The Momentum Effect: Book Writing, Retreats, & Women's Empowerment w/ C.K. Collins
In this episode, Kelly Collins shares her journey of selling her business, and going all in to find her life purpose. She's an example of someone who has taken massive action since and has created a huge amount of results in that time. This episode talks about her process for writing, and what she has learned leading her own retreats and helping other women transform their lives.
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Podcast Transcript
Lou: Hello, friends. Welcome to another episode of the art and business of Meditation podcast. Today we have our guest, C. K. Collins, aka Kelly. Kelly sold her news publishing company in 2021 and then went to travel and write her book. I know that sounds like maybe a dream for a lot of you. She is the author of the Swipe Right Effect, the power to get unstuck. She is now a coach focused on helping women who are seeking and yearning to regain their momentum. Kelly, passionate, leads the momentum effect program, where wise women connect to find the next calling in their lives. Kelly, welcome to the show.
Kelly: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Lou: So, Kelly, we have different stories, different timelines, but there's a similarity in both of our stories in that we left the normal working world in different ways. And the first thing we each did was write a book. And I go back to that, knowing what I know now, and it's like, that's probably not the first thing you should do, right? Maybe there's other things to focus on and grow and maybe get an audience first and then have the book so you can actually promote the book to someone. But I wrote my book first, and it sounds like you did, too. So I'd love to hear just that kind of juncture, because it sounds like an important juncture in your life to sell your company, to step out into this completely new world. And why the book then? What was the inspiration to write this book during this time?
Kelly: Well, it was a big time of change in my life. I had been through a divorce. I had sold the company. My kids were grown. It was like this trifecta of identity change, and in some ways, identity loss, the role of a wife was gone. So that's why the travel sabbatical really happened. And I had hiked the Camino to Santiago. And so my intention was, I was going to write a book about that. But as I was traveling and meeting all these, and I did do another Camino during that year as well. And I met these people, these women who were giving me advice, and it was really sharing their experience, and it came in the gift of advice. And so the book started forming in my head, and it was like that. The 11th month, I was like, oh, look, what. When Kelly said that to me, what happened? And when Allison said that to me, this happened. And so I realized that my story is their stories and that we're very commingled in our know. Even if it was just a small time that I met them on the Camino or a long time that we were together as soccer moms, there was that pivotal moment that they said something to me that changed my life. And so every chapter is a piece of advice they gave me, how it helped me, what changed. And then I interview them, and they tell their story about how they learned it, what happened with them. And so it's really like ten women's stories, plus mine, little mini memoirs. But I had to pay forward that advice that had been given to me. Because anybody going through a big life change, whether it's divorce or loss of a spouse or job change, health change, a lot of those are in here. It's not just about divorce, and it's about choosing yourself and listening to the advice that is coming to you from the universe, from people you love, maybe from complete strangers, and about just choose yourself and work on yourself before you go and make some kind of change that is permanent. And it wasn't the right thing.
Lou: That's such a beautiful way to structure a book. So it sounds like you had wanted to read a book about your time in the Camino. And I'm curious, even just before where it came through, have you always been a writer? I know your company was a news publishing company, so I don't know if that was in the essence of things that you were doing. But I guess just, like, what about even writing a book about the Camino was stirring in you before it ended up becoming the interview type of style.
Kelly: I mostly hired writers because I was a publisher, marketing, but I had done a lot of marketing writing. I would write the articles for the hospital that would go in the newspaper. I've done a lot of writing, but never anything book related. So I had a lot of experience that way. And 2020 changed a lot of things for a lot of people. But for me, what it changed was I had to get over myself and my fear of public speaking. And we had a cycle as of March 5, 2020, because our town was the first one in Tennessee to get Covid, and the first case of COVID and the news was just coming so fast. I mean, we're very ingrained in the community, so we knew the hospital leaders and the city leaders and the chamber leaders, and we wanted them to be talking to our audience. So we started doing interviews like this online, and I'd be sitting there just hands sweating and freaking out, God, I'm going to mess this up. And it changed how I wanted to communicate with the world. That was kind of the first thing which ended up leading to a podcast, which I absolutely adore doing now, but that made me really comfortable with interviews and so that made that kind of a natural go to for the book. It's not just about me, even though I did share a lot about how much I hurt and how I healed and what that was like, but I wanted it to be more than just how I got hurt and how I turned my pain into power. I want it to be about all these different women. Two of them lost their spouse, one lost a child, several were divorced. Some had been through a lot of traumatic job changes. So all of us go through change. It's a fortunate, unfortunate part of life. It was 2020 that got me down that path. And then the book I wanted to write was I started a company with four other people who hiked the Camino in 2020. And we were like, the hostels are absolutely essential along the Camino because it would be incredibly expensive to stay in hotels the whole time. It would keep people from doing it. And there's a quarter of a million people do the Camino every year in Spain. And so we started thinking, there's nobody walking, there's no pilgrims. How are the hostels going to survive? I would say 90% of the hostels are run by former pilgrims who went back to help, who went back with a passion to serve the other pilgrims. And so we formed an app, which was a virtual hike of the Camino, called Camino for good. And we saved 27 hostels. The money that we raised through selling the app went to the hostels. And I wanted to tell their story, because not just their Covid story, but I got to know these people as we were helping them, and we were paying their electric bill and paying for their coal, and we're paying for their rent or their mortgage, and we got to know them really well, and they have story. I kept looking, and there was no books about the Albergue owners, the hostel owners. And so I still will write that book.
