E101: Community, Resilience & Purpose with Stephanie Ward

Episode 2 of our 5-part mini-series exploring what success really means beyond money.

What happens when the life you thought you were meant to live disappears?

In this episode, I sit down with entrepreneur Stephanie Ward, who shares an incredibly honest story about expectations, adversity, and redefining success on her own terms.

Stephanie grew up believing success meant becoming a doctor. That was the plan. The path seemed clear. But life had very different ideas.

After years of chronic pain and eventually major reconstructive surgeries due to a genetic condition, Stephanie found herself needing to rebuild not only her mobility but her entire sense of identity and purpose.

What followed was an unexpected journey into entrepreneurship, building a business, growing a team, and creating a powerful community that supports neurodivergent and marginalised entrepreneurs.

But for Stephanie, success today has nothing to do with status or income.

Success is about impact, belonging, and being invited into people’s lives to help them grow.

This conversation is raw, inspiring, and full of powerful reminders that success rarely looks the way we think it will.

In This Episode We Talk About

• Growing up with strong family expectations and believing success meant becoming a doctor
• The reality of living with hip dysplasia and major reconstructive surgeries
• Learning to walk again and redefining what success looked like day-to-day
• The unexpected start of her entrepreneurial journey
• Overcoming fear of failure and building confidence as a business owner
• Growing a business and hiring a team
• Being diagnosed with ADHD and how it transformed her business growth
• The importance of community, connection, and kindness in business
• Navigating betrayal in business and rebuilding after heartbreak
• Creating inclusive communities for neurodivergent entrepreneurs
• Why success now means impact and trust rather than money

Want to learn more about todays guest, Stephanie Ward?

Stephanie Ward is the founder of the Spicy Brain brands and Stephanie Ward & Co. These companies help business owners and neurodivergent entrepreneurs with a range of done-for-you and done-with-you business services, so that they can achieve the success they deserve in business.

https://stephanie-ward.com 

https://thespicybraincollective.com 

About This Mini-Series: Success Beyond Money

This is Episode 2 of a 5-part series where I interview powerful business owners about what success really means once the money is there.

Over the next few episodes, we’ll explore:

- Identity beyond income
- The cost of ambition
- Time vs money
- Health, relationships & legacy
- What happens when you realise “more” isn’t the answer

If you’ve ever wondered:

“Will I finally feel successful when I hit my next income goal?”
“Why doesn’t this feel how I thought it would?”
“Am I allowed to want something different?”

This series is for you.

Want to connect? Find me here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamemmahine

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-hine

Website:  https://www.emmahine.co.uk

You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/@EmmaHineStrategy

Transcript

Hello and welcome to The Simple Business Dream Life Podcast, the show for business owners who want to grow to six figures and beyond without their business taking over their life.

I’m Emma Hine, Business Growth Strategist, and I’m here to show you that building a successful business doesn’t have to mean constant hustle, overwhelm, or sacrificing the life you’re working so hard to create.

After building a seven-figure business that looked incredible on the outside but left me exhausted and burned out, I chose to start again, this time keeping things simple, focused, and sustainable.

On this podcast, I’ll share honest conversations, practical strategies, and real-life stories to help you simplify your business, grow profitably, and create a business that truly supports your dream life.

So if you’re ready to stop chasing someone else’s version of success and start building a business that works for you, let’s get started.

Hello, and here we are again, another episode of this week's mini-series. And today I am having an amazing conversation with Stephanie Ward. Hi, Stephanie, great to have you here. 

Yeah, it's great to be here. I'm very excited about this conversation. 

Amazing, amazing. I'm going to do what I always do and we're going to dive straight in. And I want you to tell me, going back a little bit, what would you say success was going to be for you? When you were younger, what did you think success meant? 

