Kelly Roach Shares Her SECRET to Business Success

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Restrictions apply. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.
We have a tremendous episode for you today, a conversation with Kelly Roach. among rising up out of a household that was filled with drama and fear, barely living above the poverty line.
Kelly worked her way out of that situation, becoming one of the youngest senior vice presidents in the history of her Fortune 500 firm. She today has six different businesses, highly successful, all seven figures to eight figure businesses.
And she runs it all through the filter of her family and her faith. And in this episode, what we dive into is how to bring faith into your business, how to think about it, why it's important.
And tactically, how do we integrate our beliefs in the creator, in God? How do we work them into our business in a way that is real and true to us, as well as helping us build deeper connections with our employees, with our prospects, with our customers, and really driving massive growth through faith, not as a tactic, but as a pure belief structure that we cultivate and integrate into our lives. And how do we not become fearful of any type of consequences from bringing faith and talking about faith in our business? This is a wonderful episode.
If faith is part of your life and you work in or own a business, you are going to want to wait, particularly for the last 10 minutes of this episode, where we get highly detailed on what it takes to bring faith into your business in a successful and productive way. Before we get to Kelly, I want to give a quick shout out and reminder to you guys, if you are not subscribed to this show, it would mean the world to me.
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It also helps me understand what parts of the conversation either made sense or that

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My friends, I love you for being here. Let's get on to Kelly Roach.

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Kelly, thank you for taking the time.
Glad to have you here. Excited to be here.
Thanks for having me. Awesome.
So in spending some time researching your story, one of the places, one of the things that you highlight kind of in your, you know, who you are is, you know, you say you came,

you grew up, you know, just above the poverty line. And my story is kind of very similar to that.
We never were hungry, but we luxury wasn't an option. You know, even even what we consider luxuries, most people today wouldn't wouldn't even blink Yeah, I'm really interested in one, how you felt you did that.
And to where like, what do you think the characteristics are of the people who pull themselves out of those situations and thrive in their lives? and those who continue to go to the same bar, you know, kind of live the same exact way their

parents did and never break free of of that place of kind of just getting by. Yeah, it's so it's so fascinating, right? So, you know, for me, actually, it was really my story is kind of interesting because my dad actually worked for a nonprofit, a religious nonprofit.
And in deciding to do so, basically, we were living off of the wage that could barely support one person. And there were five kids in my family.
So it was insane. I don't even know how they pulled this off to put food on the table, but they did after a lot of stress, anxiety, crying, depression,

you know, constant stress in our household. But, you know, I'm a person of faith.
One thing my parents did really, really well is they instilled that in me from a young age. And, you know, I always kind of looked at life from this perspective, right? There's things in life that you can do something about and there's things in life that you can't.
So for example, if you have a devastating loss in your life, someone that you care about passes away, or you suddenly get a terminal illness, you know, these are things that you cannot control in your life. You can't decide whether or not they're going to happen.
You can't do anything to change the fact that this event has happened. And now what you can do is decide how you're going to respond to it.
But to me, since a very young age, since I was literally on the free lunch program and I was mortified one day when there was a volunteer lunch lady that ripped open my envelope and didn't know that I was on the free program and that there was nothing in it. And it was in front of all the kids.
And that was like my final straw of like, I will not live like this. I will not have this life.
I will not do this because I always saw money as being something that we can influence and control. And it is, you know, anyone on YouTube for free can learn how to make money.
Anyone who has cell service and a cell phone can make millions of dollars from their home. And anyone who has the desire to change their financial situation can.
And we can come up with all the stories and excuses and reasons why our situation's harder and our situation's more complex. And, you know, there's a reason why we can't.
But the truth is, is in the environment that we live in today, that really, truly is accessible and possible for pretty much everyone that has internet service. And from a very young age, having that experience, I just made the decision that I just simply wasn't going to live like that.
I wasn't going to be put in a situation to be compromised, embarrassed, feeling very exposed and vulnerable in that way in an area of life that I felt could be learned.

And so it was really a decision for me at a really young age that I believe, unlike my father, that I can make money and do good in the world.

