Episode #5 - AJ Vaden
For many ambitious working moms, the desire for recognition often stems from professional achievements. However, AJ reminds us that true significance lies within our homes. This perspective shifts the focus from external validation to the invaluable connections we nurture within our families.
AJ explains how she and her husband pursued more money and time, only to find themselves still stressed and unfulfilled. Instead, they discovered that true wealth is about cultivating peace in their lives. AJ emphasizes the importance of asking, "Will this bring me more peace?" whenever faced with decisions, guiding listeners to prioritize peace over chaos in their busy lives.
AJ shares her personal practices, beginning each day with dedicated alone time. This solitude allows her to recharge, reflect, and set intentions for the day ahead.
3 KEY TAKEAWAYS:
1️⃣ True wealth is defined by the peace we cultivate rather than the money we accumulate.
2️⃣ Recognizing and adapting to the different seasons of life is essential for maintaining balance.
3️⃣ Being well-known starts at home with our families, where genuine connections are formed.
“How can you unleash the uniqueness you have in the service of someone else?”
Guest Appearing in this Episode
AJ Vaden
AJ Vaden is the CEO and Co-Founder of Brand Builders Group, a personal brand strategy firm dedicated to helping individuals turn their reputation into revenue. Under her leadership, Brand Builders Group has been ranked on the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest Growing Companies in America for two consecutive years.
As a multi-time 8-figure entrepreneur, AJ has helped launch six multi-million-dollar businesses over her 20-year entrepreneurial career, including public seminars, a speakers bureau, sales coaching and consulting, and hybrid publishing.
She also co-hosts The Influential Personal Brand Podcast, ranked among the top 100 business podcasts, and has been featured in SUCCESS Magazine, Forbes, and Good Morning America.
Full Transcript
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Welcome to the Feel Good Club podcast. This is the place where ambitious working moms learn how to elevate their wellbeing, increase success in all areas, and create a positive, aligned life. Whether you're here to hear expert interviews or inspiring talks, this is your space to learn and grow. I'm Tia Graham, keynote and TED speaker, bestselling author,
and founder of the Feel Good Club community for high achieving moms. I am an expert in the science of happiness. This show is here to help you feel grounded, happier and connected to yourself and others. I know you are going to love it. Thank you for being here. Let's dive in. In this episode with AJ Vaden.
You are going to learn what does it mean to be wealthy and well-known in your career? How does this apply to a busy mom? And how does one go about finding their uniqueness so that they can truly thrive professionally? AJ Vaden is the CEO and co-founder of the Brand Builders Group, a personal brand strategy firm. Under her leadership, Brand Builders has been ranked
on the Inc 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in America for two consecutive years. As a multi-time eight figure entrepreneur, AJ has helped launch six multi-million dollar businesses over her 20 year career. And she also co-hosts the wealthy and well-known podcast. She's a mom of two and one of my favorite people. I'm so excited for you to hear.
and get inspired and learn from this episode. Hi AJ, welcome. I'm so glad that you're on the show and I want to start by saying congratulations for hitting New York Times bestseller for your incredible book, Wealthy and Well-Known. Congratulations. Everyone listening is going to get a copy. just congrats on that.
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are happy to be here.
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Thank you so much. We are still living on that ride, so we're pretty excited about it ourselves.
Good. hope you live. I hope you ride and feel that for a long time. So the listeners are ambitious, high achieving, very busy working moms. What does it mean to be wealthy and well known as a working mom, whether you're in corporate or you're an entrepreneur?
Yeah, so I'm going to answer the well-known piece first. And since so many of the listeners are working moms, I'm going to focus on that mom part for a second. And I think one of the things that just to tie this into the title of my role as mom is I often have found that my idea of being well-known happened outside of the house.
And it was about being well known in my community, well known in my industry, well known in my space, well known in the thought leadership space, being well known online. And what I forgot is that the greatest impact, the greatest influence that I have are between the walls of my home with my two awesome little boys and that I was already a superhero at home. I was already very famous in my household.