Yeah, so when I was younger, my family, it's really interesting because my grandparents did really well for themselves. They had an engineering company. So they had a company that made the moulds that makes like JCB cabs and bins, and they were very entrepreneurial, great about that. They wanted my mum to be an accountant, and my mum never did that. That was not something that excited her at all. And she went down the entrepreneurial road herself, finding sort of different things that she liked along the way. But my grandparents had a very kind of strong level of expectation for me in that it was like, Elizabeth didn't do it, my mother, so we're going to put these expectations on Stephanie. And academically, I did really well. Emma, like I was class in school, I test really well. I'm terrible at studying, but I test well. And it was kind of the steps should be a doctor. And I was very much steered down that route. I was, you know, shadowing ENT surgeons and GPs in the summer when I was 14 and 15. This was all things that I thought was where I wanted to be. And I got to being a teenager, being sort of 16. I left school with GCSEs and I was horribly bullied in my last year of school, which meant I wasn't engaged in my lessons in the way I should have been. And I got my results, but I was done with being institutionalized. And I never got A-levels. I never went to university to be a doctor anyway, but that's the whole story we'll come to. But my grandparents were so disappointed because I didn't go down the road. I thought being a doctor was going to be the be all and end all because you make loads of money and you have an impact and you save lives. required me being in an environment that didn't make my brain work the way that it works best. It was not good for me. And so I've got friends who went to do medicine and for years I felt like I failed because success for me should have been, I was a doctor at 25. I would have been a consultant by 30. I would have been living my hashtag best life. And The reality was by 25, I was in a wheelchair. So my life looked very differently to what I thought it was going to. 

Yeah, and it's interesting, isn't it, how we often believe that success is what other people think we should be doing. And, you know, we take that on as that's what I'm that's what I'm going to do. That's what I'm going to do. So let's move on a little bit. So you touched on there that at 25, you were in a wheelchair. What? What did success start to look like at that point? So what did you start to think, actually, what is my life going to, what am I going to be able to do? 

Well, I'll be honest with you for a while, it was really dark. So I, up until that point, I kind of worked in pharmacy, I'd done a bit of freelancing. So in 2012, when I was pregnant, I was bored, like absolutely bored rigid because I had to go off on maternity at about 29 weeks because my kid, he was like a boarder, he was a big boy. He was 9 pounds nearly two weeks early. Wow. Yeah, he's now a 5 foot 4 size 6 shoe wearing teenager who can piggyback me around the garden. So he's never been small. But by the time I'd kind of gotten through that whole part of my life, I got to 25. And for me, success at that point looked like, can I get up this morning and walk? So I have a genetic condition called hip dysplasia. So it's usually found in first born daughters, it's usually found at birth. But I have a really unusual type called acetabular anteversion where the backs of my sockets aren't covered. So they don't like click out of place like babies would. They usually can't even be seen on an x-ray because it's the backs and you can't see 3D and 2D. So it wasn't until I got this really excellent surgeon when I was 25, I got referred through a GP, it was this whole thing. I'd been in pain for years before I saw him by the way, but We won't cope with that because that makes me very, very angry. But essentially I had to have my pelvis reconstructed. So when I was 28, I had the first set of reconstructive surgeries and it took me a year to get my mobility back. I very nearly lost my mobility completely at the six month mark. I did get it back. I had a great physio guy called Dave Hopper. And if I see him at like occasion, I still have physio now. I'm like, Dave! Because I'm just so excited about the fact that he saved me. Him and my coach Anna Knight were the two people that got me through that part. But I learned to walk again. And then I had another surgery in 2020. I was one of the first people to have surgery after the COVID restriction started lifting. So August 2020, they had knee hot food. So I literally had tuna sandwiches for three days. Emma, I have not eaten a tuna sandwich since then. 

Understandable. Understand. I've never eaten one in my life, but definitely no. 

It was the worst. There was one day where I was sitting with one of the cleaners who actually used to play in the garden with my dad as a child. Don't ask how that came into conversation. I couldn't tell you. But she said, what's the matter? I was like, I just really want some fried chicken. She went, get somebody to bring you some food to outpatients and I'll go down and get it. And my ex-partner, who I was seeing at the time, brought me a KFC and she went and got me this KFC. And it was the best thing ever. But because my mindset was better, I was back to being mobile in 11 weeks. So For me, that was a huge win. I was like, okay, so how do we keep going with this? Because I'm not going to be disabled enough to be occupied in my own mind, sitting on my bum all day. My friend Nikki said you should be a virtual assistant. And my exact words were, you might need to bleep this, I'd rather **** in my hands and clap. 

