One of Stephanie's first clients was a fifteen year old who had just picked up a stack of legal charges. It was her first week out of grad school, and nobody had finished training her. She figured it out, but there were consequences.

Twenty years later she is a licensed clinical social worker and a clinical consultant, and when people ask her who her client is, her answer is unexpected: her client isn't a person, it's a system.

Which sounds abstract right up until someone hands you a bubble bath and calls it a solution to what is happening day after day, month after month.

We talk about what happens when a group practice scales and starts to feel like profit first instead of team, why an outside consultant gets heard saying the same things staff have been saying for years, what a trauma-informed workplace looks like in actual policy rather than in a values statement, and the thing Stephanie calls a trap that almost every exhausted professional has been told will help.

Chapters
00:00 Meet Stephanie Jones, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Clinical Consultant
01:34 She Thought She Would Be a Lawyer: How She Found Social Work Instead
02:44 First Job Out of Undergrad: Inside a Residential Group Home for At-Risk Youth
05:23 The Supervisor Who Changed Everything and the Gift of Being Told You Are Doing Fine
06:33 What High Acuity Means, and Why New Social Workers Get the Hardest Cases
09:05 Why an Outside Consultant Gets Heard When the Staff Never Did
11:36 When a Group Practice Scales: How Profit First Replaces Team
13:57 My Client Isn't a Person, It's a System
17:12 Trauma-Informed Workplace Design
18:30 Secondary Trauma, Transparency, and Water Cooler Anxiety
21:11 Layoffs, Moral Injury, and Why Baseline Anxiety Is Everywhere Now
24:06 Maslow at Work: Why Collaboration Is What Makes People Stay
28:06 How Practice Owners Rebuild the Hierarchy They Left
31:23 Staying in Your Values and Still Making Money
37:54 The Self-Care Trap: What New Social Workers Are Never Told

About Stephanie

Stephanie Jones is a licensed clinical social worker and clinical consultant with more than 20 years of micro and macro social work experience, helping agencies and group practices build trauma-informed workplaces.

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Mentioned: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
You Need A Budget, YNAB.com
Profit for Keeps® is registered trademarks of Amber Dugger LLC.

ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route.

Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call

RESOURCES
The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap
The 5-Minute Grounding Reset

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On LinkedIn
On Instagram

Magnolia Cloyd wanted to be a chef. Then she heard that only one in four restaurants makes it, decided she would be one of the three that fail, and went to study marketing and entrepreneurship instead because it felt safer.

Fifteen years later she runs her own design studio.

She is building it in the margins of her day, around homeschooling two children and a husband who works ten to fourteen hour days. Which sounds like a limitation, right up until she does the arithmetic out loud.

We talk about the planner she made for herself in the middle of young motherhood, the three words she built her whole studio around, why she spent years afraid to name the clients she actually wanted, and what it takes to keep going when growth is slow and gradual.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome to The Scenic Route: meet Magnolia Cloyd
03:14 She Wanted to Be a Chef: the plan before design
04:08 The Statistic That Changed Her Mind About Restaurants
05:04 Teaching Herself Graphic Design on the Job
06:26 Coming Home in 2020
06:55 The Planner She Made for Herself
09:41 Where Beauty, Strategy, and Ease Came From
14:40 Catching Yourself Forcing It
20:41 Why She Was Afraid to Name the Clients She Wanted
24:57 Regret, and Every Earlier Version of Herself
29:29 Building in the Margins
36:14 Building in the Quiet Before Anyone Is Watching
42:43 Be, Do, Have
44:41 How an Hour a Day Compounds
46:29 Building a Life First Business

LEARN MORE ABOUT MAGNOLIA
Her two signature services: The Grace Edit, for books, devotionals, journals, and planners, and The Strength Edit, for brand design for founders and nonprofits.

Get Magnolia's Freebie Here!!

Website

In the Margins with Magnolia on YouTube
On Instagram
On LinkedIn

ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route.

Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call.

RESOURCES
The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap
The Engineer’s Exit Decision Toolkit
The 5-Minute Grounding Reset

Website

FOLLOW
On LinkedIn
On Instagram

🎙️ This show is recorded with Riverside, the easiest way to run a professional podcast and livestream simultaneously. Thinking about starting your own show? Try Now!

Justin Anderson knows that trade or setting aside a part yourself, especially the creative side. He spent years as a network engineer, keeping systems running to precision, while the writer in him sat in a drawer next to grief he had been taught to keep silent.