Lou: That's so incredible.
Kelly: But all of that kind of led, and I do talk about the Camino a lot in the swipe right effect, because three of the women I interview, I met, they're from Canada, from Sweden, and from South Africa.
Lou: Funny story on that note of the Camino and 2020 is that my partner, she runs a retreat company. And at the time, it's evolved over the years, but at the time we were doing, and I kind of facilitate a little bit on it, but we had done a backpacking trip in Yosemite with a group of twelve people or whatnot. And one of our retreats planned was to do a part of the Camino more so in the basque area, so we're French and Spain, that area. So it would have only been like a five day chunk of the Camino. And that was supposed to happen, I believe, September 2020. Obviously, it did not happen, and it was supposed to happen again at some point, but it didn't work out. So it's so crazy to think of that timeline that you were actually doing something to support the money that they were losing from people that weren't going out there. So incredible. And it sounds like, from what I'm hearing from you, is that there was first this recognition. It was almost like this sense of you wanting to overcome something that you recognize of, like, wow, I don't feel comfortable public speaking. I want to kind of get over this fear of public speaking and leaning into that. And I'm a big believer when we start to face our fears, they kind of open up doors to other areas. So it sounds like you leaning into this facing of a fear all of a sudden an interview, and it's like, oh, public speaking, what can this be? I can share stories. I can write a book. It's just interesting to see how that unfolded to these other areas.
Kelly: Yeah. And now I stand up in front of room full of people and passionately talk about coming back from a big life change. And if you told me even three years ago that I would do that, I said, no way.
Lou: Before we get into some nitty gritty on book stuff, what is some advice that sticks out from the book around? And I know a lot of. There's a good amount of listeners, I think, that maybe have gone through divorce, so you can go that route, too. Or if it's another transition area, is there anything that sticks out that's like anyone's story that's really powerful? I'm sure they're all powerful, or they wouldn't be in the book, but I'd be curious.
Kelly: I'll answer that with something somebody said to me. I did a webinar Monday night, and she had been to one of my public speaking things at a bookstore, and I had given about a 30 minutes presentation about learning to become the hero in your own story and stop investing yourself in everyone else's. Don't stop doing that, but start recognizing that you have your own story. And I shared, I usually like to ask. There's four questions that I ask at the end of each of the webinars or seminars, and if nobody will talk, I usually share one of the things from the book. So at the bookstore, I had shared about Allison in the book and her story. She'd been through a big divorce. She was devastated. And when I said, one of the questions is, what advice would you give people who are going through a big life change? And she said, I'll tell you what my best friend said to me. And it was, this will look different a year from now. This will look different a month from now. This will look different a week from now. And it's going to look different when you wake up in the morning, because it's not going to stay the same. You're not going to stay the same. Things are going to change in your life. And so stop thinking, this is the final, pivotal moment of your life. This is a moment in your life, and it's going to look different tomorrow. And that really struck that woman enough to the point where a week later, she's on my webinar, and at the end, when I'm asking them to answer these four questions, she said, I want you to know I will never forget that as long as I live. And I say it to people all the time.
Lou: And I love that it shows the ripple effect of this. Right? It's like that lesson from Allison to you to now, this person, and who knows how many more that will spread through, just through that kind of network. So I think that's the power of sharing stories. It's the power of writing a book. It's the power of doing this work in general is like the ripple effect that we can create in this world. I think in so many ways, I think the collective kind of, I don't know if you know the Ram Dass quote, we're all just walking each other home, but how things travel through. So amazing. So take us to the actual process of writing a book, because congrats to you. A lot of people be like, I have this idea. I'm going to do this idea. I'm going to interview these people, and maybe they start, but the real, I guess, skill is finishing and getting it out there. So what was that like for you on just a logistical or tactical writing it and doing the interviews? And did doubt come in? Did you ever want to throw it away and not do it? How was that whole journey of the actual writing of the book?
