Next Level Women with Jennifer Perri

You've built the career. You've achieved the goals. But what happens when you start wondering, "Is this all there is?"

For Emily Doskow and AJ Hassan, two accomplished advertising and marketing executives, that question opened the door to an entirely new chapter.

In this episode of the Next Level Women Podcast, Jennifer Perri welcomes Emily and AJ, co-founders of Sportsballer, for an insightful conversation about redefining success, career reinvention, entrepreneurship, and the power of building something meaningful together.

After decades of success in corporate leadership, both women found themselves reconsidering what they wanted their next chapter to look like. Their journey eventually brought them together to create Sportsballer, a brand that combines their experience in marketing with their passion for sports, wellness, and connection.

But moving from established executives to entrepreneurs came with challenges neither could have fully anticipated.

How do you give yourself permission to step away from a career you've worked so hard to build? What happens when you no longer have the resources and support systems you've grown accustomed to? And how do you learn to trust yourself when you're creating something entirely new?

Throughout the conversation, Emily and AJ share their experiences navigating those questions, learning to celebrate the smaller wins, leaning on each other's strengths, and discovering a more personal definition of success.

It's a conversation about partnership, purpose, leadership, and having the courage to explore what's next, even when you've already accomplished so much.

Because your next level doesn't have to be a bigger version of your last one.

🎧 Listen to the full episode, and if you enjoy conversations about women's leadership, personal growth, business, and reinvention, follow or subscribe to the Next Level Women Podcast so you don't miss what's next.

Connect with Emily Doskow & AJ Hassan:

Sportsballer: https://drinksportsballer.com

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

TikTok: @drinksportsballer

Emily and AJ are also active on LinkedIn.

What if the next level of your life requires walking away from the success you've already built?

After more than 15 years helping build some of the world's biggest beverage brands, Ingrid Smith found herself asking a question she couldn't ignore: What would happen if she took everything she'd learned and invested it in something of her own?

That question eventually led her to leave corporate America and launch Nirvana, her own ready-to-drink cocktail brand.

But taking the leap was only the beginning.

In this episode of the Next Level Women Podcast, Jennifer Perri sits down with Ingrid for an honest conversation about career reinvention, entrepreneurship, and what it really means to bet on yourself.

They explore the realities of leaving a successful corporate career, navigating uncertainty, building a business as a mother, and redefining success beyond professional accomplishments.

Ingrid also shares a perspective on risk that might surprise you, especially if you've been waiting for the perfect time to make your own next move.

Because sometimes the most important question isn't whether your idea will succeed.

It's whether you're willing to give yourself the opportunity to find out.

If you're navigating a career transition, considering entrepreneurship, or questioning what success means in this season of your life, this conversation is for you.

Connect with Ingrid Smith:

Instagram: @drinknirvanaofficial

Website: https://www.drink-nirvana.com/

LinkedIn: Ingrid Smith | Drink Nirvana Official

Keep choosing what's next.

If this episode resonates with you, follow or subscribe to the Next Level Women Podcast so you don't miss future conversations with women who are redefining success and building lives on their own terms.

And if you know a woman standing at the edge of her next chapter, share this episode with her.

Because your next level begins with the decisions you make today.

What happens when you've worked your way to the top, only to discover that success doesn't always look or feel the way you imagined?

Katie Naughton knows what it's like to build a successful career in a male-dominated industry, question her own confidence, and eventually realize that the leadership style she'd spent years following wasn't the one that felt right for her.

In this episode of Next Level Women, Jennifer Perri sits down with Katie, founder of Drive Her Forward and former automotive dealership owner, to explore the lessons that shaped her journey from dealership ownership to creating a community for women leaders.

Katie shares how she learned to trust her voice in rooms where she often felt outnumbered, why putting people first changed the way she led her business, and what she discovered about the loneliness that can come with leadership.

They also explore something that doesn't get talked about enough: recognizing when the environment you've worked so hard to succeed in may no longer be the right place for you.

And perhaps most importantly, what happens when you stop trying to become the leader you think you're supposed to be and start discovering the leader you already are?

This conversation is about more than professional success. It's about confidence, authentic leadership, meaningful connection, and having the courage to decide what comes next.

Because sometimes reaching your next level means changing how you define success in the first place.

CONNECT WITH KATIE NAUGHTON

Drive Her Forward: https://driveherforward.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiemnaughton

ABOUT NEXT LEVEL WOMEN

Join Jennifer Perri for conversations with women who are challenging expectations, redefining success, and creating lives on their own terms.

Follow or subscribe to Next Level Women for more conversations about leadership, confidence, personal growth, reinvention, and what's possible when women choose their own next chapter.

What if the pattern you keep experiencing in relationships is asking you to see something about yourself differently?

