Money Tales

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Bree Schumacher. Bree is a lifelong entrepreneur who took a $500 loan and turned it into a 7-figure business with over one hundred employees, which she ran for nineteen years. Bree sold the business in 2020. While she could easily have sold it to a competitor and immediately walked away, Bree went with her heart. She knew selling the precious business to one of her longstanding employees was the right move for the business and to secure her legacy. Bree creatively structured a deal that allowed the employee to buy her out over time. The payout period is nearly up and Bree shares how the scarcity money mindset of her youth is being triggered as the cashflow comes to an end, even though her family is financially secure.

Bree is a mom of three boys, a lover of travel and the host of the Seize Your Midlife Podcast as well as the travel company, Be Somewhere Sunny. Bree is a new investor with an “it’s complicated” relationship with money.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Dr. Deborah Ekstrom. Early on her career, Deborah didn't have a lot of extra time. There were tremendous demands on her for the things she needed to learn for medicine. She tells us that like most professional women, when she got married, she supported her spouse through his journey and had children who required her attention and nurturing. It was challenging, and learning about money wasn’t a priority until it became one. At that time, Deborah found it difficult to find information to educate her, but she was determined. As she reflects on those days, she’s come to realize that the more you know about finance, how money works, what the money rules are and what your personal values and ideals are related to money, the better you’ll be at making good money decisions.

Deborah developed her media and training corporation, Money Loves Women, for the purposes of getting more money, power and influence into the hands of women. She believes wealth comes in many forms but attaining financial wealth is the most confounding for women. Forty years of self-study, courses and mentors have resulted in the Money Loves Women Signature Course consisting of the stacks and pillars of wealth building followed by mini-master classes in investing in the areas of stock market value investing, tax deed and tax lien investing, niches in real estate investing, business start-up and business acquisition.

Deborah has a podcast showcasing wise and successful women as role models on her podcast, Money Loves Women which publishes weekly on Wednesdays.

Additionally, Deborah has run her own surgical practice for almost 40 years and learned and advocates for business as one of the most common and achievable paths to wealth. She is the president and founder of Salisbury Plastic Surgery in Massachusetts and has acquired a business together with her two partners in the software service sphere.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Tracy Coenen. When Tracy went to college she decided to major in criminology and law studies, because she wanted to become a prison warden. However, sophomore year she took an elective called Financial Crime Investigations and she loved it. The course changed the trajectory of Tracy’s focus and she’s now a forensic accountant. In that role, her goal is to help a thousand women a year have better financial outcomes from their divorces.

Today, Tracy runs her own business. Her job is to find money in cases of corporate fraud, high net worth divorces, and other financial shenanigans. Tracy does a lot of work with corporations, investigating situations when executives have stolen money or companies are fighting with other companies about money. She also does fraud investigations related to divorces for wealthy people, where she’s tracing money, trying to figure out how much they have, where their money has gone, what they've been spending it on, and in some cases, where they’re hiding money. Tracy is also the author of several books and she’s the creator of the Divorce Money Guide.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Jeanette Bronée. In her twenties, Jeanette was a successful executive in the fashion industry in Denmark with fifty people reporting up to her. She felt like she could do it all. Then, at the age of twenty-six, Jeanette’s ambition caused her to leave all of that and move to New York. She had a rude awakening. Jeanette’s first job in the U.S. was as an assistant and it paid almost nothing. She felt like she was falling apart and had to start over. This forced Jeanette to search for who she was and explore what she was doing and how she was going to take care of herself.

Today, Jeanette is rethinking self-care in the workplace as the foundation for peak performance, engagement, and a culture where people belong and work better together. As an internationally recognized self-care mindset expert, she has spoken at the United Nations, given keynotes across the US and spoken to audiences on five continents. Jeanette shares the tools to reclaim agency and cultivate the human connection that helps us communicate and collaborate with curiosity and care so that we can navigate challenges, innovate and grow stronger together in our constantly changing reality.

Jeanette gives us the C.A.R.E.-driven framework (confidence, agility, resilience, and equity) so we can change our relationship with self-care at work in order to be busy and healthy at the same time, cultivating a culture where people create impact and sustainable success together. Her clients include IBM, Lockheed Martin, Kaiser Permanente, Genentech, Microsoft, Facebook, eBay, Siemens and more.

