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What happens when you reach the career milestone you were certain would settle everything, then find a bigger question waiting at the top? Stan Phelps built a career at the top of sports marketing, running tennis promotions for Adidas and managing the New York Yankees relationship from an office inside Yankee Stadium. Each time he reached the role he had aimed for, the view asked more of him than the title had promised.

Following his curiosity, Stan gave himself one year to write about every part of his field, searching for the single idea to go a mile deep on. That year became his first book, and grew into twenty. He left the stability of corporate work behind, moved his family to the Triangle, and built the work and the life he wanted on his own terms.

In this conversation with Dr. Caroline Sangal, Stan shares the full arc, and what changed when he stopped chasing the next thing and started asking what he truly wanted to build.

You will hear:

• How reaching the top of a field can surface the very question you were trying to outrun
• The moment one word on a conference badge shifted how people saw him
• Why going a mile deep on one idea builds more than spreading wide across many
• The year of writing that became his first book and grew into twenty
• How Stan defines authentic success now, and where he puts his energy today

Find Stan's latest book, Speak Different, and his work at stanphelps.com.

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You can reach every career goal you set and still catch yourself wondering what it was all for. Patrick Kamba knows that question well. He built the kind of career that looks complete from the outside, leading global programs in pharma, becoming a director, writing a book. And somewhere along the way he started paying attention to a smaller, more honest measure of success: whether he was actually around for the people he loved.

Patrick and Caroline walk through his whole path, from a kid who chose engineering while his family pictured a doctor, to a leader who learned to want less noise and more life. If your work looks right on paper and something quieter has started tugging at you, this one will land.

• What comes up after you hit the title you chased for years
• Why Patrick started measuring success by his weeknights
• How the relationships he built over ten years carried him through a career shock
• What quiet ambition means, and how to chase big goals without performing them
• Success as freedom, with people to share it with

Patrick Kamba wrote Quiet Ambition. Find him at patrickkamba.com.

Ready for a career that fuels your life? Start at nextsuccesscareers.com.

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Nobody trains you to lead. Jen Heemstra found that out the hard way, then wrote the book on it.

She became a chemist by accident. Almost went to law school. Took an industry job that quietly convinced her she was mediocre. And then came the moment most academics dread: the tenure vote where half the room votes no.

Here's the twist. That's the moment she found her purpose.

In this episode you'll hear:

• How a night job in a stockroom turned into an entire career
• What a toxic job does to your confidence, and how she got hers back
• The tenure vote that should have ended her, and the leader who changed everything in one afternoon
• The one question from her husband that finally got the book written
• How she defines success now, and why kindness is the whole point

Chapters:

00:00 The plan, and a mother's advice

03:30 Changing majors and a year of exploring

07:00 Becoming a chemist by accident

23:00 The industry job

30:00 How a bad job shook her confidence

39:00 The tenure vote

41:00 The afternoon that pointed her to leadership

48:00 Writing the book

52:30 How she defines success

Jen's book, Labwork to Leadership: A Concise Guide to Thriving in the Science Job You Were Not Trained For: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674258630

Build a career that fuels the life you want: nextsuccesscareers.com

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Subscribe to Your Next Success so you never miss an episode.

Watch full video episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NextSuccessMethod/

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If you're a high achiever, this one's for you.

Dr. Jen Heemstra figured out early that achievement was the one thing she could control. So she controlled it. Grades, awards, being the person who had it all together. She literally calls it her drug, and here's the part that gets you: it worked. It built the kind of career most people chase their whole lives.

Then she got to the top, and the drug stopped working. That's where part one begins.

In this episode you'll hear:

• Why achievement became the thing she reached for, and what it was really covering
• The wake-up call that made her question everything she'd built
• How being told she was "bad at science" at fourteen backfired in the best way
• The box of rocks that showed her what actually drives her
• What changes the day you stop performing your life and start choosing it

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
03:00 The home she grew up in
05:00 Why achievement became her anchor
11:00 The worst day, and the wake-up call
13:00 Deciding to show up as herself
29:00 When we start questioning our lives
35:00 "You're bad at science"
38:00 The box of rocks
42:00 The lab she runs now
49:00 Gratitude, and the people who carried her

Jen's book, Labwork to Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674258630

Build a career that fuels the life you want: nextsuccesscareers.com

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From Nice to Kind | Deidre Beacham on Nice Girl Syndrome, People Pleasing, and Radical Self-Ownership

Nice girl syndrome is one of the most invisible programs a woman can run, and Deidre Beacham ran it for decades before a single conversation finally made her see it.

