Childhood Chaos Became Her Superpower
On paper, Patrice Poltzer’s upbringing looked like a standard middle-to-upper-class suburban Chicago childhood—complete with private school and a neighborhood full of friends. Inside the house, however, things were far less predictable. Raised by an adopted, fiercely positive single mom who later remarried, Patrice grew up navigating the intense highs and lows of a stepfather ("Disco Bob") living with untreated bipolar disorder. One night, the house would be filled with tension and yelling; the next, he’d be playing drums to Madonna or flooding the backyard at 2:00 a.m. to build a regulation-marked ice rink for the neighborhood kids.
Grounded by the stability of her grandparents and a mother who instilled what her lifelong friends jokingly call an "iron curtain of self-esteem," Patrice learned early on how to read a room, withhold judgment, and adapt on the fly. Rather than breaking her, growing up without a predictable script gave her a high tolerance for instability—an unconventional muscle memory that would later fuel every major pivot of her adult life.
"There was a reason that I didn't always feel stable, because I learned to be uncomfortable in instability. And now that's serving me in my adult life when I'm doing harder things or riskier things."
Late Bloomer & The Media Ladder
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in her early 20s, Patrice Poltzer felt exceptionally lost. She spent three years selling educational books door-to-door on commission across Texas, Florida, and California. While working in California, she happened to knock on the door of an executive producer for American Idol and his wife, Kelly, who was the main anchor for KTLA (NBC Los Angeles). They were impressed by her confidence, communication skills, and drive, and they questioned why she was selling books door-to-door. They told her she belonged in television. Because Patrice was from Chicago, they specifically suggested she try to get an internship at WGN, a major local TV station there. This led her to an internship at WGN in Chicago, a one-year journalism master’s program at Northwestern, and eventually a coveted producer role at the Today Show in New York City.
"Even though I was working at the Today Show—walking into 30 Rock every day where Jimmy Fallon is walking around and Jay-Z's in the elevator—at the end of the day, you're not in control of anything. You don't have freedom over your time, and you're beholden to middle-aged white men telling you what is worthy of doing a story."
The Treadmill & The Script
Coming from the Midwest, Patrice had spent her late 20s feeling glaringly behind the standard life script—where everyone else seemed engaged, married, and two promotions deep before 30. When she finally broke into New York media, taking an overnight shift covering Asian markets at Bloomberg TV before landing at NBC, she assumed her only path forward was continuing to claw her way up traditional broadcast ranks.
Having her first baby in 2012 cracked that illusion open. Looking around 30 Rock, she realized that despite the prestige, she had zero control over her schedule or which stories made it on air. Hungry for work that actually mattered, she pursued passion projects on the side—including embedding herself twice with the Spanish Coast Guard during the Syrian refugee crisis, once at seven months pregnant, witnessing women and children arriving on rafts from Turkey. That reporting won major industry awards and permanently shifted her worldview, cementing her commitment to amplifying marginalized voices rather than letting the loudest people in the room dominate the narrative. Without even realizing it, she was already flexing entrepreneurial muscles inside corporate walls: teaching herself to shoot and edit video so she didn't have to rely on union crews, collaborating with NBC's digital teams, and launching First Bites, her own side website and newsletter reviewing family-friendly restaurants.
"When I had my first baby in 2012, that's when I started questioning things. I'm like, this could not be it. I was not entrepreneurial at all—I didn't even know that was a thing. I just thought I was going to keep climbing in the TV world."
Motherhood, Startup Shock, and Finding Her Voice
While on her second maternity leave in 2016, companies began approaching Patrice to lead their video and storytelling teams. Hoping to stay in the small, tight-knit media world without burning bridges, she called her boss at the Today Show to see if NBC would match a lucrative offer she had received from a high-profile startup. Instead of negotiating to keep her, he gave her the push she needed: "Get out of here," he told her. "Go do something interesting—come back and be my boss, go."
With that blessing—and a going-away party from her NBC team—Patrice left to lead video and multimedia for the startup, which had just acquired a major parenting brand. Instead of progressive support, she was met with organizational chaos. They forgot it was her first day, forced her to pump breastmilk in a cockroach-infested closet, and pushed her out just 100 days after she started, leaving her at home with a newborn, a toddler, and her family's health insurance hanging in the balance.
