The Money Fit Show

Season 2: Episode #33

Resilience and Reinvention, Richard Riemann of Imagination Videobooks

Like so many successful people, Richard Riemann went through difficult periods of his career and his finances. He reinvented his career multiple times, achieving success often just to experience a company shutdown, agism, and even the harsh consequences of government deregulation. But each time, he took inventory of his strengths and his motivators to find or create new opportunities for success. Now, after founding a successful nonprofit, he says it’s time to give back and support others on their journeys.

Podcast Outline

1. From introvert to storyteller
2. Creating accessible versions of children’s illustrated books, including Winnie the Pooh
3. Reinventing himself after a long career in radio journalism and being overqualified for available positions
4. Moving into a successful sales career before the employer went out of business
5. The problem with spending like you're employed when you are not
6. Starting over again after a job loss and divorce
7. Starting over yet again in the closet narrating audiobooks before starting to produce audiobooks
8. Growing up in a home where the family lived paycheck to paycheck and experienced power getting shut off
9. The role of resilience and persistence in financial security
10. Avoiding bankruptcy through debt negotiations but having to pay taxes on debt that was written off
11. Setting up a repayment plan with the IRS
12. Helping others reinvent themselves as well, including a friend who became a photographer for rescue dogs
13. Rediscovering what motivates you and what you love to do and building a business around it
14. Helping others with joint ventures
15. Being careful of overspending money on unnecessary programs instead to seek out mentors and coaches

Links referred to in the episode, and how to connect with the guest, Richard Riemann:

Imagination Videobooks Home

Imagination Storybooks on Facebook

Imagination Storybooks on Instagram

Subscribe to the Money Fit Show today wherever you get your podcasts! You can also find us at moneyfit.org/podcast

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Email:  Podcast@MoneyFit.org

The Money Fit Show

Season 2: Episode #32

27 Months to Debt-freedom, Sammie Ellard-King of Up the Gains

Although his experiences with student loans and credit card debt were in the UK, the principles Sammie Ellard-King discusses that helped him get out of debt in 27 months and become a resource for his family, friends, and beyond apply to anyone in debt in any country.

1. Effects on a child when parents have a bad relationship with money
2. Moving out on your own when you’re 17
3. Running a business while in college but spending every penny
4. How student loan repayment works in the UK
5. The problems with not seeing your student loan balance regularly
6. Trouble with credit card debt to fund lifestyle
7. Keeping consumer debt secret from friends and family
8. Figuring out how much you need to retire based on your retirement age and life expectancy
9. Taking a class to learn to get out of debt
10. Paying off consumer debt in 27 months
11. Listening to podcasts and reading books on financial freedom for self-education
12. Sharing financial advice with family
13. Not letting financial mistakes get you down
14. The problem with personal finance books and blogs that talk down to you
15. Pay yourself first (saving and investing) before paying your bills

Links referred to in the episode, and how to connect with the guest, Sammie Ellard-King:

Up the Gains Homepage

Instagram @UpTheGainsMoney

Twitter @UpTheGainsMoney

LinkedIn @Up-the-Gains

Subscribe to the Money Fit Show today wherever you get your podcasts! You can also find us at moneyfit.org/podcast

We would appreciate it if you would click the star or thumbs up to give us a like for today’s episode.

Connect with the Money Fit Show:

Twitter: @MoneyFitbyDRS

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Email:  Podcast@MoneyFit.org

The Money Fit Show

Season 2: Episode #031

Finding Experience in Adversity, Nicki Conradt-Eberlin of Unleashed Leadership

Podcast guest, Nicki Conradt-Eberlin, had to become self-sufficient while just 16 and still in high school. Instead of given into a believe that she was fated to fail, she worked through jobs, paid bills usually handled by adults, and even saved up thousands of dollars to purchase her first vehicle. Looking back now, she’s grateful for all her experiences. And she’s used her experience, curiosity for learning, and drive to become a life coach to help others set and realize their own goals.

