Unveiling the Dark Truth of Financial Crimes - Jenna Biancavilla

[0:00]  the sad statistic is that one in Four Women will be the victim of a financial crime at some point in her lifetime I got kind of tired of having to unwind the mess that was the passion behind building Savvy was to vet out all the Bad actors look at how they make money look at what products they're selling look at if they're if they're licensed if they have complaints against them and then once we get all the bad guys out just connect women with people they know they can trust and I think that what makes me Giddy and excited because the financial planning practice it's service based so I it will always require me giving advice to my clients but I've realized the capacity limits of service-based businesses and then also if you scale too big too fast you lose

[0:47]  quality and my business is all about Boutique high quality so I didn't want to scale that big and fast but the technology company is exactly the opposite I can really scale that make it make an impact and sell it and still make the the world a better place bringing our two different strengths together and building something has as you asked me at the very beginning is your heart full yeah I get to build something with my baby sister this is pretty cool let's talk about media a little bit why do you think you've been on such a rampage if you will to start documenting so much of your journey when it comes to media and why do you think it's so important for your story and what you're building with heavy first thing people do is Google you before they take a meeting with you and if you're not showing up in the right way

[1:35]  or you're not showing up at all you're not getting the meeting and actually I had someone say that to me recently and I went from that big Bank profits first to change the incentive change the outcome and now we are a team that just puts the clients's interest above our own and it's it's Pretty stinking cool and it's not unusual to find a fiduciary adviser there's about 14% of advisers are fiduciaries all right guys welcome to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast I've got a special one for us here today

[2:21]  because I've got Jenna Bianca Villa with me today and we're going to be talking about her journey in leaving the finance sect starting a tech business with her family member as well and then kind of creating A New Path if you will in this industry which I feel like is so valuable because the financial literacy space today from an authentication perspective is really up in the air and so when we can lean into Jenna's story and talk about why she started her business I really want to be able to share this with the audience but before we do that Jen I like to be able to ask a humanistic question to kind of get us started how is your heart doing today oh that's a great question my heart is is full I feel like I get to help other people and that's what fills me up is when I feel I can pour into

[3:10]  someone else and I can help them out and then usually they turn around and say something really nice back to me of thank you you've changed the trajectory of my life and um it makes my heartful I mean that's amazing sometimes it's all about how we make people feel you know what I mean especially when we talk about something as important as our finances it's incredibly scary for so many people and when you can invest into the people who you engage with it creates an amazing relationship one of the Traditions that we have here on the podcast is we like for the previous guest to ask a question of our current guest and so I have a guest who was on the podcast earlier this week his name is Benjamin Monroe and his question was when did you realize that you were in control of your own ship there's times when we realize I'm the finance person

[3:57]  I'm the LinkedIn guy I'm the marketer when did you realize that you were in control of your own ship you know what I think it told me I was in control of it um I I was in the finance world I was working for other people and it really was when I felt like other people weren't taking care of my clients in the way I said I was taking care of them and I was stuck between big company profits and my clients I told them I would serve them well and I realized I wasn't in control when I worked for that big company and so I had to Pivot and take control of the CH ship um so it wasn't I realized I was in control it was I I realized I needed to take the reins I love that so just to give everybody a little bit of

[4:45]  kind of Secret Sauce about you you're described as a holistic Financial expert an award-winning entrepreneur in the finance and Tech space you're a public speaker you're the principal of pearl Capital Management and you're a co-founder of savvy so Savvy in itself has a unique Mission but before we kind of get into that mission I want to ask you a question what's wrong with the financial sector today and why do you think Savvy has such a pivotal mission in trying to create safe spaces for people who are trying to get into this world of understanding their finances well the the what's wrong with it it's it's really just it's con it's capitalism unfortunately which I I like that companies like to make money because I am an investor I invest in the stock market so I do want them to continue to put profits first make money so that when we're investing in them we

[5:33]  know what we're getting um but when it comes to investing your money with a big bank or a big financial institution you're not first as the consumer the profits are first uh they have shareholders who come first they have you know the the employees who usually they put their commissions first and I think it's the the part where most consumers aren't aware of that they're not aware that they're advisor isn't actually advising them with what is in their best interest they're advising based on what is going to make their company and their shareholders profits and it's that disclosure isn't there it's not buyer beware this this works like a used car salesman watch out you're being sold things you might not