Okay, interesting. 

Yeah, so she was like, I know you would, but do it anyway. And I'd been doing little bits and bobs that had kind of like bits for friends, bits for my sister. I was like, actually, no, I could give it a go. And I got a client within 24 hours. Wow. 

What was making you so anti? 

Honestly, I think it was I'd been at work for a while. And the thought of kind of being self-employed was really scary for me. 

Right, okay. 

2014, I'd actually missed the tax deadline for my tax return. And it was this whole ADHD thing that I've since learned that I, because there was a, the UTR was missing, my ex-husband threw it away. Great guy. I like, I got the 100 pound fine. I just thought, nah, okay. And then I let it go and I let it go and I let it go. to the point where I got a 900 pound fine. Now if I had paid an accountant, it cost me 180 quid, I would have had my taxes done. But the fear of it was so big. So there was that kind of hesitance is, what if I screw it up again? What if I make a mistake and end up in this whole situation? And it wasn't the fact I didn't want to work, it was the fear of the bits that came with that. Because having grown up in a family that is entrepreneurial, that has their own businesses, I've seen what can happen when you miss a deadline and things go wrong. And I know what my capacity is for regulating myself in those moments. I've learned a lot more since my ADHD diagnosis. But I think there was that fear of what if I screw it up? What if I fail at this as well? Because, we've all had failures in life, but I feel like for me, I felt like I had so many at that point that I can't mess something else up as well. 

Yeah, And at that point, do you think there was something that you really wanted to do? What was this idea of being a doctor still in your mind or had you completely crashed that idea at this point? 

I think I had kind of accepted that I was never going to get through uni. I tried again when I was about 24 to go to uni. And that's actually how I met Anna Knight, which is a hilarious story. She was actually on the interview panel there. I didn't realise this until I saw her years later. I had a charity delivering a session for autistic kids and we ended up being the best of friends. But I think I had retired the fact that university is not for me. So what skills, what qualifications do I have? What can I use? And I've always had this mantra of like, start where you are, use what you have and do what you can. Because I don't believe that we should be investing in things when we don't have the means to follow it through. I think spending and hoping is a really, really irresponsible way to live your life as someone who's been in debt. So I think as much as I knew I was never going to be a doctor, I didn't know what it was that I hadn't found what I was good at and where my place was going to be. And that was really scary. Like all I ever wanted from my business was to make as much money as my ex. So it means only 42 grand a year as a policeman. I just wanted to equal that. was that would success for me would have been contributing as much as him. I think that was that was the end game. 

Yeah, So you've got this first client, which is amazing in such a short space of time. There's lots of people out there who would like, tell me how you do that. So what happened from there? 

