Kelsey's Idea Graveyard
Cringe but make it inspiring, too.
First Music Career
2009
Full pop album. Paid to film an over the top album release concert but then the audio wasn’t really usable. Wonder what happened to that footage. Gutted my childhood piano and painted it pink to hold my keyboard. It still weighed a ton. Then moved away to a tiny town in Arkansas (as featured in my novel Things I Forgot About) for my husband’s job. Had to throw piano away. Tried out for American Idol. Didn’t make it.
First YouTube Channel
2009
When you think of the biggest YouTubers of all time, guess when they started? 2009-2010. If only I’d kept at it! The theme was “Stuck in the Sticks” a vlog about a musician trying to make it from the middle of nowhere. Great idea but I was so depressed living in said middle of nowhere I couldn’t keep up with the music career or the youtube channel.
MLM 1: Scentsy
Also 2009
Scentsy was brand new at the time and I wanted to get in on the action under my friend who was crushing it. But I am not very passionate about wickless candles and to sell a lot of product you gotta be passionate!
Post & Pixels
2010
While employed at an ad agency, started a side hustle of a Pinteresty lifestyle vlog featuring cute designs I made for baby showers and the like. Also wanted to start an Etsy shop. (My trusty fall-back degree was in graphic design. That’s right, my fallback in case music didn’t work out was art. Ha!)
First Book & Business
2012
After crushing it in marketing (as an employee) I was contracted with an international Froyo chain to be their agency of record. Now I was my own boss. This business was successful as first but I didn’t scale to more clients so when the first client was purchased by a big conglomerate, my business was over.
Also: I didn’t really enjoy it.
But from this experience I wrote my first book for creatives explaining what I’d learned called Go Solo when the term solopreneur was brand new.
When you think of the biggest YouTubers of all time, guess when they started? 2009-2010. If only I’d kept at it! The theme was “Stuck in the Sticks” a vlog about a musician trying to make it from the middle of nowhere. Great idea but I was so depressed living in said middle of nowhere I couldn’t keep up with the music career or the youtube channel.
Pursuit Talk Show
2015
YouTube Round 2 that “Went from 0 to Tony Robbins as a guest in 18 months!”
True.
Also true...
Did not make any money. I spent money to produce this show for years. I eventually added comedy sketches and more video content and rebranded to “The Kelsey Show.” Man, it was epic while it lasted but without profits, it couldn’t last.
Pursuit Magazine
2016
Magazine, merch, audio podcast, I tried so hard to make The Pursuit brand into something but I make so many mistakes and I just could not compete with shows like School of Greatness, for example, which started around the same time and today (after one interview video a week consistently for 10+ years!) is like the biggest youtube interview show of all time save Joe Rogan.
While employed as an ad agency, started a side hustle of a Pinteresty lifestyle vlog featuring cute designs I made for baby showers and the like. Also wanted to start an Etsy shop. (My trusty fall-back degree was in graphic design. That’s right, my fallback in case music didn’t work out was art. Ha!)
Acting Career
2017
With the social (not monetary) momentum of the celebrity talk show, we sold everything we owned and moved my little family to Los Angeles to be closer to YouTube HQ and the industry. Vlogged, Made music and did open mics. Got a legit talent agent, landed a commercial, did a ton of auditions. Corporate comedy gigs were going very well. But didn’t get enough gigs to survive the Coronapocalypse and never had a “big break.”
MLM 2: Optavia
2018
This weight loss program WORKS if you stick with it, but it’s expensive and for a sober person with a sugar addition it still contained a lot of sugar in the day to day processed bars and desserts. I didn’t want to coach others and after a while I also didn’t want to keep eating the processed foods.
Comedy Tour
2019
While in LA, My then-comedy partner Jackie and I paid to film our set (just like I did with my big music concert, remember?) but the video wasn’t as great as we’d hoped. We did book one big paid gig for a women’s conference but that was it. Then she got a spot on AGT and after that big break she had her own gigs her manager booked for her. Then 2020.