[6:20]  need to make profits for this company um and so that's the thing that people end up in these products that paid High commissions that they didn't necessarily need that put them in a bad financial situation and you know 5 10 15 years later they're just upset they they they trusted a company they trusted an advisor and unfortunately they shouldn't have um they should or I guess they should have been where that they weren't putting their interest above their own one of my favorite saying is change the incentive change the results and it seems like the financial institutions out there have really bad incentives for the overall I would say long ity and benefit of their actual customers so what do you kind of think about that change the incentives change the results kind of statement well I it's where my heart is

[7:10]  that's why I opened my own financial planning shop I changed the incentives I removed all the commissions I made it a exact transparent fee that is exactly aligned with the clients so uh our fee is correlated to how successful their account is so if their account balance goes down our fee goes down uh and so we have all the incentive to help them have more money and it's changed the whole culture of the way I work and the way my team works and and I went from that big Bank profits first to change the incentive change the outcome and now we are a team that just puts the clients interest above our own and it's it's Pretty stinking cool and it's not unusual to find a fiduciary adviser there's about 14% of advisers are fiduciary so they're out there they're

[7:59]  not the majority but they're out there and that's why I created savvy so that I could just connect women with these advisers that are there and I do the heavy lifting of vetting them and finding them for the women I know that you also have a I would say additional superpower who's a part of the Savvy co-founding team your sister Janice is heavy in the tech space you come from the financial space and so let's kind of talk about how that was the perfect marriage if you will to be able to create a product and an ecosystem where people could feel safe when it came to their finances well it's it's Pretty stinking cool to work with your your sibling and you might know something about [Applause] that and I just feel so blessed because I get to see my sister in a different light and she is so smart and I'm I'm proud of her she's my baby sister she's

[8:50]  she's not a baby at all but she'll always be the baby sister to me and bringing our two different strengths together and building something has you asked me at the very beginning is your heart full yeah I get to build something with my baby sister this is pretty cool and it's a passion project we're trying to make the world a better place we're trying to protect women we're trying to allow them to vote with their dollars and show them we don't want those High commission sales guys anymore so uh it's it's pretty special I mean what a journey of being able to build something substantial with somebody who you love you know there's a lot of topics that are out there and this maybe comes from the business world of never get into business with your family never do those things because the lines are going to get blurred but from my perspective and

[9:37]  I know yours as well if we're going to be spending so much time working we might as well be spending time and making memories with the people who we love and so I always kind of Snicker if you will at people who say don't start business with your family because what else is there to do in life other than build something substantial with somebody who you love and shareing those memories the UPS the Downs the starting the tough times and then eventually kind of the victory that we can share with each other I want to kind of ask you a question which is really important when you approached your sister to kind of start Savvy what was that conversation like what was she working on and how did you kind of convince her to be you know your superpower and your Sidekick in this well we still have our full-time real professions and so Savvy is our extra thing that we're building on nights and weekends so it was when when

[10:28]  I first approached her it was was just kind of this idea of what do you think and testing it out and should we build this and do you think it would work and I have to say we didn't go into it realizing how big it would be we kind of just said yeah let's test this out let's see let's sketch out the plan you know and sketch out the algorithm and how would it work and it's snowballed so I can't say that we sat down and Drew the whole business plan and made a real decision to go into business together it was more so th those baby steps that we look back and went oh how' we get here but what's really shocking is we had worked together in the past and it wasn't great uh so early in my finance career when she was fresh out of college

[11:20]  she was an assistant for me at my finance shop previously and she didn't like working for me and the dynamic and how it was all going and we said never again and it was only after her and I had to work really closely together when my father needed a liver transplant and we were trying to get him on the transplant list and we were spending all of our time in and out of hospitals and talking to doctors and really needing to organize and collaborate and share notes that we thought you know we can actually do this and we can work together so it was a really difficult situation we went through as a family that brought us together to realize okay we're more mature now we can work together and my father got his liver transplant and is as well yeah awesome well

[12:07]  congratulations on that you know Teamwork Makes the Dream work and when it comes to saving the life of our family member you guys accomplished something incredibly important and so my hack goes off to you and I want to give you guys a little bit of you know personal gratitude for coming together because I know it's not easy me and my sister as an example she's a co-founder in Francis and one of the things that we had when we were growing up is our relationship ship was not great until I went away for college and it almost seemed like the distance made us closer and so I want to kind of ask you a question between you and Janice did you guys always have a really tight relationship or was it kind of like your big sister your little sister we were different in school um I was the big sister I was the cheerleader I I had that life and that trajectory and she was you know the younger Rebel she was a

