Her Next Chapters
This podcast is for moms with an empty nest on the horizon who are reclaiming & redefining their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show we’ll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms, hear from women who restarted their careers, and share tactical tips for a successful job search after a career break.
Her Next Chapters
104. Leaving a Six-Figure Job to Start Over: Renee’s Story of Alignment and Purpose
In this week’s episode of Her Next Chapters, I sit down with mindset coach and former school principal Renee DeVore, whose story is one of the most powerful midlife reinventions I’ve heard yet. After a 25-year career in education — including 16 years as a principal — Renee walked away from her six-figure job, sold everything she owned, and moved to Mexico in search of alignment, authenticity, and a life that actually fit.
But her transition wasn’t linear. And it definitely wasn’t easy.
In our conversation, Renee opens up about the deeper reasons she entered education, the years of ignoring the whispers that she was on the wrong path, and the panic attack that finally forced her to choose herself. She talks about trying (and failing) to transition into corporate, facing hundreds of rejections, and the moment she realized she had a gift she could build a business around.
We walk through every chapter of her evolution — from launching an Etsy shop, to failed partnerships, to retreats, to TikTok growth, to finally creating Sol School, a year-long coaching and community experience for high-achieving women ready to leave burnout behind and design work on their own terms.
This episode is a powerful reminder that:
- Reinvention in midlife is not only possible — it’s normal
- Your transferable skills can take you further than you think
- Pivoting (again and again) is part of the process, not a sign you’re lost
- Taking action — even small, messy action — is what creates clarity
- You don’t have to burn it all down to find your next chapter
- The life you actually want might be on the other side of letting go of other people’s expectations
If you’re a woman navigating a career transition, thinking about entrepreneurship, craving more freedom, or just trying to figure out what’s next after burnout or a career pause, Renee’s story will hit home in all the best ways.
Doors to Sol School open December 8. To learn more email Renee and/or follow her on any of her social accounts:
Email: renee@yoursoulgrowthjourney.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/coachreneedevore
Tiktok: www.tiktok.com/@yoursoulgrowthjourney
Instagram: www.instagram.com/soulgrowthalchemy
- Want to chat about your career goals? Schedule a free call HERE.
- Send me an email ---> christina@hernextchapters.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn ---> www.linkedin.com/in/kohlchristina
Grab the Free Strengths-First Resume Template - it's perfect for anyone in career transitions, whether with a long career gap, a career pivot, or just ready for a change.
Hi and welcome to Her Next Chapters Podcast. I'm your host, Christina Kohl. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR pro who restarted my career after being a stay-home woman for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with women to have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanting to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show, we'll raw conversations about our ever changing roles as women. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for a job search after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started.
Christina Kohl:Well, welcome to this week's episode of Her Next Chapters. I am really excited to have a guest with us today, Renee DeVore's joining us. And Renee is a mindset coach for high-achieving women through her company Soul Growth. And she's also the founder of the Sol School, a first-of-its kind learning and coaching experience for women who are ready to build freedom, fulfillment, and financial flow on their own terms. So after a 25-year career and education, 16 of those as a school principal, Renee walked away from her six-figure role to create a life rooted in alignment, authenticity, and purpose. Today she helps high-achieving women reconnect with who they are, build businesses that reflect their truth, and lead themselves with confidence and clarity. Through her work with Soul Growth and the Sol School, Renee blends strategy, soul, and self-leadership to help women move from overthinking to action, from burnout to balance, and from success defined by others to fulfillment defined by themselves. Renee, welcome to the show.
Renee DeVore:My gosh, that sounds so beautiful when you say that back to me. I'm like, that is so clear and so on point. So thank you for that.
Christina Kohl:Isn't it? Yes. And I just want to share with the audience like you and I met earlier this this year, I think in 2025, through a mutual friend, Lisa Klein. And then I joined your community that you were developing, you know, just you're like, hey, come hang out with me. I'm like, I'm in! Yeah. Yeah. And you know, so we know each other from that. And you've I've even seen pivots in your coaching in the last year, but beyond that, this whole idea of being an educator and being a principal and just walking away. I would love to hear more about that. Like, how did you get into education in the first place? And then what was the undercurrent that prompted you to just start over?
Renee DeVore:Yeah. It's really interesting. So, first of all, I became a teacher because my dad was a teacher. Um, I saw that growing up, and so education was really um in our blood, and maybe this is a little TMI, but I was always seeking approval from my dad. And um I there was a real conditional love that was attached to our relationship. And so I know now um what I didn't know until I exited my career, that this I never felt aligned to being in education. I was never pumped about what I was teaching. I love the kids, but what I've realized is that I love anybody I can help become the best version of themselves. Right. So it didn't have to be education. It could have been social work, it could have been therapy, it could have been doing what I'm doing now. But ultimately I became a teacher seeking approval from my dad. It gave us a common pathway to have conversations around his path, his passion, which eventually became my passion, or so I thought it it was. And so I can track back all the way into even my third year of being a teacher when I moved from my hometown to San Diego and I tried to get out then. And I got my life insurance certificate to be like a selling life insurance, and I sat in a cubicle for two days doing cold calls, and I was like, this is not gonna work.
unknown:All right.
