I’m a coach, speaker, lifelong learner, career entrepreneur, mental health advocate, wife & mother to two amazing daughters. I have spent the last twenty-four years on a mission to make the world a better place, and I spend a significant amount of my time invested in that endeavor both personally & professionally.
LEARN MORE ABOUT ME
(choose your own adventure)
My Bio & Professional Background
My Founder Story
My Personal Story
My Bio & Professional Background
My Founder Story
My Personal Story
My Bio & Professional Background
As a coach & speaker
The official bio: Sonya Stattmann has spent the last 24 years as an entrepreneur, trainer, coach, and speaker focused on individual & organizational transformation. She has worked hands-on with thousands of founders, leaders & high achievers worldwide. Sonya is a coach, corporate wellness speaker, and wellness expert for the founder & startup ecosystem. She offers science-based resilience tools for stress management, mental health & wellness, navigating change & goal achievement. Sonya also has a TEDx talk called Moving Beyond #Empowerment and 3 public podcasts with more than 260 episodes.
~ Professional Background ~
Psychology & human behavior was ALWAYS my jam.
From the youngest age I can remember, I was interested in people: what made them tick & what was underneath the surface. I started journaling at age 6, read my first self-development book at age 9, and took college-level psychology courses in high school. At University, I majored in psychology for years and stumbled upon a class that changed my life: Stress Reduction through Dancy Therapy. Since then, I have passionately studied psychology, human behavior, neuroscience, stress management & mental health to understand how our minds & bodies work.
Then I took a deep dive into business, branding & marketing.
In college, I realized I didn’t want to be a psychologist or a teacher and fell in love with business, branding & marketing. I graduated from the University of North Texas with a degree in Journalism, Advertising, and Marketing in 1998. I had a knack for getting to the roots of a business and pulling out its mission & message. I landed my first “real” job at a big branding agency in 1999 and after only a few months had a stack of advertising awards. I pumped out four years of work within ten months but at a huge cost to my wellness. The advertising agency was a toxic environment and before the end of my first year, I decided to leave & become an entrepreneur.
I founded my first business in 2000 and never looked back.
I took my small amount of experience & trailblazed into the industry. My first business at age 25 was a consulting & branding business focused on teaching male-dominated industries how to market to women. At that time, being a female founder focused on shifting the way men saw women’s purchasing power was trailblazing new paths. I was good at “coaching” out of my clients their mission, vision & biggest dreams. I could then turn their words into emotional marketing that reached the hearts & minds of their ideal clients.
I have been professionally coaching, training & speaking to audiences for 24 years.
I have coached thousands of founders and leaders. I was “coaching” before it was an industry. My long-term experience has allowed me to practice & test tools over and over again and watch how each tool transforms the clients I work with. I have taken those experiences and built a speaking platform that is evidence-based and time-tested. I started speaking in 2000, and have hosted more than 350 events.
I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit & a trailblazing attitude.
My parents were both entrepreneurs and I saw first hand the benefits and challenges of being a business owner. But I have always had the soul of a founder. I was willing to work for my mission, face highrisk for high reward, and do whatever it takes despite the difficulty. My business has evolved over and over again to face change and challenge – and it survived the financial crisis, Covid, and much more.
I have always had a heart for entrepreneurs & founders.
In 2008, I founded the world’s first wellness & coworking space for founders in Austin, Texas. We offered emerging entrepreneurs the support & wellness services required to build without burnout. We had onsite childcare, a yoga studio, coworking space, business education, and a host of wellness services from massage to acupuncture. It takes a village to raise a business. I knew that founder mental health was a priority decades ago.
I have worked with thousands of individuals & hundreds of organizations from almost every industry from tech to wellness.
My extensive background has informed & elevated my work. I have seen the common denominators that transform individuals into leaders and organizations into success stories. And the success of both starts with building resilience! I have had the honor of working 1:1 with founders & leaders and working with teams.
Stress management & mental health were the key.
I spent the first decade of my career focused on traditional business & leadership tactics. My clients got results, but still at a huge cost to their wellness & sustainability. It wasn’t until I started prioritizing stress management & mental health in my work that I saw the accelerated transformation in my clients, their teams & organizations. I now focus fully on the wellness tools individuals & teams need to succeed.
I am a certified trauma-informed trainer & it couldn’t be more relevant to my work.
To shift some of our biggest workplace issues right now, we need to understand how they correlate & are affected by stress & trauma. Most people are not equipped with the tools and education to navigate today’s challenges. We need solutions that build psychological safety, mitigate harm, and offer the education & resources to empower all people. Being trauma-informed means I can provide a safe space for my clients and audiences.
I started podcasting in 2016 and have shifted over the last few years from public podcasts to private podcasts.
I fell in love with podcasting, creating three public podcasts with more than 260 episodes. My longest-running podcast, Women in the Business Arena, was in the top 2% of all business podcasts and listed on several top 10 lists. I also did two one-season shows, The Feminine Lens and Reclaiming Ourselves. But over the last few years, I started putting energy into private podcasts. I offer a customized private podcast for every client I work with. I also am currently working on several private podcast courses.
