kelly ehlers on building her book and movement from the ground up
Kelly Ehlers is an award-winning entrepreneur, marketing visionary and author with more than 25 years of experience shaping brands and challenging the status quo. She is the founder and CEO of The Evoke Agency, an award-winning social, digital and PR agency; the founder and publisher of The Tease, a modern media company redefining beauty and salon-professional culture; and the creator of Nice Girls Win, a book and movement proving women do not have to become harder, louder or less human to succeed. Kelly has built and scaled multimillion-dollar companies by leading with bold ideas, relentless optimism and kindness with a spine.
Nice Girls Win: How Kind Women Can Create the Lives They Deserve
by Kelly Ehlers
Kindness isn't the problem. Playing by the wrong rules is. You don't have to choose between being kind and being powerful.
Ever been called a Nice Girl, as if your only option is to stay quiet, wait your turn, and accept less than you deserve? Who decided being nice means you don't get to take what's yours? For too long, women have been forced into a binary trap: Be the Ice Queen who burns bridges to get ahead, or the Nice Girl who gets left behind picking up the pieces. We've been conditioned to believe our kindness is a liability. That our empathy somehow weakens our ambition. So we shrink ourselves to fit into rooms that were never designed for us... and wait for permission that never comes.
Kelly Ehlers is tearing up that script.
In Nice Girls Win, Ehlers-an award-winning founder, entrepreneur, and leader who scaled multi-million-dollar businesses while navigating pregnancy discrimination and corporate gaslighting-reveals how to turn "nice" into a powerful, strategic advantage in work and life. This isn't about becoming harder. It's about becoming smarter, more confident, and unapologetically self-led. Inside this bold, practical blueprint for women's empowerment, leadership, and personal growth, you'll learn how to:
- Activate Your Warmth: Use emotional intelligence as a strategic edge to command respect and influence any room
- Burn the Invisible Contract: Stop overgiving, reclaim your time, and set boundaries that protect your energy
- Execute the Strategic No: Build confidence and self-worth by saying no without guilt
- Manifest Your Own Reality: Stop negotiating for less and start claiming what you actually deserve
Winning isn't about self-abandonment; it's about self-preservation. It's time to stop playing small... and start owning the world.
You don't have to choose between being kind and being powerful.
Interview with kelly ehlers:
You’ve had a wildly successful career in business. When did you realize your past version of success was costing you something?
I built two multimillion-dollar companies (digital marketing agency and media company), won the awards, grew an incredible team, and created a career I was proud of. From the outside, it looked like success. But internally, I had reached a point where I could no longer tell where the business ended and I began.
I had become very good at carrying everything, fixing problems, and making sure everyone else was okay. That version of success was built on self-abandonment. It was costing me my energy, my identity, and my ability to enjoy what I had created in the first place.
At 47, I found myself staring at a blank page and asking a terrifying question: What do I actually want now, or said differently—deserve?
That question changed everything. I realized I did not need to walk away from my ambition. I needed to stop disappearing inside it.
You argue that kindness can be a competitive advantage. Can you share an example where being the kinder person produced a better business outcome?
The best proof is in the businesses I have built. Some of Evoke’s client relationships have lasted more than a decade, and several members of my leadership team have been with me for 10 to 14 years. One even started as an intern.
That happens because people feel respected, heard, and valued. They trust you to tell the truth, solve the problems, and stay at the table when things get hard.
And I’ve done all of this with kindness. When you are in a leadership position and use kindness as your foundation, it lowers defenses, creates loyalty, and gets people working toward the solution instead of protecting their egos.
Used intentionally, kindness is a business strategy… and it can be lethal.
Tell us about the creative process of writing your book. Did you learn anything about how you work best? Were there any particularly difficult or fun chapters to write?
I am naturally a very fast-moving person. I build, decide, and execute. Writing required a different kind of discipline and understanding, especially since I’ve never written a book! I had to have a complete beginner’s mindset. Once I started, I had to revisit lessons and stories from my past and decide what lessons and stories I wanted to share with readers. And that’s not an easy thing. Imposter syndrome comes up. Will people care about this? Will it resonate? Am I helping the reader enough? Will it make a difference?
