How to Trust Your Business Vision with Actress Turned Entrepreneur Kelly Collins-Lintz

This just in: doing what everyone expects of you is OUT, doing what what makes you happy is IN.

Kelly Collins-Lintz – actress of both film and movies, blogger, writer, momager (her kids are also in the acting biz on shows like Bosch, the Walking Dead, and Under the Dome) says “listening to your gut is the best way to create your own path to success,” and this woman knows what she is talking about!

From the time she was small, Kelly was one of those people who loved to entertain and encourage others. She got her start as a professional actress when she was working for a non-profit organization and doing a bit of commercial work along the side. After hearing that still small voice that she attributes to God, she took the leap into full-time acting and landed roles in productions like One Tree Hill, Gifted, We are the Millers and many other roles. Her children followed her into the business and have found great success in shows like the Walking Dead and Bosch.

There was one little problem -with all this success, Kelly still wasn't happy. 

So she dialed into her gut again - both figuratively and literally and discovered a product that transformed both her personal and professional life called Plexus. This nutritional supplemental system is focused on gut health and she experienced such life changing results, she started her own highly successful business advocating for the benefits of this product that she refers to as "personal development program with a compensation plan."

If you ever felt that guilt of being highly successful at what you're doing and still not happy, this is a must-watch. Kelly offers so much wisdom about following your own inner path to happiness, you'll want to have your journal ready. 

Take Action...

• Do you want to start your own business but are on the fence? Check out my article that gives you 10 reasons why you should. 
• If you need to know what's involved with starting a business step-by-step before making a move like this, download this free guide. 
• Need validation from an expert like me who can assure you of the market potential of your idea? Book a call with my partner Jen and I and let's chat. 

About My Guest: Kelly Collins-Lintz is actress, Momager, writer and Sapphire Ambassador for Plexus. She entertains and inspires people on screen and on social media and in everything she does.

(Which I know first-hand as she and I were roomies when we both moved to Orlando almost 30 years ago!)

About Us: I'm Betsy Jordyn and my business development firm builds strong and powerful brands for remarkable consultants and coaches and their unique strengths. Simply put we design consulting and coaching practices that position you as a thought leader and sought-after expert by helping you find the words to describe the value of what you do and use them on your website and in your marketing. Check out our roadmap to accelerated success as well as our mentoring and website design programs at https://www.betsyjordyn.com.  

Links:

Kelly's blog: www.lifeinthehoneywagon.com

Check out my FREE resources to help you get instant traction and accelerate your success! Click here for free goodies.

Schedule a consult call to talk about creating your brand messaging and positioning and online platform: https://www.betsyjordyn.com/schedule

Connect on Social Media:

• Betsy Jordyn = https://www.linkedin.com/in/betsy-jordyn/
• Kelly Collins-Lintz (guest) = https://www.facebook.com/kelly.collinslintz

Related Blog Post:

• 2020 Study: Why Smart People Start Their Own Consulting Businesses or Coaching Practices
• How Prophetable is Your Consulting?
• From Employee to Healthpreneur: Adrienne Barela's Inspiring Story

To Read the Full Transcript:

Betsy Jordyn:  Welcome everybody.  I am so excited to have my special guest here for this conversation who is my friend of over 30 years, I think by now.

Kelly Collins-Lintz:  Wow.

Betsy: Kelly Collins-Lintz.  It’s such an honor, such a pleasure.  I’m so excited.  Kelly, not—besides having the distinction of being my first roommate that I had when I first moved here to Orlando, and one of my bridesmaids from a million years ago.  She is a mom, first, an actress, a momager, meaning she is in charge of her kids’ career and a Sapphire Ambassador for Plexus, and Kelly is going to share with us her story around how she’s really found a way to express her passion and her purpose through her work.  So, welcome, Kelly.

Kelly: Thank you.  Now I feel old though, so good-bye. 

Betsy: I shouldn’t have said that.

Kelly:  Thirty years, are you kidding me?

Betsy:  No, I only met Kelly like 10 years ago, it was like, you know, we were young pups and now, look us now.  That’s what happened.

Kelly:  Oh my goodness. 