And I was already intimately loved and loved imperfectly by my two little boys and my husband. And it was honestly through a lot of this journey of motherhood that I have learned what it really means to be well known. And I think a lot of that means that people get to see the not so pretty sides of you and they love you anyways.
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One of the things that I have learned is that as I become more vulnerable and being more of who I am in my house, outside of my house, that has also increased my well-knownness. And what I would say my well-knownness is I'm allowing people to actually get to know me. Not the professional version of me, not the made up hair and makeup, suit on, ready for camera day me. No, me that just came out of hot yoga.
the me that's still sweaty and sunburned, the me that is me. And so the well-known piece is allowing people to actually know the hard parts of your story. And I think that's a huge part of like, there is a natural connection to human beings when we realize we're not in this life alone and that the hard part and the hard thing that you went through relates because that's where connection is made. Connection is made in the hard parts of our story, not-
I've never had someone come up to me after a podcast or a speech and go, AJ, can you please tell me more about all those amazing parts of your life? Can you tell me more about the accolades and the successes and can you hear me talk more? That has never happened once in my life, but every single time that I'm willing to go there and share the part that's not favorable, like when I got fired or when I hit the road three weeks after maternity leave and thought that was normal.
Like when I start actually sharing the real.
that story in the book. I was and I could relate to it in so many ways.
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That's what creates authenticity. And that is really what it means to be well known. And then realizing that it's like, I'm well known by my creator. Like I loved and perfectly known as I am without any social media followers, without any email lists, without any accolades or titles behind my name. And I think that's a lot of where we place our identity, right?
thinking of on LinkedIn or this of like, that's the well-known and no, yeah, there's too much emphasis on that.
Yeah, this is really an identity conversation of realizing that you are already well known and that being well known is not about notoriety or fame. It's about intimacy and connection. And then on the wealthy piece, we spent a very long time, me my husband and I trying to figure out how to be more wealthy. And at first we thought that was about money, right? It's like, how do we have an abundance
of money and our banking accounts. And we thought if we had that, well, life would be good. And then when we had some abundance of money, we were still stressed and slightly unfulfilled and didn't even have time to use all the money that we were so hard to make. And then we started thinking to ourselves, oh, we got it wrong. It's not about money. It's about time. We just need to figure out how to have more time, more weight,
discretionary time you are okay. Okay.
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And then we got some of that, not a lot of that, but we got some of that, but we still felt the same. And we had at this point spent the better part of 20 years of our professional lives trying to figure out how to get more money and how to get more time. And we were in the same spot.
in terms of how you felt.
how we felt, right? Still stressed, still wondering what this was all for, still really conflicted with what was worth our time and what wasn't. are we ever going to not feel this way? Are we ever always going to feel this busy? And then what we realized is that money or time, that wealth to us is really about an abundance of peace. And that peace is available and present regardless of how many dollars you have.
or how many minutes are available on your calendar, that there can be peace in the chaos and there can be peace in the calm, but peace is available right now and making necessary decisions in our life and in our family that invite more peace in, not always about more money. It's not always about more time, but we now make decisions based on a peace threshold.
so good. I talk a lot to working moms and I talk a lot about decisions to feel more joy and to increase well-being all around the center of penis. Yet having a one of my as the listeners know one of my daughters is autistic and it's been extremely, extremely challenging. And I've been on a journey of inner peace, especially over the last four or five years. And I
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couldn't agree with you more, it is way more valuable than time or money, right? And it's not that you want to work towards those, of course, but feeling that despite different things that are out of your control and having that being grounded and being centered. So for someone listening who doesn't feel a lot of peace right now and certainly isn't making decisions or even, I would say, planning around.
How do I have more peace in my day, in my week, in my year? What advice would you give to someone who's really kind of early on in this path and thinking like that?
Yeah, so I would actually give you a tip that we literally ask ourselves out loud now and at every decision point that you need to make personally or professionally, actually run it through the peace filter of will this bring me more peace?
Peace filter, perfect.