The hardest part to put on paper wasn’t being fired for being pregnant—or even the six-year legal battle that followed. It was the introduction. It was admitting to the world that I had been in a dark place. At the time, that struggle was silent. Private. Invisible to almost everyone around me. Now, the world knows. And while telling that truth terrified me, it also showed me something powerful: even in the darkness, I was already becoming the woman who would build two companies—and write this book.
The most energizing chapters were the ones about invisible contracts, boundaries, and the Strategic No. Teaching other women how to stand up for themselves kindly but powerfully was also a potent reminder to do the same for myself.
The biggest lesson was that I write the same way I lead: I have to tell the truth first. The structure comes after.
The book includes a “Permission Slip.” Why was giving women permission such an important part of the framework?
Women are constantly waiting for permission without realizing it.
Permission to say no. Permission to change their minds. Permission to stop overexplaining. Permission to want more. Permission to want something different. Permission to disappoint someone without abandoning themselves.
The Permission Slip makes that invisible waiting visible. It asks women to stop looking outside themselves for approval and write down what they are finally ready to allow in.
It sounds simple, but it can be radical. Sometimes the life-changing moment is not someone telling you what to do but realizing you were always allowed to choose.
You are not asking for permission. You are making a decision.
What is one piece of conventional leadership advice you now believe is particularly bad advice for women?
“Toughen up.”
Women have been told that leadership requires us to become harder, louder, and less emotional. I completely reject that idea.
You do not need to become someone colder to be taken seriously. You need clear standards, strong boundaries, and the confidence to communicate both.
Empathy helps you read the room. Kindness helps you control the temperature. Emotional intelligence helps you understand what people need in order to move forward. Those are leadership advantages.
The answer is not to toughen up. It is to stop confusing kindness with weakness.
You talk about “invisible contracts” in your book. What are they, and what was the hardest one you had to break?
Invisible contracts are the silent agreements we make without ever consciously agreeing to them in the first place.
If I work harder than everyone else, I will be safe. If I keep everyone happy, I will be loved. If I never need help, I will be respected. If I prove myself one more time, I will finally feel worthy.
No one hands us these contracts, but we organize our lives around them.
The hardest one for me to break was believing that my value came from being the person who could carry it all. I had built an identity around figuring shit out. That strength helped me survive, build businesses, and lead through enormous challenges. But eventually, it also became a trap.
Breaking that contract meant understanding that I could still be capable without being responsible for everything. I could be needed without being consumed.
What's a sentence women should stop saying at work immediately? And what's a sentence they should start saying instead?
Women should stop saying, “Yes, I can do that,” before they have even considered what the yes will cost them.
Instead, start saying, “Let me think about that and get back to you.”
In Nice Girls Win, I call this exercising the Silent No. You do not have to respond immediately. The pause gives you time to decide whether the request deserves your yes.
Stop handing out automatic yeses.
What do you most hope readers take away from this book?
I want women to feel shaken awake…shaken!!
I want them to recognize every place they have been shrinking, apologizing, over-functioning, controlling, or honoring an invisible contract they never agreed to.
Most of all, I want them to understand that they do not have to become harder to win. They do not need to trade their warmth for authority or their humanity for ambition.
Nice Girls can be kind and commanding. Generous and boundaried. Warm and wildly successful.
You can stop apologizing for existing. You can take up space. You can win on your own terms.
What are you most excited about or looking forward to personally or professionally at the moment?
Honestly? Changing the world.
I did not write this book to have it sit nicely on a shelf. I wrote it to shake women awake. To challenge them to do the hard work, walk through the fire, and come out knowing exactly what they deserve from this life. Then go get it.
I said out loud what many women will not say or are afraid to admit. Now I am most excited to see what happens when they recognize themselves in these pages, stop abandoning who they are, and start choosing the lives they actually want.
This is bigger than a book. It is a movement.
And more!
Ready to start winning on your own terms? Check out Kelly's empowering self-help book on leadership, confidence, and authenticity in business Nice Girls Win: How Kind Women Can Create the Lives They Deserve
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