I don't need to compromise and say the only way I can do good in the world is if I don't have enough money to take care of my family. And so I think I've been on this journey since a really young age to figure out how can I use my gifts? How can I make lots of money? And how do I do tremendous good in the world by focusing on the things that I in fact can influence and control in my life.
And, you know, I think that's probably a lesson that's pretty relevant to most people listening in some area of life when you listen to this show today. How old were you when you kind of first had this thought that you didn't want to live this way? You know, it's funny because I was talking about this story, I think, with my daughter, maybe the other day, and she asked me what grade I was in.
And I said, I honestly, I can't remember. That's so bad.
I want to say it was probably like, I'm going to say it was around sixth grade. I'm going to say it was around sixth grade.
I was old enough that I was like, yeah, no, no, you know, and, and, you know, since I was a really young person, as a very young person, I was first a mother's helper and then I was a gatekeeper at the pool. And then I started waitressing as soon as I was legally able.
And I had five jobs all throughout college. So I just made it my business to say, I'm going to learn as much as I possibly can.
I'm going to acquire as many useful skills as I possibly can. and I'm going to do whatever it takes to make my life my masterpiece and to not live based on standards that were set for me, but standards that were set by me.
And that's worked out pretty well so far. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
That's actually so that's like six grades, like around 12 years old. That's right around the same time that I had the same exact thought.
I remember, you know, I can remember like walking down the streets of, you know, my small town to my buddy's house and just saying to myself, like, I don't want this future. You know what I mean? Like, like, like if I choose to live here because it's my choice, that's one thing.
Yes. I'm not going to be forced to live here because I haven't done anything that gives me the ability to break out.
Exactly. And it's very funny.
That feels like a moving year. One of the things that you kind of highlighted in there was control.
You know, what I wrote down paraphrasing what you said was kind of control what you can control. Right.
So that to me feels like a core kind of first principle that you hear said in different ways from a lot of people who are highly successful. They tend to they tend to as much as they can either outsource or just let pass by them the things that are out of their control.
They don't waste brain cycles on it. How do you cultivate that in your work? Because it's a very hard thing for many people to stay focused, to not allow negativity to creep in, to not get lost in the presidential election or this war or climate or whatever your topic du jour of fear is.
How do you how do you capture that idea? How do you make sure that you're not getting distracted as much as possible?

Yeah. I mean, I think the most valuable asset and resource that we have is time.
And how we use our time is what determines everything in our lives. And so for me, I've made it my business since I made that decision at a young age that I wanted a different life to really place a high value on how I use my time.

And- I made that decision at a young age that I wanted a different life to really place a high value on how I use my time. And when you do that, you have the discipline to use your time in a productive manner that's going to move you forward towards your goals.
And it sounds so simple. But as you know, that is like the biggest struggle that people have.
Right. And so I think being ruthless with your time is the number one core principle of achieving really high levels of success, because it's it's not about doing 100 things.
It's about understanding the five or 10 things that are going to change everything. And I say this all the time.
You know, you can change your life in an hour a day. You can absolutely change any area of your life in an hour a day.
You wanna learn investing? You spend an hour a day learning investing, you'll be one of the top investors in the world. You wanna build a body, you wanna be able to be like one of the top people in physique in your age and in your space, you spend an hour a day working on your body.
Nutrition, wealth, health, relation. You wanna have one of the best marriages in the world, spend an hour a day investing in your relationship.
If you think about that and you let that play out and actually let me take it a step further. There's actually been studies done on this.
Jesse Itzler talks about this all the time that if you spend spend 18 minutes a day on something, by the end of that year, you'll be in like the top 5% of people in the world in that thing. Now, think about that.
That's insane. That's insane to think that if you were to just dedicate 18 minutes a day to the right things, you can basically have anything that you want in your life.
And, you know, most people, to your point, they just don't have the discipline focus to keep their energy on that. And I think, you know, people like us that came from being very clear on what we don't want, you know, you then have to marry that with being very clear on what you do want.
And so when you know what you don't want, you know what you do want, then you have to decide, well, what are the three to five things that I can do every single day that are going to move me forward towards that thing that I do want? And for me, I decided that was learning sales, marketing, communication, and leadership. So I have focused my life on learning those things.
And that is what allowed me to take my first business over eight figures in 5000 lists, like really just like taking the industry by storm. I started five other companies.
I have a portfolio of six companies focusing on those things. I don't chase the fads.
I don't chase the trends. I don't waste my time with the newest technology I never have.
I'm not constantly chasing 100 different rabbits. I'm like, what are the three to five things that are going to move me and the team and the organization forward? And it's all about the discipline to use your time on the things that are going to move you forward towards your goal.
And to your point, why don't people do it? Well, a lot of times it's not the thing that we're the naturally the best at or most comfortable with, obviously. Right.
So if you want something different in your life, then that probably means that it's going to require you to do things that don't come naturally or learn new things that make you uncomfortable or put you in a position where you have to fail a whole lot of times before you figure out how you're going to have success. And I think, you know, that's why lots of people have big dreams, but don't do anything about them because it requires a behavior change and behavior change requires being disciplined, being uncomfortable and failing a lot in the process.
Right. Do you think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that we set these goals, but there are other people's goals? I have this theory.
I'm actually six days from us talking here in February. I'm doing my first TEDx talk.
Congratulations. That's so wonderful.
Thank you. Yeah, I'm very excited about it.
I've been working on it for like a year and obviously we're at the moment where now it's real. Its title is Stop Living a Life You Didn't Choose.
And I have this theory that I want to put in front of you and get your feedback on. It's the idea is we we get much of our lack of satisfaction, purpose, success is the result of prioritizing our status in a hierarchy versus mastering the craft that we need to be good at.
And what I found throughout my career also started and sold businesses and been an executive and done a lot of mentorship and coaching and stuff over the years on the side. And people, and I'm very, this is where I'm interested in your take.
People come to me with these goals, right? Like, what are we doing? Like, we're talking here. You reached out to me.
You know, how can I help? Like, what do you want? And they'll start to talk about the things that they want. And it sounds like it came out of like a $37 guru, like PDF template.
And it's like, is that what you, you know what I mean? Like, yeah. And I've tried to reframe how I asked the next question, how I originally started asking it was like, is that what you really want? People would say yes.
Well, it's like, how did you get to that goal? Like if you, you know, people be like, I want to, I want to own an eight figure business. Why? Right.
Like, do you want it because you want to say that you did that? Do you want that because entrepreneurship is cool? Do you want that because your parents were successful and you feel like you have to be financially like what? And I think so much of the inaction that happens is because we set goals that sound right, but don't feel right. So then we're unwilling to make the sacrifices.
Right. And, and this kind of leads in the last part of my little paraphrase here before I kick it back over to you, which is where I took a lot of them was, OK, if we're not if we don't actually know what your true goal is yet, then.

