Becoming Stress-Proof: Kerry Hoffman of So Very Kerry On How To Reduce Or Eliminate Financial Stress During A Challenging Economic Time
An Interview With Savio Clemente
Step 1: Pretend like you are reorganizing your kitchen and you want to dedicate one cabinet to all of your snacks. The snack cabinet is truly the best cabinet in the kitchen! Before you could organize that cabinet, you would first need to gather all of your snacks in one place so you could understand how many snacks you have to fit in the cabinet.
With all that’s going on in our country, our economy, the world, and on social media, it feels like so many of us are under a great deal of stress. A time of high inflation, a recession, or unemployment, can be particularly stress-inducing. We know chronic stress can be as unhealthy as smoking a quarter of a pack a day. What are stress management strategies that people use to become “Stress-Proof? What are some great tweaks, hacks, and tips that help reduce or even eliminate financial stress? In this interview series, we are talking to authors, business leaders, and financial experts, who can share their strategies for reducing or eliminating financial stress. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Kerry Hoffman.
Kerry Hoffman is a Project Manager with 10+ years experience. She can project manage anything from your startup business to your personal to-do list. With her desire to always charter new frontiers, Kerry is an expert at bringing order to chaos in all areas of life
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!
My love for organization and efficiency was instilled in me at a very young age from my parents. From as early as I could remember, my family unit operated to maximize efficiency. When we played the license plate game, we brought a print-out of every state listed alphabetically so that we would not have to write them down in the car. We cataloged everything we did as a family. No question ever seemed unknowable to me because I was taught that with the right resources, you can find what you are looking for.
This resourcefulness and quest for constant efficiency led me to follow in my father’s footsteps to law school. Upon graduation, I still hadn’t found a passion for the law itself so I took my organization skills into an industry I was falling in love with: hospitality. I started my career managing two floor plans at Colicchio & Sons, a 3-star restaurant in Chelsea, before turning in hospitality shifts for a daytime desk as Project Manager at Seamless, and then Grubhub. While at Grubhub, I managed projects on Product, Engineering, Account Management and Sales, culminating my experience in spearheading a large client-facing tech migration. My love of food paralleled my other great love: fitness. My desire to reach my step goals and my life goals led me to ClassPass to serve as Head of Global Project Management & Operations. Now, I am the the Director of Project Management at Sendoso, the leading B2B gifting platform. I am responsible for driving organization and efficiency across large scale cross-functional company initiatives, including marketing campaigns, product launches and events.
Outside of my 9 to 5, I work with companies, teams, and individuals to add project management to any facet of life, from scaling a new technology to building systems for managing a home renovation. My belief is that more planned time unlocks more unplanned time. With more organizational efficiencies, you can free up space to have fun, be free from worry, and do what your heart desires.
What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?
A key lesson comes from the band The Fixx, that one thing leads to another. Attending one event, applying for one job, or striking up a conversation with someone at your hair salon could lead to an amazing connection or opportunity in the future. It is easy to be so focused on how what we do today benefits us today. But what we do today can benefit us years down the road. The desire for instant gratification can keep us from making important investments that will pay dividends later.
Another key lesson is that everyone and everything exists on the equivalent of a light dimmer. There will be times in your life when a certain friend or connection will shine bright in your life and other times when those same friendships and connections fade into the background. That doesn’t mean that you have to turn the lights off entirely. You can simply dim them. In life, there are so many opportunities to connect, disconnect, and reconnect. If you want to reconnect though, don’t turn the lights all the way off. Leave it on a dimmer so you can easily slide the lights back up when needed.
None of us are able to experience success without support along the way. Is there a particular person for whom you are grateful because of the support they gave you to grow you from “there to here?” Can you share that story and why you are grateful for them?
When Grubhub acquired Seamless, we had the task of moving 4,000 clients to a new backend system that was not even built yet. The company assembled a product and engineering team to build this system. And I was hired to project manage the client side of this massive migration. My new boss, Megan Bowen, met with her direct reports once a week for 30 minutes with the exception of me, for whom she saved 60 minutes. This project would take well over 3 years to complete and was business critical, so we needed that hour each week to touch base on the project and solve any urgent problems.
