Financial Literacy for Kids with Dan Sullivan and Chad Willardson

[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to inside strategic coach with Dan Sullivan and special guest today and author of smart not spoiled Chad willardson Chad it is awesome to have you on the show cannot wait to jump into smart not spoil this incredible book let me just read the subtitle the seven money skills kids must Master before leaving the nest super important topic that a lot of people miss so before we jump in Dan I I know you've got some great things to say about why this is so important but Chad why don't you give us a little bit of an intro as to who you are and why you wrote the book so this topic is important to me both professionally and personally and uh once again Shannon and Dan thank you for having me on I'm a father of five kids my wife and I have five children ages six to 17 and one of the things that we struggle with as successful entrepreneurs is how do we teach our kids to be smart and not spoiled how do we not ruin them you know they have things that we never had and so my background in wealth management for entrepreneurs and families I just felt like if I can't get this right then nobody can and so I I needed to really kind of dispense the knowledge I've gained as a parent and as a financial expert to the world to give families and parents resources to really you know figure out what do we need to teach kids how do we need to teach them and why do we need to teach them about money to teach them basically the correct principles that are not being taught in schools and so that's just something that I'm very passionate about and and that's where this book came from I was thinking of how great it was the timing of the book that it came out during what I call the great lockdown you know worldwide and I think that the issue of education and children so obviously education in the family and how the family educates but the kind of education that children are receiving in the school that's suddenly become a hot issue I'm a kind of a political junkie and so I read the articles and I watch what's going on and it seems to me that we've reached a tectonic shift in how parents are thinking especially if they're entrepreneurial parents and they they have the position to kind of create the freedom for their family to kind of operate according to their own values their own principles so can you you think of a single incident that actually triggered the decision to write the book because it also accompanied something you did with your children at the same time sure it's such an interesting opportunity to really step back and evaluate what are my kids being taught and who's teaching them and is that what I really want and I would say you know one of the instances I referenced in my book was we talk about how my wife and I have never paid an allowance you know we just have never given our kids an allowance just paying them to exist and to breathe we've always tried to create opportunities for them to take initiative and to be entrepreneurial to earn money I remember we were leaving Disneyland and we'd already spent a lot of money that day with five kids at Disneyland and it's the end of the day the firework show is done and we're walking out towards the tram to the parking lot and one of my younger children sees the Mickey Mouse balloons that are glow in the dark it says Dad Dad can we each get one of those Mickey Mouse balloons and and I was like uh no we've already kind of spent enough money for the day so we're just going to call it a day and they're like well just go over to that money machine box over there and take some of the money out and then we can get our balloons and it kind of hit me like you know what if they think the money comes that freely out of the money machine box then we need to do a little bit more conversations and education about the source of money what money means and that was one of the kind of one of the moments where I said I've got to do something differently obviously so yeah Chad what about yourself let's get a little history here how did you grow grow up I grew up in a middle income family pretty modest home my parents were married I'm the oldest of four kids and we had about a 1,000 squ foot house when I was growing up my parents had a 10-year-old used car very frugal very responsible very charitable but not a lot of money background not entrepreneurs no entrepreneurs in my family I was kind of the more of a of a risk-taker personality kind of a go for it kind of kid you know we were taught to be responsible but I didn't know much about money growing up so this is something that I learned after I started my career post college so the other issue that came up at the same time as the motivation to write the book was your own observations at right at the beginning of the lockdown what happened to the school system system and how your own children who I guess are all in the school system so if they're six to 17 I would say they're all connected so what did you observe first of all it was a natural situation so there was disruption just caused by a general unnatural situation in the world but would you observe that just said even when it's natural there's something wrong here I think what was interesting is first of all school was cancelled and I live in the state of California so we have stricter rules than some of the states in the US but first school was cancelled and then it was brought back virtually and if you can imagine I'm working mostly from home virtually and then I have five kids who are supposed to each be zooming from home so we've got six of us my wife's trying to manage it and at the same time we're going through a major home remodel so it was like 15 to 20 Construction workers plus six of us on Zoom it was chaos but as we started observing a little bit about how the learning was going with this Zoom school and this new world it kind of caused me to pause and reflect and my wife and I said is this really what we want you know do we want our kids in