Renee DeVore:So I I ended up going back into education. And so there were points in my career, my 25-year career, where I always thought about what else could there be out there for me. And I just I didn't know. I think when you've been in that box for educators, we've been in it since we were four or five years old, right? We don't know any different. So it took a lot, like 38 was when I really started to question. I'd already been a principal for six years, 38, uh, which I think is really common for men and women to begin to think about like, is this it? Is this what the rest of my life is gonna look like? And I remember going into my therapist and saying, okay, we've talked about my dad. Now I need to talk about my career. I don't think that this is where I want to be. And so we navigated for like the next seven years, right? It was the next seven years that I finally made this decision to uh sell everything I owned. I had a condo, you know, here in Chicago. I had my car, all my furnishings, new furnishings, just purchased my home three years prior, sold it all to move to Mexico to just leave my identity behind and to enter into this space and place of not being anything other than Renee. And it was the beginning of my transformational experience, but I fell back into education. Um, this was in 2019. I fell back into education. I moved to Vermont and I knew within a week of going uh that I shouldn't have been there. I should have, I should have done differently. And I got stuck in the pandemic. And so I was there captive for a couple of years until October of 2021. October 1st of 2021, I had a panic attack and I thought I was dying. And I realized in that moment that this was the universe telling me, like, I've been trying to send you whispers, right? Heart whispers for a long time now. So I'm just gonna give you this one other type of whisper, which is like a feeling of death. I had never had a panic attack before. And I called my boss that night and I said, I'm not coming back. I'll stay for the end of the year, but I'm not coming back. And that was it. So I've been a principal for 16 years at this point, right? So I there's all these points along my career that were telling me, like, this isn't it, this isn't it. I tried to get out at different at different points. I'm sure there's so many people who listen to this too and are like, yep, I've been there, I did that, right? I got cuffed to the money. I to some degree got cuffed to the power in the title, um, got cuffed to this notion of not knowing what else there was out there for me. Yeah. Um, until that panic attack hit and I thought I was dying. And I was like, if it's not now, Renee, it's gonna be something worse down the road. So that was it. Yeah.
Christina Kohl:Right. Oh my gosh. Thank you for sharing all of that. And it's not uh in my opinion, it's not TMI at all, because I think a lot of us fall into careers, not necessarily because we're following our heart or intuition, but like, you know, for you, it was with your dad. It's like, well, this is what I've known, and it makes sense, and we have this connection, but it wasn't really Renee because you weren't listening to your inner voice then, and it took a panic attack, which is I understand feels like a heart attack, like you can't breathe, and your chest is tight. And it's just um, I know someone who personally who's had one and and she was in the emergency room because I thought I'm dying. Um, and so for it to take that. And a lot of women that I work with and that that listen to the show, they might be on a career pause, you know, taking care of taking time out to care for their families, and then it's ready, time to go back to work, they're ready. And a lot of the just like, well, this is what I've always done. Yeah, just like you leaving Mexico, you took a break, a pause, reset, and you went back to education because it's what you know and it's what you're employable as, and with what you can start with that salary, and but your body's like, no, that's no, listen. And I think that's a really important message during midlife, you know. That's the the name of the show, the podcast, her next chapters, like what's next. Yeah, there's not just one, there's gonna be multiple chapters coming. That reinvention, what does that look like? It's okay, and especially after a career pause, or not. I mean, you didn't you were pivoting along the way, but especially after a pause, it's an opportunity to reinvent and use those transferable skills to do something new. So you finally listened, you had your wake up call and you're like, I'm not going back to education. Like you were done as far as in the traditional K through 12 sense. Because you're still educating now, just in a very different way, right? So um bring this forward from then. So, what happened after you left your role in in Vermont as the principal?
Renee DeVore:Yeah, listen, everybody thought that I, you know, not everybody thought, I thought I would it would be an easy transition. So, okay, of course, as a principal, and what I realized very early on that nobody really understands what a principal does unless they've been close to a principal or um they've been a principal themselves. Everybody, I think, has this perspective of what a principal does, which is sit and discipline based on all the movies out there, and there's nothing else that they do. I am the CEO of the school. Like I didn't realize that, and I wasn't even capable of really seeing that until um I met some people along my journey outside when I left my career who were able to kind of show that to me. So I left thinking I was gonna go into corporate. Like I was looking for the money. I was looking for the same salary, I was looking for the same benefits. I was a little nervous about not having similar vacation time, right? I was looking for those things that made me feel safe or that I thought made me feel safe. You know, months went by. First of all, as an educator moving into corporate, it's a totally different ballgame in how you have to approach the application process and looking for jobs. Plus, I was always having to learn new jargon, acronyms, the ways you know, corporate speaks compared to how educators speak. I there was a huge learning curve, and I wasn't prepared for it. I wasn't prepared for it. I thought it was really going to be a much simpler transition than what it was. And so I was a little caught off guard. Um, I applied to hundreds of roles. I had never been rejected more in my life. I mean, in a six-month time span, I'd been rejected more in those six months than I had in my entire life through boyfriends, through like, I mean, it killed me, right? And there was just a point in time I was like, hmm, are these rejections actually redirections? Is this a redirect of something else I need to be looking at? Am I not seeing something here, right? Similar to all the whispers in my career. Now I'd had that