Building a Business That Changes Lives with Shellee Howard

Welcome to the Limitless Women podcast. Our mission is to

help women business owners like you grow profitable businesses

and actualize your opportunities to serve and give to yourself

and others. Here's your host, the founder of Limitless Women,

Laura Gisborne.

Okay, welcome back to the Limitless Women

podcast. I'm really excited to share with you a dear friend

that I recently reconnected with. Shelly Howard is the

founder of College Ready, and she has an amazing story for us

today of her journey of how she became an entrepreneur, what

she's done. She and I became friends years ago, so I've got a

little bit of perspective from like the before and after. She's

on fire now. You will see her all over the press, the media,

and she was just on David John's show. I'm not sure exactly

she'll tell us how that all went down, but then she's just won an

award. You know, things are on fire for you, and I'm so

thrilled to have you here and celebrate your success today,

Shelley. So thanks for being with us.

Thank you, Laura. It's so good to be here.

Yeah, so good to see you too, honey. Actually,

good to see you. We talked on the phone. It was really nice to

actually see your beautiful face. All right, tell us a

little bit about how College Ready started. I think there's a

really amazing story about your own journey as a mama and what

was happening for you and for your family. And you know, let's

just get us up to speed with what is College Ready and how

did you get into the journey of entrepreneurship?

So good, happy to share. So first and foremost,

I am the daughter of two entrepreneurs. I think that's

super important to set that tone because people are like, "Wow,

you just think outside the box. I started my first business at

12. Wow! I really, really love money. When it came to the more

I made, the more I could give, and it just it felt great. And

so, College Ready was my seventh business I started, and it all

happened because the iPhone came out, and at the time I was a

professional photographer, and I saw the writing on the wall, and

I'm like, "Whoa, this is going to change things. And at the

same time, my firstborn was preparing for college, and so I

was I was working full time, and then I would come home and I

would learn everything I could about college admissions, I

still felt like I needed more, so I went back to school and I

got my master's, and I went back to school and I became a

certified independent college strategist. And then it was time

for my my firstborn to launch. He went to Harvard, graduated in

four years, pre med, and he did it without me paying a dime, and

he's debt free. So

cool! So that's

how College Ready started. So it was another

opportunity that the hard work paid off, and now everybody asks

me, "Can you help my child? And so that's how College Ready was

launched.

Yeah, so cool. And so, what did you do? And I

know that this would like probably can't give us all the

details in one show, but you know, kind of give us an idea of

like how you knew what you knew. It sounds like you went and got

the education to learn what you needed to learn to really be

able to do this well. And as I know you, you do everything

well. That's how you are. You're very committed. What did you do

that had your son graduate debt free?

So, starting with the first part of it is,

what did I do? You know, there was nobody that was any help to

us when we were navigating. I would have loved to pay myself

back then, to be honest with you, the the amount of work I

put into preparing, I would have so much rather paid somebody,

but there wasn't anybody, and the high school counselor was

just too busy to be helpful. So it did fall on my shoulders, and

I did take it seriously. My son asked for my help, and he had

big hopes and dreams. He wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon,

actually a brain surgeon, and it changed to orthopedic surgeon.

But so he had big hopes and dreams. So hopefully, as a

listener, you're like, oh yes, I understand the pressure that

must feel. And so what I ended up doing is I was doing both. I

was a professional photographer, and then I was also on my free

time helping families. And what I realized is, I loved it.

That's

what I realized: is I speak teenager, I love to

inspire, I love to provide impact, and so it. It was just a

really nice way for me to transition out of one and into

another, and so it never really was. I'm going to quit my job

and start this thing. It was. I'm going to transition out of

what was paying me, and I'm going to transition into what I

really wanted to do, and I was very successful at it, and it

spread like wildfire.

So cool. The

second question is how we did it. Is I ran call

it I ran my son's platform as a business. So the first thing I

did is I was like college is a business,

okay,

and I reverse engineered it. So I was thinking

if my son wants to be a surgeon. What do awesome surgeons do?

Where do they go to school? What kind of internships? What kind

of research? What kind of community service? And I reverse

engineered the whole process.

