Do you have a financial contingency plan? How about your employees or franchisees? Do they have a financial plan and strategy?
Our guest today is Vince Shorb, who provides us with suggestions on how to improve your company’s and your team’s financial management.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Pass on your knowledge and encourage the next generation to go into business and for financial literacy.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- You can visit our guest’s website at: https://www.financialeducatorscouncil.org/
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- If you are ready to franchise your business or take it to the next level: CLICK HERE.
- Connect with our guest on social at:
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Vince Shorb is one of the country’s leading advocates for financial wellness and deploys financial education program across the country. He leads social impact campaign partnerships with financial service providers that enhance their brand, increase awareness, highlight their expertise, and deepen relationships with prospects and clients.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
If you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success Podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m, your host, Tom DuFore, founder of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, the question is do you have a financial contingency plan for your company and your organization? And how about your employees or franchisees, do they have financial plan and strategy or a contingency plan? And our guest today is Vince Shorb, who provides with us suggestions and guidance on how to improve your company’s as well as your team’s financial management. Now, Vince is one of the country’s leading advocates for financial wellness and deploys financial education program across the country. He leads the social impact campaign partnerships with financial services providers that enhance their brand, increase awareness, highlight their expertise, and deepen relationships with prospects and clients. So let’s jump right into my interview with Vince Shorb.
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (01:05):
All good to be here. Vince Shorb, CEO, National Financial Educators Council. I founded the company about 18 years ago. When I was leaving financial services, I really wanted to help people avoid a lot of the problems they were getting into. So I focus on youth. Now we serve all ages and wanting people to avoid the dumb mistakes I made with money and help them grow in their security and financial wellness.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:30):
Avoiding mistakes with money I think is something all of us are hoping to have happened. We’d like to avoid that and I should speak for myself. I know I have made poor financial decisions at times and one of the things that comes to mind, thinking back to COVID or even the great recession with the real estate bust that happened and things that have gone on and whatever may come into the future makes me think about financial emergencies. And how do you get prepared for that? Our audience, these are business leaders tuning in. How do you find or advise or find successful companies or leaders in this space? How would they prepare their organization for such a thing like this?
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (02:11):
Yeah, I think you said preparation is key, but sometimes there’s just some extraordinary events. So even as prepared as we can get, sometimes we need contingency plans. So I always tell people, “Get your base emergency monies and set aside and ready, but have some levels of contingencies too if you need financing, if you need other things as backup.” For instance, good friend of mine started a restaurant. This was his dream. He was a chef for celebrities, started a restaurant where I used to live in Huntington Beach, California, right before COVID hit. He had several backups. He was shut down for two years, lost his dream that he worked hard for and there were several levels of contingencies for him. But it’s important to have that and just realize as much as we can get prepared, the end result is never guaranteed. So we need to ebb and flow with what’s going on and just try to make the best decisions we can for the business, for the employees and for yourself.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (03:10):
That makes a lot of sense. And when you think of contingency, you mentioned that word contingency and I’ve heard others talk about that in the past, but sometimes I think it’s a little unclear in terms of what the preparation goes into contingency. So if someone were to say, “All right, Vince, I think this sounds great, I like the idea of contingency, but what might an action step or two be after listening to this that I could take to really start myself down this pathway?”
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (03:38):
Yeah, say a few things. One would be cash, right? Money’s king, having cash, having that money set aside where you know can access it. Then we have even the credit cards, equity lines where we can have that built up and have that credit available. Now, even sometimes when we have that equity available to us, sometimes they can cut that and trim that down. So even a third level of financing, maybe even thinking about hard money or anything like that. We can also have potential partners and other people that can invest into the growth. So I would say the more diverse and the more unique the contingency plans are, the better prepared you are and better risk management profile you have.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:18):
Given with what you’re doing, I don’t know, maybe some research or resources that you might be able to share to help educate business leaders and or to maybe help leaders be educating even their own staff and team members about personal finance and budgeting and things of that nature.
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (04:38):
Yeah, I think it’s interesting with business owners. We see the way they’re managing their personal finances and their personal life often follows through to the business. So some of the issues we see and we train as certified coaches and educators that work a lot with entrepreneurs and business owners. The big thing we see early stages on businesses is commingling, right? They don’t know where money’s coming from, where money’s going, the finances are all intermingled and it’s kind of a mess, right? The next stage we see is, hey, these bad habits that they have on their personal finance side carry over to their business side. And bad habits can range from overspending to even extreme frugality. Now, I’m a frugal guy myself, but when you’re in business, you’re making bigger bets and sometimes you’re having to calculate that return on investment and make these investments to marketing, to other things that may or may not pay off in some instances.