When he finally started writing again, something he expected to be a little side income, it cracked that drawer open. Sixteen years of suppressed grief came up through his characters. And instead of choosing between the engineer and the writer, the logic and the imagination, he built a world big enough to hold both.

That world is the VaelorinVerse: a dark fantasy universe where mental health is the magic system, not the villain. Justin built it for everyone carrying an invisible weight nobody else can see. The caregiver grieving someone who is still alive. The first responder who cannot show a crack. He did not build it to fix them. He built it to provide a place where they feel seen.

In this conversation Justin and I get into why so much of what we are shown about mental illness is wrong, the two doors of grief, and why building something real takes longer and looks less dramatic than the quit-your-job-and-go-all-in story we keep getting sold.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Meet Justin Anderson and the VaelorinVerse

03:48 The Kid Who Dreamed of Being a Psychologist and a Writer

06:20 Why Algebra Ended the Psychology Dream and Engineering Won

11:24 Coming Full Circle Back to the Mind and Writing

13:50 Why Movies and Books Get Mental Illness Wrong

15:24 How Writing Surfaced 16 Years of Suppressed Grief

24:40 The Toxic Writing Group That Sent Him Back to Therapy

28:32 Building a Fantasy World Where No One Feels Alone

32:41 The Invisible Weight First Responders and Caregivers Carry

34:33 Grieving Someone Who Is Still Alive

43:32 Four Doors Into the Same House: Making Help Accessible

47:53 Why You Do Not Have to Quit Your Job to Build Something Real

54:51 Therapy Is Not One Size Fits All

58:54 The Two Doors of Grief and Why Externalizing Works

EXPLORE THE VAELORINVERSE

The VaelorinVerse (novel, audio, folklore, memorial wall, shop)

On LinkedIn
On Instagram

On YouTube

ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route.

Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call

RESOURCES
The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap
The 5-Minute Grounding Reset

FOLLOW
On LinkedIn
On Instagram

Website

Jo Bee had been teaching dance for twenty years when she started noticing something on her birthday. Not New Year, her birthday. Every year the same question would arrive: what happens now?

She was good at her job. She knew she was good. She also knew, in a way she had never said out loud, that she had spent two decades adding a "but" to the end of every sentence about herself. Yes, I teach dance, but only in schools... yes, but.

Then one birthday she stopped adding the but.

What Jo describes in this conversation is not a career change. She did not leave dance; she asked dance for MORE. She started an Instagram account. She went back to being a beginner in someone else's class. She told a stranger she could choreograph, and when the choreographer dropped out, she choreographed a short film that screened in New York!

None of it required her to be the best. That is the part she wants you to hear. Somewhere in the last three years she worked out that she does not have to be in order to be good at this, be successful at it, and love it.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Meet Jo Bee: Dance Teacher, Choreographer and Founder of Jo Bee Dance
01:22 Twenty Years of Teaching Dance in Schools and Wanting Something More
02:42 Why Her Birthday and Not New Year Became the Reset Point Every Year
03:14 The Only Thing Stopping Me Was Me: Naming the Real Obstacle
03:38 Starting an Instagram and Deciding to Shoot Her Shot Everywhere
06:17 How Minimizing Your Own Achievements Keeps You Exactly Where You Are
07:39 Going Back to Class at Pineapple Studios and Ending Up Teaching There
09:11 Choreographing a Short Film That Screened in New York
12:00 I Was Not Unhappy, But There Was an Itch: Is There More Than This?
14:17 Why Dance Belongs in the Wellness Conversation Next to Yoga and Pilates
16:26 You Do Not Have to Be the Best: The Realization That Set Her Free
18:13 Teaching a Room Full of Corporate Women in Suits How to Dance
24:54 What Is Next: Wellness in the Wild, Corporate Wellbeing and New York
29:43 If You Do Not Ask, You Do Not Get: What Jo Wants You to Take Away

LEARN MORE FROM JO BEE
Jo Bee is a London based dance teacher and choreographer, and the founder of Jo Bee Dance. Want to join Jo Bee in person join her at the Wellness in the Wild Festival in Suffolk.

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ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route.
Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call

RESOURCES
The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap
The 5-Minute Grounding Reset: https://reset.victoria-steward.com

FOLLOW
On LinkedIn
On Instagram

Website

Jo Bee had been teaching dance for twenty years when she started noticing something on her birthday. Not New Year, her birthday. Every year the same question would arrive: what happens now?

