Meet Kelly Wilkniss of My Soulful Home in Pasadena

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelly Wilkniss.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Kelly. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
The story of my business starts when I left my career as a trial attorney in NYC to move to Los Angeles in late 2004. I was a prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, then practiced Civil Rights law for 14 years. I did not want to move to LA. That soon changed when the sun never went away & my family settled into life in San Marino. With two little girls, I was busy making a new life & yet again, renovating a house. We had undergone many renovations while in NY, houses in the Hamptons, apartments in NYC, and a few in between. Admittedly a serial renovator, I am addicted to the transformation of homes into sanctuaries for the people who live there. That “addiction” turned out to be the core of what I would become next.

In 2006, I was finishing up the San Marino renovation and volunteering at the girls’ school. People start noticing what I had done to my house and asked for help with theirs. Helping friends renovate/decorate their homes sparked the idea to actually do it as a career. My thoughts on that was… interior decorating was something you did on the weekends, not as a career, but hey… I was not going to take the California Bar exam! I had a small number of local clients & an Etsy shop for a few years. All well & good, but I wanted to expand the reach of my business.

In 2013 I decided to launch my blog, My Soulful Home. I instantly fell in love with the medium of blogging, avidly learning all I could about photography, SEO, etc. Through blogging, I met the most amazing community of kindred spirits. I developed an app, bHome, which features many of my fellow home & garden bloggers. After launching the app and working hard to grow my blog following, exciting things started to happen for my business.

My biggest renovation/restoration project to date began in 2016 when we purchased our current home from an elderly hoarder of Olympic proportions. Oh, the stories I could tell you about the 10 months we spent in escrow trying to help him move out! The house struck me hard the first time I looked at it and I knew it had to be ours. Built in 1886, it is a Folk Victorian Farmhouse. I dubbed the restoration #bringingbackanamaericanbeauty.

A beauty she is, with great bones, but boy did she need more than a “spa day” to come back to life. From electrical to plumbing to the final touches we lived in during the whole process, to ensure it would be done right and with respect to the house & its history. You can see the before & after on blog and on my YouTube channel, My Soulful Home.

While finishing up the house, I was asked to write a book! That was a surprise indeed.

Since the renovation was still in progress, I decided to focus on another passion of mine, floral design. I am an avid gardener, so sharing how to care for cut flowers & how to grow a cutting garden seemed like the perfect topic. My book, My Soulful Home ~ a year in flowers does just that, mixed in with stories people seem to be enjoying, as well as 12 floral tutorials one for each month of the year. My book is available on Amazon, what isn’t available on Amazon!

In February 2017, I began hosting & producing a podcast along with two other well-established bloggers. Our podcast, Decorating Tips & Tricks, has garnered a very large, loyal & engaged audience. We are consistently in the top 5% of all podcasts on iTunes with respect to downloads & reviews. As the name suggests we share decorating tips & advice 3 x a week in a casual, chatting with your girlfriends over coffee or wine sorta way. Collaborating on the podcast has greatly expanded the reach of my business. Podcast listeners have become virtual design clients & sponsors are very interested in working with us together & individually promoting their brands.

Turning from promoting other brands to my own, I recently opened an online decor shop with one of my podcast co-hosts. The shop is Bespoke Decor. We offer high quality, unique and very beautiful textile products for the home. All made on the USA by our manufacturing partner, another female entrepreneur. I couldn’t be more excited about this new aspect of my business. It combines everything I love doing and tangibly benefits my audience. My business life is most definitely a story of reinvention. To anyone contemplating their next step, I say go for it!

Follow your heart and your passion. You will not know where it will lead you, but in doing so you will be happy & fulfilled along the way. Also seek out kindred spirits, noodle on ways to collaborate to further your individual endeavors and how to come together to create new opportunities. The possibilities are truly endless!

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I wouldn’t say totally smooth, and certainly not paved with gold at the beginning.

Blogging, in particular, is a challenging career choice. The learning curve is huge, the aspects countless and the chance for success slim. Doing it all right, finding your audience and getting them to come back continually requires lots of long hours, working through frustrations, avoiding the comparison trap and stick-to-itiveness!

All that being said, IF you are doing something you love, it doesn’t feel much like “work’.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about My Soulful Home – what should we know?
What I am most proud of as a company/brand is that I am not really a company/brand I am a friend to my readers, listeners and customers. I do what I do for them and in doing so I have created a viable business. They are my focus and concern. It is in that relationship, that I have found fulfillment & success.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
THREE THINGS:
-I didn’t quit when it seemed too hard.
-I am a lifelong learner so I learned all I needed to and continue to learn every day to be better at what I do and pass that along to my readers, listeners, clients & customers.
-I truly care about my relationships with my readers, listeners, clients & customers. That comes through in everything I do and I know they feel it from the feedback I get.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mysoulfulhome.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/mysoulfulhome
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/mysoulfulhome
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/mysoulfulhome
• Yelp: https://amzn.to/2t0xmV0 – book
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrMrpSINwfGMzLQLWzo1N1g?view_as=subscriber

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