1. Becoming self-sufficient in high school because of alcoholism in the family
2. Working her first job in an in-school credit union branch
3. Saving up money to purchase her first car at 16 ($3k-$5k) while paying for groceries, insurance, phone, and other bills
4. Using her passion for horseback riding to stay motivated financially
5. Moving on to a full-time position with credit union after high school while attending community college before earning two bachelor’s degrees
6. Using a low-limit credit card during and after college
7. Challenges after graduation
8. Analyzing student loan debt after college and how much it starts to add up over time
9. Learning about financial products online but also learning from mentors and company materials
10. Realizing that she loved training and onboarding, which led to setting out as a life coach
11. Letting go of the scarcity mentality to grow her business and embracing the abundance mentality
12. Identifying different life goals for each client
13. Being grateful for all experiences of her life
14. Reframing views of challenges and difficult times
15. The importance of consistently checking in with your finances (where your money is going and how you are spending it)

Links referred to in the episode, and how to connect with the guest, Nicki Conradt-Eberlin:

Schedule a Time with Nicki

Unleashed Leadership

Facebook @UnleashedLeadership

Instagram @UnleashedLeadership

Subscribe to the Money Fit Show today wherever you get your podcasts! You can also find us at moneyfit.org/podcast

We would appreciate it if you would click the star or thumbs up to give us a like for today’s episode.

Connect with the Money Fit Show:

Twitter: @MoneyFitbyDRS

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Email:  Podcast@MoneyFit.org

The Money Fit Show

Season 2: Episode #30

Couples, Money, and Working Together, Dr. Ray and Jean Kadkhodaian of Couples Synergy

Dr. Ray & Jean Kadkhodaian are relationship experts and cofounders of their successful counseling center. After working with thousands of couples, they created a unique approach to coach couples to have amazing relationships, called Couples Synergy. They cohost the podcast, Couples Synergy: Real Couples, Real Stories… Real Relationships. As a married couple, they believe that they cannot teach it unless they live it. They help couples create the relationship of their dreams, with the partner they fell in love with!

1. Working together in previous jobs and now in counseling settings
2. What money meant to them when they were young, including power and control
3. The marshmallow experiment and how trust plays a role in the notion of delayed gratification
4. Couples fight more about sex and money than any other topic
5. How they had to create their own approach to money as a couple
6. Allowing a partner who enjoys spending money to pay for things
7. Allowing a partner who prefers to manage money to work on the budget
8. The relationship between responsibility and resentment
9. The freedom of living only on cash even if forced to do so due to bad or no credit
10. Settling debts with creditors
11. Remembering the most important things when finances get stressful
12. Being a young, single Mom, joining the military, and going to college
13. How a log in the wilderness can bring greater joy than a scratched dining room table
14. Disconnecting from your parents’ view of money and trusting in your spouse or partner
15. Accepting the reality of life rather than pretending money solves our most important challenges
16. Bouncing checks, paying fees, and stepping away for a trip to Mexico
17. Learning lessons rather than regrets
18. Making decisions quickly but changing mind slowly
19. The power of a faith and belief system
20. Not making decisions from a place of fear
21. Money is symbolic, so you need to learn to detach from those meanings
22. Blending of finances to create an “us” in relationships

Links referred to in the episode, and how to connect with the guests, Dr. Ray and Jean Kadkhodaian:

Couples Synergy Home

Couples Synergy Podcast

Subscribe to the Money Fit Show today wherever you get your podcasts! You can also find us at moneyfit.org/podcast

We would appreciate it if you would click the star or thumbs up to give us a like for today’s episode.

Connect with the Money Fit Show:

Twitter: @MoneyFitbyDRS

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Email:  Podcast@MoneyFit.org

The Money Fit Show

Season 2: Episode #29

Hiding Money from Yourself, Wendy Fedan of Create a Way Design & Publishing

Wendy Fedan is a full-time freelance illustrator with multiple sources of income related to her dreams.  She launched her own company in 2021 designed around publishing her and other people’s books called Create-a-Way Design & Publishing. Her family has been debt free for nearly a decade now, and Wendy is a wife and mother of two teenagers, living in Amherst, Ohio.