[12:55]  soccer player more of a jock so we were very different we had different friends we went to the same College I joined a sorority and I recruited her and convinced her to join my sorority and she she followed and she got there and she was like this is not for me I don't like all these girly girls and so we were really different when we were younger and but now as adults I don't know anyone who sees eye to eye with me more than my sister um because we have all those shared life experiences so we grew together we've always been friends but we were different what about you and your I mean we are we're super tight now but that's also come with some family I would say turbulence back in 2021 my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer and I was living in Hawaii at the time Alexa was here in Las Vegas where I'm currently located and I remember

[13:42]  having phone calls with her and talking about how scary that experience was because that was the first time where the livelihood if you will of a family member was actually challenged and in that moment it kind of put everything else into perspective and now I'll be honest with you like do we see eye to eye on everything I'm in charge of like sales and business development and stuff like that and she handles all of our love and loyalty which is like customer success and so we've each found our own little lane that we can kind of operate in but whenever there are challenging times I heard a saying the other day and it was really powerful it said you know nobody is going to understand you like your sibling because your parents are going to be around for a portion of your life and eventually they're going to pass away but you and your sister or you and your brother your sibling spend the entire lifetime together they're going to be with you from the very beginning

[14:29]  all the times when you grow up the times when you get married the times when you have children the times when you're middle Ag and your bones start aching and then eventually you are going to be the two who are left in your family and it was just kind of an interesting perspective to me because I think especially in this world of business we get caught up in the I want to accomplish more but I've really been trying to do a good job of slowing down and enjoying this journey and this version of me and her together because these are the times that we'll look back on when we're 60 when we're 70 years old and say do you remember when we won that contract do you remember when we had that idea and those are the times that we'll reminisce on instead of trying to rush to get to the next place I'm not sure if you kind of try and deploy a mindset like that as well I've found that I love the journey um because when I achieve all the goals and I get to where I want to be I think

[15:18]  I get a little itchy and and I wonder okay what's next I can't just be satisfied in the achievement it's the journey that actually makes me happy I like the action and the momentum and knowing that about myself and knowing that I like the journey makes me appreciate the day-to-day in the minutia a lot more because I don't actually like standing at the top of the mountain I like climbing the mountain I feel like that's an incredibly healthy perspective because I feel like one of my favorite books is called the Gap in the gain it's by Dan Sullivan and he talks about we often find ourselves high PE or people with high achieving mindsets find themselves in the place of the Gap because we're here and our G the goal that we're trying to get to is like the representation of the Horizon so there's always a distance between where we are

[16:05]  now and where we're trying to get to and if we're only chasing that horizon or that finish line as soon as we cross it it never really feels as sweet as we want and so sometimes appreciating the journey to get there is the best way to create sustainability and enjoy the process but the other side of the Gap and this is something I would love to kind of hear from your perspective especially with your journey with your sister is the gain do you guys ever take time to pause and say look how far we've come from where we had this idea we started creating the algorithm things started snowballing do you guys ever kind of pause and say look at what we've done together we're we're in both mindsets and I've read this book so I I love the Gap in the gain and and even though you might have might might not have hit a hundred you only hit 90 out of a 100 appreciating the 90 that you did instead of the hundred goal the 10% Gap um we

[16:55]  really try to live in both worlds we definitely get frust frustrated because there there are moments where we had a launch scheduled and we didn't make the deadline and we had media that was going out and this is embarrassing that people are clicking on a website that's locked down because it broke and we had to go back to development but the media kept going with this and so there's definitely times we're in gap mindset because it's frustrated when you don't frustrating when you don't hit your goals um but it's also really cool to see we took something from it didn't exist it was just an idea to we built it and it exists because we built it built it and yeah it launched a little later than we wanted but it's here do you ever think about kind of your goals on a

[17:45]  longer time Horizon as I've gotten a little bit older when I was in a younger mindset I always thought of things as like I need to accomplish it now it needs to go perfect but often as I get a little bit older I recognize that the quickest way to build something to a million dollars is not the quickest way to build something to $10 million as an example so do you ever try and I would say extend out your time Horizon to give yourself more air cover if you will to accomplish your goal so when the media is launching but the website goes down it's kind of like okay this is part of the plan but we've got more time to accomplish our goal so I'm a planner right by profession I've been a financial planner for 15 plus years now so when it comes to money um and having all of the finances in order that's that's my wheelhouse I I love mapping out the money for the next 40 50