Smart, smart. So it's like that. You you

identified the identity of that role and that person that he

wanted to grow into being, and then you looked at all the

distinctions and thought, "How do we actually put him on that

path?

Absolutely, and then we went into LinkedIn and

we actually saw the path. This is where this doctor started.

This is who they talked to. This is what they did, and all of the

sudden it started really lining up, and I was like, "This is it.

This is the business plan, the business model to get him where

he wants to go. And then I've been doing that 18 years for all

of the other students through my program.

Yeah, super cool. And I think it's

interesting because there's such a lesson in that already, just

in the first five minutes, Shelley. Of you know what what

does it take to actually step into the identity of your

vision, right? Like you have the vision, you have the idea. This

is where I want to go. But what are the steps that you're

actually going to take? And I think it's you know a lot of the

work that we do with with folks now is in the foundations.

Right, like going back. Often, people will be in business for a

long time, and they haven't hit their goals. They haven't hit

their revenue. They haven't hit you know the the impact that

they want to create in their life and with their business.

And so we go back often and say, okay, well, did you build on the

sand? Are you on shaky foundation? Right? Did you

actually go and build the foundation for the dream that

you have here, right? Like so, there's a lot of that foundation

that has to be in place before you lead to flow. So I love that

you know it's so clickable in so many ways, and I think we could

talk for hours about all the ways that being an entrepreneur

is different in the world, right? Like how we see things

differently, how we problem solve differently. I did not

realize that you had this was your seventh business. I had

somehow missed that in all the years that we've known each

other. But it is interesting, you know. It's interesting how

we're wired differently as entrepreneurs, right? We're

wired differently to see things in a different way. So tell me a

little bit about the award that you just won. Speaking of being

unique and seeing things differently, tell but let let me

celebrate that with you.

Absolutely. So last year was a really wonderful

year. It was my best financial year at College Ready, and that

alone was just it was I I had met my financial goal, and it

was wild. It's like okay, now what, right? As an entrepreneur,

you don't go. Oh, okay. I'm good. We don't have to. It's

like, okay, what's my next big audacious

goal

and how we hit that? And at the same time, I

was being approached by people, and I was nominated for the 2026

Global Educational Consultant of the Year. I have students inside

and outside the U.S. and so I never really thought much about

it. Somebody, I still don't know who it was. It was anonymous,

and I get this information. Of course, I thought it was not

legit, and so I got all

my research.

They could have possibly have wanted me. Who are

these people? Yeah,

yeah. I went through three interviews and I

had to write a founder story, and it turns out that I won the

award. And in order to accept the award, I had to fly to the

Philippines.

Oh wow!

And I was like, I've always wanted to go to the

Philippines, and it just happened to be my 100th country,

so it was just such an epic moment. I got to walk down the

red carpet, wear the gown, get the trophy, and just be

celebrated. And it felt so surreal. My husband just

watching with such pride. My kids cheering me on, and it was

like a reality. What I found out is a big part of why I received

the award is because I have an international nonprofit, and I

never saw that. That that was going to be such a big part of

my story.

Yeah,

and I was in Africa when I decided. All of

this was going to happen. My fourth time in Africa, and so

that award meant so much more because it really was a

cumulation of not only the the work I do with the students, but

also the things that I care deeply about and how I'm making

impact, and how I'm joining my students, making impact with my

school in Uganda, so it was like this big package that was

delivered and celebrated. And so that award is the Global Pioneer

Award, and it had to do with the starting of my business, the

starting of the nonprofit, and the success of both.

