Stress Less: Kelli Risse’s Untraditional Journey To Unlocking Your Best Self

Glenn: [00:00:00] Good morning, everyone. I'm Glenn Harper. Julie Smith. How are you doing, Julie? Good. It's the Empowering Entrepreneurs Today podcast. What have we got planned for today?

Julie: [00:00:08] You know, I think we have a really special guest who I think, you know, speaks a lot to me in regards to her woman power and mom power and career power. So I'll let you take it.

Glenn: [00:00:18] Well, how about that? Well, we've got we're fortunate enough today to have Kelli Risse here, fellow entrepreneur. Welcome, Kelli, how are you?

Kelli: [00:00:25] I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

Glenn: [00:00:27] Well, it's the best. We love entrepreneurs, especially ones that made incredible pivots to decide that they're going to quit a real job and become an entrepreneur. There's nothing better than that. And so we're going to try to explore that journey with you a little bit, to try to inspire other entrepreneurs. And that's the you know, the purpose of this podcast is to get other entrepreneurs some kind of, you know, support, confidence, knowledge to make them feel like they're going to be successful as well. And that's the fun part about this. So if you want to give a little bio of what you do and how you do what you do, we can put that on for listeners. Just a brief one to let us everybody know what you do.

Kelli: [00:01:10] Sure. So I work with organization teams and individuals who are really high level and they are overstressed, overcommitted, running into many directions, putting fires out. And I just help them reduce their stress and even use stress to their advantage. We I mean, we can definitely use stress to our advantage. And so I just love going in. I'm a mindset coach. I also consider myself a stress management coach and also go in and do presentations. I'm a speaker and just love getting in and helping people. I don't like to call it work life balance because I don't feel like there's ever balance. I like to call it harmony, whatever work, flexibility, whatever that works for the person, because we're going to go through seasons of life. But I love helping people do that so that we stay healthy. Like as an entrepreneur, we have to have our health. And at one point stress affected my health, and that is why I ended up doing what I do.

Glenn: [00:02:15] That's amazing. Where I'm sitting here going, Oh, I got a lot of stuff on my calendar on where I can get rid of some of that. So we have to call you up and get some rid of that. You know, we don't really call it stress. We call it just how do you respond to events that are happening on a continual basis. Right. And there is a skill set to how to manage that. Right. And I think that's what you probably end up doing.

Kelli: [00:02:36] Yes.

Glenn: [00:02:36] Yes. You know, we did a little bit of Julie did a little research. She's got you know, she's a Google nerd. And she found out that you're from originally from Maryland Heights, Missouri. And then all of a sudden you're in O'Fallon and we're trying to figure out what it O'Fallon had to offer that Maryland Heights didn't have to offer. And then in between there, apparently, you were down in Southern California, and I'm not quite sure how you went from A to B to C and made it all work. How did that happen, that journey?

Kelli: [00:03:04] So, yes, I grew up in Maryland Heights, Missouri. I went to grad school in Southern California, and believe it or not, my master's degree is in dance education. So I wrote an entire thesis on a dance program for a high school. And that was because based on my experience as a dancer and I was on the the POM squad drill team, whatever, you know, it has 18 different names. And we were taking P.E. and we would have rather been dancing. And so out in California, that's a big thing. So I wrote an entire curriculum around that. Well, you know, schools need funding for that and just all kinds of things from there. My husband and I at the time had decided that, like, we just could not really afford to live the life we wanted in California, being young at the time. So we moved to Colorado, spend five years in Colorado, absolutely loved living there. That I mean, Colorado is a dream. Then we had our first child and that's when we moved back to Missouri to be by all of our family. When you're when you're standing there with like a one week old baby in your arms and and family drives away and you're like, oh, what are we doing now? That's that's what brought about so brought us back.

Glenn: [00:04:19] Got it. So when you started, what were you doing as a career wise before you became an entrepreneur? What did what made that change happen? What were you doing to make pay the bills and working for a living?