[18:35]  60 years I've got that down pat uh when it comes to running my business I've tried to do 10year goals and life is a series of obstacles and every single time I get to five or 10 years and I look back at those goals I wrote it's a joke it's like life is just like yeah right you thought that's where you were going you went here you know what where I went was better and I think that's a big part of Entrepreneurship is seeing the opportunities that come your way pivoting and taking them when there's a global recession or whatever is going on um or a global pandemic or all of the things that we've lived through um but I think it's pivoting is a is a big answer to to seeing where you're going and part

[19:23]  of your 10year 20e journey I know that you're a big reader because I listen L to a previous episode that you recorded and you talked about Atomic habits as being one of the best books for mindset but I don't want to go there yet I want to ask you a question do you ever do any research on a growth mindset Carol DW from Stanford University talks about a growth mindset have you looked into that at all I've looked into growth mindset a little bit haven't read on this what do you want to share about growth mindset okay so this is really interesting to me because my girlfriend is in medical school right now and she's going to become a physician's assistant and she has been amazing through her entire academic career and she's very much a type A personality and so are her classmates and one of the things that I recognize about them and just kind of how they come across obstacles is when

[20:10]  we have a plan and it doesn't go well sometimes it's easy for us to get flustered because we have an expectation of how things are going to go but like you said life in itself is full of twists and turns and so a growth mindset in itself is really about kind of the ability to recognize that our only objective is to continue to keep learning when we come across hardship or situations that challenge us instead of saying this isn't part of the plan we should be saying okay what can I learn from this situation and how can I adapt and kind of move to this and in itself I think you've got a little bit of an interesting dichotomy because you're a planner and your success is based on planning coming in the financial space but you're also an entrepreneur and you see how twisty and tury the road of Entrepreneurship is you really have to put yourself in both camps and it's just really interesting kind of to dive into the mindset of somebody like you because

[20:58]  you get paid to plan but you're also on a journey that is completely Uncharted well I love I Ryan holiday do you read Ryan holiday at all and all of his stoic stuff and that that ancient wisdom of you know you're you're going to sa your ship and you're gonna try to get from point A to point B and that's the plan the plan is to go to point B but you also have a plan for if you get boarded by Pirates or you run a ground or there's a big storm or whatever was a thing back in back in the day of the stoics and that is how my mind works is I I have a goal and I know where I'd like to go and then I think of every single case scenario and what might happen if all those different possible things happen I call it my spiderweb because you can go in all of these different directions and it's nice to

[21:46]  have a plan for all of the different directions and say okay I know what the worst case scenario is I know what the best case scenario is and I'm pretty comfortable in this spectrum of places that I could potentially go um but also I've thought about all of these and so I'm also more accepting to pivoting because I've gone through all of these different scenarios before I sailed my ship towards a destination that I probably don't end up at because you know I've I've read um whoa what's this startup book I just lost it um The Lean Startup which is basically all about pivoting um and making sure that you know that your business is not going to go in the direction you want to and and Le reading The Lean Startup will definitely teach you to Pivot it really will I mean it's just an interesting

[22:34]  perspective one of the topics that I really want to get into is kind of the idea of skill stacking and especially because we're recording this podcast together I want to talk about the idea that media has created in our minds and why it's so fundamental for us to record podcasts like this because there's tons of types of Leverage in the world today there's human capital leverage you can get other people to work for you thumbs up sorry about that you also have you know media leverage which means we can record a podcast like this and other people can connect with us and we will be always out in the world omnipresent and there's also a leverage through code as an example being able to write a piece of software like you are doing with Savvy that gives you the scaleability to do things but let's talk about media a little bit why do you think you've been on such a rampage if you will to start documenting so much of

[23:21]  your journey when it comes to media and why do you think it's so important for your story and what you're building with Savvy well when people come and they meet with me or they call me or they sit down for a meeting they usually have already researched me watched a handful of podcasts read some of the content that I've put out and they show up to a meeting with someone I've never met before telling me I already know everything about you I I saw your Instagram I know that you fostered dogs and you volunteer with you know kids in the foster care system and I like what you're all about and i' like like a meeting with you so they already really do their research the first thing people do is Google you before they take a meeting with you and if you're not showing up in the right way or you're

[24:10]  not showing up at all you're not getting the meeting and actually I had someone say that to me recently they said I got referred to two different advisers I looked you up and the other adviser up and he didn't have any information online not it was bad just there wasn't anything there and the this client said I thought boy he could just pack up and leave and I would never and no one would ever care because he's not present or he's he doesn't have a lot of content out there and so they saw it as flighty or not really invested into their profession because they weren't putting content out man that's a really interesting perspective and because it kind of goes back to something we were talking about before we started recording here which is like human behavior if you think about consumer Behavior today normally we're not going to just randomly click on somebody's link and book a time with them but we