I mean, it's seemingly as simple as that. And I can't tell you how many times that I have almost said yes to something because of the wrong reasons. Because it's
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Because of the money or notoriety or success or
You got it. And if when I add the peace filter in and I go, will this bring me, my family, my household, more peace? If the answer is no, then the answer is no. It's because we are filtering things through will this bring peace or chaos into our life? And even if it's a little bit of chaos, the answer is still no, because we already have enough chaos. There's enough.
When fighting circumstances. Yeah, working in kids, of course.
But just asking that question and it could be something as simple as, Hey, like I got invited to go to this retreat. It's a five day retreat. And on the one hand, I'm like, man, I would treat that sounds so nice. There's no phones allowed. Yeah. At the same time, it was going to create chaos for my husband, for my kids, for our business, uh, for me leading up and after and the amount. And it's not that I don't want to take time off. That's not what I'm saying. I most certainly do.
But not in this season and not in this way. It's not the right thing for my household. It's not the right thing for me. It was going to create chaos. So the answer had to be no. So it's just asking the simple question. Will this bring more peace?
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Right, right.
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Let's take a quick pause for something that can really support you. If you constantly question if you are good enough as a working mom and desperately want to feel happier, I'd love to invite you to a complimentary discovery call with me. In 45 minutes, we'll get clear on what is out of alignment, what you want your days to feel like, and
two to three simple changes you can make immediately to feel calmer and more confident. It's completely free and it's a chance for us to connect and see if the Feel Good Club for Working Moms or One-on-One Coaching might support you. To grab a spot, go to tiagram.com forward slash discovery call. That's tiagram.com forward slash
discovery call and pick a time that works for you. I love it and I've over the last year as you know have really been making decisions differently and I've been using call more than peace in terms of how I say it and you know in talking to my husband about intentionally choosing to travel way less for work because the anxiety and stress
was more than all of the benefits of the travel. Even though I love the word travel and keynote speaking and everything, and I love that you said season. It's understanding that there are seasons and nothing's forever and appreciating the season we're in and understanding what that season needs and the peace that that season needs so that we don't always feel like we're in chaos. So in addition to the peace filter,
Is there something else you do in your daily life, something really practical that working moms listening can do, can apply and feel a little more peace starting tomorrow?
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I'm gonna give you two things. One is something I do just for myself because I think that's important part of being a mother is doing it for yourself. I start every morning with alone time. It's my solitude, it's my solitary time. And some days I get more minutes than others depending on the schedules, but I'm not a naturally early morning person. That is not who I am. However, I have become one because that is
the season right that I'm in if I want to have my alone time then I have to fight for it. have really strict protocols we have this little yellow light alarm clock that our kids are not allowed to come downstairs and that light comes on at 7.30AM and so from for me from 6AM to 7.30AM the house is mine my husband has his own routine he does it in the garage I have mine is usually outside.
My kids are now old enough. There's six and eight where it's like he can be in the garage and I can be, know, in the front yard. But this is my alone time, right? And I'm not doing anything grandiose. I'm away from my phone. I'm away from my computer.
You're not, it doesn't sound like you're working in this time.
So this is me, my computer, my Bible and a journal. Okay. And this is reading this is journaling. This is taking a nice long hot sips of coffee with I think we all just need to enjoy hot coffee, the amount of cold.
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Like you're mindfully, you're, you're, you're, know, mindfully enjoying it.
Yeah, I think a lot of that too is going like, I look forward to this time now. I can't wait to take that first sip of hot coffee, not cold coffee, hot coffee, because this is my time. And I go outside and I'm barefoot in the grass. Then I sit down, I read a journal, I pray, this is my time. But I'll tell you what else I do. I shower by myself, right? There's no kids coming in and out. This is my time. And I know that seems silly sometimes, but the amount of
alone time that we get as moms and working moms is far and few between. And there's just some things I want alone time. just want to walk.
really protecting it and and also there's there's you're talking about family boundaries too of alone that mom needs alone time yeah yeah
You've got to fight for it. we tell our kids just like, sometimes you want alone time. I mean, I want it too. Right now to counter that though, there's something else that we have in our weekly rhythm that makes me not have guilt for asking for my alone time because I need it just like we all do. But we do family date night every Friday night.
