Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, we're talking with Gary Klaben, and Gary is a financial advisor from Chicago.
Gary has a really great program of videos and education that employers can offer as a benefit to their employees, giving them access to real financial advice when they need it.
He's put a lot into creating an app that provides all of these videos to employees to help them get educational advice on practical things like what to do when they're going to buy a car, or when they're going to buy a house, or how to think about money. Things they wouldn't necessarily have access to otherwise.
What he's really doing is helping provide a sense of financial wellbeing for employees of large employers.
So, one of the things we talked about was how to get this word out, and towards the end of the call, we really came up with the idea of ideas, which is identifying potential clients for this service, and how do we get the message in front of them.
This is a great episode and will really help you think about who benefits from your service.
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 205
Dean: Gary.
Gary: Hey, hey, it's Dean. How are you?
Dean: I am so good. How are you?
Gary: I'm very good.
Dean: Well, this is a very special occasion. Good to have you-
Gary: Yes it is.
Dean: On the podcast format here. Normally, we talk in secrecy in stay in top secret status, so this is going to be good.
Gary: Absolutely.
Dean: It will be very similar. We'll brainstorm and we will talk about... We'll hatch some evil schemes here and-
Gary: Evil schemes.
Dean: You know, the evil, visually it works out better because the evil, the way that... You know how in Austin Powers, you know-
Gary: Yeah.
Dean: There's Dr. Evil. He's always got that, "So you say evil schemes?"
Gary: Yes, yeah.
Dean: We had Stephanie Estima. She made me a wordmark for evil schemes that replaces the V with a heart, which is exactly the sentiment that we're looking for-
Gary: Oh, right -
Dean: Evil schemes for the good of humanity. That's what we're creating here.
Gary: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. That's cool.
Dean: Yeah. Okay, so we're recording now. This is the podcast and we'll forget within I predict 120 seconds that we're recording the podcast and it'll just be you and me talking about whatever we want to talk about.
Gary: Perfect.
Dean: It would be good for the first 90 seconds or couple of minutes here to maybe tell the backstory a little bit so we can pick up from there, just so people know who you are and what we're-
Gary: Yeah.
Dean: Going to focus on here.
Gary: That's great. Thanks, Dean. Yeah, so I came to the profession that I'm in or the thing I'm in kind of Securitas here, but I spent six years in the military after graduating from West Point as an Army office and when I got out, like a lot of entrepreneurs, I found out I was an entrepreneur. Then, I also found out that the thing I loved doing was helping people with money and all I love doing is solve one money issue every day and I'm a really happy guy. I mean, if I do that every day, that makes my day, Dean, and-
Dean: Yes.
Gary: And so going the traditional route I would say with the wealth management with all of the different hoops and so forth and ended up years later running a company with 25 team members and about a billion dollars under advisement in a traditional wealth management role. It wasn't quite enough because very early on in my career as a guy in my late 20s, I realized all of the people my age needed help with money, but of course, the way everything was structured, I couldn't make any money from them so I really had to kind of leave them by the side of the road a little bit and kind of go off and work with wealthy people, which is great, and help them out. I love helping them out and helping their families, but what happened is about a decade ago that I kind of acme back around because I realized that the advent of the internet had... You obviously have really looked at that and made a huge change in your life with that, that allowed me to take this message out more digitally to then make it cost-effective for young people to just make good, smart decisions with their money.
The route I went was to do videos because I'm good on videos and I present well on videos and I basically decided to do ultimately single-subject two- or three-minute videos with a good hook up front to get somebody to get a simple concept like buying a new or used car, or should they rent or buy a home, or how to increase your credit score or how they pay down their debt. All of these things that come up with people and that morphed and changed. About three years ago, we said, "Well, now, we can kind of multiple that to go out to companies to do what is now known as generally speaking financial wellness, but more in-depth providing financial well-being to the team members and employees of a company to then be able to get on the right track to get moving along so they can save money, so they can realize all of the goals they want in their life and everything else that you can do about money just to make one good, smart money decision after another as they move through life and get to where they want to go. That's kind of the real quick story, so that's what we're trying to do is bring this out to -
Dean: How many of those -
Gary: Companies.
Dean: Videos have you done now so far? How many are in your collection?
Gary: I've done about 2100 videos total of-
Dean: That's great.
Gary: Yeah, I know. It always boggles my mind a little, but the ones that are organized in libraries and so forth are around a hundred or so, and that kind of structured out in 12 different areas. Then, there is access to several hundred more through the blog I do, so I've been doing two blogs, one for I'll say the wealthy crowd, and one for the regular crowd. The regular crowd, there's about 250 or so on there, so if somebody goes in and wants to type in a word about saving or type something - about debt or whatever, they'll pop up five, six, eight, 10 videos and they can go through and pick the ones they want and watch it. It makes it really easy for them to kind of look at any issues from multiple angles because I always come at it from several angles because everybody is wired differently and they look at their stuff-
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: Differently. I realize you got to be able to tune into somebody that's out there, speak to, as you and I both know, to their DOS, making sure you're helping them address their dangers out there, the things that really bother them, go bump in the night with money and then help them seize opportunities like, "How do I get ahead with my money?", and different things they're trying to do and then make sure you understand their strengths. That's the DOS from the strategic Coach and help to do that, so you're always kind of looking in videos like, "Who's my audience." Every time I do a video, I think of that person or persons who I've worked with personally over 35 years about this issue and then I speak to them through the camera-
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: Specifically to that. That's the way I've always done my videos and people tend to come back and go, "Oh, I really like your video because it sounded like you really understood me and talking to me." I think that's always effective on a video when somebody gets that personal experience.