[24:57]  want to do research and I love to kind of dive in a little bit more because something really sparked in my mind when you were talking about you being a dog mom why are you such a dog mom and why do you like fostering animals a little bit of background is my entire life my mom has fostered animals we've probably had hundreds of dogs and hundreds of cats and I know that people who Foster animals have a really warm heart so what's kind of your story with fostering oh I um to my core am I embod that quote by Gandhi and I'm not trying to sound like I'm I'm a great person and just just that that quote Gandhi says of be the change you wish to see in the world and there's something inside of me where I see a problem and I think I wish

[25:46]  more people Foster dogs all these dogs in the shelters you know there's kill shelters there's I wish more people did it and then I have to take a second and say if not me then who who who's going to do this because I'm busy but so is everyone else and I can figure out time I'm self-employed I can bring them to my office and guess what I have employees my employees now have part of their job description you might have to help me with the dog I bring home and everyone knows when they sign on with a job with me you might have to help me with one of these dogs because I'm busy but I also get these emails now that I am a foster for the Humane Society and the emails are will say you know these dogs are really sick we we're going to have to put them down because we can't afford this sickness spreading throughout the

[26:33]  shelter not because they're a kill shelter but just the situation and then I cry and I go get them and then here we are again oh man that's just so beautiful because we all have our own stories and I can't tell you how many times my mom I even have so in the office right now you can't see him he's sitting on this chair over here my name is Keenan my dog's name is Kell so if you grow up anytime in the '90s early 2000s you understand the Keenan and Kell reference cuz when I was growing up my friends always made fun of me they're like Hey where's your best friend Kell and when I got older I was like you know what I'm going to turn this into a joke but one day my mom called me and said hey this beagle got thrown away in the trash can because it was constipated they were going to try and just throw him away but would you mind fostering him and naturally in my mind I was like this is the best sales pitch ever because as soon as she knows that I have

[27:20]  this dog in my house and he's a puppy and all my friends start to like him I'll never let him go and now we are here almost 9 years later and he sits in in all these meetings with so that fostering mentality is just like so near and dear to my heart and I think we gave everybody a little bit of a personal side of Jenna today because when you talk about those things it allows for other people to connect with us which is absolutely amazing you know what go ahead oh I was just gonna give a little pitch for fostering for anyone who's on the on the edge on the cliff thinking about maybe being a foster um The Fosters actually get the first pick of all the shelter dogs and so you usually all the good ones The Fosters keep they never make it to to the adoption floor so if you want the first pick you get a trial run so worst case scenario you trial run with a shelter

[28:09]  dog you didn't like them you send them back and you did a good deed and everyone's happy best case scenario your trial run works out great you keep them so I have there's my sales pitch on why you should foster a dog there you go that is going to be the Timeless sales pitcher fostering forever just spend time with them just let them sleep in your bed cuddle a little bit give them a good good place and then we'll see what happens you know those guys are marketers and salespeople first I swear to God which is really cool one of the things that you talked about a couple seconds ago I want to back up to was you know part of your job description with your team is you're GNA have to help Jenna raise these animals and take care of them sometimes one of the things that I heard in a previous episode was you talked about when you first started building your team you went through kind of a revolutionary process and understanding that not everybody's going to be exactly like you so let's kind of talk about those early stages of building out your team and then

[28:56]  recognizing that not everybody's is going to grind as hard as Jenna does and that's okay well that was a lesson I learned when I was managing at a different company thank goodness I didn't have to learn that lesson when I was paying the employees but I just thought I work this hard I grind this hard everyone's like me why aren't you like me and and I was a terrible manager when I first started I had no training um and I apologized to all those people um but I learned that everyone brought unique skills and a unique quality ities and it was actually that's what makes the world go around that what's that's what makes a business operate well because I am a quick start if you know the Colby personality test I am an ideas person I have way too many ideas I invent a new business idea every

[29:45]  single week if someone needs a business idea call me I have to throw them away every week um and most of my team members are much more in the methodical organized type uh type of personality and so when I come up with a new idea they all now say to me okay Jenna where does that go on the priority list because we know it's not important should we just put it away in the parking lot is it like just don't even add it to the list at all and so they know how to manage me and my entrepreneur brain and that that makes us so much more successful than if I just had a round table of a whole bunch of ideas people we'd get nothing done at all because we would just continue to throw ideas at each other so I'm really lucky that I don't have a a whole bunch of people like me and that I've learned