By her 50s she had lived through more than most people face in a lifetime. And still, standing in front of her stepfather when he told her she was not being nice, she felt herself shrink. Everything she had built, everything she had survived, and that one word still had power over her. That moment became the beginning of everything she now teaches.

You will hear:

• The difference between being nice and being kind and why it changes everything
• How nice girl training runs like a program you never agreed to install
• What she discovered about herself that decades of therapy had never uncovered
• How she moved from needing outside validation to protecting herself from within
• What a lifetime of seeking approval actually costs and how to stop paying it
• What authentic success looks and feels like when you finally stop performing

Connect with Deidre and take the Nice Girl Index at deidrebeacham.com

Work with Caroline: nextsuccesscareers.com

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Find Yourself | Alex Dumas on Identity, Belonging, and Coming Back to Who You Are

Finding yourself after years of performing, surviving, and building from the outside in is the real work underneath every career story, and Alex Dumas traces his own path back with rare honesty.

He grew up feeling out of step, performing for the laugh to keep people at arm's length, carrying a verdict about himself he made at age six. Then someone saw him, really saw him, and he wanted, for the first time, to be worth seeing. What followed was love, loss, and a slow becoming that eventually led him back to himself.

You will hear:

• What it costs to carry a verdict about yourself that you made before you knew any better
• How love became the catalyst that started his real becoming
• How he moved through the hardest season of his life and kept going anyway
• The moment something buried inside him came roaring back
• What authentic success actually looks and feels like on the other side

Connect with Alex and access his gift for listeners at talk.ac/alexdumas?code=PODCAST

Work with Caroline: nextsuccesscareers.com

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Subscribe to Your Next Success so you never miss an episode.

Watch full video episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NextSuccessMethod/

Learn more about Next Success www.nextsuccesscareers.com

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Who Are You Without the Title? | Michele Novack

Career reinvention after corporate is rarely just about finding the next job. Michele Novack invested 30 years in banking and finance building her identity from the outside in, and eventually had to rebuild it from the inside out.

Her arc moves from a Yonkers childhood marked by early trauma, through single motherhood and night school, to VP roles at Bank of America and Capital One, to founding CardinalsByte, her cybersecurity risk management firm for small businesses, entirely from the ground up.

You will hear:

• How a career becomes an identity, and what happens when that identity is gone
• The mirror practice Michele returns to when she needs to reconnect with herself
• How forgiveness, including forgiving herself, became the foundation of her reinvention
• Why she built her firm entirely through referrals and real relationships
• What small businesses actually need to know about cybersecurity compliance
• What authentic success looks like when a three-year-old grandson is part of the picture

Connect with Michele: Free cybersecurity assessment at cardinalsbytes.com/contact-us

Work with Caroline: nextsuccesscareers.com

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How to Build an Event Production Career From Curiosity and Calling, With Cameron Magee

Building an event production career from scratch looks a lot like Cameron Magee's story: a curious kid, a mentor who pulled up a chair, and 20 years of showing up and giving more than he took.

In this conversation, the founder and CEO of avad3 shares how a small-town Arkansas boy with no entrepreneurial family background launched a company from his dorm room and grew it into a national production firm trusted by Walmart and the White House. More than the growth story, this is a conversation about identity, service, and what it takes to build a place where people actually want to stay.

You will hear:

• How a mentor at a church sound booth gave Cameron three years of patient instruction and changed the entire arc of his life
• The vending machine principle: give $1.10 back for every dollar someone gives you, and they will send three friends
• How he launched avad3 in college, nearly skipped college entirely, and graduated with the company logo on his cap
• The question at 25 that redirected everything: not "is this it" but "what could this become for others"
• Why avad3 collects next time notes from every crew member after every event, and how 1,400 moments of honest feedback a year drive their culture
• What a mentor told him about having a vibrant personal life that changed how he leads and how he lives

Connect with Cameron: Visit avad3.com to learn more about the team and how they serve event planners nationwide.

Connect with Caroline: nextsuccesscareers.com

Support the show

Subscribe to Your Next Success so you never miss an episode.

Watch full video episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NextSuccessMethod/

Learn more about Next Success www.nextsuccesscareers.com