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Maybe you don't know the actions to take so like a great place to start is like what you're not going to do like i love that you highlighted that because i think it's so incredibly important and so few people write down like i will not take a random cup of coffee meeting or pick your brain meeting on a friday morning because that's prime time creation or work Right. And if you stick that in there because you feel like you should, you know, like so starting to make a list of the things you're just unwilling to do first.
And like out of that tends to come what you might what you should be doing, I guess. Does that make sense? Is that does that play for you? Yeah, I speak to this all the time.
So I think, you know, there's two big things. And I think part one is everything that you just described.
It's that people are setting goals based on societal norms and expectations of their peers, their industry, their network, their associations that are being projected onto them versus them deciding what they want. And I'll talk more to that in just a second and a deep belief that I have around that.
But the second part of it is I think people don't ask themselves what the implications of what their dreams will cost are going to be. And that's a very, very important question to ask because dreams come with a price tag.
And the bigger the dream, the bigger the price tag. And if you're not willingly contractually obligating your heart to investing the price that your dream costs, then you're just going to live a life of frustration because you're never going to act in alignment with the dreams that you desire, which means you're never going to accomplish them.
You're always going to feel like a failure, always going to feel like you're falling short. And that's because, A, they weren't your dreams to begin with.
So you were never going to do them because they weren't in alignment for you. They weren't even your dreams to begin with.
And B, you never stop to ask yourself, what is the sacrifice that will be required in order to do this? And anything that's worth anything in your life is going to come with immense sacrifice. And that's what makes it worthwhile.
And that's how you learn the skills to achieve and sustain success is by going through that molding and maturing process of becoming the person that can not just accomplish that thing, but hold it, right. And I think there's also a faith perspective on that.
And this is just my personal purview. But as a business strategist for many years, I think that each of us were put here with a very specific calling from God.
I think we each have a mission. I think every day that we wake up, that's God saying to us, I need you to be here for one more day because there's something that you haven't contributed to this world yet that you're here to do.
And I think people are many times operating of the world, which is ego instead of operating of God, which is asking, what am I here to contribute? How am I here to serve? Where am I being called to go in my life as a next step? And, you know, I think that when you pivot into getting on this journey and on this path of fulfilling your calling, which is from your soul, it's from your heart, it's from your intuition, versus pursuing checking boxes and getting all of these external things, you can still achieve the external things that are maybe for you that are in alignment with that. But you probably will act more congruently with accomplishing the goals that you set out to achieve because to everything that you just said, and I love what your talk is about.
I couldn't agree more. And I think it's a huge thing that alignment is there, right? Yeah, I'm completely aligned with you on the faith aspect.
We're Christians. My kids actually go to Catholic school.
I have a mixed relationship with Catholicism, but definitely a Christian. And, you know, it's funny, the other day, my son asked me about hell, right? He's 11.
My younger son is nine. And we're in the car and he asked me, know like he's like dad is hell really like in the ground right and i know he's old enough to know that that is you know i think he felt like that might be a silly question but obviously he asked it and i said you know my i said my again i go i do it i i don't know i am not a biblical scholar you know like i've been a christian my entire life but obviously take take for take take this in with a grain of salt.
I said, dude, I don't know. I am not a biblical scholar, you know, like I've been a Christian my entire life, but obviously take this in with a grain of salt.
I said, my understanding or how I visualize hell or our relationship to that concept is that, as you said, when God puts your soul into a body, gives you a perfect version of your life. Right.
he gives you this you do which is impossible because we're fallible right but he gives you

