🕰️ The Journey Begins: From Single Mom to Channel Creator
So, you know, there’s so much to our story and it gets to be more when we get to be a little bit older, right? So I’m going to be 52 in a couple of weeks. And so my story gets longer. But, you know, when I really felt like I needed a shift and a change was after I had been a single mom of two children, working a lot to make ends meet. And then, you know, as it had it, everything came together. I met this amazing man, and we’ve been married now for, I guess, about 24 years. And anyway, long story short there, I became a stay at home mom had two more children.
🏋️♀️ Empowering Through Fitness: Starting a Concierge Fitness Company
So as most moms can attest or anybody that ends up going from, you know, a career-type field into staying home all the time, you’re just like, oh my gosh, what happened to me? Like, where am I? What is it that I’m supposed to be doing? And so when that happened, I started to kind of put my feet into some different things. So I had already been really loving fitness into fitness. So I started my own concierge fitness company and would go to these women’s houses and bring everything they needed. I’d be able to bring my little kids with me because I have such a huge age gap between our kids. And anyway, so that’s kind of where it started.
🌈 Hopeful Handbags: From Passion to Nonprofit
Now, when it went from where I am now is I decided that, you know, I wanted to start a nonprofit. Because my mom grew up in a very abusive home. So my grandfather did not only abuse my grandmother, but also all of the children. And my mom had me, which was 15, my dad was 17, and we lived across the street from my grandparents. So as I got older, I realized why we lived there. We lived there so that my mom could help take care of the other younger kids that were mine in my sister’s age. So I went on after I had my four children and got certified to be a domestic abuse advocate.
💼 Handbags and Beyond: Expanding the Nonprofit Worldwide
And once I did that, I started collecting once-loved handbags with my grandmother loved her handbag and started having people fill it with necessities. And we started donating those back to people that were getting back on their feet from domestic abuse. That’s when it started in 2017. So then from there, we started helping with many other things with survivors and the nonprofit began to grow to grow. So now we are in multiple countries. We are registered in multiple countries. And we have three main pillars. One is our handbags and our shine and new programs, which helps survivors and their children get back on their feet. And then we have our self-defense portion, which I’m very, very passionate about self-defense always have been and feel like everybody should be able to have the right and the knowledge.
🌍 Global Impact: Water Tanks in Kenya and Special Projects
To be able to defend themselves. And a lot of it is situational awareness as well, not just the tactics, but we also teach those. So that’s something that’s open to the entire public and we do that globally. And then the third portion is our special project. And right now our special project is Kenya, where we are in the middle of being certified for NGO status, but we are putting in water tanks. We have done 13 so far at rural schools in rural Kenya and the Rift Valley and also working on toilets. So the way we do this is the money that’s raised in each area stays within the areas that the money is raised for unless it’s earmarked for a special project.
📚 30-Day Self-Perception Makeover: Personal Growth and Empowerment
And with this special project, we also include in the amount that it costs to put a water tank and toilets in labor. And who are who we are using and who are we hire on for labor are survivors of domestic abuse, child abuse, and people that can also teach the trade to other people in the community. So that’s been absolutely amazing. So that’s a little bit about hopeful handbags. So then from there to be inspired in kind of a different way. I did write a book called the 30 day self perception makeover and I did that based on, you know, the stuff that I when I grew up, you know, I had an ED disorder in high school. I didn’t feel that good about myself and knowing that the things I thought about were really were the things that were going to happen. And whatever I thought about myself is really what mattered. We also incorporate that into hopeful handbags. So that’s just a little bit about the book.
🚀 Tech Startup Ventures: Revolutionizing Social Media for Influencers and Kids
But one thing I do want to mention is something that I’m doing now that I really never thought I would do and how I got there. So I am now the CEO of two tech startup companies. And one which we have just launched recently. And it is the first. The first app that actually is a social site mixed in with a content monetizing site for influencers and content creators. And we make it really easy for you to monetize because YouTube, you know, I mean, you can monetize on YouTube, but you have to have a certain amount of followers. There’s so many different things that you need to have to make that happen. And this is a platform where you can monetize right away. Keep just start sharing out your link. You can charge whatever you would like. You can receive tips. You can charge for messages. So many amazing things in the background.
👶 Child-Safe Content: Tackling Social Media Challenges for Kids
And it also has a blogging system that gets picked up by SEO. So our search engine optimization is right on up there with the best of them as far as reach goes. So we’ve got all of this combined into one and is literally the first to ever have this. So I’m really, really proud of this. Something I’ve been working on for a while. And then another part of that is we have that we’re going to be launching in February is a kids monetizing site. And let me just tell you just really quickly about why that’s so I’m so passionate about this as well. And also the other side, I kind of all comes together, you know, I have four children and my youngest now is 18.
🌐 The Future: A Safer and Monetized Online Experience for Kids
And when she was just becoming a teenager and COVID was happening and all of this stuff was going on, there were things that went on on social media that we found out about the hard way as far as what was going on and what our kids were seeing. And it’s something that really rocked our world. And I can say luckily we’re okay today. However, it was a lot. It was a lot of hospital therapy and things and it all stemmed once I started doing the research, right? They say, you know, a parent is better than the FBI when they’re trying to find something out that has to do with their kids. And so I’ve been thinking, okay, how do I make online safer for our kids? How do we do this because they’re going to have access to it?
🚀 ZZAtem
And so we came up with having this kids site because kids want to share their content as well, right? We’re talking about under 18, 17 and under want to share content as well. But we need to make sure that it’s safe for our kids. We need to make sure that there’s not going to be an ad that’s stuck in the middle that’s totally not appropriate for our children. So that’s where my passion comes for social media and being and starting up these apps and these companies. So one thing and also educating parents, educating them on things that you don’t know unless you need to know them or you put into a situation where you got to find them out. We just want people to be aware.
💬 Connect with Kathleen
One thing that I found out was that and you may already know this, you may already be ahead of the curve, more ahead than I was that, you know, kids can actually put things on their phones and there’s apps behind apps. So I was the phone checker, right? I mean, all my kids, nobody got a phone before high school. Nobody did. And I let them know I will be checking your phone randomly just so you know, I’ll have to be checked in parked downstairs npm plugged in. No exceptions. And I was checking the phones, but when I went on the phone, I wasn’t only seeing anything. It’s like, oh, this is pretty boring. But behind the apps were other apps, apps of things that I had restricted from being on. I told them, no, you cannot be on these things. One being TikTok. I mean, the things that I found in the back of TikTok and the stuff that’s really going on that are targeting our kids. And these are things about self-harm. These are things about other people. I mean, it’s honestly, it’s a huge eye-opener.
🌐 Kathleen’s Passion for Tech Startups and Child Safety
So that is the short story. There’s so much more to this, but I want to keep everybody all day. But of why I’m so passionate about these tech startups. I mean, it’s really about keeping people safe. What’s the name of the two that you talked about? Yeah. So the one that’s already launched is called ZZ Atem. It’s an app ZZ A T E M. And it’s an app. You can also use it on your desktop. And within there is a platform called ZZ fans because we want to kind of also reinvent that word fans for whatever reason by some other platforms that are out there.