Dean: Videos are very simple. I think what people can... You can be encouraged by what you're doing is that you've got a pretty simple setup, the simple background, simple straight-to-camera. I know you setup kind of always on the area for you to do your videos.
Gary: That's correct.
Dean: Yeah. How much did you spend on the setting up the security or just the basic equipment to do the videos that you're doing? Did you -
Gary: Yeah, that's a really great question, Dean, because I think sometimes people think there's a big barrier-
Dean: Right.
Gary: To videos, so originally I just threw a camera up for a couple of hundred bucks and started doing it against a blank wall, but then I realized to get better sound and make it easier to do things. I set up a room and had the back wall painted that green that's unique-
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: For-
Dean: Green.
Gary: The back side and put in some lights and got an upgraded camera. I had a guy do it, I didn't do it. He was in that business and I hired him. All said and done, everything there, and it seems like it's professional everything, was about $1500-
Dean: Right-
Gary: So-
Dean: There you go.
Gary: Yeah, it's not. It is actually fairly inexpensive. Expense, Dean, as you know, is really, then, gets into the production side of it where... Okay, so obviously you got to figure out, what is your subject in the video? How you're going to shoot that, how you're going to edit that, how you're going to distribute that, all of those things which, again, you can outsource all of that through many, many different sources out there. I would say if somebody was doing videos, they could probably do one video a piece, depending on who they hired and everything else, for probably $250 I would say-
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: So it's not that expensive-
Dean: Right.
Gary: Versus if you go to a full studio, they're going to charge you 2,000 to $5,000 to do something similar, so it does make a difference.
Dean: Yeah, and you get to where you're really the... If we talk about this who not how approach to it, that you are the who, the cow in this who has all of the milk and you're coming into... We have our own language in our organization around supporting me as being the cow who's making the milk, and so we would call that The Milking Shed. I come into The Milking Shed, that's what you've got, your little thing set up there, and all you do is look at the camera and talk. There's no need for you to do any of the other stuff after that and that's-
Gary: That is-
Dean: Really-
Gary: A great point and I'll mention it, so you're right, Dean. Initially, I was doing a lot of it myself, so my time was probably I'll say an hour and a half for a video initially. Now, my time is about five minutes total per video, and when I say that people look at me like, "What? How could that be? How's that possible?" The point is is that you talk about cows, and so certain cows... I only know this because I know a lot of farmers and I've been in farming country, they have different quality milk. It's more cream versus versus that. It's a bunch of different ways, so if you know you've got your cow shed and you want to do certain kinds of cheeses or different kinds of milk and everything else, then you get a specific kind of cow.
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: I'm a kind of cow in the video world that is somebody who's highly auditory, and so if someone, my producer... By the way, they're not even in the room. I just did 10-
Dean: Right.
Gary: Videos yesterday and we spent a little more time than normal because we did a lot of discussion about different things we were trying to do, but total time, full-time videos plus all of the discussion that we did about other items we were thinking in the future was an hour and a half, so they're now producing those 10 videos, but what's really interesting is they know what kind of cow I am. I'm a Brown Swiss cow, by the way, and they happen to have very high cream content as it turns out, so I'm a - Brown Swiss and they go, "Well, Brown Swiss, we want to make sure with this Brown Swiss cow that we feed it certain kind of hay, certain kind of corn, certain kind of thing because -
Dean: Wow.
Gary: "Boy, that Brown Swiss then puts out the very best cream you'll ever get." That's what they've done with me. Over time, they've said, "Gary's a Brown Swiss, so here's what we do with him. Bring him in the room, be prepared as producers," I have two different producers, one for one blog post, one for the other, "Be prepared to then give him an idea to riff on," like we're doing right now."
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: "Then, just give him the idea, give him a few seconds, usually 30 seconds, to come up with his thoughts, and then turn on the camera and let him go." Two and a half to three minutes later, the video is done, it's ready for production, and you go on to the next one. Now [crosstalk 00:14:18] I would submit that for most people, it may be a little longer than that, but not much more because once they identify what kind of cow they are in this world of video production, then that format gets set up, so you get the very best, in this case, cream from your Brown Swiss cow, so-
Dean: Yeah. That's so good. I love it. I mean, this is a great way to think about it. People, they've heard me enough talk to them about the self-milking cow idea on this podcast. This is great to hear someone who really understands that concept and is going down the path. Okay, so there's what we got. You've got this wonderful now library archive of all of these questions and things that are I'm sure timeless that are equally valid in the future here as they are right now because principle-based stuff. Where are we at now in terms of where do we want to jump off from there?
Gary: Sure-
Dean: And yeah...
Gary: As is the issue with lots of people like me, lots of content but not really good marketing. Pretty classic, falling into that same place, and that's why I'm talking to you, of course, and why I have had many great conversations with you, Dean, over the years because you're that who on the other side who can take many different kinds of folks with different kinds of content and help them direct how to market it to get somebody that does a call to action, but then actually does something that benefits them based on whatever it is, so your -.
That's where we're at is going, "Okay, we have this really great content. We know that it really syncs up well. We know from working with lots of individuals and some companies as well, many companies at this point, that it engages with people and gets them making decisions." In my view, the only reason I do videos is that somebody, first of all, will watch it, but more importantly, will do something as a result of watching it because otherwise - to me it's a complete waste of time. It's just me goofing around having a hobby or something.
