How to Turn a Real Customer Pain Point into a High-Value Company with Kelly Parker

Leadership isn't just changing. It's evolving in ways we're only just beginning to imagine. And women, we're not playing this game anymore. We're the ones reshaping the entire field, building models, movements, and businesses that serve more than just a few. On the She Leads podcast, you'll hear real conversations with women who've broken through all kinds of barriers, revenue, identity, orders, and expectations.

There's no sugarcoating here, just the truth told by those who are living it. I'm Adrienne Garland, entrepreneur, strategist, educator, and creator of live experiences, gathering women leaders together for over a decade. And this is the She Leads podcast.

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the She Leads podcast. I am honored to welcome my next guest. Her name is Kelly Parker, and she's the bootstrapped founder of Send Ribbon, a corporate gifting business that was acquired by UrbanStems. Since the exit of her company, she now helps other female founders launch, grow, and exit their companies. I cannot wait to talk to Kelly.

She also is on the board of Girls on the Run, New York City, where they inspire girls to be joyful, healthy, and confident through fun running based programs. I wanna talk to you a little bit about that too because when I saw that, was like, this is amazing. I've never heard of it, so I wanna learn more. And Kelly is also an adviser at We Are The Whisper Group, which was founded by my friend and former She Leads podcast guest, Carrie Kerpin. So it is a small world, and it is definitely a small group of women that start and exit companies that are acquired by larger companies.

So I cannot wait to talk to you because we need to normalize growing businesses and selling them so that we can create wealth. So welcome to the She Leads podcast, Kelly.

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to chat with you and so happy that our world's collided with Carrie and a few other people.

Yes. I mean, is such a small world and the fact that there are women out there that are truly helping other women to think about growing companies, them at as high of a valuation as possible so that we don't undermine ourselves and so that we can continue to do all this good work. This this is so important in our world. So I want to before we get to the exit Yeah. Let's start at the beginning.

So how did you start your business? How did you come to be a founder in general?

Yeah. Well, I would say twelve plus years of Catholic school with a lot of rules makes you wanna do things with not a lot of rules. Oh my gosh. It's hysterical. Yeah.

So for anyone who has ever gone to Catholic school, you know that you just have to do what you're told all day long, and I think that never worked for me. I even went to Catholic college and I would say that without my school, I went to Belmont Abbey in North Carolina. It was a very small school and without the guidance and teachers and people looking out for me, I probably would have never graduated because school was just so not my thing. And I've fought the urge to go back and get my MBA so many times because I'm like, deep down, you don't like this.

So I think at

a very early age, not liking school made me an entrepreneur. From the time I graduated college, I joined tech startups in New York. I would never fit in in corporate. It was too much like Catholic school. So I built companies and I worked for a lot of organizations that everyone would know, like Indeed.

And one of the companies I worked for was acquired by WeWork and then I was at DoorDash. All companies So that were being disruptive and building things is how I got the entrepreneurship bug before I built my own business.

How did you get into doing that? Because it's not a path that a lot of women go down because I actually teach entrepreneurship at NYU on the undergrad level. And even though the people are in an entrepreneurship class, they still say, well, I want to get a corporate job first so that I can be stable. And then I'll I'll, you know, maybe launch a business. What you know, you talked about being in this rules based thing, but, you know, jumping to working with startups, that's a very scary proposition.

Yeah. Well, I think it's a very timely conversation because it had everything to do with what was going on in the economy. Right? So I was fortunate to graduate in 2011, which was right after 2010. And I was learning from, you know, my friends that were a year older or two years older, like how hard the job market was.

And so many of them who pursued careers in business and things in finance actually went back and became teachers and nurses because the jobs were very different. So when I graduated college, I worked two jobs. So I got into startups because it was a contract to hire position with an entity that was owned by AOL. So AOL acquired this startup and they were growing it and it was called patch.com. It's very popular on Long Island.

Yes.

