Inspired Living: Your Path To Creating A Brand That Feeds Your Mind And Soul

Hello and welcome to episode number one of Inspired Living with Keri Murphy. You have no idea how happy I am that you are here and that I am finally putting out this show. For the past years, I have been doing video interviews with incredible celebrities, influencers, and people would keep asking me, “Keri, I wish you had an audio version.” My friends, here you go. It is official. We are taking Inspired Living TV and bringing it to you as a weekly show. If you are new to our community, we are committed to inspiring people all over the world to do their genius work, that thing that lights you up from the inside out. We do that through helping you create an incredible business, a brand that allows you to do what you love, and in return create income that then allows you to put that back into the world.

The Era Of The Supermodel

To me, that is exactly what inspired living is. It’s doing something that feeds your mouth, that feeds your family, but it also feeds your soul. You’re able to take that money, take the abundance that you are creating, and put it back into society. I don’t know about you, but I grew up in the ‘80s. It was the era of the supermodel. I remember as a little girl, I would beg my mom to put me into some modeling and acting classes. After a few years of me begging her profusely, she said, “Keri, I will put you through these classes but you’re going to have to come up with $100 of your own money.” Not only that, I was eleven years old. Do you remember what eleven looks like? I’m sure it was not my sexiest version. Eleven years old is all about adolescence. I was awkward. My mom is a hairstylist and I had one bad perm after the next. I had braces three times, but here I am wanting to pursue modeling and acting.

I went to work babysitting, which was something I didn’t love to do, but I did it. I came up with my $100 and I remember taking these classes every Saturday. I would do modeling and then it would take me into these acting classes and it lit me up. I knew that I was going to be a super remodel when I got older. I could walk that runway. Fast forward a few years, I quickly discovered that my Italian genes allowed me to grow out more than up. I’ve now embraced my voluptuous body but back then, it was a hard pill swallow. I fell in love with being on camera. I fell in love with the ability to emote. It was a way for me to express myself as a middle child, the fixer and the pleaser in my family. It was an outlet and a way for me to put something else out into the world. I started doing that when I was eleven years old and started doing commercial work and got some great jobs as a mannequin model where you stood in the window and you didn’t move.

Fast forward, I found myself doubting my ability to ever make a career out of acting. In my early twenties, I was getting restless and I went away to college on a broadcast scholarship. My parents got a divorce when I was around nineteen years old. Being the middle child and the fixer, I decided I was going to come home and be there for my family. After a year of being back home and going in and out of different colleges, I found myself restless. I went back to that little school that I went through as a little girl and it also had a talent agency. I asked the owner if she had a job and she said, “Sure.” She hired me to work at the front desk and then I was doing enrollment for the performing arts center and then I was helping book talent.

Sometimes, the fact that we're naive and we don't know what we know saves us from ourselves. Share on X

I did this for five years, and I learned the entertainment industry on a different side that I had been on. I had been the talent for many years, and now I was working behind the scenes and understanding the inner workings of an agency. In five years in, I was getting restless and a good girlfriend of mine, who now is one of my incredible mentors as well, she started an interior design business. As a little girl, not only did I want to be a supermodel, I broke furniture. I moved my room around so many times that everything was falling apart and I had more tack holes on the wall from my posters. I remember my room was primarily dolphins and palm trees with a couple of neon flamingos. It was a happening room growing up in Portland, Oregon where there was a lot of rain and pine trees. It was quite the escape for me.

I went to interior design school and got my certificate and started my interior design business at 23. I quit my job at the talent agency and quickly found myself working in a furniture store because I figured, “If I’m going to get clients, I need to go where the clients are at.” At the same time, not coincidentally, I was the local expert for a morning show in Oregon as the interior design expert. Every week, I would get on the show and do a segment as I was building my business. I didn’t even realize at the time that I was using video to grow my business. It was something that I did, something that I loved and it always worked hand-in-hand. When I was working at the furniture store, I was doing these segments on our local morning show and quickly found myself with five clients. After I got those five clients, I quit my job at the furniture store and found myself as an entrepreneur. This is before Facebook. This is before websites. This is before anything that we have now which includes the ability to broadcast at any moment.

About five years in, I found myself restless. Maybe you’re in a place right now where this pandemic has caused you to reset, where you’re finding yourself restless, where deep down you know that you’re not doing your genius work on the planet. You’re at a pivot point. You’re at this place in your life where you get to choose what is going to happen next for you. At that time, I remember my mom calling and she said, “Keri, you won’t believe it.” I said, “What mom?” She said, “There’s a modeling agency for sale.” I said, “Mom, that sounds great but if I was to ever own an agency, I would want to represent talent too.” If there’s anything that I love, like in my core of who I am, it is developing talent. Even as a little girl growing up, I would find the person that I knew needed help or that I saw potential in and I would try so hard to help them.