Dean: Right.
Gary: Yeah, so what I look at is go, "Look, we've got these libraries. We got a tech partner involved." This is now a year ago, and the tech partner has a huge, wonderful, very robust tech platform. It's phenomenal, and so then all of the videos reside on that platform - so that you can be consumed easily by someone out there who's in and wants better financial well-being through a company. Then, also the videos get texted out because you and I both know that unlike number 22 on their list of things to do, until I'm number one. In other words-
Dean: Right.
Gary: All of a sudden they need a car and they're going, "New or used?" Or-
Dean: Yeah, right -
Gary: "I need help," and - right away the video pops up and they go, "Oh, there it is," and bam, you're right there at the point of want. You're at the point of want and that's why we text out the videos on an ongoing basis. We have them as resource -. Now, when they're ready, then we need to be there to engage with them. It's a very important aspect of that. We look at these elements, then we'd say, "Okay, so we've got this financial wellness platform," we like to call it well-being because financial wellness is like an abused term now -. We want to engender, we want to build well-being because of the nature of what's going on with most Americans and COVID has brought this out.
You have these financially-strapped entrapped people who are seriously trying to figure out how to deal with their debt problems, how to deal with their other cash flow issues, how to pay their bills, how to get out of debt, how to increase their credit score. How to just get back to some point in life that feels better because they tend to fall into four bad things that happen to them. One, that they're not present at work, in other words, absenteeism because they have such a huge negative cognitive load because of the financial situation. Number two, that causes greater safety problems with drivers and different physical things they're doing. It causes greater safety issues for them and for the corporation or the company they work for.
Number three, their productivity goes down because, again, they're thinking about their money so much that they can't concentrate on what they're doing. Number four, they create high turnover for their companies because if somebody offers them an extra thousand dollars a year down the road, they switch and go just because that's the only choice they feel they have to be able to pay their bills or do whatever they need to do. We've got these people who really, really need help and the companies now are starting to come around, very slowly, to saying, "Gosh, these are greatest investments. They're our greatest resource we have and we're not even paying attention to them."
I know, Dean, you know this or you've probably read about it, but back in August of last year, this whole movement for stakeholders versus shareholders. Shareholders, of course, own the stock and want to get return versus stakeholders are the employees, the vendors, or they're their folks that we need to change our view. It's like almost 200 companies signed off on this last year. They started to do the research and say, "Well, what's really happening?" I just found this out the other day, but now companies are doubling their emphasis on helping employees from only 20% to 46% in the latest survey that came out just a week ago.
These companies are getting serious so they're looking for solutions and we're looking for the companies that are serious so you don't know how to go, "Hey, here's a financial well-being company that does financial coaching to the nth degree and does it digitally to keep it very low expense-wise to then help your employees who you're trying to help to make good, smart money decisions. Let's get these two guys together." Gary sit around on the phone with Dean going, "Dean, how do we do that?"
Dean: Okay. Well, this is brilliant because now what you... I want to just kind of address something. You've got all of this content now. You've got an amazing collection of all of these and a lot of people think that the content is the answer, that if you build them they will come kind of thing. I see it all of the time. People are frustrated that they... "I've been podcasting. I've been doing all of these podcasts," or, "I've made all of these videos," or, "I've been blogging," but that alone isn't the thing. It's one part of a four-part harmony that would be the before unit of what we talk about in terms of the before unit, the during unit, the after unit.
This is a before unit strategy that makes up the first four Profit Activators that we talk about, which is, number one, select a single target market. Number two, compel new prospects to raise their hand so you're turning invisible prospects to visible prospects. Then, Profit Activator three is educate and motivate, which is exactly where all of this content falls into Profit Activator three. It's about educate and motivate people so that you create a fertile, receptive environment for Profit Activator four, which is to make super easy offers that make it easy for people to get started into collaborating with you in your during unit.
Take this puzzle as an example. The during unit, if we were to say, "If I look at what you've got and your intention with all of this, the thing that I would be looking to see is, what is the best outcome that we could create for someone if they would get out of the way and let you do it?" I often say to people the big question that helps clarify that is, "What would you do if you only got paid if your client gets the results?" Now, that presupposes a couple of things. It presupposes that there is a result that's going to come from all of this and it also presupposes that you know how to get it.
Gary: Yeah, exactly.
Dean: If I say that, if we bookend this on one end with, what is the best outcome that you could create? I think you're onto something here. All of these things that you're saying, the things that the employees are going to get, you've been very clear on those, but what is the actual result that the companies are going to get for embracing this? They're the check writers, so when you look at it that... One of the great concepts that Dan Sullivan says, "Who do you want to be a hero to?" Right?
That's our thing, and often the ultimate thing that we want to be a hero to, everything that you're doing there, is sounding like that the ultimate beneficiary is all of the employees. That's absolutely true, but there's another level of beneficiary of that, which is the check writer is going to be the company. That's what you're hoping to happen is that the companies will write the check to provide this benefit for the workers, right? For the employees-
Gary: Sure, yeah.
Dean: For the stakeholders. Okay, so a hundred percent they're going to benefit from it, but let's focus on, what are the companies going to get? What is that? If you can quantify the qualitative things like you're saying that all of those implications that you talked about, absentee, sick days, susceptibility to competing offers, that people leaving for slightly more money, stress, worry, all of those things. How could we set up an environment or a way or an experiment or a case study that shows before we did this this was what was happening? After we did this, look at what the great benefit was.