She was good at her job. She knew she was good. She also knew, in a way she had never said out loud, that she had spent two decades adding a "but" to the end of every sentence about herself. Yes, I teach dance, but only in schools... yes, but.

Then one birthday she stopped adding the but.

What Jo describes in this conversation is not a career change. She did not leave dance; she asked dance for MORE. She started an Instagram account. She went back to being a beginner in someone else's class. She told a stranger she could choreograph, and when the choreographer dropped out, she choreographed a short film that screened in New York!

None of it required her to be the best. That is the part she wants you to hear. Somewhere in the last three years she worked out that she does not have to be in order to be good at this, be successful at it, and love it.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Meet Jo Bee: Dance Teacher, Choreographer and Founder of Jo Bee Dance
01:22 Twenty Years of Teaching Dance in Schools and Wanting Something More
02:42 Why Her Birthday and Not New Year Became the Reset Point Every Year
03:14 The Only Thing Stopping Me Was Me: Naming the Real Obstacle
03:38 Starting an Instagram and Deciding to Shoot Her Shot Everywhere
06:17 How Minimizing Your Own Achievements Keeps You Exactly Where You Are
07:39 Going Back to Class at Pineapple Studios and Ending Up Teaching There
09:11 Choreographing a Short Film That Screened in New York
12:00 I Was Not Unhappy, But There Was an Itch: Is There More Than This?
14:17 Why Dance Belongs in the Wellness Conversation Next to Yoga and Pilates
16:26 You Do Not Have to Be the Best: The Realization That Set Her Free
18:13 Teaching a Room Full of Corporate Women in Suits How to Dance
24:54 What Is Next: Wellness in the Wild, Corporate Wellbeing and New York
29:43 If You Do Not Ask, You Do Not Get: What Jo Wants You to Take Away

LEARN MORE FROM JO BEE
Jo Bee is a London based dance teacher and choreographer, and the founder of Jo Bee Dance. Want to join Jo Bee in person join her at the Wellness in the Wild Festival in Suffolk.

Follow on Instagram
Website

ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route.
Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call

RESOURCES
The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap
The 5-Minute Grounding Reset: https://reset.victoria-steward.com

FOLLOW
On LinkedIn
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Website

What if the exit you keep rehearsing is one you could actually negotiate Julie Harris Oliver was walking into the building to quit her job with no plan, phone pressed to her ear, when her mom said the words that stopped her cold: too bad you can’t negotiate your exit. Julie’s answer, to herself, was instant, "But I can."

That reflex, catching the permission a half-second before she could talk herself out of it, runs through her whole story. Julie arrived in Hollywood as an acting major and left 25 years later as a finance leader who had run a $2B book of business. She was the accidental expert who once got hired by writing a ten page email to a boss who assumed the word ACTING on her resume was a acronym for accounting.


Victoria and Julie talk about negotiating an exit instead of just leaving, why burnout recovery takes far longer than anyone admits, and the thing Julie now sees in nearly every client: a buried mission that will not shut up.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Meeting Leadership Coach Julie Harris Oliver
01:50 From Acting Major at NYU to Behind the Camera in Hollywood
04:15 The Bookkeeping Job That Launched a Finance Career
07:27 When Her Boss Thought Her Acting Degree Said Accounting
11:15 Realizing the Struggle Was Systemic, Not Personal
14:12 How She Negotiated Her Exit Instead of Just Quitting
16:38 Why Burnout Recovery Takes Longer Than You Think
19:36 Inside a DEI Team Led by Women of Color at Warner
24:23 The Broken Wrist and the Signs She Kept Ignoring
25:20 At Fifty She Decided Now Was the Time
26:50 Saying No to the Deal and the Relief She Felt in Her Body
30:08 The Two Kinds of Clients She Loves Coaching
32:35 There Are No Rules Anymore, and What That Makes Possible
39:43 Her Podcast Deep Work Out Loud and the Cohort She Is Building

Learn More from Julie:
Website
Book a complimentary consultation
Deep Work Out Loud: YouTube, Apple Podcasts
Instagram
LinkedIn

ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route.

Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call

RESOURCES

Monthly Masterclass
The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap
The 5-Minute Grounding Reset

FOLLOW
LinkedIn
On Instagram

What if the path that looks like you can’t make up your mind is actually the most honest thing about you?