this perfect version that you could be, right? Whatever that is, whatever that value is that you're contributing to the world. And our goal is to wake up every day and work as hard as we can to get as close to that version of what God intended us to be as possible.
And I said, heaven or hell is the emotional connection we have to the distance between what we end up being and what we could have been. And I said, so when you get weighed and measured, you know, by again, just talking through the visualization, you know, St.
Peter, and you have to see what you could have been. Do you look at it and go, I did all right.
I got pretty close. You know what I mean? I'm considering that I'm imperfect and we're all going to make mistakes.
And, you know, hey, I did a great job. Like, awesome.
Or you look at it and you go, oh, my God, if I had just put Netflix away and I didn't get high every night and I worked out once in a while and I focused a little more on my community, my family, I could have been that. Right.
That's hell. That feeling of what you could have been.
Right. And I think, you know, take that visualization in the faith aspect as much as you can.
I think what you're saying is so like so many people have started. I believe our culture today has taken an atheist spin to this self-orientation when every book take Christianity out of it.
Every every book that has lasted thousands of years the core concept is give more than you then yes and you want back in return yeah so if you just focus on value creation it's it's the unlock to all your wildest dreams right now it may not be what you think your dreams should be today but it doesn't mean that it's not available to you. And I think this idea that you've carved out that I that I want you, I'd love for you to dig in a little more or maybe how we think through this as a thought experiment is this idea of what your dreams cost.
Yeah, nobody talks about this. No one who hasn't done a depth of work that you've done or I've done is kind of holds us in their head.
But like, if you want to be that thing, it comes with a cost. Like my my the thing I love doing in business more than anything else is speaking on stage.
I've done 350 plus keynotes in my career. I absolutely love it.
I just it is where like I feel like I'm the purest version of myself in a work environment. Yet I have a nine and 11 year old.
I'm unwilling to pay the cost today of being away from them more than say once a month. So I will never have more than 12 gigs in a year right now.
Right. But because I'm unwilling to pay that cost.
But you see people who want to become speakers and they're out on the circuit and they start running around and they take every gig they can get. And they're, you know, I just need stage time and you're away from home 45 days, 50 days a year at a minimum.
And also, and all of a sudden your relationship starts to get cracks in it. Your kids start to act a little funny around you, or they get very needy because they're not seeing.
And it's like, and all of a sudden they're going, wait a minute, this isn't what I want. It's like, never thought about the cost of that thing.
So so going through that thought experiment when you're working with with a mentee or a coaching client or whatever, like how do you start to get them to understand that? And how do we how do we really think through what those costs will be to us? Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of the most important responsibilities that people like you and I have. And I very often talk about business through the context of training for your business

like an athlete. one of the most important responsibilities that people like you and I have.
And I very often talk

about business through the context of training for your business, like an athlete trains for their sport. I say it's a blood sport.
And I talk a lot about the realities of what it means to be a CEO of a successful organization, which there's no clear and honest representation of that online whatsoever. And so it starts by people like us

just sharing these truths with people so that they can get into a state of preparation. Because a big

part of what's happened, particularly in the online world, is that there's just been such a

misrepresentation and over glamorized, you know, glorification of entrepreneurship. And, you know,

the truth is 85% of businesses fail. The divorce rates amongst entrepreneurs are higher.
There's a mental health crisis. There's a significant amount of depression.
It's and I believe the people that don't go through those things are the people that did the exercise of being highly discerning. And to your point, actually, it's very interesting.
I have a daughter that's 10. She's about to turn 11.
My favorite thing to do also is speaking. I have specifically not pursued a speaking career for the last 10 years because I am not willing to travel and be away from my family for all the reasons that you just said, because it was not worth it to me.
What I would gain, which is a lot. Same with you.
You would gain a lot by being on the road. Doing that is not equivalent to what I would lose in that time that I can't ever get back.
That's unreplaceable. I just literally started taking a speaking program this month that starts next week because I just started homeschooling my daughter.
Best decision ever. And me and my husband are actually doing it together.
But now we can travel together. We have more freedom.
I don't have to be away from them, all of those things. So it's both to the positive and to the negative.
When I was starting my business, I was working as an executive in a Fortune 500 company. My husband and I decided that instead of having two incomes, we wanted one of us to be home full time with our daughter our entire lives, never put her in daycare, never with a babysitter with us and retired my husband while I was starting my new business, worked a full time job and worked in the business for years.
And I was willing to pay that price because the life that we live today is so extraordinary. It's everything I dreamed of.
It's everything I worked for. And our relationship with our daughter and our relationship with one another is because of those sacrifices that I made for many years leading up to her being where she is now.
And when you meet her, every person that meets her is like, what? Like this girl's 10, right? Because she's been poured into and she's been enriched and she's been developed and she has been just grown and cultivated so intentionally. And so to your point, when we think about our goals and dreams, we have to both think of the things that are absolutes to us that are part of what we believe is our purpose, our calling, our true reason for being here.
And we have to start calculating the price of what it will cost. And when it's something that is negotiable, that would be nice, that maybe it would fill our ego.
Maybe it would fast track our success. Maybe it would be a great feather in our cap.
The example for you and I was speaking, we both did the calculation and said, it ain't happening. Like I was not willing to give up that time with my husband.
I wasn't willing to give up that time with my daughter. And only now that we can do that together and make it a family experience.
Is that, you know, worth it? So I think it's both knowing what you don't want. And for me, coming from a household where my parents were fighting every single day, anxiety, depression, never knowing how they were gonna pay the bills.
The last thing I wanna do is go create wealth for myself, but lose my relationship over it. Like those two things are not incongruent.
So I think it's also a big part of this is that many people have been taught to look at success in a singular fashion versus in a holistic fashion. Because when we look at success, when you compromise your relationship, your health, other areas of your life in order to get further ahead, what will happen is you will ultimately pay that price.
You're just going to

be paying the price later, right? And so you have to make calculated sacrifices that aren't going to actually be the thing that blows up the thing that you're trying to create. And so this is where taking time to actually really think about what matters to you on a deep level, not on a, I want to achieve level, like on a, what do I want my day-to-day life to look like?