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And so we cut out of work just a tiny bit early on Fridays. We usually end our Fridays at 3.30. So that's the end of our workday. And from 3.30 until bedtime, which is roughly 8 p.m., it's family date night. And the kids get to pick the activity. We make suggestions. But this is where we just for five hours, we just have family time. And it's again, no work, no phones, no meetings.
We go to monster truck, we go to movies, we go bowling, we go putt-putting, we go to baseball games. But this is our time where we just live it up. And it's every Friday night, it's Friday night, family night. And that makes all the morning times worth it because I know that at the end of the week, we're all gonna celebrate together. I'm gonna be in a good mood. They're gonna be in a good mood. And it's something that we all so genuinely look forward to.
I was going to say, I'm sure, and especially the kids. So I'm curious about this. In addition to your morning, and I could see setting that, and it's OK for everyone listening, if you don't have 90 minutes right now, if you have 15, if you have 20, doesn't. It's about what works for you now. If you're a single mom, whatever works for you. AJ, do you also take time for yourself on the weekends?
It's so fun.
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You know, I don't do that a lot, but here's what my husband and I do. We each love working out. And so we alternate our workout schedules. I go to yoga. I do hot yoga. I always get to go to one hot yoga class on the weekend. Okay. And then he watches the kids while I do that. And then I come and watch the kids and he usually does his thing or he takes a nap. he takes a Okay. Just like whatever you want to do.
That's not like my husband. Yeah. Yeah, use your time.
We alternate that. the other thing that we do that I think has been in a really amazing rhythm is we never miss church. Like we will fly home early for church, but a part of that is because it's our time to worship together in church and the kids are in kids church, right? And it's a part of that is it's doing our spiritual practice together. But then on Sunday evenings, we're in a family Bible study. And again, these are just some things that we have learned. Now this doesn't apply to everyone.
Right, this is what works for your family, of course, and your faith.
But in family Bible study, we have two babysitters. There's five families, 12 kids, and those two babysitters watch those five kids for three hours every Sunday. And it's us in adult time. And we all pitch in. It's potluck style. And we talk life. We read scripture. We read bread. And the kids have a blast. And they're with babysitters. And we do that every Sunday. So I love that.
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community piece for the adults that I love. Okay, you inspire me so much. got okay.
Me and my husband get a ton of just us time on Sundays as a part of our Sabbath practice. Right. We're doing it in community and we have babysitters and
Kids are fun. Yeah, they want to hang out with kids. don't. Yeah.
it makes it more affordab in.
I love it. that's so cool. Okay, so we are gonna shift a little bit from family and I wanna talk about the beautiful working mom who's listening and their career and their work.
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in as one of the foundational steps within with brand builders with the book is for the person to find their uniqueness and this is as it relates to you know the work that they do and everyone listening you know is passionate about that so can you tell tell the listener how does how do they go about finding their uniqueness for their work kind of for their life
Yeah, so two quick precursors to this is number one, I believe that many of us have likely asked ourselves this question or even asked it to others, which is, what's my purpose? Like, what am I supposed to be doing in this world? And what's like my role in this job? And like, why am I here? Why here?
Why am I here? Yeah.
And I too asked myself that question for the majority of my adult life of like, what am I doing all this for? Like, what is my purpose in all of this? And then I realized through a lot of reflection and the preparation and research for writing this book and a lot of really wise counsel that I was just asking the wrong question. And it's not, why am I here? And it's not, is my purpose? It's who.
Am I uniquely called to serve? Who? It's not a what question. It's a who purpose. And I really believe that most of our purpose lies within a who. Like who is that person that we were sent to help, to influence, to serve, you know, to be there for, to just help. Yeah. There is, there is a path forward and you're not alone in this. I think a lot of
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Not what.
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A lot of the work that we do at Brain Builders Group under the guise of a personal brain strategy firm is also its identity. And it's tapping into like, are you naturally created to be? What are the God-given talents that were bestowed upon you from a very young age or even ones that you've developed? like, who can you unleash them on? Right? It's like, we all have gifts. We all have uniqueness. Most of us just...
don't realize the power of our own gifts. We think that they're ordinary and common because they're ordinary to us.