Lizbeth Marquez has started more things than most people try in a lifetime: a hair care line born in an oncology ward, an events business, a brand strategy practice, a high-ticket sales career, and now a podcast she co-hosts with her best friend. For years she carried all of it like a flaw. She figured she was scattered, maybe had ADHD, couldn’t settle on the one thing she was supposed to pick. This conversation is about the moment that story flipped.

Victoria and Lizbeth, two podcast hosts who each spent two decades in one world before following a feeling into another, get into what it actually takes to trust the next aha: how Lizbeth knew when to move, why she never leapt without building a bridge first, and a hard-won lesson about choosing a business partner that cost her more than money.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Meet Lizbeth Marquez: Podcast Host, Brand Strategist, Former Medical Professional
02:38 Falling Into Medicine at 15 and the Creative Dreams She Set Aside
04:37 Pregnant at 18 and Choosing the Safe Path
05:33 The PA School Dream and Three Rounds of Rejection
09:18 From Oncology to Entrepreneurship: The Patient Who Sparked a Hair Care Business
12:52 Starting an Events Business With a Partner
15:16 What Multipassionate Really Means and Why It Is a Strength
16:13 How She Knows When It Is Time to Pivot: Following the Aha
22:33 Why She Did Not Quit Her Job to Chase the Business
23:44 Using High-Ticket Remote Sales as a Bridge Out of Medicine
27:53 Why She Started the Work Drama Podcast
34:09 How Free Headshots Led Her to a Podcast Studio
37:05 Do Your Due Diligence Before Taking on a Business Partner
42:53 Trusting Herself Again and Starting Over at 39

LEARN MORE FROM LIZBETH
Website

FOLLOW
On Instagram
Work Drama Podcast
On TikTok
Apple/Spotify

ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route.

Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call

FOLLOW
On LinkedIn
On Instagram

RESOURCES
The Engineer’s Exit Decision Toolkit
The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap
The 5-Minute Grounding Reset
Website

Maren Londahl-Smidt did the in-between.

She built her private practice while she was still working her hospital job. First clients on two evenings, then a third day, then a fourth, waiting until she knew her practice could provide the revenue she needed before she let go of anything. She did not leave until the runway had cured.

When people ask her when the right time was, she says there is never a perfect time and you will always be scared, but there is a better time, and there is a better way.

Maren is a therapist, a cash flow strategist, a fellow Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, and she was my very first PFK® practice client. She has ADHD, and instead of fighting it, she built a whole coaching business around it. Her guiding question is not how much can I push myself to do. It is what is my actual capacity, and how do I design the money and the work around that.

In this conversation we get into the money anxiety that hit the moment she went full-time on her own, why she fired a nine-hundred-dollar-a-month accountant who would not even tell her what to set aside for taxes, how Profit for Keeps® finally connected her personal and business finances, and why designing around your real capacity is not lowering the bar. It is how you keep showing up for the people you serve.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Meet Maren Londahl-Smidt, Therapist and Money Coach
02:15 From Horse Shows to a Grad School She Found Online
03:43 The ER, the Burnout, and the Income That Never Added Up
05:20 Why Private Practice, and the Insurance Trap She Left Behind
10:39 The Strategic, Staged Exit: No Weekends and No Leap
12:45 Never a Perfect Time, but a Better Time and a Better Way
13:52 The Money Anxiety That Hit the Moment She Went Solo
14:48 Firing the Expensive Accountant and Finding Profit for Keeps®
17:49 How a Coaching Business Was Born From an Offhand Question
23:50 Niches, Profit for Joy®, and Learning Her Real Capacity
28:12 Finding Her People: Therapists With ADHD
33:27 What's Coming Up

LEARN MORE FROM MAREN
Join the Predictable Pay Challenge: 5 days, July 27-31, 12pm EDT, for therapists with ADHD or ADHD tendencies.

Learn more about the ADHD Practice and Profit Cohort with Amber Dugger: 6 months with built-in rest weeks, limited to 24 people, kicks off August 10.

Follow Maren for More
On Instagram
Join her Facebook Group: Profit for Keeps for Therapists

ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit & Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, and their own timing.

Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call.

FOLLOW
On LinkedIn
On Instagram

RESOURCES
The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap
The 5-Minute Grounding Reset

What if the thing standing between you and the life you actually want was never the number in your bank account?