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (05:35):
So having at least a risk management profile where you’re able to take measured investments and make that into the marketing promotions and other team growth and other things, I think that’s a good skill skillset to develop. For businesses that are beyond those stages, I think it’s important that you’re educating employees on personal finance. If we look out there at the base of America, most people are in a situation financially where they’re worried. American Psychological Association points this year to 74% say money is their primary source of stress, is a big stressor. Being able to educate your employees on personal finance can help with retention, with recruitment. Additionally, it can just help them feel more secure with their pay.
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (06:21):
On that next higher level, when they’re scaling, like with what you’re helping to do franchise build these different locations and partners, really providing that education to that franchisee I think is critical because we don’t know their habits they’re bringing in. They can meet the capital requirements, they can meet the process requirements, they can meet all those things, but if they’re bringing bad habits over personally into the business, that can really shorten their business lifecycle. So it’s important that you’re taken upon yourself to help them and identify areas that they may have those challenges. Keep a close eye on them early on, depending on your relationship and contract there. Keep a close eye on them early on how they’re managing their money and provide that input from an experience standpoint that will help guide them best.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:08):
I hear you describe working and educating, helping educate your employees, and then for a franchisor working with their franchisees, when we hear the term personal finance, it’s personal and it’s not often discussed publicly. So how does an employer or a franchisor approach that subject with educating their staff, their franchisees? How have you seen it successful in your experience?
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (07:36):
The franchisee I think it could be very direct, “Hey, I’m, committed to your success. This is what it is.” Right? With an employee there’s some more delicate, a little, we got to handle it with special gloves, right? People are embarrassed oftentimes about their money, feel shame about their money, just don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want their employer knowing. So the more we can distance ourselves from the actual application, I think it’s great to bring in third party people to conduct that. Letting the employees know, “Hey, this is what you’re doing with them.” If they’re working with a one-on-one coach or they’re going to financial education classes, letting them know, “Hey, this is you, we’re not getting any details on you, on your finances, anything like that.” Making sure the educator or coach is reiterating that so that they know this is private.
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (08:23):
Additionally, if you’re doing classes, people tend more to go to positive classes. Like if you have a lot of employees looking to pay for their kids’ college or a lot of employees looking to buy a home, they’re going to attend that because it’s something positive, that’s a status thing. But if you have a how to pay off debt class in a big class conference room, nobody’s going to attend, right? So that should be on the side because people don’t want to share with all their employees what’s going on in their life. But again, if you’re doing more positive type things, growth type things, investment type things, you’re going to get good turnouts for financial education. If you’re doing more recovery or fixing issues, that should be on a more personal level, online learning, personal coaching, et cetera, where they know their information’s protected.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (09:11):
And is that something by the way that you do through your council, through your business and what you do through the coaches and people you’re training? Is that something you offer? Would you mind talking a little bit about how that works?
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (09:23):
Yeah, basically we have coaches and educators that we train, certify, provide all the resources, materials to go serve workplaces, faith-based organizations, schools, so it’s really systems that will enable them to develop unique financial education programs that meets the needs of a specific organization. For example, if they go into let’s, say a manufacturer, you’re going to have people working on that frontline in the warehouse, you’re going to have shipping, you’re going to have salespeople, you may have executives, you may have that middle management. Each one will likely be in a different socioeconomic status, different pay. So the role that they would do is they would go in, consult with HR and or whoever’s leading the team development. They’d understand the needs from that perspective.
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (10:09):
How can we help the organization, maybe it’s to reduce loans on their 401k plans, maybe it’s to help them understand how these judgments are being taken from their paycheck and what they could do to avoid that proactively. And then they also take time to understand the needs of the employees through surveys and other details that will help them understand. And then they design programming to meet the unique niches that that organization serves and deliver a report that shows the outcomes not just on content knowledge, on behaviors, on their confidence on the systems they establish. So we look at personal finance as you alluded to earlier as a personal thing, each person’s unique and they’re going in and adapting the general personal finance to meet the specific needs of who they’re serving.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:56):
Is this viewed more so as a benefit that you would be offering to your staff and team?
