#32: Potential.

This is not about changing you, but about becoming yourself.

I passed Kelly on the preschool drop off circuit for years, our kids were slightly different ages and never in the same class which meant we mostly smiled from afar while doing the heavy lifting of motherhood. I mistakenly assumed that she was a stay-at-home mom much like myself at that time, but since our kids were not technically friends we failed to connect in any meaningful way until a fellow friend recognized the similarities in our stories and facilitated a proper introduction.

Kelly and I in July 2019 after she shared her story on my first group hike.

This one connection, this one story, this one friend changed everything for me. I anxiously invited Kelly to my very first focus group for my first business way back in 2018, she showed up with her littlest in tow and I quickly found in Kelly a sounding board, a twin flame, another mother equally torn by the complexities of motherhood but leaning into her own intuition as a means of moving through it with intention and ease, not to mention helping others along the way.

Kelly left behind her first identity and her corporate life to be home with her first child while simultaneously launching her coaching business. Over the next 10 years she tried just about everything on for size business-wise while adding 2 more kids into the mix. One of the things I love most about Kelly and about our friendship is her ability to remain true to herself, all the while guiding me back to myself time and time again.

Ali Dunn, Sophie Davies, and Kelly Brown sharing their stories at my space in June 2021.

The thing that surprised me most about this interview is how much I learned, I mistakenly thought I knew her whole story because we have had weekly and sometimes daily conversations over the past 5 years. I asked Kelly to share her story at one of my very first in-person events, a group hike in July 2019, and then again two years later at my very last in-person event at my co-working space in June 2021. And yet there was still so much to learn, further proof that these conversations matter, digging deeper and deeper into who we are so that others can find themselves, so that others can ultimately feel less alone.

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Kelly Brown always thought she wanted to be a teacher and towards the end of college she applied for a position with Teach for America. She was accepted to teach in a bilingual program in Houston, but felt really unsure. She was worried that she wouldn’t know anybody and had tons of student loans. She noted that she was the first in her family to go to college and she had a lot of debt which left her hesitant to follow the teaching path. Even though her loans would be deferred for that program, it felt like a heavy weight, one she wasn’t sure if she wanted to bear.

At the same time, she was in a class with a couple of professors who owned Duke Corporate Education. They taught an undergraduate level class, but they were also in the professional world running a corporate leadership company with a focus on adult learning. Kelly received a job offer with Duke Corporate Education and ultimately decided to work for them instead of Teach for America.

Her first day of work was at a leadership training program and the thing she noticed most was the coaches, lots and lots of coaches. She said she didn’t have a concept of what a coach was at the time, but remembered really liking the coaches and said they all had really interesting lives, although she never considered it might be a profession she might choose for herself one day.

Her first job was to manage the logistics for Duke CE before helping to design the curriculum. She travelled to India, Thailand, and Mexico and throughout the United States and gained a broad prospective working with diverse clients, but said this work really accentuated the type-A side of herself and left her extremely exhausted due to all the travel and the intensity of the programs.

While working for Duke Corporate Education, Kelly was commuting to Washington DC to visit her then boyfriend (now husband) while the rest of her family and friend network was back in Chicago. Everyone she knew from college had left Durham and she began to reevaluate what she might want to do next, where she might want to be long term. At this phase of her life, she wanted to work for a company where she was surrounded by good leaders and where she could learn a lot, she was also hoping to get a position back in Chicago to be closer to family and friends and she made a list of companies she respected there.

Google was one of the companies on that list. She eventually found a job that she felt she was somewhat qualified for, and quickly applied, two days later she heard from a corporate recruiter. Google flew her to Chicago for her interview and she was eventually hired for that job.

