had college degrees and went for it.
After school, she went through a number of jobs that helped teach her her skillset. One of the things that she did learn about herself, which is important for all of us to step back and think about this for ourselves, is that she liked when her daily job changed, when she was challenged, or had different what she called puzzles to solve.
That is important to discover about yourself because some people prefer routine and maintenance, doing the same thing every day, and not having things change. When we identify those things about ourselves, it helps us understand what to unlock, what is going to inspire us in a job, and how we’ll better align to a job so we can be successful. In her first sales job, she felt inspired because the direct correlation to working hard was making money. That opened up a whole other area for her in her career, which you can see by her success and what she’s doing at Build.
The thing that I found important was her talking about change management, innovation, and how we help people along that curve. She looked at it from a data standpoint of plotting out where people are and understanding what you need to do with each type of person to help unlock them and get them excited and motivated to take that next step.
There’s always a meeting in the middle. As a leader, you can work as hard as you can to get people to move forward. If they don’t want to change, then that’s another conversation. What was important from this conversation was that she is attacking it individually rather than trying to do this as a one-to-many. She wants people to be successful. She’s also training her leaders on how to lead that way.
At the B3 Method Institute, we call that being a connected leader, where we nurture people one by one because we never know what’s behind the behavior that we’re seeing during the day. It can be five levels deeper of what we need to unlock and untap in somebody. We can open up that change and help them to be successful.
When we talked about the profession at large and everything that it’s going through, this is where creativity comes back to play. Creativity is not just art and music. It might open up your brain to understand creativity in that way. However, when we have changed, as we do in AI, creativity is at work as well. How do we unravel these possibilities and shift and change something that might have been in place for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, or more in our organization?
How do we change the way that we work, understand, and untap in ourselves what is most important to us in our roles? Do we like the technical side? Do we like the technology and we want to stay working in that, or are we an interactive personality? We like solving problems. We like having those conversations. Those are the things we need to focus on there.
It’s important that we’re not just looking at our roles anymore as what we do now, but how we’re going to do it in the future and how that best aligns to the person that we are. When we are in these positions, even if we don’t want to stretch ourselves or if we weren’t good at something, how can we align something that we might not be good at with something we enjoy within ourselves?
She had a great tactical exercise that you can do. That was, what are the tasks that you love doing and that you’re good at? What are the tasks that you are good at, but you don’t like doing? What are the tasks that you’re good at and you hate? When you write these down for yourself or even record yourself and speak it into a phone, it can help you to understand what is next for you and what kind of learning and support you need.
It is so that when you go to ask for that support or have meetings with your leaders, you can be very structured in those conversations and specific about where you’re strong and where your gaps are. I want to thank Stephanie for sharing her story with us. There were so many great lessons in her story. I hope you were able to take at least one away that you can apply in your daily life. I also want to thank BILL again for sponsoring this episode and working to constantly strive to innovate. I have had a close relationship with BILL for many years.
I see the innovation and the care that they have for this profession. It’s awesome to be a part of that innovation and technology. It’s one of those things, too, that in this time of change, we start looking at all these new technologies that are coming out, but we have these proven, mature technologies that are out there that are innovating every day. We need someone to keep up with those as well to compare to what’s coming onto the market. We ensure that we’ve got the best solution for our practice for our company.
Thank you all so much for being supportive of this show, tuning in to it, and sharing it with your colleagues and friends on social media. We appreciate every single time that you do that. Remember that the energy you create for yourself is contagious. Being intentional about that energy not only makes you feel better, but it makes the people around you feel better as well.
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About Stephanie Valenti
With over 15 years of experience in B2B sales and operations, Stephanie Valenti is a 4x Executive operator across multiple industries. Today, Stephanie is at a public company with a focus on driving innovation and leadership into the Sales organization at BILL- an innovator in the FinTech space.
Stephanie has a passion for scaling teams, building processes, and cultivating a winning culture, as evidenced by her executive roles at three record-breaking companies that achieved triple digit growth. She is also a creator and facilitator of executive level courses at Pavilion, a leader for a 2000+ member CRO group, and a start up advisor for Hatchet Ventures.
She stands for people first leadership through accountability, transparency, and humility, and mentors the next generation of leaders enterprise-wide. Stephanie lives in Dallas with her husband and three children, and enjoys listening books and hitting the food scene in her spare time.