Kelli: [00:04:31] Yep. I was an educator, so I was an educator for about 15 years and absolutely loved it. You know, the connection between coaching and speaking. What I do now and being a former educator is that I'm still educating. So I have a and even dance education, right? It's the whole education piece. So I have that passion for educating. So I was I was an elementary educator, actually, and. What I noticed is that when I would do parent teacher conferences, just watching, watching the kids that would come in, I kept thinking in my mind if I could get in. And for me it was because I being a mom, I feel like if I could get in and I could help women in the home and I could help them with stress, then it would trickle down into the kids that we are as teachers trying to help and serve. And it would make everything better for all of us.

Glenn: [00:05:30] That doesn't sound like that would work at all. I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, that's crazy talk. That makes so much logical sense. How come nobody ever figured that out before?

Julie: [00:05:40] And I'm just curious. Were you ever able to use your dance thesis when you were in the Education Department? Were you able to kind of incorporate any of that into what you were doing?

Kelli: [00:05:52] Here's how this worked out. Here's how my dancing played out. Okay. So so as a staff, we would have big assemblies to motivate the kids and blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, the principals would be like, okay, what can we do as a staff? And I'm like, We can do it dance. They will love watching the teachers dance because there's the good ones and then there's the not so good ones that are, you know what I mean? It's just fun and it's funny. So yes, I brought that right in. And then the other thing that happened with my dance degree, which didn't have to do with education, but in 2020, when the world shut down, I ended up doing porch dances and it started out as the simplest thing. I went out one. It was like the first Friday that we made it through quarantine, and I did almost like the Saturday Night Live pose and had my husband take a picture and I was like, We made it. Then the next Friday we made it through another quarantine and I did literally just like a 22nd little cheerleading, like whatever from there. After that, every Friday at about four between four and five, I would go out and I would do some kind of dance on my front porch. I have a lovely front porch. And I did tap, I did funk, I did seventies, I did hula hoop, I did baton twirling, I did Irish dancing. I mean, I just like that's that was my fun and entertainment during COVID was making up a dance and going out and doing it on my front porch on Fridays. And I got requests. People loved it. They look forward to it. It was a good time. It was good times. Good times.

Glenn: [00:07:23] Were you was this like after a happy hour you were doing this or is this just spur of the moment, just jumping in there and doing it?

Kelli: [00:07:30] Yeah, well, I have to tell you, I am a planner. I am a planner. And I like to. I like to. I am not a I am not a just go out and just like freestyle. I am a choreographer by nature. So I would plan everything that I was going to do. I would pick my music, I would plan it out, and by Friday it was ready to go.

Glenn: [00:07:52] So what's funny about that is it's when you go from having a structured quote, real job doing what you do planner that you are and you decide to flip the switch and you're going to go on your own and be an entrepreneur. There ain't a lot of planning going on. You're literally just out there shooting, you know, flying blind. How did you how did you handle those control issues to be able to go just jump and go do this thing? Or did you have it planned out perfectly?

Kelli: [00:08:16] So the Oh, definitely not perfectly. That is that is for sure. And I feel like I feel like every year as a business owner, I am growing and learning and getting myself more prepared to continue to keep scaling. Right. Like where where I was when I first started was what got me to where I was. And then I had to readjust to get to the next place and to get to the next place. I do look at things very much like a business was like my lesson plans. What is my daily calendar like? That was just the lesson plan of how I was running in my classroom. The thing for me, going from education to being an entrepreneur that I is still an area that I'm working on is the whole marketing. 22 kids showed up in my classroom every year. I never had to market them. I never had to find them. I never had to do a Facebook ad for them like nothing. They just showed up magically. And so that's been my biggest growth really area that I've had to put the most effort in and be conscious of.

Julie: [00:09:25] So can you tell me, how were you one day in the classroom? What was the straw that broke the camel's back or what was the epiphany you had where you're like, This just this isn't fulfilling me anymore. There's something else pulling me in a different direction.