In this episode of Next Level Women, I sit down with relationship coach and Unbreakable Us author Joëlle Lydon for an honest conversation about self-abandonment, self-trust, boundaries, relationship patterns, and what it means to stay deeply connected to another person without losing yourself.

Joëlle knows this work personally.

After painful relationships, including an abusive marriage, she reached a point where she had to confront a difficult question: Why do I keep choosing this?

That question led her to examine the beliefs she carried about relationships, the ways she had overridden her own intuition to keep the peace, and the patterns that were quietly shaping her choices.

What she did next was unexpected. Joëlle created a year-long dating experiment designed to challenge what she believed about men and relationships. Along the way, she learned how to ask for what she wanted, receive without overanalyzing, recognize what was actually available to her, and relate from a very different place.

And that is only the beginning of this conversation.

We explore why accomplished, intelligent women can feel confident in nearly every area of life yet struggle deeply in intimate relationships. We talk about how to recognize self-abandonment, why boundaries are not walls, what happens when one person begins growing inside a relationship, and why becoming more fully yourself can actually create the possibility for deeper connection.

Joëlle also shares her concept of the Sacred Third, a way of viewing the relationship itself as something both people are responsible for tending. Instead of asking only, “What do I want?” or “What do you want?” the question becomes, “What does this relationship need from both of us right now?”

If you have ever kept the peace at your own expense, questioned what you knew or felt, struggled to communicate what you really needed, or wondered why the same relationship patterns keep appearing, this episode will invite you to look at those questions differently.

Not through blame.

Through clarity.

Because your next level may not require you to become someone new. It may ask you to stop abandoning the woman you already are.

Follow or subscribe to Next Level Women wherever you listen so you do not miss future conversations about confidence, identity, self-leadership, reinvention, relationships, and becoming the woman your next chapter is asking you to be.

Website: https://joellelydon.com

Explore working with Joëlle: https://thediscoverysession.com

Book: Unbreakable Us: Removing the Barriers to Love

Available wherever books are sold.

What happens when the career you built is no longer the future you expected?

Rebecca Schlanger has spent more than 20 years helping organizations navigate complexity and change. Now, she is applying many of those same skills to her own career reinvention and asking a much more personal question: Who am I when the title that defined so much of my professional life is no longer there?

In this conversation, we explore career transition, self-trust, women in leadership, and the unexpected power of a nonlinear path. Rebecca shares how frequently being the only woman in the room shaped her confidence, why knowing her values became essential to trusting her own authority, and how mentors and trusted advisors helped her find her voice.

But this conversation goes beyond career strategy.

We talk about the identity shift that can happen when life does not unfold according to plan, and what it means to recognize that your skills, experience, and value have not disappeared simply because your circumstances have changed.

Rebecca is also beginning to rethink what her next chapter could look like, with more creativity, freedom, autonomy, and room for experiences she may never have made time for before.

If you are navigating career reinvention, questioning your identity beyond your work, or wondering whether an unexpected detour might actually be adding something important to who you are becoming, this episode is for you.

Subscribe to Next Level Women for conversations about confidence, clarity, reinvention, self-leadership, and building a life that reflects who you are becoming.

Connect with Rebecca:

Website: https://rebeccaschlanger.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaschlanger/

What if some of the beliefs influencing how much you earn, charge, spend, and allow yourself to receive aren’t actually yours?

In this episode of the Next Level Women Podcast, Jennifer Perri sits down with Chella Diaz, creator of the Diamond Method, for a conversation about money mindset, self-worth, inherited beliefs, and what happens when accomplished women unknowingly continue playing small.

Because your relationship with money isn’t always about money.

Sometimes it begins with the conversations you heard growing up.

“We can’t afford that.”

“There isn’t enough.”

“You have to work hard to make money.”

Those messages can follow us into adulthood and influence everything from spending and pricing to how confidently we own our expertise.

Chella shares how one of those beliefs surfaced when she was first paid to speak—and why receiving $500 created a reaction she never expected.

Jennifer and Chella also explore the connection between money and identity, why women sometimes struggle to charge for what they know, how to begin questioning inherited beliefs without blame or shame, and the realization that made Chella confront where she was still playing a smaller version of herself.

They also get practical with a simple exercise for evaluating your experience, your results, and the prices you’re willing to confidently say out loud.

This isn’t simply a conversation about making more money.

It’s about recognizing the beliefs underneath your decisions—and deciding whether they still belong in the life and business you’re building now.

Subscribe to the Next Level Women Podcast for conversations about reinvention, money, self-worth, business, leadership, confidence, and becoming the woman who chooses what comes next.

What happens when the version of success that got you here no longer feels like the definition you want to carry forward?

In this episode of Next Level Women, Jennifer Perri sits down with investor, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and impact leader Jenna Nicholas for a conversation about success, alignment, purpose, leadership, intuition, and the legacy we leave behind.