Congratulations, sweetheart. That's really,

really, really beautiful. And I think about you know when I met

you, and this was really more in its infancy. And I remember how

much you. I always, when I refer back and tell people about your

story, one of the things that I was so impressed with back then

that I'm still impressed with today is your willingness to do

the work, Shelly. You know, I remember talking to you, and you

were going out, and people were like, "Oh, I don't feel like

networking, or I'm going to go to one thing a month. You were

out there four days a week. You had leads groups. You were in

every chamber, and I was like, "This woman is on fire. She's

going to do what she says she's going to do. You had a revenue

goal. You were like, "I'm going to hit it. You were hired your

first team member, assistant slash business manager today,

Michelle. It was like you were just getting started. I look at

again how far you've come in such a short period of time, and

I really want to hear more about the nonprofit work. But what

inspires you? Like as I think about your your discipline and

how you stay on track, you know, I want to hear the story of how

you got inspired to do the nonprofit work, but also like,

what's that thing about you, Shelley, that has you really

like put your eye on the prize and put your head down and stay

focused? What do you think that is for you?

Well, I think you kind of brought it up as I'm

pretty tenacious. Yeah, yeah. Most people give up. I, I'm

just, I just keep going, and I really believe that comes from

being a scholar athlete. I played softball for the USA, and

I was the smallest catcher that they had ever had. Oh,

sweet love. And

I didn't let that stop me. I was, I was fast.

I was determined, and I learned very early that I fail forward.

And I think a lot of times people are afraid to fail, and

that's what stops them. I just lean into it. Again, both

parents being entrepreneurs, it is a very normal part of being

an entrepreneur.

Yeah,

and so I'm very tenacious. I'm very self

motivated. I don't need anybody holding me accountable, and so

those two things I think have served me well as I've gone

through this process.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about Uganda. Let's

talk about what you know how that journey, that part of the

journey, the journey inside the journey, evolved with your

nonprofit. Tell us that story. So it is

a beautiful story, and I'll give you the

short version. Sure. The first time I went to Africa, it was to

take my 17-year-old, who really wanted to be a doctor, and I

didn't know if it was for the DR, you know, in front of the

name, or really the desire to do the work, so I was a mom on a

mission, and so he gave me two weeks because he was so busy,

and he said I'll do anything, and so I took him to the slums

of Mathari, which is some of the worst of the worst in the third

world country, and we served together in a clinic, and it was

it was hard, it was

life changing. It

was life changing. It was really hard

work, and there were many nights I heard him whimpering, and you

know he was like, "I just don't know, Mom, if I can do this kind

of thing. And by the end, he was changed forever.

Yeah, the

beauty of that is he just finished orthopedic

surgery as chief resident, and he just served in Ethiopia for

two weeks as his give back.

Nice. That's the

impact that Africa has made on my family. So

that was trip one. Trip two, I was asked to go with a friend to

explore South Africa. It was lovely. Step trip three. I was

asked by three entrepreneurs to go with them and help women

build businesses, and I was like, "Oh yes, oh

yeah. 20

days of helping women build businesses. I'm all

in, and so we were angel investors, and so we all donated

$50 per lady that we helped, and we leaned in because their

husbands were killed, or you know, are not part of the

journey, and the women were left to raise the families, and so we

we did that for 20 days all over Africa, and on my final day

there, I was having lunch and I. Met a gentleman by the name of

Yonah, and I asked him, "What do you do? And he says, "I'm a

women's advocate attorney in Africa. Help me understand what

that looks like. And he goes, "Well, when a young girl becomes

a woman, they're unclean and they can't be educated anymore.

And I paused and I said, "Excuse me. Oh, we didn't ask for that.

I would love happily give that up. And you're punishing these

girls. And he says, "It's not me. It's the government.

Right.

And so I said, "What can be done? He goes, "We

can start a school for these young ladies to live in and not

be judged or governed by the government,

and

I said, "What does that look like? And he

goes, "It's going to cost 6000 U.S. dollars. And I said, "Where

do I write the check?

Nice.

That was it. That's how it all got started.

Got started, and here you are. And what year? How

long ago was that?

We are now in our third year. We've been in

nonprofit for one year. The first two years, it was really

getting comfortable with: Are they doing what they say they're

going to do? It's a trust.

Sure.

Let me tell you, we started with 50 kids. We're

up to 950

Nice. Good job, honey.

It's amazing, and these young girls are going

to high school, and it's so cool. They're going off to

college, and now it's a student-led organization. So I

now mentor my students to lead other teenagers to do the

impact.

Yeah, so good, so so good, and the ripple

effect is huge, and you know people who are in our community.