Kelli: [00:09:41] Yeah. So the transition was a plan B, so I did a direct sales company first. And so the direct sales company was in health and Wellness. And I started with that and I started seeing how I could make money differently. That wasn't tied to I mean, in teaching is very much a pay scale, Like you can't even walk in and get a raise. It is like how many years of experience? Where is your education level? This is it, you know what I mean? There's there's no performance and how great of a teacher you are. None of that mattered. Which then at some point that really started to frustrate me. I was someone like I put in 110%, hence why I ended up at one point in the hospital, because I was someone who really my students were my kids. I honestly probably poured more effort into my students than I did my kids and in a form of like education and by the grace of God, my own children were extremely smart and I never had to worry about that. Like they I just knew they'd be fine so I could then pour myself into the kids in my classroom to make sure that I got them where they needed to be. So I was very much a type A type teacher. And and so I when I started my Plan B and I saw that there were other ways to make money that didn't involve all the things that I was doing. That's what got my mind thinking in an entrepreneurial way, which then led me. So I did that for a bit. That's what got me out of teaching. And then at some point I decided I didn't want to be in direct sales anymore. And so that's when I started my own business. I went and got my coaching certifications and went in a different direction.

Glenn: [00:11:28] So you literally you said, I'm done teaching. You went to direct sales. Then you said, All right, the time is to jump in both feet.

Kelli: [00:11:36] I did direct sales while I was teaching them together.

Glenn: [00:11:39] Okay, then you made the move.

Kelli: [00:11:41] Okay? Yeah. Yeah. And then I made the leap. And I can tell you that my teacher friends, some of my non teacher friends, they thought I was crazy. Yep. Because, well, that's kind of what entrepreneurs are. I mean.

Glenn: [00:11:58] Crazy, crazy, insane that nobody understands it. You know, it's it's funny. And entrepreneurs listen out here like some people quit cold turkey, some people go into it slow. But ultimately what it comes down to is you're going to have to put in. At least double the effort that you were doing because you have to do your real job, because you've got to make a living, and then you've got to try to better yourself and you got to put that other effort. And meanwhile, you're trying to be a mom, you're trying to be a spouse, you're trying to do these other things. Yeah. It's no wonder we're under a little stress, I guess. But but again, it's worth it, right? I mean, that you could could you see the end where, like, if I can go through this, I'll get over there and it's going to be way better. Could you see that and sense it and feel it or is just like, I'm just going to go for it and see what happens?

Kelli: [00:12:41] It was a little bit of both. It was a little bit of both. And it was a lot of encouragement from my husband. I think my husband, you know, the interesting thing about stress is we know how much stress we can handle. It's how is our stress affecting our loved ones and other people that we're around and everything else? And he was done. He was done with all the stuff. And so he was like, you're done. Like, you're going to go you're going to start your own business and this is it and I'm going to support you fully. And luckily, I had a husband who 100% supported me in making this taking this risk and doing it. You know what I mean? Like, he is my biggest cheerleader of this, which is which is fabulous. But it was really my stress and craziness is really what I'm going to call it was affecting him and it was affecting my kids, too. Like I look at if I had stayed and living and I and one of the ways that I look at stress is, is I have stress personalities. Like I've created these stress personalities. And we can actually when we look at them, we can somewhat laugh at ourselves because we are funny, we're human beings and we're funny.

Julie: [00:13:55] So if you don't laugh, then you cry. And we don't want that.

Kelli: [00:13:57] No, exactly. You know, when I look back at myself now and I'm like, if I hadn't done something different, if I had had a Kelly in my life back then, I could still be teaching. But I didn't have a Kelly in my life back then. I just knew that something had to be different and I didn't know how to make anything different other than I can't keep doing what I'm doing. So I just need to leave. So I hang on. I lost my train of thought. My my thought process around that was I have to I had to do something different. And if I didn't, I don't know that my marriage would have made it.

Glenn: [00:14:35] So he probably.

Kelli: [00:14:36] Saw the stress affects relationships. Stress affects people in our. You know what I mean? It's not only us that it affects it affects other things. And and I, I, I saw that like, and definitely in hindsight I was like, hmm, like I am lucky that I have such an amazing man who hung on while I was not nice and was snappy and was all the things that, you know, stress can do to us. So yeah, I needed a Kelly back in the day.

Glenn: [00:15:06] Isn't it funny the the belief that if you keep doing the same thing, that you're going to get better and that's, that's insanity. But you've got to be crazy to go do something new. So there's definitely a definition between crazy and insanity, and entrepreneurs are definitely crazy. I wouldn't say they're insane. Insanity is if you keep doing the same thing. So recognizing that and help somebody push you over the top to help you make that decision, I mean, can you just imagine where you'd be if you didn't Wouldn't have made that decision. Isn't that crazy? Right? I mean, it's been all over.