wake-up call, right? I wasn't really spiritually present at that point. Like I was at there's something about energy that I carried, but I wasn't really super spiritual. So I wasn't kind of leaning into that, but I was like, there's something, there's something off here. Like there's no way I can apply to hundreds of jobs and not one interview. Like, what is that about me? And I think, you know, I've shared this a lot on my social media platforms. Um, I was working with a sales coach who just wanted me to be a part of his program, his group program, because he liked my energy. And he sent me um a video by Steve Harvey, which is Discover Your Gift. It's like five minutes long. I was like, okay, cool. I'll re I'll watch this. I watched it five minutes and I was like, What? Is it that easy to discover your gift? And I would say, give, you know, to your audience members, you can just Google Steve Harvey, Discover Your Gift. And he talks about the difference between following your passion and discovering your gift. And I closed my computer and I was like, if it's that easy, Renee, what's your gift? And I, and I literally said so quickly, your gift is to spread love, light, and positive energy to the world around you. And then that next step, and I think this is important for the people who are watching this because I think that this is one of the questions people need to ask themselves when they're at this crossroads and not certain what they need to do. There's, you know, I'm sure you've got a list of questions for people to reflect on. That question of like, what's your gift? What do you do really well? I say, what do you do best with the least amount of effort? What's what comes the easiest to you with the least amount of effort? And to me, it was just spreading love, light, and positive energy, talking to strangers, right, making connections, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, my next step after that, within moments, was well, what can you do with it? And it's when I stepped into action and I opened up my Etsy store. I was like, I just want to put positive messages on hats, right? And sweatshirts. I want to open an Etsy store, never done anything like that. And let's just get this positive light energy out into the world in some way, not worry about money, not worry about benefits, not worry about any of that stuff. And just have this be a beautiful exchange of energy between whoever buys it. And that was this the first step I took, which is a huge disconnect between that and what I do now.
Christina Kohl:Yeah, yeah. But it was your first step into entrepreneurship.
Renee DeVore:It was my first step into entrepreneurship. And but I I didn't even see that as entrepreneurship. I just saw it as let me take my creativity that had been so stifled for so long. I'll say that that was another important step for me, too, is knowing what my core values were. Because one of my core values is creativity, which I recognized was something that I was absolutely missing in my career as a principal. Um, I had it when I was a teacher, I had more latitude as a teacher, but I didn't have it as at a principal. And so when I realized that, I was like, oh, this makes perfect sense why when I left my career, I was so excited about um kind of looking at my my canvas of my life differently, right? And just being able to visualize and see kind of on a different scale than I was when I was kind of in that box. So yeah, the Etsy store was the first step. Um, and I still didn't know probably for another year that I was stepping into entrepreneurship even after that Etsy store. Do you still have that store open? I do. I think I've I've paused it. I use it because now I use it for my swag to give to my clients. Right. Or you know, women who come to my retreats. I use uh, I don't need to have that anymore because I've got to hold another platform. But yeah, so you know what's interesting when you when we look at my journey, it's like everything has kind of come full circle now. It took me three years, right? I'm sure we'll talk about this, but every in three years, I was always wondering how all the pieces of the puzzle would eventually fit together. And really, it just is like just letting it happen the way that it needs to happen, right? Surrendering to the process, following your heart. I'm probably going steps ahead of you right now, but that's okay. That's okay. It's such an important part of that journey of stepping into action and just letting your heart kind of guide the way and not and recognizing you're not going to have all the answers when you probably want the answers.
Christina Kohl:Right. Yeah, we can spend days, weeks, years thinking, and but it's the action that makes all the difference. And and sometimes the action, I'll tell my clients, like, you know, strategic volunteering. Go try, go do the thing that you want to do next, do it for free. And you might find that I don't want to do that thing. I thought I did, but once I did it, it's not really for me. Or but might also introduce you to someone else, a person, or a uh another thing that you could do, another opportunity. You just never know. But it's taking those steps that are gonna be what's I'm trying to think of a metaphor, maybe I'm making it my own, but like a river, like it it has to, you have to be in motion in order to go to wind up anywhere.
Renee DeVore:So you can't I mean in my woo world, I'd say you're telling the universe that you're you you're exploring and you want to kind of step out of the box a little bit and and experiment, right? And that energy of of action is actually reciprocated back to you. I, you know, I say this all the time. I say this to my clients too, when they're they get caught up in the planning mode and perfection, right? And I've got to have it all mapped out because us hyperachiever women, right? We like to have everything planned out. We like to see what the outcomes are gonna be, and that's just not realistic in a life journey. But I tell my clients all the time there are no wrong turns. There are no wrong turns, there's only opportunities to learn what's meant for you and what's not meant for you.
Christina Kohl:Right, right. And there's um someone I follow, Ruth, Ruth Suka, she says that there are no mistakes, only lessons.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Christina Kohl:Yeah, same, right? So, yeah, it's to say there are no wrong turns. It's you're gonna learn and grow from it and be moving forward. Yes, and moving in the right direction that you need to be going. So let's let's go back to you a couple of things I want to unpack. Because quitting your job and going to Mexico, selling your car, your furniture, your brand new furniture, your house. What made you take that leap? I mean, that's that's not that's a really big leap. That's not just I'm gonna pivot and do something different. That's pretty radical. Um can you take us to that mindset?