Fearless Funny Speakers
2019
Finally, FINALLY I was getting booked regularly for speaking and paid comedy gigs. Hooray! So then all the experts said, make a course! Form a coaching program! So, I did. And 2019 was actually my most profitable year to date….and then, of course, the world imploded.
Sync (Music Career 2)
2019
One of the many online courses I took through the years was one by now-famous-podcaster Cathy Heller before she became the big brand she is now. She made a living writing songs for sync – meaning songs for commercials, tv, movies. She had a clear formula, write about colors, emotions, specific themes that are used again and again in commercials and TV shows. I was like, um, I can do that. And I did. I wrote Rainbow, Together, Good Morning, Rise Up, exactly as she instructed. But none of them ever got picked up for a sync deal and I also didn’t finish the album because Coronapocolypse halted production.
Viral Videos: The Sisters
2020
I had a few viral videos before these, but my “Extroverts Stuck in Quarantine” video went bonkers and actually resulted in followers that were ready for more comedy videos from me. This video series was successful and inspired my books but it never catapulted me to hundreds of thousands of fans. Also, IG and FB started to crack down on videos that used snapchat filters (and viewers online got tired of them too.)
Why Am I Like This Shop
2020
Start a print-on-demand shop, they said. It’s so easy to make passive income! They said. I took my extrovert/introvert quips and made them into merch. I still have the merch for sale on my site but it’s complimentary now to my books and not a whole brand on its own. I told my best friend Stephanie “I’m going to promote this business for two years! It’s going to take off!” I think I lasted 90 days. lolz. Every business takes work. You need to love it or you won’t to do the work to grow it. As I learned again and again and again!
MLM 3: Rodan + Fields
2021
This time, R+F. As my social media started to grow, I had a lot of people asking me about my skin. I DO use Rodan and Fields on my skin, to this day. So it made sense to try and build an income through the products. But again, I wasn’t passionate enough to build a team under me and sell sell sell. Good thing since R+F screwed over their people and shut down their network marketing model. 😬
Local Businesses
2021
Like the rest of California (and New York) we moved home during the end of 2020. Our outdoor park by our house was roped off with caution tape. I couldn’t live in isolation like that without any family around. When we moved back to Oklahoma City I had a photography studio idea, a retail shop idea and another print on demand idea. I set up websites and IG handles for all of them! Luckily, I didn’t spend much money and didn’t do any grand public announcements. It takes me a really long time to learn my lesson but I was slowly learning at this point.
Original Musical
2021
I met entrepreneur Gigi Butler (founder, Gigi’s cupcakes) at a conference I was emceeing. I read her book and the idea for her life in Nashville, as a musical, just came to me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I asked her for a meeting, recorded the songs, worked on a rough script outine and flew to Nashville to pitch it to her. She loved it! We worked on it together for about a year. Paid to have a professional storyboard and trailer video made. Had a listening party. Met with musical movie producers. Had some traction. But then Gigi had to move to Florida and we couldn’t exactly pull off our Music City Musical without at least one of us living in Music City. Insert crying emoji.
The Great Depresh
2021
When the musical died in development, while we also couldn’t conceive and couldn’t find an adoption match, I was done. I also got sick.
For two weeks, I did nothing. No social media, no ideas, no funny videos, zero. I had only one daughter in school during the day at the time, so I sat and read fiction for two weeks. A LOT of fiction. I flew through multiple book series. It was after that period of extreme rest that I thought, “Hmmm, I wonder if I could turn this idea into a novel…”
That was twelve novels ago!
An Actual, Six-Figure Profitable Business!
2023
Please learn from all my mistakes.
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If you are a creative person, a painter, singer, comedian, influencer, it's hard to take what online gurus say; "just add value" and apply it to our art. If I can do this, so can you.
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I put everything I finally figured out this time around into one big PDF for you. Not a course, not a group not a video series it's just one easy file (if your brain needs to listen rather than read.) Please get it!