Jennifer Stoll | Wellness Coach | SEEN™ 20 Women, 20 Stories: The Personal Brand Experience | Bonn, Germany

Photographed in Bonn, Germany

What inspired you to start your business, and what keeps you excited about the work you do today?

It didn’t start as a business. It started as a rebuild.

There was a point, during the year my father passed away, where I looked at my life, the career, the schedule, the very unhealthy version of myself I’d been performing for years, and realised I’d optimised everything except whether any of it was actually mine.

I also knew my health was on a very unstable trajectory, weighing in at almost 150kg. I started changing things quietly. Habits first, because habits are where the leverage is. Then the harder stuff.

What I didn’t expect was how many women were watching. Not because I had it figured out, but because I was saying the parts most people leave out.

That’s what @join.theshift is still becoming: a place for the unglamorous middle of transformation. What keeps me excited is the messages. Someone tells me they finally started, or finally stopped, and I remember that the point was never me. It’s the permission.

Who is your ideal client, and what transformation do you hope they experience after working with you?

Women who are competent, respected, and quietly done with the version of their life they built to please everyone else. They’re not lost, that’s the thing. They’re high-functioning. They just have a growing suspicion that they’ve outgrown the story they’re living in.

They come to me for structure, usually. Habits, discipline, a way to get their body or their focus back. My work centres on body recomposition, not just losing the weight, but gaining strength, and that’s the part they can see. It’s also the smallest part of what actually changes.

Because what they leave with is different: they stop outsourcing the decision. They stop waiting for permission, for the right time, for someone to confirm they’re allowed.

The transformation I want for them isn’t a new routine. It’s self-leadership, the ability to make a hard call and back themselves through the discomfort that follows. Everything else is downstream of that.

What is one challenge you’ve had to overcome in your business, and what did it teach you?

Telling the truth about how I actually did it.

My journey started out very quietly. I felt a lot of shame around my own weight-loss journey, having had gastric bypass surgery in 2023 and working with a nutritionist for almost eighteen months.

The usual reaction to gastric surgery is that you’ve taken a shortcut, that you couldn’t have made it happen otherwise. It is not a shortcut: the procedure is complex and the recovery is brutal.

But it is true that I would not have been able to take the right step towards health without it. Both of those things are true at once, and saying so out loud took me far longer than the recovery did.

I rebuilt myself in private. And I was doing it while running a European company in the supplement space, in a professional world where “put yourself out there” isn’t exactly the cultural default, especially not in Germany, and especially not as a woman talking honestly about reinvention.

For a long time I sanded down the edges. Made it more palatable. It performed fine and it meant nothing.

What it taught me: the discomfort isn’t a signal to soften. It’s a signal you’ve said something true. The content that changed things for me was the content I almost didn’t post.

How has becoming more visible helped your business grow?

Visibility is the whole engine. Nothing I’ve built came from a plan; it came from someone seeing something and reaching out.

Speaking is the clearest example. I recently delivered a keynote in Salzburg, Gut Feelings: Von innen beginnt alles, about my own transformation, in front of a room of people I’d never have reached otherwise. That happened because I’d been visible first.

It also compounds internally. When you’ve said the thing out loud to a few thousand people, you stop negotiating with yourself about whether you’re allowed to say it.

The confidence isn’t a prerequisite for visibility. It’s a by-product.

Many women hesitate to put themselves out there. What would you say to someone who’s holding back from showing up?

Nobody is thinking about you as much as you think they are. That’s the bad news, and it’s also the entire liberation.

The fear is almost never about being seen. It’s about being seen badly, being cringe, being too much, being wrong in public. So we wait until we’re polished enough to be unjudgeable.

That day doesn’t arrive. You just get older and quieter.

Here’s what I’d actually say: you don’t need confidence to start. Confidence is the receipt, not the ticket. You build it by doing the thing badly, surviving it, and noticing that the sky held.

And be honest about what waiting is costing you. Not showing up isn’t neutral. It’s a decision with a price; you’re just paying it slowly enough not to notice.

What did you enjoy most about your Personal Brand Experience?

Before the session with Monica, I was excited, though I had the locations clear in my head, the wardrobe sort of happened shortly before we shot.

I’ve spent my career on the other side of a campaign: briefing shoots, directing them, deciding which image-runs. Being the subject was a completely different kind of exposure.