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (11:01):
A lot of them look at it as a benefit as a part of a overall wellness program. We see a lot of success there when companies have wellness programs, who work out things, the healthy eating things, all these things, we see them want to adopt personal finance because oftentimes it’s the root cause of many issues, root cause oftentimes of alcohol, other drugs, root cause of unhappiness, emotional pain, root cause of stress, right? So they’ll have yoga, but they’re not addressing the root cause, which is, “Hey, I’m 50,000 in debt and I’m worried about keeping my home.” So I think this addresses the root cause of a lot of a company’s wellness programs and that’s how we typically position it. But again, it’s really open to any type of organization. I know a lot of times people feel it’s just for the bigger organizations, but oftentimes the smaller, that 20 to 100 employee need it just as bad and it helps with retention and recruitment too, which I think is a good tool, especially for the smaller to mid-organizations.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (12:03):
Vince, this is a great time in the show where we like to make a transition and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (12:15):
Nope. I’m batting 100%. Just kidding. Yeah, I would say personally my biggest miss, I know for some people college is a great thing. I was always very entrepreneurial in middle school, grade school through high school, always entrepreneurial, always into investing, started investing in real estate at age 19, and then my biggest miss was going to college. I spent a lot of years studying useless things that I’ll never learn. When I graduate, I ripped up my degree. It was more for backup and I consider that a miss because I didn’t have the confidence in myself that age to say, “Hey, I’m going out there and going to make it happen. I don’t need this piece of paper. I don’t need to spend all this time.” I took a real estate development class, I was really interested. I love real estate, still a big investor in that. But I took a class and one of the first questions I asked the teacher is, “Hey, tell us about your investments and your developments.”
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (13:04):
He said, “Well, I started one, then I went bankrupt.” And I’m like, “Okay, well, what next?” “Oh, down here teaching.” Yeah, I don’t want to learn from you. Right? So I would say the biggest miss I had was wasting that time in college. But for some people, hey, lawyers, doctors, that’s a great investment of time. For me being more entrepreneurial and always focused on hustling and making things happen, it was a waste of time for me and for the youth out there listening, think through who you are and where you want to invest your time and energy early. There’s a lot of ways to learn, great podcasts like this, books, YouTube videos. There are a lot of ways to learn. So just consider that before you make a six figure investment into your education.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (13:43):
Thanks for sharing and let’s look at the other side. Let’s talk about a make.
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (13:47):
A more recent make was about 10 years ago when we were really focused on the direction of this organization and what our plans were for the future. And we really were considering two things, a big investment content, a big investment into leadership positioning. And the content really took up a lot of time and energy, but we decided to really make a big investment into that leadership positioning by creating standards for educators, standards for learners, frameworks for policymakers, and acting financial literacy legislation and that really helped us achieve leadership positioning. I’m really glad we made that investment then, I thought it might’ve been a little too early.
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (14:25):
We’d also made the equal investment into content. We have one of the largest financial literacy libraries out there, but now with ChatGPT and these other things that can create content so rapidly, I feel like if we would’ve just invested into the content then and not pursue that route of leadership positioning, it would’ve been a detriment to us right now. So we just got done with a board meeting here yesterday. So that was one of the things that everybody’s happy about. I’m going to just position us for more interviews, meetings with policymakers and influencers that can help us really with a primary goal is getting financial literacy taught on a more broad scale.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:02):
Fantastic. Well, let’s talk about a multiplier that you’ve used to grow yourself personally or businesses you’ve led or grown.
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (15:10):
Processes for us, it’s been processes, procedures, being able to duplicate, being able to easily train and scale. We are the only, in our vertical, the only accredited organization or IACET accredited if you can see there. And that was a great thing for us. We went through and with our submission on the initial thing, we had consultants and so forth that helped us. But what we submitted them initially was I think like 40 pages right on the process is how we conduct programming. By the time it was done, it’s about 700, 800 pages just for that. And the level of detail, if anybody goes out, gets sick, something unfortunately habits, quits or anything of that nature, we can easily duplicate every single thing.
And I think that IACET certification accreditation helped quite a bit. Also, we’re certified B Corp, very similar thing when we have a develop processes and procedures across the business that address social workers and overall business growth. So I would say processes are our biggest multiplier, allowed us to automate a ton of stuff, allowed us to convey information to our employees, contractors and other people very easily and it’s nice and organized so they know where to click on Google Docs and they can go right there. So not having to go through and try to find a file on my computer or COOs or whomever makes a world of difference.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:36):
Well, Vince, the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (16:41):
Success I think for me comes in two forms. One, I want to be useful in the world. I want to be a contributor. So from a social impact side, success for me before I die, I want to see every youth graduate required to meet a high level of rigorous financial education. And we talk financial education, we have a broader term, not just money management, but also the income side, whether it be entrepreneurship, career planning, income generation. So that’s one of my personal goals to do and we’re actively pursuing that now and getting some good relationships going there. So from a social impact that’s where I want to be from a success, from a personal side, I just want to be free. I want to be able to be free, 100% free. I think these last few years, last four or five years, really raise the eyes on what it takes to be free.
