Career Sparks with Val

Welcome to Career Sparks with Val ✨ : Real conversations with international millennials building purposeful careers. This podcast is for ambitious international millennials who want to hear real, inspiring stories from people who’ve built meaningful careers across borders. I’m your host, Valeria Kadelski—but you can call me Val. I’m a career coach helping professionals like you to build careers that truly light them up. Together, we’ll uncover the lessons, strategies, and sparks of inspiration that can help you create a career and life you truly love. Ready to ignite your spark? Let’s dive in! Connect with Val on Linkedin! 🤝 Follow Spark Coaching with Val on Instagram or<a href="https://sparkcoachingwithval.com/" target=

Career Sparks with Val is a business podcast hosted by Valeria Kadelski - Spark Coaching with Val, with 11 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Valeria Kadelski - Spark Coaching with Val hosts Career Sparks with Val, a business show with 11 episodes published.

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  Episode #20

  20. How to turn your international career experience into a business offer that sells

  Sep 29, 202619 minS1

  Val breaks down how to turn years of corporate, international, and cross-cultural experience into a clear offer clients will actually buy. She walks through her S.P.A.R.K. framework and shows how to move from broad expertise to a focused, testable business idea.This episode is especially useful for people with varied backgrounds who feel overqualified, multi-talented, or unsure how to narrow their experience into one direction. The main focus is building an offer around the problem you solve, the audience you understand best, and the outcomes you can prove. Key topics Why the real challenge is not having enough experience, but deciding which experience to monetize. The S.P.A.R.K. framework: Skills, Problem, Audience, Results, and Kickstart. Break skills into three buckets: skills you enjoy and people would pay for passions you love but would do for free skills you are good at but do not enjoy using The best starting point is the overlap between what you are good at, what people already ask you for, and what you actually want to keep doing. Skills only become commercially relevant when they solve a real problem. Val warns against describing your business by title or expertise alone, like "strategic communication consultant," because that does not explain the actual outcome for the client. How to assess whether a problem is urgent by looking at what happens if it is left unsolved, including costs in money, time, health, reputation, frustration, and quality of life. Audience should be defined by circumstances and psychographics, not just demographics like age, gender, or job title. Results are one of the hardest parts to define, especially for coaching and mindset-based work where outcomes are not always numeric. Val encourages turning vague outcomes into measurable indicators, such as time spent on work versus self, completed projects, focus days, and productivity shifts. The final step, Kickstart, is to test the offer with real conversations before building the full program or service. Resources & links: Enroll to the January cohort waiting list Book a free clarity call to understand your next steps or work with me 1:1 Sign up to the newsletter Connect with Val: Linkedin Instagram

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  Episode #19

  19. Networking for entrepreneurs: 5 mistakes that make you forgettable

  Sep 22, 202616 minS1

  Val shares a practical guide to making networking events feel more natural, less awkward, and actually useful. The episode focuses on building real human connections first, then following up in a way that helps people remember you for the right reasons. This episode will help you to approach networking with a connection-first mindset, especially if you are an entrepreneur, coach, consultant, or service providers. Key topics Do not pitch immediately: Val explains why leading with your offer shuts conversations down fast and makes people zone out. Start with curiosity: she recommends asking simple, neutral questions about the event, the person’s reason for attending, or what brought them there. Use light vulnerability to build trust: sharing small personal details, like needing coffee or having a chaotic morning, helps the other person relax. Do not turn the conversation into free consulting: instead of jumping straight to advice, ask follow-up questions to understand the person’s actual situation. Let conversations end naturally: If the exchange is going nowhere, it is better to close it politely than force small talk. Use clean exit lines: Val gives examples of how to leave gracefully while keeping the interaction warm and respectful. Follow up the next day: She stresses that a quick message matters, and that the message should reference something personal from the conversation. Choose a clear intention before attending: her own mindset shift was to go in with the goal of connecting, not selling, pitching, or proving competence. Focus on relationships, not immediate sales: she explains that trust usually comes from repeated exposure and human connection, not a single conversation. The same rules apply online: Val notes that virtual networking still works best when it feels personal and curious. Resources & links: Launch Circles community: Copenhagen events Amsterdam events Book a free clarity call to understand your next steps Get your Business Growth Tracker and sign up to the newsletter Connect with Val: Linkedin Instagram