What I enjoyed most was how easy it all felt. Monica is such a pro at directing and giving the right impulses.

There were so many shots that took my breath away because they worked magnificently when they probably shouldn’t have: a blue rubbish container that ended up providing a stunning accent colour; the rooftop of a car park,

paired with the most iconic dresses, giving us the most dramatic images of the day; a thin stretch of grass with barely any flowers in it that somehow came out looking like I’d been engulfed in wildflowers.

Every one of them ended up meaning something to me, because I actually looked like myself in them, and I felt unstoppable.

How are you using your personal branding photographs in your business?

Everywhere, and harder than I expected to.

They anchored an entire Instagram content strategy for @join.theshift, carousels, Story teasers, and an introduction series I built in a dark, moody editorial style, with the images as the spine.

Beyond social, they’ll carry my new website, my LinkedIn profile, speaker profiles and keynote decks, press and features, and newsletters.

Having a proper library changed how quickly I can move; I’m not scrambling for a usable photo every time an opportunity lands. The image is already there, and it’s already on-brand.

They’ve also quietly raised the bar on everything else. When the photography is that considered, sloppy copy stops being an option.

If someone was considering investing in a Personal Brand Experience but felt nervous, what would you say to them?

The nervousness is the point. You’re not nervous about a camera; you’re nervous about deciding what you want to be seen as. That’s genuinely a big question, and most people avoid it by staying blurry.

Two practical things. One: you do not need to be photogenic, thin, younger, or “ready.” That’s the whole story you’re trying to leave behind, and it will follow you into the next excuse.

Two: this isn’t vanity spend. It’s infrastructure. Every stage, every feature, every collaboration will ask you for an image, and the version you have will either open the door or quietly close it.

And then surrender to Monica, because she clearly knows what she’s doing. She isn’t only an incredible photographer; she creates a space where it’s safe to be photographed.

You’ll be a little vulnerable for a few hours. You’ll use the results for years. That maths isn’t close.

What’s one thing you wish more people knew about the woman behind your business?

That I’m not naturally disciplined. I’m just very good at building systems that make discipline feel natural.

People see the training, the races, the output, the consistency, and assume I’m wired for it. I’m not. I’m wired exactly like everyone else, I want the comfortable thing.

The difference is that I stopped relying on motivation years ago and started designing my days so the right choice is the easy one.

I’m also far funnier and far less serious than the content suggests. I overthink everything. I cry at a good insurance ad. I get exhausted.

I say this because “she’s just built different” is a comfortable place to put someone. It lets you off the hook. I’d rather be proof that it’s a method that works, not my personality.

Outside of your business, how do you love spending your time?

Training, mostly, I compete in Hyrox, which is essentially an hour of deciding not to quit, repeatedly, in public. My first race was in the Doubles format with a training partner more than twenty years my junior, and I was hooked immediately.

There’s something clarifying about a sport you can’t talk your way through.

Beyond that: long walks with my dog, Hoss, who has zero interest in my calendar and is usually right. Time with my son.

And genuinely, travel. I’ve lived abroad for long stretches in several countries, and that rewires you permanently. I get restless if I stay in one place for too long.

A Few Quick Favourites

Three words your closest friends would use to describe you
Honest. All-in. Unshakeable.

A book every woman should read or listen to
Choosing one is almost impossible, so here are the three I’d add to your summer reading list immediately: Atomic Habits (James Clear), Untamed (Glennon Doyle), and 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think (Brianna Wiest).

A podcast you love
My brain is picky about voices, and at the moment I’m stuck on a German podcast called Kaulitz Hills – Senf aus Hollywood, hosted by the musician twins Tom and Bill Kaulitz.

A favourite quote or mantra you live by
One line has been with me for over twenty-six years. It’s perhaps still hanging there today, a faded poster on the wall of my old boarding school classroom, somewhere in Hermannsburg, a small, almost forgotten settlement in South Africa:

“The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running.”
After Ecclesiastes 9:11

Back then it was just a sentence. Today it’s a life motto that has never left my head or my heart.

One word that describes the season you’re stepping into
Unapologetic.

Where to connect with Jennifer Stoll

Website: http://www.jointheshift.de

Instagram: @join.theshift

Personal Brand session: Photographed in Bonn, Germany