Interesting Humans

Flow. Details. Impact. These are the hallmark words in Elin Walters' world. She is the owner and curator at Exactly Designs, an interior design firm she founded a little more than four years ago.
As Elin says on her website, "I was once asked, “how do you feel when you walk into a room? What do you notice?”I replied, “I just know visually and emotionally if it is exactly right, if the room has realized its full potential. I’m always finding ways in my mind to make a room better.”

The lane Elin has chosen is the midcentury modern and modern aesthetic. She loves to incorporate color and whimsy in spaces as well as move walls. When she approaches a design project she's looking for that hinge, a particular element on which to build a space her clients will love. As she explains in our conversation that one piece--a piece of furniture, a paint color on a wall, a section of flooring, a window that offers a certain light--can be the determining factor for everything that is built around it. And, despite what you might think you might know about what it is that interior designers do, Elin points out several instances where her work involves way more than picking out nice pillows or dropping a $20,000 rug on a floor and calling it good.

"Design is design, not decorating," she says. The projects she gets the most excited about are the ones where spaces are completely reimagined. She often works hand in hand with her clients' contractors to ensure design is incorporated into the renovation process. If it's not, well, I'll let Elin explain that part.
We dive into her approach as well as how her upbringing with artistic parents in Williamsburg, VA and Goshen, IN subconsciously influenced her eventual path to doing design for a living.

Elin reveals some challenges that have impacted her business and her personal life as well in this far ranging conversation that I hope if you are a solo entrepreneur might help you.

I applaud Elin for being willing to be my guest as she is also my wife. It took me a couple months to convince her to come onto the Interesting Humans podcast and she agreed if I promised to ask more about interior design and her work than about our lives together. And, truth be told, she and I have very similar conversations almost every day about both professional and personal topics so what you're going to hear is a lot like the two of us sitting down over coffee. I hope that warm vibe comes through.
I'm lucky to be married to such an articulate and engaging person as Elin. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Links:
Exactly Designs website: https://www.exactlydesigns.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exactlydesigns/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/exactlydesigns/
Atomic Ranch feature, May 2020: https://exactlydesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AR-Argyle-Exterior-3.pdf
Seen Magazine, Interior Design accounts to follow on Instagram: https://seenthemagazine.com/instagram-accounts-for-home-design-and-decor-inspo/
Midcenturyhome.com: https://www.midcenturyhome.com/interior-designer-elin-walters-midcentury-home-renovation/
Elin's parents and their work in Goshen, Indiana:

Website: https://christianrward.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christianrward/

I call Emily McGuire a Relational Marketer. Not only is she a guru of email marketing but she also is growing her one-person business to include copy writing and even business coaching. Emily and her company, Flourish and Grit, is the perfect person to talk about the coronavirus havoc on business, particularly small businesses.

It takes grit to be a solopreneur as Emily and so many people are finding, people who have pivoted their careers away from corporate jobs to working for themselves. Even amidst the pandemic, with layoffs across industries and companies, scores of people are looking to hang a shingle and rely upon their own abilities and passions to earn a living.
But wait, how do you do that?

Emily started Flourish and Grit just under three years ago primarily focused on helping clients take advantage of their databases through reaching out with email marketing. Emily takes the pulse of her clients current database and marketing efforts and helps refine based on the client’s goals.

Yet Emily is much more than that. She has become wise as a business person in understanding the nuances of creating long term clients through careful vetting, establishing boundaries and being authentic. She is who she is and she advocates for her clients to do the same.

So who is she? I met Emily in January at a gathering of business people and solopreneurs who were looking to find their marketing voices through understanding who they are. The event was co-hosted by Janelle Reichman, who was my guest on Interesting Humans Episode Two, whom you’ll recall owns her own website design firm.

Emily learned through constant observation and practice what to do and what not to do as a solopreneur. In the process of building her business she experienced the reverb of some personal trauma from her younger years. We touch on it some in our conversation and Emily is pretty transparent about being excommunicated and shunned by her family and how the experience has served her as a solopreneur and a person today.