Gary: Yeah, that's very good because you and I have talked about this for a little bit on the side and different times when we have met and different places. What we've determined is so the real hero in the company is the HR department because - if you really talk to the human resources people, they are tasked with taking care of the people. That is their job, so they're spread thin because they've got all of these different employee benefit programs and 401(k), healthcare program, dental, and time off, and on and on and on and on. Their job if you said, "Boy, we want to be a hero to them." "Exactly right." "What's their job?" "Well, they're job is to attain and retain every great five-star employee." Let's just go there - for that.
It's a cradle-to-grave approach. It really is if you want a really strong company, and everybody's seen that. When you get people there for long periods of time and they do really well and they're very productive and they're good, solid team members and all of that. They're always looking for, "How do we attain, attract really good team members, employees? How do we retain those folks? They'll leave as soon as they realize that, 'Hey, this company's not the real deal that I thought it was.' How do we do that effectively?"
They have numbers. They can look and go, "Here's our turnover. Here's productivity." They have a lot of that before and, in fact, our tech partners go and do that. They go, "Okay, let's look at that." Then, we have some metrics to go measure against as you're putting this whole program in to measure the overall financial well-being of the entire company. I'm with you, I'm totally with you on this, Dean, and then -
Dean: You know, this is similar... It reminds me of our mutual friend Kevin Brady, that's the same... We did a book, I did a book called Return On Benefits, because that's what they offer, employee benefits programs. When you look at that, I've had really good results with this concept of return on something that's qualitative. One of the first 90-minute books that we did when we first started the company was with a gentleman who did workplace safety and he was a guy who was really passionate about workplace safety.
Having a conversation with him, I was saying... When you look at it that most of the HR departments are sort of mandated, "Oh, make sure we're compliant and get the new posters and do the announcements or the mandatory trainings or whatever we need to do that." Nobody's really thinking about it as what it could be, and I asked him that question, like, "What would be the best thing that could be an outcome?"
He was talking about how retention and all of these same kind of things that you're talking about, retention, workers' comp, reduce all of these benefits. We started talking about that and targeting the C-suite instead of going into the HR department, then has to go to the C-suite and get approval for this, is to go the other way. Start with the conversation with the CFO, the COO, the CEO on the return on benefits and get it coming that way from the top down. It's sent to HR as a directive rather than just HR having to send it. You know?
Gary: Yeah, and I agree because each time we go to a company and somebody brings me... like I'm bringing at a lower level, I go, "Guys, we want to talk to the C-suite because they're either onboard with this or they're not. If they're not onboard, it's not going anywhere."
Dean: Right.
Gary: We're still a hero to the HR department, but it has to be-
Dean: What does it-
Gary: Coming from... Yeah -
Dean: What's the investment for it? We go the other way, if we look at describing your ideal candidate for this, your ideal client, how many employees? What level of revenue? What kind of markers, characteristics would make-
Gary: Sure.
Dean: Someone a perfect candidate for this?
Gary: I'm going to go through some framing because otherwise it won't make sense, or it'll make better sense, I should say. The framing is a... You know me, I like to frame things so people can get them clearly. I have a little formula and it's fairly simple. The formula is FW = FC + E + ET. FW is basically financial well-being or financial wellness. We're defining it because people say, "Well, what's your program?" We're defining it by these three elements, and that first one is FC. That's financial coaching.
Dean, you know I talk about this. It's the tacit knowledge that a coach teaches someone, how to ride a bike, how to play an instrument, how to play football, versus explicit knowledge where you can read it in a book and it's about facts and so forth. Tacit knowledge is where coaches come in. In the money area, it's complex, so you need a financial coach. That's important. That's first.
Number two, E is engagement. People engage when they're ready to engage. You know this, you see this in marketing all of the time. They raise their hand when they're ready to raise their hand-
Dean: Right -
Gary: And when they raise their hand, then you've got to engage. You have to be there and engage at a very deep level in this case very quickly and very easily for them. That's got to be there. Then, ET is exponential technology, not regular technology, but exponential technology, because most people will readily reject any technology that seems like it's old and needs to be dusted off and it's been around too long. It hasn't got some of the latest and greatest stuff. You got to make sure that that's always upgraded, and it doesn't have to be on the leading and bleeding edge, but it certainly has to have all of those things.
When you have that, especially here, the big, bad four-letter word, really bad four-letter word. I don't know if I can even say it on the air. It's math. I think I'm okay saying it, but in some circles, that's not okay. M-A-T-H is really, really difficult for the general public, and it's difficult for most folks. You want the exponential technology to take care of all of the heavy lifting, the budgeting and the collecting the money and adding it all up and doing all of that stuff so you can figure out, "Am I saving or I'm spending?" Or, "Am I net deficit or not? What do I need to do to make that work?"
If you don't make that super easy and make it just very intuitive and very clean and simple to understand, you're going nowhere fast. The exponential technology does all of the heavy lifting, connecting everything else. The coach has to be there when they're ready to engage, so if you look at those three, so we want to have coaches available on a phone call away, and ultimately for the people that get more and more engaged, then they get the wrong financial coach. We've had to figure how to get that down to a monetary level that's acceptable to a company, and it is.
Dean: Got it.
Gary: What ends up happening is then that CEO, CFO in particular, goes, "Oh my gosh, we're seeing costs being driven down on safety issues. We're seeing productivity levels rising with people, that now we needed a team of 10 and we only need a team of seven." As they grow their company, they're not having to hire more people because they're actually seeing all of these benefits. There's not turnover, so the HR department's not just vigorously trying to constantly bring new people in because they're losing so many. So many things functionally did better and better within the company that we'd see tens of millions of dollars saving within several years. We have case studies for that. We can see that.
