We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Keisha Montfleury a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Keisha , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

HandiWork LLC specializes in personal development programs with a social development focus for our school-aged girls. This supports them in practicing HEALTHY CONFIDENCE so they will not give into negative behavior such as self-harm or bullying.

Why the name HandiWork? (I would love to share)

HandiWork simply means: something that one has made or done; some of it’s synonyms include creation, design and achievement.

At HandiWork we believe it’s going to take a village (of educators, community members, parents and mentors for our girls to become the most HEALTIEST version of herself

Keisha , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

HandiWork was birth from a couple of factors; It’s a combination of my own personal experience, educational background, passion and purpose.

Due to a failed relationship I came to the realization as to why I participated in an unhealthy relationship (it was due to having a low self-esteem and not valuing myself). This is when I made it my purpose to make sure that our girls have the best chance of becoming the most HEALTHIEST version of herself so that she knows how to and have the desire to cultivate healthy relationships (of all kinds; meaning parent-child relationships; sibling relationships; friendships; and ultimately romantic relationships).

I also have my degree in Child/Human Development and have over 17 yrs of working with our children and their families in multiple types of communities (such as child care and Transitional Aged Youth)

We do this by hosting interactive and workshops and providing resources for our girls to be equipped with the skills, knowledge and strategies to thrive as individuals.

Everything that we do is based off our 5 Foundations of practicing HEALTHY CONFIDENCE which are:

1. Purpose : knowing that our girls have a PUROSE here on this earth that she is already equipped to do

2. Self-Care (Oohh La La)- Teaching our girls to care for their “shells” which is there outside beings, and caring for herself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually

3. Journey- Reminding our girls that we are ALL on our own individual journey, while reminding them of the importance of exercising our bodies and wanting the desire to travel outside of our norm

4. Health & Nutrition- Being mindful with the things that we put inside of our bodies

5. Invest- Making sure that we make time for the people that we care for in our live, ourselves and giving back to our communities

Our workshop and classes promote everything above and are as follows:

*5 Day Confidence Challenges- 5 days that are designed to highlight the 5 FOUNDATIONS to HEALTHY CONFIDENCE

* 5 Day Confidence Challenge Elevate 2.0- We spend a whole week focused on one of the FOUNDATIONAL topics of HEALTHY CONFIDENCE (which includes guest speakers and challenges)

* HandiWork Sessions- A individualized program that is designed to support, encourage and guide our girls while giving her the space to do this on her own pace with the parent/guardian support

*Mentorship programs- such as our Melanin Empowered program that happens during Black History Month and is designed to support our African American girls to embrace her MELANIN while being educated and poured into

We have tangible merch such as our:
*Confidence Kits- which has practical tools that supports our girls for her to actually care for herself

*PDF Workbooks – An interactive PDF workbook that gives our girls practical tools for her to be able to practice HEALTHY CONFIDENCE. The workbook is packed with ICE-BREAKER Games, Recipes, and DIY activities for your girl to do either by herself, with you as her guardian, or a best friend!

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

There are multiple ways that we have to be CREATIVE on how to foster relationships with our clients.

Our company is in a unique situation because not only are we cultivating relationships with the girls, but we also have to maintain relationships with the parents.

Since our programs are service based and we touch on topics such as self-esteem and thoughtful conversations we use social media to of course give valuable information on our expertise.

We also share newsletters 3 times a month that provides content and information on how to support their girls and their confidence, gives tips and tools for their girls and allows information for upcoming classes and workshops.

And we love to do thoughtful things for our clients such as sending them personalized “HandiWork” birthday cards and gifts for holidays such as “International Day of the Girl”

Have you ever had to pivot?

Just like everyone, when Covid hit, we had to pivot a bit (which was a bit scary), but after the initial shock we had no choice but to turn our programs (which were all in person workshops and classes to virtual). This made the business flourish a bit , it gave me the opportunity to be creative with the programing, NOW hosting programs IN PERSON & ON-LINE. The on-line programming allowed us to be on various platforms that provides more opportunities which exposed us to be able to do workshop/classes for girls from all over the United States (such as Florida, Georgia and Utah…also even out of the country such as Belize).

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.keishashandiwork.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keishashandiwork/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Keishahandiwork/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keisha-montfleury-43a949152/
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/y5gquGgzng4

Image Credits
Professional images taken by : Priscila Garcia of Capture Photographe