Meet the Crew: Kelly Dye

The 850 Always Brings You Home

Hi, I'm Kelly Dye, one of the founding members of Local Livin'. Though if you grew up in Pensacola in the '90s, you might know me as Kelly Heisler—the one with the lime green bug and KELLBUG plates. I was a free-range Cordova Park kid who graduated from Booker T in 2002, left for college (Go Gators), moved to Atlanta, and spent 20 years exhausting myself running the rat race, creating marketing strategies for some of the biggest corporations on the planet.

After having two kids during the pandemic and making it through some of the hardest years of my life, I realized I was desperately missing two things: community and life on the water. So, like so many of my fellow Pensacolians, we moved back home. Now my kids, currently four and five, get to experience the same amazing childhood I did.

But here's the thing about coming home.

I didn't just want to transplant my corporate career to a different zip code. When I first got into advertising, I told myself I'd use my powers for good instead of evil—that I'd sell people things they actually needed. Somewhere along the way, what I had hoped would be a personally fulfilling career became just a paycheck. I was great at my job, but I hated how it made me feel. I wanted to go back to that idea of selling people something they need, something tangible, something that was built with intention, pride, and purpose.

When I started asking around about what people in Pensacola actually needed, the answer kept coming back: reliable pool maintenance. There were endless waiting lists. People complained about getting nickel-and-dimed for forgetting to unlock gates or dealing with contractors who either no-showed or overstayed their welcome. My dad's a retired contractor, so I've spent many hours over many years hearing about the shortage of skilled workers and the unreliability in the service industry. It seemed like an opportunity to do something different.

You may be saying to yourself, neat story, Kelly, but what do you know about pools? To which I'd say, so glad you asked. I'm not just cosplaying as a pool pro. I got my CPO (Certified Pool Operator) license and spent the latter half of 2025 studying Pools 101 and training in pool pro apps like Skimmer. If I'm going to help keep pools running smoothly and prevent small issues from becoming expensive ones, I knew I needed to understand the trade inside and out. Thankfully, I'm not doing this alone—my business partner and Senior Tech, Perin Neville, is the mechanical genius of this operation and the one who brings our service to life. We're here to bring trusted service to a great community and have some fun along the way.

We want our bottom line to lift up the community, not just extract from it. We want to represent the 850—not just clean pools, but build something that celebrates local livin', done right. Another part of our brand promise is to support locally owned businesses and franchises as much as possible—from our vendors to our vendors' vendors. Did I mention we'll have amazing merch coming soon? Because we may clean pools, but that doesn't mean we can't look cool while doing it.

Yes, I understand these are heady concepts for a pool cleaning service. But did you expect anything less from a former "marketing maven" given free rein of her own company?

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