Betsy:  Kelly, tell us, what I’d love to do is go back in time.  When I met you, you were thinking about starting an acting career but you really didn’t go full on into it until a few years later.  Tell us a little bit about your story around how you got into acting and how you experienced the acting profession and what you’ve done.

Kelly: Right.  Well, it’s interesting because, I’ve always ever since I was a very young child had the goal of working as a professional actress.  I was one of those people that knew what they wanted to do from a very early age, whether it was for the right or wrong reasons and I pursued it all the way through my growing up years, via training.  I was that annoying kid that was in the school play and then everyone leaves school and do the community theater play at night.  I was literally Lea Michelle on Glee before there was Lea Michelle on Glee.  That was me. 

And then I took a little bit of a detour.  I went to Penn State for performance and got my degree in performance and through a series of odd events, I took a job in Orlando that had nothing to do with the industry and it was one of those things where God—God literally said, this is what I want you to do.  It made no sense and yet, at the same time, you know how sometimes you get that gut feeling of this makes no sense but I know I’m supposed to do it and so I did.  I took this job that had nothing to do with the entertainment industry and I moved to Orlando.

It was there that I got my first start professionally in acting because when people leave drama school, you don’t really hearing them saying, all right, I’m off to Orlando.  Like they’re either off to New York or they’re off to Los Angeles and that’s what I--

Betsy: Or they’re going to Orlando for Disney.

Kelly:  Or for Disney, right.  And that really wasn’t me either.  What the truth about central Florida is, it was the commercial capital of the country because it’s warm all year round there and because the talent pool was pretty small, I was able to get an agent really easily and start working professionally in the industry, even doing some small roles in television because there were some shows that were shooting in the back lot of Universal Studios, shows shooting in Miami.  I was able to actually start doing more than my drama school counterparts were.  And here they thought I was leaving—I wasn’t even going to pursue it and then they’re like, did I just see you on this show?  And I’m like, yeah!  They’re like, how did that happen?  I’m like, God.  Ha! 

Betsy: Can I ask you a question about this one though, so you were working in a very different type of role, what made you decide that this whole acting side of you really needed to have expression?  What were the signs that said, I do need to go get an agent, even though you were doing some other work that you felt was meaningful, how did you know that this was something you should pursue?

Kelly: Because I felt like God sort of directed me into some areas where he was like, hey listen, this is what I wanted you to do all along, I just needed you to go through the back door because it’s a much better way.  Sometimes, the advantage of listening to God, whenever we’re trying to make decisions, is that he has a birds’ eye view of the best path to get there.  And so, when you choose to listen to that, sometimes you have an advantage.  I really feel like, He led me into some place where he was like, see this would not have happened if you would’ve followed your little plan of moving New York, where I’m quite certain I would’ve gotten eaten alive, would’ve been very discouraged and would’ve moved back home to my parents’ basement, immediately.  

Betsy:  Some people might be saying, so Kelly, you hear from God, what does He say?  Does He come down on high? What do you mean when you hear the voice of God?  How do you get yourself in that state where you’re attuning to a direction from a different part of you?  How do you get to that place, or is that just the way you’ve always been wired?

Kelly: That’s the way I’ve always been wired, from a very young age.  I kind of had a little bit of a spiritual experience when I was 4 years old, where it was very clear to me that there was a higher power that had created me, that loved me, that wanted the best for me.  That’s a whole other story, but I’ve always listened to what I call the still, small voice.  It’s that voice in our head that says, go here, not there or don’t choose him, choose him.  Or even as simple as, perhaps one sleeve of Oreos is plenty for today, you know.  I always listen to that voice and I’ve never—I’ve never regretted doing what it said.  Ever.

Betsy:  How do you know the difference between that small voice and sometimes we hear a small voice that’s nasty to us too.  It’s like, oh my god, who are you kidding, you should have that second sleeve of Oreos.  How do you know the difference between the voice that you hear inside your head that is for your good and then the one who sort of keeps you down?

Kelly:  Well, for one, because the still small voice is not nasty.

Betsy: That’s true.