this system and are we getting the value that we really want and do we have the freedoms that we want and basically the answer was no to all of that as we saw was being taught and the learning that was happening it was like you know what if we take this into our own hands if we find some potential partners and tutors that are experts in their fields could we create a curriculum could we create a program where we could teach kids about entrepreneurship and money and finance and you know communication and public speaking and lots of these things that aren't really taught in the school systems and so it coincided me with writing this book the decisions to really kind of check out of the Matrix for our kids and get out of that system and create a more Family Value focused program that we feel will serve our kids better in the long run well one of the things that's interesting is Shannon you probably remember it was a TED Talk and it was the person who talked about outliers Malcolm Gladwell it could have been Malcolm Gladwell but I don't think it was it was somebody else Malcolm Gladwell well wrote a book called outliers but this person and he said that you have to understand he said that for about the last 100 years we've thought about processing people in systems that are very very similar to how factories process materials and products and you know that was kind of appropriate that was kind of appropriate because the type of Life the type of Lifestyle the type of work that people would do when they finished 12 years of the primary and secondary school Factory they would go out and they would get jobs in factories and they would live in housing areas and in communities where everybody worked in the factory but that's not been true now for a good 30 30 or 40 years and I think that education is the last system in society to change totally yeah it was Dr Ken Robinson's Ted Talk which was yeah phenomenal because he said that's how the system was designed to produce people for factory workers but that is no longer the world we live in that's still our education system yeah it was very interesting I actually got on to this very very early so I was born in the 40s and started first grade in 1950 and I had a mother who was you know just totally that what you're interested in get really interested in it and you know things that you're really passionate about about really build some skill around the things that you're passionate about and I remember when my mother died my sister who was the oldest she's 87 almost 87 and she sent all my report cards that my mother had stored away so I 12 years of school 1 through 12 same building same more or less 50 students I went to school with so you got two report cards a year and so I had 24 report cards it was interesting because of mostly A's you know I was a good student but there would be a c every once in a while and I remember I'd bring it home and show my mom and she says well I guess you weren't interested in that you know so the big thing is that I feel blessed that I think that I had two you know highly individual parents you know my father only got through to grade eight and he was a farmer and my mother graduated and I think she did a teaching program somewhere because she was a supply teacher but even then you know I could tell that the world was changing in my teens and my 20s I just said you know I don't think that these big monstrous systems these factories were these big pyramids and the office buildings that went along with them were pyramids and the big government pyramids and Union pyramids everything was a big pyramid and I just had a sense that things were changing because the technology was changing yeah so when you made the decision that the system was no longer doing what well the system was doing exactly what systems are supposed to do is your argument with your children being systematized you didn't want your children actually being systematized what did you focus on then as the replacement for them we started with the thought process of what are some of the values and skills we think our children would need to learn to be most prepared to be successful in their future and I think one of the problems is the curriculum like you said I don't think it's evolved much it hasn't changed much it's a systems based curriculum and you know in the book I talk about how teenagers graduate high school knowing how to dissect a frog and they know the inner parts of a cell but they have no idea anything about investing or taxes or borrowing or you know cash flow budgeting or things like that that every single adult is going to need to learn and so my wife and I essentially started from Ground Zero what do we want our kids what are the values and skills we want our kids to learn by the time they're 18 years old and then the next step was well who are some of the mentors and experts and one are the best minds and thinkers that they can tap into to teach those different values and skills so fortunately when it comes to the entrepreneurial things and the financial skills that's something that I can fill but there are many other topics that we've looked at and had to bring in some who not how Partners so just as you talked about this in the social settings which you did I'm sure you know friends family whatever was there a range of response to what you were doing definitely a range I don't think people are surprised with it now because they kind of know that I I'm a eight quick start and I make decisions based on kind of what seems like the best route but certainly some people I think Express the desire to do it but they just didn't have the courage to I felt like that was one of the things I noticed was like man I would love to do that but you know they just don't have that next level courage to check their kids out of the system and really explore what's best for them you know we just went to New York City for a Thanksgiving break and my wife kept our younger three kids for an extra week there and went to all these cool museums and did these