Figuring Sh!t Out - A Living Archive of Being & Becoming

Hosted, created, and produced by Vanessa Fontana from her own coming-of-age journey in New York City, Figuring Sh!t Out began as a personal experiment in honesty: an attempt to give language to the chaos of survival and the subsequent healing that comes through self-discovery.

What started as conversations recorded from her bedroom grew into a global podcast, creative brand, and community. Today, it serves as a living archive of what it means to build a meaningful life in real time - through storytelling, creativity, entrepreneurship, and the courage to keep figuring it out.

From Survival to Self-Expression

Vanessa’s story is rooted in resilience and reclamation. Growing up in chaos, she learned to survive by hiding her truest self and chasing achievement as a safety net. She graduated college early, landed her dream corporate job, and moved to New York City - only to find that success without alignment felt hollow. Even as she checked every box, she remained caught in patterns of disconnection and survival.

Her turning point came through healing and creativity. EMDR therapy, somatic work, and inner child healing cracked something open, awakening a creative voice that had long been buried. In April 2023, that voice became Figuring Sh!t Out - a podcast created to document the questions, uncertainties, and transformations that come with building an authentic life.

Within its first year, Figuring Sh!t Out surpassed 200,000 downloads and reached listeners in 124 countries. What began as a personal creative outlet evolved into a global community, laying the foundation for a brand centered on honest storytelling, meaningful connection, and the belief that our greatest growth begins when we’re willing to embrace the unknown. Listeners resonated deeply with Vanessa’s raw honesty, poetic storytelling, and ability to bridge spirituality, healing, and lived experience.

Leap and the Net will Appear?

By the end of 2024, after running a Marathon and realizing the greatness that lives inside risk-taking, she left her job in AI to bet on Figuring Sh!t Out full-time. The Road Less Traveled (Season 3) began as she traveled to Bali to deepen her study of yoga, spirituality, somatics, breathwork, meditation, and nervous-system regulation, learning from great teachers and new travels. Vanessa wanted to know what would happen if she gave creativity the same commitment she'd given her career and academic pursuits.

This leap became the foundation of the podcast's question since: what does it take to have a creative career in NYC?what does Figuring Sh!t Out full-time look like? How do you turn your passion into a revenue stream? And how do you stay honest and consistent in the process?

It started as an experiment in what it would take to build a creative life from the ground up - she brought those practices from across the world home and built an ecosystem and landing place for her audience with weekly workshops in New York City, an online creative community, live multi-week programs, and a retreat in Costa Rica.

At the same time, she built the business behind the brand using her background in scaling corporate bottom-lines: producing the podcast, developing strategic partnerships, creating integrated marketing campaigns, growing a loyal audience, and designing experiences that extended far beyond the content itself.

What began as a leap of faith became proof that creativity and strategy can coexist - and that the most meaningful work often lives where storytelling, community, and business intersect.