So patch was owned by AOL. So it kind of had the stability of like, okay, you're working at a big company, but it's a startup. And it was truly its own entity. But I wasn't hired full time. No one really was.

It was like forty hours a week hourly rate. So it was a full time job, but it wasn't, you know, the same as a full salary and so on. Was an hourly job until I was hired full time. So there was risk in that, but I knew like, the stability of it being owned by a bigger company and so on. And then at night, I worked the MetLife campaign.

It was the year MetLife had taken over the stadium in New Jersey for the Jets and the Giants. And I worked for a sports marketing agency every Jets, Giants and Yankees game for that entire year. So my first year out of college, because I was so scared of what happened to my friends in 2010, I worked Monday through Friday, nine to five for patch in office, and then every Yankees, Jets, and Giants game weekends and nights.

Oh my gosh. That's an NBA right there. You don't need

to go get You your

know, I was, like, piecing it together. And the reason why is not just, like, the fear of the economy and the market and what happened to my friends, but, you know, there was a lot of self pressure. I'm the first college graduate in my immediate family, and I take that with great pride. My parents and grandparents made so many sacrifices for me to have that opportunity, and there was nothing more of the wait and disappointment to enter a job market that, Hey, you have a degree, you should get a job, right? This should be a shoe in, and it wasn't.

And people I was competing against for these positions in media or tech or startups in New York, they all went to brand name universities and had inroads into these organizations. All I had was my small Catholic school in North Carolina, the most proud thing my family has ever had of a piece of paper going door to door and interviewing. So it was a very different start to my career. But I knew that if either one of these positions, you know, these part time positions went away, I would have one or the other. Right.

So I worked two full time jobs.

And, you know, I mean, I think it's so interesting. And it probably speaks to why you launched a company and were able to successfully sell it to a larger organization, because you clearly have a lot of grit and you understand what you need to do in order to reduce risk and you know, place your your bets appropriately. So did you learn a lot from working at some of these startups that you mentioned about, you know, what the market is is like, what it's, know, what what some of the founders do right, what decisions are made that are not right. Can you talk a little bit about what you learned along the way before you started your own company?

Yeah. I you know, it's such a good conversation because I now as someone who mentors a lot of younger people and Gen Z, I really feel like they're robbed of watching behavior within office, right? And watching how you get on an elevator with an executive or when to stay late in the office and when not to. It was things that I picked up on from leaders that I admired, and many of them were male leaders, right? Were people that ran really big departments or, you know, I just watched even like, you know, this one executive that I've always admired, he's still a part of my life and career, he said to me, Kelly, if I go to get coffee, I never walk alone.

Someone is walking with me because I could either learn something from them or learn they could learn from me. And he optimized every single minute for learning and And solving just watching that behavior early on was like something that I was able to replicate little things from him and make it my own in my own career. So many lessons learned. Was early at one startup that was acquired by WeWork. I was the eighth employee.

There's no difference when you're a first 10 employee to a founder. You're all doing those jobs. Only difference is the founder is responsible for keeping the lights on. As the first seller, I would say that was very much my job too. So I did learn very much hands on in all of my roles and were kind of able to cherry pick what worked for me as an entrepreneur.

Wow. So what, when did you make the decision to, to jump out of that world? It sounds like you got a lot of incredible learning. You, you developed a wonderful network. You saw what it meant to take risks.

What you so you knew you knew what it you know, that companies succeed and companies fail. What made you decide, okay, now's the time for me to launch my business?

It it was actually such a pivotal time in my personal life and, like, professional life that I was like, okay, I need to do something for me. I was like, you know, around 27, I had had all these experiences. I have traveled so much. Like I said, I was flirting with the idea of going back to school and getting my MBA. Shout out NYU Stern because they've accepted me like a few times.

And I still I'm the girl who cried wolf every time. I'm like, I so want to be there. And then I don't end up going. So, you know, I really was like, okay, now's the time for a change. I was 27 and it was, you know, just a really great opportunity for me to take a leap.