Kelly: Yeah, from the time I came up with the idea, I outlined the chapters and I was traveling, and so I decided to do this. I had to nest, I had to find a place, but I didn't have a place. I sold my house and literally given away everything I owned. So I didn't have a place. To go. And so I've been coming to Newport, Rhode island, for 20 years. My nephews grew up here, and I just loved visiting here. And, in fact, the summer of 2020, I rented a place here, and all my kids came in so that we could shelter in place but be together. And this was where I was when we created Camino for good. I remember walking on the beach thinking, I don't know about this. I don't know about this, because it was friends, and I was worried that I would lose my friendship in some way. And I'm walking on the beach thinking, is this right? Is this right? And I look down, and there's a scallop shell, which is the sign of the Camino. And I had been walking on that beach every day for two weeks and never seen a scallop shell. And so this place was important to me. It's where Camino for good was found. And I went through the same doubt process with the book I get here. I rented a place, a winter rental. So it's just eight months off season in the winter, a cute little two bedroom beach cottage. And I'm like, this is. And I have a daughter in Boston and a daughter in Brooklyn. So it was also. Was. They were also a reason why I ended up here. And I thought, this is perfect. I don't really know anybody. I'll stay focused. But I freaked out about sharing personal details about my life and how hard it was, and is that going to make me look like a bad person, that I'm sharing things like that, or am I weak or whatever? The million things went through my head, and I went for a walk on that same beach, and I was like, I don't know. Maybe I'll see a shell. And I went for a walk. Nothing. No shell. Daddy.
Lou: When you're looking for that, it's hard to. Sometimes it's almost like you don't find it.
Kelly: Yeah. And the next day, I went, and as soon as my feet hit the sand, I thought, what if I just start? And I opened my notes on my phone, and I started writing an outline. Visioning Kiki, that question. Allison, Karen Kelly. And I'm not even looking at the water and the beautiful scenery. I'm typing, and all of a sudden, I stop, and I look down, and there was seven scallop shells at my feet. And I went, okay, I'm writing this book. And I picked them up, and I stuffed them in my pocket, and I kept walking, and I kept seeing shells. And I was like, okay, I get it. And when the day before there was not. But the universe was waiting on me to decide that I could start just by making that one little move that I'm going to write it down. It helped me decide to keep going and be brave and vulnerable, but the process. So once I decided, it was like I wrote it in three months.
Lou: Wow.
Kelly: I sat down. Well, first two different people just happened to say to me, well, if you're going to write a book, have you ever heard of how Ernest Hemingway wrote a book? And I was like, no, tell me. And the second time I said, yes, but tell me more. And I guess in the autobiography he described it that he would sit down and he would write a thousand words a day, and he would not get up until he knew what the character was going to do the next day. And then he would sit down the next day and write 1000 words and he wouldn't get up until. And so I said, okay, I'll start with 600 words. And every morning I would get up, I would go do my peace walk on the beach, and I would go like, there's several beaches. So I would kind of go a different direction every day to just, I don't know, I like walking meditation. I learned to do that on the camino, and I would kind of form my thoughts every day on my walk. And I would walk, rain, sleet, snow, it didn't matter, I did it. And then I would come back and shower and sit down and write. So I'd had that kind of prep work, already done that thinking through the story, and it got to be where I didn't stop at 600 words. I would just keep going until I'd finished the story because I had the blessing of being retired. So this was on my schedule. I didn't have to answer to anyone. I had to make myself eat because all I didn't wanted to do was write once I got into it. But it's hard when you're working, because now I am working. I've built a new business around the book and around coaching, and now it's hard for me to write.
Lou: Funny how that works. Yeah, you really sounds like been open to the synchronicities and the signs that the universe is giving you. And I'm wondering, was that always the case, or did that get kind of fine tuned through, following more of your own truth? And do you find that it's still as connected now, or is there like moments? Was that moment just like it was really strong? How do you still communicate or open to that now and then there's another piece just to emphasize, for anyone listening, is the decision that sometimes we have to kind of like to say, meet God halfway, meet the universe halfway, meet mystery halfway. We have to kind of take our step to then get the energy or to maybe pivot to where the energy is. So sometimes it's like not waiting for the sign and actually going your step and then seeing what comes back. So that's just a comment, but back to the question, is that still how you kind of operate, or do you feel connected in that way?