Renee DeVore:It's funny, as you were just talking, I was like, I think I've always been a rule breaker. I've always wanted to break the rules. Yeah, I was in a principle. You're the principle of the women. I mean, and I was in a system that was constantly telling me to stay within the rules and create rules for everybody else. I remember kids coming to me and questioning me on rules, and I remember saying to them, like, I don't know. It's been in place for the last like 50 years. That's why the rules are new. Yeah, I couldn't ever give them a good explanation. But I I was a rule breaker. I mean, who I was in my career and who I was in life were two different people. Um, there was obviously a tension there too. Um, so I had gone on vacation. I had already told my boss that I was like, I the school district I was in here in Chicago, in the northern suburbs of Chicago, they just ate me alive as a principal. It was really tough. And the walls really started to cave in on me. I started managing adults more than taking care of kids. And um, I remember, you know, in October telling my superintendent at the time, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not gonna come back next year. So I'd already known. But so that was in October. In December, I'd gone on a two-week vacation to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, which I had gone plenty of times. I had met somebody down there who was taking a three-month hiatus from his job. And I was so envious of like anybody who could just take a three-month hiatus from their job. Right, granted, I don't remember what he was like an engineer for boats. I don't remember what he did, but I came back with that on my heart, just like, I want that. I want that for myself. And I started to think, well, can I? I it's something about Mexico, but I remember coming back to my office staff, my secretaries at the time, who I was very close to. And this was me just kind of sprinkling, you know, this is the action piece. So we think action sometimes is like the volunteer stuff that you're talking about. This little action is what set me um set my trajectory in movement, was just coming back to my office staff and saying, So would it be crazy if I moved to Mexico for a year? And without a flinch, they were like, Oh my God, no, this would be amazing. We would be the first ones to meet you. And I was like, Wow, I was not expecting. I thought they were gonna tell me I was crazy. And that was the affirmation that just started the ball rolling for me. And so it was meeting that person in Mexico, hearing his story, coming back, asking, you know, my office staff who I trusted, little questions, right? There was an affirmation there. And then I kept, you know, applying to jobs and nothing felt good, or I didn't get interviews. This was still trying to get into another principal position. I thought, well, maybe I'll get into a different type of environment. Maybe that'll shift things. By the way, wherever you go, there you are, right? It's not always about the environment, it's often about you. Um, so I had gotten this interview with this alternative school in Massachusetts, and um that's where I started my career, was in an alternative school. And I thought, okay, well, this is it. And I felt really good about um my application process. And then I got on the interview, and I knew even going into the interview, if they don't move me forward, because this was the only interview I had had that I felt really good about. And I, it was probably March, March at that time, and that was pretty late in the year to be making decisions on moving to Mexico or another job. I got into the interview and I said, I just want to let you know, if you don't move me along in the process, I'm gonna, I'm moving to Mexico.
Speaker 2:That's that's my first case.
Renee DeVore:The interview team, right? Right. It's almost like I was self-sabotaging, right? The whole process. Sure enough, a week later, I'm sitting at my mom's house and I get the email that says, We did not move you forward in the process. And I remember looking at my mom and just saying, Okay, that's it. Gotta look for places in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. And then the next four months were about putting my house on the market, selling everything I owned. And um, I didn't, you know, my goal was to leave there and figure out whether or not I wanted to come back to education, but I didn't have those tools. And so I say it wasn't a wasted year. I would have done it very differently now that I know what I know now. Um, but what I teach, and I'm probably you are the same at this, is that I want I want people to know that they don't have to burn it all down like I did. I was in such an overwhelmed, dysregulated state that I could only see those two options. I could only see this job and this alternative school or selling it all and moving to Mexico for a year. That's all I could see. Okay. Right. We want to keep, we want to get people before they get to that stuff.
Christina Kohl:Before they burn it all down. Yeah.
unknown:Yeah. Yeah.
Christina Kohl:So, okay. So thank you for for going back in time on that. And then we you've left Vermont, you um started your Etsy store. Okay. Let's talk about the evolution from there because there's been a lot of yes, evolution and change and gaining those tools that you didn't have, maybe when you're in Mexico, that you've acquired and and use in your in your practice, your coaching practice, in your business. So, yeah, walk us through kind of the iterations because you've been evolving. I've witnessed some of your evolution in public on social media and in our calls. And so I think it'd be interesting for the audience to hear that as well.