Jessica Kleine is a money coach for women, and she will be the first to tell you that the numbers have almost nothing to do with it. She has watched clients double their income and walk straight into problems twice the size. Six and a half years in, she is clear that the math was always the easy part... and that the real work lives underneath it.

Her path here was anything but a straight line. She was the straight-A kid headed for law school, right up until the afternoon she reached for the LSAT sign-up sheet and heard a small voice ask, “What if I hate it?” That one question set the tone for everything after: paralegal, then stay-at-home mom for what was supposed to be six months and turned into twenty years, then direct sales, then homeschooling, then a money coaching practice that found her by accident. Her family motto, “we'll figure it out,” turns out to be a whole philosophy.

We get into why more money doesn't fix the feeling, what your spending is actually trying to tell you, and why Jessica is convinced that most of the rules we follow were simply made up, which means we get to make our own. We talk about building a business on your own terms, choosing time freedom over chasing a million-dollar version of success, and the relief that arrives when you realize curiosity, not crisis, has been steering all along. Jessica is living proof that none of it was a wrong turn.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome to The Scenic Route
01:01 Meet Jessica Kleine: A Money Coach for Women
01:48 The LSAT Moment That Started It All: “What If I Hate It?”
03:03 From Paralegal to Stay-at-Home Mom: When the Plan Changed
04:00 How Money Coaching Found Her by Accident
07:52 Why More Money Won't Fix the Problem
09:36 The Logical Brain Meets the Magic of Money Mindset
18:27 The Hermit Who Built an Archery Community
21:27 Slow and Steady: A Business on Her Own Terms
22:46 Redefining Success: Time Freedom Over a Million Dollars
28:39 “Rules Are Made Up”: Why You Can Write Your Own
34:57 The 8 Money Archetypes: What Your Spending Is Telling You

LEARN MORE FROM JESSICA
Join Jessica for her July Workshop: “What Your Money Habits Are Trying to Tell You” Register Here.

Website
On LinkedIn
On YouTube
On Facebook

ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop.
Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call

FOLLOW
On LinkedIn
On Instagram

RESOURCES
The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap
The 5-Minute Grounding Reset

John Petrozelli has built his whole life around one rule: before you make a big move, prep the ground, study the risks, then leap. He learned it as an Air Force intelligence officer, sharpened it across seventeen years and five different roles in the FBI, and carried it into a career in cybersecurity. So what happens when a man who plans everything tells you about the one time he leapt without a plan?

That is the heart of this conversation. John walked away from the military fast, on anger and instinct, and spent the next year and a half treading water before he found his footing again. If you have ever wondered what it actually costs to jump before you are ready, his answer is worth sitting with.

But this is not a heavy episode. It is also the story of how John got curious instead of bitter: how he used those same intelligence skills to rebuild his life after divorce, why he finally stopped forcing the search and met the right person when he was not looking, and how all of it turned into Done With Dating, his free, podcast-driven dating platform where listeners can actually apply to date the guests.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Welcome to The Scenic Route

01:28 Dreaming of Becoming an Air Force Pilot

02:31 Switching From Engineering to Intelligence Work

04:27 What “Intelligence Preparation of the Battle Space” Means

07:08 Becoming an Air Force Intelligence Officer in 1998

08:07 What South Korea Taught Him About the Gray Area of Life

09:06 Combat Mission Planning for Special Operations

10:59 From the FBI to Director of Cybersecurity: Five Career Pivots

13:08 How Cyber Warfare Actually Works Today

17:25 Rebuilding His Dating Life After Divorce, and Hitting Burnout

21:23 Meeting the Right Person by Not Looking for Her

23:24 Building the Done With Dating Podcast: Three Pillars

26:50 How the Matchmaking Episodes Work

40:31 The One Time He Didn't Prep the Battle Space: Leaving the Military

44:11 From the Marathon Bombing Manhunt to a Desk Job Overnight

CONNECT WITH JOHN
Website

Done with Dating Podcast: YouTube/Apple/Spotify

ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward is a Corporate Exit and Financial Empowerment Coach and Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach, helping senior corporate women stuck in the "one-more-year" loop, build the self-trust and financial clarity to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route.

Curious? Book a Pivot Clarity Call.

FOLLOW
On LinkedIn
On Instagram

RESOURCES
The Can I Pivot Yet? Exit Roadmap
The 5-Minute Grounding Reset
Website