Hmm, I'm not so close to us
Yeah, that old saying you're too close to the forest to see the trees. You're so close to what is absolutely magnificent, you cannot see it because it's natural to you, but it's unnatural to others. And so one way that you can simply start to uncover the uniqueness that is already there is to ask yourself two simple things. What do you do naturally that is not natural to other people?
Okay, great journaling question.
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One micro example, like for me personally, I can, this is a blessing and a curse sometimes, but I can look at any situation, any room, any refrigerator, and immediately know how it should be, not how it is.
You immediately see the possibility.
My brain literally thinks in Tetris. If you could just take this and move it here and take that and move it there. And if you move this up and move it down, like my brain thinks in Tetris. One of the biggest gifts that the Lord gave me was problem solving. And I am that friend. Like if you're in a crisis, I'm your best friend. I am a great friend in a crisis. If you wanna go hang out and chit chat, I'm not your friend. Like I'm not that friend. You don't call me to catch up.
with gossip, I'm not your friend for that. But I am your friend if you're in a crisis, that's who you go to. I have learned about myself because I started asking myself these questions. Now, second, similar, is what do people naturally come to you for without prompting? Right? And so what do people actually call you for? What questions do they bring to you? What are they naturally discussed with you? And we all have that friend.
Right? We all have a friend that we naturally go to if like, you know, I'm looking for some homeopathic remedies. I know who I'm going to. And I'm looking for the hottest new restaurant in town for date night. I know who I'm calling, right? I need a new hairstylist. I know who I'm asking. Right. And a lot of that is because that's how we naturally communicate. That's what we're already talking about. So what did people come to you for without prompting and between the thing that you learn about yourself, I'm like, well, I'm like,
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really just kind of good at that. So one, you have to give yourself enough credit to acknowledge that you're really naturally good at something. And then two, you have to start paying attention to what do people come to you naturally for. And at the intersection of those two things, there is this pattern. There is a uniqueness that is there that is inherently yours.
I love this and so many and I know you know for me also so many working moms have big identity shifts or maybe confusion about identity because obviously a lot of your life changes when when you become a mom and whether you know back to title or what I should be doing or what is my purpose and I immediately thought of two
that we are most powerfully positioned to serve our children because God gave them to us, right? We are connected to them in so many ways. And that's such a big part of our life and identity. And then who are we most powerfully positioned to serve with work? And of course, that can change over time, you know, as you grow, as you get different experiences. And so once
a person listening or working on listening, excuse me, has their answers to those two fabulous questions. What would you say that they do next?
Yes, I would say that if you are starting to uncover this natural gift that you already possess, this uniqueness, this ability to help in certain areas. Like I think like my husband has an uncanny ability to simplify complex theories. that's he thinks in acronyms. He's also very funny, but he can take any complex idea.
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very funny.
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and break it down into a process, a system or methodology. He is gifted at that. one of the things that I see him do is just a tangible example is every single time that he knows someone who is struggling, he'll just say, let me break that down for you. And so here's the same thing that you can do just like that. See where you can break it down for somebody else, right? It's how do you unleash that uniqueness that you have in the service of somebody else?
Mmm.
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And maybe you have just the power of positivity. Like, there are some people in my life, if I just need to feel good, like I just need to be around someone who exerts, like, you know, like literally exerts joy. I need to spend some time with you. I need to be around you. I just need it in my life. Like, it doesn't have to be this tangible thing.
with some of that sunshine.
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It could just be like, man, like, I just want to be in your presence because you bring me peace and joy. Like you just in a happiness. I just need some of that. and I think that again, we overcomplicate it. And at the end of the day, this life is pretty simple. We make it really complicated. if you really think about like what truly makes most human beings happy, it's pretty simple. And a lot.
about helping others and community, friendship we've talked about and then through your work.
others.