One time, prior to our 1:1, I told Megan that I was really stuck on a particular problem, to which she replied “we can figure it out together in our 1:1.” When we met later that week, we put our heads together and solved the problem. As someone who loved figuring out problems solo, on that day I learned that you can sometimes save lots of time if you just put two heads together. I truly fell for the expression that “two heads are better than one.” I opened myself up to more team problem solving, both at work and in my personal life.
I am grateful to Megan for teaching me that sometimes, solving a problem benefits from having a few unique perspectives. Surround yourself with people that can provides those perspectives.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think it might help people?
I am currently working on a book. The goal of my book is to bring a project management framework to your life outside of work. The idea of using a project management system to organize tasks like laundry, kids birthday parties, and adding a new deck on your house seems overkill to some. I believe that by a following a few easy steps, you can work your home life like a job, and free up space for more fun! It is easy to look around your physical space and clear clutter. But what about cognitive clutter-clearing? I want to help people take everything they are trying to manage in their mind and move it into a workable system.
Ok, thank you for sharing your inspired life. Let’s now talk about stress. How would you define stress?
Stress can be synomyous with feeling overwhelmed. Stress takes over when something, or everything, seems out of place. And when everything seems out of place, we are overwhelmed with how we will get everything back into place. Stress is the precursor to a project forming. Before a project comes together, all you know is that you have some goal you want to achieve but have no idea how to achieve, who you need to achieve, and what resources you’ll want to achieve that goal.
In the Western world, humans typically have their shelter, food, and survival needs met. So what has led to this chronic stress? Why are so many of us always stressed out?
So many of us are always stressed out for a few key reasons. First, we emphasize More. We should all want more, do more, have more, be more. We don’t even know what more is, but we know we are supposed to go get more. And when we achieve more, we are just motivated for even more of more. I’ve witnessed people finish their first half marathon and be met with friends asking “so will you run a marathon now?” I saw someone approach a bride and groom on the dance floor of their wedding and say “kids are next!” We are conditioned to never be content with what we have or what we’ve achieved. We can be content for a minute and then we must seek more.
Another reason for chronic stress is the inability to shut out the things that might cause us stress. We opt in for push notifications. We are accessible by slack, text, instagram message, and facetime. Alexa is asking us if we are interested in recipes and products and weather. The only way to alleviate stress is to truly unplug, like actually unplug every single thing we own, and that is unrealistic. The stress is coming at us, even if we don’t want to opt in to it.
Lastly, chronic stress comes from everything living in our minds and not in a manageable system. As more to-dos pile up in your brain, your brain turns into that junk drawer you have that is full of miscellaneous, unrelated items, with no way to organize those items. We would feel less stressed if we kept our to-dos as organized as our dream Home Edit organized closet.
What are some of the physical manifestations of being under a lot of stress? How does the human body react to stress?
Stress can be manifested in general dishevelment! The same way that a messy closet looks like a tornado whipped through it, we as humans can look like a tornado whipped through us.
Is stress necessarily a bad thing? Can stress ever be good for us?
Stress is not always a bad thing. Stress can result from taking on too much, but that indicator can help you figure out how best to prioritize what you in your life. Stress is a signal that you need to pause, evaluate, make an adjustment, and move forward.
Let’s now focus more on the stress of a challenging economic time. This feels intuitive, but it is helpful to spell it out in order to address it. Can you help articulate what causes financial stress?
Financial stress can be as simple as feeling like there is not enough money coming in for how much money you have going out. But more often, financial stress comes from not having a handle on your finances. It’s easy to get stressed spending money on a huge house project, a birthday party for your kid, or the holiday season and feeling like your paychecks are not making up for it. But what’s your bigger picture? Are you saving money, investing money, keeping a budget of your expenses? Financial stress comes from the unknown of how stressed you should actually be about your finances.
Here is the main question of our interview: Can you share with our readers your “5 Things You Can Do To Reduce Or Eliminate Financial Stress?” Please share a story or example for each.
Step 1: Pretend like you are reorganizing your kitchen and you want to dedicate one cabinet to all of your snacks. The snack cabinet is truly the best cabinet in the kitchen! Before you could organize that cabinet, you would first need to gather all of your snacks in one place so you could understand how many snacks you have to fit in the cabinet.
