Sarah Taylor interviews Stephanie Nelson, author of the book “Imagine More”. Stephanie shares her journey of turning her passion for using grocery coupons into a multimillion-dollar business, Coupon Mom. She emphasizes the importance of finding one’s purpose and using it to help others. She also discusses the role of faith and God’s guidance in her journey.
Interview Links:
Find Stephanie: Online | Instagram | Facebook
Book: Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential
Transcription:
Stephanie Nelson:
But when I look at my 23-year story, there were so many slammed doors. Let’s not even say closed doors. They were slammed in my face. I was heartbroken. And it turned out that what was around the corner was 100 million times better.
Sarah Taylor:
Welcome to the Passion Meets Purpose podcast. My name is Sarah Taylor. This is where we discuss the things that you’re naturally good at, your gifts, your talents, your abilities, and then how do you put those on display for the rest of the world? Let’s jump in with today’s guest. Imagine More. I love it because it’s such a hopeful title. My guest, that’s her new book, and I want you to start, Stephanie, just by sharing your own version of when you yourself had to imagine more. Take us back to where you were.
Stephanie Nelson:
Well, thanks so much for having me, and thanks for giving me the opportunity to share the story because it’s my story, I really think it’s a God story, and what I’m hoping is that people will see themselves in the story because we all have an opportunity to have a neat story. So mine begins 23 years ago. I actually had just moved to Atlanta, Georgia. I was a stay-at-home mom with two little kids, a three and a five-year-old, and there was a speaker at a local church. I had read her book. Her book was called Let Prayer Change Your Life. I’d already read it. Her name is Becky Tirabassi. I couldn’t believe… She was speaking in person, so I got a ticket and I went, and I listened to her speak and she is just on fire, super inspiring. Her message is all about finding God’s purpose for our life.
So she posed an interesting challenge. She told all of us, “If there is something you love to do, pray about how God can use that to help other people. Because if you have figured out that equation, you’ve really landed on God’s exciting plan for your life.” And I walked away thinking, “I have a three and a five-year-old. What am I going to do? I don’t have any extra money,” but there is something I love to do. I was one of those women who used the grocery coupons who you got stuck behind in the grocery line. And yeah, I thought, “Okay-”
Sarah Taylor:
“She’s got a binder. She’s got a binder. Pick the next line.’
Stephanie Nelson:
And this was, I’ll tell you, 23 years ago. This was the year 2000. Nobody was using coupons. I might’ve known one other woman. So I saw an opportunity to, “Okay. God, how can I use this to help other people?” And I started praying about it every day. And when you pray about something and it’s top of mind, believe me, it gets you to pay attention. You’re waiting for a sign or what someone says. So I’m in church one day on day 11. It was pretty fast. And the church bulletin had an appeal for food donations for our local food pantry. Now, number one, I didn’t even know that our nice suburb had any people who needed to go to a food pantry, so I was very naive. But the thing I noticed was the items they needed that were listed, every single one was a coupon item. And I thought, “Oh, okay, wait a minute. I’ll make this a game. I’ll go to the grocery store.” And I got $60 worth of groceries that cost $10, which was my life bulb moment.
So I delivered those groceries to the food pantry. Remember, I didn’t even know we had a food pantry. I didn’t know this was an issue. And I sat in the waiting room for about half an hour because I wanted to meet a director and tell her this great idea. She’d never had time to see me because she was seeing clients. But here’s what happened, Sarah. I was sitting in the waiting room and I looked around, and it was other women like me. Other moms with little kids, and the only difference was that they needed food, and I could afford to bring it. All right. So I left there. Our pastor says, “If you want to look for your purpose, your passion, look for what breaks your heart.” And until I had actually gone to the food pantry in person and sat there, I don’t think I would’ve known that broke my heart because it wasn’t real for me yet.
So I talk about this a lot, this experience, because if we give food to charity, and that’s a great thing to do, if you put it in a collection bin at a store, that’s nice of you, but you still, I don’t think, have experienced someone else’s experience. So I think in anything, when we step into someone else’s experience, it isn’t hard to be motivated. And that’s where the passion comes in with your purpose. Once you are motivated by your broken heart and you know you have something that can help other people, the rest is easy, really. So that was my experience. And in that experience, I thought, “Okay, how am I going to…” Ultimately what ended up happening was I started teaching other women how to buy food for charity with coupons. And then ultimately, our pastor encouraged me to start a website where I listed those weekly grocery deals on a website, and people only had to follow it. I made little instructional videos teaching people how to do this. I put those online.