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  Episode #18

  18. From corporate to coaching: 5 mistakes that cost me 6–8 months

  Sep 15, 202620 minS1

  In this episode, Val shares the biggest mistakes she made when transitioning from corporate into coaching and how those choices added 6 to 8 months to her business ramp-up. She breaks down what to do instead if you are starting a coaching or consulting business and want to avoid wasting time on the wrong priorities.The focus is practical and honest: build the business side early, narrow your positioning faster, price with confidence, and spend less time preparing in your head and more time testing with real people. Key topics In this episode, Valeria explains why getting certified felt like the obvious first step, but also why she wrongly assumed that credibility alone would bring clients. She shares the corporate mindset she brought with her: in corporate, more training and more credentials usually increase value, but entrepreneurship does not work one to one. She reflects on the gap between being a qualified coach and actually knowing who needs the service, what problem to solve, what to charge, and how to market it. She explains why starting the business side at the same time as certification would have saved months, and recommends getting a business coach or joining a community early. She discusses positioning mistakes, including starting with a broad offer like helping expats with career change before understanding the more specific problem she solved best. She points out that her real strengths were tied to business backgrounds in sales, marketing, and customer-facing roles, not every possible coaching need such as CVs and interviews. She compares broad positioning to seeing a doctor for a toothache, arguing that people choose specialists when they know exactly what problem they have. She talks about underpricing, including the mistake of charging hourly or per session and ignoring preparation time, admin, prior experience, and the investment required to become qualified. She explains why lower prices do not necessarily make sales easier, since selling still requires the same trust, energy, and effort, while higher prices can signal greater value. She emphasizes that corporate habits can make people think there is a cap on income, when in business the real ceiling is often self-imposed. She closes with her biggest lesson: stop over-preparing and start gathering evidence by speaking to potential clients, testing offers, and getting real-world feedback quickly. Resources & links: Enroll to the January cohort waiting list Book a free clarity call to understand your next steps Get your Business Growth Tracker and sign up to the newsletter Connect with Val: Linkedin Instagram

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  Episode #17

  17. How to start building a creative business on the side (Alessia's story)

  Sep 8, 202613 minS1

  Val brings back a call she had with her former client Alessia, to show how you can build a creative business alongside your regular job. In this conversation, Alessia shares how she moved through career changes while also building a creative practice on the side. They discuss what coaching looked like, how she got unstuck from too many ideas, and the mindset shifts that helped her move forward and build her passion business on the side. Key topics: Background: Alessia introduces herself as an Italian creative who moved to Denmark at 19, studied multimedia design, specialized in web development, and now works as a software developer. The long-term vision: She wants to become a singer in the gaming industry, combining her love of music and gaming into one path. Confidence grew through non-judgmental support: She credits the process with helping her see that her goal was not “crazy,” just less conventional and more abstract than a typical path. Small steps made the goal feel real: Breaking the vision into manageable daily and weekly actions helped her move from stuck to consistent progress. Looking ahead: She is excited to see how much progress she can make in her creative project over the next year. Resources & links: Enroll to the January cohort waiting list Book a free clarity call to understand your next steps Connect with Val: Linkedin Instagram

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  Episode #16

  16. Should you quit your job to start a business? What to consider first

  Sep 1, 202617 minS1

  This episode is for full-time employees who are thinking about starting a consulting, coaching, or service business and wondering when it actually makes sense to leave their job. Val breaks down the decision through a practical lens, focusing on financial readiness, personal tolerance for uncertainty, market validation, and visa considerations. Val shares a candid framework based on her own transition from tech into coaching, including what she handled well and what she would reconsider with hindsight. Key topics Financial readiness is more than savings: Val explains that runway is not just about having enough money to survive for a few months, It also means preparing for uneven revenue, delayed sales, and periods of scarcity after the initial jump. Expect an uneven income curve: she warns against assuming business income will rise in a straight line. Instead, she describes entrepreneurship as a cycle of abundance and scarcity that can last for months. Personal readiness matters as much as financial readiness: you do not need to feel fully ready before starting, but you do need strong motivation and a realistic view of uncertainty. Val notes that many people romanticize entrepreneurship before experiencing the day-to-day ambiguity of making decisions alone. External validation changes dramatically when you leave a job: in a job, managers and performance reviews provide feedback and reassurance. In your own business, there is usually no one confirming that you are on the right path, so you need to be prepared to self-direct. Internationals need to factor in visa status: Val points out that leaving a job can affect work visas, residency status, and the ability to legally operate a business. She shares an example of a client who had to transition from one visa type to another before opening a business. Testing the market before quitting is critical: she emphasizes the need for evidence beyond encouragement from friends and family. That evidence can include paid projects, consultations, customer demand, or a clear market gap. Starting on the side can be the smarter option: If the current job is tolerable, Val suggests building the business while still employed. This gives more time to save, test ideas, and reduce pressure. If you are desperate to leave, get support: for people who truly need to quit, she recommends working with a coach or mentor to shorten the trial-and-error period. The goal is to avoid spending too long without income or direction. The real question is not “Am I ready?”: Val reframes the decision around runway, uncertainty tolerance, market evidence, and whether fear is disguising itself as hesitation. She advises listeners to lower their expectations of readiness and make sure they are not jumping in blind. Resources & links: Apply to the September cohort - deadline September 3rd Book a free clarity call to understand your next steps Connect with Val: Linkedin Instagram

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