Vanetta Schoefield

I attribute my success to my trauma. I have always had to brace myself, always been waiting for the shoe to fall off. I grew up in a very low-income household in a town with a population of 15,000 that was number one for teen pregnancy. I was very top in my class in a space where there were very small classes, so I did not see a lot of resources. I've always been scrambling, always been rushing, and now that I'm on a healing journey, I'm undoing those things and unlearning those habits. But honestly, it's the fact that I have never had stability as a child, never had stability as a young adult that groomed me for the instability of entrepreneurship. This is just a walk in the park for me.

The best career advice I've received is to network across, don't necessarily go out looking for a mentor, and don't ask for a mentor. You find the people that are doing what it is in the space you want to do, and focus on the skills you need, not the person that you feel is attached to your success. Focus on the skills that you need to experience over the one particular person you feel a connection to. Because if you have expectations for people, they're gonna let you down. So you set an intention to say, hey, no matter what happens with this situation, with this organization, with this partner, with this client, I'm going to develop this skill set. You will leave and it will really help you focus on what matters the most, which is the skills and the experience.

What I give is focus on your bigger picture, and find your why. If you are going on the day-to-day, if you are looking at the week, you will always set yourself up for failure, or just to have expectations be ruined. But if you just focus on your purpose and your why, and this is part of a 10-year plan, part of a 20-year plan, this month, this quarter, it could be bad, it could be whatever, because you are focused on where you're going and your why.

What I face the most is that there's such a lack of understanding and respect for the arts overall, and I think comedy is one of the least regulated industries. So I am the craziest, most insane person to want some kind of systems. The biggest challenge is I'm the only one pushing systems, I'm pushing this, so being the one against the many is difficult. But now, the biggest opportunity is education, and I've built a platform. I'm actually launching my school platform called Making the Show Your Business. I had my first module complete. I'm creating a whole full-body diagnostic for creatives, taking the 10,000 hours of mastery for any skill or craft and using that as a through-line to help educate creatives on where they are on their journey. I'm giving them the tools from my 15-year career and all of those experiences and stories, allowing people to create their own careers and showing them they can do whatever they want from their passion.

Work ethic, integrity, and morals are most important to me. I live in an industry and a space where, as a woman, and I'm kind of hot, I'll tell you this, people want to really judge you as the cover of the book you are as a woman. And although I'm softer on the eyes, I put in work, and I value the work ethic. It's all about the work for me, and it's about the results. I value that, and I put my integrity and my morals over everything, so I don't want a favor. I want an opportunity to prove and show I'm the one for the job.