So that first client, and I'm going to name her because Liz will love this, her name's Liz Taylor and she is a maths tutor based in Cambridge and she is incredible. What she can do for a child doing their GCSEs is insane. If you've got a kid struggling, get in front of her because she is an absolute weapon. But Liz was also working for a charity in Cambridgeshire as a deputy CEO and they had a few holes that needed filled. And she was like, can you just come and just do bits and help a CEO? And I was like, I'll give it a go. And that's pretty much been my mantra. I was like, I will try. And at the time I was cheap, so they were willing to take the risk. And I basically filled all of their holes for about two years. So as much as I had other clients coming along, what I did there really much, like it developed my skill set to a point where I had something that was really marketable. Like I can take care of the back end of everything in a business. There's very little that I can't do now. So once my confidence was getting better, the clients just started flowing in. It got to 2023 and I was like, I'm going to need employees here because there was too much for one person. And the first person I hired was an absolute wreck. Oh my God, don't even ask me about that because that... But the second person I hired was a lovely young last called Abby. So she was still at uni at the time and she was doing a degree in business with marketing management. And I'd watched her on LinkedIn because she was doing like branding and design. I was like, oh, She's got a good eye for it. She's now been with me for three years next month that Abby's been here. And she's absolutely like part of the furniture. She's actually going to be joining me at an event in a few weeks. And like she's so good at just, she very much gets what we do and shares that with the world. And then after her there was just people kept coming. In 2023, when I was diagnosed with ADHD, I got put on meds and my business went 13 times bigger in a 12 month period. We basically were in this rapid expansion phase of recruit, settle in, recruit, settle in, recruit, settle in. We hired six people that year. It was the busiest year of my life. But what I've learned is that the people I attract are just like me. And so What I know about that is if you show them that you're there for them, you love on them, that comes back in, they'll give you that back tenfold. And I don't give with the expectation of receiving, but what's really cool about this business is that the way that you make the people feel, they then go and tell others. And success for me now looks like the way people talk about me when I'm not in the room. Like the fact that people say nice things about me or checking, like if someone says something bad about me, 10 people will be like, you can't say that because I have had such an impact through my team, through my company, through just what I do, that I'm now one of the most supportive people in the world. And like that is worth more to me than any numbers in the bank. 

Yeah, and I think that's really important, isn't it, to get to that point? And it sounds like you just sort of come across that rather than sat there. Some people will sit there when they say, I'm going to do this one in this age. I'm going to do this. My business is here. We're going to get it to this point. You know, I'm going to be doing this in my life, this holiday, this holiday. It sounds very much like you've just sort of developed into this point. And now you're sitting here and you're saying, do you know what, this is it. You know, this is what is making me happy. And all that stuff you're doing, that impact you're having and that, you know, how obviously you're treating people and therefore how you're getting that kindness and love and support back, that is going to make you money, isn't it? 

And this is it. I did very much trip and fall face face into what I do. But so something I'm going to tell you about, in 2024, towards the end of the year, one of my best friends who was working with me left my company and took quite a lot of customers with her and I didn't see it coming. And in December 2024, I gave Dan Meredith a handsome sum of money for me to go to his house for two days and cry on his rug about how much I hated my business. Because it wasn't that I hated the business, is that what she did and the way that I felt about it It broke my heart, Emma. It absolutely broke my heart. And for me, like, I was really, really worried about what was coming next. I didn't want to do it anymore. And I don't know if anyone listening will have seen 13 reasons why, but the premise of it is there's lots of things that happen that make her not want to be around anymore. And the 13th thing is she's like, I'm going to give it one last try. And I said to Dan, I said, I'm going to go all in. I'm going to give it one last try because If I can restore the joy and keep going, but if I can't, I need to walk away from this because what happened just absolutely broke my heart. The fact that somebody would hurt me that way. And this is actually the first time I've really talked about this on a podcast because it's taken me that long to get to a place where I feel healed enough to talk. So what I did, I invested in sponsorship at Atomicon. I chucked money into Danny Wallace's speaking programme. I attended everything. I went to the opening of Envelope. I said yes to everything because I wanted to say I had really tried. I closed one of my businesses down and migrated the customers into one that didn't have my name on. So if I wanted to leave, I could walk away proudly and say, I tried, but this can be sold. And sort of last year, what happened was when I opened my community up for free is that we got 150 members in a month, which then converted to 22,000 pounds of additional revenue. And what I found is that my community has become accidentally inclusive. I didn't set out trying to target marginalised communities or disabled people. I was like, this is a place called the Spicy Brain Collective. And if you feel like you fit here, regardless of labels, diagnosis, come along. And what I've learned is that it's become a really, really great place to be. And so what's kind of happened off the back of that is I've now got this great responsibility of these people Trust me to set an example. But I also, I don't, like, I don't pitch. If you ever see me at an event, I will not pitch my services to you, right? And I didn't know there was a word for this. It's A Yiddish word and it's called Kvell, K-V-E-L-L. And it's this overwhelming sense of love and pride platonically from another person. So just to absolutely gush over this as a human. If you ever want to see that in action, see what happens when I bump into washing Nali after a few months. That is a perfect example. But I don't go to things to pitch. I go and fell on my audience. And I like, I don't care whether people have given me no money or 100,000 pounds. Every single one's VIP because it used to be in my space. And for me, like the way that makes me feel, I could be doing this for free and I would still be happy. 