My Founder Story
A lifetime entrepreneur
MY FOUNDER story
My solution to a toxic culture – build a culture of my own.
In 1999, I was 24 and working for a big & very successful branding agency. I was working 14-hour days in the basement which we used to call “the dungeon”. It was an extremely toxic environment, especially for women. After 10 months, I reached a breaking point. Close to burnout, I had to find a different way to work.
Around the same time, the marketing world was shifting. Books were being published around the purchasing power of women, but most industries were still focused on marketing to men. I saw a gap in the advertising industry – one I could fill!
I quit the toxic agency & started a branding agency focused on teaching male-dominated industries how to market to women. I was good at my job but had no idea how to run a business. Those first few years were hard, but eventually, I found a way to work that fostered work/life balance & success without burnout.
I cultivated a talent for working with founders & business owners and moved from branding to full-time coaching. My business has evolved over 24 years, often pivoting to fill a gap in the marketplace, but the core has always been the same – supporting leaders & founders to succeed.
I have been a mother for almost as long as I have been a founder. My founder journey was intricately tied with learning how to cultivate & raise my children. I found ways to bring my oldest daughter with me to conferences, to work events and incorporated her into my businesses.
In 2008, I co-founded a second company, the first co-working space in Austin, Texas. It offered founders & emerging entrepreneurs the support & wellness services required to build a business without burnout. It also offered childcare, something I desperately needed as a single mother. I spent two years seeding its success and then moved on to other projects. It lasted until Covid hit in 2020.
Even then, I saw a huge need for founder mental health. My work evolved into supporting founders, teams & organizations with wellness. I saw that stress management & good mental health accelerated high performance.
As a founder, I have always been driven to achieve, but my edge is that I can do it without a cost to my health & well-being. I practice what I teach and invest all my passion into my mission.
My Foundation
[my mission]
To help founders, individuals & organizations reduce stress, improve mental health & build resilience – so they can change the world
[my core belief]
The key to solving every world problem is teaching people to regulate their nervous systems – pick a problem & I can show you why
[my business values]
Integrity, honesty, compassion, sustainability, innovation – and practicing what I preach
[my vibe]
Empathetic, creative & determined – I can hold space for others, problem-solve & accomplish any goal
My Personal Story
From chaos to resilience
the short story
From chaos & burnout to recovery & resilience.
As a child, I experienced an extreme amount of stress & instability. I grew up fast in a home with a single mother and younger sibling. My mother was always under an extreme amount of stress and burden, struggling to support us and keep her head above water.
We moved constantly, and I attended thirteen schools in twelve years. I was always the new kid, trying to re-orient myself to new environments. and often a victim of bullying and harassment. Most of my life was spent running from early trauma and striving to achieve “success”.
I got almost perfect grades in school. My teachers all loved me. I did community service projects and even took college-level courses in high school, but I covered up my pain and struggle. I thought I was resilient, but I was running off of adrenaline and living in a constantly dysregulated nervous system.
Eventually, I left a chaotic home life and went to University, trading one level of chaos for another. I worked full-time to pay for college, got all A’s in my courses, and slept about 2 hours a night. In 1998, I graduated and started my professional career.
I got married to my first husband at the same time I founded my first business, not realizing I had married a drug addict. Soon we had a baby and I spent years trying to keep my family & business alive.
Eventually, my husband’s drug addiction took everything: my home, my first business & my mental health. But I was determined to rise from the ashes.
Hard work was always a part of my experience. After I lost everything, I was at rock bottom. I had to rebuild my life from the ground up. I rebuilt my business, worked on my healing & recovery, raised my beautiful daughter, and found a new path forward.
My personal recovery informed my professional work. I learned how important stress management, mental health & personal development were to running a business or leading a team. I started doing deeper work with founders & leaders, helping them to find optimal performance and more fulfillment & freedom.
In 2010, I met my Australian husband and moved to Australia, where I lived for 8 years. In 2018, we made a big family decision to travel the world. My work was always remote, so it provided us an avenue to work & play. We have lived in Australia, Bali, and Mexico. We are currently taking a pause back in the USA.
I continue to practice my work personally & professionally. I live what I teach. I now know that my personal journey has been a blessing. Want to know the full story, click here.
~ A Few Fun Facts About Me ~
Favorite Coffee:
Cortado Breve (I’m a coffee snob)
Sources of Joy:
Nature, Travel & Family
My Signs:
Scorpio Sun, Pisces Moon & Cancer Rising
Energy Profile:
Ambivert Outgoing Introvert
Secret Pleasure:
A Good Drama Or Juicy Novel
Best Ways to Get to Know
Me & My Work
Sign up for Achieving Wellness™
Weekly wisdom for founders, leaders & high-achievers on stress management, mental health, resilience & more