Dean: That is perfect. Well, that's what you're talking about, then.
Gary: Exactly, exactly.
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: Yep.
Dean: So there - you are... That's part of the approach, then. You've been doing it, you've got results, you've got case studies. Have you documented the case studies in that kind of thing? Like maybe doing a return on financial well-being? Or-
Gary: Yes, and our partners have done that because they've been doing this longer than we have and they have extremely good quantitative factors that they can pull apart a hundred different ways and really show this. That can be put out there and they have some cases that have been around for five years or more. This is a new space, so it hasn't been around a long time, and then bring that to a company and go, "Look, these are the results if you're serious about this." I'll tell you, this is the strange thing, Dean, but it doesn't matter. I was told a long time ago and I've learned this is what the client, in our case clients or customers, doesn't understand does not exist.
Dean: Right.
Gary: Even though you and I know something seem to be true, it doesn't matter because if your prospective customer or client doesn't understand that, as far as they're concerned, whatever you're talking about doesn't exist. We have some of that going on in this space and here's why I'm saying this. For the cost, and this will really throw you, for the cost of a company party at a Holiday, for that cost you can put an entire financial well-being program for a company for that one meal, entertainment, whatever they're putting together-
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: Per employee. It's the actual dollar amount that has to be put out. It's so low relative to the benefit that even when you bring this, or the other one we use is dental insurance, which is fairly inexpensive. The cost for company dental insurance or that is how much a program costs, but the point is, if they don't understand it doesn't exist, even it if was $1, doesn't matter. It's a cost, not an investment, so it's very hard to get these companies to see this in a different light than they're currently looking at it.
Dean: Did you say it's hard to get them to see it that way? Or-
Gary: It is because they're focused on employee benefits being kind of in a cost element, and so they look at it -
Dean: Yeah -
Gary: They - "It's just another employee benefit that costs us X amount more dollars. It doesn't result in anything. We kind of have to check the box off kind of approach." We're trained to -
Dean: Between the... Yeah, the difference between safety, for instance, like the OSHA stuff versus what you're talking about is that there's no mandate for them to actually do what you're talking about. That seems like even farther along, and I just mean that it sort of feels to them... I can imagine if I'm thinking like the company that the actual practical benefit to the employees feels like the dental insurance, they could actually see that that's something that somebody's going to use. I'm just playing the-
Gary: Yeah.
Dean: Role of somebody on that, that they may not see that, well, financial stuff, it seems a little less tangible than...
Gary: Right, exactly, and it's kind of a reordering in their corporate minds about how to deploy money for additional benefits. As an example, a lot of companies look at this in their 401(k) because 401(k)s, "Oh, it's money. They save money for retirement, so this is where this falls." It's interesting because then you say, "Well, like half the companies out there have a match. You put X amount away, 3% of your salary, they put away 3%." Okay.
Dean: Yes.
Gary: Now, that's a huge number. If you start doing the math, you're talking, you know-
Dean: Right.
Gary: Millions and millions of dollars. Okay, so what we - and they go, "Okay, so you've got a 3% match. All right."
Dean: Yes.
Gary: "Why don't you consider taking even a couple of pennies of this, very small amount, 1%, 2% of this, and putting a matching program in for your team members or employees to match them saving $10 per pay period to a savings account?" Then you would match $10 with it to get them out of this hell hole they're in where basically half of the country doesn't have enough money to pay for a $400 expense. If you can just get them to get at least $500 set aside in a savings account, why wouldn't you do that? What the-
Dean: Gary-
Gary: The 401(k)... Yes?
Dean: Let me ask you something, then.
Gary: Sure.
Dean: When you say an employee, like a per employee thing to put this off, what's the cost per employee to...
Gary: If you give them full-blown stuff and everything - and really full - stuff, it's going to be somewhere around 6 to $10 per employee per month.
Dean: Okay.
Gary: I mean-
Dean: And-
Gary: It's very easy and inexpensive.
Dean: All right, exactly. Okay, so if you look at that 6 to $10 per employee per month, how many employees are they putting it through? What's your ideal?
Gary: We usually look at companies that have about 500 and up in employees, and namely the reason for that is to get the coaches in, again, to be able to pay for those coaches because of the fact that it gets unequal distribution at times. Just the way things work. You got to have certain amounts of dollars available. You can certainly do another approach where you say, "Okay, do you want to coach the new employee? You pay the money out of your pocket." The problem is they don't have the money, so it doesn't function well. It's - better that -
Dean: It's about 5,000 a month basically for a 500-
Gary: Yeah.
Dean: Person-
Gary: Yeah.
Dean: Okay.
Gary: If you look at a 500 company and if they're at 10 bucks will get a vast amount of services here. It's about 5,000 a month, and when you look at the covered payroll, like I said, it doesn't even show up, it's such a small number -
Dean: Right - exactly.
Gary: Yeah-
Dean: Part of what I-
Gary: And-
Dean: Was going to ask is that, then if we look at this, what is the cost to deliver it? The reason I'm asking that and the context of it is that when I say to people when we start looking at it, I say, "Sometimes it's less expensive to get somebody the result than it is to convince them to give you money to get the result." When I say that is that it's the actual... If you were to bring somebody on for a case study or for a trial or for something like that, I imagine that that's a fairly high-margin offering since it's all digital.