One of the reasons, in addition to pursuing school or thinking of an idea, was I had performed so well at that startup. I was the eighth employee, it had grown to a Series C company, we had well into the hundreds of employees. And when I had made my decision, the founder had said to me, well, you'll always have a job here. And I think that was the safety net that I needed to hear because I didn't have my idea of what my next job would be. I always had my idea of, well, if this fails, I'll just go back to what I know.

Because I was a top performer within his organization. So yeah, I took the leap at a time where I had enough experience and enough, you know, enough grit and like, desire for the uncertainty. And now looking back almost ten years later, I don't think that I have the same desire to jump into the fire with no safety net. I think about what big numbers were for me back then. And when I say I had $5,000 to my name the day I started my business, I don't mean of savings, I meant truly we had 5,000.

So I really didn't have the, you know, I had no way of failing. Like it was like, it had to to work or I was just gonna call Dan and be like, hey, need my own job.

Yeah. And I I think so many founders find themselves in that position where it's, you know, you you hear the stories, you know, I had $2 in my checking account and it was like either make this happen or, you know, I don't know what. And so maybe for some, that's an ingredient for success. Right? There's so many different ingredients for success including, you know, timing and just what the market is sort of looking for.

And I you know, you're talking about launching a business and you were in sort of I'm assume and I don't know what the business was that was acquired by WeWork, but I'm sure that it was sort of in that real estate coworking world. So how did you sort of see that there was a gap in the market for corporate gifting? Did that come through all of these different roles that you had? How did you come up with that idea?

Yeah. So you're spot on. My customers were office managers and we provided office services. So the company did everything from janitorial to cleaning to food service. So I knew that these amazing talented office managers, many of them women, were the gatekeepers, right?

And they played essentially God for these companies of who they worked with, for what vendors. And I would ask them questions like, you know, who do you use for gifting? What do you send? And I basically had data of 200 office managers to know, you know, if there is a client that has a baby, what do you send? If there's a birthday in the office, do you do a cake?

Right? And I was able to understand that part of it. And then secondly, just in gifting in general, very briefly my mom owned a flower shop in Brooklyn, so I did know a little bit about the gifting industry and how people, both consumers and corporate gifting, how they actually purchase. The secret sauce is you just have to make it very easy for people to act on their thoughtfulness because say gifting is a love language and some people are like, oh, I send terrible gifts, I'm not good at it, or I've received terrible gifts. But the truth is as a gift provider, if you just make it very easy for someone to be like, oh, I know I have to send a gift, what are the options?

And you just click a button and do it. So I had had that background of how people purchase gifts and the psychology around it. So for corporate, it's even less thoughtful. I was able to combine that experience to create just a product and service that made sense for them.

Gosh, that is so smart. And I'm sort of asking because I'm always incredibly curious. What you just touched on is I think maybe the difference maker between somebody that has a corporate gifting company that even provides beautiful gifts, right? You found the point of friction, and you alleviated that. And that's not often, I would think a thought that comes up in this in this world.

Right? You think I must have the most unique things. I must have the most beautiful things luxurious or but no one really thinks about that prop the process, of ordering.

I'll be so honest and say our packaging wasn't the prettiest, our products weren't the best. The service was based on USPS and FedEx carriers, right? There's that out of my control. But the difference was, hey, this is a baby gift that is corporate appropriate, the right colors, the right price point, and it could get there in three days with your logo on the card and a personalized note. So that's all they wanted.

They didn't want to follow it on Instagram or create this community. It was like, nope, I need to send a baby gift for the point of sending a baby gift, but it has to feel personal but not too thoughtful because it's a professional gift. So I, you know, I was trying to create things that made sense for my customer because it was a very specific customer.

Hey, everyone. So for years, I've been working with Dr. Kent and sending people in my network his way. He does so much impact work. What do I mean by that? Well, he helps people create books and podcasts and things like that.

He even helps with this podcast behind the scenes. Doctor Kent is my thought partner. Anyone listening knows that we all need to do what we can to get our thoughts, opinions, and voices out into the world and how important it is for women to invest in other women and for women to hire other women. I am all about that, and you all know that. But in this case, I think doctor Kent is an exception.