I realized that there’s a term for that. It’s called codependency, but I did realize that I would find the underdog. I would find that person that I knew had potential and I would cheer them on and I would try to help them see a different possibility. Now, I get to do that for a living. People pay me to do that now and they want the help, versus me trying to find people that I think I can help. Fast forward, she calls me back and she says, “Keri, you won’t believe who it is.” I said, “It’s Carol, isn’t it?” You don’t know who Carol is, but I will tell you. Carol was the owner of the talent agency and the little school that I went through at eleven years old. Talk about serendipitous. At this point, I am 27 years old. I am restless with the interior design stuff. I’m working for myself and by myself, and even though I love the creativity, I was getting bored.

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My mom and I went in, and we both put down $15,000, which at 27 years old is a lot of money. Within 30 days, I am running this modeling and talent agency, this performing arts center. The beautiful thing is I had worked there for five years. I understood all the inner workings of the different departments within the company. Here I am at 27, I have no idea what I’m doing but I have a passion and a vision. I feel for many entrepreneurs, that gets us started. You have to have the vision. You’ve got to have the drive. Sometimes the fact that we’re naïve and we don’t know what we know, saves us from ourselves. If we only knew we probably wouldn’t do half the things that we ended up doing. I’m running the agency and things are going great. We’re almost at seven figures. I have a great team. We’ve changed things a lot and I’m realizing that I’m running out of money. I’m realizing that things are slowing down. Things that were happening easily weren’t happening easily anymore.

Recession: Greater Version Of Yourself

At this point, I am 32 and I had no mentors. I had no marketing plan. The agency grew, it was around for over twenty years. I had a great word of mouth and we had grown it a ton in those five years but it was 2008. Do you remember 2008? That nice recession that we had. I had no idea what was happening, but I did feel something was happening. I felt like almost overnight I was forced to close the agency. Talk about a time in your life where you feel like you hit rock bottom. For many of us that are entrepreneurs, our business becomes who we are. It becomes our identity. Our ego is filled with the business instead of our personal values. It was December 8, 2008, I never will forget. I sent an email out to over 500 talent, all my vendors and my team and I said, “As of December 8th, we are no longer in business anymore.” I pulled up a U-Haul to my brick and mortar that is a standalone building and packed everything up.

I short sold my home. At that moment, I can say that I’ve never cried harder. I felt like I lost myself. I had no plan B. I had no money. Yet I will say that I knew that there had to be something greater. I knew that in my early 30s, this wasn’t going to be the end of me, but it stripped me away. It stripped everything that I knew. It took me back to my core, my faith and my, “Who are you?” Here’s the beautiful thing about life and you might have heard this before, but I’ve never believed it to be true. That is that everything happens for us, not to us. I know that sounds cliché, especially when you’re going through some stuff and you’re like, “What in the world is happening?” Looking back at my life, connecting all the dots, there is not one thing, especially the tough stuff that happened that did not bring me to a greater place. Maybe right now you are going through the trenches. You are wondering why in the world is this happening.

I’m going to encourage you for a moment to step back and believe that this is enabling you to step into a greater version of yourself. We have to become the person that can bring our dreams to life and yet we’re not born that way. We’re not born with the success gene. We’re not born with the capability to run a multi seven-figure business and we have to develop ourselves to become that person. I felt like losing everything for me was allowing me to step into the next version of myself. I say Keri 5.0. There have been a lot of versions of Keri. What had happened though that year in 2008, which is I look back and it is remarkable. I got a call on my cellphone from the Golf Channel. The Golf Channel had found me on YouTube. We’re talking about the power of technology, of YouTube, of putting yourself out there which is everything that we teach here at Inspired Living. You have to be found.

Previous to this, I was a spokesperson for a golf tee time website called GolfNow that was purchased by Comcast. I am oblivious to the golf world. I have no idea what I’m doing except I am a spokesperson for a tee time website and the Golf Channel found my blooper reels from that work that I had done and not my professional host to sizzle reel that I put together. They weren’t interested in that. They wanted the outtakes. As you’re growing your business, we have to remember that people don’t always want to see you at the top of the mountain. They want to see you climbing it. We have to get over this need of being perfect so we can let our real self, which is perfect in its imperfection, shine because that is what connects people. It is not this perfect message and perfect quaffed looked person. They want tangible. They want authenticity. It’s important.