basically Hands-On experiential historical site visits for a full week she had it all mapped out and it's like my kids wouldn't never get that kind of experience if they're sitting in a classroom for eight hours hearing lectures out of a book but here they are they can say I've been to the Natural Museum of History and here's the cool stuff I saw with my own eyes yeah you look like you're just at the beginning of your career but you've actually got quite a number of years behind you clients kind of like you do you have clients the financial investment clients who are also dealing with the same issue yes I would say most of our clients I think in our business and this is my 20th year in business but in our business you kind of attract clients who were like you and so when I write down my ideal client if I'm honest with myself I look at the list and I'm like it's it's kind of like like who I would want to be close friends with someone who's like me but it's the ambitious it's the growth focused High earning entrepreneur family oriented goals focused coachable those kinds of people and those people are definitely seeing the same issues with what their kids are being taught and what they want their kids to learn so I felt like the book smart not spoiled has been a great hit amongst those types of people because it's exactly what they're looking for you know I've had lots of people reaching out saying hey I got a couple copies but I'm buying another 20 books and I'm going to send them to you could you sign them because I want to give them out to everyone I know who's got kids because it's something that we're thirsty for is teaching kids values about financial literacy and success and Entrepreneurship because it's just not being taught anywhere else so when you do this you were talking about Courage the people who don't have courage and one of the things that I find is that people who are courageous in the eyes of other people certainly it is courage I mean to do something something different but the other thing I always find that it's informed courage that they have a sense that there's actually currents that are going in a completely different direction and I want my children to be ready for those currents so what are you seeing in society that you may be not going against the norm at all but you're kind of taking advantage of something that will be the new Norm I see the currents taking it in a different direction in the that what these kids learn even in college let's say as a freshman at College four years later that stuff's completely irrelevant technology has changed and passed them by and so I feel like learning on the go my kids can look up something on YouTube and learn how to do something faster than taking a four Monon course in school and so I see technology collaboration free sourcing of information everywhere just really speeding up and accelerating the opportunities and so I want my kids to be on the front lines I want them to be on the edge of that technology growth and not to be sitting there just tolerating and accepting a system that is so slow moving you know I don't want them to get left behind so in coach we have some profiles the first one being the Colby profile and then the strength finder and to what degree have you taken advantage of analytical profile tools that you use yourself and you use them for your company probably use them for your clients have you also applied those to your children I have for my older two I learned a lot it makes more sense my oldest child is a lot like me she's an eight quick start she loves to get up in front of her room and speak and she can come up with stuff on the Fly she gave a public speech yesterday in front of a couple hundred people and I knew someone in the audience and they said I have never heard a teenager just get up and own the room like that and she had no notes she was just going for it and until I use those tools I just kind of could sense what she's good at but I could really kind of nail it down knowing what her scores are and what the tools are so we've used that for our older two kids we used it for my wife and I in fact we recently had a call with chrisy and and Julian were just talking about and even Shannon about some of the ways that we can work together because I'm a 7681 and my wife is a 7518 so she's not a quick and she's a high implementor and I'm exact opposite so I think using these tools in the family is extremely beneficial the sort of beginning point of unique ability I think is crucial here and I know when all the talk you know the summer of 2020 when you had the riots you know it was starting to get intensely political and that even came I think from the personal lives of the people who worked at coach you know and I was talking because I was hustling to supply you and I were hustling actually to create entirely new content that summer for our entrepreneurs and I was appreciating that you know if this whole group Identity or looking at who's competing and who has the greatest claim for being victimized by Society you know and all of a sudden color makes a difference size makes a difference what you're attracted to makes a difference I said you know if you don't start with unique ability you're going to take a Ron road somewhere along the line and I think that the unique ability concept just in the way that our team has performed for the last two years Chad I told our team we had a start the new year meeting first week of Jan January and we had an extraordinary year last year I mean I think quality of sales last year combined with the quantity of sales it was the best sales here in the history of the company but just everything how we treated the clients how we stayed in touch with the clients and I told them I said you know I can't think of a single thing that this company could have done better over the last two years than you did and I said I just feel intensely proud but it goes back again that everything in Co starts with the individual's unique ability so I'm wondering if specifically or