[30:33]  that that's not what I need on my team yeah I feel like that's a a beautiful mindset and that's part of our maturation process as Leaders as well you know one of the things that I always looked at when I was growing up was I saw tyrannical leaders like Steve Jobs as an example who led with an iron fist who were sharp with their tongue burnt their teams over were willing to turn people over if they didn't get the job done but now I see a huge shift in the form of leadership of being able to connect with people being a people person in our last call I believe we talked about soft skills and how you can leverage empathy compassion kind cander curiosity as a leader and in doing those things we get more out of our team members as well and so my question for you is how do you prioritize the soft skills in your leadership style with kind of nurturing your team and getting the most out of them as

[31:20]  individuals well one of the things that I really wanted to do was lean into what was important to them and all of my team members are at different stages of life we have a pretty diverse team and a lot of people have life outside of work and so we made Fridays optional so we have a flex Friday and we don't take client meetings on Friday um I'll check in and work and catch up and some people want the the extra hours they want to they want to work a little bit more so they'll pick up a Friday shift here or there um but we're lucky to be in a type of business that we can get about half Manpower on Fridays and still get everything done um because we're not taking those client

[32:06]  meetings on that day um but just little things like that giving them the ability to rejuvenate to spend time on what is important to them um I also talk about money we're in a money business so it should I should talk about money and I really say you're here to trade your time for money so this needs to be a good use of your time you need to feel fulfilled doing it but ALS Al remember you know we're we're making money and so this the money part needs to make sense for you financially um is there a better job that you can get somewhere else do I I need to pay you more to convince you to stay so we talk about money a lot because I I I'm smart enough to know that if I stopped paying them they wouldn't show up anymore so um all of the pieces of why people have a job and why people uh what people do outside of

[32:53]  their job I make sure that we're addressing all of that um we do some charity donation matching and we talk about a lot of the other things other than work I think that's super important for the new generation of people who are coming into work and when I say that I don't mean just gen Z I'm talking about everybody on the other side of the pandemic because it seemed like previously we were living to work and now we're working to live we're using work as a vehicle that helps us experience life and that's something that's super important I have a an interesting little question for you because you've been in the finance space for so long I want to know did you guys have these type of financial conversations did you talk about money a lot when you were growing up was it a taboo topic was it something that you guys openly communicated about what was that like oh no I grew up in a household that looks a lot like kind of Middle America where there wasn't enough money

[33:43]  um for the spending you my dad was a veteran so we got a VA loan to buy the house and lucky we were in a place in Arizona where the the home equity kept increasing um but then we bought a boat and a truck to pull the boat and then we had to ref finance and get the equity out of the house to cover the the boat because the payments were too high and we were just living paycheck to paycheck barely getting by there were fights when people overspend um and I think that's actually one of the reasons I my sister and I both work so hard is because we never want to be in that Financial place where we are strapped so uh her and I are both really driven we have great work ethic um I I don't know I guess it was the the positive thing that came out of our money trauma is that we work

[34:31]  hard but probably there's a therapist somewhere that can unpack some more of that and tell me that maybe I work too hard because of my money trauma I mean here's a question for you so working too hard especially in the world of social media today a lot of people say we should only work four days a week you shouldn't have to work more than 40 hours you shouldn't do all this type of stuff working is evil if you will but when you're the principal of a management company but you're also the founder of a company like Savvy you have to put in a lot more work than I think people uh I would say anticipate or think you do so what is kind of your relationship with I would guess the idea of like work life balance or is it something more of like work life integration and there's not really a right answer but it's what's appropriate for you it is work life integration um when you choose to be a

[35:25]  multipreneur uh you are basically saying I don't like my free time very much uh I like building as my passion project as my hobby and that is true for me I don't watch television I really try to avoid being on social media much because I need those hours because I am working on a couple other businesses and I can't do it during normal business hours because I I have the financial planning practice that takes up all the normal business hours Monday through Friday night 9 to5 and so I have to squeeze these extra business ideas that I come up with into my free time and I choose that I actively choose that I like building um I feel like that's where I'm at in my life I'm in building years and the goal I'm G to cross my

[36:14]  fingers the goal is that hopefully I'll pull out of these building years and be able to lean on something some of these things that I've already built um during my building years and so I'm hoping it's going to turn out to be an EB and flow and right now I'm ebbing a little bit and working a little bit harder and planning on flowing a little bit maybe 10 years from now I mean me and you are in the same space I um love showing up to work because I realize the work that I do today is exponentially more valuable in the future and if I can build when I kind of look at business I always talk to my sister about we're building a money printing machine here and the more time you spend tuning and twisting all the little screws and bolts to get this thing really humming the more it's going to produce for us over our lifetime and some people often say I have family members who aren't into my immediate family and they say Keenan you work too