What do I want to achieve level, like on a what do I want my day-to-day life to look like? What do I want my experience of living to be like? When I accomplish that thing, who do I want to be with? How do I want to feel? What are we going to do together? If you consider all of those implications, it will give you a pretty clear roadmap on what is worth sacrificing and what isn't worth sacrificing. And a lot of times what I see is people are more willing to sacrifice their time, their health, their relationship, all of these other areas of life.
They're willing to sacrifice those things in an instant, but they're not willing to sacrifice just getting themselves uncomfortable to just do the damn thing that they need to do that's going to get them what they want. And so there's this massive incongruence between what people say that they want and what they're doing about it.
And then they use all these other things as an excuse. So a lot of it is just this radical honesty with ourselves.
It's this radical honesty with ourselves. And I think going back to what you shared about your TED talk, it all starts with the congruence and the alignment of being on this very personal journey, because the only way that you can come to the right conclusions is if you're looking at it through the right lens.
And if you're not looking at it through the right lens, even if you go through the exercise, you won't arrive at the right conclusion. Right? Yeah.
I, I think a major, well, there's so many things in here. One, I completely agree with everything you've said.
The, the radical honesty piece is, is a, I think a challenge for all of us, but it's so incredibly important to try to cultivate in our lives. And I take it even one step further and say, we have to be radically honest with ourselves first.
Yeah. I think a lot of us, when we read these books or we take in these topics or we hear a TEDx talk on something like radical honesty or whatever, there's a couple of different ways to package that.
We immediately go to how I communicate with my spouse or how I communicate with my team. Oh, yeah.
No, no, no. Those things.
One there. I don't know that being 100 percent honest in any one of those situations is actually the right thing to do.
However, if we're not being honest with ourselves first, we can't be honest with them because now we're playing a role or responding in a way that we feel like this version of me, you know, should be. And it's like, no, who are you? What are not just the good things, but what are the bad things about, you know, like I, you know, it's funny.
I, you know, divorced, unfortunately, three years ago. And, you know, I've had these, I've had like a couple relationships with other women since my wife.
And, you know, it's funny, like you, you get so used to being with someone, you know, there's kind of things that aren't, that go kind of unsaid if you're not being intentional about it. And, you know, I, I get feedback from like, you're very, you're very, um, you're disorganized with your schedule.
Right. And part of that is like, I have two kids that are in like a million sports and I don't always know.
And it's like that, I just have to be honest with myself that like for me to be highly organized is real work. It's like work, work.
Like for other people, it's just like, oh, here goes there. This goes there.
That's what it is. That's great.
That is it's the opposite for me. Like that is the opposite for me.
So it's it's then doing a calculation of letting people know up front. Hey, just so you know, his schedule is crazy.
Sometimes I don't get everything right. You know, I may miss a date or whatever.
Also, like how much work. And this is really where this question comes in.
Like when we start to get radically honest with ourselves and understanding, OK, I maybe I'm being honest with where I want to be. Right.
And I'm and I'm honest with the with the costs. How do we start to frame the places that we should actually put in work to get better? And, you know, like, do we double into our strengths or triple into our strengths like a Gary Vaynerchuk would say? Or do we put in do I take an organizational class and try to level up my, you know, my organ, my calendar organization or whatever to become better at that thing.
Like, where do you stand on this?

Like, do we push further into the things that we're great at and really just outsource or accept the things that we're not? Or is it better to lift up some of the things that we're not as good at and kind of pull them up into a more workable level? Yeah, that is such an interesting question. And I love

that you asked that. And I don't know that I have the I'm not the almighty with the perfect answer, but I can certainly give a little bit of my opinion on that.
You know, I think I think, first of all, we were given our strengths to exploit them. We are given our gifts from God to use them.
That is the primary calling of our lives. So to me, I do feel that our strengths were made our strengths because that is where we are meant to assert our power and invest our energy.
So I am very much of the idea that leaning into our strengths is the core of how we achieve success. However, we all have and I hate saying the word vice because vice many times is used in the context of like drugs alcohol like negative habits but that's not the same as you could be here using your strengths but because you don't have organization you're constantly missing this thing that would take you from here to here right so that's that's the 20% that we all have to look at to say, okay, 80% of my energy is going to go into maximizing my gifts and deploying my strengths.
But I have to pay attention to the 20% that could give me another 80% that I'm ignoring because it's not my natural strength. And that's where I feel like we missed the mark, right? People either go crazy leaning into their weaknesses and they just feel like a failure all the time because they're actually not operating in their zone of genius.
And that's why they're miserable. And that's why they feel unsuccessful because they're actually miserable because they're unsuccessful because they're just not even focused on the right things.
I think that's different from understanding where, and I think for a lot of us, like for you, for example, like you're a business leader, you have a busy family, you're running all over the place with the kids, all these things. Like you probably just need someone that you can outsource, like helping you manage your schedule with.
And like, instead of you trying to become like great at managing your schedule, you just need to get help in that area. And I find that a lot of times for myself and for high powered entrepreneurs that I'm working with in coaching, many times it's an area that we either need the right help or better help in.
It's not that we need to become something that we're not. It's that we need to identify this is a weakness of mine.
There's people that are great at this. I need the right person that's going to compliment me in this area to make sure I have success.
But what I will say, because I see a lot of leaders do this with sales. Oh, I'm not a salesperson.
So then they go hire a salesperson and then they go fire a salesperson and they fire another salesperson. They fire another salesperson because they're not training them.
They're not managing them. They're not coaching them.
They're not giving them the right support systems. So yes, a lot of times I feel like we need to compliment our, our weaknesses with someone else's strength.
But at the same time, there's a role that sits in the middle of that, which is giving that person the right support to be able to support us, which is where I feel like people like us fall short sometimes, if that makes sense. No, I think it completely does.
In the last company that I that I started, I sold it in three. But one of the things that like I had been an executive for about a decade before that at different companies and but it wasn't until it was my company that this like really hammered home.
I kind of always knew it to be true. And I think it's a little more my natural style, but, but it certainly wasn't until I got into this company.
So it was a primarily, it was in the insurance industry. It was commercial insurance sales.
It was a digital agency. And, you know, I was for the first year, the number one salesperson.
Right. And that's kind of my bread and butter is development and sales and marketing and everything was good.