Kelli: [00:15:36] And that is one of the reasons why in my coaching and my speaking, like everything that I love talking about, all goes back to mindset. Because when I went through, it wasn't until I went through my coaching programs and really started to learn and understand my thinking had to change. Because if not, if our thinking doesn't change, we just end up in a different job, a different environment, a different whatever, doing the same thing that we were doing, you know what I mean? And so that is that's a that's a definitely a critical piece to it.

Julie: [00:16:12] And Kelly, I know you focus, you know, mainly on women. What made you make that? Do you feel like you just connect better with them or what? What made you make that decision?

Glenn: [00:16:22] Yeah. What about dudes? We're all over here.

Julie: [00:16:23] We're stressed. I mean, I get it.

Glenn: [00:16:25] I'm totally kidding.

Kelli: [00:16:27] Now I do feel like I have a connection with women because, well, I am one. I understand what it's like to be that that high performing, high achieving. And you have kids and, you know, and you have a husband and you're trying to do it all. Do it all and do it all at the very best. Like I understand what that's like, which is why I feel like I connect with women the best. I am really excited to start coaching men. I honestly feel like men will be easier to coach because they're different.

Glenn: [00:17:08] Absolutely.

Kelli: [00:17:09] Men are different. There's a different emotional component to men than there is women. And I feel like we bring women bring I don't know. We just bring different things to the table that sometimes keep us stuck more than men do.

Julie: [00:17:24] So you mean you think women have a harder time getting out of their own way than sometimes men?

Kelli: [00:17:30] Yes.

Julie: [00:17:31] That's interesting.

Glenn: [00:17:32] How about them apples? Guys, remember, simple. We can do one thing at a time. And, you know, let me finish one thing, and then I'll go to the next thing. Chicks. They got to do it all at once. It's. It's an amazing thing. But again, recognizing that and understanding it and literally having somebody that can point the obvious out to you, I probably is a huge help for these people. And you know that you know, you said something earlier that I wanted to go back to that was kind of interesting. And I don't know what your response would be, but you wanted to you thought if you could teach the kids, that would make an impact. But then you thought, well, if I could teach the parents of the kids and now you're teaching other people, so are you trying to do instead of one on one, 1 to 1 kid or 1 to 1 parent, you're trying to do one to many and hope that trickles down to the kids, because given the choice, would you rather coach kids or coach adults that will ultimately coach kids? What is your preference?

Kelli: [00:18:27] I would rather coach adults and my focus for 2023 is really moving into companies and working with teams, you know, because it is it's getting into more so that you can make more of an impact. Because if you look at every one of those teams, you know, and I feel like when we look at and again, I'm going to say some generalizations here, but when we look at what's going on in and and corporate and we're looking at low engagement or looking at high turnover and, you know, those are being addressed in certain ways. And yet I feel like the underlying issue of all of those things is stress. And people are bringing their stress to work and then they're taking their stress from work home and then it's this just the cycle. And yet I feel like corporate is scared to address the S-word. And so it gets pushed under the table. And yet it's the underlying thing of everything. And if we go in and we address it and we talk about it and we do some very simple things with it, and with that, again, it's going to trickle down into families like we're bettering, we're bettering the kids that are then coming up, right? Because what are our kids saying right now? You know what I mean? Like, and what did our kids just go through during the whole COVID thing? I mean, we've got a whole generation coming up that are still like trying to figure out what in the world even just happened with that. You know what I mean? And we know that the mental health and you know, by all means, there are people that need therapist and they need that regularly. And it's it's much deeper than that. And yet there are some things that we can all do in general that that can be managed from the coach, the training, the presenting aspect that can help us all on a on a on this level. And then people that need deeper need to work with either a coach, a therapist, whatever that looks like.

Julie: [00:20:28] So Kelly, just to build on that, when you're seeing the stress levels and you're seeing this issue in corporate America, what differences or are you not seeing any across the generations? Because we know as corporate America is getting older and the younger generation is coming in, it's a different mentality, a whole different personality per se.