Sarah Taylor:
You were the trailblazer. This was dial up internet.
Stephanie Nelson:
Dial up internet. Can you believe that? Yes. And oh gosh, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the website, the Wayback Machine, where you can see what websites used to look like?
Sarah Taylor:
No, but now I want to. I want to now.
Stephanie Nelson:
Go on the Wayback Machine. Oh gosh. Anyway, so okay. I had no idea what I was doing. I’m not a technical person, I didn’t have any extra money, but it only costs $35 to start a website. And all I had to do was spend every available waking moment doing data entry. That’s all. And I kept thinking… I had a PowerPoint presentation. I would call up coupon companies and grocery store chains who I thought had a benefit here. If we could get more people using coupons, that would be good for them. And I went and I met with executives, and I tried to get them to take this idea away from me because I couldn’t do anything with it.
And each one of them said, “Great idea. It’s not our business plan. We love your heart. We love what you’re trying to do here to get people to donate food to charity, but it’s not our business plan. So how can we help you?” And that’s what’s really neat is when we talk about passion and purpose, sometimes maybe you aren’t the one starting the idea, but you’ll be a person who sees someone else, and you see an opportunity to help that other person.
Sarah Taylor:
Yeah. You even have a name for them. Pivotal people.
Stephanie Nelson:
Pivotal people. When I wrote this story, and I wrote it for my children, by the way, who are young men in their twenties, I wanted them to see the backstory. I’ve had quite a success story that people might think, “Oh yeah, but I wanted my own sons to see…” No. Lots of failures. Lots of challenges. Don’t let that derail your purpose. Because actually lots of times, I believe, when we get a closed door, even though we think that would’ve been the ideal solution, God has a better idea. Now, that’s easy for me to look, but when I look at my 23-year story, there were so many slammed doors. Let’s not even say closed doors. They were slammed in my face.
I was heartbroken, and it turned out what was around the corner was 100 million times better. Unbelievably better. So I want people to understand that. So pivotal people. When I looked at my 23-year story, I actually identified four specific people. Had they not stepped into my story with their skill that they really didn’t think was hard, the story would not have happened. And I wrote chapters about these people. I looked them up on LinkedIn. Hadn’t talked to some of them for 20 years. Sent them their chapters. Let me just tell you what-
Sarah Taylor:
Did they know they were that pivotal?
Stephanie Nelson:
Only one knew. The others had no idea, and that was just super special. And I think that any of us could do that in our lives. We should. Everyone should do this. Sit down. Look at your story. And when those pivotal people surface, it’s not hard to find people now, and there wasn’t a single person who thought it was cringey. I’ll tell you that. “Who are you?” One person wrote the whole story about my contacting her on her LinkedIn page. She said it made her year. And then it makes me more intentional about looking around to see where I can be a pivotal person in someone else’s life. We can do that.
Sarah Taylor:
And just a side note, Stephanie has a podcast called Pivotal People, and we’ll link up to it in the show notes so that you can actually hear stories of some of these people and others that Stephanie has interviewed. So yeah, keep going.
Stephanie Nelson:
Thank you. So I talk in the book about I had this grassroots effort. Now I’m teaching people. We have a website. Ultimately what happened, I had a whole bunch of really just amazing breaks. Some people would say lucky breaks. I look at some of these things that happened and said, “There is no way outside the grace of God these things could have just happened.” So when I say it’s a God story, it was really important for me personally, for my sons, to see how God can work in our lives if we trust him. And it’s much easier in retrospect, I understand, to look back and say, “Here’s where God worked.” At the time, I might not have… You can’t see the future. We walk by faith, not by sight, one step at a time. So what ended up happening was my little $35 website, which by the way, I did upgrade to high-speed internet.
It ended up being a multimillion-dollar business. And there is no way I saw that coming. Absolutely not. It ended up spreading other women… I got a lucky break. I got on national TV, and it was Good Morning America. And my hope was that the financial expert on Good Morning America would recommend my website. That would be wonderful. But I was a regular mom with a couple little kids. The producer of Good Morning America said, “No, we want you to come on because you are like our viewers, and they can relate to you.”
Sarah Taylor:
That’s a smart producer.
