Meet Kelly Stucker

We were lucky to catch up with Kelly Stucker recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kelly, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

My resilience primarily came from a tough childhood and my desire (even at a very young age) to see the good in every situation. My grandmother took me in at five to give me as fair a shot as she could provide at a stable, secure life. She could never grasp how problems just rolled off of me ‘like water off a ducks back’. As I grew up my drive, determination and dedication served as vehicles for my resiliency, with the end goal overriding any doubts, hesitations or set backs. As I roll into middle age I use adaptogenic herbs and somatic stretching paired with activity to keep up my resilience to stressors – whether they be mental, emotional, spiritual, environmental, or physical.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I have always been entrepreneurially inclined. I built and sold three businesses by 41, helped to build and sell two more businesses by 42. I have been a Certified Professional Stress Management Coach since 2017 and my herbal business, Rose Ranch Apothecary, has been operating since 2022. Rustic Ridge Homestead Goods will be up and running by the end of this year. The most exciting part about all three of these businesses is that they’re so closely intertwined with my mission of truly healthy living – starting with stress reduction through coaching and herbalism and ending with food and herbs to nourish our bodies and nervous systems. Last October I started teaching classes on herbalism, bringing information from the past to the present one community at a time. I am constantly coming up with new products and my most recent products have been my most popular – Beef Tallow Moisturizer and a Face Oil to add to your daily moisturizer.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Organization is number one !! Being organized with your time, money, and paperwork will lead to efficiency and less redundancy- saving time, money and effort.

Drive, determination and dedication are number two. As the old saying goes ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. Showing up everyday ready to work and give it your all are paramount. When I opened my first business in 2004, I worked every hour of every shift every day. I didn’t hire my first employee until one year had passed. By the time I sold every thing in 2021, that one business had turned into three with 20 employees.

Being a risk taker can bring enormous gains (and enormous losses if miscalculated !). When I would get nervous about a move, I would turn to the wise words of the rapper YG who said, ‘scared money don’t make none’. In other words, if one is too scared to put in the time or capital the returns will be small.

My best advice for those early in their journey is to keep showing up on time and moving forward day after day. Consistency pays off !!
And do NOT take no for an answer. If the answer is no, withdraw, reassess, pivot, and try, try, try again 🙂

Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?

If I had one decade of life left I would be doing exactly what I’m doing now. Living life at my own pace, staying present and grateful for my position in life, creating community in a face to face atmosphere one person at a time. I have traveled, I have worked myself ragged, I’ve lived in densely populated areas. In this stage of my life I could happily spend the next decade loving my animals on my farm: raising cats, dogs, chickens, bees and goats and being the best steward to the land I can possibly be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://roseranchapothecary.com/