Member Spotlight: Kimberly Lovelady
Tell me a little about yourself.
I have a health and wellness consulting firm that helps people make small changes in order to improve their lifestyle. During my other time when I'm not busy, I am a mother to two lovely boys. One is in college . . . and my youngest is in middle school. I'm married. We are getting ready to be empty-nesters. . . . I volunteer all over the place.
How did your business get started?
Fundamental Health Solutions started as a company that we were beginning to do a lot of marketing and social media. We were at [a conference] that it was inspired by. Before then we had a traditional business. It was with health and wellness in public health. So I've spent over twenty years in the public health field.
I've always had a consulting firm, and it started to shift. I think it was 2007 when I first heard of Gary V and online platforms. I started Facebook and this weird thing called Instagram and YouTube. I was able to take what I knew from traditional academia and corporate and then begin to apply online and utilize these features while still having local programming.
Because I realize a lot of my core programs are local and all evidence-based, they are health programs that help people make healthy lifestyle changes. If you have a disease state or a pre-disease state (so basically if you’re sick or not sick), we have programming either way. We are really making sure people do not go into where they have chronic conditions or chronic diseases. So that's the goal. So we do it online and local.
How has theCO helped you launch deeper?
theCO has been very helpful because of the different businesses and the different minds that are here. I always had an office and I had a home-based business, but I got tired of working from home, so I got an office space somewhere else, but I was the only entrepreneur in the space. It was kind of lonely. Entrepreneurship can be lonely if you become siloed, and you're so busy, especially if you are online, and you've just been doing your own thing. I needed to be in an environment where there were other people who have the same drive with different ideas but saw the world bigger than local—who were dreamers and were willing to take action on a dream and make it happen. theCO has been really helpful with that because everyone has their different specialties. Even though I'm a health and wellness firm, there are also people in coding, robotics, and just all these different companies where they are businesses from a different lens.
What would you tell someone who is thinking of getting a CO:membership?
Anyone who is interested in being an entrepreneur should. I think theCO is the best place to come, especially in Tennessee where everyone is siloed. To have a spot where you have a bunch of different visionaries and dreamers does support you because sometimes when you have your own business, people who you think will support you are the last to support. So [it’s nice] to be in an environment where you are not weird.
I think the price is astounding because if you were to go to another city you would pay at least three times as much, especially for access to what we have here. The community, resources, the fact that if you're a startup business you don't have to be in your house. That is huge because you need to be able to separate business from home life; most of the time we can't. And just to have that place where you can go to grow. You should definitely come do it. Give it a try! Go to the workshops and meetups! Because if you're not willing to invest in yourself to grow your business, you don't have a real business—because how do you expect for someone to spend money with you if you're not willing to spend money with someone else?
Learn more about Fundamental Health Solutions here.