Mel Carr didn't set out to build a networking organization. She published her first book collaboration in 2022, checked every box her publisher handed her, hit international bestseller, and then watched everyone scatter. A year later she was still missing her people. So she rebuilt the whole thing around community: authors from one city, meeting on Zoom every two weeks, gathering in person for a photo shoot, then launching the book three separate times so each woman gets three chances to be seen. Nine books later, Six-Figure Chicks has more than 140 authors, four volumes out of Arizona, three out of Houston, and a run of new cities ahead including Virginia, Boston, Las Vegas and Maui, with Canada next year. Mel walks us through how the name came to her, how a business coach asking "how much do you want to make this year?" changed what she thought was possible, and why she keeps giving her knowledge away for free.
The through line is vulnerability, and Mel is candid about how long it took her to practice it. She didn't tell anyone publicly that she signed herself out of high school at 15 until a year or two ago, because she was afraid people would decide she wasn't smart enough to run a company. It was reading the other authors' raw stories that gave her permission to tell her own. That same instinct led her to found Her Write to Rise, a nonprofit connecting the authors with the next generation through monthly virtual Fishbowl sessions and in-person mentorship on college campuses, built around a simple message: it's okay to ask for help. We also get into what it means to receive help once you've asked, why sharing the hard parts does more good than sharing the polished ones, and what each of us would tell our 15-year-old selves.