Gary: Right. Yeah, it's - all digital except when you get the coaches involved, and there-
Dean: Exactly.
Gary: Yeah, and there is some maintenance stuff because if technology doesn't work, then you got to help fix things where people - passwords or whatever. You get a lot of that customer service in the background to deal with those kinds of issues that come up with any kind of digital technology. If then the cost moves up when you start to get live people communicating through video conferencing or a phone call or email or text or whatever-
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: With a real person to help them solve this one money issue they're dealing with - because something pops up - all of a sudden they've got to handle something, and that's when they show up. Like, "My car just went on the fritz. I was told it was a thousand dollars to fix it or else I got to get a new car." They've always bought new cars, so they get this video, it talks about a used car and they're like, "Well, maybe I should consider a used car?"
Now, Dean, you know as well as I do, the difference between a new car and a used car, generally speaking, over say a six-year period is substantial. It's 10, 15, $20,000. It's not a small number. It's a really big number, but people, again, don't get the math, so they make decisions for a variety of reasons. My Dad always said, "Always buy a new car. I love the new car smell. If I get a used car, it's a lemon." There'll always be all of these different... which each one of them doesn't make a lot of sense when you start to really inspect it, but they don't know that because they've never looked at it any other way.
Then, a video shows up and they go, "Oh, here's a different way of thinking about it." They go back to the check platform. They call the coach. The coach says, "Oh, in your case, you'll save $200 a month for the next six years by doing this used car, blah, blah, blah, versus the new car. Oh, by the way," because they can turn around and show everything, "You'll be able to pay off that credit card three years earlier and you'll pay your student debt off four years earlier."
Dean: Right.
Gary: Now, when you put it in that term to somebody, they go, "Why are we not buying a used car?" They just made a good, smart decision because they engaged with a coach who could then help them think through the ramifications of buying a new car versus a used car.
Dean: Yeah. My thought was, who else would... I'm wondering about, would this be something that you could bundle with or as a partner with a payroll company? Or with someone who's all but like linked to their paycheck -
Gary: That's actually... Yeah, that's a great, great question, and I've spoken to a few of them, but because they're in a certain lane, it's hard for them to... Now, you're - if you can find somebody would. It's hard for them to get outside of that to look at this differently than they look at everything else because, see, I'm... If you think about the 401(k) as kind of one of the rail cars in your overall money train, right?
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Gary: It's like the focus of most companies. They go, "Well, that's really only for old Dean, old Gary, when they're in their 60s, and here they are and right straight in front of them is a $22,000 balance and a student debt that's killing them and you're saying, "But we'll give you a 3% match so that when you're an old dude you'll hopefully have enough money." I'm like, "Yeah, but I need this," and so they're struggling, this person, to get this thing done or something else, but what it is it's one rail car out of the money train, of which there's six or seven other ones that'll become important. The company, this is strange, they go to their 401(k) advisor and they'd say, "Well, how do we help our employees more?" Well, by not putting all of your money towards a 401(k), buy putting it towards all of these other issues your clients have, excuse me, your employees have. We can go through and find out what those are. We can find out if you've got a younger population and maybe 40% of our workforce has problems with paying down credit card debt and student debt.
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: Or you got a huge middle workforce that's worried about funding for college education for their children or getting close to that or so forth. Or, if you have an older workforce, which is killing the company because of the cost of healthcare. It's just absolutely killing the company and they can't retire because they're trapped. They're trapped to get out of here, so yeah, then we put programs in for them, but whatever your company has structured, let's have the monies go to the right rail cars within this money train and make the thing run more smoothly down the track and be more productive and safer and do all of that. That's what we an do. We can really go in and customize to that company to then fit their particular employees to meet their needs and not get focused on just the 401(k) or focused on something else.
When they get a payroll person or I get a 401(k), they see the world through the payroll lens. If we can get them to see the world through what you just said earlier is, "What does the C-suite believe they want to with the entire ones?" How do they want to make the overall body economic better? How do they want to make sure that the changes are visceral enough to get people to feel like they're confident and come to work with confidence and produce better and have better safety? How do we do that even from a payroll provider's perspective?
Dean: That's what I mean is that... It feels like there's a lot of silos that are sort of all independent, all going for the same thing, some share of the company dollar for just overriding thing of well-being, which could be attributed with, like you said, the 401(k), some benefits or not benefits. I love this whole financial coaching, but very few people... I've never heard of any companies offering stuff like that, so you have kind of an open slot there. These payroll companies, the 401(k) companies, the dental insurance, the workplace safety, all of these things where... I mean, I don't know the details, but our mutual friend Paul Able-
Gary: Right -
Dean: Lucky to combine and taking something that is traditionally an expense and turning it into a reduced or a profit center for a -
Gary: Absolutely - and Paul and I have spoken about this and-
Dean: Okay.
Gary: The difference is his circle of folks that he's helping are in a much smaller company so-
Dean: Right, exactly.
Gary: We don't have a solution yet for the smaller companies because the financial coach is so integral to the decision-making process.
Dean: Yeah -
Gary: It is integral and we are looking at a different model for that to have the employee pay for, but again, we run into that same issue is the ones who really, really need it can't afford to do that. We go back to the company and we see the company in the 50s and 60s and 70s, they basically took care of all of the retirement and all of the needs for their employees and they could because that was a utopian time where Corporate America had no competitors in the entire world.