And that's hurting my cheeks because I'm just smiling so hard on this here because that is just beautiful to hear. That is beautiful to hear. And you can tell by listening to you that is not you just saying, this is what I do, this is you, this is who you are. And this is why you've attracted this beautiful community who love hard back on you because it's you, isn't it? It's who you really are. And that's what success is to you, right? You know, what other people are achieving and doing and all of that type of stuff, which I absolutely, absolutely love. Moving forwards, is there something that you sort of say, obviously you're very happy in your world and your community and what you've got now, is there anything more that you are thriving for in terms of your need for success or is this it? 

So I've got a few little sort of things for me because I think, so one of the things I thought I had to achieve a certain level of income or a certain level of status to be successful. And I think, you know, I could be quite happy and say I've made it here. My ADHD is like, wait, what else can we do? What else can we do? And so a few years ago, I was on a Focus Mate session. If you've never seen Focus Mate, get among it. is a great way to like just body double with strangers. But I made friends with someone on it called Gemma, who lives in Australia. She's an absolute icon. We were talking about emotional regulation and sort of my meds framework, which we've now built out, came from this because we were talking about, do you need motivation or a distraction? Actually, there's like kind of other things like you've got empathy there, you've got solutions. I was like, oh my God, it spells meds. You know when someone's freaking out and you say like, take your meds. It's a really good little acronym because you've got motivation, empathy, distractions or solutions. So what we did was I built out this framework that you basically, this is a tool. Now I don't need to make any more money off that, but you know what I would love to do is go into places, have them pay me to do it, but I want to put that money into a fund which I then use to help neurodivergent entrepreneurs leaving special schools. because kids don't get entrepreneurship as a career choice. They're told apprenticeship. Kids in my area, they've got like 3 employment opportunities like McDonald's, the Burberry factory or APS, which is a packaging factory. And the nickname is ********* packaging ***** because it's not a nice place to work. Now there is progression routes, but my son wouldn't access that because of his neurodivergence. So we might go to an apprenticeship and get an employer that doesn't understand him and he won't pass it. It could go into adult daycare, but my son is academically capable, so why would I want him to go into a route that is going to stagnate his progress? So what I'd love to do is have this fund, and he's even got a website called the Jack Ward Inclusion Initiative. I made it years ago. I would love to collect the money from delivering that and help more young people to progress into entrepreneurship. That would make me the happiest person. I've also got this new brand of mine, which is this rapid implementation, which is very much me going to fix problems. And that's launching at the end of March. But I will never be satisfied with being still. So what I'm trying to do now, some of it is got to make money because I want to create a legacy and money does make the world go round. However, it's like I joke on, you know, it's much more fun to cry in a Lambo than it is a Vauxhall Corsair. However, I would much rather have a Boxhall Corsa and help somebody else springboard a business that gets them the Lambo. Because I don't need a Lamborghini. I'd probably crash it. I'm absolutely shy. 

I never drive. I can drive, but I rarely drive, so it wouldn't be any good to me either. But there you go. 

I just get photos from Instagram. But the thing is, that one thing that held me back for a long time is that I thought my grandparents wouldn't be proud of me because I wasn't a doctor. My grandparents died in 2016 when I was in my wheelchair peak and my son was struggling and everything was going wrong. And I've got this bracelet that I wear, right? So a few years ago, I was at Peak Fest, and one of my clients, the lovely Janet, was doing a session. And because of where her attempt was, people didn't know that she was there. So I went around, I was like, oi, Janet's doing a session, come on. And I've rang up a bunch of people. One of them was Helen Wilson, who runs a company called Gutopia. She also provides like VIP squads for events as well. And we were sat together. And in this session, we were talking about what was the big dream. And mine was to be a doctor. And the way that the exercise worked, they kind of looked at what was the big dream? Did I still like it now? What were my thoughts around it? And I realised that actually my grandparents would have been proud of me because what I do earns me on the level of a doctor, which they would be happy about, and that was important to them. But for me, I get to change people's lives without cutting them open, you know? 

