Entrepreneur returns to Grand Rapids roots

By Abigail Blonigen

"There’sno place like home,” says Grand Rapids, Minnesota native Judy Garland in the movie classic “The Wizard of Oz.” In the last few years, entrepreneur Megan Kellin has found that sentiment to be true.

Kellin, also from Grand Rapids, was raised by entrepreneurial parents who played a large role in the community. The oldest of three girls, Kellin began working at a young age in her parents’ restaurant, sometimes helping with their other ventures as well.

Kellin went on to study business at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. With a knack for foreign languages, Kellin took off to South America after college, backpacking around the world for a year with her now husband.

“Our main mission was to hike as many mountains as we could,” Kellin said. “We surfed when there was good surf and we learned how to scuba dive and fish, ski, hike, trek, whatever we could do.”

After returning to the United States, Kellin and her partner continued their travels on the West Coast, living out of their vehicle before finally landing in Colorado. In Colorado, Kellin launched be.Media House, now a global creative marketing company which has worked with clients from

Rocky Mountain Bride to GoPro and Toyota.

Kellin and her husband lived in Colorado for about 10 years before deciding to move back to Minnesota. Kellin’s husband is also from Grand Rapids (the two started dating in high school), and his mother had fallen ill. That, in addition to having their second child, inspired them to move closer to family and back to the timber town.

Their time away, travels and experience helped the Kellins see their hometown in a new light.

“All of a sudden, we started to realize that there’s so much opportunity in entrepreneurialism, in different businesses that didn’t exist but we had experienced in other places,” she said.

Kellin’s first venture was transforming a rundown hotel into what is now Hotel Rapids, a chic and refined boutique hotel complete with a bar and bistro. Tapping into her entrepreneurial family — her two sisters are also entrepreneurs — Kellin owns the 30-bedroom inn with her mother.

Hotel Rapids soon became the catalyst for several interconnected businesses.

“Very quickly, within working in the hotel space, I realized that there are a lot of stories that aren’t being told,” Kellin said.

The desire to share these “stories of people doing

Continued on page 8 exceptional things in the north” led to the development of Lake and Company magazine during fall 2015.

Megan Kellin started publishing Lake and Company magazine in 2015 as a means to share “stories of people doing exceptional things in the north." The magazine’s success helped Kellin see another opportunity: a retail space for the products featured in the publication. From local makers to trendy outdoor apparel, the retail space that opened in 2016 serves to tell the story of these products just as the magazine tells the stories of their creators and users.

“I started listening to what people were doing and what drives them to live in northern Minnesota,” Kellin said. “I was very intrigued, and I started looking at these different lake communities and they all seemed to have their own very distinct personalities … and if I'm interested in that, other people must be interested in that, right?”

Kellin was right, and Lake and Company caught on like wildfire. The publication started off as a free magazine in a few locations up north and within a few months was on stands in seven states.

The magazine’s success helped Kellin see yet another opportunity: a retail space for the products featured in the publication. From local makers to trendy outdoor apparel, the retail space serves to tell the story of these products just as the magazine tells the stories of their creators and users.

The first Lake and Company store opened in Grand Rapids in 2016. They now have bricks and mortar in Grand Rapids, Stillwater, International Falls and Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

The Lake and Company magazine has also expanded with a national iteration of the publication in addition to the regional, Minnesota-based one. The national mag sits on stands in 48 states.

Kellin also used her publishing expertise to launch Lake Bride Magazine in 2016. It has a similar flare of adventure as Lake and Company through the lens of Minnesota weddings and elements.

Connecting to both her bridal and hospitality experience, Kellin, her sister and family run Little Lazy Lodge — a four-bedroom, four-bath resort on 180 acres in Boy River, Minnesota. A northern Minnesota getaway for weddings to family reunions, both Kellin and one of her sisters were married on the property.

Through the hustle and bustle of the multiple business owner lifestyle, family remains most important to Kellin, who has three children aged 9, 6 and 3. The family intentionally carves out time to travel, get outdoors and “live the brand” they promote. Juggling entrepreneurship with motherhood and womanhood has been no easy task. Kellin operated her businesses through all three of her pregnancies.

“It’s really, really hard to not only be a mother and operate a business, because the expectations don’t change as a business owner from the general public. You have to return emails, but you might have just had a baby a couple days before,” she said. “You have to get those systems in place.”

There were also times when people would ask to talk to “the boss” instead of Kellin, assuming she was not the person in charge. Some folks would even specifically ask to talk to a man.

“You have to work twice as hard to get your ideas heard, to really participate in that space,” Kellin said of being a businesswoman in northern Minnesota.

Over the last few years, as she’s made a name for herself in the community, people have begun to take her more seriously. Her work has been noticed state and nationwide as Twin Cities

Business named her one of the top 100 people to know in 2022.

Like many small businesses, the pandemic required flexibility of Kellin and her various entities. Though aspects of her work had to temporarily downsize, she was able to take time to refocus and refine her work and rebuild her teams with experienced professionals from across the country as remote work becomes more common.

“Our mission at the Lake and Company is to inspire other people,” she said. “That’s what our company operates off: being in good company and surrounding yourself with people that inspire you.”

As for up-and-coming ventures, Kellin will be busy working with the Lake and Company national expansion in addition to opening a new coworking space in Grand Rapids in a restored old church. Called the CoHaus Collective, the initiative is set to open in early summer. D