Kelli: [00:20:51] Yes, it's completely different. You are correct. And I feel like so I am almost 52. And I look at I look at people in my generation and we are and even even older, we're just the you do it. This is how what like let's go. You just do it. You do it. You do it now. At the same time, we have also needed to learn how to pull back at times. There was a time in my life that my husband was like, Hey, we're going to go spend the weekend in the woods. We're going to take the boys for Wheeling. I'm like, We're going to sit in the woods. I don't even know how to sit in the woods. Like, I have a list of things that I need to do. And you want me to just sit? Like, I didn't even know how to do that, right? So I needed to learn how to relax. Because if I wasn't doing what in the world would I? What was going to happen? So there's that. Then I feel like we have a generation that's coming up that has watched our generation. They've watched us and they're like, Yeah, I don't know that I really want a part of that. I don't want any part of that, right? And yet at the same time, because also we look at, you know, I look at my grandma who had like 13 brothers and sisters now. So we had a big workforce at some point in time.

Kelli: [00:22:09] Now we're down to people having like two kids. They're waiting later. We don't have people to work, right? We don't have the amount of people in the workforce that at one time we had the boomers are retiring. We don't have this huge workforce coming up. And then we have the millennials, the Gen Zers coming up that is coming up Gen Z, and they're looking at things a little bit differently and then they're like, Nah, I'm good. So we have to teach them. Those are the ones that we have to teach how to use stress to their advantage. Like stress is okay, we need to be able to use it in a good way. Stress can motivate us. Stress is good for us psychologically and physically. It's when it's taken over the edge that it then becomes not good. Right? So it's it's the this group had to tone it down a little bit. This group has to step it up or I don't know what's going to happen in the workforce, quite frankly. And I feel like this this younger generation, we also need to teach them about resiliency. They have to understand resiliency. They have to understand how to self regulate themselves a little bit better so that it's not, oh, I'm feeling a little anxious. I got to go home. No, we just got to we just got to learn how to we have to teach them how to work through that.

Glenn: [00:23:24] She had to shut off the electricity for a couple of days. I think everybody will learn a little bit more when they can't get on their phones and get on the X-Box. What did you when you were doing this thing, what was the biggest fear that you had to overcome to be an entrepreneur and kind of go through those first month, three months, six months a year? What was your biggest fear that you had that you had to really overcome and just squash it and push it down? And it's like I'm doing it regardless of what this voice in my head is telling me. Do you have any comment on what that might have been?

Kelli: [00:23:56] Yeah, the voice in my head was, So what will other people think about what I'm doing specifically? So what will other people think? And the second thing is selling, and I say it in that voice because really the bottom line and this is for everybody, is that if you have a service that you are providing and somebody needs your service, you're not selling, you are honestly sharing a solution, You are sharing. I am sharing a solution that if you need help and you are like, I am tired of my life being this way and I want something different, I have a solution, you know what I mean? And so, so, so flipping the script on that also and other challenges.

Julie: [00:24:45] Do you feel like I'm.

Kelli: [00:24:46] Going to always.

Julie: [00:24:47] Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I was just I was just thinking, you know, a challenge that I could foresee you possibly having is finding that balance that you had always thrown everything all of everything into your classroom and your kids and what that looked like. And to then come over and say, okay, well, now I'm on my own and I have to build this thing. How were you able to kind of step back and say, okay, I didn't like how that felt. And step back and say, okay, this is how I'm going to find my balance and make this transition, because this is what's healthy and good for me and my family.

Kelli: [00:25:27] Yes. And I can 100% tell you that. Now. I know like I know that when I know the difference between flow and between this is not okay with me. And I cannot do another day like this. Like I am so aware now I know what's going on in my body. I know just I know what's going on in my relationship. Like I am so in tune with that that I can recognize very quickly and go, okay, like, like what do I need to change right now for tomorrow so that this is different?

