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We sit down with Pam Baker, founder of "Widows Who Wine" and author of "Where's the Key to the Safe" to talk about rebuilding life after loss through friendship, purpose, and practical preparation. We also get into the uncomfortable but essential money and paperwork realities that hit families during grief and how to make them easier.
• Pam’s path from cystic fibrosis advocacy to widowhood leadership
• Why Widows Who Wine is a social sisterhood rather than a grief group
• How loneliness shows up after loss and what helps women rejoin life
• The “business of death” and why probate tasks feel brutal in grief fog
• The widow tax and the hidden ways cash flow can drop
• How to choose financial help and how various fee structures work
• Common traps like authorized user cards and lack of account access
• Beneficiary reviews that can override a will and trigger conflict
• Writing letters to children to explain decisions and reduce infighting
• How to start a Widows Who Wine chapter with support from Pam and her team
Connect with Pam:

Order her book: https://lastinglegacyconsulting.com/book/

Connect via her website: https://widowswhowine.com/

Find her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/widowswhowine

Subscribe to the Pivotal People newsletter for new episodes, giveaways and more: https://stephanienelson.com/newsletter/
Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
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Order Stephanie's book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential

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Success can go to your head. Failure can go to your heart. And if you’re building something from scratch, it’s easy to let the business decide who you are.

We sit down with Brett Smith, Executive Director of the Center for LIFE at Miami University (Leading the Integration of Faith and Entrepreneurship), to dig into what founders rarely say out loud: entrepreneurship is a tough, lonely sport that can amplify stress, shame, and identity swings. Brett shares what his research reveals about the “high highs and low lows” of entrepreneurial life and why a founder’s identity often rises and falls right along with revenue, funding, and momentum.

Then we get practical. Brett explains how a relational identity with God can act as a stabilizing counterbalance to entrepreneurial identity, affirming you in the lows and humbling you in the highs. We also unpack why success can be just as destabilizing as failure, how faith can shape decision making when the information is ambiguous, and why translating academically rigorous research into everyday language actually matters for entrepreneurs, investors, and teams.

Finally, we point you to free tools through Faith Driven Entrepreneur’s Research Insights and share where to learn more about the Center for LIFE, including resources on faith-driven entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with a founder friend, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Brett Smith Bio:

Brett R. Smith, Ph.D. is the Cintas Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship, Founding Director, Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and Founding Research Director, Leading the Integration of Faith & Entrepreneurship (L.I.F.E.) Research Lab at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His research interests focus on social and faith-based entrepreneurship. His research has been featured in leading academic journals.

Learn more and contact Brett at: https://lifemiamioh.com/

Subscribe to the Pivotal People newsletter for new episodes, giveaways and more: https://stephanienelson.com/newsletter/
Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
Follow us on Instagram @stephanie_nelson_cm
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Order Stephanie's book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential

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A 13-year-old says, “I want to go to Uganda,” and a whole future cracks open. That’s where our conversation with Dr. Janelle Aby goes, and it’s why it sticks. Janelle is a physician, a clinical professor of pediatrics at Stanford University, and the medical director of the newborn nursery at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, but her most surprising work might be the stories she’s been brave enough to write down. We talk about her book-in-progress (working title: A Beautiful Mess) and why storytelling can cut through the endless noise and get us back to what matters.

We dig into how she writes without formal writing training, how reading shapes voice, and why the best stories often start as moments you can’t forget but can’t fully explain. One memory about her son Jack and a homeless man becomes a lesson in generosity with no guarantees. If you’ve ever wondered how to journal, write a memoir, or simply make sense of your life, her process is a practical map: capture the scene, then stay curious until the meaning shows itself.

Then the conversation turns to Uganda, global health, and faith in action. A connection with Damali and her orphanage grows into a community effort and, eventually, a newborn hospital project in a region with limited medical options. Janelle describes it like “surfing on a wave,” where you still take steps, but you’re not the one supplying the power. We also talk about obedience close to home, the courage to loosen control, and a relationship with a friend named Donna that proves community can be both hard and holy.

If this story nudges you to take one next step, don’t ignore it. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs encouragement, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Subscribe to the Pivotal People newsletter for new episodes, giveaways and more: https://stephanienelson.com/newsletter/
Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
Follow us on Instagram @stephanie_nelson_cm
Follow us on Facebook at CouponMom

Order Stephanie's book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential