We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kristen Fedeli. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kristen below.

Alright, Kristen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I would say the biggest risk that I’ve taken in my life is quitting my teaching/counseling career of 12 years to pursue business ownership and working outside of the educational system.

Ever since I was a little girl, I had always wanted to be a teacher because my role model and best friend, my Grandma Janet, was a teacher and reading supervisor. She would bring me her old grade books, lesson plan books, text books, pens — all the things to make a girl’s dream of “playing school” a reality. I was hooked. I went to Penn State to get my teaching certificate and I taught 5th grade for 7 years.

During that time, I realized that I had a much bigger passion for how my students were feeling about life rather than fractions and science. I went back to get my Master’s degree in Elementary School Counseling from IUP. I then moved to Virginia and I was a school counselor in a K-5 elementary school for 6 years.

As amazing as the job was, right around 3 years into it, my husband and I started to struggle with miscarriage and infertility. It was really hard for me to show up at work each day and interact with kids whose parents may not have been treating them well when I would have done anything for a baby of my own. About 3 years into our infertility journey, it really started to weigh on me mentally, physically and emotionally. I knew that I couldn’t stay in that job forever.

I always say that I prayed for a baby and God gave me a business. A friend introduced me to a skincare company at the time, and though I am rather introverted and had zero sales experience, I jumped in and built a pretty decent business. I was able to quit my career (a HUGE risk considering it had been my life’s dream to be a teacher!) and pursue IVF with my husband.

I guess there are two risks here– the risk of leaving my career and the risk of pursuing IVF, which is basically just a really expensive lottery ticket into parenthood with no guarantees of a baby at the end of it.

We ended up being one of the lucky ones, our IVF journey was successful and it ended with two identical baby girls, who are now wild and wonderful four-year-olds who keep us on our toes daily!

After having the girls, I lost the passion that I had for the skincare business and felt the itch to move on to something different. I knew that I wanted to be home with them as much as I could, so returning to the classroom didn’t feel like an option for me. I started to pursue copywriting and my sister-in-law hired me as her Operations Manager for her online boutique, Spicy Chic Boutique.

As much as I loved copywriting for businesses, I actually have recently transitioned into more of a virtual assistant role for two business owners who I adore working for. Helping others is a huge area of satisfaction for me and I love to find ways to make other people’s lives easier. Working as a virtual assistant has allowed me to have the flexibility to be with my family, which is my number one priority, and has allowed me to find satisfaction in helping businesses and people that I really believe in.

For me, the risk has been a rollercoaster. There are times that I’ve doubted myself, thought that maybe I should have stayed in my career in education for the security, and times that I encountered TONS of imposter syndrome (like tons and tons). But, I trust in the timing of how things are supposed to workout and so far, I feel really lucky that they have.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I did mention how I got into what I do now in my previous answer, so I’ll save you on repeating that!

As an Operations Manager for Spicy Chic Boutique, I work alongside the owner to plan our marketing strategies, run our social media and email marketing, host live sales for our customers, and even sometimes show up for packaging and shipping! It’s just the two of us running the boutique and while she does much of the forward-facing content, I am behind the scenes pulling the strings!

As a virtual assistant, I have a lot of different roles. Sometimes I feel like Alexa, responding to tasks and requests whenever they come in! Most often I work with scheduling, time blocking, emails and newsletters, organization, social media, etc.

I think I solve a few problems for the clients that I work with. I try to be a soft place to land for them because being a business owner is mentally taxing and stressful! I want to be an easy place where they can mentally “drop” what they need and I can pick up the ball and run with it. It’s important to me to try and help them to optimize their schedules, plans, inboxes, etc. so that they can do what THEY’RE really good at, and I can do what I’m really good at!

I think I’m most proud of my consistency and dedication to the people that I work with and for. When I believe in someone’s mission and vision, I’m all in. I’m proud to be a part of these individual’s teams and to play the part that I do in their success and lives.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

This might seem pretty basic, but my mission is always for my daughters to see me trying to be the best that I can be at whatever I’m doing. They see me cry and get overwhelmed, most often with a laptop in front of me, but they don’t see me quit. My mission is to show them that they can choose what they want to do and be proud of what they’re doing, regardless of what other people think of their choices.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I feel like my biggest pivot has been from working in the educational system for more than a decade to essentially working from home and being in charge of my own income/schedule/finding clients/etc. Working in education was very regimented. I showed up at a certain time, performed certain tasks, met criteria, checked the boxes, and served in my specific role. It was a hard line of work because our teachers, counselors, administrators, faculty and staff are so underpaid and undervalued. However, working for myself has been chaotic in its own way at times, and that has been an interesting pivot for sure.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristenfedeli/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kristen.m.fedeli/

Image Credits
Amanda Brisco Photographer