All of Flow's blogs, social media posts and other texts come out of Sharon's mind. As content coordinator, she ensures clear and fun communication that inspires and teaches the reader something. Sharon is not very good with technology, prefers to go on new adventures every weekend and wrote her own book about intuitive eating.
More fun and easier
"I very much believe in Flow's vision: to make finances more fun and easier, so that people get more overview and manage their money better. My job as content coordinator is to explain everything very practically and clearly to our users, so that they start to live that vision. I find it super fun to make complicated things accessible. Through language, but also by experimenting with different forms of communication. For example, we want to do more with videos and slideshows on Instagram. I am also responsible for our blogs, social media posts, website texts and the texts in the app. Now I still write some of it myself, but that will become less in the long run, so that I can focus more on coordination and strategy."
December jar
"I wasn't yet working at Flow when I first used the jar method. It was December and after I had done the Christmas shopping I thought: crap, I don't have any money left for groceries. In itself not a disaster, I could just transfer some money from our savings account. But of course that did not feel good. Then I decided to divide the money I spent on gifts by twelve and put it in a jar each month, our December jar. That gave such a nice feeling! Not long after that, I started working at Flow, and that's when I completely organized our finances into different jars. There are eleven of them, to be exact."
Meeting Day
"Working at Flow gives me a lot of energy because you get a lot of freedom. We usually work from home, but Tuesday is meeting day and most of us come to our office in Amsterdam. That is always very useful and fun. At Flow they don't expect you to work days from 9 to 5 exactly, but they do expect you to work enough hours in total. That means they put the responsibility on you: no one is after you, you have to make sure you work on time and deliver high quality work. That works very well for me. I enjoy the fact that I can go running every now and then during my lunch break. I compensate for that by working a little longer in the evening."
180 museums
"When my husband and I moved to the U.S. for two years, we took trips with our kids every weekend. That way we discovered the area and had real quality time together, without work and phones. We liked that so much that, once back in the Netherlands, we continued to do so. Hiking, supping or going to a museum: we always think of something different. I really like gaining new experiences, and I need to get out of the house in the weekend, on an adventure. Sometimes I think our four children have been to the most museums of all the children in the Netherlands. The total has now reached 180. Sometimes we go and then it turns out to be a disappointment. Fortunately, an ice cream makes up for a lot of that."
Own website
"Because my husband builds websites and I am good at content creation, the idea arose for our own website where we report on all our outings. On nederlandsglorie.nl you'll find all the places we've been to so far: from restaurants and castles to museums and outdoor activities. In the surroundings of Utrecht, where we live, we have done just about everything you can imagine. Recently we bought a tent, so we can go further away from home, for example to Friesland, Drenthe or Limburg. That tent gives us a lot of freedom, and we're going to make good use of it this summer."
Tech geeks
"I'm not that good with technology, and in a team like Flow, between all Apple-lovers, that stands out, haha. In every Zoomcall, I'm always the only one you'll hear: 'Oh, wait, my microphone...' and 'Can you hear me?' The other day I couldn't connect in Google Meet either. Fortunately, with all those tech geeks around me, help is at hand in no time."
No budget diet
"When I look back now at how I managed my finances before, I think: it went fine back then, using my gut feeling and occasionally nibbling something from my savings account. But with the knowledge I have now, it was a real mess back then, haha. The fact that I now have a clear overview of my money gives me peace of mind. And I don't do budget diets, you know; I just want to enjoy the here and now and I always top up my budgets."
Intuitive eating
"Besides my work at Flow, I have my own online health platform. Here I help women get healthier and fitter in an intuitive way. That is, in my coaching I don't emphasize all the things you shouldn't eat, but rather explore why people eat what they eat. Dieting is about what you should or should not do, and intuitive eating is about: what do I want? In it, I encourage people to eat healthy and make better choices. I wrote a book about it: Voed Jezelf Zo (NL). The nice thing is that I now find out that eating healthy and being healthy with your money are not that different at all. In both cases it's about: what do you want to achieve? Make sure you keep that goal in mind, and find the right tools (like Flow, or like a nutrition plan) to help you achieve your goal."