Stephanie Nelson:
I’ll tell you what, I was absolutely terrified, but who can give up six minutes of free advertising on national TV? Nobody. So I pulled it together. I called my best friend from college and said, “You have to meet me in New York City. I can’t do this myself.” We had a great day at Good Morning America, and it was easy because it was my lane. I was only talking about my favorite subject, grocery coupons. Before I went on, I was so terrified. And I remember my brother saying, “Why are you afraid? They’re only going to ask you about grocery coupons. They’re not going to ask you about the crisis in the Middle East. They’re not going to know anything about grocery coupons that you won’t know.” And when we stand back and say, “If you find your thing and it’s your passion and it’s your purpose, you can feel confident that you care about this. You’re an expert. You are in a position to be able to share this with other people.”
And as important, as useful as I thought using grocery coupons was, I still had no idea until it went national how much it meant to people. Especially I would get messages from people who were on food stamps, and they said this doubled the purchasing power of their food stamps. And I received over the years, I don’t know, thousands of emails. I’ll never forget the one, the woman who said, “We have always been clients at our local food pantry. And for the first time ever, our family was able to donate a whole bag of groceries to the church food drive at Christmas. It was our best Christmas ever.” We so take for granted that we have the ability to give a bag of food to charity. We have no idea how it makes people feel to see us do that when they can’t do it. And it occurred to me then… There’s a passage in 2 Corinthians that I love is when we give, we are answering… I’m paraphrasing. Our giving causes others to give thanks to God, particularly when it’s anonymous. So we have no idea what people are praying for. And if we have a nudge to help or do or whatever, we don’t know what the end of that story is, but we could be answering someone’s prayer and bringing them closer to God with something as simple as donating food to charity.
Sarah Taylor:
I’m just going to pause you for two seconds because it’s so timely. This is going to air during the holiday season. And even right now at the radio station I work at, our entire lobby is filled with items for the Concern For Neighbors Food Bank. And it’s from our listeners. We made an Amazon wishlist, and one by one, the doorbell keeps dinging, and these items keep coming in. So I grabbed a couple and I was looking through and I prayed. I was like, “Lord…” Because I saw what you just were talking about. This is going to go to a family. And I was like, “Help me pick items.” And I zeroed in on the Nutella because my 6th grade slathers… He puts a 6th grade boy amount of Nutella on a waffle, not what I would do. And I bought Nutella and I said, “Lord, will you take this to a boy like my boy that this is all he wants and somehow put that Nutella in his home?”
Stephanie Nelson:
Yes, exactly. And God can do that. We know He can do that. So I tell this story because it was my story, and I use it as an example. If God can do something with the idea of grocery coupons, he can do something with your idea. And over the years, I have watched other people do really cool, amazing things with what they love to do. I saw a woman who had a heart for foster children. She had her own foster children. She had her own children on top of that. And yet, she felt called to create an organization that provided all kinds of supplies for foster families. So foster families who couldn’t afford clothing and bicycles and toys and all kinds of things. And she did that from her basement. People donated things and then foster families shopped. And I can remember watching her give a presentation, our little PTA meeting, over 20 years ago at the same time I was starting my thing. And today, she has a multimillion-dollar charity with a warehouse and a posse of volunteers.
And when I heard her give her presentation, it was not a polished presentation. She wasn’t trying to be a polished presenter, but her heart was so clear. We have given to her every year since then. She doesn’t even know who we are. I wrote about her in my book. I haven’t even told her that yet, so I’m sending her a book. But we have no idea who’s paying attention. So when you are doing things truly from your heart and you’re truly helping other people, you don’t know who you’re impacting simply by being observed, particularly when it’s authentic. So my story ended up that I got on national TV on Good Morning America. They called me at home that night after I got home, and they said, “Well…” I don’t think the producer quite understood.” She said, “That was our most popular segment of the day. Do you know anything else about saving money?” So they ended up hiring me. This doesn’t happen in the real world. They hired me and they gave me this name. They gave me the name The Coupon Mom. So I went on the show over a couple years. I went 17 times, and that is how my website grew. And when they ended their contract, frankly I can’t believe we came up with 17 ideas. We were really stretching the coupon topic.
Sarah Taylor:
What was number 17? What was the one where they were like, “I think this is done?”
Stephanie Nelson:
Yeah, I think it was How to Save on Diet Programs. It was a big bomb because there’s no way to save on diet programs. They cost a lot. I didn’t have any great ideas. It was a disaster. But I digress.
Sarah Taylor:
It was time for the next thing. It was time for the next thing.
Stephanie Nelson:
It was time for the next thing. I can’t go from talking about feeding the hungry to how to save on diet programs. That just doesn’t work.