Glenn: [00:26:07] And, you know, back to the thing we're just talking a minute ago, like when you make the change from your real job and going to be an entrepreneur, everybody's a naysayer. Everybody's looking at you like you're crazy. So and ultimately, that's that's the case. And you have to kind of change your centers of influence. Then all of a sudden, because you're getting all negative vibes instead of positive and support, everybody's kind of pushing you down and critical versus giving you a hand and pulling you up. Did you have some mentors or some people that were like, you know, you got this, Kelly, you can do this. Who who was that for? You? You don't have to give names or if you don't want to. But just did you have a couple of people that were like, man, they were my rocks and they helped me get through this because everybody else is telling me I shouldn't do this.

Kelli: [00:26:51] Yes. You know what? I really did I. It was interesting. I only had a very, very few people. And I'm going to say that those were the people in the financial world that are looking at telling teachers, have a retirement. What are you doing? Like, only those people, even like my teacher friends. Right. Because they were still keeping their retirement. So they're like, sister, you go like, good for you, because they knew that their paychecks would still be steady and fine. I got really lucky and I feel like I am someone that had a lot of supporters. I still have people like supporting me, cheering me on. And the the my parents supported me, which was huge for me. And like I said, my husband supported me. I did have mentors, the coaching programs that I went through. You know, when you're with coaches also doing this, you're surrounded by other entrepreneurs that are you know what I mean? This is what we all want to do. So that was good. I moved into a brand new subdivision when kind of all of this was going on, and my neighbor across the street was also a coach. I mean, we became I looked at her when I first met her. I'm not kidding. Like we met in the middle of the street and I said, we're going to be best friends. And sure enough, we are, because you have, like you said, you have to have people like that. I have coaches like as a coach, I know the importance of having a coach like I would never because I have my own blind spots. And so it's so important for me to make sure that I'm working with someone that is calling out my blind spots just like I do, just like I do for my clients.

Glenn: [00:28:28] Well, that's so effectively you did it without even really knowing it, but you had to change your whole center of influence and went to people that were the like minded, which is again, that's kind of scary to think You have to do that, but that's okay. You can still be friends with everybody, but you have to go over here because if not, it's just really hard to do it. As an entrepreneur, you're on this lone island that you got to do things on and there's no reason for that. You've got to get around those like minded people to help you, so never give up. And I think that the second thing you said that really resonates is people always think they have to go sell. They don't have to sell, they have to market. And if you market and you know your product, you know your service and you can market effectively, it sells itself. You just got to go and close that deal. But it isn't about going out there and knocking on the door and trying to sell an encyclopedia that nobody wants. It's way different than that. And I think you found that at early time in your career that that was a big change for you.

Kelli: [00:29:23] Yes. And, you know, I'm going to say back to what you said, the big I'm going to say, I think you asked me this and I did not bring it up because it just came to me when we thought about this. One of the biggest challenges for me was being alone, working alone in my house, being alone. I am an extrovert. I love people, I love talking, I love all of that. And then every day I was like, Here, You know what I mean? Now, on the days that I had clients, I usually stack my clients and the days I had clients, it was great, right? Because then I had that and I was doing that on the days I didn't. That's when like, that's when I could see I have to do like, I had to get myself a like a light therapy light like just to have some light coming in. Like I knew I had to be doing things. I had to make sure I had music on, like things that kept me in that space. I also joined some great networking groups. One of them is 400 Women Strong. That again, surrounding yourself with the people that you know that you need to be surrounded with. So that's that was a big a big thing that I had to do for myself.

Glenn: [00:30:31] So that's definitely a takeaway for our listeners here, is that you don't have to do it on your own. None of these things you did cost you any money. It's just getting more relationships. When you get more relationships, you just get energy from that. You know, more people, you get to work on your spiel a little bit better and next thing you know you're plugged in. And it's it's not easy, but it's not hard either. You just got to know what to look for, right? Do you have a do you have a dream client or person that you would love to coach that you see in the news or that you know of and say, Man, if I could just get in front of that that chick or that dude, I would just rock the world and change their life. Do you have somebody like that in mind? Have you ever thought of that?

Kelli: [00:31:12] No, I have not thought of that. And now I'm like, I should have that person. I don't know why you don't now I don't have that person. That's my homework. I feel like I have homework from you guys.