Kelly: What I teach now in my practice
Kelly: meets head on where I was before I had the trifecta of change in 2017, before I lost my three identities, right? And I was that person. I was rolling through life, being the guide and everyone else's story and never the hero in my own. And on December 9, 2017, I had these three things that happened all in one day, in less than 12 hours, that were like, you're going on the Camino. You're going on the Camino. You're going on the Camino. One of my best friends, Bill, kept saying he had done it seven years before when he was getting a divorce. And he said, you need to do this. And this is a man who'd known me since I was 19, and now I'm 52. So he's known me forever, and he's like, I know this will help you. And I was a big runner, so I was fit. I wasn't worried about that part. But it was, how do I leave my company for seven weeks? Because I thought I was indispensable. I thought it was so important that it was no way I could leave, but turns out I could. And so he told me to watch the movie the way, and I did. And then after I watched it, I thought, I've got to talk to Karen. She went on a pilgrimage when she was getting a divorce, and she'll know whether I should go or not. 5 seconds later, Karen called me, and I went to the office the next morning, and I picked up a devotional called Jesus calling, which I had not touched in two years, since my partner had exited the business. And I opened it up, and it said, I will walk on this path with you. If you keep your eyes on me, you will walk easily on perilous paths. I mean, it was just like, okay, I get it. And from that moment on, I did. Several things happened. I started realizing there's been signs all along that I have not been paying attention to. Lots of signs in my marriage and my work, in my spirituality. And secondly, that I had to put myself first, probably for the first time since I was like twelve years old. Whenever you lose that, I'm the most important thing and everybody should do whatever I wanted to do. When you're a teenager, you kind of lose that and it's effort to get it back, to make yourself important again. And that's the day that I decided I needed to be my own hero, that I was the only thing I had left to really take care of, because everything else had already been taken care of. And so that is when I started understanding that the universe, I had a relationship with God and I prayed to God, but I never really listened until then.
Lou: The signs were there the whole time and now you could see them. That's so powerful. So you write the book, you get it done. You do the Ernest Hemingway leave or not even leave a story. That's so crazy that you got that message twice from Ernest Hemingway and you get it finished. Now, what is your decision on how to publish? Market it. Do you know that you want to coach what unfolds next?
Kelly: Gosh, no. I had no idea I had coached small independent news publishers. I was one of the more successful companies that was independent because I had grown from one site to eight and we had a decent profit margin. So people were looking to me going, hey, how do I do this? So I had fun coaching just on the side. It was great. So I knew I liked that, but I was not thinking of that at all when I wrote the book. It was just, I got to pay it forward. I got to pay it forward. That's all I could think about. And I knew I didn't have a social, especially with a new pen name, because I'm not using my legal name that the whole news business knew me under. I had a pen name with no following. And so I knew enough about the publishing business to know I'm not getting a book deal. No matter how many publishers I know. I don't have what they require nowadays, you got to have 100,000 followers. So I decided, I'm just going to self publish. And so I started diving into how to do that. I kept asking, do you know anybody who's self published? Do you know anybody who's self published? And I found people who gave me great advice, but I still did it terribly wrong. I did not know what I was. I just put it out there. I didn't know that I only had 30 days to actually hit bestseller before, or I was going to be terrible in the algorithm. I didn't know things like that. And I found coaching later that helped me learn that you write a book, and the book is your calling card, and the calling card takes you to all the other things you're going to do with the book and what your book is teaching. And so I ended up writing a workbook to go along with the book because people kept saying, you didn't leave room in the book to write stuff down. Every chapter has an empowerment practice, but I just gave it to them. I didn't leave them a room. I didn't guide them on the steps to do it. I just said, this is what you have to do. And so I wrote the workbook and fleshed out all the different empowerment practices, which that was, like, eight months later. But it became about gathering. I set my intention word for 2023, and I put the book out on January 1. And then my word was gather. And what I wanted was to gather with people who'd read the book so we could talk about choosing yourself, and we could talk about choosing a path for yourself. I ended up doing, like, five book signings, 25 book groups, and multiple book discussions. And I saw the pattern that women especially, but caregivers in general, but women especially, think that they're being a hero by being the guide in everyone else's story and by helping everyone else, and they lose the momentum in their life because they're investing outward all the time. And that's not that that's a bad thing as long as you, too have your own story and you, too have a direction for your soul. And when people realized that I interviewed eleven women in here, they started asking me if they could tell me their story.
Lou: Kelly, I'm sorry. Kelly, do you hear me?
Kelly: Yeah.
Lou: Sorry. My Internet cut out like I said it might. I switched back to hotspot. I'm going to go off video. You could stay on video because it should be fine on your end. Last thing I heard when it was recording was the book signings and starting to gather.