Renee DeVore:Yeah, I think if you were to even just hear the story, the part of the story that I've shared with everybody here today, it's like there was a lack of clarity from a young age, from the time I entered into college, right? I wasn't clear about anything. I I was doing everything for everybody else. I wasn't doing it for myself. And so to get to the age of 47 and finally be like, well, how do you want to live your life for you? I was like, I don't, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to live my life for me. I've been doing it for everybody else, even though I was single for so many of those years. And right, like there was, but I had really been living my life for everybody else, by everybody else's standards, by every what everybody else defines success as, what my dad, right? Um, so to get to 47 years old and say, I don't even know what this next step is gonna be, right? So that action step of just opening the Etsy store, being inspired by that video into that Etsy store. And then after that, um, I had met somebody on LinkedIn who lived just five miles away from me. She had also been an educator, she had been out a couple years, and we had met for the very first time about three days after I opened my Etsy store. And she was sharing with me what she was doing, and I shared with her about my Etsy store, and I showed her my postcard, and she's like, Renee, uh, this is the business I want to. I want, I want to go into business with you. And I was like, What? I'm like, this is just an Etsy store. This isn't this meant to be a business. This is just an Etsy store. She's like, I this little postcard that I had, I wish I had I could share it with you. She's like, uh, this is what I want. I want to empower women and I want to use your company soul growth and let's go do this together. And so at that point again, I was okay. I I don't know, but yes, all right, I'll do that. Right. And I did. So for nine months, we tried to figure out how to build a business together. And nine months went by and that partnership failed. And we went our separate ways. I'll spare you all the details of that. And then I thought I wanted to open up a brick and mortar. And so I went, you know, for two months thinking like I wanted to open up a space to bring people together. Uh, so many things here. And so I spent another two months trying to figure that out. And I was like, well, that's a lot of money going out and not any money coming back in. So I had gone like at this point, 16 months without a paycheck, right? Without bringing any type of money in, trying to get clarity. And I wouldn't change it in the world for the world. I would, would I do things differently? I would. So after that point, she went into coaching executives in a startup, making $20,000 a month. And then she was asking me to coach her to coach the executives, but I wasn't getting paid by her. And that that was like a light bulb moment for me. And I was like, hold on, how is she getting paid $20,000? I'm not getting paid anything. What am I doing wrong here? That was the impetus for me to um, because yeah, that was the impetus for me to say, I think I need to think about coaching. I think that that's the easy route. I was looking at the most difficult, complicated routes possible for this next step of my journey, right? But the easiest one that had been under my nose for my entire career, right? This goes back to what's your gift? What are you best at? What are your strengths? What did you love most about your job? It was helping people become the best version of themselves. And I did that often through one-to-one coaching, whether that was kids, teachers, parents, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Renee DeVore:And so I remember that moment and I was like, okay, I guess it's I gotta launch a coaching business. So then I launched a coaching business, had no idea who my ICP was. I thought I was gonna be educators because everybody told me it needed to be educators because of a former educated. I got into that.
Christina Kohl:I so ICP, if we just not everybody knows that that acronym.
Renee DeVore:Right. And everybody told me it should be educators because that's what I knew.
Christina Kohl:That's your background.
Renee DeVore:Right. So I did, and I I coached four women for free um to get their testimonials. And I realized after that, I was like, these I don't want to be in education. I don't want anything really to do with education anymore. And then I had this amazing human, um, Carrie Lynn Shaw, I'll just name her. She came to me uh early 2024, I think it was. Um, we had a coffee chat, and at the end of our coffee chat, she said, I think I need you to be my coach. And I was like, what? Her and that just simple coffee chat and my connection with her and my opportunity to coach her defined who my ideal client was and is today, right? She always has become the pillar of who I want to continue to work with in my coaching clients. Finally, I got my my ideal client, right? I I got them, the avatar. And then I saw I was doing that for a little while, I was getting some beautiful referrals, and then I hired a business coach, and the business coach said, Well, it's gonna be really hard for you to make this kind of money doing the kind of life coaching. So you need to you need to fit yourself into one of these pockets: relationships, money, health and wellness. Um I don't remember what the other two were. And I was like, Okay, well, business and career. And I was like, Well, I don't do any of those, but maybe I can do relationships because I've saved some marriages in the process of my coaching. So I built a love that lasts. My new offer was helping people love themselves, like helping people love themselves so that they can have these beautiful, loving relationships.
Christina Kohl:I was on one of those calls with you when you were like coming up with the taglines and such.
Renee DeVore:Yeah, the five words.
Christina Kohl:Five words, yeah.
Renee DeVore:And it always felt awkward. So it's another example of somebody telling me what I needed to do, and I always felt awkward. I wanted to embrace it so bad because somebody told me that's that's what I where my lane was. And that felt awkward, and I was embarrassed of like, I gotta pivot again, everybody's gonna see me online. But it's beautiful because the the the amount of times I've pivoted, the the amount of times you've seen me pivot, everybody's seen me pivot, it's my truth, right? It's the reality. It's the reality of being in a box for 47 years under the nose of other people who are telling you what success is, um, to unravel all of that programming.
Christina Kohl:Well, and it gives I I'm pointing to myself now, it gives us people who are watching permission to pivot. Yes. If Renee can do it, then so can I. Um, and I love because I I've been like even in my entrepreneurial journey as a coach, I'm like, okay, is do I want to focus on empty nest? Like even this podcast, we talk about you know the empty nest transition and we talk about career transition and and moms coming back to work. And sometimes I'm like, I just want a coach to come in and tell me what to do. Just tell me what I need to do. What am I great at? What am I what what are my gifts? What are my my Be careful what you wish for? Exactly. Because then you go down a path that isn't the right path. And um, so I'm still kind of figuring that out for myself sometimes. I mean, there's parts of what I do that I absolutely love, and there's other parts I'm like, I want to maybe explore. So I I can appreciate what you're saying. That like, well, somebody told me I needed to be in this niche, however, how we say niche, niche, whatever, um, that you have to do that. But yet you were anyway, I'll let you continue telling your story. But so you pivoted for a while into relationship coaching, finding Mr. Wright, which I thought was so clever because your husband's name is last name is right. Right, yeah. Um, yeah, how to help before you find Mr. Wright, you know, you need to love yourself first, that relationship. And that probably still is part of your coaching, but it's not the primary focus. Right.
