Listen to the interview here!
Kate Flowers
Kate Flowers
Toni Reece: Hi! Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project. I'm Toni Reece, and I am so excited to be joined today by Kate Flowers. Kate, take a moment and tell us a little bit of who you are and what you do.
Kate Flowers: Hi! Thank you so much for having me. My name is Kate Flowers. I work at a local real estate company, RE/MAX of Reading. I am the Agent Services Coordinator. I work directly with all of our 135 wonderful agents, helping them on a daily basis. But, as far as what I do when I'm outside of work, I love being a part of our community and doing whatever I can to interact with local businesses, friends, and family, and just enjoying life.
Toni: Fantastic. I'll bet you're a busy woman with all those people you need to take care of over there at RE/MAX.
Kate: That is true, but I love every minute of it.
Toni: Fantastic. We're going to go into the first of four questions, and there will be some clarifying questions in between of the Get Inspired! Project. Our first question is, what does inspiration mean to you?
Kate: What does inspiration mean to me? I'll tell you the truth -it's just an overwhelming surge of energy that really motivates me to want to do something -to do something good. It could be something as simple as beauty in nature, or a smiling child, or just the need that I see in our community that something needs to be done. Really, it's just something that motivates me and just positive energy that makes me get up and do something.
Toni: Wow! Let's go to the second question, which is, how do you put that into practice here in Berks County?
Kate: I'm glad you asked that, because right now I'm working on a wonderful project. It is called Greater Reading Guerrilla Goodness, and it's a partnership between myself and Kristin Boyd. It is a project that promotes acts of kindness in our community. It could be something as simple as promoting people to smile or hold the door for one another. It's just showing that these simple, simple things can really make a difference in someone's life.
The biggest part of that is that it's contagious. You smile, it makes someone else smile, and before you know it, maybe our little community could be just all smiles, and everybody's happy. We right now have taken this project to Facebook, and we do have 300 followers, so we're excited about that.
Toni: Congratulations.
Kate: Thank you. We are working on a project right now where we're touring local libraries with The Magic Wand Project For Kids. It's so exciting to work with these young children who are just inspiring, really. They get the idea of kindness. We discuss it, we give them ideas, and they give us ideas, too. They make these magic wands. They decorate the star, and then we encourage them to go out and do good acts of kindness in their community, and then to just continue to pass it on.
Toni: What a phenomenal project. I absolutely love that! You had spoken about in the first question that what inspiration means to you is that “surge of energy.” What I'm imaging listening to you is that you're taking that “surge of energy” and you're applying that energy around acts of kindness and putting it into practice with those random acts of kindness. Can you give us an example or two of some things that you've done? I know you've just spoken about the project with The Magic Wand, which is very cool, but what are some other ways you've taken that energy and you've moved it into acts of kindness?
Kate: I'll tell you, especially doing these random acts and knowing that the recipient is going to be surprised, to me that is invigorating. There are simple things like leaving quarters in a parking meter for someone whose parking meter time is going to expire. Kind of just looking out for one another. To me, it's encouraging.
Another favorite thing of mine to do to inspire kindness is to leave change in the gumball machines at the grocery store. It's so much fun. You figure a young child stumbles upon it, and they're so excited. It's 25 cents, but everything doesn't have to be about money. You can visit a neighbor who you know might be a little lonely. They live by themselves. Just stopping by, saying hello, and really kind of slowing down a bit. We live in such a fast-paced world, and just taking the time to just be kind. Just be nice. Say hello. Ask people how they're doing. Genuinely ask them and listen to them. It's very simple.
Toni: Do you get to see the reaction of people when you put these things into practice, or do you just kind of do it and sneak away?
Kate: Well, sometimes. It depends on what it is. With the parking meter, you want to stand around the corner and wait for the person to come back to their car and realize they didn't get the ticket they thought they were going to get. Sometimes you see them, and sometimes you don't.
Toni: That is fantastic. I myself, I would want to have that candid camera out there and see. Do you find that that surge of energy and movement, the inspiration that you are inspired by but then that you carry forward with this project that you're working on, do you see that as being contagious yourself? You've spoken to that, but have you witnessed that?
Kate: Absolutely. We can just tell by our Facebook followers and the people that we meet when we do these projects that they too become just invigorated by the idea of spreading kindness. Like I said, I think it's all too easy for us to get caught up in our busy lives and just forget how simple life could be. It makes you feel good as well. You do something nice, you feel good, and so do the recipients.
Toni: So it comes full circle for you.
Kate: It absolutely does.
Toni: Who in Berks County inspires you?
Kate: Well, I have to say it's probably not just one person. I was an active member of the Greater Reading Young Professionals group, and I was so fortunate to meet just a wonderful group of young women who work in our community. They have successful careers. They're also very active within the community doing different projects or helping certain organizations in their free time. Some of them have families.
To me, those women are just inspiring. I look at them, and I just think that they have such well-rounded balanced lives, and that's really just what I inspire to do. I'm focused on my career and also on my outside community activities, and I'm getting ready to have a baby, so …
Toni: Well congratulations!
Kate: Thank you.
Toni: So it's really, these women that have inspired you, it's the balance that you've witnessed and what they do with that balance as well -that's what I'm hearing you say. It's that they're able to keep it all together, and you absolutely are doing the same. That's fantastic.
What would you want your legacy to be?
Kate: I would most likely say I just want people to remember me for the kind things that I did -and I say that because I really get happiness from doing those things. There's no other reason why I do it other than it really completes me as a person. I really would hope that people would understand that I truly just enjoy what I do, and I hope that I've made people smile along the way.
Toni: I would only imagine that that happens several times a day. I'm sitting across from you, and you have one of the most beautiful smiles I've ever seen, so absolutely. Thank you so very much for being part of the Get Inspired! Project.
Kate: Thank you so very much.
