From the outside, Liz Kinnmark’s path looks anything but linear — spanning industrial design, creative entrepreneurship, fitness, and financial consulting. But woven through every chapter is a single thread: a deep curiosity about how systems shape human experience.
In this conversation, Liz shares how cycles of creation, collapse, and renewal taught her to see business as a living ecosystem — one that thrives on rhythm, adaptability, and care.
Q: Liz, your background isn’t exactly the typical path into financial consulting. Can you tell us where it all began?
You’re right — I didn’t start in finance at all. My background is in design. I studied Industrial Design at Pratt Institute in New York, where I learned how to bring ideas to life and build systems that balance form, function, and feeling.
After graduation, I co-founded a design consultancy that grew quickly — we worked with national brands, got products into major retailers, and had an amazing network. But when the 2008 financial crisis hit, everything changed. Practically overnight, clients froze budgets and our business unraveled. I had no savings, no plan, and — looking back — no understanding of cash flow. I wish I’d known then what I know now.
Q: That must have been a difficult experience. What happened next?
It was a big wake-up call. I went back to corporate design, where I learned structure, systems, and process. It gave me stability, but I missed the human side of work — helping people directly, creating community, and seeing transformation up close.
That’s when I shifted into something totally new: fitness instruction. What started as my hobby and a creative outlet became a whole new path. Eventually, I opened my own fitness studio, which grew into a thriving community — a space for movement, empowerment, and growth.
Q: And then came another major disruption — the COVID lockdowns.
Yes. When COVID hit, everything for in-person businesses stopped overnight. I lost revenue, classes, and all sense of predictability. But this time, I was ready to pivot. I diversified quickly — offering virtual sessions, expanding into virtual assistant work, and eventually taking on business consulting clients who needed help navigating their own chaos.
What started as survival became transformation. Over time, that consulting work evolved into my main focus — and Wild Return was born.
In many ways, Wild Return is my own wild return — a full-circle journey back to more structured, strategic work, but this time built on a foundation of flow, intuition, and lived experience. After years of hands-on entrepreneurship, I approach systems and strategy differently now. I don't see my work as "deliverables," but as living structures that support creativity and sustainability.
Q: Where did the name Wild Return come from?
The name came from a few places at once — part metaphor, part philosophy, part wordplay.
In ecology, rewilding means restoring a system to its natural balance — removing unnecessary constraints, letting diversity thrive, and allowing nature to find its rhythm again. That idea resonates deeply with me. I want to bring the spirit of rewilding into the world of business and numbers. So many people feel disconnected from their finances — boxed in by rigid systems or old beliefs that don’t serve them anymore.
But Wild Return also carries a second meaning — the pun on “returns.” It’s about redefining what abundance looks like. Not endless growth for growth’s sake, like a cancer, but healthy, regenerative prosperity that benefits the entire ecosystem around it — your team, your clients, your community, the world.
To us a “wild return” is what happens when your financial systems are in harmony with your values. You see growth not just in profits, but in energy, purpose, and positive impact. That’s the kind of abundance we want to help people cultivate — rooted, balanced, and deeply alive.
Q: You work with such a diverse range of clients — from a local fitness studio to a solo law firm to a global digital nonprofit. How are you able to move between such different worlds so effectively?
At the core, every organization — no matter the size or sector — faces the same fundamental questions: How do we use our time, money, and energy well?
My background in design helps me translate between different kinds of systems. Industrual design thinking taught me how to see patterns and solve problems creatively.
And honestly, I find that I’m often better at spotting patterns and key inflection points in a business when I’m not attached to its content. When I’m outside of the day-to-day creative work, I can see the numbers as a story — one that reveals how energy is moving, where things are bottlenecked, and where opportunity is ready to grow.
Q: What’s the core message you hope your clients take away from your journey?
Wild Return is the culmination of everything I’ve lived through — every cycle of creation, collapse, rebuilding, and renewal. It’s about making business human again, especially in this era of remote work, algorithms and AI -- that leaves many feeling isolated.
My brick-and-mortar fitness studio is still my sandbox — a place to test ideas, learn from people, and see how systems play out in real life. Every pivot and every challenge has reinforced the same truth: healthy business systems are alive and personal, not static or disconnected.
And in an ever-changing world, the flow of money doesn’t have to be something you fear — it can be something that continually supports you. I’ve seen what happens when you don’t understand your numbers, and I’ve seen the peace that comes when you finally do.
Wild Return is about that balance — the wildy rewarding space where financial strategy meets flow, and where your systems become as alive as your vision for them.
Liz Kinnmark is the founder of Wild Return, a consulting practice that helps founders and organizations bring clarity, flow, and sustainability to their financial systems.
With a background in creative entrepreneurship and finance, Liz specializes in helping teams rewild their operations — creating structures that feel as alive as the people who build them.
Learn more at wildreturn.co, or schedule a consultation to start your next season of growth.