I picked up the phone and they said, “Keri, this is so and so from the Golf Channel. You probably think this is a prank call, but we saw your blooper reel on YouTube and we’re interested in having you host a new show.” They flew me out to Florida. I auditioned for this show called Highway 18 and they gave it to me. I had never hosted a live reality show before and they gave me the job. It was an incredible experience. That’s my first national show. At the same time, I’m filming this show, MTV calls me and they said, “We saw that you coached Miss America. We talked to her mom. She thinks the world of you. We’re looking for someone to be a coach on our next made show called Geek to Chic. We think you’d be a great coach. Would you be interested?” “Let me think about it. Yes.” I’m telling you this happened in a month’s time. My agency is slowly dying and here I am with these two national shows offers.

Being a TV host was my childhood dream and being a supermodel. It was that or the next Mary Hart on Entertainment Tonight. You can imagine I’m pretty elated at this point. However, I was not going to let the agency fail. I was going to keep that alive and CPR until I could not resuscitate it. That’s exactly what happened at the end of 2008. When I closed the agency, I happened to sign with one of the top agencies here in Los Angeles and I moved out here with nothing but my car that I could shove as much into. I put everything in storage. I moved out here into a home full of wiccans. The book here is good. I ended up moving out of that home within the first few weeks of getting here. I moved seven times in three years. I did the hosting schlep around, get in your car, get hair and makeup ready, sit in an audition room for hours on end for your two seconds for someone to tell you that you’re good enough.

I think one of the greatest problems we have as humans is waiting for someone to validate our worth, waiting for someone to validate our gift and our vision. I did it. I sat in that room and I will never forget my tipping point. I want to remind you that I’ve been an entrepreneur at this point for over ten years, and I’m waiting for someone to give me work. I am 33, broke, brokenhearted and I am trying to figure it out again. Here I am in a bikini with a cover up on, in a room of probably 150 of what looked like supermodels waiting for my two minutes for me to come in and prove that I could be the spokesperson for this resort. I waited for three hours for that two minutes. I remember walking out of that audition room sobbing.

One of the greatest problems we have as humans is waiting for someone to validate our worth. Share on X

At that moment, I made the choice that I was never again going to let someone validate my talent and my vision. I said, “I am never doing this again.” I have never auditioned since. I have built a seven-figure business since then doing exactly what I love, which is helping people truly see their potential, developing their talent and helping them share their message through video, because the video is the number one way to market and reach your ideal client online, and grow and scale an inspired brand. A brand that feeds your soul, that feeds your mind and that allows you to give back. That is why I am here to share with you that if there is something that you know you’re here on this Earth to do, that is not a dream to taunt you. That is not a carrot that is dangled in your life for you to somehow, someday try to grasp onto it. It is your destiny.

It is why you are here and yet there is no straight road. Any road to success is full of obstacles and full of adversity. Every single celebrity and successful entrepreneur that I have interviewed have all had a story. That’s why I’m bringing them to you here on this show through Inspired Living TV because it is important that you realize what you are capable of when you get over the self-doubt, when you stop waiting for someone to validate your worth, and you claim it as your brilliant vision. Because I had a big golf following, Kevin Sorbo was a Facebook friend. He has been around forever. He’s an amazing actor. He was Hercules. I remember reaching out to him on Facebook. This was in 2009 and I said, “Kevin, I see that you’re a big golf fan. I am launching Inspired Living TV. I’d love for you to be a guest.” He said yes.

Birth Of Inspired Living

This is a great lesson for you who’s waiting for someone to find you instead of you going out and finding them. We wait for someone to crown us as an expert. We wait for someone to say, “You deserve your own show.” We wait for someone to say, “You should have your own podcast,” instead of putting the crown on your head and saying, “Today, I crown myself. I am not going to wait any longer.” That is how Inspired Living was born. Inspired Living came about after a year of being a personal development trainer. I was teaching NLP. I was teaching all things I would not hire me to teach you now. One of the things that I taught was platform and presentation skills. I taught this in Hong Kong to a group of 500 people where English was their second language. You can imagine what that was like over seven days. I’m telling you that was the greatest education I could have ever received. From that, people started asking me, “Do you coach?”

