Season 2 kicks off with Carrie Kass, founder, CEO, and TEDx Round Rock Women speaker. Carrie and Angie became friends through the multi-author book Pieces to Purpose, and this conversation picks up right where that friendship started.

Carrie opens up about the moment she hit send on her first published story, the trauma she'd buried for decades, and what it cost her to finally speak it out loud on stage. She walks through losing her role in a private equity acquisition, and how that loss became the spark for her new book chapter, The Unacquired Voice.

They dig into networking done right, why "what do you do" is the worst way to start a conversation, and how Carrie's community became her business overnight when she needed it most. Carrie also shares the books that shaped her, from The Giving Tree to The Five Love Languages, and previews her new book Voice and Vision, releasing August 5th.

This one is honest, funny, and full of heart. Grab your coffee and settle in.

www.carriekass.com

IG: @thecarriekass

FB: https://facebook.com/carriekass18

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-kass-a59114a/

TEDx talk: https://youtu.be/5Jp1xudljow?si=hO3qFLMQ_GdJXImS

Connect with Carrie on her social platforms, and connect with Angie at angiesmithsummitconsulting.com.

0:00 – Sponsor Message A quick thank-you to Windstar Insurance Group out of Cedar Park, owned by Angie's friend Stephanie Dew, for backing this season.

1:02 – Welcome to the Season 1 Finale Angie kicks off episode 10 with Vidya Moorthy, calling her "the crown jewel" to close out the first season.

2:22 – Vidya's Story: Detroit to Austin An MBA in finance, a master's in PR, a career that took her from Detroit to Asia Pacific to Austin in 2021, where she started from zero relationships and built a whole network one coffee at a time.

3:53 – Leading Austin Businesswoman Vidya took over as president in 2024 after founder Olga Adler stepped back. Her mission: get women access to capital, power circles, and new markets, without gatekeeping it behind a big price tag.

6:28 – Raised on Family, Faith, and Education Vidya grew up in southern India in a home that wasn't wealthy but was rich in education. Her name, Vidya, literally means education, and that thread runs through everything she's built since.

11:31 – The Mountain Question "Do you want to climb the mountain to be seen, or to be able to see further?" Vidya's answer to what keeps her climbing, and why she tries to pay it forward without keeping score.

15:06 – Active Listening as a Discipline Vidya breaks down why real listening takes generosity and empathy, and why it's not your job to convince someone to see it your way, just to honor their truth.

17:41 – Book 1: Atomic Habits by James Clear Vidya on why this "everybody's read it" book still changed her life: metacognition, getting 1% better daily, and the idea that profound change starts in the smallest habits.

23:38 – Book 2: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini A story of two women bound together by hardship in Afghanistan. Vidya also shares a beautiful memory of her father's letters and the lesson he taught her about writing with simple, powerful words.

30:46 – A Taste of Her Keynote Vidya previews "The Lion in a Changing Jungle," her talk connecting global shifts, like trade, currency, and policy, to what's actually happening in a small business down the street in Austin.

36:11 – Connect with Vidya Find her on LinkedIn as Vidya Moorthy, or through austinbusinesswoman.com. Their annual awards gala is open to nominations, no membership required.

38:56 – Closing Vidya on never taking a mic lightly, and Angie's invitation to connect for coaching, speaking, or a future episode.

3. Bonus Book Mentioned (not covered in depth)

📚 The Lion Women of Tehran — mentioned by Angie around 28:01 as a similar read on oppressed women finding connection through hardship.

0:00 – Intro: Angie welcomes Veronica Seaver, a woman she's known and admired for over a decade, back for Episode 9.

3:21 – Career Journey: Veronica traces her path from the restaurant industry at Hyatt to HR, to running her own nurseries, to becoming Elgin Chamber president. Every stop taught her the same skill: how to create buy-in.

8:55 – Choosing Honesty Over the Mask: Veronica gets real about faking her life for years and the moment she decided to just be honest with everyone, about everything. She talks about how dropping the mask disarms people and how much energy it gives back.

12:04 – 📚 Book Mentioned: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. This is the book that taught Veronica to love reading and showed her, as a kid, that she was creative. She's already planning a Narnia-themed event because of it.

16:16 – 📚 Book Mentioned: Hey Doll by Veronica Seaver (unpublished). Veronica wrote this after losing her mom and grandma to cancer within one week of each other, both diagnosed at the same time. She checked into a hotel the day her mom died and started writing. It sat untouched for eight years before she finally finished it, locked away in a hotel room by herself. Heartbreaking and funny in the same breath.

25:09 – Empowering Women Without Undermining Men: Veronica pushes back on the assumption that empowering women means being anti-men. Her mentors, her general manager, her ex-husband, have all been men who called things out of her. She wants to do for other women what men have done for her.

28:15 – Adjusting Her Business for a Tough Economy: Veronica talks candidly about how expensive everything's gotten and why she had to rethink her business model to stay sustainable.

32:21 – Introducing The Business Social: Veronica unveils her new event space in downtown Elgin, seats 70, walk-in ready, and open to the public for everything from business classes to baby showers. She's also planning a monthly community night with concepts like Pitch a Friend Singles Night and Hot Take Night.

37:11 – Where to Find Veronica: She shares where to follow her, mainly Facebook, with LinkedIn and her website sheisallthethings.com as backup.