Glenn: [00:31:22] I gave you to do list. I didn't want to add to that. I really didn't. But no, I some people always have, like, man, if I ever get in front of that person, I am just going to make the pitch and I'm going to and I'm going to make it happen. I just didn't know if you had one of those or not. So that's kind of funny. I think the the next thing is, is is, you know, the the thing we talk about as an entrepreneur is, is the change in mindset to go from being a, you know, employed to being an entrepreneur is a big deal. And then it's like we're navigating this path or this journey that we're on. And the illusion that we have is that there's an end game. Everybody thinks, What's your end game? And I think probably by talking with you, you probably to feel the same affinity. That just a trick question because there is no end game. You're you're good at what you do. Why would you ever stop? And so it isn't about the ending. It's about the continuous journey. What do you feel? That's the that's the that's the case with you.

Kelli: [00:32:22] Yes, 100%. You know, it's definitely the journey. And I look at the journey that even that I've been on and just how much I've grown and and how how I changed, how my niche has changed. What I started out coaching in is not what I'm not what I'm doing now. And, you know, honestly where I'm going. You know, I started out coaching very much individuals and now I'm moving into companies. I want to work with teams and I am going to come back to your question in a minute because because I'm still thinking about that. And, you know, it is definitely the journey and there's not an endpoint. The one thing that I can say is I don't see myself retiring right now. Like, I can't I just can't see that because what I do. Like I can I can do forever. I don't. You know what I mean? Like, I don't see an endpoint at all.

Glenn: [00:33:14] It's fun. And that comes back to the other piece of it that, you know, at some point when you become an entrepreneur, either you're going to create yourself a job and do business right, and you can only do so much work, or you're going to make the conversion to building a business because that's what ultimately we want to do as entrepreneurs. We don't want to just create a job, but we don't know how to get our own way on that and we want to build something. And that is when then after you build it and I can step back and do all the cool stuff that you want to do while this business is humming along, where are you at in your journey? Are you middle of the road? Are you have you established building the business or are you still working on that or are you still doing business? Where are you at in your journey?

Kelli: [00:33:54] I would say I'm still I'm still I'm still doing business. I'm still doing business. I'm this is my big year to scale my business. And then we'll see what happens from there. Yeah.

Glenn: [00:34:08] And that is exciting, right? Because now all of a sudden you can you realize that you can't bring all this knowledge and things by yourself. You've got to have a team, you've got to have your strategic relationships, and you just know too much now to just do everything yourself. You need to delegate some of that out and be a leader versus a doer per se, which is the coolest thing ever, I think. And I definitely you got the personality type for that from what I can see, and that's the best. Now, we always have one other cool question, and I'm going to let Julie ask that one, but because this is one of our funnest ones.

Julie: [00:34:42] So in this in this journey that you've been on, what would you identify as your superpower? What is something that you can do better than most of your peers? What is something that you can think of? This is Kelly, and this is what I think of because this is what I'm just I'm really good at this.

Kelli: [00:35:06] My superpower is asking the right questions for four people to get the answers that they need for them to make the changes that they want to happen in their life.

Glenn: [00:35:22] Does that mean you're good at reading people?

Julie: [00:35:27] So, Kelly, I actually think you're really good at marketing in the beginning of this. You're kind of like, Oh, this was this was my biggest struggle. But what you're doing, what your superpower is, is essentially marketing to your clients to help them down the path that you kind of can already see.

Kelli: [00:35:45] Yeah. Yes, that is true. Thank you, Julie.

Glenn: [00:35:50] Hey, we're just helping people one at a time. And our billions of listeners out there. This is exciting.

Kelli: [00:35:54] Yeah, but. And that is one of the biggest things that I get from clients. And not clients, Just people. They're like, You ask really good questions, And I'm like, because it's the questions that then that then make us think of the answers that we need. And I also truly believe that we all have the answers inside of us. We we have just lost that. And sometimes it's having someone ask us the right questions to get to what we need inside us. Right? So having that and we have also lost the ability to tap into our intuition like we're not like, I don't know, what is this influencer say about it and what does this say about it? And we're always like trying to find somewhere else instead of going, I have all the resources and everything that I need inside of me. I just need to go back and learn. Like that's something I teach my clients actually, to learn how to listen to themselves and use their intuition.

