We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michelle King. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michelle below.

Michelle, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I struggled with a lot of darkness in my teens and twenties including eating disorders, depression, anxiety and suicidal ideations. I always felt so ashamed feeling bad about my life, and because of that – I never spoke about it. So that darkness just became this heavy burden as I got older and ‘found myself’ as an adult. It was no wonder I felt so alone and trapped when I got married and had my daughter at 29. I remember looking in the mirror and feeling like the person looking back at me was screaming trying to just be heard. Here I was in an awesome marriage to the love of my life, a new mom to a beautiful, healthy baby, and living a seemingly happy life. I sat in this dissonance not understanding why I was so unhappy and once again felt ashamed of not being grateful. The darkness ensued.

That’s when it hit me, everything outside of me made me who I was. I tried to cover shame with success and happiness, and kept piling on layer after layer onto an impenetrable facade. And so… as my life and everything in it got ‘grander’, the person who was yet to be discovered, the version of me ashamed to be seen, got smaller and even less significant… until that day when I looked in the mirror. I saw her – the woman inside of me – for the first time, and I heard her voice wanting to be healed and accepted. In that same moment, two words came to mind – Positive Presence.

It was like I turned on a dim flashlight in an abyss of darkness within myself, and I discovered an opportunity to shine. In that moment, I sparked my purpose and all-of-a-sudden wanted nothing more to protect my daughter and as many young girls as I could from experiencing my same dark journey. I decided to embrace my darkness and decided to dedicate my life to impacting the generation my daughter was going to forever be looking up to – the teenagers and young adults of today’s world. The vision of Positive Presence has always been to provide a safe place for the next generation to be heard and inspired therefore creating a positive ripple effect for all generations to follow.

Before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, here’s more about Michelle.

Michelle Marie King, a philanthropic leader, innovative entrepreneur, and captivating public speaker, has worked in the positivity activist (a term she coined in 2001) space since 2002.

Michelle became interested in mental health and positivity among the next generation when she herself experienced darkness and struggle as a young adult. As Michelle matured, she began to focus on healing the damage she experienced while working in the modeling and pageant industry. This led to a realization of how permeating the negative feelings she experienced are among our world’s youth.

Michelle began spending her time working towards finding a way to share the light and positivity she learned through years of self-work and reflection. Throughout this journey, Michelle has engaged in many large-scale public speaking events across the country on topics such as women and wealth, becoming a passionate philanthropist, and struggling with eating disorders. Michelle continues to spread her message of positivity and light as a featured guest speaker at several women’s empowerment summits, young entrepreneur conferences, and women in business events across the country every year.

In 2016, her passion for mental health and positivity led her to create Positive Presence Global and the proprietary mentor-coaching S.E.L.F curriculum. Since then, she has worked with hundreds of mentees and trained dozens of new mentor-coaches who have reached thousands more mentees. In her career as a model, philanthropist, emcee, entrepreneur, and public speaker, Michelle has appeared on radio, television, billboards and print in over 15 different states to continue to promote Positive Presence Global and her community efforts.

Michelle’s mission is to masterfully motivate people of all ages to lead a positive life and inspire others to do the same!

Any advice for managing a team?

Integrity, Authenticity and Communication

Positive Presence Global has over 40 team members across the country, and we are working on doubling that team as we expand into Canada over the summer of 2022. One of the most challenging aspects of this business is the human capital piece. We rely on our team tremendously from our execs at corporate to our admin assistants and interns all the way to our coaches coast-to-coast. At the peak of the pandemic, many of these people we only met via Zoom, and could only judge their character from an extensive background check and their on-camera persona . As we’ve continued to grow, we’ve had to come up with new ways to build trust and ensure our candidates had congruent core values as the company. It’s challenging any way you look at it.

We’ve done that by setting a precedence of high integrity as soon as the 1st online interview. We make it feel like less of a job search and more of a journey to aligning with people’s passions. Along the way, our entire talent acquisition team and certification team practices and preaches constant communication to condition our team members to interact with the entire company. We strive to treat everyone as though they’re the founder of the company. We believe every person should be treated with respect and every person should feel welcomed to be honest and authentic. We don’t judge, we don’t put up barriers, we welcome vulnerability of any kind and encourage everyone to practice love and acceptance within the company and amongst the families we work with globally.

We still have a long journey ahead of us in perfecting our leadership principles, but we believe our practices, policies and procedures have allowed us to cultivate a positive experience for all.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Up until winter 2019, I was a solo-proneur and I made a decent living on the one-on-one, in-person coaching services I provided. Thanksgiving of 2019, my husband (who was the bread-winner at the time) got a job opportunity closer to our families in the Midwest – something we had been subconsciously manifesting for years. In less than two days over Thanksgiving break, in a split-second decision, we decided to uproot our entire lives including my in-person business and move across the country. And in order to make this happen, my husband had to be in Minnesota starting his job in less than a month. Overnight – we had to put our home in Colorado (which was JUST decorated for Christmas) on the market, pack up our everything we owned, AND… find a new home in Minnesota. While my husband focused on finishing up his job in Colorado, I was tasked with everything else, which meant my thriving personal business came to a screeching halt.

Thirty days later, we did it! We sold our house, moved our lives to Minnesota, bought a new home all while couch surfing across the Midwest in the midst of the holiday season. From New Year’s through end of January we were living out of boxes at a friend-of-a-friend’s home waiting to move in and settle down into our new roots. Again… my business stayed on pause so my husband could acclimate to his new job and I could take care of our daughter overwhelmed by change.

Once we moved in, it still took another month to set up our home, get our daughter in a school, buy furniture… all the things. So.. for three months, my business was flat-lining, and then… March of 2020, we got word that the whole world was shutting down because of a pandemic (doomsday for my business). I felt like there was no coming back from this but I still felt pulled to try by all means necessary to revive my dying business. I maxed out my credit cards and savings and found a website company who specialized in Google Ads in California. In a blink-of-an-eye, I decided to turn my entire company into an online business, created my own certification program for coaches, and went to work. I pulled all-nighters for months and put everything into deficit hoping for a miracle.

After launching a new sales page about my new online mentor-coaching program along with a very small Google Ad strategy, I started getting leads. I became my best salesperson AND delivered exemplary service. One lead led to ten, ten led to 30 and we continued to grow exponentially. Within months, I needed four new coaches… and within 6 months, I was able to invest in a training team. Now with a marketing team, training team, executive team, sales team and coaching team, we continue to break records month after month.

I’ve learned that to be an entrepreneur, you must cultivate delusion. Nobody will believe in you more than you and YOU must be the hardest working person in your company in order for you to attract others that will work just as hard!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.positivepresenceglobal.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/positivepresenceglobal
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/positivepresenceglobal
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/michellemking
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvhrSjByW2xReMoEmWO2BAQ/