Renee DeVore:I mean, I think loving ourselves is always a part of where we all need to begin. And I needed to begin there too. Um, I'm not sure I completely knew what it meant to love myself. And I had gone through years of therapy, and so loving myself meant exiting my career and saying yes to myself without anybody dismissing all the noise of everybody else's judgments and opinions. Right. That was the first step. And so I want to come back to something that you said too, because I think as we grow and through our chapters, we evolve. And that's a natural part of our life. It's natural for us to start something in our 20s and then get into our 30s and be like, I don't know if this is the right fit, and then do something in our 30s and get into our 40s and be like, I this feels different. I, you know, but so many of us don't take that chance on ourselves. So many of us just keep going down the lane. I say this a lot in my platforms as well, is that especially those of us who are in the over 40 club and Gen X specifically, uh, we were taught to stay in a lane. We were taught to go to college, right? Go to college, get your major, find your career, find your company, get married, have kids, stay in that lane until you're 65, which now it's probably like 72, right? And stay there, and then you'll be happy, you'll live happily ever after. And it's just not realistic. Who wants at the age of 24 to stay in something? I mean, maybe marriages, yes, but I mean, in their careers for 40 some odd years, um, it's just it doesn't make sense. So as we grow and we understand ourselves and our environment shifts and changes and we get introduced to new people, it's natural for us to want to do things differently and want to look at new chapters for our life. And we should. Yeah. Because life is an experiment. It's not meant to be like, um, I stay in this lane and I know what the outcomes are. And by the time I'm 65, I'll retire with this amount of money and then I'll live happily ever after. If you get to 65 and you get to live that life.
Christina Kohl:Yep.
Renee DeVore:I know I skipped the question of keep continuing my story.
Christina Kohl:Totally fine, totally fine. But wow, so many truth bombs there. And yeah, because I'm thinking back to myself, like I went into HR because going to college, you're 17, I was 17, and you have to pick your major, like, you know, what's called like well, business. Everything in our lives has to do with business, right? We go to the grocery store, that's business. That's you know, we go buy clothes, that's a business. And so I signed up for business. And then I enjoyed psychology classes, so I picked that up too as a minor. And then when my psychology and my business classes came together talking about the same topics, yeah, it was human resources. I'm like, there it is. I'm I'm gonna be business with people. Kind of it wasn't like this passion about it at all. It's just you know, you're supposed to go like corporate was the way to make money. And and when when I went back to work, same type of thing. I was 13 years off, and I'm like, oh, HR, that's what I know. And you know, I had my clients do this exercise of I call it red light, green light, where you write down all the things you do used to do in a job. And so for you, that green light would be mentoring people, mentoring students, helping them become their best version, mentoring teachers, right? So you you that mentoring and coaching that you were doing and seeing transformations probably would have been your green lights. Your red lights might have been enforcing the rules, the bureaucracy, the employee relations. Like I I did not like employee relations part of HR.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Christina Kohl:Um, I liked recruiting and I liked bringing my onboarding new people and interviewing people. Those are the things that I like that I that I get to help people with now. But anyway, my point so red light, green light is that little exercise for those of you listening if you want to give it a try. The red, the red are things like please don't make me do it again. The green are the things that light you up, and those are transferable into other areas. And I think particularly in midlife, that's a really good time to evaluate. I mean, I came to that decision too. I left a job, I left corporate without a job to go to. My job is like coaching. I want to help other people. But yeah, I left the corporate six-figure job, jumped, and here we are. Yeah. Three years, gosh, it's been it was March of 23 when I left corporate. Um, so still kind of learning the whole ins and outs of business myself. So let's get back though to your story. Like keeping injecting my own thing.
Renee DeVore:I think it's great. That red light, green light is powerful. What's that? I said that red light, green light is really powerful. And I think, you know, a lot of people can use that, and then where they get stuck next is like, okay, great. I know what my green light is and what I love to do, but what can I do with that? And how, right? It's it's the other piece to this, and I started with this when I left my career and I moved into corporate. I was really, I was looking for money. And I most people who are leaving or wanting to transition, they're they're looking for the wrong things. They think they want the money, they think they want the benefits, and that may be true, but more than likely they're looking for probably more flexibility, or they're looking for a different culture, or they're looking for more freedom, or they're looking for, right? Money, of course, we all need money to live. Right. But what I learned in my own journey is that I actually needed a lot less money than I thought that I did, right? When I was I was spending frivolously on things that I didn't need. Um, and I had to retrain my my own money mindset, exiting that six-figure salary and going without a paycheck for 16 months. I remember getting my first $2,000 check and I was like, this feels amazing, right? So uh yeah. So I to go back to my journey, um, you know, we've you've we've talked about all of these different pivots that I've taken in my in my time. And I was kind of getting settled into this coaching and doing the one-to-one coaching, but then there came this lull. And um it kind of it was another opportunity for me to say, um, am I where I'm supposed to be? Am I just supposed to be on LinkedIn? Um, should I be checking out other other places? Because again, people tell you only to stick on one platform. So I started playing around on TikTok and and my videos started taking off there. Um, and I started getting more leads from clients on TikTok, right? Just doing like uh, what do they call them? Talking head reels. Um, and I started getting more leads on there. And so, and and just something about this confidence, I don't know, it unlocks something in me that all of a sudden I was kind of taking all of these experiences. And this is how I operate. You were a part of my solopreneur, you know, solopreneurs club that I woke up one morning and was just like, let's start a community. And here I was, just the next day, putting this community together. It was the same with this final step in my current journey, which is the soul school. It was like um just a download of you're supposed to bring community. Oh, by the way, let's back up there. I also did retreats, right? I did a retreat for 17 incredible women. I had never hosted a retreat. Um, I had never been to a retreat. Again, I just woke up one morning and thought, I was supposed to bring people together. Let me just put it on LinkedIn and see who who bites. And people, people bid. And then next thing I know, I'm hosting a 17 woman powerhouse woman, you know, retreat in Nashville. And now I'm into going into my third retreat, international retreat next February. I so all of these different experiences were really about following my heart and just saying yes to myself and saying, yeah, it's gonna look crazy to some people. People aren't gonna understand it, they're not gonna understand the pivots. Um, and that's okay. You just got to keep following your heart. Um, but there were plenty of people who were inspired by that too.