We were kind of in this unusual environment where we could spend enormous amounts of money on employee benefits because the car companies in Japan and Germany and all of the other ones didn't recover from World War II yet. Well, now, we're in this environment where companies had to be really smart about how they pushed their money around, and basically the two biggest problem areas are health and money. There's a lot of studies show that a very big connection between the two that a lot of money stress has caused, hypertension and diabetes and all of these other things.
When you say wellness, you can basically say wellness and you're really talking about both when you're looking at that standpoint, but they've certainly addressed heavily the health wellness, but very lightly the financial wellness side, which is now being addressed in these various programs. The interesting part is the financial wellness is so, so much less expensive because you don't have the doctors and nurses and TAs and all of the other ones who are very costly to get in front of anytime you need to do it. You don't and so the cost of delivering this thing, if you're looking at it purely from a cost standpoint, is much, much less.
The result is much, much higher, so Dean, to your point, is how do we make that clear communication of, "Guys, at least try this? It looks to be from what we see a big result from a small effort and a lot of good will to your employees by addressing their financial health straight on."
Dean: Yeah, and that's where the interesting thing is that part of these things in the case studies that make them proof elements in a way is that a lot of them... The danger is that it's correlation and not causation in a way that if they say, "Well, we're getting these extra things like, 'Oh, our costs have gone done or whatever.'" If you can link them and show the comparison or whatever that there's a reason why that it's because of this program that these specific numbers are going down and they ROI on that is tremendous. Over time, the longer that this goes on, the more evident that the pattern is because it's more difficult in the short term to show these ramifications of it, but...
Gary: It takes a while. We tell companies you really want to have a 10-year perspective here-
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: Because people will raise their hands when they do. When they're ready to deal with a money issue, that's when they're ready and they don't all jump on right away. We -
Dean: I'll tell you-
Gary: The... Yeah, go ahead, Dean.
Dean: One of the best marketing things that I've ever done... decisions that we've made was we started a case study with one of our clients to show the long-term implications of doing our Getting Listings program for the real estate agents. We're up to now, end of September, we've got the seven-year results now to show what's happened over seven years and it's tremendous because we laid it out in an infographic that tracks the whole thing over seven years. That is really compelling, you know? How-
Gary: Yeah -
Dean: How -... Have you identified companies? The good thing is that there are... I want to get you some tactical things that we could do, is you've identified a list of companies that would be ideal for this?
Gary: I would say generally not. It's-
Dean: Okay.
Gary: We've been using the entrée, though we're changing now to go through 401(k) advisors because they tend to be a trusted advisor for a company, and then the company kind of associates money issues with them and so, hey-
Dean: Yes.
Gary: And they ask for financial wellness because they know it's a buzzword out there from these folks. It's been more of a driven from that direction, then-
Dean: Okay.
Gary: Which would make more sense, like you said, to actually drive it to what really is going on. Who is the ideal prospect and would be more amenable to doing something about this and getting it going versus just going to everybody out there who seems to have a 401(k) and seeing if they're interested.
Dean: Right. If knew companies that have some set of sort of requirements that you have checklist kind of things, that if you could select a small group of them, meaning, say, 500 of them kind of thing as your dream clients, then just like you've done with all of these videos, will be great is to pick those HR directors and go directly to them with a postcard that has QR code that goes to one of your videos kind of thing.
If you were to let the HR directors kind of experience some of what you're talking about, like if you were to think about... You said there are 12 basic categories kind of thing that you put them in?
Gary: Yes. Yeah, so it's like tax, investing, you know -
Dean: What I might-
Gary: And so forth.
Dean: Do is... Have you seen the full-page ad that I did in Success Magazine for the 9-word email?
Gary: I think so because I've seen it through I think Genius. I've seen it - before.
Dean: Right, yeah, so it looks like an article, it looks like that. What I might do is take one of your big best concepts for each of those 12 and write a full-page article as if you were in this HR Magazine kind of thing that addresses the best thing that you could share with somebody about this idea. Then, on the back of the postcard, have UR codes, like have your titles of the videos kind of thing, and instead of play buttons, have your QR codes that somebody could scan to activate the video.
Gary: Right.
Dean: Because now, one of the newest things that I'm helping my postcard guys drive is digital variable QR codes so that you could have it addressed to Nancy Whoever, HR Director at this particular company and the QR code would be specifically triggered to her so that-
Gary: Oh-
Dean: If she - were to scan one of these, then you would know that Nancy at Fantastic Co. scanned the card and you would be able to then follow up or have something more specific to them to see who's engaged out of those, you know?
Gary: It's interesting you say that, Dean, because what I've found - is when we get to the point where somebody says, "Hey, could I see a video?" Invariably, we'll show them a video. It's usually two to three minutes long and I find this visceral reaction from people because when you do your own stuff, it's hard to give your own value to your own stuff. You know how that goes.
Dean: Yep.
Gary: I get this visceral reaction as they get it and they go, "Wow, I want to do this." It's-
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: It seems like they always get this really positive-
Dean: Yes, right.
Gary: Result and, of course, I think, "Well, I guess I did a decent video because obviously the idea was to get them motivated, to get them to take action and all of that. I do know the videos elicit generally a very good response from people because I think they recognize those same elements because I'm coaching in there. It's a financial coach way. I don't do it in the standard educational way because I recognize that people need to see it in a way that makes sense to them that they can grasp it and go, "Oh, that's what I'm missing," or, "I never thought of it that way." Or, "Oh, boy, I never got that." I see those kind of reactions from people and I realize they see value in it. I think you're on to something here because-
Dean: I think so, too. I see it-
Gary: Yeah.