Sarah Taylor:
Yeah. Yeah, and there was drift, right? It was drift out of your heart lane.
Stephanie Nelson:
It was.
Sarah Taylor:
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Stephanie Nelson:
I write about it in the book. Stay in your lane. You get out of your lane. So back to coupon mom. So then I went off and I got my own publicist, and she got me on all kinds of shows that ended up… Who knew this? The recession started. So right when I thought the end of the world was when… I’ll be honest. I thought the end of the world was when Good Morning America said, “We’re not going to renew your contract for a third year. We’re kind of done with this topic.” I thought that was the end of its growth. But I thought, “Okay, it’s big enough. God, thank you.” And the same man who got me on Good Morning America noticed I wasn’t on Good Morning America anymore. And he called me up and he said, “Why aren’t you on TV?”
I explained it’s over. He said, “No, no, no, you just need a publicist. I’ll give you mine.” And he gave me… There’s a whole chapter about her in the book. She ended up being this amazing woman. Dear, dear Christian. Became my best friend. We worked together for eight years until unfortunately she passed away. And she got me on national TV on all other shows. So that’s when we really grew. And ultimately she even got me on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and then all bets were off after that. So I thought it was all over when Good Morning America… At that time when Good Morning America ended, my website had 200,000 members. Over time, it finally grew to 8 million members. So the day I went on… It took 7 years for the website to get to 200,000 members. In two weeks, and the two weeks after I was on Oprah, it added another 200,000. So we don’t know what God has in mind. We don’t. And the cool thing is that so many women saw me going on TV. It’s not hard to start a coupon website. Dial up internet was history.
They all had free blog software. So then hundreds of people were doing coupon websites, and they were going all over the country doing what I was doing. And I’ll tell you what, I could not have built a more effective army. They were talking about donating food to charity. They were teaching people how to save money. I would watch them on TV and I would really be like, “Thank you, God.” I couldn’t build an organization. That was not my lane. Building an organization was not my lane. But many of those women became friends. It was really special. And I might add that the year they all started going on was 2011. My business doubled. I didn’t go on television once in 2011 because now there were so many other people, and my business doubled. All boats rise when the river rises. So I learned a big lesson about competitors. Let’s look at competitors as colleagues and partners, and let’s link elbows. If we all believe in the same idea and the same cause, we can be so much more powerful together. And that was a pretty big lesson, and I’m thankful for it.
Sarah Taylor:
Mm-hmm. So your passion right now with this book and sharing the story, the failures, the disappointments, the slammed doors, the ones God opened, the fact that he always has better blueprints for us than we could ever come up with for ourselves-
Stephanie Nelson:
I love that.
Sarah Taylor:
It’s a surrendered heart is what it is. It’s a surrendered heart. Like, “Lord, you put these unique things in me. This lights me up. When I do this, I feel alive.” And it feels like work, but such satisfying work. And it’s like, “I think you’re doing something with this, and He breathes on it.” And then we step into what He has for us. So now with your story in this book, Imagine More, you are really wanting to help someone else find their own lane. Someone’s thinking right now, they’re listening and they’re like, “How do I find my lane?”
Stephanie Nelson:
Well, when I heard that speaker 23 years ago, I told you and she gave us that formula, we left with that formula. We left with a conviction that we need to pray. But there was no specific follow-up. And I can remember our pastor at church saying that there wasn’t really any follow-up. Again, I wrote this book for my sons. I wanted to give them a roadmap. Let’s just call it a roadmap. So I think the beginning is really looking at yourself, becoming self-aware, really doing an assessment of what you love to do. I call it, “What is your superpower?” Some of us are really good speakers. Some of us are better listeners. Some of us are good at rallying groups. Some of us are good at being followers. So understanding your superpower. And when I say “followers,” supporters. The person behind the person. Once you identify a superpower, then I walk you through, “Okay, let’s be specific on what’s your big idea, and how do you get your big idea and being intentional.”
And I’ll tell you, that’s a fun stage because you really are paying attention to what’s going on around you. You’re really paying attention to conversations. You’re throwing this idea out to friends and family members. They will give you input. They will give you ideas. And then, the third piece is people sometimes say, “God, if you want this to happen, you’re going to have to do it.” Okay, God can do anything He wants to do, but we’re going to miss out on the experience so He gave us these superpowers. He gave us these big ideas. Push up your… I always say I never did a big thing. People say, “Wow, Stephanie. You did such a big thing.” I never did a big thing. I did a small thing every single day, which added up to a big thing. A lot of those small things did not work, but some of them did. So let’s step into it. You’re in your lane. You’re doing what it is you like to do, but we do need to work at it. I did make the phone calls.
When the guy said, “Here’s the phone number of the producer of Good Morning America. Call her tomorrow.” There are people who wouldn’t have made that phone call because that’s a scary phone call. Or call all the TV stations and say, “So-and-so talked about your…” They wouldn’t have called because they would’ve thought that was bragging. Let’s spin it around. It’s not bragging. You know what it is? When you have landed on your idea that you truly believe is going to help other people, get yourself out of the spotlight and focus it on the other people. So in other words, instead of saying, “I’m calling attention to myself by promoting this.” No. You have a gift for the world. You are doing something for other people. So when we feel self-conscious or we feel like we’re putting ourselves in the spotlight, we’re actually being self-conscious instead of others focused. So let’s be others focused and see this for the gift that it is for other people. I’ve had people say to me, “Oh, you’re so good at self-promotion.”
I’m good at making phone calls and I’m good at telling people, “Here’s an idea that will help you.” You can call that self-promotion if you want, but there are people who will say things like that to you which might discourage you. And you just have to keep focusing on the guy upstairs because I’m like, “He gave me this idea. He doesn’t want me to back down.” And I have a joke. I’m like, “Be obnoxious. See what happens.” Now, my friends are like, “Well, Stephanie, really you had perseverance.” There’s a nicer word for that, but now I’m not ashamed to say, “Okay, so maybe I was obnoxious in the beginning, but it worked. I talked to a man years ago who had a wonderful website, and it taught people how to save money at restaurants, and he had free coupons for restaurants. And there was nothing like this at the time. And I said, “You have to call up Clark Howard, who was the financial expert who recommended my website. He’s going to love this.” And this man said, “Oh, I would never bother Clark Howard with that.”
And as soon as he said that, I thought, “Oh no, your great idea is going to die on the vine because you think it’s about you or about him. He would love to be able to share this with people.” So I encourage people to look at it like that. You are doing… The Colossians 3:23, I love it, is, “No matter what you’re doing, work at it with all your heart as if working for God, not men.” And you’ll know. You’ll know when you’re working for God. It feels like it.
Sarah Taylor:
Wow. And coincidences, right? They’re not coincidences.
Stephanie Nelson:
I have few coincidences in the book, and I spelled it out. And I spelled it out because I want my sons to turn to God. I want my sons to look up to God and say, “Okay, that wasn’t a coincidence.” And I’m just going to have to tell you. So my 30-year-old son read the first chapter, which is the overarching story. He works in banking. He’s a financial analyst. He looks at businesses, financial statements all day long. And then he read my backstory and he called me up. He said, “Mom, this is a crazy story.” I said, “I know it.” And he said, “But it does remind me so much about God, and I am going to go back to church.” And I hope people buy this book, but I am most happy that it hit my son in that way.
And I told him I was sharing the story. He said, “That’s okay. That’s okay.” That is my hope. My hope is that people will discover a way to help other people, but really my hope is that people will just trust God. And every time one of these crazy coincidences happen to me, it just increased my faith in God. So yeah, I had a multimillion-dollar business. That’s really fabulous. That sounds really great. But I’ll tell you what, my faith has grown so much over the past 23-year experience. And that’s really what we want. That’s what we want for our kids.
Sarah Taylor:
Yeah. Oh, Stephanie, I’m so grateful for you. I’m so thankful for how you articulate this. And just my whole heart, my whole spirit just leaps as you talk because our prayer, Stephanie and mine’s prayer for you, the one who’s listening is that even throughout this, something bubbled up inside of you. Or over time, as Stephanie said, as you pray through this, the Lord is faithful. He will tell you who He created when He created you. And look back on your childhood. What were you naturally good at as a kid before you thought, “Oh, that dream’s too big.” What do you just naturally want to spend your time doing? And then just see what He does with it. So Stephanie, thank you.
Stephanie Nelson:
He can do anything. Well, thank you so much. It’s been so nice to talk to you about it. I appreciate you sharing it with your listeners.
Sarah Taylor:
And we’ll link up everything for Stephanie in the show notes, how you can find her book, and her podcast and her website, and all the different ways you can connect with her. And we will have that listed out. So thank you, Stephanie.
Stephanie Nelson:
Thanks so much. It was great talking to you. Take care.
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