You know again, predominantly women who are in our community,

and a few great men that support us as well. For many of us, the

education around the idea that once a young woman starts

menstruating, that's it. It's like that's that's the end.

That's the end of your childhood. That's the end of

your opportunity, and now your expectation at this point is

that you're going to get married and you're going to have

children, and that's that's the journey, right? There's no

education, there's no more opportunity there for women. So

if a family is struggling and has to decide between feeding

their children or paying for education, often food has to

become the first priority. If they're going to choose between

educating a son or educating a daughter, they'll educate the

son so that the son can then take care of the elders. And

then if it's a piece of the piece that was such an eye

opener for me was the idea that sanitary pads and women having

opportunities to even just have a way to keep themselves clean

so they can stay in school and leave home was somehow a luxury,

right? I mean, that's one of those things that was such an

eye opener for me as a woman growing up in the United States.

You know, I just I couldn't imagine that being able to just

even have access to sanitation is you know shame on me. I

didn't know what I didn't know, right? So as we've learned more

peels, they were using banana peels.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and there's lots of

stories about the different, the gravel, the leaves, the sitting

on a pile, the different things. Monica Niragawa, who's the

founder of Girl Up Uganda, I just told you we were in a

leadership camp with her in August of this past year, and I

think the the amount of courage and fierceness of these young

girls. There's 300 girls there between the ages of 11 and 14,

and I just thought about like, man, their courage, their

compassion for each other, their fierceness is just really again,

it's a it's an amazing opportunity to serve there. It

really is, and so I'm so grateful that you're doing your

work there. And again, again, that's the part of what we got

this community all fired up about. It's like you do your

piece, I do my piece, somebody else does their piece. Together,

collectively, that's how movements happen and how change

can happen in the world. So thank you so much for your role

in impacting lives and leading leaders is you. You get the

power of that. Like again, the long-term vision is not for them

to be dependent on you, but for them to be independent and

strong and fierce and be able to lead the next generation after

we're gone. So pretty cool stuff. Pretty pretty cool stuff.

What's been the thing that you wish we go back to your role as

an entrepreneur. What's the thing that you wish you would

have known then, that you know now? If you think if you went

back in time to say like, and this could be either what you

wish you knew as a young woman or what you wish you knew when

you started your business. Tell me what you what comes to mind

when I ask you that question.

What comes to mind is being surrounded by

like-minded entrepreneurs, women who are actually walking this

journey before you, with you. That is so powerful. I will say,

I've grown the most in those arenas. The other thing is

hiring. I will tell you, it was life changing, and I was

terrified. I don't know about you guys, but I'm like, I don't

know, I'm going to pay this person. And now my COO is the

one who was my part time first assistant. Yes, and she's been

with me. Oh my gosh, I think she's on 10 years, and she's

she's amazing. And I I couldn't do college ready without her. I

tell her all the time how much I appreciate her, and she was my

first hire. And since then, I've hired 11, and so it's a way to

really step out of being in it and being more of the visionary,

and you can create so much more when you're not in it and you

are the in the visionary role. So I would encourage, even if

you don't think you can

do it, it's so

it's so so so powerful. So I would have hired

sooner is the bottom line.

Well, and I think speaking of the sooner

thing, it was a cute thing that I was also thinking about

preparing for today. One of the things that you said to me, and

this is another funny Shelley story in my mind, is that when

you joined Legacy Leaders, when you started working with me and

working with our community, one of the things you said to me is

you had come to an event a few years earlier, and the price had

gone up, and you're like, "Oh, I better hurry up and sign up now

before it goes up again. I think that that's the piece too. Like,

there's no time like the present to invest in yourself. And and

for me, I think the idea is like the I want to find the people

who are doing what I want to do, and get in partnership and

surround myself with other people who are growing and

leading and being on fire. Versus, I don't want to be the

smartest woman in the room. You know, I think that that's a a

way to atrophy. And when you're talking about bringing on

Michelle, it's Michelle, right? Talk about bringing on Michelle.

