The Adventurer

I woke up one morning with the Talking Heads song in my head.

“This is not my beautiful life. This is not my beautiful house!”

I had the loving marriage, the house, the business.

It should have been perfect. But it was someone else’s idea of a perfect life.

Not once in over three decades of living had I ever stopped to ask, “What do I want?”

I followed all the commandments of Business As Usual and soaked up the How To’s and the Systems of internet marketing.

I mastered the rules of persuasive sales copy and email marketing. I became the queen of content marketing, the princess of the product launch, the mistress of the action strategy.

I used what I learned to bootstrap two 6-figure businesses, create and sell marketing courses to thousands of entrepreneurs, earn over $1 million in sales, and coach both solo-preneurs and multi-million dollar corporations.

I got certified as a Master Practitioner of NLP, Master NLP Coach, Master Hypnotherapist and Master Time Line Therapy®️ Practitioner and NLP Trainer.

Yeah, I know how to write copy and spin messaging that sells.

But here’s the thing:

None of that felt like ME. It wasn’t my business. It wasn’t my life.

I was choosing from the limited options placed before me and selecting from the roles other people wanted me to fill.

I’ve come to believe that the best reason to master the rules is so that you can learn to break them. Ruthlessly.

So I completely dismantled my life.

I said goodbye to my marriage of 17 years to a man I still love.

I stepped away from my online business to travel the world by myself and dive into the Unknown.

I let go of everything I knew about who I thought I was.

I’m not going to bullshit you and tell you that it was easy. It brought me to my knees more than a few times.

What I’ve learned (am still learning) is that my way of living and doing business doesn’t look like anyone else’s. It’s not supposed to.

It’s weird and fun. It flows with ease, even in the most challenging moments, because there isn’t anything I’d rather be more than ME.

I’m here to awaken the changemakers – coaches, healers, thought leaders, conscious entrepreneurs – to the Love and Truth of what they really are, enabling them to create businesses as an expression of their joy that ripples out in waves of awakening in new technologies, economies and services that care for all beings and this planet.

The most important discovery in my journey into Being Myself?

Being me is:

Exuberant joy.

Aliveness.

The boundaries between self and other dissolve.

There is no thinking, only being.

The joy wells up and overflows, and I am moved to express it as creation.

Life is moving me.

And I saw something:

That’s just what I am without all the crappy thinking that isn’t.

All the time I was holding back the life in me by obsessing about who I am and whether I’m enough…when I am that beautiful light.

And now I think…

…this really isn’t about me, is it?

It’s about YOU.

You are a beautiful being of light.

Somehow this message found you.

You are an expression of the divine and it shines through you — even when you don’t feel it — in the perfection that could only exist as you.

What if you saw yourself that way?

You. Perfectly You.

The Seeker

Drawing By: Lydia Jansen

Once upon a time there was a girl who grew up believing there was something wrong with her.

The girl’s parents split up only a few years after she and her little brother were born. Their little family moved every few months. There was always a new school, a new house, a new boyfriend for her mother.

Nowhere felt like home. Nothing felt safe.

So the little girl created a world of rules and routines to feel safe. Be a good girl. Get straight A’s. Never let them see you cry.

The girl taped her world together by following the rules and pushing herself to work hard. She developed a talent for filling whatever role needed filling. She found a purpose in what she could do.

All of this helped a little, but still, she dreamed of making a home with a boy and a life that was all her own.

When the girl finally became a grown up woman, she was done moving. She stayed.

She met a charming salesman who loved her and made her laugh. He needed a partner to bring his big ideas to life, and so that’s what she became.

For twenty two years, the woman lived in the same town where she was born, on the same street, with the same man. Together, they created a life and multiple businesses that should have been perfect. They projected the image of the happy couple, and mostly, they were.

But still, the woman never felt at home in her own life. Her house, her marriage, even her career felt like wearing clothes that don’t fit.

You see, secretly the woman didn’t want to be married to this beautiful man, living in a house in the same city where she was born. She didn’t know where home was, but it wasn’t there.

Years went by and the woman kept doing what she thought other people wanted, filling the roles that needed filling, careful to never be too much, and she was very good at it.

Until she wasn’t.

One day, she heard the call of surrender. Surrender was a place where you let everything go, and she imagined it felt like bliss. So she started asking for it.

As the mystery of surrender slowly revealed itself, the woman discovered that it wasn’t about giving up; it meant not trying to be what she wasn’t, and spending time in the space of what she really was.

She began to discover what she wanted, moment by moment, and what she didn’t even know she wanted until it showed up and she found herself saying yes.

She left her beautiful husband, their beautiful home, and the beautiful business they’d created together, and set off on an adventure to discover the home she’d always been looking for. She met many magical human, animal and dragon friends who taught her many things.

She learned to let come what comes, and to let go what goes. She saw what remained.

One day, without trying, she woke up and noticed that her life was perfect. To her amazement, it had nothing to do with where she lived, who she was with, or what career she had, for home was none of those things.

She had finally found the Home within herself.

And now the strange and wonderful adventure of her life continues…

The Professional

Stephanie Benedetto is a transformational business coach, storyteller and (Un)Marketer at The Awakened Business, where she helps transformative coaches, healers and entrepreneurs unleash their heart’s message to create soulmate clients with playful (Un)Marketing — no hustle, hype of endless social media required.

She approaches business as a game played by your rules, and believes you can PLAY your way to a thriving, profitable business that changes the world.

Stephanie has over twenty years of experience bootstrapping multiple 6-figure businesses, creating and selling marketing courses to thousands of entrepreneurs, and earning over $1 million in online sales. Known for her playful, light-hearted approach to creating deep impact through business, her areas of expertise include one-of-a-kind brand messaging, content marketing, email marketing and transformational coaching. She’s coached both solo-preneurs and multi-million dollar businesses and has been featured on The Huffington Post, Fox Business News, Vox and numerous publications on and offline.

These days Stephanie is a transformational business coach based in the Three Principles understanding as discovered by Sydney Banks, and a certified transformational coach through Michael Neill’s Supercoach Academy. She uses curious questions, stories, and play to inspire joyful creation.

Stephanie sees business as a sacred vehicle for the transformation of this reality. But what she’s really interested in is empowering people to play the game of life, without holding anything back, and creating with the joy they were born to experience.

Stephanie is a 6/2 Emotional Projector according to Human Design, ENFP per Myers Briggs, Enneagram Type 2, and a triple water sign (Pisces/Cancer/Cancer) with a thing for dragons, wolves and impossible questions. (While she still loves taking personality tests and quizzes for fun, she never ever takes them seriously.)