1. The perspective on credit card debt as a fact of life when Wendy was a young adult
2. The importance of delayed gratification
3. Financing wants with student loans while in college
4. The journey into debt involved credit cards, student loans, and possibly furniture debt
5. Don’t go shopping for a home when you’re 7-8 months pregnant
6. Feeling like student loan debt would never go away, even with monthly payments
7. Altering their lifestyle to deal with credit card payments
8. Freedom is the main work associated with paying off debt
9. Being able to finally save after paying off debt
10. Having multiple checking and savings accounts helps put savings funds out of sight and out of mind
11. Changing your mindset and how you think about money to get out and stay out of debt
12. Believing that money was the root of all evil, and how being afraid of money leads to financial problems
13. Taking financial classes together as a couple to help get on the same path
14. The budgeting challenges of irregular income associated with freelancing
15. The challenge of going from two steady incomes to one
16. Setting up own publishing company as a self-publishing author and illustrator
17. Getting out of debt opens up opportunities to pursue more wants and creative paths

Links referred to in the episode, and how to connect with the guest, Wendy Fedan:

Create a Way Publishing.com

Subscribe to the Money Fit Show today wherever you get your podcasts! You can also find us at moneyfit.org/podcast

We would appreciate it if you would click the star or thumbs up to give us a like for today’s episode.

Connect with the Money Fit Show:

Twitter: @MoneyFitbyDRS

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Email:  Podcast@MoneyFit.org

The Money Fit Show

Season 2: Episode #28

From Government Assistance to Millionaire, Tiffany Harris of Kustom Kreationz Wholesale

Tiffany Harris is a mother of three: two girls, one boy, plus one fur baby. She’s a wife and a profound businesswoman. She started Kustom Kreationz Wholesale (KKW) because she was getting married and was having issues with people making the customized items she wanted. So, she decided to learn how to create them herself. Once she figured out how to make those items, Tiffany learned about sublimation and fell in love. She calls herself the Sublimation Diva.

Tiffany grew up in a poor neighborhood in Philadelphia and has overcome extreme odds to become a huge success in her field. She teaches other entrepreneurs how to start their own businesses, how to navigate credit for business, and how to be unstoppable in the pursuit of creating a career.

1. Sublimation is a printing process to make decorative apparel
2. Growing up without entrepreneurial role models
3. Working as a teacher until she had a stroke in the teachers' lounge
4. Starting work at 14 years of age
5. Having the confidence to get past any obstacle
6. Earning five college degrees
7. Planning to run her own hotel and restaurant
8. Earning a nursing degree and realizing she didn’t enjoy the profession
9. Getting an MBA and a Master's in Human Resources before getting a teaching degree
10. Continuing to work a side business even after the stroke, using just one hand for all her typing
11. Identifying what she wanted to do and how much it would cost and then figuring out how to earn the money
12. The difference between her first visit to Disney and her more recent visits
13. Messing up her credit at age 17 when getting credit cards at college
14. Learning about credit and credit worthiness
15. Focusing her debt repayment efforts on the most recent accounts
16. Needing focus and patience to rebuild credit
17. Starting her business when she was getting married because she couldn’t find a business that offered what she wanted for the right price
18. Rather than reinventing the wheel, she learned to fix the shaky wheel
19. Writing a book so others can understand you can rise above trials and tribulations (depression, suicidal thoughts, poverty, public assistance, violence, etc.)
20. Building an academy to help business owners build their business credit
21. “If at first you don’t succeed, let’s just go off and try again”

Links referred to in the episode, and how to connect with the guest, Tiffany Harris:

Kustom Kreationz Wholesale Website

The Makings of Me: My Journey to 7 Figures from My Living Room

Kustom Kreationz on Facebook

Kustom Kreations on Instagram

Kustom Kreations on TikTok

Kustom Kreationz on YouTube

Subscribe to the Money Fit Show today wherever you get your podcasts! You can also find us at moneyfit.org/podcast

We would appreciate it if you would click the star or thumbs up to give us a like for today’s episode.

