VIDA is a community filled with amazing Members from various industries and backgrounds. This is just one of the many things that make our coworking space stand apart. As a result, we’re regularly making new connections and learning from one another, be it a new business tip, trend or life hack. 

VIDA Member Connie Vanderzanden is one of many who make our community so special. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce you to her and share with you her work in the field of finance. 

Below Connie is educating us on 1. How she uses her career and passions to help women entrepreneurs with their finances, and 2. How the VIDA community helps her find a better work-life balance – and “light her creative fire.” 

VIDA: Tell us…What do you do for a living, Connie?

Connie: I have almost four decades of experience in the accounting industry working with a variety of industries. I also spend my time supporting women entrepreneurs to craft new relationships with their business numbers and money. 

VIDA: What led you to this career?

Connie: I defaulted into this career, and it was only supposed to be short-term. Numbers were always something that came easy to me. I got a scholarship to PCC and started taking classes for an associate degree in accounting. 

I was working for a tax firm at the time, and at an early age learned what a “tax season” was and couldn’t take classes during those months and lost my scholarship. I had enough bookkeeping, though, to qualify for my first full-charge bookkeeping position. 

It wasn’t joyful, but easy. It was temporary until my partner and I expanded our family. And so I never left the accounting industry. While it wasn’t the most exciting career to choose, it is the journey I was born to experience, learn from and now teach/mentor about.

VIDA: How do you help entrepreneurs redefine their relationship with their finances?

Connie: Even as an accounting professional, I didn’t have a healthy relationship with money and avoided interacting with my own financial data. In 2015, I hit a roadblock that shifted everything and crafted a healing approach to loving money and allowing it to support my life. 

You can say that roadblock allowed me the space to shed a persona I had been donning, like a disguise, just so I could fit into the box of what an accounting professional was supposed be. While I can help you craft a financial plan for your business, I will also make sure you are nurturing your whole self, allowing money to show up fully for you and your team. I want to make sure your big dream is front and center for our planning. I’ll help you source new finance team partners and help craft rituals for your own money. Some clients say a session with me is a bit of therapy with a dose of money magic.

VIDA: What are you most passionate about, either professionally or personally?

Connie: I love to talk about all things money and business with anyone who is interested. I read at least one business- or money-related book a month. 

If I can travel and incorporate some business development, count me in. In fact, I am going on a pilgrimage to Bali as part of the Sacred Commerce course I’m taking and will be learning even more about rituals, spirituality and how they intersect with our business.

I am also a newbie Green Witch and looking forward to planting my first garden this year. I use tarot and oracle decks for my spiritual and journal practice. I love all things witchy and supernatural. I enjoy a great audiobook while I’m cooking, and will admit, I binge a bit too much TV. Mostly, I love living in the PNW.

VIDA: How does community play an important role in your everyday work life?

Connie: As an introvert, being in a community can be a little tricky. I love being a hermit in my home office with my dog. However, for my creative juices to flow and craft new experiences, I cannot live on an island. I need community. In fact, I schedule projects for my time at VIDA that are marketing or creative in nature. Just being in the space with other people helps light my creative fire.

VIDA: At VIDA we say, “make life work for you!” How do you find a healthy work/life balance? 

Balance is what you make it. There is no one perfect definition of what that will look like. It took me a long time to allow myself to identify and claim what balance meant for me personally. 

Being in the accounting industry, I was taught that doing equated to my worth, and just working harder was the requirement of a fulfilled life. While that may work for some, for me, it was a recipe for burnout. I am still finding a healing path back from that. 

Balance to me is working with my own energy cycle and being okay that as a Projector I’ll work differently than my Mani-Generator partner or best friend. Balance is tuning to the planets and astrology, and using that for planning just as much as tax deadlines. Balance is taking my dog for a walk at 10 a.m. because I can. Balance is being there for my friend after her cancer surgery because I could create flexibility and set funds aside to allow me the space for that without shame or guilt.

VIDA: We couldn’t agree more. Balance is personal and different for different people, careers and lifestyles. Thank you, Connie, for being a VIDA Member and sharing with us more about what you do!

 

Interested in joining the VIDA community and finding more work/life balance? We’d love to have you. Contact us today for more information and a tour.