I remember that conversation of hiring her and like the how am I

going to pay for her? What I think you might know today that

you didn't know then, at least from my perspective, is that

great team members not only pay for themselves, but they are

like the lifeblood. They're the human asset of the organization

because as founders, we are founders. We are not the

business, right? Our role, as you said, is to stay in the

visionary lane to keep holding the expansion of what's possible

for everyone else. But then the people who get to execute on

delivering the promise of the brand, we talk so much about our

clients and our students and our patients, and that as as a group

of people, but the people who are part of our team also get to

live their experience, right? So it's one of these blessings

being an employer. It's one of the reasons the government gives

us the benefits that it does for us with tax deductions. I'm just

working with a couple yesterday about their tax deductions. I

think this whole idea of like that's a whole nother thing to

build an organization that provides an opportunity for

amazing people to live their vision through the work. So I

love that Michelle's still with you all these years later and

growing, and your COO now. And yeah, what's the future hold for

you? What are you looking forward to?

Wow, that's that's one area that we're we're

working on the vision for. We we always are looking three years

ahead, and AI is just a huge part of that now. Yes, like

everybody else, it's coming quicker than we anticipated. How

fast and all of that, so we knew it was coming. Like I've been in

the lane of it's here. It's from from entrepreneurs' point, but

not as a student point. Like,

can

they use it to write their essays to a blog?

With what? Like, all of this is like some new stuff. And so, my

podcast, Parents at Your Teen College Ready. I'm interviewing

a lot of faculty and how they're addressing it at the university

level. So we're we're trying to help families. And so why does

that impact College Ready? Is we want to be cutting edge. We want

to be that consulting firm that I can tell students right now.

Here are the top 100 jobs on the chop block. I want you to know,

don't go spend four years in that degree

if you're

going to graduate and it's not going to

be there.

Yeah,

that's huge. And so we're having to step into

that and pivot. Even though I had vision, our vision is now

having to embrace that part of

it and

help kids understand communication,

collaboration, speech, all of those things. You can no longer

just be a good student,

right?

You now have to be able to have intellectual

curiosity. You can write

prose.

You can guide people. You can collaborate with

all of your company, and that is the vision of how are we going

to set these kids up for success. And so we've added

career career exploration as part of College Ready.

Tell us more about that.

Yeah, so it's called see our future now, and

what we're doing is we're helping students first get

financially literate, which we didn't realize how bad it was,

and then once we can get them vision of do they want to go

into debt, let's talk about this. Do they just want not to.

What what does it look like? Do do they want to be an

influencer? Where's their business plan? Like we're

bringing the reality of what this generation is dealing with,

and we're saying, let's hit it head on.

Nice.

Talk about your core values, your gifts, your

strengths, your advocacy, and what lines up for you? Gone are

the days that you could be undeclared, undecided.

You are

forced to choose when you are just in your teens.

And so, if we allow them to have this knowledge and understand

the value of time, the value of money, the value of an

education. What does that look like? We are launching students

who are not going into debt. They are

understanding what major they want and how to stick with it,

and their acceptance rates are soaring. Their scholarships are

huge.

Nice.

So in 18 years, our students have received $80

million in scholarships.

Good job, honey! Congratulations, that's huge,

huge. And again, the ripple effect of that is so much more

than even we can count, right?

For sure,

so cool. It goes back, I think, is just kind of a

full circle for me, Shelly, in this conversation of you know

how an entrepreneur thinks differently, and so if you are

not familiar with how the education system was not you,

but whoever's listening to this, if you're not familiar with how

the education system was originally created, it was

designed. The education that we kind of know as traditional

education was was really catered to create soldiers and create

factory workers, right? You know, this is old paradigms,

which is like memorization and rote and spitting it back out.

It wasn't designed to create creative thinkers. In fact,

often in our traditional school systems, you were penalized for

being a person who is an outlier or thinking differently, right?

