Meet Kristina Browning

 

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kristina Browning a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kristina, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

I’m not sure I’ll ever truly “overcome” it because it follows me everywhere I go, but I often remind myself that others climb higher, aim bigger, and achieve success in various forms, so why not me? Who’s to say they don’t experience it too, yet still reach their goals despite it? The older I get, the more I realize we never truly know anyone else’s story. I adore documentaries for this reason. So perhaps many women standing on top are battling imposter syndrome as well. Knowing that’s a possibility keeps me trudging forward and pushing it off my shoulder. I learned the first time you do a thing, it’s always the scariest. It always feels the most awkward and unfamiliar, but just like when we all learned to hold a pencil, the more you do it, the better it feels. Imposter syndrome is heavy at first but the more we do the thing, the easier it is to brush that feeling off. It’s also interesting to think about creating a category and becoming that title you made up. You can’t really be an imposter if you’re the first one to do it so that’s another mark in my favor; imposter syndrome be damned (again!)

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Initially, I was a Realtor in Portland, Oregon, thoroughly enjoying both showing homes and staging those that I listed for sale. Often times I found myself having conversations with clients when they expressed things like “I don’t like this house because I don’t know what I would do with this area” and when I answered, they loved the concept and made an offer. OR clients would be selling their home, and after I got done with the staging of it…moving their own things around, decluttering and making sense out of odd spaces they would say things like “If my home had looked and functioned like this the whole time, I wouldn’t have been nearly as frustrated with it.” The more conversations like that happened, the more that I realized that maybe I should be in the business of working with clients when we are NOT buying or selling so I can help them make the home they are IN function well and be as fulfilling as possible.

I began to think about what that might be called. It’s more than Interior Design. It’s more than organizing. It’s more than figuring out pinch points in the floor plan or understanding the scale and assessing if the furniture is right for your space and your family. It includes the ability to edit and weed out duplicates. It includes creating automation and tweaking habits. This sounds like coaching. And so, I became a Home Functionality Coach and trademarked it.

Next up: how to get people to hire me when they don’t even know what a Home Functionality Coach does or that one exists? Create a podcast: Home Space and Reason. I ask questions for people to think through about their space and the reasons they made the decisions they made. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/home-space-and-reason/id1478330055

I created a graph of lenses that I use to work with at each client’s home from which questions spur, and together, we work through the areas that cause the most frustration and anxiety. (It’s a great, colorful graphic that I would be happy to provide if you would like!)

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American spends 87% of their life indoors. I would surmise that this means two things:

#1 What is happening in your home is very important, including how it functions, how you feel in the space, and whether it brings you and your family frustration and stress or pleasure and support.

#2 Your home should reflect and enhance your personalities and passions, acting as a haven to recuperate and propel you toward whatever your heart can dream up next. It protects you from the weather and is the literal framework of your life. This is a big deal! Your home truly matters.

My clients range from “When I clean my home, it still doesn’t look beautiful” to “My teenager is so triggered by our kitchen that she is no longer eating and all the therapy in the world hasn’t helped. We are desperate!” (Video episode on this: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/home-space-and-reason/id1478330055?i=1000641168796)

Eight years later, my Home Functionality Coaching segment has flourished, seamlessly complementing my work in real estate. I dedicate an equal amount of time to both areas striking a balance that enhances the value I provide to my clients. It’s ALL home related. Meanwhile, my podcast has surpassed 100,000 downloads across more than 100 countries and I continue to release weekly episodes.

 

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Trusting that it happens for a reason: Moving seventeen times in my life up until today is what really helped me tune into the fact that how I live in one home is absolutely different than how I live in another. In one home, I might suck at laundry and in another, I am a rockstar. This spurred questions and answers which is what I have based my career off of. The love of asking good questions and seeking interesting answers. For me, as much as it sucked moving seventeen times, that experience was leading me to the information I needed… I just didn’t know it at the time.

Learning to get what was in my head to come out of my mouth: Noel Bailey was a man that I worked with maybe 6-7 years my senior when I worked in collections in my early 20’s. I hated that job but I listened to Noel gracefully extract money from military personnel who were late on their payments with such grace and kindness that I knew this man had skills like I had never been exposed to. As much as I took that job as just a stepping stone to the next thing; my time there with Noel was fundamental to who I became so even the jobs you don’t like might be serving your future in an unexpected way.

Understanding what rich means to me: Rich means something different to everyone! To me, being rich is having the same number of toilets in your home as there are people. We have three people in our home and three toilets. We are rich. Why? There is nothing more luxurious than if everyone has food poisoning and you each know you have a private toilet. Am I right? Panic sets in if you have one bathroom with four people living there and you all ate the same thing at the potluck! Am I right?

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

I sometimes feel like a broken record when I talk about how important lighting is in any space. So many homes have bright recessed lights screaming down from the ceiling that are far too white to provide any level of comfort. Restaurants, tasting rooms… it applies to them all. I have often said “I wish I could work with a lighting company to provide instant product solutions from bulbs to designing a lamp for restaurants that lights the food without being abrasive (all about the space and the reason!) OR how about an app that shows them what the room would look like with lamps and warm light instead of what they have! I am an idea person. There is really no end.

I would also love to work with a company like Google or Amazon on the evolution of their smart home systems to really help make them do what real homeowners need them to do. I hear a lot from homeowners and that extraction is valuable. It would be great if I could proactively do something with the intel that I get. There has to be a partnership there!

Contact Info:

 

 


Image Credits

Portrait of Kristina Browning by Alyson Reed

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