Jenna shares how her values have shaped the way she approaches business and investing, why the right opportunities aren’t always the ones that look best on paper, and how she returns to clarity when she has an important decision to make.

They also explore what ambitious women may need to reconsider when achievement begins to come at the expense of themselves.

Jenna introduces the HEAL Framework from her book Enlightened Bottom Line—Hope, Empathy, Abundance, and Legacy—and shares how those principles influence the way she thinks about leadership, investing, and impact.

This conversation asks a bigger question than simply, “What’s next?”

What do you want everything you’re building to mean?

What happens when betrayal doesn’t just break your trust in another person, but makes you question your trust in yourself?

In this episode of Next Level Women, Jennifer Perri sits down with psychotherapist, coach, author, and founder of Transition to Wellness Sonia Rodrigues for a deeply honest conversation about betrayal, emotionally unhealthy relationships, self-worth, and what it takes to rebuild after a difficult chapter.

Sonia shares why healing involves more than surviving what happened. It means rediscovering what you want, what you need, what you value, and what your intuition may have been telling you all along.

Together, Jennifer and Sonia explore the hidden cost of overfunctioning and people-pleasing, including the moment strength can begin to look more like self-abandonment. Sonia explains why women often become the fixer, rescuer, peacekeeper, or person holding everything together, and invites us to ask a powerful question: What is it costing me to keep this relationship functioning?

They also explore attachment styles, nervous system regulation, emotional safety, and healthy boundaries. Sonia shares why prolonged emotional instability can leave your body constantly waiting for the next crisis and why part of healing is helping yourself relearn what calm, consistency, and safety actually feel like.

At the heart of this conversation is a reminder that you do not have to wait for someone else to change before you change your life.

Healing can become the place where you stop abandoning yourself, begin trusting yourself again, and decide what kind of life you want to create next.

Listen to the full conversation and ask yourself: What would change if you started choosing yourself differently?

You may be great at what you do. That does not mean you need to know how to do everything.

For many women entrepreneurs, that distinction comes later than it should.

In this episode of Next Level Women, Jennifer Perri sits down with attorney and longtime solopreneur Elissa D. Hecker for a conversation about the legal, leadership, and business decisions that can either protect what you are building or quietly create problems later.

Elissa works with entrepreneurs, small businesses, and creatives on contracts, trademarks, copyrights, licensing, AI, and intellectual property. And in this conversation, she breaks down some of the areas business owners often overlook until something goes wrong.

They talk about why women tend to take on too much themselves, the importance of knowing what you do not know, what entrepreneurs need to understand before signing contracts, the difference between copyright and trademark protection, and what to consider before using AI for confidential information, intellectual property, or original business assets.

They also explore a deeper side of entrepreneurship.

What happens when being capable turns into believing you have to carry everything?

How do you scale when you still feel like no one else can do what you do?

And what becomes possible when you stop getting in your own way and start building the right people and protections around you?

Elissa also shares the personal decision that led her to leave an unhappy work environment more than 22 years ago, build her own practice, create stronger boundaries, and trust that she really did know what she was doing.

This episode is about more than protecting a business.

It is about knowing the value of what you have built, understanding where you need support, and becoming the kind of leader who no longer believes she has to do everything alone.

Subscribe to Next Level Women for conversations about confidence, entrepreneurship, self-leadership, identity, reinvention, and becoming your next level from the inside out.

CONNECT WITH ELISSA D. HECKER

Website: https://www.eheckeresq.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elissa-d-hecker-48467711

Email: [email protected]

What if confidence is not something you need before you take the next step?

In this episode of Next Level Women, Jennifer Perri sits down with transformational business coach, speaker, retreat leader, and founder of Get Clients Everywhere, Marie Fratoni, for a conversation about what it really takes to build confidence, become more visible, and create meaningful connections.

Marie shares a simple but powerful truth: confidence comes as a result of doing. The more willing we are to show up, try, connect, and even get it wrong sometimes, the more confidence we build along the way.

Jennifer and Marie also explore why so many accomplished women still struggle with imposter syndrome, what most people misunderstand about networking, and why genuine relationships can shape opportunities, growth, and even the direction of your life.

You’ll hear how Marie built a career around connection, why having people who see more in you can change everything, and how to begin rebuilding your network after a major life or career transition.

If you have been waiting to feel more ready, more confident, or more certain before putting yourself out there, this conversation may shift the way you think about what comes next.

Because confidence is not always the thing that comes first.

Sometimes it is what you build by choosing to move.

Subscribe to Next Level Women for more conversations about confidence, reinvention, self-leadership, visibility, and becoming the woman your next chapter requires.

Connect with Marie Fratoni:

Website: https://getclientseverywhere.com

Email: [email protected]

Social Media: Search Marie Fratoni