Kim Wise, Co-Founder of BE YOU Motivate Shares Her Vision Behind the Brand and BE YOU Retreats

By Jules Lavallee

Kim Wise is a wellness entrepreneur, motivational coach, corporate trainer, author and co-founder of BE YOU Motivate, a women’s wellness and personal transformation company creating experiences designed to help women reconnect with themselves, their health and one another.

A former NFL cheerleader for the Indianapolis Colts, yoga teacher and longtime student of personal development, Kim has spent much of her career exploring what helps people live with greater intention, confidence and energy. She is the creator of The Happy Program and works with individuals and corporate teams on mindset, motivation, personal development and performance.

Kim co-founded BE YOU Motivate with Krista Flynn around a simple but increasingly important question for women entering a new chapter of life: What do I want now?

Through its Becoming You retreat series and wellness community, BE YOU brings together experts and experiences spanning movement, mindset, longevity, beauty, nutrition and personal growth, while placing equal emphasis on something Kim believes is fundamental to women’s wellbeing: meaningful human connection.

Her philosophy is simple: Life isn’t a dress rehearsal. Women don’t need to become someone else in their next chapter—they need the space, tools and community to rediscover and become more fully themselves.

Kim lives in Longboat Key, Florida, where BE YOU Motivate hosts intimate wellness and transformation experiences for women from across the country.

Why did you create BE YOU?

BE YOU was created to educate and inspire women to become the best version of themselves through the things we have some control over—our wellness, fitness, nutrition, beauty, mindset and the community we surround ourselves with.

My co-founder, Krista Flynn, and I continually meet women over 40 who are asking some version of the same question: “What do I want now?”

We’ve spent years building careers, raising families, supporting other people and checking all the boxes. Then you reach this incredible stage of life where there’s an opportunity to look at yourself again and ask, What’s next for me?

We wanted to create a place where women could explore that question while being educated, inspired and supported by other women doing the same thing.

My personal philosophy has always been “Life isn’t a dress rehearsal.” BE YOU is about helping women fully embrace the chapter they’re in—and get excited about the chapters still ahead.

Take us through The Happy PROGRAM.

The Happy PROGRAM grew out of both my personal life and my professional coaching.

I grew up as an athlete, and athletes are taught to take a big performance and break it into smaller components. I was an NFL cheerleader, for example. If I wanted to improve a routine, I didn’t just keep doing the entire routine and hope I got better. I broke it down. Maybe I needed to improve my turns, so I worked specifically on my turns. When I put everything back together, my overall performance improved.

I started thinking: Why couldn’t we approach happiness the same way?

The Happy PROGRAM breaks happiness into seven areas: Purpose, Resourcefulness, Optimism, Gratitude, Resilience, Adaptability and Mindset.

We begin by creating a personal Happiness Score across those areas. That gives you awareness of where you’re thriving and where you may need more attention. Then instead of saying, “I just want to be happier,” which is incredibly difficult to act upon, you can identify a specific area and begin making small changes and creating new habits around it.

For example, maybe your gratitude is high but your sense of purpose is low. Now we have something tangible to work on.

The idea is simple: improve the individual pieces and you can improve the overall performance of your life.

The Happy PROGRAM is something I’ve taught and developed through my coaching work, and I’m currently working toward publishing it as a book.

Tell us about the Becoming You retreat series. What makes each experience unique?

The Becoming You retreats are progressive, which is one of the things that makes them different.

Most retreats ask women to escape their lives for a while. We want women to return to their lives changed.

Each retreat gives women a purpose and an opportunity for intentional social interaction. Then we continue building from one retreat to the next so that the transformation isn’t something that disappears the moment you go home. It’s supported, encouraged and celebrated.

We intentionally keep our retreats intimate because we want the connections to be genuine. The women really get to know one another.

I’ve watched women arrive as strangers and leave as close friends. Some have even become business colleagues. They’re like-minded women coming together at a particular moment in their lives and asking: “What do I need for me right now?”

Throughout the series, we introduce women to different experiences and experts across wellness, fitness, nutrition, beauty and personal growth, while community runs through everything we do.

At RESET, for example, women create vision boards and make a 90-day commitment to themselves. Then the journey continues. We’re not looking for overnight reinvention. We’re creating intentional, incremental growth—and a community that supports it.

How important are connection and community?

I think connection is one of the most underestimated parts of wellness.

We talk constantly about nutrition, exercise, sleep, hormones, longevity and all the things we can measure—and they’re incredibly important. But you can be doing everything “right” and still feel lonely or disconnected.

Women are craving real connection. Not followers. Not likes. People.

That’s one of the things that has inspired me most about our retreats. Women arrive from different places, with different backgrounds and at different stages of life, and very quickly the titles and labels disappear.

They talk. They laugh. They share. They encourage one another. Friendships form.

And because our retreats are small, you can’t really disappear into the back of the room. You’re part of it.

I’ve come to believe very strongly that community isn’t something that sits alongside wellness. It is wellness.

What have you enjoyed the most when working with women?

Seeing women become who they were meant to be.

I thrive on helping women get out of their own way. So often, it’s not that we don’t know what we want. We’ve created stories about why we can’t do it, why now isn’t the right time, or why we should put everyone else’s needs first.

At our retreats, we might create a vision board around who we want to become or what we want the year ahead to look like. Then we create an action plan, identify the limiting stories that could get in the way, establish milestones and share our commitments with the group.

And then something really important happens: other women start cheering you on.

I love watching the breakthroughs, but I equally love the laughter, friendships and energy that develop around them. Personal growth doesn’t always have to be so serious.

I always say, “Life isn’t a dress rehearsal.” Watching a woman decide she’s actually going to start living that way is incredibly rewarding.

Tell us about RESET—the first retreat in the Becoming You series.

RESET is held in February, which is intentional. It gives you just enough time to wade into all those New Year’s resolutions we love to make—and discover which ones are actually sticking!

Then we ask a much more interesting question:

“What do I want now?”

Through journaling, guided discussions and exercises, women have an opportunity to really think about that answer. We create vision boards and turn those visions into action plans. At our last RESET, we even explored our Life Paths and shared them with one another.

Women laugh. They cry. They have breakthroughs.

But I don’t want women leaving with nothing more than a beautiful vision board and a good feeling.

The carefully curated sessions are designed so that women leave with a plan, new knowledge and tools, and—perhaps most importantly—the support and accountability of a community around them.

That’s where transformation can become lasting change.

Share your vision for BE YOU for 2027.

We’re continually learning and evolving ourselves—which is part of what makes this so much fun.

I’m huge on journaling, so I’m constantly asking, “What’s next?” And I don’t mean simply chasing the next wellness trend. I mean: What’s the next level? How can we make this better?

I tend to look at the big picture, then break it down into the individual retreats, and then right down to each part of the agenda. I ask myself: How can we improve this? What can we introduce women to that they may not have experienced before? How can we make the entire journey extraordinary?

For 2027, I see BE YOU continuing to grow—more experiences, more experts, more community and new opportunities to bring women together.

But I don’t want growth to come at the expense of what makes BE YOU special. The intimacy, personal connection and feeling of being genuinely seen need to remain at the heart of it.

And there are definitely some exciting things we’re thinking about for next year—but I’m going to keep a few surprises.

You’ll have to come to a retreat to see what’s next!

After all, life isn’t a dress rehearsal.

Website: BE YOU Motivate — beyoumotivate.com
BE YOU Instagram: @beyou_motivate
Kim Wise Instagram: @wisekimj
Facebook: Kim Wise
LinkedIn: Kim Wise