The Entrepreneurial Advice That Shaped 2025 ft Kelly Stumpe, Jessica Marx, Robyn Spangler, and Keri Ford
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Listen to the FULL episodes:
Episode 155: How The Car Mom Disrupted the Auto Industry
Episode 159: Luxury Branding 101: How to Position Yourself for High Ticket Offers
Episode 161: What It Really Takes to Break $100K, $500K, and $1M
Episode 164: How I Built BrandWell
Episode 167: How Vulnerability Builds Authority (and a Business)
Episode 170: The Cognitive Cost of Always-On Entrepreneurship
What better way to close out the year than with the Season 10 finale of The Branding Business School Podcast! After a year filled with powerful conversations and transformational insights, Victoria is wrapping things up with a highlight compilation of the most impactful moments from 2025 — the clips that made us think deeper, build smarter, and lead more intentionally as entrepreneurs stepping into a new year.
In this episode, you’ll hear from Kelly Stumpe (The Car Mom) on disrupting industries, Jessica Marx on scaling strategically from 0 to multi-six figures, Robyn Spangler on building authority through vulnerability, and Keri Ford on nervous system support for ambitious founders. We’re also revisiting some of Victoria's most-downloaded episodes, including the one where she’s in the guest seat!
Whether you’re launching, scaling to your first $100K, or leading a team and stepping fully into your CEO role, this episode is your permission to pause, reflect, and reset. Let these clips spark inspiration, clarity, and direction as you enter 2026 grounded, confident, and supported. Season 10 may be closing, but while you wait for what's next, dive into the full episodes behind each clip! We’ll see you next year! Happy New Year!
Season 10 Finale: 2025 In Review
Throughout this year, Victoria has had the privilege of sitting down with a handful of incredible women and for this episode, we have hand-selected some of the most profound advice from this season. These highlighted episodes are conversations that Victoria still thinks about, still quotes, and often goes back to when business gets loud, heavy, or just plain confusing.
Inside this episode, we’re revisiting episodes from some of the most downloaded and loved solo episodes from Victoria along with guest episodes featuring Kelly Stumpe, AKA The Car Mom, Jessica Marx, Robyn Spangler, and Keri Ford. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
Disrupting a Male-Dominated Industry with Authenticity featuring Kelly Stumpe
Kelly Stumpe, better known as The Car Mom, has disrupted a male dominated industry as not just a female, but a mother to four. During this conversation, Kelly shares how she built an empire without compromising some of her non-negotiables as a mom. We’ve pulled some great clips from this conversation, but if you want to listen to the rest, you can find the full episode here!
Kelly shares how she built a thriving brand in the automotive space by prioritizing moms, safety, and practicality over jargon and specs. She opens up about monetizing as a creator, staying mission-focused and focusing on building a trusted audience, and how she balances business with motherhood using firm non-negotiables. Her perspective on being a disruptor, showing up as a woman in a male-driven industry, and giving yourself permission to do things differently is a must-listen; inspiring us all to stay true to ourselves and reminding us that it’s okay to be different from everyone else.
Scaling with Intention featuring Jessica Marx
Jessica Marx is a Forbes recognized business advisor, Victoria’s business advisor, and the founder of Tailored Premiere. While we could have included her entire episode, because it’s pure gold, we selected clips that share how to scale with intention and make decisions that are actually going to support the season that you’re in. This episode is a great one to listen to especially since we’re starting off a new year, so definitely go listen to the full episode here!
During this conversation, Jessica breaks down what founders really need to do to grow from 0–$100K. She talks about how research and development, listening to your customers, hiring strategically, and knowing when to step into true CEO leadership is crucial for your business to continue to grow to each milestone. It’s about finding where you can fill a need and a void that matters, even if you’re doing the exact same thing as another company. What is your differentiator that allows you to set yourself apart and demand a higher price point? The research that you do and listening to the people that buy from you will help you determine that.
If you’re in the process of scaling from $100K - $500K, it’s crucial that you are assessing what your weeks look like and how many of those tasks are actually generating revenue. How many of those tasks are correlated to being a CEO of a company. Once you determine that, then you can look at your tasks and see what can be outsourced and hire strategically.
Building a company that is not dependent on just you alone is a mindset that you should implement the minute you start a company. No one starts their own company to work a hundred hours a week, but if you don’t consistently remind yourself of the reason why, then you’ll find yourself working nonstop. Those in the zero - $100K range have the most opportunity to structure this as you grow with setting the right systems and processes.
For those that are in the early stages, or those building their way to $100K, Jessica says to stop focusing on what everyone else is doing, or what is in the online space, because it’s a lot of fluff. Really focus on the research and development, your own business, your own personal growth, and what you want to do differently within your market.
Building BrandWell’s Team – A Conversation Between Victoria & BrandWell’s COO, Lauren
Victoria jumps into the guest role for this episode when BrandWell’s COO, Lauren, interviews Victoria on the podcast! This conversation is filled with fun memories reflecting on how Victoria built BrandWell, but the clips shared in this episode focuses on how Victoria built her incredible all female team. To listen and learn more about your wonderful host of this podcast and hear about her journey to building BrandWell, listen to the full episode here!