I had never intended to be a coach. I was going to have my own show. I was going to be a famous TV host and yet as I wasn’t fulfilling that, I was feeling unfulfilled. After this year jaunt as a trainer, I traveled to Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and London. It was amazing and I dove into personal development as well. I went to Landmark. I was doing all of these classes on NLP and quantum physics and overcoming my own limiting beliefs. I say so much and I believe it to be true. In order for you to create what you want externally, you need to create it internally. Every single person that has reached a level of success had a belief that they could, and that is not something that is given to you. I don’t feel like you’re born with it. I feel like it’s something that’s cultivated and developed through your own inner working, inner knowledge, your level of consciousness and how you react and show up in the world.

From this little training, I started coaching people internationally. I was more of a life coach and then I found I’m becoming a therapist, and that’s not exactly what I saw for myself. Then it happened, that a-ha moment that changed everything. If you’re an entrepreneur, this is going to be magic for you because I’m going to guess that you are multitalented, multi-passionate, can serve many people and get them many different results. The problem with that is that it’s not marketable. I, the consumer who’s looking for you, cannot find you because you’re trying to be too many things to too many people. I had this moment where Inspired Living was a site that had finances, relationships, business and health. Isn’t that what inspired living is? It’s everything.

I was online, starting to do research on this whole coaching world and came across someone well-known in the coaching realm. I was watching her video and let’s say it was not authentic. It was that talking head, be super smiley and keep smiling, “Hi, everyone. Welcome. I’m going to change your life in three minutes. All you have to do is press the link.” That talking head, that Mickey Mouse voice, that person that comes over you when you press record that you don’t know what in the world happens, but you feel a little possessed like, “What just happened? The natural me scooted, skeeted and swam away from my body.” I had this moment where I was like, “I can teach. I can teach entrepreneurs how to be on camera. This is amazing.” That epiphany was what I needed to grow my business. It went from being a lifestyle site that no one knew what I did to a site where no one knew what I did but I did, and that was teaching entrepreneurs how to be on camera.

That officially launched in 2011 and now years later, we have served thousands of people. We work with entrepreneurs on understanding the importance of being on camera, the way in which to show up and craft your core message, how to create a brilliant brand, a brand that stands out, a brand that stands for something, a brand that makes a significant difference in the lives of others and in the world. That is what brings me to you now. I want to share my story with you, so hopefully you can see yourself in my story, that you got inspired and realized that wherever you’re at in your own life is your divine path to get you to where you want to be. Also, the importance of being you of not waiting for someone to crown you in authority or someone who’s worthy to own your own business but someone who says, “I am enough and I am going to do this.”

I remember when I was sharing with someone what I did, they said, “You have a little crazy in your DNA.” I can say, “Yes, I sure do.” I have resilienceness, a tenacity, a drive and I don’t always know where I’m going. That’s the beautiful thing about being an entrepreneur is that we get in the car every day, we go down the road and we make wrong turns and then we get back on the path, back on the freeway that gets us in the right direction. That’s what I want this show to be for you. I want this to be the road you come to every week where you’re getting the right direction, or you’re hearing from incredible celebrities, because to be a celebrity is to be celebrated. I think a lot of us shy away from that term.

Success is different for everyone. Every single person should be able to live the life that they seek for themselves. Share on X

As someone who grew up in entertainment, the more celebrity you have, the more influence you can make. That is why I want to create celebrity brands. Brands that are positive, brands that give back and not brands that are engineered to be fifteen seconds of fame. That is not what we do. To be celebrated, isn’t that something we all should be? You’re going to get these interviews. You’re going to hear from influencers that are doing amazing things being innovative and testing new models because without innovation, none of us will make it. I’m going to be sharing with you my personal tips from decades of being on camera, being an entrepreneur, losing it all and building it all again. I hope you’ll join me because it is all about community.

It’s all about us aligning together for the greater good, for equality, for understanding, for success. Every single person should be able to live the life that they seek for themselves. Success is different for everyone. We need to stop comparing ourselves to everyone else because the measurement is your own. It is time to figure out what that means for you. That’s why my tagline is, “Dream it. Live it. Be it.” Dream big and figure out the type of life that you want to live that’s going to get you there, and then who do you need to be? Who do you need to become to step into that life? Dream big and dream it. Do the work and live it. Most importantly, be it.

I would love nothing more for you to join our Inspired Living community. You can go to InspiredLiving.tv and register for our emails, for the videos that go out every single week and to be a part of a tribe that truly cares about you and wants you to be successful. As we grow this show, I would love your reviews. I’d love for you to do a screenshot and share it because I truly believe that when you are inspired, we inspire others. We need that now more than ever. Thank you so much for joining me. It is my first show episode. I can’t wait for what’s ahead because I have some amazing people that I’m going to be bringing you. As always, please remember to dream it, live it and be it. Until next time.

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