Kelly:  Yeah, it’s never nasty.  It always wants what’s best for you.  So, if it’s telling you not to eat the sleeve of Oreos, it’s because it wants you to fit into your jeans.  I mean, I’ve definitely listen to that other voice many, many times too and allowed it to rule the day.  I think one of the secrets of success is the people that don’t do that.  That tell that voice to be quiet.  Your mind is so powerful and it’s one of the reasons why I feel like I’ve been able to be successful in a variety of arenas because I have not let that voice win the war.  It’s won some battles, but not the war. 

Betsy:  That is really powerful.

Kelly:  Yeah.

Betsy: Because there could be that battle that you hear in your head is, I really want to do this but then you hear the nasty voice that says, "who are you kidding, why would you be this person that would do XYZ.”  It sounds like when you were in that role and you heard the still, small voice say to you, hey, “this acting part of you really does need expression, go for it.” Even though you might have had concerns, you still went for it anyway.

Kelly: Well, yeah and I think you have—in order to be successful in Hollywood, you have to know how to take some gut punches and be in fetal positions.  Rejection is the name of the game and those who are successful have just heard the word “no” more and have not let it deter them.  We’ve heard many, many nos.  You have to audition, professionally, you probably have to audition anywhere from 30-50 times to get one yes.  We don’t even think about the no’s, it’s just part of it. 

Betsy:  When you were down here in Orlando, what was your big break and then where did you go from there?

Kelly:  Oh gosh.  Well, my very first commercial ever was for Kohl’s.  So, I did that.  I did lots and lots of commercials for Aqua Fresh and Kmart and McDonalds.  I did a McDonalds Superbowl commercial.  When I was in Orlando, I was sort of the commercial queen of the universe.  This was before any of my kids joined me in the industry.  Then again, after 10 years—and then, right before I moved out of Orlando, I had the distinction of working with Kermit the Frog.  That was really cool.

Betsy: Wow!

Kelly:  That I still get paid residuals on, to this day.  That was called Kermit’s Swamp Years and it was sort of like, what was Kermit’s childhood like.  And I saved him from dissection is what I did, in the movie.

Betsy: Is Kermit as nice as we remember him to be?

Kelly:  He was so great.

Betsy:  Did you ask him to sing the Rainbow Connection to you personally?

Kelly:  I don’t think I did, but what was really fun was a guy named Steve Widmeyer is the puppeteer behind Kermit.

Betsy:  Is that a trade secret?  That there’s actually a puppeteer behind him?  Go on.

Kelly:  Even between takes, he would not break character.  You would every now and again be watching the monitor between takes and you’d see Kermit yawn.  They were amazing, watching these guys was amazing.  And what’s so weird is at the time when I met him, I said, well where are you based out of Steve and he’s like, oh I live in a little town called Cumming, Georgia.  It’s about 45 minutes north of Atlanta.  I was like, hmm, never heard of that.  Six months later, I would move to Cumming, Georgia. 

Betsy:  Wow.

Kelly:  So, so weird and I still live there.  It is a little town north of Atlanta and again, the still small voice said, “Great, you’ve done what I need you to do in Orlando, now it’s time to go to Atlanta.”  I was able to be in Atlanta on the very ground floor of what has now become one of the biggest film and television industries in the country.

Betsy:  Wow.  You had kids when you were in Orlando and then you moved to Georgia and I believe you had a show too, is that accurate?

Kelly:  We moved to Atlanta and that’s when I really got my start in film and television.  Landing supporting roles in some larger projects.  They would cast their leads out of the LA or New York market but they didn’t want to travel everyone in, because that’s expensive.  A lot of times, the supporting roles would go to local actors and again, I had plopped myself right into the middle of a much more manageable talent pool.  I was able to land roles on shows for NBC.  I did a season of One Tree Hill.  Was able to work on lots of different movies.  It was great.  And then my children followed me into the industry.  My children are most known for even though they’ve all worked on many, many projects is three of my four children have played prominent roles on a little known zombie show called The Walking Dead.  My daughter landed a role on that in seasons 1 and 2.  And again, because they wanted to cast the child actors from here.  And so, Chandler Riggs who played Carl and my daughter who played Sophia were both Atlanta actors.  And so then, I never wanted to go to LA because all of my friends that went to LA—like a lot of times in Orlando, they were like, we’re blowing this popsicle stand, we’re headed to Los Angeles to make it big because we can’t get big roles here in Orlando.  Well, they went to LA and fell off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again, for the most part.  There was a couple of success stories, but it’s difficult, difficult town.  And so, I never had any interest in going there because you know, I would much rather work some than never.  Ha!