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And there's a lot of fulfillment in just knowing like this gift that I was given, somebody that's now is the beneficiary, the recipient of my gift. It doesn't have to charge, you don't have to charge anything, doesn't have to cost anything. This is just you living into the God given uniqueness that you already have.
you just made me think of something that the Dalai Lama says is that humans today spend so much time, too much time thinking about themselves and that if everyone just spent a little more time thinking about others, serving others, everyone's happiness would increase and of course just that ripple effect. So you're reminding me of that too. So this is the Feel Good Club. What is one tactic?
that haven't said yet that helps you feel good as a high achieving working mom.
Y'all don't think I'm too weird.
We're all weird, so I'm sure it is going to be good.
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Nothing makes me physically feel better than the hardest, hottest hot yoga class on the planet.
I hate hot yoga.
That's it, you're gonna think I'm
I love yoga, but I'm impressed that you just.
But let me tell you why. was literally laying in Shavasana just a few days ago on one of the hardest classes I've ever taken. I'm literally like, I'm chanting. I can't breathe. I'm like, I'm dying. Can I get up? I don't know. And I literally started asking myself, why do I keep doing this to myself? Why do I come if I'm so miserable at the end of the class? And I'm not lying. This is literally like a voice popped into my head. And it reminded me, they're like, because when you do hard things, you feel alive.
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When you do hard things, you feel alive. It's like your humaneness is right.
and it
Right. I literally left the yoga class barely because I couldn't hardly walk. And I go outside and I sit in the trunk of my car and I just sit there for like 10 minutes and I'm going, I need to like really unpack that for a second. Because what I realized is that there are so very few things that we do as adults. So I'm going to say adult working moms for the listeners on the show, but how many things do you do on a daily break on a daily basis that literally bring you to your physical knees?
Like I can't function, I can't breathe. Like this is so hard. And I think so many of us who are high achievers have gotten pretty good at doing things. And there's not a lot of things that are exceptionally, exceptionally hard. I mean, emotionally or physically that we do these days.
And yoga is both, you know.
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And it is, it just, got me thinking. It's like, what I love about it is I leave feeling. I feel something. I feel exhausted. I feel tired. I feel stretched. I feel like I can't believe I made it. feel like I feel all the things. I feel stronger. feel, I feel happier. I feel deeper. I feel something. And that's what I do for myself is I go,
Feel strong.
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and exert myself to the point of I feel something.
I feel something. You're just so I grew up in northern Canada and so you're it's reminding me of how I feel when I'm skiing and snowboarding like on hard runs and I'm pushing myself. You know where the legs are a little wobbly and you're like, okay, I'm doing this not going to die. so good. Okay, everyone. Let's go take a hot yoga class and we'll think of AJ and I think of the podcast we can do hard things which is so it's yeah, we can we can.
So I know that you have an awesome gift for everyone listening. Tell us about that.
Yes, so our book, Wealthy and Well-Knowed, Build Your Personal Brand and Turn Your Reputation into Revenue came out in a summer of 2025, but we are giving away the audio book for free. Everyone get this. Yes, so one of the reasons that we're giving this book away from free because this is truly, we believe that this is the result of our uniqueness and this is us unleashing it for the benefit of other people and it's free. So if you go to free,
Brandaudiobook.com, freebrandaudiobook.com, forward slash AJ. You can grab your copy of this. And if you use the forward slash AJ, then I'll know that you came from the show today, which will be so good. So we know who all of the listeners are, but you can download the free audio book and with the book, every chapter comes with additional sets of free resources to help you get clear on your uniqueness, who you serve.
speaker-1 (32:37.79)
and the gifts that you already possess that you can share with the world.
So great. And where can people follow you and stay connected with you?
platform where I post all my content is on Instagram and you can follow me at AJ underscore Vaden.com or not. That's just my handle, but yeah.
Well, thank you so much. You have made me feel good coming on today and thank you for the inspiration, the tools and giving us a little peek into your personal life and I appreciate your time and hope to see you soon.
Thank you so much for having me on.
speaker-0 (33:21.558)
Thank you for joining me on the Feel Good Club show. I hope today's episode left you feeling inspired and equipped to take on your day with confidence, self-love, and joy. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your fellow ambitious working moms. Remember, you are not alone on this journey. We're all here to support each other in feeling good,
and living our best lives. Until next time, take care and be hopeful. And remember, prioritize your happiness.