Our conversation is both deep into the trials and tribulations of owning your own business and broad about the person behind it. I hope you will enjoy meeting Emily McGuire.
LinkedIn: ​https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcguireemily/
Instagram: ​https://www.instagram.com/flourishandgrit/
Facebook: ​https://www.facebook.com/flourishandgrit/
Twitter: ​https://twitter.com/flourishandgri​t

Website:

https://www.flourishgrit.com/

Freebie:

Action Guide: Boost Your Email Open Rates ASAP

flourishgrit.com/open

Website: https://christianrward.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christianrward/

When I was a kid I would often accompany my parents on Saturdays to a store that was both a grocery and department store, a bit like Costco is today. Sometimes my father would give me some cash and I would hotfoot it to the toy section to grab one of the latest models of these miniature cars called Hot Wheels. I was obsessed with building my collection. I would make my purchase and then was faced with the immediate question that I realize now was a precursor to similar questions I would ask as an adult.

What do I do with what's left?

Most often I would go straight to the jewelry counter and purchase with what change I had some cheap piece of costume jewelry for my Mom. I don't know why this was my pattern and perhaps there are deeper aspects and another set of questions. The point is that I had choices each time:

Give what was left back to my father;

Make this purchase for my Mom,

Save it for another day.

Which do you think would have been the smartest? How you answer that question has a lot to do with your philosophy about this thing we call Money. The Saturday trips to the store with my parents helped form my lifelong relationship with money, along with observing how they spent and spoke about money in our household. And, like a lot of people, my relationship with money is strained at best.

Today's guest, Mark Willis, takes a stand against the many commonly held myths about money. In fact, Mark, a certified financial planner and the founder and principal in his own firm Lake Growth Financial, is a paradigm breaker. He is the host of the popular financial podcast, Not Your Average Financial Podcast, in which explores and challenges widely held as fact ideas about finances.

In today's conversation, Mark offers a counterintuitive approach to our relationship with money. He challenges whether a house is an asset or a liability, whether it's smarter to defer taxes to retirement, and even the sacred cow of 401(k) as the best place to park our money for retirement. He questions the worship of "financial gurus and money personalities" on network television and social media who prescribe mainstream money views without question.

But Mark is no heartless bean-counter. He starts each relationship with prospective clients with a deep examination of that client's fears, concerns, and history with money. He even tells us that financial conversations, if done right, "should feel like those best late-night conversations about life."

Today's conversation is a wide-ranging and enlightening look into the work of a heart-based financial planner whose central tenet is a Bank On Yourself philosophy that puts the most value into our own deeply held desires about money in our lives rather than following the herd. So hold on. You’re probably going to get uncomfortable because this conversation strikes at the heart of how our core beliefs about money are really core beliefs about our lives.

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Mark Willis.
Mark Willis website l Facebook l online community l podcast
Bank on Yourself principles and founder Pamela Yellen

Website: https://christianrward.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christianrward/

What makes a good teacher? More important, what makes a teacher good? Just as with any professional endeavor there are character habits that lead to mastery. Teaching is no exception. And while there are fantastic teachers everywhere, some rise a bit higher.

The role of teachers today has never been more important yet also has not been as under assault as it is today. Tax cuts riddle school budgets, technology drives adults and kids to distraction, and expectations for how kids achieve has seemingly never been higher. Not to mention the more prevalent occurrence of shootings in schools. So is it a wonder that teachers feel hamstrung to teach with so much going on outside the classroom?

Today's guest, Tracy Anderson, is a teacher I would have loved. Tracy's students thrive in today's educational landscape and she possesses a unique blend of individual talent and commitment that makes her exceptional.
Her career spans 23 years, the past 20 at Ann Arbor's Community High School. Tracy has taught literature, creative writing and journalism for two decades to students who've gone on to excel as adults in life and any number of careers. She is highly regarded by her students, their parents and by the administration. In addition, she is the director of The Communicator, the award-winning, glossy 80-100 page magazine entirely produced by students five times a year. Last year the Communicator won a Pacemaker award for excellence from the National Scholastic Press Association and was up for another award this year.