Connect with the Money Fit Show:

Twitter: @MoneyFitbyDRS

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The Money Fit Show

Season 2: Episode #27

Look Your Money in the Face, Kelsey Knutson

Kelsey Knutson is a small business coach and podcast host based in the Pacific Northwest. She has a bachelor's degree in Entrepreneurship, is debt free, and has learned many money lessons along the way. She believes our relationship with money dictates the financial choices we make in business and life. And she’s on a mission to help people reframe how they think about money and implement sustainable systems to help them achieve financial (and life) goals.

1. Inheriting different aspects of her relationship with money from her parents
2. Learning about money through entrepreneurship versus being told about money
3. Going to college without having conversations about how to pay for it
4. Having up to four jobs at the same time in college
5. Exchanging time for money
6. The embarrassment of overdrafting her bank account
7. The scarcity mindset
8. Side hustles in college led to majoring in Entrepreneurship
9. Dealing with imposter system
10. Having an aha moment during the third round of job interviews
11. Getting full-time consulting job through her university
12. Quitting on a whim to go to beauty school and get into debt for the first time
13. The difference between classes at University and Trade Schools
14. Apprenticing under professionals
15. Saving tips to accelerate debt repayment and become debt free within three years
16. Starting business debt free
17. Staring challenges in the face and then setting up processes to deal with them
18. How your energy attracts others when you love what you do
19. Here aha moment of balancing work and personal life came after fainting on the job
20. Starting a business with a vacation already on the books as a way of forcing herself to stay within her work-life balance
21. The profit first approach
22. How having a safety net (emergency savings) allowed her to shift from salon owner to business coach, especially during the COVID-19 shutdown
23. Starting a business out of passion and accidentally becoming an entrepreneur
24. Finding a way to fund the bills, whether through business ownership or side hustles
25. Starting her own podcast as another tool to achieve her life purpose
26. Giving yourself grace in your personal finance choices
27. Looking your financial challenges in the face rather than ignoring them

Links referred to in the episode, and how to connect with the guest, Kelly Knutson:

When I Grow Up Podcast

KelseyMarieKnutson.com

Kelsey on Instagram

Kelsey on Facebook

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

Subscribe to the Money Fit Show today wherever you get your podcasts! You can also find us at moneyfit.org/podcast

We would appreciate it if you would click the star or thumbs up to give us a like for today’s episode.

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Email:  Podcast@MoneyFit.org

The Money Fit Show

Season 2: Episode #26

Make Your NOW Fabulous, Scott Harris Author of Leap Forward

Scott Harris is a well-known skydiver, veteran, businessman, and motivational speaker. Scott’s interactive keynote presentations and workshops make him popular with his audience. He uses his personal journey to create an exceptional storytelling experience for his audience. He utilizes the skills he has learned from his multifaced life experience to help entrepreneurs, managers, leaders, and young people face their fears and find a clear path forward with confidence and joy.

1. Parachuting into Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding to broadcast images from the blacked-out event
2. Joining the US Army at 17 years old at the tail end of the Vietnam War
3. Returning to college after leaving military service involved facing the challenges he had previously found difficult
4. Being an avid reader
5. Moving from merchant marine to engineering in Southern California
6. Facing the challenge of having his car’s engine blow up when he was already struggling financially
7. The phone call that may have saved his life
8. Putting yourself in a position to have good things happen to you when you need them
9. His “life-affirming” experience with the Universe
10. Being more concerned about doing your best and helping people than being concerned about money
11. Attributing success to a can-do attitude despite the challenges faced
12. Supporting others by helping others to embrace their own challenges
13. Rather than focusing on the end goal, focus on enjoying the journey
14. Looking at every obstacle and challenge as an opportunity to become and be better
15. Defining yourself not by your history or even your future, but by the forward movement of your present
16. Don’t just work for a paycheck
17. Conquering the moment while planning for the future
18. Finding joy and reward within yourself rather than looking for it externally

Links referred to in the episode, and how to connect with the guest, Scott Harris:

ScottKHarris.com

Leap Forward on Amazon

Subscribe to the Money Fit Show today wherever you get your podcasts! You can also find us at moneyfit.org/podcast

We would appreciate it if you would click the star or thumbs up to give us a like for today’s episode.

Connect with the Money Fit Show:

Twitter: @MoneyFitbyDRS

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Email:  Podcast@MoneyFit.org