And then eventually I hit a point where now I had three additional people.

So there's four of us. And exactly what you just described was happening.
Right.

Things were falling through the cracks. They weren't doing it the way it needed to be done.

And what I realized in that moment was and I think this is like the the the complete misunderstanding of what a leadership position is. Like when you become a leader, you don't sit on the ivory mountain and reach down to people.
If anything, you become the Sherpa at the bottom of the mountain, literally walking people up the mountain. Like, so we came up with this term of service, right? Like as you ascend in this company, you become more of service to the people below you.
And that idea, it changed the whole construct of the business and really is what propelled it was all I stopped. So I immediately stopped selling, but stopped selling to then be like, okay, account management team, what are the things that you need? Is it a piece of technology? Is it training? Do I need to go get a consultant? Like, is it a new piece of, you know, is it a, is it a wax analysis? Like what, what, what do we need? You know, sales, same thing.
And all of a sudden I became like almost in the tasks that I was doing and a lot of the things that I was doing almost, you know, if this were visual, like underneath them in the things that I was doing. And but but most leaders are do not see this.
And there's just, you know, that classic just, you know, I give you a paycheck. Just do what I tell you.
And that just simply does not work over the long term. And it's how you have these high churn rates.
And it's it's just such a miss. And I think it comes from and I want to come back to here's where I'm going with this long diatribe.
I am very interested and I'd like to spend most of our time remaining on this topic. I am very interested in the integration of faith into business.
Right. And I think that this idea of being of service certainly comes out of a lot of my Christian beliefs.
And that's why it was in my brain and et cetera. But I feel like faith in business, it's like some people go all in and it's got everything.
And it's like they wear, you know, they got the you're wearing cut off sleeves with their cross tattoo and, you know, all this stuff and the chains hanging out. And that's fine.
I don't have a problem with that. But like, yeah, or or we kind of like a lot of people hide it.
And I'm very interested being the faith is so important to you, how you've chosen and what you would recommend to integrate faith, your beliefs. You know, some organizations simply saying the word God will get you, you know, well, maybe not anymore because Trump's president.
Like up until up until a few months, a month ago, you know, it would get you canceled. You know what I mean? You're fired for saying that.
So how do you do it? And what do you recommend people who faith is a big part of their life, but are unsure of how to integrate it into their business? Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, just say, you know, faith is the centerpiece of any healthy and productive society and culture.
And a lot of the challenges that we've seen, especially in the U.S. for our U.S.
listeners over the last decade have come as a result of faith really being removed from the centerpiece of society. And so if you're a person of faith, I think you're really being called in this moment to share that and to have that be a part of how you do business and how you interact with people.
And my personal perspective is, you know, I didn't share my faith. I kept it very private for my first 10 years of being in business.
And, you know, after COVID, when I saw the level of just despair and desperation and just the depths of struggle that people were in, I really started publicly sharing my faith and my faith perspective. And, you know, I really started calling on leaders to start sharing their faith and living their faith and using faith as a mechanism for expanding their capacity, their courage, their strength as leaders, all of those things.
And, you know, I definitely wish that I had started that much sooner. I will say I think it was a lack of courage on my part that I didn't share it sooner because I was always like, oh, like I got it.
I have to keep it professional. I have to keep it separate.
You know, I don't want to be like preaching at people and I don't want to like make people uncomfortable in this, that and the other. And, you know, definitely my experience of beginning to introduce my faith was, first of all, it was hugely welcomed and people are craving that so significantly right now.
They just they're craving something rich and real and substantive and something deeper. And so I would say for anyone that's thinking like, oh, that it won't be embraced or that it won't be welcomed.
I think you'll be shocked. I know I was.
So that's point one. I think point two is that the way that you share your faith, I think is important because I know for me, you know, my mission is really kind of a perspective on trying to reintegrate faith back into the centerpiece of society.
So I think a lot of people's experience of faith has been very radical, where it's like someone that is just fanatical or a church that they experienced or a person that they experienced that was just too far, too aggressive. And so a lot of people have moved away from the church, they've moved away from religion, they've moved away from faith and in whatever perspective because of that.
And so I think that's a real opportunity to be the change that you want to see in the world. And that's how I view that is, you know, you can share your faith in your content.
You can share your faith. When I run an event with my team, I gather my team to pray before the event.
We have team meetings in the morning on Zoom. Starting this year, I started opening the Zoom room 15 minutes early for anyone who wants to come and pray.
I was shocked at the number of team members and slowly the number just kept growing and growing and growing and growing. And, you know, so I think there's lots of little ways that you can just begin to show that you're a person of faith and be welcoming to others to also reclaim that part of themselves, whatever that looks like.