However, when my children started landing some great roles, scenes and success, I wanted them to have the opportunity and it’s much easier to get your foot in the door out there as a child actor.  We would spend weeks at a time out there.  I didn’t even want to do that but a manager found us in Los Angeles.  They reached out to us and said, have you ever thought about working in this market. 

Betsy:  Oh, so you were bi-coastal. You were in two homes at the same time.  You didn’t fully move to LA, you were--

Kelly:  Never.

Betsy:  --you still kept your base in Atlanta and you moved to LA.

Kelly:  Yeah, we would only go out there for the portion of the year that’s called pilot season.  That’s when all of the new shows that were trying to get on the air would shoot a pilot episode.  It was a concentrated time of lots of auditions.  We would go out there, try to land on a pilot and then half the time the pilot doesn’t even get picked up.  We did that for a while.  Then the advent of self-taping came into play where you tape your auditions and then you send them in and it really doesn’t matter where you are.  If the casting people know you, they don’t care if you’re there or here or wherever.  That really helped us too. 

Betsy: It’s so interesting because most people would say, oh my gosh, you are living the dream.  You are a Hollywood family, everybody’s successful and at some point, you decided to go and add this whole other dimension to your career around owning your own business and becoming a Plexus Ambassador.  Can you share a little bit more around how did you go from this to this and why is this such an obvious passion project?  If anybody has followed Kelly, Kelly has an amazing Facebook page and she’s got a ton of following around her Plexus business.  Just the passion, just oozes all out of you.  Most people would be like, well this is the dream, why is this the dream?

Kelly: That’s such a great question.  Again, it was a result of the still, small voice saying, go.  You don’t have to understand it, just go.  It began by accident, as a lot of great things do.  Four and a half years ago, I was searching for some solutions for my health.  I was struggling with some issues mainly surrounding mood.  Some chronic anxiety and depression issues and I thought it was because I was a mom of four and we’re all exhausted or that I’m an actor and we’re all angst and crazy.  I just thought it was sort of part of my dark soul.  But no, my gut was unhealthy and I just didn’t know it.  A friend of mine, actually another actress who I played sisters with on a television show about 10 years ago now, she posted on Facebook that she had been able to get off her anxiety meds by getting her gut healthy.  That sounded like total voodoo to me because no doctor ever said that to me, they just wrote me a prescription. 

I tried the products that she suggested that had to do with gut health and root healing.  Boy—it was a miracle.  Within three weeks, I felt a lift in my mood and in three months, I was a completely different human being. 

I still would’ve rather run off a cliff naked and on fire than delve into any kind of network marketing opportunity because I had my preconceived notions of what that was.  People started asking me about it.  People started wanting what I had.  You look happier, what are you doing?  Also, I feel like you’re losing weight, what are you doing?  Your skin looks better, you know.  It became for me, I just basically became a Plexus Ambassador to meet demand. 

Then, at the same exact time that I was looking for solutions for my health, we had a nagging problem in our family in that my children were becoming really successful and they were all working.  The problem is, one of us had to be on set with them at all times.  When you have more than one child working at once, Mark could be in Los Angeles with our daughter who was starring on Bosch.  I would have to be in Budapest, Hungary with my son who was starring on The Alienist.  Every now and again, we would be like, I wonder who’s at home paying the mortgage.  We don’t know.  It became a real issue of how can we work when we’re helping our children work.  I became to really understand how a lot of these parents end up having to live off of their children, because there’s no choice, but I did not like that.  It was not a comfortable place for me to be.

One night, I just sat down and I was like, Lord, I am profoundly exhausted and I don’t have a solution to this.  I don’t know how to do anything else.  I’m an actor and I really don’t know what else I would want to get out of bed to do.  He’s like, I got you.  A couple of months later is when I ran across Plexus and again, he had to trick me.  He had to really trick me, but when I started seeing how much I was helping people, when friends started calling me saying, I can’t believe how much better I feel.  My depression is gone.  Oh my gosh, I’ve lost 30 pounds, or my autoimmune issues are resolving. 

