We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chelsea Leader Gold a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Chelsea , thanks for joining us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

I grew up the child of a national Television Producer who did a lot of the heavy lifting and an attorney that took parenting lightly — one person who was awesome at doing things rebelliously differently and one who was a fabulous passenger, along for the ride.

I remember (or maybe I don’t and my parents have re-told me the stories enough for them to feel like memories of my own) how my dad used to ask me questions like, “what color is the sky?”
“Blue!” I’d say.
“I thought it was purple?” he’d push back.
“No, Dad. It’s blue!”
“How do you know?”

My dad – he valued inquisition, debate, conviction and charisma.
My mom – she valued a lot of things, and was really impactful at making those clear. One value that ranked highly? Sharing stories.

Not just storytelling. But story sharing. What was your story, if OK to relay, was hers to connect to an excited audience. What was hers was yours to please do the same.

She loved that so much that she made it her career.
And it seems like I mean TV, but really I mean Campowerment, the expert-led community, powered by play that became our family business…the one that’s become a safe haven, a playground and an incubator for growth for thousands of women and dozens of organizations.

Together, my parents empowered me and my sibling with…
– Curiosity for people’s realness (we hardly ask “how are you?” and leave satisfied; we often ask, “what matters to you right now?” and stay a while, in connection).
– Paired with the ability to hold people’s stories with them

– A pension for finding adventure (thanks to our mom)
– Paired with a second mode: a love for letting adventure find US and being game to go along for the ride (thanks to our dad)

– A true love for community — where stories and spirit are generously exchanged
– Paired with the commitment to create it where we cannot yet find it

Among lots of other traits across a vast dimension. I, and we, from our parents, definitely do our own thing!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I wear a few hats at this moment in my career and life. In all of them, I’m designing paths for people to connect to our aliveness & each other.

Alongside said mama, I own and operate Campowerment, which offers deeply thoughtful and totally-different retreats and collective experiences that inspire life and leadership development through PLAY.

Alongside an incredible creative partner whom I happened to have met at a Campowerment retreat, I co-host Grand Exit, which starts conversations to upgrade our relationship to death and dying, in order for us to live fully now and then: live on.

My career has unfolded step by step – as life does – and I anticipate it continuing to be so. I studied Journalism at the University of Florida, at a time (2007-11) that our professors told us Journalism as we knew it was a dying field…but I knew the ability to observe, listen, write, report, share would get me wherever I was going. (Though, like most, I had not the slightest of idea of what that might look like.)

My final college internship was in Social at TOMS (Shoes, at the time) – the One for One company that was in the founding wave of social entrepreneurship. From Day 1, I felt I had found my people and perhaps a lane that might fit. That internship became my first career job, and I left years later (begrudgingly, but knowing it was time) when my learning plateaued.

I hopped to content strategy, on the advertising agency side — trying my hand at New York City, where I heard the music inside me (and coming out of everyone else, everywhere, all over the streets!). I stayed agency side only until Campowerment became bigger than the Gmail account my mom and grandma could manage, and realized my side hustle had more of a need for me than my job. Our little project was earning hundreds of millions of media impressions — from the Today Show to Oprah Magazine, to the Hollywood Reporter and more, so I took a big risk, following in my mother’s footsteps, and left my steady day job!

I took freelance strategy projects for impact-focused brands for years when we were first developing Campowerment, and only ramped those down when the business could support me, too.

It’s been a joy – and a challenge – and a purveyor of major life milestones – to get to shepherd Campowerment into its next chapters, which is why, I have to believe, it handed me Tamatha Thomas-Haase, my partner in Grand Exit, which we both develop on the side, currently as a podcast and an upcoming book.

I’m so honored and so proud to get to live out my values in real time, and facilitate experiences that allow others to do the same, while being witness for their dynamism — through both these endeavors.

And in what I hope to be life rich with many creative adventures, I know these two will show me the way forward.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Oh, I most certainly can!

I have lots (if your run a business, have a career or live a life that existed before and now after the pandemic, you probably do, too!).

In 2018, the venue Campowerment called home most (having done our first retreat there, then hosting 16 more retreats there, including our first B2B custom experience/co-ed program…among other key milestones) burned to the ground in Malibu’s Woolsey Fires, during the time we were setting up in prep for the arrival of 168 campers, who were set to drive up the next day.

It was, by definition, a business interruption; huge exposure of risk to the business. It was a real-life use case for everything we’d ever learned about emergency protocol, crisis management, risk mitigation, insurance coverage, communications strategy…and most of all: community.

In 24 hours, we evacuated 2 dozen volunteers pre-event, communicated real-time updates of a natural disaster and its potential implications, created a credit policy as well as a point-of-view on total unknowns, checked in with all our campers as best we could to ensure they were safe, recouped as much of our deposits as we could while still being considerate and sensitive to the fact that many others were in a vulnerable situation, and then planned a community gathering for all who were already in town to mourn, to feel, to be together, to find gratitude for safety and to breathe!

What followed was a wild set of business decisions and backup plans, a GoFundMe campaign that raised $70K by the best community members ever, a rescheduled retreat elsewhere and a Today Show story on the “Phoenix Rising” camp that would follow. Not to mention a stronger business infrastructure, new appreciation for our people and the opportunity to CHOOSE Campowerment anew.

So incredibly, the Today Show story that covered that camp is what caused Tamatha, my partner in Grand Exit to learn about Campowerment, and what brought her to camp month’s later, which handed off to a project that has affirmed all my highest values and beliefs.

It’s a pivot and a fated set of circumstances for which we are all the better :)

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Word of mouth.

I am old school in this way, but I really do believe that in a service industry especially (Campowerment) — and now with content as the service (Grand Exit) — our work *is not* for everyonem but *is* created thoughtfully in order to hold deep meaning and impact for those with whom it resonates.

Thought and meaning *can* come through copy in ads, but the loyalty and connection it creates can’t be won or bought. It has to be earned, and it’s meant to live through the people it affects the most.

Those memory-making, story-generating experiences merit sharing. And sometimes judicious sharing. So customers do the vetting and the top-funnel selling *for you.* Because it matters to them, and bolsters their influence in values-forward way.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.campowerment.com and www.grandexit.com/newsletter
• Instagram: @campowerment @grand.exit
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelsealeaderfuller/
• Other: Grand Exit is available where you get your podcasts: https://link.chtbl.com/grandexit

Image Credits
Credit: Human Flower Productions