Kelly: Okay.
Lou: Yeah. Sorry about that.
Kelly: That's okay. So I had the gathering thing started to happen, and I went to five book signings and 25 different book groups and a lot of book discussions. I started speaking at bookstores and women when they realized that I had interviewed women so they could share their story. The women wanted to share their stories with me, which was awesome. But I saw the pattern that they were not really owning their own story. They were acting as guides and their spouse's story or their children's story, even their pets. They're just taking care of everybody else, but not really realizing they have their own story. And I read Donald Miller's story brand. It's a marketing book, but it laid out storytelling architecture, where you have a hero and a villain and. And a guide. And so I started trying to build some kind of content that allowed the women to go back and relearn how to understand things like deservingness and their own place in the world. I created a six month program thinking this is a problem because I keep seeing it everywhere. And then I read a book called Holy Moments by Matthew Kelly. And it was right after I just sat down and had a huge download and created this program called Momentum Effect. I just did a Jerry Maguire moment where it was just a twelve page manifesto of this is what needs to happen. These are the women, this is the way it should go. This is the market. And I went to a beach trip with my cousins, who are twins, and they both brought the book independently of each other because they're twins, and gave it to me and my sister and my sister in law. And I opened that book and it said almost exactly what I had written down and laid out with the program, which is, if you feel like something's missing, that does not mean that something is wrong with you. It means that you are in connection with your soul. And your soul is trying to say there's more to life. Go get it. And so these women were all feeling that something's missing. I love my life, but it was just a commonality of all their stories, even though they were happily married and had great kids and a beautiful little golden retriever, and everything's perfect. But something's missing and it's their own momentum, it's their own story, it's their own life. And I just think it's so beautiful how Matthew Kelly put it, that that is your sacred truth. There's more. And because it's a sacred truth, you should not ignore. Know, I just think that's so beautiful.
Lou: Is the holy moments book. Is that like a little book?
Kelly: I think I actually gave me this.
Lou: Book and I don't think I actually read it, but now you're making me like, I need to read.
Kelly: Yeah, you got to go find it. I know. Usually I keep it right here because when I do webinars, I read from it sometimes, but I think it's my bag from the talk I gave last night. So. Yeah, I just think his words are incredible. And he has a YouTube channel that's full of amazing, inspirational things. But this specifically, the title of chapter one was there is more. And I was like, so it was also another sign for me that I was on the right track. I write all this stuff, twelve pages, build it, and then I open that book, and it's like, yes, there's nothing wrong with you. It just means there's more, and you got to go get it. It's crazy.
Lou: So do you start with the program, or do you start with one on one? How does this become okay, now, this is the business you step into. Like, okay, I have a coaching practice. What was that process like?
Kelly: Well, the swipe right effect workbook has 13 chapters with 13 empowerment practices. So I started with a one on one coaching, mostly for women going through divorce, because I felt like that was what I could most specifically speak to. So I did the one on one coaching with that, and it's basically just going through empowerment practices with accountability and with support and with love and kindness, and making sure you're being kind to yourself. And then in May of last year, that whole momentum effect program just came out of me. Not out of me, through me. I had gone to a conference. I'd met these people, and I kept saying, there's something. There's something. There's something I'm supposed to do. And I'm trying to be patient, but I'm impatient. There's something I'm supposed to do. These women keep saying the same things. After I had that download, and then I got the book and I had all the confirmation, I just went for it. I scheduled the retreat. I put down $9,000, and I was like, please make this happen. And I filled the retreat. But the retreat is the beginning of a six month program. And every month after the retreat, the five months after the retreat, we'd meet for a masterclass. And I hired five teachers to teach these master classes. There aren't deserving this. Letting go of the bad things in your life, life purpose, embodying your life purpose. And our friend Allison, that we have in common, she taught body healing from trauma. At the retreat, none of these women had ever heard that information, so it was beautiful to watch the impact. We talk about forgiveness. So every month is a master class from somebody, not me, and then we do a one on one together. Each person, there's twelve women, and I do the one on ones. And then we also do a mastermind. So we do the class, the one on one. They get a workbook. We work on the workbook together, and then they all come together and discuss the material. So every month, there's one topic deservingness we do a master class, we do the workbook, and then we all come together and talk about it. And the way these women started realizing that they deserve to have this information and this time for themselves and they deserve to have the more that they want. They were feeling guilty that they wanted more, and then they were able to discern what the more was and then discover the path towards it. And it's a huge risk you take as a coach to just put your baby out there and hope that somebody wants it, hope that it's going to help them. But you don't know until you do it.
