We were lucky to catch up with Sarah Shivley recently and have shared our conversation below.
Sarah, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Our mission is to help people thrive in faith, family, and finances. The interesting thing is that hasn’t always been our mission. We originally started by selling coffee. Without going into all the details, after a few years, we just didn’t find much joy in it, so we started to process through what we were naturally good at and what people typically came to us for help with. Those three things were questions of faith, family, and finances, so we decided to pivot.
This new mission is meaningful for me for a couple of reasons. First, I can’t imagine anything more important than being able to help people process through their faith questions. That’s truly what wakes me up in the morning. Secondly, when it comes to family and finances, there are just so many challenges people experience. My husband and I decided at the beginning of our marriage that these were two things we were going to get right, and what made the biggest difference for us was allowing our faith to inform our thoughts and actions. It hasn’t always been easy, but we’re nearing 17 years of marriage and 5 years of debt freedom. Now, we’re experiencing more and more opportunities to pass on our knowledge and experience to help others.
When someone thanks us for helping or encouraging them I can’t explain the joy that brings me. If I never make a single dollar over the rest of my life helping people thrive in faith, family, and finances, I’ll die feeling like I completed the job I was put on the earth to do, and that’s why this mission is so meaningful for me.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Sarah Shivley and I wish I could say my journey to content creation and mentorship was a linear one. It’s been anything but that! Like a lot of people, I went to college because I felt like I was supposed to, but when I was young I never really felt this specific career calling. I just really wanted to be a wife and mom. Well, when I met my husband we were fortunate enough to have a pastor who, along with his wife, took us under his wing and helped us get our marriage off to a great start. As I look back, that had such an impact on us that we wanted to pay it forward. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but after almost 15 years together we were invited to start a marriage mentoring ministry at our church, and we’ve been doing that ever since.
When it comes to finances, we just decided we were going to learn as much as we could and get out of debt as quickly as we could. We had no plans of teaching that information to anyone else, but when people find out you paid off your house in your 30’s they start asking questions. My husband is really the brains behind all of our financial success, but I enjoy coaching people through the emotional and mental struggles associated with managing money differently from the masses. We recently had the privilege of putting on our first finance seminar and are hopeful that we’ll have more opportunities for seminars in the future.
A couple of things we’re working on currently are a finance workbook (where we walk people through wise financial principles) and weekly meal plans. In the workbook, we share not just practical financial information but also our personal stories, which people always tell us are so relatable, helpful, and encouraging. The idea for the meal plans came about because one of the things people often struggle with is overspending on food. Cooking at home can be confusing and joyless, so they eat out more than they should. Well, for 15+ years I’ve been meal planning and cooking at home and I realized that sharing my meal plans is a practical way to help others get their finances in order.
I think the thing that sets us apart from others who may do similar things is the integration of our Christian faith into everything we do. Our name “The Kaloway Co.” comes from a verse in the Bible. Matthew 5:16 says, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” The word good in “good works” is the Greek word, kalos. We know that Christians haven’t always been a force for good, but for us, above anything else, our goal in business and in life is to do good and shine bright – not so people will think we’re awesome, but so people will think God is awesome <3
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I said before that my journey to content creation and mentorship has NOT been linear. Here’s what I mean… I felt this desire to begin creating content in 2017, so I started a youtube channel. At the time my kids were little and I found that I just couldn’t juggle it all, so after a year and a half I decided to switch to blogging, thinking that would be an easier avenue. That lasted another year and a half and then Covid hit, and I couldn’t find any words. So I did nothing for about a year.
Then, my husband and I decided to embark on a two-year pivot and start selling coffee. I’m not entirely sure where the coffee idea came from, and looking back it might seem like a gigantic and unnecessary detour, but here’s what came out of it – ’10 years.’
Let me explain…
I’d often scroll through social media, see successful accounts, and wonder how long it took them to find success. Six months? A year? Three years? I had tried so many different things and needed to know how long to stick with this new venture, so I started reaching out. I’d send a message and ask, “How long did it take you to feel successful?” The response: 10 years.
10 years?!!!! You’ve got to be kidding me!! Over and over again I’d send a message, and over and over the response was the same… 10 years. I’m gonna be honest, that’s not what I wanted to hear. Who wants to devote 10 years to something before seeing success? Then I realized… it took my husband and I 10 years before we started to feel like we had a handle on married life. It took us 10 years from the time we started our debt-free journey to pay off our house.
We had actually devoted 10 years to multiple things before seeing success, but they were all things we were passionate about and believed in. As soon as that realization hit we began our exodus from coffee and pivoted back to content creation. But we knew the only way we’d stick with it long enough to find “success” was if it was something we were passionate about. For us that was faith, family, and finances.
The comical thing is that within a year of making that shift, my personal Facebook account got hacked and subsequently shut down by Meta. What did we lose along with that? Our Facebook and Instagram business accounts. Everything gone. But even in that there was a silver lining. It gave me the time I needed to start thinking through the products we wanted to offer. This fall we’ll be launching our meal plans and God-willing our workbook, so I’ll be working to build our new accounts back up. But man… you want to talk about resilience? I didn’t realize how resilient I was until I looked back over the past 8 years!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I like to call myself a recovering people pleaser. On one hand I don’t care at all what people think of me, and on the other people’s potential negative thoughts about me are crippling. I was working out one day and the instructor encouraged us to think of one thing that was holding us back. Almost immediately this sentence popped into my head:
“Your best isn’t good enough.”
The crazy thing is that as soon as I heard that statement I was immediately transported to the moment it first entered my mind – high school volleyball practice. I’m not sure what happened when I hit high school. I’d been playing sports since I was four and never had any breathing issues, but when I got to high school I had to get an inhaler. This one day at practice we were doing a drill that made my lungs burn! I wasn’t one to give up so I kept going and going and going. I gave everything I had and it just wasn’t enough. My best just wasn’t good enough.
The issue is that my best just wasn’t good enough that day. Unfortunately, what I had internalized was that my best would never be good enough and that thought followed me well beyond high school volleyball.
Being a content creator has been one of the most intimidating and healing experiences for me. I’ve spent hours on a graphic for social media just to trash it because I think it’s “not good enough.” I’ve been crippled by my negative assumptions of what people will think of a post, blog, or resource. I’ve also been so encouraged when people say, “Wow, I really needed to hear that!” Or they ask me to send them a link to a specific resource I created years ago that they need again.
What I’ve had to unlearn (and what I’m still unlearning) is the lie that my best will never be good enough. The truth is that my best is not fixed. As I continue to create my best gets better – it’s a moving target. Maybe today my best isn’t good enough to make me a viral sensation. But if I’m committed to my craft I’ll keep getting better. And if helping people is the end goal, being the best is completely unnecessary.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kaloway.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekalowayco/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekalowayco
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thekalowayco
Image Credits
Personal Photo (me and husband in blue) – Douglas LeHue Photography
Me on couch in black shirt – Nikki Dockery