Jeanette’s new book “The Self-Care Mindset, Rethinking How We Change and Grow, Harness Well-Being and Reclaim Work-Life Quality” is a book of tools to harness our human advantage to grow through adversity.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Robert Marks. Robert always wanted to build his own house. He even remembers being in middle school and doodling houses while his teachers droned on and on. About ten years ago, Robert and his wife found a beautiful piece of land that would be perfect for their dream home. They spent two years planning the construction, working closely with an architect, and then another couple of years building it. When the house was finished, it was incredible. Everyone loved it. His wife, their family, their friends, and even their dog. Robert liked to tell people that he built the greatest house in the history of Cleveland, Ohio. There was only one problem. Within a week of moving in, Robert realized he didn’t like living there. Eventually, his wife missed their old neighborhood and they decided to move back. In reflection, Robert realizes, building the home was his dream, not necessarily living there and changing their lifestyle.

Robert founded Fidelity Voice and Data in 1999 and soon grew the start-up into one of the largest telecommunication and cloud services competitors throughout the Midwest. Starting the company with a $600 investment, Robert grew the company into a $30,000,000 business. The business was launched to solve the problem of High-Speed Internet access to businesses, government agencies, non-profits, education and healthcare facilities. In 2004 the company launched a groundbreaking VoIP venture and built data centers in Cleveland, Columbus, and Chicago. Following this success, he sold the company in 2015 and decided to focus his attention on continuing to give back to his local community through multiple philanthropic initiatives. Along with Layne Swenson, Robert launched the startup Projector, LLC in 2020.

Robert currently lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio with his wife and four children. Robert holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of South Florida.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Meridith Grundei. Meridith knew from a young age that she was born to be a performer, and that meant hearing constant reminders about how she’d starve as an adult. A less resilient person might have been deterred by these warnings, but not Meridith. She’s a self-identified rebel and she was determined to prove that she can make it. This wasn’t easy. She was working in an industry where peers would often work for free to get credits. Free wasn’t part of Meridith’s vocabulary. Along the way she created and ran improv workshops to supplement her acting work. She was always focused on creating her own path to success.

Today, Meridith is the owner of Grundei Coaching, LLC, specializing in public speaking and presentation skills. As an award-winning theatre director, producer, and former Second City improv teacher, she recognized the similarities between performing for audiences on stage every night and presenting to clients/colleagues every day. However, the latter didn't have the right tools to bring their stories to life.

Grundei Coaching, LLC provides presentation and public speaking consultation, individual training and development and creative team solutions using improvisational theatre techniques to build trust, empathy and out-of-the-box thinking. Meridith’s clients include entrepreneurs looking to expand their brand by appearing on more stages, and managers, leaders and teams in both the tech and medical fields. Some of her most recent clients include Amazon AWS, Merck, Idorsia and the Iowa Department of Health.

In this episode of Money Tales our guest is Rachel Donnelly. When she was a young adult, Rachel’s mom was diagnosed with cancer and passed away a couple of weeks later. Rachel’s dad had previously died, so along with dealing with the shock and emotions, Rachel was probating her mom's estate. She was also stepping into her mother’s shoes by taking care of her uncle, who was in the later stages of Parkinson's disease. This meant even more logistics of getting the power of attorney, healthcare proxy, and other legal documents in place for her uncle. Rachel tells us she remembers standing in the parking lot of a bank after trying to set up an estate banking account after her uncle died and wondering why someone wasn’t available to help her manage this incredible dumpster fire. This got Rachel’s entrepreneurial blood flowing and inspired her to start a business.

Rachel is a driven and compassionate entrepreneur who has used her personal experiences to create meaningful change for others. After enduring several losses, including the death of her parents, she founded AfterLight (formerly Black Dress Consultants), a business that assists clients in managing the administrative tasks associated with legacy planning and after loss. Her goal is to enable clients to focus on healing in grief and getting back to the things that really matter after a loss.

Rachel is also the co-founder of Professionals of After Loss Services (PALS), a training and support network for industry professionals who offer services to individuals and families after the loss of a loved one. This industry organization has been instrumental in enhancing the quality of services available to those coping with loss.

Before starting AfterLight, Rachel worked in higher education fundraising for several institutions, including Agnes Scott College, Emory University, and Georgia Institute of Technology.

Rachel is a proud alumna of Agnes Scott College, where she earned her degree. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Love Not Lost, a non-profit organization based in Atlanta that provides grief tools and free photography sessions for families facing terminal diagnoses. Rachel is also a member of the Atlanta Estate Planning Council.