just because you've become very very clear about your own unique ability that whether this gives you a sense of safety about your children if that you can just get them in touch with what they're uniquely good at absolutely then there are certain skills I think there are certain skills I still think Reading Writing and arithmetic are sure really really important but that the individual really knows their own unique uness that they're an individual and that being popular with their group is not their standard for their judgment absolutely in fact in the chapter I talk about Learn to Earn I'm talking about how to create value and earn money and it's all focused on these kids finding their unique ability what they like what they're good at and what someone might actually pay for and once they get all three of those as a kid the sooner they can learn that the better you know we talk about with my kids we talk about the results based economy and the time based economy which you've mentioned many times through coach and my daughter is actually my 17-year-old is saving up money for a service trip a three-week service trip in Zimbabwe and it's coming up this summer and she's got to earn her entire $5,000 and fund it herself and it's a service trip you know she's not going to be earning money but she's a nationally sponsored Adidas sponsored basketball player she's a very talented basketball player and so she went on Saturdays or on non-school holidays like Christmas break she does Private skills training for kids who are ages 7 to 12 when she's doing these skills trainings she's making $140 an hour and I said you realize that you could be working at a local fast food chain like some friends of yours making $14 an hour doing something you don't enjoy you might be mopping the floor or cleaning the toilets or picking up trash $14 an hour minus taxes and you're making $140 an hour doing something you really love which is playing sports outside you know so my son the second one who's 14 he's engineer he's a Hands-On kinesthetic high implementer and he's doing a couple business things with a 3D printer where he gets to use his hands and he gets to make a lot more money than if he was just taking a Time based job and so I think you're spot on Dan that helping kids discover C their unique abilities and then thrive in something like that is going to give them more confidence and frankly makes me wonder if the whole College route is even the university route is even worth it I mean yes it's an important certificate I guess as a baseline but if they can discover what they're good at what they like and how they can create value in the world then I don't think that other stuff becomes as important how does this fit in with sort of family life what you're talking about because what I notice is that there's sort of a an attitude on the part of people who are looking at you know what holds everything together and I've come down to an appreciation of religion as religion plays a part in people's lives the book that I just put out American happiness love that book by the way read it twice the whole point is I say there are certain mindsets that Americans have that the creation of of the country the activity of creating the country has forged certain mindsets if you didn't have these mindsets it was hard for you to be successful in the way the country formed the other thing is that it's an immigrants country so that a certain type of individual from far away in the world Europe or Africa or you know a lot of it's Asia now they are where they were born unique in a certain entrepreneu attitude that a lot of things are fixed in their life property for one thing in many places of the world if your family doesn't have property you're probably not going to have any property you know as you get to be an adult too they're attracted to a possibility and they you know the US has always done a good job of advertising itself around the planet you know through culture a lot through culture so when they came over we've had now 400 years you know basically and 20 year Generations we've had five times four so we've probably had 20 30 somewhere between 20 and 30 Generations here and there's a certain kind of DNA that forms from that I go through seven mindsets the first one is individualism second one is ingenuity the third one is exceptionalism fourth one is teamwork fifth one is growth sixth one is transformation and number seven is winning the Americans don't like this participation medals they don't like showing up medals they like clean winner clean loser you know agreed but the eighth one is the one that I've had the most conversation about is that Americans uniquely as a people uniquely in the world and uniquely and that it's totally voluntary uniquely feel they have a direct relationship with God the vast majority of americ even Americans who do not go to any particular church still have a feeling about that and my sense is that's one side of the political Spectrum in the United States right now the other political Spectrum has its values but at the center where my side and the side of most people that I talk to you know I have God in the center you know people say you believe in God and I said no I don't believe in God I experience God I said it's not a belief it's an experience and I said but I'm also clear that there are other people who don't have the experience but what I notice is when they don't have that experience they tend to have sort of like governments in the center you know and I think that seeing government as a religion really really creates some very fundamental problems for someone with an entrepreneurial minded approach to the world would you say that that would be true 100% yeah yeah 100% there and to me and to my family we're faith-based family and there's nothing the government could say that would make them a higher authority in my life so that's definitely not something that I would look forward to is more and more and more government making decisions for my family when we feel that we can