You know how many successful founders have dropped out,

right? I was just watching the dropouts, so it's an interesting

piece. When you are wired for entrepreneurship, which it

sounds like you are, you think differently, you act

differently, but that's not the majority of humans, right? It's

a small, small percentage. So it's interesting having this

conversation with you, looking at where none of us really knows

what God's plan is. You know, it's kind of all unfolding. We

we say in our world we're grateful to have God as our CEO

and AI as our amplifier, and I think we're also on a need to

know basis, right? We our job is to work on our capacity, to work

on our presence, to work on our awareness and partnership with

God. So as this evolution is happening for humanity. I love

that you are in the business of empowering students with a way

different way of thinking than their traditional education.

Absolutely, and it's going to serve them well

because that's the future for

life. For life,

this this generation is going to switch

careers every two to three years. You can't prepare them

for war and prepare them for switching careers every two to

three years. The same

world, yeah, it's a different world for sure.

Well, and I think about the people that I know that have it

who've really, when I think about my friends who I really

admire and respect, who I believe are truly successful,

meaning that they are spiritually well, that they are

physically well, that they have time freedom, that they have

financial sufficiency. I think about these people; they often

are people like you and I who beat to their own drum. So it's

not a new conversation, but it is. It is very much a small

sliver of the population, and I think at Limitless Women, what

what I've heard again and again over the last decade plus is

this next generation of leaders calling and saying, "Help us,

give us that wisdom that you've learned from being in the

trenches, so that this journey can be a little easier. So I

just am so grateful to you for doing what you're doing locally

and globally to impact women and girls and boys and men and

everybody that you're touching, you know, we really, really

appreciate you using your leadership skills and your

superpowers to impact lives.

Thank you so much. I just I find my joy

because. From inspiration and impact, and so I encourage any

listener to really get clear on on what is your joy, what is the

impact you want to make, and if you're doing both of those, you

are really living your best life. I just I encourage you to

to think. Don't give up on that. That's areas that I've had to

struggle with in seasons where it's like, this is no longer

aligning with me. What do I do now? Yeah, and and listen to

that because that stirring inside of you is the one thing

that's kept me. I tell people I'm unemployable. I love what I

do. I love my boss. I love my life, and that's because I get

to inspire people and have the impact that I want to leave.

Yeah, so beautiful, Sweeney. All right,

so we've got lots of places for people to connect with you

besides CollegeJourney.com. You've got two best-selling

books. I feel like there's more that you have to share as you

keep evolving in your own leadership, and so I'm hoping

we'll get you out to speak at a conference soon. If you if you

can fit us in, I'm like, where are you in the world today? When

I'm texting you, oh, I'm in the Philippines. I'm like, wow,

great! How cool is that? You know, so we'll get you here so

you can be with us in person. Anything else? Any parting words

you'd like to share? We want to make sure that we get all the

links and share those with everybody. But tell me, where

can people go to learn more about you and anything that you

want to wrap up with?

So, if it applies to yourself and you're

listening, just do it. Just do it. Don't worry about failing.

Just do it because if you don't do it, you'll never know. That's

the one thing I've learned with all my years of wisdom. If you

have a child, a teenager who is struggling with who they are,

what matters to them, what impact they want to make, there

is help. Do not just shrug and go, "Oh, they're just young. If

they don't figure it out, that plan will cost them time and

money, and that is the area that you can't give them back. So I

encourage you for yourself go, and for them go. Don't wait for

it to land in your lap. Step into it, and that's what I want

to encourage you to do.

Beautiful. And so, how can we stay connected

with you?

Sure. So the best way to reach me is through

my website, which is CollegeReadyPlan P L A n.com And

for your listeners who do have teenagers or grandkids or

whomever they want,

whoever, yeah,

right, whomever they they see fit, I I'm gifting

a 30 minute discovery call to see if they are future ready,

and that's collegereadyplan.info. My

best-selling books are on Amazon. They're at $4 right now

for your listeners. I used to give them away, and nobody would

do free $4 They'd blow off

my shelf again.

No figure. And and really, my podcast "Parents

Is Your Teen: College Ready" is where I bring in the whole

village. So, if you need anybody in that arena, I encourage you

to listen. So, thank you, Laura, for having me.

Yeah, such a pleasure, my dear. I really

appreciate you and appreciate everything you're doing to help

so many.