Speaker 2:Right.
Renee DeVore:And one day, similar to those experiences, I got to a place where I was like, um, I am meant to build something for women so they don't have to go through the same challenges that I went through as as I was exiting my career and entering into entrepreneurship, even though I didn't know it then. Um I basically took my experiences and I like, I want to make it easier for others. I don't want the high achieving, hyper-independent, right? High achieving also also often goes with hyper-independent. We struggle to ask for help. I don't want those women, I want them to have the same freedom, the same flexibility, the same fulfillment that I feel, but I want to make it easier for them. And so I was able to point back to my entire journey, right? Between education, um, between the retreats, between the communities, between the one-to-one coaching, between the networking, all of these pieces, right, started to come together. And I was like, that's how the soul school was built, born, right? Uh it was just like thinking about my own experiences. How can I make it easier for others? Because I know I'm meant to go through these experiences in my life, and then I'm meant to help and teach others through my experiences, right? That's a part of my coaching, but that's what the soul school is meant to be. And then I used my network, um, who I had built up over the last three years, hired. I've got five of us, five coaches now in this school that I've hired in to create a community and to create a mastermind program that women can enter into while they're still getting paid in corporate to see whether or not they want to build that first year of business with low stakes. Right? The only stakes is an investment in themselves.
Christina Kohl:Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. And your, as you were talking about all of your experiences, because I'm thinking of my journey as an entrepreneur, but also what I coach is the state, the the stay-at-home moms coming back to the workforce. I lived that journey. And it took me two years of spinning my wheels, stopping, starting, the rejection, the lack of confidence, and couldn't find a coach who understood or who could talk to me about it. And so that's why I became that coach to make that to make that journey easier. So we it I think we can teach best from what we've lived through. Yeah. And your experience over the last three years, and combined with the experts you're bringing in, I think are going to be an amazing start for someone that is dipping their toe into entrepreneurship. Or you said someone leaving corporate, would it also be appropriate for someone who's coming off of a long career pause? Like I think it would be to like in an incubator of like, okay, let's say how do we figure out? And I'm assuming that you're I'll let you tell it, but I'm assuming certain things, like, you know, how do you define what it is that your gift is and how what is your niche? Who you're going to serve, like what is your initial offer? I'm assuming that all those kind of fundamentals would be a part of it. But let me let you share like what's that school look like?
Renee DeVore:Taking my own experiences and connecting with coaches who I trust, who, you know, creating that curriculum over the course of a year, the first step for the first three months is getting clarity. What do you want to do? And how do you know? And what are your strengths? What are the things you love? What's your gifts, right? These are for service-based businesses, consultation, you know, consulting, fractional work, coaching, right? That's for the people who are looking to be in the service-based business. So clarity is first, first on the agenda, first in the curriculum map. Then it's your um branding, your content, your messaging, and helping people that. So there's a coach for each of these. There's a clarity coach, there's a there's a content and messaging coach, there's a sales and strategy coach, and then there's a launch strategist coach as well, right? So once you've got your offers and then launching that and getting your email subscribers and all of that. So basically, I'm I'm just putting this all in a platter and saying it's kind of a one-stop shopping center where you could probably pay close to $30,000 if you were to get a coach for every single one of these, which by the way, if you don't, you're gonna you're gonna spin your wheels trying to figure out how to do all of this on your own. Um and it's gonna take you a lot longer.
Christina Kohl:A lot longer.
Renee DeVore:So I I also want to come back to something that you said because I think that there's a lot of women out there who doubt themselves that they can they can have their own bus business. Um I think, and I think there's a lot of people out there who can't have their own business, right? I there, there's it goes both ways. But I think I would have never ever guessed of myself as being um capable of running my own business. And here I am. Those of us who um have the experiences, the skill sets, we have the resilience, we have the commitment, we have the belief in ourselves, we have some of these, you know, necessary traits. Um, it may mean not going back into corporate necessarily. It may mean, you know, wanting to create your own empire for yourself, like you and I are doing.