And, you know, I say to my team all the time, I always think about the song, they'll know we are Christians by our love, right? So I think a lot of people are fearful to share their faith because they don't want to feel like they're preaching at people or telling them what to do. And what I believe, especially in the secular world and in the business world is the way that you conduct yourself as a business person can reflect your Christian values without you needing to be like screaming Bible verses at people.
I actually do teach using Bible verses in some of my programs. So I actually, I love doing that.
And there's spaces and places where I do that. And there's places and spaces that I don't do that.
But there's a lot of ways that you can reflect your value system and reflect being a person of faith without it being direct or aggressive. That from my perspective, what my goal is, is I want to get people to buy their first Bible or walk back into a church or start praying again or start even asking themselves, what are my faith beliefs? Like, what do I believe? Start questioning things.
And I've been successful doing that. And I've been successful just opening that part of people's hearts again, which is what my goal is.
And then from there, everyone walks a unique faith path. Everyone walks a unique relationship that's between them and their creator.
And it's none of our business what that looks like. But I think just being a person that by demonstrating your faith in the way that you operate, the way that you conduct yourself, the way that you communicate, lead and do business, that's a great starting point for all of us.
And then you see where it goes from there, you know? Yeah, I completely agree. You know, whenever anyone asked me about, because I'd say similar journey around COVID, that early COVID was when I was building my company.
And actually I launched my business seven days before Cuomo shut down New York. So like I launched on March 9, 2020, March 16 of 2020, you know, the state got shut down.
And at that time, for good reason, that's not a knock on Cuomo. He did a lot of things that are are worthy of being criticized, but but you know, not that particular decision.
And when people ask me about, you know, when I started mentioning my faith and talking about my beliefs in that regard on the show, I had some people reach out and like, oh, you know, that's courageous. Or are you worried about, you know, X, Y, Z? And I just said, if someone, if someone doesn't want to do business with me, because I'm a practicing Christian.
Yeah, that's a good thing. And I don't mean it like the fact that I didn't do business.
It means they wouldn't have long term been a good value fit for what I was trying to do. Right.
And that's fine. Like that you don't there is no requirement for you to believe what I believe to do business with me.
However, I want you to know who I am so that you can self select in. And that's one of the things that I don't know if my brain is broken or.
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Just what? But like, I've always, for the most part, been very willing to share exactly how I feel about things. It creates negativity.
It creates people who in the space don't agree with you or will use something you said to attack you, which all those things are okay because the other side of it is the people who end up doing business with you feel so much more connected to you and understood. And like the example I give is if all things are equal and you have two people to choose to do business with.
And one, you know, is a practicing Christian in this case. And one is a practicing atheist.
Everything else, they look exactly the same. They talk exactly the same.
You know, everything else about them is exactly the same, except for those two things. I'm going to guarantee the vast majority of people will go with the Christian because, you know, that they they abide.
They have at least some level of humility to defer to a higher power, which says to me is they think give value versus take value. And this like postmodern liberal atheist, self-oriented secular mentality that is creeped into our country.
Like these people are not happy. Now, you could be out there an atheist and saying to yourself like, Oh, I'm happy.
You're wrong. The statistics would say that you're more the edge case than you are the rule because you are living every day to your next whim because you are the center of the universe.
And it is simply one, you are not just statistically. And two, there's there's a hole there that you're trying to fill with these ideas that seemingly have no backing or to for success.
You know, I mean, that's that's I think what we've shown, you know, not not to get political, but in the most recent election is that we can. An idea can make us feel good inside.
At the end of the day, it actually has to produce results. What we're what we're learning is that the kind of postmodern liberal belief structure, this this atheistic belief structure, it simply doesn't produce positive results.
Yeah, it can make you feel good and it can allow you to signal all day long. Right.
And in your groups, you can form little hierarchies around who signals the best and look out, you know, this I am, except none of those none of those scenarios, none of those mindsets, thought processes have produced real consistent results to the positive. Just hasn't happened.
And that's the part that I struggle with when I, when I come up against some of these individuals is like, just show me one receipt where that mentality actually produced positive results for people long-term and you can't find it yet. Yet we still fight this battle every day.
And I think so much of it has to do with faith. So, well, yeah.
And I mean, I just just add one thing to that before we move on. And I think it's I mean, and this is a huge thing for me with homeschooling my daughter to I do the Christian studies with her.
And, you know, so I have the ability to really do that faith formation with her, which I

think your whole life is predicated by what your belief system is, right?

Like your whole life is predicated by that.