Dean: Completely.
Gary: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that that's a really great idea.
Dean: In that way, your sending something that's really valuable. It's an interesting thing and I Know that you are a teacher at heart, right? That you're really, you want to educate people and the sort of mindset that I put myself in when I was writing that ad was I said, "What would I write, what could I share on this page that would be the most valuable page in the magazine? What - would I do if Success Magazine was paying me $10,000 to write this article versus me paying Success Magazine $10,000 to let me run it?" You know?
Gary: Right, right, right. Yeah.
Dean: If you take that mindset that, what would you do if Fantastic Co. hired you to write 12 really great articles and show your videos the HR directors? You were being paid to educate HR directors about return on financial well-being?
Gary: That's really good. That's a great way to look at it. It's funny you should say that, but I picked this up from either Genius Network or Strategic Coach, where in my video room I have here, it's right in front of me. It's up on the wall. It's a little thing that says, "What's the aha in this video?" Before I do every video, I want to know what's the aha in what - features are seeing. Okay, here's Fantastic Co. They've hired me and they want me to get an aha. On each video, somebody goes, "Oh, that was interesting," or, "Hey, I'm on the -
Dean: For the HR - for the HR?
Gary: For the HR, so every one of those twelve have got to have a really strong aha kind of thing, and that's what you're saying, I think.
Dean: That's exactly what I'm saying because now that's going to drive it's own... They're going to start looking forward to this postcard. HR directors don't have gatekeepers for their mail and for their stuff as much as like a CEO would. If you're sending a postcard that looks like a valuable educational series kind of thing...
Gary: Yes-
Dean: I think your -
Gary: That's really cool.
Dean: I think you would get through. You just adopted a thousand of them or 500 of them and sent that to them. That same thinking with Alex Epstein that we went through, there's only 250 people that can hire him. The 250 leaders of the biggest energy companies, you know?
Gary: Sure.
Dean: The same thing here. If we look at the... There's infinitely more companies that could hire you for that, but lets just take 500 of them and focus on really deploying a six- to 12-month test on those. I don't think you can-
Gary: No, and-
Dean: Go wrong.
Gary: That would be outstanding. It's almost like the Einstein letter, you put out every month.
Dean: The World's - Most Interesting Postcard, yeah.
Gary: Yes. It's a great postcard. We've been doing that, too, from your direction. It's great because it comes out, it's really interesting, and then on the back side, there's always a call to action, something to say, "Hey, who do you know that's dealing with... you know, they're ready to retire. I want to know how to deal with the issues that come up or whatever it happens to be.
Dean: Right.
Gary: We've gotten results from that and it goes out every month and it's a really powerful way to do it. You're basically saying the same thing except instead of the call to action is really going to be this video, QR Mode, but -
Dean: We'll still have a super signature on the postcard-
Gary: Yes, yeah.
Dean: Saying, "Whenever you're ready, here's four ways we can help you.
Gary: Yeah, because that's what you're talking about, and the postcard's got this nice, bright yellow, so by color you know -
Dean: This would be a little difference. This one would be a little bit bigger, so it looked like a magazine article. If you'd like to-
Gary: Okay.
Dean: If you were writing an article for HR Magazine, that would be the kind of thing.
Gary: Got it.
Dean: I've got the whole format.
Gary: Oh, yeah, and you - probably have -. Alex has probably been doing his thing knowing Alex-
Dean: Yeah.
Gary: I know him pretty well because he does have a such a limited number of folks given with his particular expertise on it. That's really cool, Dean. Makes a lot of sense because that's the people who are most passionate about trying to help out the team members of their employers -
Dean: I think we -... I think we've gone and launched an evil scheme here.
Gary: A perfectly evil scheme.
Dean: Yes. I mean, this was good. With a heart, evil with a heart. Let's do it.
Gary: Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful.
Dean: I love it. Well, that was fun.
Gary: Yeah. Yeah, it was. That was a good riff back and forth on things and it was [crosstalk 01:08:48] really helpful getting me to think through and- vocalize this. Appreciate it, Dean. You always are magic with that, and starting off with the cow shed and looking at all of that.
Dean: Yeah. That's great.
Gary: We had a Brown Swiss cow that my family when they moved to a farm 45 years ago, so that's why I know about that particular breed -
Dean: I was going to say -"Boy, this is great. You've really taken this to heart. Yeah.
Gary: Yeah.
Dean: I love it.
Gary: Yep.
Dean: All right, Gary. Well, I'll look forward to talking with you and seeing this unfold because I think that's going to be a good thing.
Gary: That'll be great, Dean. Thank you. I really appreciate it. You gave me a lot more clarity on, again, the Four Profit Activators, the whole before unit thing, which we're struggling with, and that's wonderful, so thank you and appreciate it.
Dean: Awesome. Thanks.
Gary: All right, man. See you.
Dean: There we have it, another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation and go deeper in how the 8-Profit Activators can apply to your business, two things you can do. Right now, you can go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com and you can download a copy of The More Cheese Less Whiskers book and you can listen to the back episodes, of course, if you're just listening here on iTunes.
Secondly, the thing that we talk about in applying all of the 8-Profit Activators are part of the breakthrough DNA process, and you can download a book and a score card and watch a video all about the 8-Profit Activators at breakthroughdna.com. That's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business. That's really the way we think about breakthrough DNA as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there. That's it for this week. Have a great week and we will be back next time with another episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers.