We were lucky to catch up with Elke Robshaw recently and have shared our conversation below.

Elke, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

7 years ago, I walked into my husband’s home office and had to leave immediately because I wasn’t able to breathe. That’s when I knew I had to do something. For years, I was looking for the “right moment” to leave him. Once the boys are grown, once I’m not the president of the school anymore, once I have a job that can financially support me. But in that moment, I just knew I couldn’t wait another day.

A year later, I was divorced with two kids (7 and 8), in a new relationship with someone 14 years younger (and extremely hot …) and had started a business with my new partner.

Literally, EVERYONE told me I was insane, I was not only destroying my family but also my life. I was throwing everything out of the window for a brief moment of passion and midlife crises. However, I knew it was the right thing to do. Even though I realize how it looked from the outside, I knew that what Curt and I had was not a “midlife crisis adventure.”. It was a lot more. More than I ever had in a relationship with someone more “age-appropriate.”.

Now, 7 years later, we proved everyone wrong. I built a new family with Curt; my boys absolutely love him; our business is growing every year; and our friends have accepted us as we are. I’m still often mistaken for being my partner’s mom, but there are worse things in the world.

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

Curt started Kong Academy in October 2016. I joined as a volunteer to help with whatever he needed help with. At the time, I had a part-time job supporting a financial planner and had plans to become a CFP myself. However, after volunteering for Curt and Kong Academy for a few months, I realized that I enjoyed working with Kong much more and that I started spending more time at my “volunteer gig” than at my paid job. I asked Curt to become a co-owner in return for working for free for a year. He agreed immediately.

Kong Academy teaches kids social and emotional skills through play and movement. We believe that skills like a growth mindset, conflict resolution, emotional management, communication skills etc. are the foundation for a happy and fulfilled life. And if you teach them in a meaningful and relevant way, even kids as young as 4 or 5 can start learning them.

The thing I’m most proud of is the massive growth of our summer camps. We started offering summer camps in 2017 and had maybe 30 kids in total. In 2023, we welcome almost 1,100 kids to our camps. The quality of our camps is second to none. We run weeklong immersive outdoor movement adventures for kids that will stay with them for a lifetime. One of our campers said that all he asked for Christmas was to be able to join our camp again next year.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I think this would also go under “pivot” but I chose resilience. It was in 2020 just when Covid started. At that point, we were 100% in-person and 100% “hands-on” with our kids to make sure they are safe and don’t get hurt during the activities. When Covid started, we had a phone call with one of our business advisors, who offered to pay us money if we closed the business until “all of this is over”. I was shocked. We strongly believed that parents and kids needed us now more than ever. So many child-care providers and companies working with kids closed down and there was nothing to do for them. Parents were going crazy, they had to work from home, where with their kids 24/7 and there were almost no breaks for them.

We decided to stay open and support our community. Over the weekend, Curt developed a curriculum that could be taught virtually, we offered virtual classes just a few days later. Three months later, as soon as we were legally allowed, we started our in-person classes again. We run our program outdoors and had created a curriculum with games that allowed kids to stay at least 6-feet apart, everyone was wearing masks and we had bought pretty much every single pool noodle in Seattle (which we needed for the games).

Parents were so grateful and told us that thanks to our program they didn’t loose their sanity. It meant so much to us that we were able to offer our community a much needed service.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Nothing beats word of mouth for us. Almost 75% of new families join us because someone talked about us or they read about us in a FB group. It was really interesting when we found out (we started asking all new families how they’ve heard about us). First of all, it keeps us on our toes to make sure we provide the best service possible at all times. We are constantly working on improving our content, the way we communicate with our families and our student’s experience. It also means that we don’t have to spend a ton of money on ads and other marketing channels. We’d rather invest the money in our coaches, their training, the curriculum, the equipment etc.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kongacademy.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kongacademy/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KongAcademy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elke-robshaw/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kongacademy