Tracy is exceptional for two important reasons. First, she is clear on her teaching philosophy. Her clarity of purpose is obvious as we discuss different experiences from her classroom. She is inspired by the premise fundamental to Montessori education that respects the individuality of each student and their learning style and that students' needs change as they grow.

Second, that respect for every student who comes to her classroom has led Tracy to commit to her career as a student of teaching, always challenging herself to understand the educational process more fully and whatever subject matter through which she is guiding her students.

One of the parts of the conversation I love the most is when she mentions that whatever exercise she has her students do she also does. Moreover, there is an absence of ego in Tracy's classroom. She talks about several instances where she admits to her students mistakes she made in approach or a question she asks of students. This humility serves as a great example for her students and inspires them.

"I treat them like individuals and like adults. I trust them," Tracy says,

Armed with a clear sense of fundamentals--she possesses bachelor and masters degrees in teaching as well as a substantial amount of education credits toward her Phd--and with a joie de vivre for young minds, Tracy is a fascinating conversation as well as a lovely person.
Links:
You can find Tracy Anderson here: https://tracyanderson.org/
Detroit Poet Jamaal May's poem There Are Birds Here
Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way
VOICE, Community High School's Literary Magazine

I hope you enjoy today's conversation wit

Website: https://christianrward.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christianrward/

As New Year’s Eve turned to 2021, for the first time in a while I felt a real energy and excitement for a big period of growth. How about you? Are there things you are looking forward to? And speaking of, how are you doing on those New Year’s resolutions?

Been working out at the gym to lose that extra 20 you’re carrying? Started that side hustle? Mended those fraught relationships with the Uncle who sits on the other side of the political fence. Mastered your finances and gotten out of debt? Yep, I thought so.

Today’s guest, Krisstina Wise is a self-made multi-millionaire who has made it her life’s work to master money. After nearly losing her life in 2013 to catastrophic illness and spending almost half a million dollars to recover, Krisstina got out of her bed and made it her mission to inspire others to build extraordinary wealth and optimal health.

Rising from a challenging childhood where she and her brother were essentially abandoned by her parents when she was 10, Krisstina rose to become one of the 100 Most influential Real Estate leaders in the country and has been recognized by Apple and Evernote for her creative leadership with emerging technologies.

She is a go-to financial coach, author of Falling For Money, a top rated best selling “romance novel for your bank account", host of the Wealthy Wellthy podcast, and leader of Sovereignty Academy, an online money school that helps people get their arms around all things money for your household and your business.

In our conversation, Krisstina opens the veil into her life from her childhood living with two alcoholic parents in a mobile home, going to school and being bullied for her life circumstances to the woman who grew into an overachieving Realtor with the material trappings of success: multiple cars with prestige nameplates, fancy homes and an extravagant lifestyle.

It all came crashing down in 2013 when she was diagnosed with metal poisoning and a hormonal system that was shutting down. Her efforts to recover took her far and wide inside and outside of traditional and alternative medicine and half a million dollars to get well again. She emerged, like a phoenix, with a completely different perspective on what’s truly important in life. “I was in a very dark place,” she says.

We cover how challenge builds character, how learning to love money is not idolizing currency itself but loving in the universal sense, how our spiritual lives connect our finances and our health, and how we can make deliberate choices to transform our lives around money and in every other aspect as well.

Krisstina imparts wisdom for the soul, This is an important episode if you have mastering your life and your finances on your 2021 radar. Besides being a PhD in managing money, creating a business and teaching others, Krisstina is warm and open .
Links:
Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman in the WorldJoseph Campbell, The Hero's JourneyTwitter: @krisstinawise
Instagram: @krisstinawiseLinkedIn:

Website: https://christianrward.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christianrward/