Lou: You have to take that risk, right? You got to start. Yeah.
Kelly: Otherwise that page manifesto just goes nowhere.
Lou: Incredible. And so that's amazing. To go from publishing this book to filling your first retreat, how were you making connections? Was it through your book talks that you were, like, building an email list? Was it people you knew? How did you kind of market yourself for the retreat to be able to fill it for your first retreat? That's incredible.
Kelly: Everything I tried failed at first.
Lou: We all have to just start that. That's part of the fun.
Kelly: I had to fail and fail and fail and give up and start over and give up and start over because giving up never lasted for more than 24 hours because I was on a mission. When you're on a mission, you let yourself have a pity party and then you keep going again.
Lou: Is there a failure that was notably challenging or disappointing? I know I've definitely experienced those in my journey. Is there anyone you can share that was like, oh, it's always like, people are going to love this, they're going to want this, and then it doesn't work and you're like, what the.
Kelly: It's so great. Why don't you want
Kelly: just. I tried Facebook ads. It never felt right even doing that. So I just kind of know. I tried Facebook. I tried,
Kelly: tried.
Lou: Did you hire someone for that or were you trying to run it on your own?
Kelly: Sorry?
Lou: Did you hire someone for the ads or did you run it on your own?
Kelly: I did hire a virtual assistant and we kind of did everything together, but I would do all.
Lou: But it wasn't like an ad specialist.
Kelly: No, I just hired a virtual assistant because I was also processing my podcast. And if I at the time doing that, I was never going to get to write, of course. And the writing is where I develop all of the ideas to help people if I have to write it first. But what every coach will tell every coach to do is go to your friends, go to your network. And I did. And the first person to sign up was my cousin, and the second person to sign up was my friend Karen. And she referred three people to me. And then I went back to. I used to be on the board at the chamber. I went to the women that had been on the board with me, and I asked them if they knew anybody. I'm not saying you need this. I'm just saying, do you know anybody? And people started making referrals. Well, I got up to six people, which was barely going to cover the rent of the place. And I think I was three weeks out, and I got a text, hey, my wife made this video, and it was from one of my former mentors when I was in the news business. My wife made this video. I thought you'd like to see it. Well, she's in the video saying, I realized I needed something more. I was like, hey, I think she might want to come to my retreat. And then somebody out of the blue calls me a soccer coach for my daughter, like, her whole time in middle school and high school, and says, I saw all your content on LinkedIn. It's amazing. And I think my wife needs to come to your retreat. And it just started going like this, and I was like, wow. And then it was full. I had been stressing, like, to the point of feeling like I needed to puke for months, and our friend Allison had to listen to me whine and be scared, but all of a sudden, it was full. Now, I did gave scholarships to two people that needed it, and they were here in town, and they had lost their job, and they were a mess, and they had no money, but brilliantly creative, intelligent women that just needed a break. And so I said, if you'll help me with the food and you'll help me just kind of be a caretaker to everybody. It's three people instead of one, and that is a gift to me, and I will gift you the retreat. And if you want to continue to the whole program, you can continue through the whole program. But I need hands on deck. And they were like, heck, yeah. And they were about to finish the first circle of women next month, and they've gone through the whole thing and found a job. One of them moved and found a new job. One of them stayed here and got a new job. Their lives turned around, and it's great.
Lou: So many good things to learn from what you shared. I think just highlighting. And every coach will tell you to go to your network. And not only that, I'm reading a book that I've just fallen in love with, because I followed this guy for a long time and everything he's speaking is like, oh, I did this, but didn't know I was doing it. And I think it's just really good, solid business advice for people that are looking to launch their own business. It's called million dollar weekend by Noah Kagan. And he talks about your zone of influence and when you want to start a business. We think that ideally, yes, to see it really thrive and scale like strangers find our work and then purchase from us. That's where it goes for sure. However, where it starts doesn't need to be that. It starts in our zone of influence and like you said, communities that you're a part of, friends, cousins, people that know something. So just to highlight that, because I think it sometimes feels like we need to go somewhere else when it's actually we can help people that are around our sphere, at least we can start and invite that. And it sounds like you starting there then opened up kind of the magic of people reaching out and, oh, I know this person, and I might know someone who's good with that. So I think that's just a really great thing to highlight from how this began. And, yeah, congratulations on bringing that together.