I started to feel an emotion that the entertainment industry had never brought to me.  That was peace, serenity and joy.  I want to bring up this idea that a lot of times, what we think will make us happy, actually takes us in the opposite direction.  While we had a lot of success in Hollywood, while we had a lot of admiration for that, which felt good, it’s a glitzy glam situation and people admire it, it’s unique.  We had a lot of satisfaction, I guess but not a lot of peace and joy.

I will say this, the closer that my children got to fame, the more we dealt with mental health issues in them. 

Betsy:  Wow. 

Kelly: Which is the whole--

Betsy:  Can you say that phrase again, is that when you go closer to what you think would make you happy.  What you just said was so powerful and it really doesn’t. There’s something about flying too close to the sun.  It’s just not all it’s cracked up to be.  That’s just so powerful.  I just want to sit with that whole idea for a second.  

Kelly: Well, I think there’s the idea that fame equals happiness and in almost 100% of the cases that I know of and we’ve worked with many A-list actors that everybody knows, the opposite was true.  The more famous they were, the more miserable they were.  When we began to experience the same, loss of satisfaction, a lot of people admiring us, like I said, but also the primary emotions that I was actually feeling in my body were anxiety, fear, financial instability.  You get a job and you’re like, well this is going to be ending in February, then what are we going to do? 

I was really tired of the financial instability.  I was really tired of being at the whim of what I called an abusive spouse.  Hollywood is like an abusive spouse in that it gives you pearls one day and tells you you’re beautiful and the next day it will beat the crap out of you.  And you never know why.  You never can duplicate what you did to get the pearls in the first place because what works one day doesn’t work the next.  It’s a very unsettling, unstable situation to be in.  It’s why I feel like most Hollywood actors are also, have addiction problems. 

I was like, oh my god, this doesn’t make me happy, at all.  This doesn’t make me happy and I only realized it when I actually started feeling happiness and joy from this other venture that maybe wasn’t as shiny, wasn’t as flashy or unique and yet, I felt so much more peace and serenity, not to mention, I started getting a paycheck that was insane.  I was like, I mean, I was able to finally afford the first new car I’d ever owned.  

Betsy:  People are gonna be like, you were a successful Hollywood actress, I’m super confused why you couldn’t afford a car.  People might say that, so there must be something missing that we have about the shiny fame of acting.

Kelly: Yeah, I mean, only 6% of all actors make a living acting.  They all have other things going on.  Dave Ramsey says the smartest thing you can do is have three sources of income, three streams of income, one of them should be passive.  We had like eight or nine.  I was managing my children.  I was acting myself.  I was voicing audio books.  I was coaching child actors.  I was consulting parents of child actors.  That was a grueling pace I was setting for myself and I was exhausted. 

This opportunity allowed me to let go of some of those methods of earning an income that I didn’t find all that fulfilling.  It was great.  You know, in your 20s and 30s, you’re sort of willing to starve for your art.  In your 40s, you kind of just want some granite countertops.  I’ve been able to get those and I’m like, my computer is sitting on one right now that I was able to afford because of my Plexus income.  That was one of the main reasons why I became intentional about that business.  It also was like, I’m having so much fun doing this, I have to really take a look at this and say, does what I always thought from the time I was four years old would make me happy and yet it’s not, am I brave enough to let it go? 

I think a lot of times what we think is going to make us feel the emotion of happiness and joy in our body does not.  And yet we keep thinking that it will or we haven’t reached the right stage of it yet or we haven’t done this yet and when we do that, then that’s when the emotions come and I think that’s maybe the secret of life, really, is figuring that out. 

Betsy:  You’ve done this more than once, so when you had the other role, back in the day, that was not in the entertainment industry, you asked yourself that same question and went down this path and listened to what that still small voice was saying.  Now you’re at that same point as to say, I want to be happy in what I do.  I want to enjoy my life in a different way and I’m going to listen to this and I’m going to go for this, even if it doesn’t make sense.  People didn’t think this made sense and I went and did it anyway.  Now I’m doing the same again.