Yeah, which is a bonus. 

Yeah, the less blood I get on my clothes, the better. But for me, I get to have such a profound impact on people's lives that they would have absolutely been proud. And for me, that was such a big, pivotal moment in my life. I'm doing good work in the world. 

You absolutely are. You absolutely are. And does the bracelet say something specific? 

Yes, it says powerful. But yes, Helen was wearing that bracelet and she went, I think you need this more than me. And she gave it to me. She'd actually got it that day and then some sort of spin the wheel type thing. I think you need this. And I've worn that every single day since Peak Fest because that was so important to me. And it reminds me every day that I'm doing work that is worthy of being proud of. 

Absolutely, you are. I mean, you're coming across as a very, very ambitious person. Do you think that's been driven by all of the hurdles, let's call them, that have been thrown in your way? 

I think so. I've had more than my share of hurdles. There's various things. I was illegally married off at 15 in Islamic law. That's just a comic one at this point. That's a long story. But there are many reasons why I shouldn't have achieved in life, things that when I've told therapists, I've had three therapists cry because of things that I've told them and say, oh, honey, I think this is the wrong dynamic for this room. 

Yeah, we're not crying, this isn't quite working. 

No, but I think there's lots of reasons why I shouldn't have succeeded, but I'm a firm believer that having a purpose is the key. If you don't have a purpose, if you don't have a reason to get out of bed, why would you even bother? And for me, being in work, despite the fact I've got a heart condition, a knackered left leg, I've got autism and ADHD, there's so many reasons why I could say I can't work. But by having my work, having the people that I need to show up for, it gives me that accountability to keep going. And every Monday we do something in my community called arousing pep talk. And I named it that because arousing sounds funny. Okay. But every Monday I've got between 2 and 25 people turn up and we just shoot the breeze, talk about what went well last week. Some profound wild learning that's happened to me during the week because believe me, weird stuff happens every week. And then we'll talk about what we're excited about because the thing is, that Celebrating your impact, celebrating your small wins is what gives you the motivation to keep going. And when you keep going and you keep doing the thing and keep pushing and keep striving for better, that's the best feeling in the world. Because when you do something that feels good, that's what success is meant to feel like. Something that fills you with that warm, fuzzy, I did that thing. It's the best thing in the world. 

Absolutely love that. And we're going to close this down. I'm just going to ask you one really simple question. What does, if I asked you to summarise success to you right now in one sentence, what would it be? 

Oh, that's a good one. 

I mean, you can have two sentences if you like, because that was really cruel giving you one, wasn't it? But... 

What success means to me right now is that I get to show up and people invite me into their worlds to help them. People feel comfortable leaning on me to help them. That's success for me, the feeling that I get to do good for others and that they invite me in. Because it's really hard to ask for help, right? Like, it's so hard to ask for that. And the fact that I'm invited, I will never take that for granted, ever. 

I absolutely love that. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me. I've loved our conversation and I hope you have too. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed this. I will never get bored of talking about how much I get to love other people. I think if we all just went into the world and love each other, wouldn't it just be better? 

Oh, so much better, wouldn't it? So much better. I am going to share all of Stephanie's links and everything so you can go and find her because I know she's not going to pitch to you. But hopefully you will go and find her and yeah, get some love. But thank you very much. I will see everybody else next time. 

You’ve been listening to The Simple Business Dream Life Podcast with me, Emma Hine.

If today’s episode resonated and you’re ready to simplify your business so it truly supports your dream life, you can find out how to to work with me over at emmahine.co.uk.

Until next time, remember success doesn’t have to be complicated. You can grow a business that thrives and gives you the life you want.