Lou: My partner, like I said, she runs a retreat business, and I've seen the struggles, right. I've seen how hard sometimes it is get people to leave their house to go somewhere else and logistically vent plan. It's something that I don't have any interest in doing the event planning. So I have a deep respect for people that, starting with getting people together, obviously, I think it's really cool to do it as part of a program, right? Where it's like, yes, we're getting together and then we know each other, and now we're together in this virtual space, it sounds like, which I think has just an added layer of connection and then potential benefit. So really exciting. And the mastermind piece, I love mastermind, so I'm glad that you have that piece in it. It sounds like it's actually a true mastermind, too, because sometimes people use the word mastermind, but then it's really just like group coaching, and it's not really a mastermind because a mastermind, I think, is having that, everyone having a voice in it and learning from each other and having kind of all that come really great.
Kelly: And the beautiful thing about that for me as the coach is I get to keep learning, too, because the master class teachers I've hired, I'm learning from them and I'm learning from my clients because they'll say this unbelievable golden nugget. And the next day I'm writing a LinkedIn newsletter for it. It's just like, wow. We had one woman say, I've been trying to make revolutionary change in my life and I realize I need evolutionary change. And that blew my mind. I was like, yes, some people need the revolution, some people need the evolution, and you need to start realizing. And so I wrote this whole 1200 word post on LinkedIn about it. And I love the LinkedIn newsletter because it's helping me write my next book. It's helping me focus on new content, and it's an obligation, it's like a weekly obligation to make myself do that. You did ask about failures. One thing that, that I did do wrong was I kept looking to other people for answers. And I went to a book retreat and I put a lot of money down and it was a risk for me and I didn't get the return. And then I hired a coach for three months and I got an amazing amount of return. And it was very one on one. We met every week. It was an intensive, but I am so type a. It's like she gives me a list of things to do and I get it done. And then I did another coach later in the year to teach me how to coach. And it was a group situation again. And I could tell that they had grown fast and were overwhelmed and there was no one on one. There was no accountability. By these three experiences, I really learned a lot about what I need in a coach because I do need a coach. I think I can do 30 things at once. And a coach keeps me centered. And I think that if you're going to hire somebody to help you start something new, make sure you ask questions and questions and questions and make sure there's a one on one component, because that is a mistake. I hate to think of the thousands of dollars I would love to have back that I could have put into a one on one situation instead of a group. I got all caught up in their spark and their success and their thing, and I made a couple of financial. I learned from some.
Lou: What was the book?
Kelly: The school of hard knocks.
Lou: That's the biggest learnings, right when we spend that money and it's like, okay, I mean, I think of this differently. I have my own experience in that for sure. Was it a book retreat of learning to market and publish, write? I'm just curious on the book end what that retreat was about.
Kelly: It was about a year ago. So my book had only been out about a month, and they would read the book, review it, and then it was mastermind format. So everybody's on the hot seat for 30 minutes with the two coaches and the feedback I got on the hot seat was good and I implemented it and I did kind of a second edition of the book, and I think the book was better. And they told me I needed a new cover, and so I got a new cover. I mean, I listened. I did get valuable advice or in the hot seat. And then the mastermind part was interesting because we got to watch everybody else be on the hot seat. And, man, I was taking notes, like ferociously. But then after that, it was supposed to be six months of support and everything was group. Everybody was in a different place. Some people had been on their 7th book. I was on my first.
Lou: I needed to get customized for you.
Kelly: Yeah, because I knew enough to be dangerous having been in the news publishing business. And I love the marketing part, but that's not what it's all about. And, you know, and I kept wanting to go back to that and my coach was like, unless you're just going to start churning out 30 books and it's going to be making money through numbers, quantity versus quality, because that is a model to just keep pumping out new books and little handbooks.
Lou: Sure.
Kelly: But anyway, I learned so much more with the one on one and got valuable advice because after the first experience, I really took my time and I interviewed this person and they were willing to invest time with me to show me what they could do for me. And that's the best kind of coach. They care enough to invest their time to make sure they are a fit, too. They want to be a success as much as you do.
Lou: Absolutely.
Kelly: Yeah.
Lou: And just one more question, just for my own curiosity around, because I have a mastermind, too, and I have some guests, and they're typically like people I know. I've been able to have a decent network, especially over the last year, and this podcast has definitely helped that as well. But do you pay the people that you have coming on? Do you have them just kind of give a presentation or are you asking them questions like interview style for that type of class?
Kelly: Master class teachers?
Lou: Yeah, exactly.
Kelly: You pay them and it's expensive, but I charge a pretty good amount of money for the program. The big amount of money also includes the retreat, and it's not as much as I probably should be charging, but this is the beginning, right? You earn your way to the big ticket. But I do pay them. And they come with a 1 hour presentation and stay for 30 minutes.