Christina Kohl:Right. Right. Yeah. One quick question, because I know for people that are in corporate now, so when you left your principal job, it it's crossed my mind um for you and for me. It's like as I'm talking about things publicly in social media, you're talking about how you were miserable. You went to work and you were miserable in that job. Is there any fear of judgment or concern around what people would think your students, the families, people from that time frame that you're now looking back going, I was miserable, I was in the wrong place, I hated it. Yeah. But you were our leader. Do you have like how how have you managed that, or is it just not been an issue for you?
Renee DeVore:I think it was really tough early on. Um, I was a little like, ooh, my my former superintendent is gonna read this, and former colleagues are gonna read this.
Speaker 2:Right.
Renee DeVore:Um and I've got a lot of my former teachers who follow me on not on LinkedIn, but on Instagram and other places, and they see everything I'm talking about. And I had to let that go because if that was gonna be a barrier, I was more worried about other people's judgments than speaking my truth. And so um I had to get really clear with why I was doing this business, and it wasn't for everybody else, it was for me. And I don't know if this is completely realistic, but I think if you're on a platform that you've got a lot of connections to, um, and you don't feel like you can speak out the way that you want to, it might be time to find a different platform where you can start fresh and new. Yeah. Right. I don't, you know, LinkedIn is a little bit of a weirder place because it's considered this professional platform.
Speaker 2:Right.
Renee DeVore:But there are other platforms you can go and play around, Substack, you know, TikTok, Instagram. Uh, you know, people poo-poo me with TikTok, but I'm a 52-year-old who also scrolls on TikTok. So if I'm 52 on TikTok, there's gotta be other 52-year-olds on TikTok too. Right. So yeah, of course there's a feeling of like, ooh, what are they gonna think of me? But this is you're not living your life for anybody else. You're living your life for you. And that's what I had to let go of for 40 47 years of my life, is I was living it for everybody else under everybody else's thumb, an idea of success. It was time to step into my own version, my own definition of what success was.
Christina Kohl:Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. Um, yeah, because and as you were talking, I'm like, well, they're not your people anymore. They're not the ones you're speaking to, or they could be listening, but they're not the ones you're trying to read.
Renee DeVore:I bet they're in awe, to be quite honest. I bet they wish that they could be doing that. I'm not seeing all of them. I bet they wish that they could be doing what I'm doing. Because they see me go to hair appointments, you know, midday. Or right, I'm off fluttering for two weeks, not on a school vacation holiday, but on my own holiday. Right. Um so I'm sure that there's a little bit of, you know, I I want to say this to your listeners too. Just remember that people's people's judgment of you is often a projection onto you that that's actually a reflection of their own fears and their own things and and and issues that they need to heal within themselves. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I think once you can let go of this not being a personal attack or judgment, that it's actually their issues that they need to get through, um, it it you can distance yourself a little bit from that.
Christina Kohl:Well, and most of it's in our own heads anyway. We think like we know what they're thinking, but we don't. So in in our last minute, in wrapping up, I want to um invite you to share with us about Soul School. Like when are the doors opening? Like when is all that happening? If people are interested. And obviously we'll we'll post the website and everything on the show notes.
Renee DeVore:Yeah, so December 8th is when the Soul School launches. Don't be tardy. Um, the Soul School launches December 8th. Uh, we are accepting 20 20 women into the program. We're really looking for women who are currently either in corporate or, as you said, are in that pause of their life and are like, maybe I don't want to go back to corporate and want to explore a business. Um, but December 8th is when the doors open. December 19th is when the early bird pricing um ends, and then we keep our doors open until January 12th, and January 13th is our pre-launch call. So it's a year-long program. Yeah, you'll sign up for six months at a time. Um, so you'll sign up for your six months and then three or four months into it. And I want to also note I don't have this in any of my sales copy, but the the women who join this, you know, in that year-long mastermind will be feeding into, if they choose to, a retreat where we come together in a space um and we bring the coaches to the women in person and we design their second year of business together in those three nights, four days. Beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Okay.
Christina Kohl:So I wish, I wish you were, I wish you would, I wish it was like two years ago in your. I know. I wish it was me, like three years ago myself. Exactly, exactly. Well, we'll have to keep talking on that as far as me. Um, but in the meantime, thank you so much, Renee, for joining us and sharing a lifetime of wisdom with us and with the audience. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate you.
Renee DeVore:Thank you. I just want to say I appreciate that this space to share my story. And um, you and I are in the game to make as much impact as possible. Um, and I see you doing it, and I'm excited to be a part of your journey as well. So thank you for inviting me onto your special space and place in your podcast.
Christina Kohl:Oh, thank you. Appreciate you.
Renee DeVore:I appreciate it. It's so good to catch up with you too. Thank you for having me on.
Christina Kohl:Well, friends, that wraps up this week's episode. I sure hope you enjoyed my conversation with Renee as much as I enjoyed talking with her. Her story of reinvention is just absolutely amazing. If you want to connect with Renee and learn more about Soul School, as she said, doors are opening December 8th. Look in the show notes for all the different ways to connect with her. All right, friends, I will talk to you next time. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you. And if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn. And say hello. I can perfectly thank you for listening. Until next time, remember your story is the video. And your next episode is ready to begin.