If you want to organize your finances, you need to gather all of your finances first. Where is your money? Is it in your wallet, a checking account, a savings account, a 401K, an investment portfolio, or in various gift cards of unknown amounts? Track down all of your money and bring it into one view so you can see what you are working with!
Step 2: Figure out your fixed costs for the entire year. You probably pay rent/mortgage, gas/heat, a phone bill, Netflix, Hulu, a gym membership, and so much more. Tally up that costs, and truly include everything you know you will spend money on. If you spend $500 a year tipping your building and garage staff, include that in your list!
Going back to our snack cabinet example, these fixed costs are like your staple snacks that you will always need space for. If you always keep roasted, unsalted cashews (the most superior of nuts), pizza-flavored Goldfish, and various Clif bars, you’ll always need space for those items.
Step 3: Now figure out your variable costs, like travel, shopping, dinners out. The best way to do this is to download your credit card transactions from the previous year. Pro-tip: do not tell yourself that last year you spent more because of so and so’s bachelorette party or your quest to try every tasting menu in NYC. Whatever your pricey activities were last year might just get replaced with equally pricey activities this year.
Your variable costs are those wildcard snacks that take up space but that come and go. You need to account for that impulse buy of double stuf Oreos and Cool Ranch Doritos.
Step 4: Based on your fixed and variable costs, figure out if your take-home pay accounts for those costs. Do you have so many money leftover to play with? If you do, this will help reduce stress knowing that you left yourself a cushion? Or, are you already over budget? If you are over budget, make adjustments now instead of just hoping it will all work out. Can you slash your travel budget a little bit, or reduce holiday spending? By making the decision upfront, you can feel confident throughout the year that you are making choices that align with your budget.
Step 5: Check-in on your budget every single month. Financial stress comes from not knowing if we should be stressed about our finances! We keep ourselves in the dark out of fear of what the light will show us. You are the boss of you and therefore you are the boss of your finances. Become the most knowledgeable person about your own situation. You can only help yourself!
Can you help address some of the potential obstacles that get in the way of implementing your ideas? What can be done to clear the way and remove those roadblocks?
The biggest obstacle is beginning. If you are in a position to hire a financial planner, great! If not, the hurdle to get over is to know where to start. Like any new project, the starting point is always to gather all of your resources first. Like a chef, you need to mise en place, which means “everything in its place.” You need everything in its place before you can start cooking!
Thank you for that. We are nearly done. Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you to live with more joy in life?
My favorite podcast is Happier with Gretchen Rubin. I’ve read all of her books and never miss an episode of her podcast. She gives great happiness hacks to provide people with small ways to live a happier and healthier life!
I also highly recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear. James Clear provides a great framework for how to build long-lasting habits. By putting more areas of life on auto-pilot, I free up to time to enjoy life more fully.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I believe that everyone should have a system to manage their to-dos in a project tool. When you go through the exercise of cognitive clutter-clearing and move everything from your brain into one place, you truly free your mind from worry and focus your energy on what you need to do, not on figuring out what you need to do!
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
You can follow my work at soverykerry.co and on instagram at soverykerry.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About The Interviewer: Savio P. Clemente coaches cancer survivors to overcome the confusion and gain the clarity needed to get busy living in mind, body, and spirit. He inspires health and wellness seekers to find meaning in the “why” and cultivate resilience in their mindset. Savio is a Board Certified Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC, ACC), #1 best-selling author, syndicated columnist, podcaster, stage 3 cancer survivor, and founder of The Human Resolve LLC. He has interviewed notable celebrities and TV personalities and has been featured on Fox News, The Wrap, and has worked with Authority Magazine, Thrive Global, BuzzFeed, Food Network, WW and Bloomberg. Savio has been invited to cover numerous industry events throughout the U.S. and abroad. His mission is to provide clients, listeners, and viewers alike with tangible takeaways on how to lead a truly healthy, wealthy, and wise lifestyle. Savio pens a weekly newsletter in which he delves into secrets to living smarter by feeding your “three brains” — head, heart, and gut— in the hope of connecting the dots to those sticky parts of our nature that matter to living our best life.