[37:01]  much you're going to get burnt out how do you kind of deal with maybe those friends or those family members who don't have the same understanding of the role that entrepreneurship and business kind of plays in our lives oh I my closest friend when I started the business just said when are you gonna give up on that and get a real job uh she's not my closest friend anymore because I needed people who were going to support the journey I was on um you can't just fire every one in your lives but my both of my parents are you know of the W2 job mindset um my mom still tries to just pop into my schedule for lunch in the middle of the day at the last minute like I have meetings I do have a real job she's like but you work for yourself like no you can't just pop into my schedule I'm booking out so um

[37:49]  my parents don't fully understand it um I can't kick them out of my life I like them I'm stuck with them but uh it's it's more than just being a workaholic I I think when you you brought up scale and I think there's something really different about the different businesses that I've built and I think that's what makes me Giddy and excited because the financial planning practice it's service-based so I it will always require me giving advice to my clients and so you hit capacity and I realized that I've been doing it long enough that I kind of feel like I'm hitting capacity and I'm going to be a lot more well I already am a lot more selective about which clients I take on um and then also you know making sure that if if I can't

[38:38]  serve a client best I maybe bring in a different adviser who can but I've realized the capacity limits of service-based businesses and then also if you scale too big too fast you lose quality and my business is all about Boutique high quality so I didn't want to scale that big and fast but the technology company is exactly the opposite and it is build it set it get it all in place and then we can scale this all we have to do is really get some marketing in place we could scale it I could sell it I don't want to sell my financial planning practice my clients are like my babies I love them so I couldn't imagine selling my babies I'm just really protective of them but the technology company I can really scale that make it make an impact and sell it and still make the the world a better place by selling it so um I

[39:27]  think that's what gets me excited is because I'm building something totally different yeah I mean it's it's a crazy world to think about the leverage that we can create with technology today when we first started our business in 2014 we were a tella Health company so we were really focused on developing Hardware Solutions basically a kiosk with a screen that we would go place in a hospital people would come to us they'd have services rendered over the virtual doctor and that was my first experience with how kind of software is that I would say JUMP across the chasm that helps us be anywhere instantaneously and just so happened right before the pandemic I was really harping with my team as guys if we get into a situation where people can't come to us we don't have any more value for our customers so we started developing a SAS platform that uses two-way SMS communication and allows for us to scale wherever there's a cellular signal meaning we can engage

[40:14]  with people we can communicate we can have those conversations we can follow up we can deliver education and that really kind of got me on this little I would say Hiatus and this high from being able to develop software because it's nationally scalable and it's also has such a lower overhead as well because when we develop software it just allows for us to be anywhere anytime we can provide value just like what we're doing right now this episode's going to live forever on the internet and so will that code that we develop as well so I really resonate with kind of that ability to get into the tech space but it's definitely a uh it's a different world out here too highly competitive well-funded very um you know I would say Cutthroat if you will what's kind of your perspective in making the transfer from service over into the SAS space Oh my gosh it sounded so easy it did it really did I had an idea put out the business plan like okay now

[41:05]  I just need to hire some developers to write the code uh what could go wrong and holy canol it is so much more than I thought um I just thought build the technology and and then it lives in per Perpetual life as you shared uh I made the mistake of hiring an India based develop development team because the the price was um too good to pass up I'll give the numbers because I'm a numbers person to build the technology in the United States was going to cost $150,000 like just to see if this idea worked and in India it was like $10,000 um and it was the the numbers were like oh yeah I won't even build it if I have to spend 150,000 I'm not even

[41:55]  gonna consider building it so I wouldn't even even I would have been priced out of trying the idea but India I'm like okay I can I can get behind this price point um but you get what you pay for and every time we fixed one thing five other things broke and it just was a mess and at some point we had to say okay the idea works we got the MVP together and then we ended up having to scrap the whole thing that we spent about a year building and have to build version two with a us-based so it actually worked so I wasted the money in the long run but that's the thing in Tech is you need that mvp and it was a lot harder and a lot longer than I originally had expected it to be I mean we always say it as well twice as long twice as expensive when we started developing our