He's doing something really different via this new program that he's launched called the Genius Discovery Program. So he wants to work with people like me and like you who are impact driven. Dr. Kent has an intensive program that goes for a month. He also has a three month program where he figures out where you're headed with your brand, your business, your speaking, and your signature story as a thought leader.

I've known Dr. Kent for a long time. So believe me when I say that he has a ton of experience working with people that are looking to make an impact but might not know exactly how to approach them. So if you're interested in talking to him, can go directly to talktokent.com, or you can send me a DM on Instagram at SheLeadsMedia, or just shoot me an email over at hello@SheLeadsMedia.com.

And I think what is brilliant about this, and often I don't think what a lot of people do as founders is, you know, because you had access to these managers that were the gatekeepers and the buyers, you were able to have these in-depth ongoing conversations with 200 people, which is, you know, you can get insights, deep insights because of that, that other companies do not get. That right there is gold.

Right. And it was something that I knew by just providing trust. I wasn't selling them anything, I was just asking if I found someone that was more affordable or a better quality. And you have to think of this psychology, it's not a consumer and they're not playing with their own money. An office manager has budget for gifting, right?

So what is actually going to benefit them to work with you? And knew exactly what it is And it's in a pinch, in an emergency, can I count on Kelly Parker to get me a gift from A to Z? If I need 20 cases of wine sent to the office by tomorrow, can I call Kelly? And that's all I wanted them to do is like, hey. If you have a project coming up, if you get stuck in an emergency, call me because I wanna be able to help.

And even if I couldn't, I had the vendors and support that could. Right? So it was just creating that trust. And like I said, it wasn't the most glamorous product. I look at gifting businesses now and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's gorgeous.

I would love to receive that. We weren't in that realm. We were in the realm of just getting something that had enough of the elements there. And I'm not saying the product was ugly, I'm just saying it wasn't as done as some of the most amazing gifting companies out there. Right?

Like, so anyway, yeah, I've learned a lot from building for an audience versus trying to create an audience.

So good. Again, like so smart. I'm gonna ask you one more question about this and then and then we're gonna get to the exit. Just because I'm I'm so fascinated by this. When you started asking questions of these office managers, Did you already have in mind that you wanted to create a corporate gifting company?

Or was this just like, I'm gonna, you know, I'm just asking questions, and then you started to see a pattern, and then you continued with the questioning?

Yeah, I knew it. I knew that there was a gap. I absolutely knew that there was a gap immediately because when I started testing it as someone who would send them gifts as well, right? Like I would always send my customers gifts because if we messed up service, I would send a bouquet of flowers or a tray of cookies and said, Hey, I'm working on this, Kelly. Well, I would send them gifts too.

And whenever I sent a personalized gift of any kind, like, to surprise and delight, I always got the nicest email back and, like, a thank you note. They were like, thank you so much. We love partnering with you. But if I send something that just got there for the point of it, I never got that response. I did test the proactive gifting and one of them that's, again, acting on your thoughtfulness, for an office manager it's a very scary thing to take vacation, right?

Like you don't really have backup, things could go awry. One of my clients was going on this trip and she had planned it for two years, so I put together a gift bag of all things for her trip, like a towel, sunblock, a camera. And I just was like, have the best trip. We have it covered and so on.

Oh my god.

Yeah. And it was smart. Right? Because it's like, hey. I listened to you.

I'm not just sending you a bouquet of flowers out of the blue. Like, this is for you. And it was personalized and appropriate and so on. That client continued to work with that business every job that she went to afterwards. Right?

And she went and so on. So I learned that gifting also was not just because you're acting on your thoughtfulness, but it was the relationship builder that created not just a transaction, but a longevity of a multi year relationship. So I learned so much from that experience that I was able to just, like I said, build the pieces of that within my own organization.

All right. So smart all around. So you you ran your business for how long before you decided that you wanted to exit?