Glenn: [00:36:53] So can I be so bold as this is how I'm kind of reading this and make sure I got this right? Really? You don't sell anything. All you do is teach people how to empower themselves. That's it. Is that a fair statement?

Kelli: [00:37:09] That is a fair statement. That is a very fair statement.

Glenn: [00:37:12] And you know how to get in their head to make them tap into that. We call it their inner greatness and achieve something they didn't even know they had in there. And they just need a couple of keys. And if you just give them a couple of keys, they're like, Oh, that's the decoder ring I'm in.

Kelli: [00:37:24] Yes. Yeah. Can I share something about one of my clients? So she is a travel agency owner, so she has all these independent contractors underneath her. And during the pandemic. Oh, you want to talk about an industry that was I mean, they had nothing. They had nothing. So she was down her whole, you know, all the independent contractors. They're looking at her for hope. Right. And she's like, I don't even know if I have hope myself. So I went on and I have a talk called The Mess of Stress, and I went on and did that. And I provide we look at stress and provide solutions. And in that she ended up being a client of mine. So the first thing that we had to do is get some hope, get some we needed to get for her. She was looking to get some just habits back in place. And when we did that, she had shared with me this dream that she had about adding a whole nother leg of business. She wanted to be a business consultant also for other travel agency owners to help them get their agency up like she had. And I'm like, And why aren't you? You know, like, what? What are we do? It was lack of lack of self confidence, the self doubt she had going on inside of her. And I just asked questions and and I had belief in her. And you know that when we have belief in someone else and and Exactly. You know what I mean. And so I helped her. I do what's called a deep dive. I have this eight hour is about 8 hours and it's a breakthrough. It's a one day deep dive breakthrough to help people get rid of limiting beliefs, any tug of wars. There's a lot of people that have this inner conflict within them. And I'll give you an example specifically from the people I work with. I want to be the best mom ever and I want to be the.

Glenn: [00:39:14] Best.

Kelli: [00:39:14] Entrepreneur ever. And they're like this because one minute they're being the best mom and their business is falling apart. And then they're like, Oh, okay. And then they're being the best entrepreneur in their families falling apart. And it's it is a very easy process to get rid of that inner conflict. So that's something I do. We get rid of some negative emotions that have been with us since we were like little that anyway, it's just a deep dive. And so I did that with her and we did this and we got her out of her way in three months, she added, because she had to get some processes, systems, everything ready in three months. She added 40,000 to her income and continues to build on that because she added this. How would you rate your revenue?

Glenn: [00:39:58] How rewarding is that? I mean, you not only you not only help somebody get out of their own way, but then they're making more money and you just got this little magic touch. Well, I tell you what, we appreciate you being on the show today. Is there? Can you give a little something how people can get ahold of if they wanted to?

Kelli: [00:40:17] Yes, absolutely. The best way to get a hold of me right now really is on LinkedIn. And I do have a website as well, but I'm sure you will include these in the show notes. But LinkedIn is a great place to connect with me as well as my website, which right now is Rise Up and Live wellness dot com. I'm getting ready to go through a big branding, but it'll all end up connecting and I actually for any of your listeners am happy to do a complimentary what I call strategy session and that means that I go in it's 30 minutes and we go in and we look at what's going on, what are the great things, what are some things that you're struggling with? And I'm happy to like come up with some solutions and help people. So that's the thing that I can provide.

Glenn: [00:40:56] That's helpful. Jennifer, thank you for that. Well, we enjoyed your time with us today. I hope you enjoyed yourself as well. And we look forward to the next time we see you. Thanks, Kelly. Julie, I guess it is time to get out of here.

Julie: [00:41:06] Yeah, it's time to go. Thanks, Kelly. I really appreciate it. And your energy and what you've brought to the table for. For women who definitely struggle with that mom guilt. But yet one want to still have that successful career. And it's something that I think, you know, when you you know, I can see you on video, but when you're going back and forth, that's definitely something that I think a lot of us struggle with on the daily.

Glenn: [00:41:27] You might have something there. So stay on that one. That's a good one. Yeah. All right. Take care, Kelly. Thank you.

Julie: [00:41:34] Thank you.

Kelli: [00:41:34] Bye bye. All right. Thank you so much.

Julie: [00:41:36] Bye bye. Bye.