Kelly Price has been successful in the music industry for over two decades now, and this year she’s adding something new to her track record. She’s joining M.C. Lyte and a host of her celebrity friends at the WEALTH Experience as the keynote speaker. The WEALTH Experience is an acronym for Womanhood, Expansion, Assets, Leadership, Transformation and Health. It’s a three-day women’s retreat focused on connecting like-minded business partners and friends, reflecting on goals and renewing one’s spirit through several general sessions, workshops and themed events that will teach women how to master their personal, business and financial objectives.
Rolling out sat down exclusively with Kelly to get the details on what she’s going to be discussing. She touches on her personal experience and shares it in hopes that other women will learn from it and grow because of it. Read what Price had to say below, and trust us, she’s definitely dropping some jewels.
You’re speaking at the WEALTH Experience that’s being held in Miami, Jan. 5-8, along with several brilliant, intelligent and beautiful sisters. Tell me how you got involved.
Interestingly enough, when this was an idea in both Lynn Richardson and MC Lyte’s heads, they sat at a table in a restaurant in Los Angeles with me and my business partner Gabby Sands and we talked about it over lunch. It was a really long lunch because it was just an incredible idea about how to bring women together and do something more. We were really looking for a formula that would speak to the whole woman. By the end of that lunch meeting, they were saying, “… we think we can pull this off. Let’s do this. Maybe within the next two years we can get it going.” And I was like, “Ya’ll need to do this like yesterday.” They were looking at me like, how are we going to pull all that together that fast? And literally, Gabby and I were like whatever we need to do to help you put it together, just let us know. But you can’t wait on something like that. We need this now. We had that meeting earlier on in the year and January 2016, the inaugural WEALTH Experience took place, I want to say less than a year later.
As I understand it, it’s a retreat about wealth, health and relationships. What would be your area of expertise? In what capacity would you be involved with helping the women?
I feel like I come as an expert of emotional well-being, having not always been emotionally well, because we address the whole woman. I participate on other panels because I’ve experienced having a whole lot of money from a position of ignorance and not knowing what to do with it and lost a whole lot of money, and lost a whole lot because I was in the wrong relationships with the wrong people handling my money and my heart, and all of it being connected. My position has migrated and increased since last year. I’m doing the keynote this year.
How did that come about?
After a couple of group panel sessions and addressing all of the women in those sessions was born a necessity to have a room where we really dig deep into the heart of women, because when you’re emotionally sick, everything else suffers. You can find a woman who’s brilliant, but if she keeps giving her emotions, and her heart and her body and everything else to the wrong person, everything else is going to suffer. So, I ended up, by request from the attendees last year, adding a session where it was just me and the women, and I talked about being in a relationship with my business partner, my husband and [how] my money was funny. And [how] my life was looking crazy, and how everything suffered, not just my self-esteem, but my ability to perform my best suffered. Everything suffered. So, that’s where I ended up addressing the women last year by impromptu request and this year, I’ll have a session where I’m addressing that.
Who should attend the retreat?
There are so many women, particularly in my age category, that have settled in a lot of ways. And what I’ve found is that a lot of women that are in this age, and in this stage of life are trying to find themselves, now that their children are grown – now that that relationship that they thought they would be in for the rest of their lives have malfunctioned or completely failed – and they’re trying to figure out ‘what do I do with me now?’ I’m getting ready to turn 44 years old and I’m a mother with grown children, empty-nesting, dating after being married since I was 19 years old, have grandchildren, a second wind in my career. I’ll be addressing that with women who are trying to find themselves in life, love and career.
I want to attend to hear that conversation.
It’s a much-needed conversation. And we didn’t realize how badly it was needed to open that up, and really, really have a candid “for real, for real, keeping it 100 for real, in real-life conversation” in a closed in place, and people can say what they’re feeling. I revealed a lot of things about myself in a room full of women, many of whom I’ve never seen before. And I think it did something to them to see a person who they had seen in one light for two decades, open up about what was really happening behind closed doors. I would stand on stages before tens of thousands of people and tell them why they didn’t deserve less than the best, and I was going home and taking whatever was being handed to me.
That’s a real testimony.
Absolutely. And now on the other side of that, so many things have happened as a result of me finding myself and learning how to love myself for real. People started saying, “you’re losing the weight.” It wasn’t hard to do because I fell in love with Kelly for real. And I decided that I never had to settle for less than the best, for real. Everything else was easy.
What are you hoping is the one thing women take away from this experience?
I want everyone to feel like I feel. And what that means is, I want these women to fall in love with themselves. Because everything else really will fall in line. If you fall in love with yourself, you’ll do what’s necessary to fix your financial picture, you’ll get your credit together, you won’t be fearful. There’s so much that I had to do on the backside of my divorce. I’m still fixing stuff. I was married to my manager for almost 24 years. I’m still fixing stuff that wasn’t totally my fault, but I gotta fix it, and I can’t let shame or fear of what people think or fear of whatever keep me from grabbing the bull by the horns and going for it. I gotta fix what needs to be fixed. But I’m worth it, because I love me. I want women to walk away from the W.E.A.L.T.H. Experience in love with themselves, because if they fall in love with them, they will never let another area of their life mistreat them ever again. Not a man, not a woman, not their finances, nothing. Not family members, not friends, not in business, they won’t let themselves beat themselves down if they fail at a business that they’ve tried, they’ll get up and try it again. They’ll figure it out. They’ll do what they need to do to get it right. They’ll get the right help, they’ll surround themselves with the right people, and they’ll drop bad relationships. They’ll kick ‘hater-friends’ that they’ve had smiling in their faces, but secretly hoping that they fail, they’ll get rid of them. If they fall in love with themselves, they’ll fix their lives. For real.