Rachel resides in Atlanta with her husband Zack and their two children. She is dedicated to her family and her community and continues to make a positive impact through her work.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Sparky Abraham. Sparky Abraham has been helping people with debt problems for nearly a decade. This means he has frequent money conversations, sometimes in unconventional situations. For example, Sparky helps host debtors’ assemblies, where strangers come together in relatively small groups because they have something in common that they usually haven’t talked about with anyone else - being in debt. He believes the debtor assembly structure allows the participants to build solidarity, share their experiences, and learn ways of addressing their debt.

Sparky is the founder of Jubilee Legal, a consumer and debtors rights legal practice based in Oxnard, California. He is also the Legal Strategist for the Debt Collective, the nation's first union of debtors. Sparky has written on topics ranging from wires to watersheds, but mostly he writes about student debt.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Kadar Lewis, EdD. Kadar tells us he was a low-income student of color who was, fortunately, given scholarships to attend private schools when he was growing up. Often, he was the only black kid in his classes. This meant he was the low-income kid surrounded by money. It was everywhere, yet his family didn’t have much. Kadar considers that dissonance as the beginning of the money trauma he experienced throughout his life. One component of that trauma was denying the importance of money. But then he realized that we all need money to move, to function, and to fulfill our life dreams and purpose. That realization changed Kadar’s life and his relationship with money forever.

Kadar, author of Thrive at Work in Your 20s, is an educator and community leader dedicated to enriching the world with life skills and leadership education which help youth and young adults succeed at their highest levels. Since 2019, Kadar has served Los Angeles County as a program officer for The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, which provides $20 million in grants each year to approximately 300 highly impactful and transformative local nonprofit organizations.

An educator and organizational leader for 20 years, Kadar began his career as a classroom teacher in South LA, which catapulted him to leadership positions with ICEF Public Schools, Magic Johnson Foundation, and the Fulfillment Fund. He has led thousands of students through workshops and individually advised and mentored hundreds of young adults to achieve their educational, career and personal goals and dreams.

Kadar earned a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership from Loyola Marymount University, a master’s degree in Educational Technology Leadership from Cal State LA, and a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Harvard.

In this episode of Money Tales our guest is Dr. Akhtar Badshah. Born, raised, and educated in India, Akhtar was accepted to MIT for graduate school. As he explains, that was the easy part. To attend school in the U.S. he also had to win the visa lottery and receive a scholarship to make his dream come true. Fortunately, the stars aligned for Akhtar. From then on, his life was shaped by people asking him to do something different from what he had been doing all along the way. As a curious and mindful person, Akhtar often said yes. These yeses led him to the enviable position of leading Microsoft’s philanthropic efforts for 10 years, where there was no shortage of money conversations.

Akhtar is Chief Catalyst at Catalytic Innovators Group where he advises organizations and individuals to catalyze their strategy focused on social and philanthropic investments. He also conducts Purpose Mindset leadership Workshops with organizations to help individuals articulate their strengths and values and craft their purpose statement. Akhtar is the Distinguished Practitioner at University of Washington at the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, the Business School, at the Bothell campus and a faculty advisor at the START Center in the Department of Global Health. He is the founder and curator of Accelerating Social Transformation, a mid-career professional development certificate course on social impact.

Akhtar is a seasoned executive with over 30 years of experience in international development, managing a corporate philanthropic program and co-founding a global nonprofit for social enterprise. Akhtar led Microsoft’s philanthropic efforts for 10 years, where he administered the company's community investment and employee contributions. He was instrumental in launching both Unlimited Potential and Youth Spark – the company’s focus to bring digital technology to the underserved communities and youth all over the world. His most recent book “Purpose Mindset: How Microsoft Inspires Employees and Alumni to Change the World,” was recently published by Harper Collins Leadership.

In May 2020, Akhtar and his colleagues launched Restart Partners funded by the Department of Commerce, WA State and supported by Facebook to increase confidence in mask adoption and vaccines and help restart the economy. Akhtar serves on the boards of Altruist Nonprofit Accelerator, CROP (Board Chair), Global Washington, Microsoft Alumni Network, National Museum and Center for Service, Restart Partners and The Indus Entrepreneurs, Seattle Chapter. He is an accomplished artist and a doctoral graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Akhtar and his family are very active philanthropists in the Seattle area.