MEET THE TWEETING GODDESS
Samantha Kelly has been married twice, has two daughters and is a recovering alcoholic – all good life experience for helping the tens of thousands of women who have been inspired by her on social media...
Motherhood, divorce and alcoholism have all given Samantha Kelly the life tools to help other women succeed
Tweeting Goddess Samantha Kelly – social media strategist, businesswoman, Tedx speaker, mother- oftwo, divorcée, recovering alcoholic – is not sure about tying the knot for the third time. ‘Would I ever get married again? It’s funny you should ask that. Andy has never been married and he wants to marry me. But I don’t know. I have to wait to get divorced first from my second husband,’ she points out, before admitting, with a grin, ‘I do watch Say Yes to the Dress a lot though!’
While Samantha, 46, has been forging a career online, hosting Ireland’s first social media summit in the Aviva Stadium last year, managing Twitter accounts for businesses and setting up her Women’s Inspire Network for female entrepreneurs, she has not neglected her love life. She met taxi driver Andy, 57, through Alcoholics Anonymous and they began dating in 2013, a year after Samantha separated from the father of her daughter, Abi, 10, who has special needs.
‘She’s hearing-impaired with a severe language delay,’ she says. ‘She’s had some challenges. She’s a lovely child. Her dad is very good, she sees him twice a week.’
Samantha also has a daughter Leah from her first, short-lived marriage to a Chinese man she met in Dublin’s Club 92 in the 1990s.
‘I got married in Hong Kong, still actively in addiction to alcohol at the time. I was mad. I got married to him, it only lasted around a year. He was a compulsive gambler and I went to a GamAnon meeting,’ she says, of the support group for family members and friends of gambling addicts.
‘Seeing these women who had been sitting there for 20 years, I thought, I’m not going to be sitting here in 20 years letting someone be that selfish. I’m going to get out of this now. I thought it was all exciting at the time. It’s just false,’ she says now, adding: ‘Everybody has a story. Everybody has some mistake they’ve made but it doesn’t mean that’s who they are now.’
Samantha has reinvented herself from single mother on social welfare to social media maven – with neither a third-level qualification nor a fiveyear plan. ‘It all spiralled. I just did not want to be poor any more and I didn’t like being on social welfare. I’m very determined that I’m going to succeed in what I’m doing,’ she says, when we meet in a Dublin hotel on a glorious summer’s day. She is wearing a smart Dunnes Stores jumpsuit, her hair, make-up and nails ➤
I only want good people in my space, not eejits with negativity
➤ immaculate. ‘I love this!’ she grins, of posing for the photographer. Before our interview begins she takes a quick SnapChat video on her phone, ‘Here I am at the beautiful Radisson Hotel...’ She is tweeting about it too, of course.
Samantha has tweeted over 250,000 times in six years from her own personal account: that’s a jaw- dropping average of 114 tweets a day. She also tweets ten times a day for each of her clients whose Twitter pages she manages – work that ‘pays the bills’. She runs another very busy Twitter account for Women’s Inspire Network, her members’ club of female entrepreneurs which she hopes will one day be a full-time, paying job.
‘We have 60 paying members but I’d love to have 500 at least. My aim is to get this global, get in front of people in America. That’s my plan.’
In return, members get 30 minutes with someone on her panel of mentors, online tutorials, coffee mornings and webinars. They meet in the real world too – Samantha will host WIN’s second annual event in October and expects 350 attendees. ‘We help each other and support each other. It could be that someone just needs a boost. Yesterday I had a bit of a down day. Sometimes I have down days. I’m not Wonder Woman,’ she admits. ‘On my down day it could be because I haven’t been paid. When you’re a small business you rely on payments coming in, you don’t get a weekly wage. So sometimes you think, why am I doing this? Oh my God, I can’t even go in and buy myself a pair of shoes. I’m back to where I was before. But then a payment comes in and everything is fine again.’
Apart from chasing cheques, being a social media influencer seems to mean rarely switching off. ‘I’m on SnapChat, I’m on Instagram, you have to keep up with every platform.’ Is it not exhausting? ‘I love it,’ she counters. ‘But not everyone feels that way about it or has the time. I have a team of five people now and I delegate.’
Her marriage had just ended and her beloved father had just died when Samantha launched her first business, Funky Goddess, in 2011. It was a first period gift box that said ‘Welcome to Womanhood’ and contained sanitary pads, a hot water bottle, eye mask and calendar. She has since sold the business. When she failed to get funding on Dragon’s Den, she joined Twitter to market Funky Goddess from there, which is why she chose the handle Tweeting Goddess.
‘ The slagging I got! People said, “She’s over 40, who does she think she is? Goddess me a***” and all this. I just blocked them all.’
Such trolling has given Twitter a bad name but Samantha defends her online kingdom. ‘Not all of them are like that though. I have on my bio “nice people collector” because I only want good people in my space. I don’t want those eejits with their negative stuff.’
From day one Samantha enjoyed engaging with people on Twitter because as a recently-separated, full-time mother and official carer for her youngest, she was ‘very lonely’. The numbers following her increased – she’s at over 40,000 now – and businesses began to take notice. But it can be difficult to put a price on your value as a social media influencer. Samantha tells me what she charges to give a talk or a training session, then asks me not to print it because she thinks it may be too low.
‘ There are people charging €2,000!’ she exclaims, a sum much grander than hers. ‘I’m terrible at asking for money. That’s one fault that I need to fix. I’m still only learning to value myself. I think it’s something we need to learn – that our time is valuable. We’re not doing it for charity, we’re doing this for our families.’
Described on Irish influencer lists as the ‘Queen of Twitter’, Samantha puts her upbeat, helpful online persona down to her membership of AA. ‘It’s only a day at a time so you have to make that day your best day.’
She attends meetings twice a week and vividly remembers the moment she quit drinking. ‘I had a big hangover and it was a lovely, sunny day like this,’ she recalls. ‘Abi was about two and Leah was about nine and I remember they wanted to go to the beach and I couldn’t go. I felt so guilty and like such a bad mother. So I said, “Right. I’m sick of being sick. I’m not going to do this any more.”
‘I didn’t drink every day, I drank on a Friday night,’ she adds. ‘I got criticised online a lot about that: “She’s not a bloody alcoholic, she only drank once a week!” There’s different types of alcoholics. I was one where if I had one drink, I just didn’t know where the drink would take me. I couldn’t just have one drink. I found that if I was angry, lonely or tired, those were triggers for me. It’s a very lonely life, actually.’
Life is not lonely any more, at work or at home. Samantha is proud that Leah, 18, got her first job in a nail boutique in Wexford immediately after sitting her Leaving Certificate. ‘Leah is absolutely stunning – she’s half Chinese. Abi is real Irish with strawberry blonde hair and freckles, so they don’t like anything alike but they’re lovely. I love them to bits. Andy lives with us now. We’re a blended family, very blended,’ she giggles.
Is that ever tricky? ‘Well, I have to admit it was a bit tough with the teenager at the start but he gives her a lot of lifts so I think she’s seeing the value in him now! Abi and him get on great, they’re best friends.’
Meanwhile Samantha is still doing what she advises on the bumper stickers she’s had made for October’s WIN event: chasing her dreams.