With her self-esteem depleted, she turned to freelance video production out of sheer financial survival, quickly landing major clients like Netflix, Amazon, and the Department of Education before pivoting into online storytelling workshops during the pandemic.
"My husband was like, 'You need to get off the floor because we need you to make some money here.' I didn't mean to start a business. My plan was to maybe do a project or two just to get a little bit of income in and then start interviewing for media jobs again in the spring. Then I just kept getting jobs, and I never went back to corporate."
The Leap: Lisbon Sight Unseen
In January 2022, over a bottle of wine, Patrice and her husband realized they were tired of talking about moving abroad "one day." With no job transfers or family ties in Europe, they sold their belongings, shut down her Brooklyn production studio, and moved to Lisbon, Portugal, that August with their three sons—ages nine, seven, and two—without ever having visited the city in person.
"When we landed in Lisbon and I'm standing in front of this big red door with my suitcases and my kids, I didn't know anyone. It felt like COVID—that feeling of, 'Oh my God, there's no one, it's just us.' A few times my husband called me out and said, 'If you're this unhappy, let's go back to New York.' Something in me said, 'Wait, no.' I knew deep down I needed to go through that intense discomfort in order to get to the other side."
The Scrappy Middle: Depression and an Accidental Tech Pivot
Expecting a slower European pace to finally exhale, Patrice instead hit a wall when her husband’s startup was quietly acquired, and he lost his job shortly after they arrived. Forced back into survival mode while untangling her identity from New York hustle culture, she experienced an unexpected, numb situational depression for nearly a year. When a 2024 digital course launch flopped in a saturated market, she built a simple AI storytelling bot as a free lead magnet—only for thousands of summit attendees to demand the software itself, leading her to co-found My Story Pro AI, which hit $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue within 40 days of launching.
"I'm like, 'This is not a product. I'm a storytelling person, not a tech company.' And everyone's like, 'I don't want your stupid storytelling classes, I want your bot.' Now I get asked to speak as a tech founder, and I'm raising money. It was not on the bingo card, but here we are."
Conviction, Margin-Amplifying, and Perspective
Now two years into life in Lisbon, Patrice’s sons are fluent in Portuguese and attend international schools alongside peers from Ukraine, Russia, Iran, and Israel—an environment that has humbled her American-centric worldview and slowed down the relentless "never enough" pace of New York. While bootstrapping her AI company means income comes in peaks and valleys, her work remains rooted in helping women and underrepresented founders claim their narratives rather than letting the loudest voices dominate the room.
"I think clarity is overrated—no one ever really has clarity. What's even more important is conviction in yourself. I might not have clarity, but I have conviction that I'm capable of achieving hard things. Some people say, 'I'm going to travel when my kids graduate.' I'm like, 'What if you die?'"
Patrice’s Tips for Wayfinders
Stop waiting for clarity—prioritize execution: You will never think, plan, or strategize your way into complete certainty. Action always outpaces strategy, and conviction in your ability to figure things out matters far more than having a step-by-step map.
Continuously stack adjacent skills: Don't rely on a single corporate title or legacy skill set. Learning practical, modern tools—whether it’s shooting and editing video, building a website, or understanding AI agents—turns you into a versatile asset who can pivot when industries shift.
Build a public body of work on the side: Even if you are happily employed, share your ideas visibly on platforms like LinkedIn or Substack. Having an established voice and audience gives you an immediate safety net if layoffs hit.
Embrace friction as fuel: Human beings grow through discomfort and instability. Learning to tolerate the awkwardness of being a beginner or navigating uncertainty builds the "muscle memory" required to take bold risks later in life.
Don't postpone life for "one day": Waiting until retirement, graduation, or the "perfect" financial moment to travel or change your lifestyle assumes time is guaranteed. If you keep talking about a dream over dinner, set a date and move.
Follow Patrice
AI Storytelling & Community: Explore My Story Pro AI, a SaaS platform and community designed to help founders and creators uncover and articulate their authentic human stories.
Daily Life & Behind-the-Scenes: Follow Patrice’s life in Lisbon, family adventures, and founder journey on Instagram (@patricepoltzer).
Newsletter & Professional Updates: Connect with Patrice on LinkedIn or subscribe to her Substack newsletter for candid insights on storytelling, entrepreneurship, and building a tech company as a non-technical founder.
