CEO Stories 069: From Disney to Digital Nomad

Erin Kelly has always felt like an entrepreneur, but her journey to actually get there didn’t look like a straight line. From being underpaid and unsure of what to do to co-founding a rapidly growing software company, Erin has finally found her lane and isn’t turning back.   Erin is the CEO of Member Vault. Erin has always had an entrepreneur brain.  She was in 4H selling bunnies as a kid. She did go into corporate world to work for Disney.   She did not know she would own her own business, but she always had ideas.  When she got tired of corporate, so she jumped into retail and then dog walking.  She eventually got into web design and her and her husband started their own business together.  It just kind of happened. When her and her husband started they were a hot mess working with anyone without a solid plan.  They threw a lot out there to see what stuck. They wanted to give small businesses help that could not quite afford it.  They charged too little in their original pricing. They eventually worked with a lot of high level clients, helped on their marketing, and then Erin fell into the OBM business. The pricing help came with experience and seeing their value with their customers.  They saw how good the companies were doing with their help. They knew they were doing people well and had to raise their prices to stay in business.   She started helping customers with marketing.  She met someone in the blog world. Erin started home side blogging.  She and her friend dappled into coaching. She would get really frustrated trying to help clients in the execution.  She found OBM, asked a friend their opinion, and they said I would be your first client. And so it started! OBM is online business manager.  They work at a higher level that a virtual assistant.  The OBM is the executor of your team and help manage the team. After a lot of frustration in the management systems, she was venting to her husband, and he actually created an app to manage OBMs.  Clients started using it and referring it to other clients. They decided it was time to really launch this app. Her husband quit his job, started putting his time into it, and they started Member Vault.  Erin quit doing her OBM work except for her number one client and focused on Member Vault. Member Vault had unlimited content available.  They watched how the customers were using the system and developed it to match these tools. Member Vault loves to listen to the customers and evolve with their clients. Erin just recently let go of her final OBM clients and went fulltime into Member Fault. She is pregnant and they have been travelling in an RV for 10 months with their toddler.  The travelling will be coming to an end. They want Member Vault to keep growing.  They are overhauling their documentation trying to make everything even more user friendly. A few years ago Erin would have never imagined she would be in in this place.  Her advice looking back would have been to not be so hard on herself and enjoy the journey.