Yeah. So I never thought about an exit. And I think this is why Carrie is, someone I admire so much and look up to as a friend, mentor, other founder, is when I got into the business, I had hit my career milestone. For me, was, hey, you own a business. Like for me, I never knew that that would be possible for myself.

So it, you know, it was something that was it. So if you asked me, God willing, on my 80 birthday, what did I do with my life? I would say I owned a business, right? That was enough. Never thought of what that exit could look like.

What I did know that I knew all along that if I kept my head down and worked really hard and acquired the customers that I did, like some of these Fortune 500 customers that were working with me from my parents' basement in Brooklyn, I was like, someone's going to find out one day and reach out to me. Someone is going to visibly see that I've built this business and reach out to me. But I didn't have an exit strategy. I didn't have a plan. The goal was for this to create a lifestyle business for me well into my later years of life.

And I built something that, you know, like I said, the goal was to attract someone to come and be like, I wanna partner with you. I wanna invest or whatever it is. And I was just in the right place at the right time. So I had I wasn't selling. I wasn't on the market or anything, but when I used to send gifts in 2014, just five or six years prior, one of the founders of UrbanStems reached out to me and said, Hey Kelly, you use your business email and send multiple bouquets a week because I was sending to my clients.

I want to learn how you're using our service. And this was before I even had the business, right? This was like three or four years prior to me even coming up with Send Ribbon. I was a power user of UrbanStems. It was because, like I said, I had these office managers, I would send them bouquets and so on.

So fast forward, it's early twenty twenty and that same founder and I had kept in touch, you know, really from like social media and LinkedIn and so on. And he said, like, I see what you're building, I think you should speak to the Chief Revenue Officer at UrbanStems. And it was early twenty twenty, like February, early March. We had one conversation. I thought it could potentially be a partnership or me send them business, because I wasn't fulfilling hours.

The world shut down and everyone was like, but I had it in my gut, like somehow, some way I was going to work with them. The world shut down and I didn't hear from them. I was busy. They were busy. I had taken on a full time role in addition to running the business.

You know, I just sent updates as if I was an investor, like, or, you know, a crazy ex girlfriend. I sent, like, you know, five bullets of, like, an update every few weeks for months. And I was just like, hey. Saw your new collection. Hope, you know, all is going well.

And then I would say, like, we're this is a piece of press we were in. This is a new client we're working with. And I would just forward them as if they were part of, like, my investor community or people that I wanted to see visible. And fast forward July 2020, the conversations picked up, and I got a letter of intent saying we would like to Oh do my gosh. It really had a lot to do with the timing.

Like 2020 obviously was peak COVID and all events and conferences and ways that you would get in front of your prospects, clients and employees were shut down. So the only way you could get in front of them was sending gifts and sending corporate gifts. You know, whether I had the best product or service, very much debatable, but I was certainly an expert in knowing how to do that well. And I think they knew that I was the person that could, you know, build that out for them.

Yeah, I mean, clearly the value was the fact that you had an incredibly deep relationship with the decision makers. That is what is valuable to other companies. It's and I'm not saying that you can sell anything. But if you have that trusted relationship with the the buyer that whatever it is that you put in front of them because they know the way that you do business, that that is invaluable. And I can see why UrbanStems and they're they're lucky that they were able to acquire your business because I'm sure a lot of other businesses would have been, you know, very interested in what you're doing and and the clientele that you built.

So that is just a testament to the way that you do business and it's incredible and you should be so damn proud of yourself. And you know, it it seems to me too the way that you built the business was yes, you applied all of your intelligence and smarts, and you also used your heart and your caring and your thoughtfulness. And all of that combined is the difference maker.

Well, thank you. I have to give credit to, like I said, the people that came before me and so many people that I learned from because I didn't have those opportunities. I've always had to kind of create them on my own. So all the customers that took a chance on me, they didn't have to. It's an $8,000,000,000 business.

