Kelli France: My Story From Food Stamps to 7 Figure Boss

Description: In this episode, Kelli is interviewed by her dear friend Joelle Gibson from the What’s your story podcast. Kelli wanted to share her story with Joelle’s listeners, but also wanted to do the same with her own! You’ll hear about the good, the bad, and everything else along the way of Kelli’s story. Buckle up! 

In this episode you’ll learn:

• 00:45 Kelli’s Earliest Memories
• 05:16 Do What Makes You Feel Good
• 11:57 Kelli’s Early Life
• 14:16 Fighting to Survive
• 20:08 Embracing Your Strengths
• 26:40 Reframing Your Mindset About Failure
• 33:23 Talk to Yourself Like You Talk to Your Best Friend
• 43:29 Changing Plans Can Be a Good Thing

Kelli’s Earliest Memories

Kelli’s life has been based on finding ways to be confident and true to yourself. This stems from her childhood experiences, as most people’s adult choices do. When Joelle asked Kelli what her earliest memory was, Kelli recalled that her first memory was centered around her outward appearance, making it a not-so-fond first memory. She realized that growing up, she felt the need to be reassured of her beauty by her family and the people around her. A lot of people, especially women, have this natural tendency to look for attention and approval. Kelli looked back on her life and recognized that this attention-seeking habit had carried into her adulthood and caused her to lose sight of who she was and who she wanted to be. 

Do What Makes You Feel Good

Finding what makes you feel good on a daily basis is Kelli’s biggest piece of advice. When you’re going throughout your life completing certain tasks because you think that’s what is going to keep you on track to success, you’re probably wrong! Finding success comes mainly from your mindset, so agonizing over things that you “need to get done” most likely won’t bring you any satisfaction. 

Kelli’s life has been full of attempts to find what makes her tick, trial, and error taking control of her endeavors. Kelli specifically remembers attempting a fashion blog with her daughter but constantly fighting with each other over silly things throughout their creative process. She soon realized that though they were creating this beautiful content, it just wasn’t her thing! Finding your niche is the first step to being successful in whatever you do because if you love what you’re doing, it doesn’t even feel like work. 

Kelli’s Early Life

So many people feel like they need some inspirational story that leads to their ultimate success, but Kelli wanted to keep it real with her listeners. She comes from divorced parents and had a pretty typical childhood. Kelli’s stepmother and mother were both self-starting entrepreneurs, so growing up she saw two powerful women paving the way for her own success. Though she grew up on the less fortunate side of society, Kelli made her low-budget lifestyle motivation to succeed as an adult. 

Fighting to Survive

Once Kelli got into college, she worked jobs to stay afloat, collected food stamps to feed herself, and collaborated with her now-husband to break through their lifestyle barriers. Coming out of college with loads of debt between the two of them, they regressed back to living with Kelli’s mom with their children, squeezing into a 2 bedroom basement apartment. Though nobody wants to move back in with their parents, this gave Kelli and her family the opportunity to grow their own business together and create the groundwork for their future. Now, later in life, she’s seen her children grow so appreciative of the things they can now afford, simple “luxuries” like microwave popcorn were the tell-tale signs of her kids’ standard of living. Everything in life is relative.

Embracing Your Strengths

Doubt is something that comes naturally along with obstacles in life, but staying on top of your mentality will aid you in overcoming these feelings. It’s so easy to compare yourself and your successes with those of the people around you, but to really understand what you have to offer in life, you need to embrace your strengths. Everyone has weaknesses and low points, but focusing on how to change them isn’t always the most beneficial perspective to have. Instead of beating yourself up about things you’re not so great at, embrace the things you’re killer at! 

Your strengths won’t always coincide with what you love to do, but you have to put in an effort to carry your strengths into everything you do. Kelli talks about how she knew she was great at marketing, but some of the endeavors she was caught up in weren’t benefitting her in the ways she needed. She learned to carry her strengths and passions into every aspect of her life and understand that life isn’t going to be laid out for you. It’s going to get messy and you won’t fit into a mold, but as long as you keep your strengths in the forefront of your mind, you’ll have the confidence to take on anything that comes your way. 

Reframing Your Mindset About Failure

It’s obvious that failure is a part of everybody’s everyday life. However, it’s so important not to let this bring you down, especially if you’re still in the process of finding what works for you. This process takes a lifetime for some people, so understanding that failure is not rock-bottom can change the way that you feel about yourself every day. Even though it feels like if something doesn’t go as planned, you’ll be back to square one, that’s the opposite of the truth. Every time you fail, small or big, you’re given a set of information about what wasn’t working. These lessons help you move forward in life to come up with a new plan, no matter what area of life you’re focusing on. Kelli says “I don’t look at it as failure, I look at it as feedback”.

Talk to Yourself Like You Talk to Your Best Friend

There are times when everybody struggles with their inner monologue. The way that you talk to yourself definitely impacts your mindset throughout the day and can change from minute to minute. If you’re excited about something, you usually say things to yourself that hype up the experience you’re about to have. On the other hand, when something goes wrong, instead of being there for yourself to pick yourself back up, we usually turn to negative self-talk. This is not helpful when it comes to moving forward and creating a more beneficial mindset to make it through challenges successfully and with minimum stress.

One of the things that Kelli focuses on when she works with her clients and meets with people about improving their lifestyle is changing the way you speak to yourself. Kelli believes it’s so important to talk to yourself like you would talk to your best friend. You usually wouldn’t say to your best friend but they’re stupid for not doing something correctly because you care about them and you want to help them change the way they do things to succeed in the future. Having that same tender conversation with yourself when something goes wrong can have a huge impact on how you move forward. Doing this for yourself also shows your children and other loved ones that they’re going to have to be there for themselves too. It’s so important to teach this basic self-care to your kids so that they feel confident when they move on to their next stages of life that enable less guidance from you, their parents. 

Changing Plans Can Be a Good Thing

Like Kelli said earlier, there’s no blueprint for how your life is going to fall into place. There will be hectic times and things won’t go according to plan when you want them to. Being adaptable and optimistic along the way is the most important part of creating happiness. Kelli’s life wasn’t working out where she was living in Utah, for example, so for various reasons, her family picked up and moved to a beach town in California. They all realized that being where they were familiar with wasn’t cutting it for them anymore, and although change can be frightening and intimidating, it was ultimately the best plan for everyone involved. Showing flexibility and optimism in your everyday practices will carry into the larger decisions you make in life and make you happier in the long run. 

Resources from this episode:

Find out more about Kelli here

Check out Joelle’s Podcast here

Follow Kelli on Instagram

Join the Fear-LESS Girl Book Club Here

Thank you so much for listening to this episode! I’m honored and excited to be on this journey toward personal growth and greater confidence with you. If you enjoyed the podcast, I’d love to ask you to take 2 minutes to leave me a 5-star review on your podcast app, that way we can help even more women to join us as we #dropkickyourinnermenagirl together.

P.S. If you’re looking for ways to increase your confidence and silence your inner mean-girl, download my free workbook, 6 Ways to Dropkick Your Inner Mean Girl.

xo,

Kelli

 

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