But to your point, I think that if you have had some kind of exposure to a faith life,

you have an advantage in life.

And I think there's a lot of people, unfortunately, in our world today that have not even gotten that exposure. And that is why I feel that people like us have a responsibility.
That's why every podcast that I go on now, you said before we got on the show, you're like, well, what do you want to talk about? I'm like, I can talk about anything, but this is what I really want to talk about. Let's talk about faith and family because people see the level of success that I've had.
And they're like, oh, you know, it must be this. And I'm like, no, actually it's this, but let's, let's focus over here because you can give anyone the blueprint to make millions of dollars.
But most people that make millions of dollars ends up losing it all because it wasn't anchored in truth. And that goes back to the topic of your TED talk about alignment, about your goals being your goals and your dreams.
And it goes back to my point of putting what goes first, first, right? Faith and family first, and then the pursuit of using our gifts at the highest level. So if there's anyone listening to the show today that has a faith life, that has that relationship with God, Christ, Savior, Jesus, and you haven't been sharing it, you know, maybe you ended

up listening to this show today as a reason to maybe just start slowly integrating that

into the conversation because you could save someone's life.

You could save their marriage.

You could redirect someone's entire life journey just because you shared your faith life.

You can save so many businesses, so many businesses that closed last year closed because people

lost faith.

They just didn't. It wasn't that they didn't know how to make a dollar because they knew how to make a dollar.
They were making a dollar. It's because they lost hope and

you lose hope when you don't have faith. When you have faith, you can keep going because you're not

walking by sight. Right.
And so there's a whole it influences and impacts every single decision

that we make because it's a belief structure that then drives every behavior that that we have. Right.
Yeah. It ends up being the foundation that you can rely on in the storm.
That's what it is. You know, you even spend five minutes a day or five minutes a week, five minutes a week in just silent contemplation.
You don't need to know prayers. I mean, that's this is what I tell people who who come to me again, again, not a biblical scholar.
Right. I had for a very long time my own unique way of practicing my faith as much as I do read about a lot.
But I just tell people like just just just you don't need to know a prayer. I don't know what prayers.
I'm like, God does not only hear in prayers, right? Like just, just have a conversation and, and, and share and whatever. And the best part is you can be max vulnerable because one, it's happening in your head.
And two, we already knows. So like you can be max vulnerable in that, that, that small moment of connection, even if it's very loose and you just feel the tiniest little thing when you stand up, you're like, OK, I'm going to be all right.
I'm going to like just that little tiny, that little tiny step. I couldn't agree with you more.
And and frankly, you're pushing me to even be maybe more candid and more forward and more direct in the way we talk about these things, because I honestly don't care in, in, in which way you choose to celebrate your relationship with, with the creator, right? Christianity is the way that I have chosen, but there, you know, if you look at the core value structure of all of the, you know, thousand, 2000 year old religions, right? You find these core concepts that are exactly the same. So what that tells me is right.
God realized some people needed to experience their relationship with him through Jesus and Christianity. Some people needed to experience it through an Eastern religion or an Asian subcontinent or they needed, you know, Judaism or whatever.
They he presented himself in a way to that particular group of individuals in which they could experience him. Right.
And maybe some of the nuances are different, but at their core, these longstanding books that that hold these ideas. Yeah, they're they're they're they're copies of each other.
Yeah. And that tells me that that one, it's another data point in so much as God does exist.
How could it be possible? Right. So these are universal truths shared through this idea of a higher power.
So so it's another data point to the fact that it is real. And two, even if you don't believe, you know, this and this is the second point I'll say to them is like, start like Jordan Peterson started.
Act as if. You don't have to believe.
Just take these books as the most, the best-selling self-improvement book of all time. You're talking about the Bible.
If you just think about it from the standpoint of being a self-improvement book and act as if what inevitably happens is you start to feel things that convince you that we aren't alone, that we are connected, that there is a higher power. And then, as you said, hope, faith, perseverance, commitment, passion, love, all these positive things start to roll out of it.
And you don't have to believe day one. Just act as if.
For sure. For sure.
This has been a phenomenal conversation. I appreciate the hell out of you and your viewpoint.
You know, you're we're fans. You can come back whenever you want, you know, your next book, whatever you have going on, come back whenever you want.
I especially even if you want to dig deeper into this topic, I would love that. Yeah.
People who've been listening and they're like, I need more of Kelly. Where do they go? Where's the best place for them to connect with you? Thank you so much.
Yeah, it was so such a wonderful conversation today. And I feel like it was just meant to be had.
So thank you for having me. And the Kelly Roadshow.
So I put out two episodes a week and I put my heart into it. It's a commercial free environment.
And I talk spirituality, but I talk business growth strategy, empire building, personal growth, family freedom, sales, marketing, all the things, team. So just, yeah, come on over to the Kelly Road Show.
And if you love today's episode and you want to connect, just, you know, pop in my inbox on one of the platforms and just say, Hey, heard you on the show. Love to connect.
Wow. We will.
We'll make sure that we have links to Kelly's show as well as some of her other resources. So just scroll down the description or show notes.
Appreciate you, Kelly. Wish you nothing but the best.
Thank