make those best decisions for our family as parents yeah do you have any sense that your example of what you're doing has influenced other families absolutely yeah absolutely we've talked to many people because we did this you know it's been over a year a year and a half so we've had other families who have kind of latched on and and made similar decisions I think sometimes it takes a few bold people to do things against the traditional system that will open up the doors for others to take those same steps yeah probably in your favor is the statistics from the rental truck industry as far as oneway trips out of California last year they ran out of trucks yeah we have many neighbors who have left California one of them they said to drive the U-Haul truck to South Carolina was going to be $111,000 one way to drive it back it was $800 and so he had to take two trips and he said otherwise how do they get the trucks back you know yeah yeah exactly so he ended up just buying a trailer because he had two trips and he said it's just not worth it yeah you know so I think we're seeing a change in the way people view education especially of their young children and it's just a it's a great reset I think to really question the systems that have been in place for so long and say what are my children being taught and what would I like them to be taught one of the things I really appreciate about your book Chad is that it educates parents as well as the kids it's like to do a financial literacy curriculum most people are like I've got two or three of the seven things that you talk about and I know for me it took me until mid to late 20s like I understood spend spending and saving right investing wasn't even on the radar that was a completely foreign concept and I'm still learning but much better now in my 50s what I love about it is it's yes it's for kids but you're going to read it as a parent and you actually equip you as a parent to be able to go oh this is what my kids need to know I probably need to Bone up on this this and this and I really feel like you've given this amazing guide to people to give them confidence about what people need to know to be independent to be successful to actually accomplish American happiness you know and be able to participate in that so I know I really appreciate it from my own education standpoint so then I can pass it on my kids who are 18 and 21 I'm like darn I wish I knew this earlier would have been really helpful Never Too Late yeah I just appreciate the perspective and the clarity and the models and examples you have in the book too as a parent it makes it way easier for me oh thank you I feel like we added a lot of little parent tips in there I put in a lot of stories from other parents but then at the end of each chapter I have something called try this at home family activities so just thrw in some little examples and ideas that families could actually try and Implement instead of just thinking about the topic as a philosophy yeah let's get a plug in here oh sure yeah smart not spoiled is there a preferred way that you want people to order the books or just go to Amazon just go to Amazon yeah I did this book stressfree money my first book I had a professional voice actor do it and this book was so full of personal stories with me and my kids that I did the voice audiobook myself went to the studio and did it here in La so yeah Shannon and I don't even bother reading the text we say you know if you want if you want the exact text read the text but Shannon just interviews me I'd like to jump just a bit Chad and go to the collaboration yes with Scott because this is enormously scalable the next thing that you're talking about I think the book is very scalable and it will be a tool that accompanies but I think the thing that you're doing with Scott Donell is really extraordinary it's exciting so the company we started is called gravy stack gravy stack is reimagining finance for kids it Bloss Med out of him hearing about this book and he already had a business that was doing business fairs child business fairs for kids and then he heard about Spar not spoiled and we we connected almost a year ago flew out to Arizona my wife and I and met with him and his wife and just hit it off we had plans to have dinner for an hour and it was 11:30 it was like a 5 hour dinner and they kicked us out of the restaurant so gravy stack is we're planning to launch between April and May of 2022 it's going to be a financial banking app for kids I don't even know where to start Dan to be honest we're so excited about it I think it's going to disrupt the banking system in a very big way for kids just let's talk about two capabilities here because it's a collaboration between two entrepreneurs that you check off the boxes you're cash confident that you're actually in relationship to this you are devoted to the same hero Target here true you know and that's what holds collaborations together is that it's for the parents and children yes to acquire not only knowledge but working capability of how to work with the banking system yes or the financial system in yes in general like you said we're both entrepreneurs who have cash confidence and Big Ideas I bring the financial expertise and the 20 years of experience there and he brings just an amazing visionary skill and the technology background he's a tech Visionary for sure and we've hired experts from Amazon pay from venmo from PayPal we've got some tech experts that have been in the financial industry we were just on the phone before this call actually and we've got a hire to coming in that's one of the best tech and gamifying experts in the industry so it's going to be an app that not only is a banking app for kids but it teaches entrepreneurship financial literacy kids are going to be able to challenge each other we're actually going to be I don't know if we've talked too much about it publicly yet but we're going to have an element of cryptocurrency and nfts for kids based on the financial literacy challenges that they're earning