And my goal was, if I got 0.0001% of that business, it would net me my old salary, right? That was really the goal was to always just create a lifestyle business. I was nowhere near, you know, multiple 7 figures or anything like that. This was truly a small business that just grew from word-of-mouth and customers that bet on me. So I'm always going to be eternally grateful for the people that took a chance because they absolutely could have went with anyone else.

You know, they didn't have to, they just believed in me. That's why I believe in, you know, so many small business founders now. And it really is just giving someone a chance.

What I think what's so applicable for many of the listeners is that, especially, you know, women, we go and we have these corporate careers and it always happens that at a certain point that corporate career doesn't work for us anymore. There's a lot of reasons why. And so, you know, what's the alternative? Start my own business. And I think so many women have the goal of let me just launch this business and at least get to the salary that I was making and then I'll be fine.

What happens is a lot of women never make it to that salary. And I think the majority of women owned businesses really don't even get to a $150,000 in revenue. And so getting even to, you know, the million dollar revenue mark for women owned businesses is often very, very difficult. Plus, you know, a lot of women owned businesses are not funded, so they can't grow and all of that. So I do think that it's important to for for women that are starting businesses to not just think, you know, how do I replace my corporate salary?

But maybe and if I do, how can I stack my business up for an exit so that I can get even and, you know, extract even more value from the business at a point that I choose? So I know in the the work that you're doing and the work that Carrie is doing, it is encouraging women founders to think ahead about the exit and the value of their their company. Can you give some tips to the listeners about some of the things that they need to be thinking of whether they're they're starting a business now or whether they're, you know, in the middle of it, and they're thinking, gosh, you know, I don't want to do this forever.

Yeah. It's such a great point because going back to our early conversation about risk and grit and what you're willing to endure in building that business really changes based on your personal life. And I can only say it from the point of view of mine, but I can say that I work with so many incredible moms and women who have families that were forced into entrepreneurship because they needed to create lifestyle businesses around time and their families. So that's one of the experiences that I have now is creating lifestyle businesses around what is your goal. Maybe it's not earning your own salary, but maybe it is earning, I don't know, half of it and then you're not paying half to childcare, right?

So everyone's goals are different. For me personally, one tip or trick that I share is around healthcare. Healthcare truly could knock out your entire business. And this has happened to me multiple times throughout my career is when you're managing your own health care and you're not on a partner's plan and anything could happen to your health. That for me is something that teach founders a lot about is like, hey, this is important because one medical bill could knock out your runway.

And it's a very crazy concept to think of, but I think about it the same way in buying a home. If the roof goes, that's an investment that you did not think that you would have to replace. So definitely lifestyle, like partners, families, kids, your health, those are all things that need to be kind of inventoried before so that you could kind of take those risks, right? When, Prior to my acquisition, I didn't have any type of diagnosis and six years later I've had nine surgeries. That's a significant thing that happened in my life that I had to navigate as an entrepreneur.

So I don't tell it as an old wisestail. I tell it because it's a real reality of outside of funding and all the other obstacles women have, healthcare and your cost of living is a significant uphill battle in starting a business when you don't have money coming in and that is money always going out every month. So that's the thing that I really chat about. The second thing that I would say is I built during the girl boss era, right, where you had to be all in, and this was a mistake in rule because you had to be all in for VCs. VCs who didn't invest in my business or so I'm like, why did I do that?

And I realize now it was part of the era of, you know, you have to be all in and work seven days a week. I gave into that and I absolutely did. And maybe if I didn't work the way I did, I wouldn't have had the exit. Who knows? But I do know now that with tooling and resources and things like AI, you can multiply your time and you can be a solo entrepreneur and not you know, give it blood, sweat and tears the way it once was, and that you can create your own business based on your own terms.

Right? And I think that's something that I really, you know, you have to work hard. There's no doubt about it. There's no, you know, skirting that issue. But do you have to, you know, miss a friend's wedding every time?