Kelly: So it's 2 hours. And then the last 30 minutes I'm going through the workbook showing them what they're going to be doing, trying to just kind of pre explain what I had in mind with it in case they get in there and they'd feel a little lost because it's hard work. What I'm asking them to do, I don't throw softball questions. I'm asking them to dig deep and giving them different things. Meditation for finding your life purpose and listing out. I have them build a resume for their life purpose. And so it's the things they did in their life when they felt like they were succeeding. And that's your line item on the resume. This made me happy. This made me feel good about myself. I knew I was making a difference. And you build a resume that way. So it's hard work. It's not just something that you can dilly dally around with. So I try to give them as much attention as I can and don't just throw them out into the wood.
Lou: There's a lot of women that maybe are listening to this and are inspired and maybe they want to get into writing a book or coaching. And so I guess we talked a lot about the book end aspect, but is there any you mentioned, I think, in your business advice where it's just like, oh, this is what I wanted to ask you about this. I haven't said, I know we're kind of at time, but you mentioned no one can make it happen for you. And you formed an advisory board. This is something I've never heard before, a coach forming an advisory board. So I needed to ask. And let's focus on that.
Kelly: Well, I did it for my first business, homepage Media group, and we were about six months in. I had a partner. She was the journalist and I was the business marketing, but also wrote. And so we had good corresponding skill sets. But we're very different people. But we don't have a lawyer. It's like, what do we not have? Because we both have a lot of history. We were in our 50s, right? So we had a life with skills.
Kelly: And these were people we knew from church, people we knew from the chamber, soccer moms, whatever. We chose people who were representative of our audience, and we had people that we knew we would come up against challenges in the business. So we had a life coach, we had a lawyer, we had a financial advisor, we had a business broker, because we didn't know if we were building to sell or just building.
Kelly: And a public relations specialist. And so they were just friends from our circle, and it was an advisory board, so they were not paid. We met once a month to get us going, and then after the first year, we went to once a quarter. No, I think we went to every other month. And then on year three, we did once a quarter because we were on a roll. And then when she exited, I pulled them all back in and said, I need you every month now, because I'm running the whole thing by myself now. And they were awesome. And they stayed with me the whole nine years until I sold the business. With this coaching business, I'm starting slow with the advisory board. I actually had a very dear friend, so smart, really intelligent woman, say, can I be the first member on your advisory board? And I was like, yes. I don't know when I'll have the rest of. But so she is my advisory board. No, she and my friend Karen and Allison are unofficially on my advisory board, but I'm not having meetings with everybody because they're all working on their own things. And so Allison and I have begun to meet weekly, and we have office hours where we both sit there and work on our own businesses and bounce things off of each other. And so that's like an accountability. Know that's important. And then Karen is still in the first circle, and so she's also unofficially on it, but she gives me great feedback as someone who's going through the process. So it's still unofficial right now, but I kind of look at those three women as my advisory board right now. But if you're building a business, I think it's one of the best things that you can do for yourself. And it's free. Well, it's time. And you can get nice danishes when you get together.
Lou: It's a really cool idea. It has me thinking of, like, wow, should I try to hire an advisory board? It feels like it makes it up to a different level, even psychologically. Like, oh, this is even more legit now. So thanks for that idea. I'm going to be sitting with that, and it's something I've never even thought about forming, so I appreciate that. Kelly, this has been so much fun. I think there's been so much value shared for people listening. I know you mentioned what you're working on now. I mean, check out her book, the swipe right effect. If any of this is kind of inspiring you, if you're in a similar situation, whether it's through divorce, and we're looking for more support in that. What's next? What are you excited about? What are you working on?
Kelly: Well, I'm trying to fill my next retreat. It's April 11 through 14th, 2024, and I'm writing my third book called the Traveling Effect. And it's about solo travel for anybody, but mostly for women. And just because women are afraid of solo travel and they don't need to be, it's one of the most incredible things you can do. So I'm writing that and just building the coaching business and I love product creation, so I get a little distracted by that.
Lou: Me too.
Kelly: I'm starting a new program called Momentum Revolution and it's all about getting momentum with your habits.
Lou: Love it. Super exciting. Where can any last words or where do you want to send people to? Website and socials? LinkedIn. It sounds like you're active on, so feel free to kind of share where people can find you.
Kelly: I'm Ckcollins author on all the socials, TikTok and Instagram and Facebook. And my website is CkCollins Co. Co. And there's a lot of resources there and information about momentum effect and the retreat. You can choose just to do the retreat and not have to do the six month program. And then I'll be rolling out next week. The momentum revolution.
Lou: Yay. Thanks so much, Kelly, for being on. And to everyone listening, thanks for taking the time and we'll see you next time.