so a lot of exciting stuff you know when you were telling me about it because we also had dinner with Scott couple months ago in Scottdale Babs and I had just been on the trip with Peter DM amandas on the Breakthrough regenerative medicine but one of our stops was in Manchester New Hampshire with Dean Cayman and Dean Cayman is like a throwback inventor to the end of the 19th century I don't even know if he has a college degree but he's got 80 inventions to his name you know he has you can call it a wheelchair but it's not really a wheelchair but it can go up and downstairs you know he he vented this and go up and downstairs and a lot of his main customers for a lot of his health related products and that are the Veterans Administration it's for Battlefield wow individuals who are crippled on the battlefield and right now he is printing skin actually with 3D printers are printing skin for burn patients Battlefield burn and then also actually growing new bones using the original DNA of the injured person and ligaments and so that's what he's doing but he's got this very interesting thing that's called first f i St and if you want to talk about it crudely it's 1 million children worldwide who form into teams of usually around eight people and they're usually School sponsored it's a high school sponsored thing and as a team they'll create a robot and then they go into a worldwide competition and they have Local District Regional National and then World wow championships Babs and I sponsored two schools this year it's 10,000 and that brings in a skilled instructor otherwise everything is provided you know by the children themselves but it would be worth your while to watch their model and see if you can do this with gravy train gravy stack yeah gravy I'm sorry gravy stack gravy train comes later this is gravy train is their outcome yes for both us and the kids that's right yeah yeah gravy stack is the skill acquisition and gravy train is the Breakthrough result of the capabilities absolutely but the big thing if you could think about it because you could actually use almost like the Scout movement or something that there's levels of capability and levels of competition certification certification absolutely Y in fact we planned have a certification program I've been the merit badge counselor in the Boy Scouts of America for the personal financial merit badge for 20 years and so I modeled some of that certification progression in the gravy stack app and we've got a team working on that but kids will be able to be gravy stack certified which eventually will mean something they'll be able to say I have some Financial Independence literacy some achievement that they can use in the real world so yeah I think it's enormous because the next educational system will not look like the educational system that's not working agreed okay it's going to be a completely different form Ag and my sense if you have this capability development and then a competitive aspect did I mention that Americans really like winning winning is the experience and I think it's quite natural so that'll put the team in it we'll lend you our eight American you know happiness mindsets to be part of the educational system I think you're spot on though Dan because if you include all those elements within the learning for these kids and that's what the parents want like you said the parents want this Independence this Innovation winning success all these different opportunities freedoms you know these are the things that they want for their kids and I think when we involve technology in a fun gamified way it's not like we're the banks today that the banks today are like the tradition Schools they're outdated they're corporate they're institutional they these big blocks of nothingness where there's bureaucratic stuff everywhere what they're doing at the banks is they just literally are giving kids a debit card and a packet of jargon sending it home with the kids the kids are never going to read it they're not going to learn and so as we're creating these really cool avatars and and the skins and the the coins and the fun gamification where they can actually choose what they want to look like in the game and compete with friends and challenge friends and see the leaderboards and things like that it's just a totally different approach to the education and financial systems that like the school systems and the banking systems are just kind of old school outdated yeah it's very interesting the history I'm sort of a history buff and I looked at the history of the American public school system and it actually has its roots in Germany Germany was the first country country that really put in a public school system and that was in 1830s 1840s Germany wasn't actually a country until about 1870 they were all these little duchies and and then it was all melded together and they created this system and it was very very german-based it came to the United States because even today the largest ethnic percentage in the American population is actually German 46% of the American population has German ancestry so there was this connection and part of it which actually triggered it was that when the Catholics came to North America they already had a school system the Catholics always had a school system like I had 12 years 1 to 12 in a Catholic school and there were two Catholic parishes 50% of the population in my town was Catholic and they had the system right from the beginning when the Catholics planned it they brought the school system with them you know America is essentially a Protestant Christian Country Canada is actually more Catholic than the United States and so they saw a real worry that in the marketplace for opportunity and the marketplace for achievement that these Catholic kids were going to run ahead of the Protestant so there was this rush move to make sure that they had their own system and that it was funded by the government you know that it would government funded system and you know it did what it needed to do for when the