No. Like, there's a way to manage your lifestyle and your business in 2026 that works for you and you don't have to be all in. So women who are building businesses, there's nothing ugly about having a part time job or consulting on the side or even waitressing once a week, whatever it is, so that you can pursue your dream. The idea that you have to quit your corporate job to pursue this and not have money coming in is not something that I recommend unless you can afford to do that. And on the flip side, with all the layoffs, this gives you the opportunity to create something for yourself, right?

I don't buy into the messaging of you have to be all in. Yes, you have to be all in if you want investment. No investor is going to write a check for someone that has a forty hour work week and then a side project. But if you're building for yourself and you're bootstrapping, there is nothing wrong with having a part time job or some type of side hustle for income.

I really like that message that you're putting out. And I feel in a way that I haven't heard it said in such an articulate manner. Because even though it was the girl boss era, I think a lot of that mentality persists that you do have to be all in and that if you are quote unquote distracted by something else that you're not serious about your business. And that's not true. It's just not true.

And we shouldn't feel shame about having to have a different source of income in order to cover all of these things that you're talking about. They're they're critical for our health and our well-being and our families. And we shouldn't put our our life in harm for the business. Right? I think somebody on my podcast said something about, you know, like laying your life on on the altar in service of your business.

And I thought, wow, that's, you know, that's really well said. And there is this societal message that like, whatever we do as women, we have to do it all. And, and I feel like it extends to a business like, hey girl, you're gonna, you're gonna have a business, you better do it all. And it's just a fallacy. So I I really love that message.

Thank you so much for for calling that out. I know that I personally have a lot of those things going like you're talking about. I have a little bit more of a stable income through my teaching. And then I, you know, I experiment a lot with the conferences that I do and and even this podcast and some other things. But, yeah, it's like, I think that type of a mosaic career, if you will, is beneficial for women as we move through our lives because it is it's exactly what you said.

Our lives dictate how how we can work. We don't have the benefit that men do. We just don't. Yeah. Which sucks.

You know, it's it's a raw conversation, right? Because it's, you know, I spoke to a founder recently and like, she's an entrepreneur, her partner's an entrepreneur and they have complete different views on I can or I can't. And you know, it's just very interesting because as we navigate our, careers and health and life, we're just never putting ourselves first even if I'm not saying it as a single woman, Like I'm not married, I don't have children, but you're always thinking about everyone else in your life before you make a decision for yourself. As someone that works with a lot of moms and women and business owners, it's not just the behavior that I see in myself, but it's definitely across the board of all of my clients.

Yeah. Wow. So tell me about what you are doing now. Right? You're you're obviously not kicking back on on the beach and, you know, St.

Bart's eating bonbons, although that sounds really good. You're still so busy doing great things. Tell tell us about what you're doing now. Do you have thoughts about starting another business potentially?

Yeah. Well, definitely not St. Bart's, but I am on a beach, one that is a public city beach. I'm here in Rockaway, Queens. But no, for me, I made the personal decision to roll over my kind of exit into the success of the acquirer.

And so for me, you know, it wasn't the day after that I could put my feet up or who knows what that could look like in the future. I think it will be for someone like myself, a life changing asset, but for many people it wouldn't be something that would change their day to day and that's how I operate. So for now, I've tried many different things post exit. I traveled, I ran the marathon, I kind of say that I did my bucket list. And one of the things that kept coming up throughout these years you know, since 01/01/2022 is when I took my exit.

So since then was these women reaching out for help. Right. And like, they were like, we saw you did this, like, how do you do it? And I didn't want to be in this consultant role, I basically created what I did need as a founder back then. So what I did need was I needed an advisor that had the experience, but was at an affordable price and when I could actually use them.

So I'm kind of like a co founder on demand, and I offer one to one advisory services for female founders who are launching, growing or exiting their company. And I offer super low rates and not long term contracts because that's not what a small business founder needs. So I created just really accessible opportunity to work with someone when you need an expert, but you can't really extend yourself to that outcome. A lot of small business services are thousands of dollars and you don't know if it's going to work for you. So I make it really accessible for women to work with myself.