Kelly:  Yeah.  Because life is a process and it’s a journey and God knows that and he’s like, well all right, I’m gonna let her go down this path a little bit so that she can learn that Hollywood is a cesspool.  Ironically, this is so crazy, the more successful that I got with Plexus, the more I worked as an actress and I think it’s because I would literally go in, like Hollywood can smell desperation, you know.  I think I started going into auditions like, I’m making six figures, you do what you want.  I started getting more work because I wasn’t so stressed and desperate to get the work. 

Betsy: Yeah, that’s a huge thing.  I talk with my mentees about that all the time is, you can’t need the job more than you can bring to the job.  If that’s the case, people will know it in every, every sense of the word.  That is so brilliant. 

Now you have this Plexus business, tell me what is it that you love the most?  What is so great about it that makes you want to give up a lot of what you were doing before for this business? 

Kelly: Well, I would say mainly the people that I’m working with is a huge part of it.  You have to be a certain kind of narcissist to really make a career as an actor and what that translates to is when you’re in that industry, you’re working with a lot of kinda self-centered, self-absorbed, narcissistic people.  Yes, there’s some good people but the majority you have to be like that to be successful.

I didn’t realize how not fun that was until I started working with a bunch of people who weren’t that way.  One of the things too that we do is, in any entrepreneurial effort, it takes a ton of personal growth and we spend a lot of time doing that.  That translates into every other area of our life.  We’re all pursuing other things, besides Plexus too.  The same things that are helping me become a successful entrepreneur are what’s helping me finish writing a book I’m trying to write, building that platform for that book and for my Plexus business.  We’re learning a lot.  We’re learning it together. 

At a time in my life, where I’m almost an empty nester where our circle usually contracts, mine has exploded in the very best way with some of the best people.  Smart women that do not listen to that negative voice.  They can do anything because they’ve told themselves that they can.  Being around that type of person—and then they help you and they cheerlead you and they’re encouraging to you, it’s just been one of the biggest, unexpected blessings of beginning a business like this.  That’s what I love—that’s what keeps me here is the people.

The products are a no brainer for me.  There’s a lot of great products out there.  I would suggest find one that you’re passionate about.  Maybe it’s cleaning supplies.  Maybe it’s makeup that’s cruelty free.  I don’t know.  For me, it’s gut health and root healing products that to me were life changing.  Changing people’s lives with this has been far more gratifying than saying a few lines in a movie here and there.  

Betsy:  What I’m hearing you say as it relates to what’s so great about this particular business.  One, you have a personal connection to the product.  You’re passionate about it so you have your own personal transformation.  Second is having your own business gave you more control over your earning and what your income looks like.  It sounds like the third thing around it is you got to choose what kind of people you surround yourself with, from a customer standpoint, from a teammate standpoint and you get to surround yourself with really good people and then, it sounds like from the people side also, there’s building that tribe.  You’re building your connections on the whole.  Then the main thing that I heard you say that translates to everything else is, building your own business has been the key personal development opportunity for you that has translated into all the other parts of your life.  That those are some of the big drivers.  Did I miss anything?  Did I hear you right?

Kelly:  Yeah, it’s a personal development program with a compensation plan attached.

Betsy: That’s great.  Personal development plan with a compensation program attached.

Kelly:  Yeah. 

Betsy:  That’s awesome.

Kelly:  Because who wouldn’t love to get paid to personally grow, right?

Betsy:  Because the more you grow as a business owner, the more that you can hold your power and really earn more of what you’re worth because there’s the self-esteem and all of the other things seem to come right alongside with one another. 

Kelly:  It’s given me choices.  One of the first things I did when I started really doing well with Plexus is—I stopped consulting the parents of child actors, which I—I found depressing.  I found that particular aspect of what I did really depressing because so many parents were thinking that they were helping their children toward the road to happiness and I knew it would be the exact opposite.  I found it hard—I found it hard especially when they wanted it more than the child did or they just assumed that notoriety for their child would equal fame and it brings so much negative along with it that I’m like, are you sure that you’re not putting some golden handcuffs on your child.  I became unable to perform that task with integrity.

Betsy: It’s like you were able to create a little bubble that protected the mental health, your mental health and happiness, your peace and satisfaction because you were able to say yes to what made you happy and say no to all the things that were not making you happy. 