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (17:32):
The ability to have freedom to say what you want, freedom to do what you want. I’ve really felt it with this COVID thing was like I was trapped, right? And so freeing me means enough money to have places in multiple countries around the world where you’re not going to be bound or restricted if you’re not talking, if you’re talking out against the narrative or the media or the government and have enough money to have good PR person, great lawyers, and that flexibility to say what you want and do the right thing in life. And so from a personal level, that’s where I and a family level, that’s what I want for them. And then from the social impact, I just want people to have that level of knowledge and confidence to live a good life and not worry about losing their home, not having gas to get to work those basics. So yeah, that’s what I’m looking for.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (18:20):
As we bring this to a close here, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you Haven’t had a chance to yet?
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (18:26):
No, I think I just want to encourage everybody, whatever level you’re at, I know some people are doing very well financially and so forth, great, pass on that knowledge. I think, hey, the wealth of information that you have in building successful business, whether it be to franchisees or other people through great groups like SCORE and other things that are donating time to help young entrepreneurs, be involved in some mentorship, be involved in helping these youth learn the skills that you have developed because they’re not being taught this in schools, they’re being taught math, chemistry, English, and a second language. They’re not learning entrepreneurship. So you have something valuable to share. So I’d really encourage you guys and men and women out there to go in and find those mentors, to donate some time and to really help to encourage this next generation of entrepreneurs.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:15):
Thank you, Vince. And one quick thing. If someone’s interested, maybe they have kids of their own or nieces, nephews or kids in the neighborhood or for their own staff and employees, how can someone find out about some of the programming and options available that is available through your organization or through some of your coaches?
Vince Shorb, National Financial Educators Council (19:33):
Contact me directly via LinkedIn, Vince Shorb, S-H-O-R-B, or you can go to our website, financialeducatorscouncil.org, financialeducatorscouncil.org. And we have a lot of programs for workplace but also for youth education, for school education. And we also find a lot of… We do a lot of partnerships with businesses and sponsoring local schools, nonprofits and faith-based organizations, youth sports teams to build that connection between a business, their brand, and giving the gift of financial education to local organizations.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:11):
Vince, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. And let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when he talked about having a contingency in place for financial emergencies and he talked about how to build that in various ways, at least from a financial standpoint as an organization. Number one, he said, “Have cash on hand.” Number two, consider having a credit line available for that just in case moment. And number three, he said, “Maybe have potential investors or other individuals that you could source if needed.” And his suggestion was just to make it as diverse as you can. Takeaway number two is when he said that the way that someone manages their personal finances is how they often manage their business finances as well. And he said this applies for both overspending or over leveraging as well as being overly frugal.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:06):
So on each of these extremes that can be challenging or potentially detrimental to your business. Takeaway number three is how he described having ways to educate and provide financial education to your franchisees as well as to your employees and viewing this as a benefit to help them out. And he said a couple of ways to offer it. He said, “Number one is make sure you focus on a positive approach to this.” So if you’re doing a group training or group education, to make sure that it has a positive connotation or designation to it. And then he gave an interesting nugget I thought that sometimes the root cause of unhappiness or stress for your staff or team is very often personal finances. So offering some kind of an education or training or benefit of some kind to help educate your franchisees or your staff on financial management is helpful. And now it’s time for today’s win-win.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:11):
So today’s win-win comes at the end of the interview when Vince gave a great nugget and suggestion, which is to pass on your knowledge and encourage the next generation to go into entrepreneurship and to build financial literacy. And I thought that was great. So if you’re in that position where you have figured out a great way to manage and steward your finances well, it’s a great opportunity for you to pass that on to the next generation. Maybe give some time to volunteer, maybe it’s through your kids or grandchildren or maybe it’s through some young staff or people at your organization. But however that’s set up, I thought that was a great suggestion and that’s going to be a great win for you as well as a great win for the staff, the people, the individuals you’re coaching, training, teaching to take that knowledge and apply to their life that can provide lifelong benefits for them and hopefully generations to follow.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (23:12):
And so that’s the episode today folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise our business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.