[42:43]  software platform as well we would used a team in Australia and we thought this was going to be great we stood up the MVP with a first couple customers there were tons of problems and then I had to find a us-based team and I had them look at the code and they're like dude this stuff is spaghetti like no wonder stuff keeps breaking it's terrible and so a couple $100,000 later you know I mean we have a platform that is solid is stable we can build on top of it but once again kind of going back to my point a little bit earlier what a story to be able to laugh about later in life because we did it we tried it out and we can share that with the people who we built it with which I think is so beautiful I want to use the last couple minutes here to kind of focus us back in on the mission of Savvy and the impact that you guys are trying to have you know one of the things that you told me early in our previous discussion was there was a specific number of women who were taken advantage of from a financial perspective and I really think it's important for us to kind of hammer home what that is so people can really

[43:31]  understand the motivation behind what you guys are building well the the sad statistic is that one in Four Women will be the victim of a financial crime at some point in her lifetime and that I had seen through my financial planning practice I had seen all of these women who were put in bad investment products not illegal just not suitable um so maybe all of her money was locked up into an annuity that she didn't have access to and she wanted to buy a home and she couldn't get access to her money um because annuities pay really high commissions and so the sales guy wants to put as much money in there as possible um and so sometimes a not suitable investment while not illegal could still be considered um in this one

[44:20]  in four women that are are considered a victim of either unsuitable Investments or financial crimes and I got kind of tired of having to unwind the mess because I became the safe place where all these women were getting referred to and saying I just want to be able to buy a house why can't I access my money why is my adviser saying I can't have my money and I had to be the bear of bad news oh because he put you in a high commission product um that's not liquid um and so and I realized I couldn't scale like going back to scale I couldn't scale the financial planning practice big enough fast enough to really solve this Nationwide problem we had so that was the passion behind building Savvy was to vet out all the Bad actors look at how they make money look at what products they're selling

[45:06]  look at if they're if they're licensed if they have complaints against them and then once we get all the bad guys out just connect women with people they know they can trust so women are connected with advisers or experts that they know have already been vetted out uh so they can put their guard down and take action and make decisions because a lot of women they've heard these stories they have a friend or a family member who'd been taken advantage of because it is common and they say I don't want that to happen to me so I will do nothing I'll leave all my money in a checking account uh so the purpose of Savvy is to really help those women take action and move forward I mean I feel like what an amazingly beautiful Mission because once again you've mentioned this a couple times creating a safe space for conversations about our finances is so important but also having people who we know have been vetted people that we can

[45:54]  trust who we can come to in some of our most vulnerable moments because I know when we talk about financial issues that often comes on the other side of traumatic experiences like divorce or maybe my husband was like died or they passed away or maybe I went through a a terrible financial situation I have a lot of trauma that's built up from that and so I just love the fact that you guys are really being intentional about what you guys are building to create that safe space for others because there's people who are definitely watching and listening to this episode who have said I know somebody or I am somebody who's been a part of that distrust or that process where I was taking advantage of and it's just so cool to know that there are entrepreneurs out there who are really putting a dent in what the future of financial literacy looks like to be able to create a safe place for us especially our women in our society because we need more help than ever and it's just so cool and I just really appreciate all the work that you're doing well thank

[46:42]  you we're excited and men can use the platform as well if they wanted to so we're we're welcome to everyone uh but we really wanted to make sure that women felt that we were speaking exactly to them with our marketing and we also um I guess I should mention you said financial literacy we are just launching a new advanced level financial literacy Master Class called elevate your wealth so for those people who are still in the I'm not ready to talk to a human yet part of their financial Journey they can just sign up for the master class and get the videos and and get some Next Level financial literacy I just I saw a hole in the content that was online there's a lot of beginner level stuff but once you know the basics uh people didn't know where to go for the next

[47:30]  layer of information without speaking directly to a professional so we made that course you're not only the idea person but you're also the connector person as well I grew up with a really cool toy called the connect it set and the most valuable pieces in that entire thing were the little circles that brought all the other pieces together and I'm just so cool that you're filling some of those holes that we see in our financial world so thank you so much for being on the podcast I want to use the last couple seconds here to have you pose a question for for our next guest so what do you got for us Jenna oo a question for the next guest let's maybe ask them what was the biggest challenge or the darkest moment of their career oh that's a good one I can't wait to be able to hear that well once again for everybody watching and listening today Jenna thank you so much for coming on

[48:16]  the show it's been awesome to kind of hear about your heart and your hustle and I know that you're aligned with a bigger mission to be able to serve your community and the impact that you're making is only going to be measured in the decades when we can look back and appreciate the gain of how far we've come today so I appreciate all the time that we spent together thank you so much for joining me thank you Keenan