When BrandWell started out, Victoria just found out that she was pregnant with her first daughter six years ago. She knew that she was going to need help if she was going to be able to take BrandWell beyond the side hustle status that it was at the time, so she brought in a white label designer. Tapping into having a team of designers proved to be really successful for her business. Now, Victoria has two employees that originated as contractors, and it’s not lost on her for how lucky she got. Lauren and Libby have become integral parts of BrandWell and they’ve been there with Victoria over the last five years. Transitioning to having full time employees in 2023 was the biggest risk Victoria has made, but it proved to be the best decision. Looking at numbers as a whole, 2022 to 2023 was when BrandWell had the biggest jump in revenue. There was also a big jump in expenses of course, but it went to prove that investing in the right people can really change your bottom line.
Leading with Vulnerability featuring Robyn Spangler
Robyn Spangler is the founder of The Clear Skin Lab as well as Rayvii, a mineral supplement company. She shares her personal story of living with psoriasis and how it brought her to founding her company. After sharing her story time and time again, Robyn has connected with her customers on a level that others just can’t, even if they’re offering the same services. This episode is a great example of how vulnerability builds authority for you and your business. If you’re a new business owner, or just wanting to hear how impactful storytelling in your business can be, you’re going to want to listen to this full episode here!
Robyn learned very early on in business, that sharing her story with psoriasis was actually a huge asset in building brand authority.The more she worked with people with skin issues, the more she would hear the comments about “I heard your story, so I know that you get it.” This then became so much more than not only does Robyn understand the physical process, but she also understands from an emotional and mental perspective of what her clients are going through. Being vulnerable with her story helps her clients know that she’s not there to take advantage of them or just provide them with another quick fix, but that she truly wants them to get positive results.
Victoria also brings up the electrolyte debate her and her husband were having, to see if Robyn could help settle it. To answer simply, Robyn shares that everyone should be taking electrolytes, especially women. Keeping your minerals in an optimal place will put you just ahead of the curve when it comes to conditions, symptoms, and diseases as we age. If you’re curious on what minerals you need specifically, Robyn shares that there is testing available for you to find out.
Robyn also reminds us that our energy and confidence in ourselves has a positive effect on everyone around us. Everything is better when you’re more energized, more confident, and mentally feel better. When mom is good, the whole household is better, and so prioritizing wellness is a worthy investment for that alone.
Building a Luxury Brand
This episode is still one of the most downloaded solo episodes in the archive! For this solo episode, Victoria talks about how to build a luxury brand that not only lasts, but positions you to sell high-ticket offers. You can listen to the short yet powerful full episode, here!
Discover the key characteristics of a luxury brand: exclusivity, status, design, high quality products, and confidence. Victoria talks through each of these points providing examples with how you can create your own luxury brand keeping these characteristics in mind. Style wise, these luxury brands have minimal style with clean lines. They feel timeless and remain consistent. The more consistent they are, the more recognizable they become, and the more people know who they are. Keeping all this in mind, Victoria encourages you to find ways to implement this into your own brand so that you too can build a luxury brand that positions you to sell high-ticket offers.
Regulating Your Nervous System as an Entrepreneur featuring Keri Ford
Keri Ford is a private advisor to multi-million dollar founders and a nervous system expert. She shares the perspective every ambitious woman needs to hear, especially if success has threatened to steal your sanity. Emotional regulation was a big theme for Victoria this year and learning from women like Keri helped her better handle some of the high pressure situations that naturally arise as your business grows. This episode is a must listen so be sure to listen to the full episode, here!
For women who are juggling family life and all that comes with that, plus their business, your nervous system is all over the place. Keri shares some ways to protect your nervous system including boundaries, meditation, listening to your body, getting good sleep, and especially for those with little ones, know that it’s not going to be forever. Cherish those moments and figure out what success looks like in life at this very moment, because it may be taking a little bit of a revenue hit.
Keri also defines the difference between healthy ambition vs. harmful overdrive and it lies in the answer of, from where are you building? Dopamine drive is when you’re constantly building from a place of “I’m not enough”, so getting to know where your inner drive comes from and healing wounds of enoughness is so important.
Lastly, our brains were never designed to handle the amount of decisions we have to make as founders of our companies. Keri shares that ancestrally, we used to make two thousand decisions per day. Now, we’re making over thirty thousand decisions a day. These decisions don’t even include all the thoughts created by social media and scrolling. Because of reels we are decreasing our attention span dramatically and losing the ability to be with the stillness or nothingness. In the modern day, we have to be very choosy about what and who we allow into our brain.
When it comes to our businesses, we also need to audit what we allow into our brains, but more so, the best way we can reduce the number of decisions we have to make is to hire decision makers. This is giving people the responsibility and the privilege to be able to make decisions on your behalf. These are people that you deeply trust, people that you have cultivated and trained, but having these people is so huge in reducing your decision fatigue.
Happy New Year from The Branding Business School Podcast!
We hope you enjoyed this 2025 In Review episode! The end of Season 10 is officially here, but there are over 170 episodes that you’re able to go back through in the meantime! If you haven’t listened to all six of the episodes highlighted from today – this would be a great place to start! We hope you have a Happy New Year and we’ll see you next time when Season 11 kicks off in the new year!
Key Quotes
“For the entrepreneur who just has such a hard time letting go of control. What would you say to them?
I think you need to ask yourself if control is more important than experiencing the life that you absolutely deserve.”
Victoria Marcouillier & Jessica Marx, Episode 161
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