She described her time at Google as very positive, saying “Google was such a bright, happy, and positive place and I really loved the people.” Over the years she went from account coordinator to account manager to an account executive, responsible for really big quotas and clients in the travel industry. But despite being good at her job, she still felt like she was off target. She was getting rewarded and getting promoted, getting bonuses and paying off her student loans and getting stocks, all this stuff that she never thought would’ve been possible for her, but still something felt amiss. She described this time as confusing because the external rewards were not matching with the internal feelings she was having. She was questioning what she was doing, asking herself if this was the right path for her.

She said that she always wanted to do something that merged psychology, business, and well-being. She said she knew these were her interests, but meanwhile she was selling YouTube ads so things didn’t quite feel right.

Leading up to her maternity leave and before having her first baby, she was traveling most weeks. She remembered being so pregnant and thinking ‘how is this actually going to work after having a baby.’ She definitely did not imagine leaving, but thought she might move into a different role within Google to create more space for motherhood.

While she was out on maternity leave, she realized she was completely devastated by the idea of going back to work. She could not wrap her head around it, the thought that kept going through her mind was, “I am her only mother but I am leaving for a job that I know is not right for me.” Even though the money was great, the people were great, the brand was great, and it should be exactly what she should want, she knew it was not what was right for her.

She noted that three of the women on her team had young kids, and she was left grappling with this idea that they had returned to work. She kept asking herself, why did they want to go back and why don’t I? She expressed that she had a good friend who was really excited to go back to work, who routinely expressed relief of going back to work. These conversations left Kelly asking herself, “what is wrong with me?” especially as more and more people returned to their careers post kids.

A variety of factors contributed to Kelly’s eventual decision to leave her career, one of which was a panic attack in the middle of the night. She had received an offer to interview with a different team, with a team where she wouldn’t have to travel and she thought this is what she wanted, but then she received the email at 2am while she was up feeding the baby and had to put her daughter down and go splash water in her face so that she could breathe.

A chance conversation with her former boss at a prescheduled company outing changed everything for her. He said, “I know you have always been interested in well-being stuff, my wife just left her software company and became a health coach.” She explained that a light bulb went on in that moment. What she heard was business, well-being and psychology, she knew she had to find out more.

At the time she was still on maternity leave, and nobody knew that she was thinking about leaving, even she didn’t really know that she was thinking about leaving, she just knew going back felt wrong. She started exploring coaching, spoke with her former bosses wife, started researching health training programs, and decided to enroll. She thought that she would do both plus care for her newborn, but a few months in she realized she was probably not going back to Google.

Her daughter was born in May and she was originally supposed to return to work in September, but postponed her return by taking an additional 60 days of unpaid leave. She ultimately resigned from Google at the end of December and completed her training the following June. After resigning, she was required to fill out an exit survey stating why she was resigning and where she was going next. She said she wrote, heath coach and mom and admitted that she didn’t even know what that was at the time. She assumed many people left Google and wrote Facebook or Amazon on that very same line.

Her first year of motherhood was spent figuring out if she would return to work, figuring out health coaching and eventually receiving her certification, then resigning from her corporate job, all the while raising her newborn. Not to mention all the confusion that came with the identity shift associated with being a mom, plus resettling into friendships because she and her husband were on the younger side of their friends who had a baby.

During this time, she and her husband were dreaming of a move to California. Although they were living in Chicago close to family, they both routinely traveled to California for work and loved the access to the outdoors. As they started to move forward with their moving plans, they were delayed by a sudden cancer diagnosis of a close family member. Gratefully, the family member was given a clear scan a few months after treatment and advised them to live their lives to the fullest and proceed with the move. They ultimately celebrated their daughter’s first birthday and their Chicago good-bye party at the same time, moving to Marin County, CA shortly thereafter.

She said that her job shift, identity shifts, and leaving her community behind was really hard. Shortly after arriving in California, she finished her coaching program and started working on her coaching hours, virtually. She said that she would coach during her daughter’s naps plus at night or on the weekends.

Kelly launched Real Food House, her first business, to make it easier for people to get meals on the table for themselves and their families so that they could live the life they dreamed of shortly thereafter. She wanted people to have the fuel they needed and the structures in place so that they can do the thing they were dreaming about.