And I make my calendar public and just really try to open it up for helping as many businesses as I can.

Wow, I love that so much. And you're so right that as a small business owner, you don't want to get locked into working with somebody for, you know, six months a year, and then your business is suffering because all you're trying to do is figure out how to pay the, you know, this coach. And I I've definitely gotten, you know, I've gotten into situations where I've signed a year agreement and, you know, the the help just sort of stopped, you know, three months in and here I am, like continuing with this person that's just not helping me. And it's unfortunate because, you know, like, I don't know, small businesses are struggling. And if you are, you know, tying their hands behind their back, then they're not going to be able to focus.

So I love that you're you're doing that, you know, at the at the same time, you know, how is it that you're able to offer these amazing rates and everything because everything is expensive.

Right? Yeah. So, you know, I goal right now is to just earn my own salary. So that's where I'm at in my own business. And that's my own goal right now.

You said, Would you ever start another business again in the future? Who knows? Think that the next few years will tell in my personal life and if nothing changes, then I have no problem shooting for the stars again and building a product or a service. But for right now, offering $100 sessions for forty five minutes with recorded notes and being that founder on demand, I'm able to keep the lights on here and it's just about volume. Having a lot of people and it's like a low ticket offer.

And then similar to you, I have a portfolio career, so paid speaking opportunities, content, different ways that I could attract and engage this audience, do. But yeah, for me right now, I really do want to help as many female founders as I can. By having more of them, I'm able just provide myself with a salary so that I could do my life's work of helping other entrepreneurs.

Kelly, I love this so much. And I just wanna also thank you for being so honest and transparent because I'm I'm always looking for that. I always seek that because I feel like there's a lot of shiny stuff that we are bombarded with and, you know, things look so good and people do not take the time to dissect what's what's really going on and how things work. And I like to demystify that for people because you have to be able to see the full picture because otherwise we we compare ourselves to others quote unquote highlight reels and don't understand all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. So I appreciate your honesty and being able to discuss all of the little aspects of it because I

think people need to hear all of this. They need to hear reality.

I agree. I'm still God fearing and I'm from Brooklyn, so the no bullshit thing is very natural of being like, hey, it is what it is. Forty five minutes for a $100. If you can't afford that or you don't think I'm a right fit, like you, and a $100 was all you had. Like I give it back before, you know, that.

So I guarantee my work and I just feel very strongly that my business model of helping more founders creates more opportunities for them and for me. Because they can offer all sorts. I'm very privileged to be able to work with great partners, so like sending them to the PR firm or the marketing agency or the ops person or the lawyer, and all of that comes back tenfold for me. So until this is broken and it can't pay the rent or it can't pay my medical bills and things like that, then I'll have to revise it. And I have you know, in doing that.

But for now, you know, founder sessions will remain the lowest as they can until I it can't be.

How can people get in touch with you? Because I think you're gonna be flooded after this podcast.

I really hope so. And, you know, I hope that it's not just the founders, but it's of future founders. Like, the people that are tinkering with an idea or scared of a layoff. Like, I like planning for what your life could look like before the the thing happens, you know? So for founders and future founders, you could find me on LinkedIn, Kellyanne Parker.

You could also find me on Instagram and TikTok as launch grow exit. But yeah, my calendar is public and you could book a session at any time.

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing your story with all of us here today. I could not be more grateful. I can't wait to book a session with you. And I just I can't wait to see all of the great things that you do with helping women to exit their companies at the highest value possible and to, you know, create future founders that are you know, do really good things in the world and and make change.

So thank you for everything that you are doing. Thank you for being you and we need we need more people like you in in the world. So thank you, Kelly, for being here on the She Leads podcast.

Oh, thank you. And thank you so much for creating this platform. Like I said, I've listened to a handful of the stories and I'm just so privileged to be here and really looking forward to following along for more amazing women's stories on your podcast.

Okay, thank you. We'll talk to you soon.

All right, thanks.

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