Kelly:  Yeah, the most successful people are the best at saying no.  They say no to almost everything.  In 2019, I started saying no and it was like the best thing I ever did.  I figured out what I wanted to be true of me in 15 years, 10 years.  I did a long-term plan.  What do I want my day to look like?  What do I want to do when I wake up?  What am I wearing?  Where am I?  Who am I with?  First of all, you have to know what that looks like and what you want it to look like and then you say to yourself, okay, so what does that person do in a day that got them there in the first place.  And then it really gave me clarity on if a particular thing doesn’t contribute to that long-term vision that I have, it’s a no.  That was the thing, I was a very good child acting coach.  Sought after.  A lot of people were really upset when I said, I’m no longer coaching child actors because I’m good at it, I was good at it.  My own four children were examples of that.  I realized, oh my gosh, just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you’re supposed to do it.

Betsy: Wow. 

Kelly:  What?! 

Betsy: That’s really powerful.  And it seems like everything goes back to you checking in with your own heart and your own spirit at different points in time and instead of going under the pile of saying, what I should is you listening to your heart and saying, what does my heart actually want at this moment and what is it telling me and using happiness as an important parameter to say, just because I can do it doesn’t mean I’m supposed to do it. 

Kelly:  Right.

Betsy:  If it doesn’t make you happy.  I want to ask--

Kelly:  So many moms do that.  So many moms do all kinds of stuff that they don’t want to do because they’re good at it. 

Betsy:  So many business owners do that.  I spend so much time when I’m helping my mentees around building the business that they love is shadow boxing this track record of what they should do because they know how to do it and they’re good at it, it’s just not what they want to do now.  It’s really figuring out how to make that leap. 

If you could say one thing to those who are listening around how do you go about creating a life that you don’t want to escape from, that actually feels like you, that you have work that makes you happy, what is that one thing that you would suggest as the next step that people can do? 

Kelly: I think I would go back to, get rid of what everybody else tells you that you should be doing.  Really sit down, take a whole weekend.  Write a story, the story of you in 10 years.  What does it look like?  Where would you be happiest?  Is it in a mountain home?  Is it by the beach?  What are you doing every day?  If you could do anything you wanted.  Who would you be helping?  What kind of people would be surrounded by? 

Figure that out first.  That’s huge.  Then, back it up and say, what did that person do each and every day that got her to that point.  Then, make a list of those things and anything that isn’t on that list, you say no to. 

Betsy: Listen, think through what you really want.  Say yes to what supports that and no to what doesn’t.

Kelly:  Yeah.  For example, Plexus just expanded into Mexico.  I want to be able to share my story in Mexico someday.  My health and wellness journey in Mexico in Spanish.  In 10 years, I want to be able to do that.  Well, if I want to be able to do that, I better frickin’ learn Spanish.  That sounds overwhelming, but not if you take 20 minutes a day and you learn Spanish.  

So many people think, well it’s too late, I’m too old.  What could you do, instead of whining about being too old, if you took 10 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day, downloaded Rosetta Stone and spent 20 minutes a day learning Spanish.  In a year, would you be fluent?  Maybe not, but would you know more than you knew today?  Yeah. 

Too many people just don’t begin because it’s just gonna take too long.  It’s just gonna take too long.  You have to figure out what you want.  If you want to be an author, you darn well better be writing every single day.  If you’re not writing the book that you’re gonna write or you want to write, you better be writing every day if you want to be a writer.

Betsy:  It’s doing like those small things towards the goal.  It’s like really trusting that the goals has merit and that you’re wanting it is a good thing.  You can just do it in small steps to get you to that goal.  Everything is one small step but it really begins with listening to whatever it is and trusting that, that this has got value and to go after that one.

Kelly:  Yeah.

Betsy: Thank you.  I can’t even—I know I’ve taken up so much of your time already.  I am so grateful and I know those who are listening in are super grateful for your amazing wisdom and your journey and your constant—constant courage and your constant desire to be the best version of you.  It’s been inspiring to watch you.  I’ve known you for a long time, people say, well nobody really changes, I’m like, well the essence of who you are is you but you’re just an amazing person then and you’re even more amazing now, so I’m super grateful for the opportunity to talk to you today.

Kelly: Well, thanks for having me.