This happened in a variety of ways; one-on-one coaching conversations, led into lots of different group programs including Improv Cooking which were cooking classes that helped people cook without recipes, and Real Circle which brought people together to meal plan. She described the evolution of Real Food House as one thing leading to another; in her initial coaching conversations she heard the people who knew how to cook effortlessly were having an easier time getting meals on the table and then doing whatever else they wanted to do. Improv cooking was an opportunity to solve this problem; teaching others to cook without a recipe, shop without a list, and simplify their lives through food.

In the Improv classes she repeatedly heard what people really needed was community, to know that they were not alone, because feeding a family was so isolating. Real Circle evolved from Improv cooking, offering community and bringing parents together to meal plan, to remind them that they were not alone and that they were not doing anything wrong. Real Circle, led into the pandemic, which led to the realization that it was about more than just food.

Kelly launched the 10X Real Program as a form of self reflection; working with her clients to help them figure out what they wanted to do with their lives and how that tied back to their values. She eventually added community in to create 10X Real Groups before realizing that her company had evolved so far from food that Real Food House was no longer a good fit, it took a bit but she went back and got an Executive Coaching certification. One of the biggest focuses that kept coming up in her work was the career piece; how careers impact our relationships, and how that fits with our overall dreams and goals.

She noted that she experimented with everything possible business-wise with Real Food House; online classes, in person cooking classes, events, groups, one on one. All the while building her family, expanding the business, figuring out who she was as a coach, and who she was as a mother. She launched Kelly Brown Coaching, as a broader umbrella to house all of those types of conversations that include well-being and career and life in general.

She is now at a stage where she is wanting to have a broader way to help more people live a life that is aligned with their potential. Shifting from a focus on using social media and being the center of the recruiting effort to making it about something so much bigger than that, and instead finding different partners who already have lots of people wanting to step into their potential.

She said she loves coaching and facilitation, adding that it grounds her, centers her, and lights her up. The more she focuses on that piece, the more she can help people because she is not clouded with social media posts and marketing. She noted, that social media pushes us to show up in ways that may or may not be authentic to us. By getting really clear about that she was able to not feel the pull of that outside noise. She noted that content creation is not coaching. She went on to explain that she doesn’t want to live her life online and she doesn’t want her clients to feel like they need to constantly be online in order to find and connect to her.

She said, there is a benefit to being on platforms where you can connect with lots of people and they have a sense of who you are and what you are doing. She also added that doesn’t want her people to feel abandoned, but she wants to practice what she preaches. Instead asking herself, ‘what are some ways to establish really authentic and meaningful relationship and connections that can happen in ways beyond social media.’

We talked about growth, transformation, and the evolution of self. This idea that we have been some other version of ourselves and therefore people expect us to show up in the same way that we always have. But what happens when we have grown beyond that version of ourselves, when we cannot go back to that prior version to ourselves. This idea that we have changed, we are not who other people expected us to be or who we once were and we agreed that as a society, we need to be more accepting of that type of change.

Kelly said that when she left google, it made many people uncomfortable because it pulled up their own fears. People close to her cautioned her about her decision to leave her career; asking ‘are you sure,’ saying things like ‘what a waste of your college degree,’ but she ultimately realized that these comments were their fears, not her own. These responses are valid, but they say a lot more about that individual as opposed to the direction we choose. As a business owner and person in general, we must be connected to ourselves and intentional about our own decisions. No matter what anyone else says or thinks, we need to feel good about the work we are putting out into the world.

This ultimately influenced her decision to leave her career, she had a child and she had a career that wasn’t in alignment anymore. When she realized that she would ultimately taking time away from something that matters a lot and giving it to something that matters less, she couldn’t pretend or fake it anymore. If we are going to fraction our time as mothers and live in a way that feels good and aligned with our potential, then we need to ask ourselves ‘how do we do something that we can be really proud of even if other people don’t understand it.’

She said she thinks about life in regard to the energy, that give or take. Potential is stored energy, like physics and ball rolling down the hill. If that energy is being siphoned by things you don’t feel are in alignment then it is not going to be given to something else. She said it is so true and so evident in motherhood, if her energy is being siphoned in one way that doesn’t fill her up when her kids come home from school she is grumpy, irritable, impatient. When she has used those same hours to do work that really fills her up, that made her use her strengths, then she is a completely different person even if the time spent is the same.

Rather than chasing things that are not a good fit, how do we allow a more powerful transfer of energy. It is our responsibility, as individuals, to say I need XYZ so that I can bring that energy home to our kids, but that is a flip of the script from what society teaches us. Kelly called it an inconvenient truth; from society’s perspective, it works better if mothers simply blame themselves.

She noted that it is a position of privilege to have the freedom and flexibility in these types of situations. It is a privilege to have choice, this push pull and continuum of ‘balance,’ when we are pouring into one thing, something else is not being poured into. She noted that if you need two full time working incomes and are also paying for childcare and summer camps, the ability to seek alignment can be really difficult. But that within whatever means you have, you must find those moments to recharge. She added that mother’s need support, community, down time, something that gives them a sense of identity, plus childcare that isn’t crazy expensive.

Our society pushes career and professional success as a metric for ‘making it’ something that we are really taught, the constant question of ‘what do you do for work.’ But then as a parent and especially as a mother, we are handed a child with very little social support, very little childcare, very little time off. For the first time, the thing that has deemed so darn important, professional success, is at complete odds with what it means to be a mother and what society deems ‘good’ motherhood. Reconciling these two things is incredibly challenging, society will tell you to just quit, to put your professional success on hold to fill your new role of motherhood.

Instead we need to be asking mothers who they are as individuals, who they want to be as mothers, and how can they build something in between those two things. Kelly encourages women to follow their own compass, asking them what works for them, what works for their family, etc. She said, ‘This is not about changing you, but about becoming yourself. Getting rid of the noise and coming back to yourself.’

Kelly attributes much of her success to cutting through the noise; cutting through the noise as it relates to her career, cutting through the noise as it relates to closing her first business, cutting through the noise as it relates to social media. Making a decision that feels good to her rather than the external factors. She described it as a daily practice, constantly reminding herself what is just noise and then focusing on what truly matters.

When asked what advice would you give your younger self, she said “there is a lot of noise out there, do not be afraid to listen to your own intuition, your own gut. That is the truest voice. What is right for you is inside of you. Knowing what is right for you is also better for everyone else. That is not selfish, that is actually better for the people in your life if you are living in your strength and gifts. That is what allows for connection, new ideas, all of it.”

There are so many ways and so many times Kelly could’ve drifted from herself. So many times she could’ve turned herself off, but Kelly did an excellent job at each iteration tapping back into herself rather than what someone else wants and needs from her. She said she feels like she is lucky in a lot of ways, because when she is off track she feels physically ill. Her internal gut feeling is so strong that it is hard to ignore. If she doesn’t follow it, she feels icky and she cannot fake it very well.

As a business owner, you have to be your own boss, how can you show up for work if it isn’t what you want to do. When you are working for yourself, you must keep moving in the right direction. Entrepreneurship requires constantly checking in with ourselves and then making shifts, 10 steps forward, 5 steps back. She said it is helpful to not view life as linear, but instead ask ‘does this keep me centered, does this feel good.’ Coming from the corporate world which is very linear, a corporate ladder where you climb straight up, this evolution can be difficult.

Kelly has connected the dots between who she once was and who she is now, finding the through line between what she needed and what she now offers to others through her work. I am beyond grateful for Kelly, for her friendship, for her story, for her words, and for her unending guidance. You can learn more about Kelly and her coaching work at Kellybrowncoaching.com.

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I believe we find ourselves in others, if you have a story to share, simply hit reply and introduce yourself!