main objective were these big systems you know I have no complaint but when the big systems are no longer the model of the world that anyone is going to go in and you're becoming even more that way in your school system it seems to me that there's a worthlessness to the activity totally and I'm leaving this conversation about smart not spoiled about Gra we stack really encouraged about how things to use our criteria Dan could be faster easier cheaper bigger results for our kids yeah because it does feel like existing systems are slow and bulky and bureaucratic and not so much really focused on the output for the kids but rather for the benefit of the people in the system so I'm I'm even more excited I was coming in about the possibilities and the speed you know between YouTube and gravy stack and all the ways that people can learn now and gamification is completely the way to get kids attention you've really I think contributed a major element to assisting parents with their kids to get a new better reality for their children which was what all of us really want thank you yeah I think it'll grow itself through entrepreneurial networking first of all it's a elective system I mean you have to pay for this system so it's not subsidized it's not a subsidized system but you know entrepreneurs are also the most charitable of individuals I mean that's proven by this Statistics that people who own their companies are the most charitable and generally contribute the most to their communities because they've got the freedom of time money relationship and purpose to do it it seems like you're doing something that's a perfect fit right here between the exponential growth it's not the number of people who are entrepreneurs but the capabilities of entrepreneurs that are being multiplied by technology and networking and a lot of the concepts that we're teaching in strategic coach about collaboration and teamwork I think your timing is just really good right here thank you thank you I'm excited and like Shannon said I feel like these Innovations and these concepts are going to be more attractive as people are realizing kind of that old staunchy traditional system is not creating the output and the outcomes for kids that our kids deserve in a changing World in a high-tech world where the world is more flat than it ever used to be yeah we need to be moving quickly you know these kids their attention spans are short you can't sit them in a classroom and treat them all the same when they've all got like you said different unique abilities and different interests well their attention span is short except when they're hyperfocused and when they're doing what they love when they get to choose electively like you said when they choose what they're learning and they choose what to focus on the sky is the limit when they're stuck in a box it's not the same thing yeah yeah that's awesome Chad thank you so much for joining us today it was really fun to have this wide ranging conversation about education but more importantly just how to get your kids to be financially literate which probably means you're gonna be more so show the book again sure yeah here it is there you go Shannon even brought it look on the Travel I appreciate that I brought it with me on my trip so go to Amazon yeah it's on Amazon all the good sources and also looking forward to gravy stack that'll be pretty exciting thank you thank you very much I'm excited thanks Chad

[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to inside strategic coach with Dan Sullivan and special guest today and author of smart not spoiled Chad willardson Chad it is awesome to have you on the show cannot wait to jump into smart not spoil this incredible book let me just read the subtitle the seven money skills kids must Master before leaving the nest super important topic that a lot of people miss so before we jump in Dan I I know you&#39;ve got some great things to say about why this is so important but Chad why don&#39;t you give us a little bit of an intro as to who you are and why you wrote the book so this topic is important to me both professionally and personally and uh once again Shannon and Dan thank you for having me on I&#39;m a father of five kids my wife and I have five children ages six to 17 and one of the things that we struggle with as successful entrepreneurs is how do we teach our kids to be smart and not spoiled how do we not ruin them you know they have things that we never had and so my background in wealth management for entrepreneurs and families I just felt like if I can&#39;t get this right then nobody can and so I I needed to really kind of dispense the knowledge I&#39;ve gained as a parent and as a financial expert to the world to give families and parents resources to really you know figure out what do we need to teach kids how do we need to teach them and why do we need to teach them about money to teach them basically the correct principles that are not being taught in schools and so that&#39;s just something that I&#39;m very passionate about and and that&#39;s where this book came from I was thinking of how great it was the timing of the book that it came out during what I call the great lockdown you know worldwide and I think that the issue of education and children so obviously education in the family and how the family educates but the kind of education that children are receiving in the school that&#39;s suddenly become a hot issue I&#39;m a kind of a political junkie and so I read the articles and I watch what&#39;s going on and it seems to me that we&#39;ve reached a tectonic shift in how parents are thinking especially if they&#39;re entrepreneurial parents and they they have the position to kind of create the freedom for their family to kind of operate according to their own values their own principles so can you you think of a single incident that actually triggered the decision to write the book because it also accompanied something you did with your children at the same time sure it&#39;s such an interesting opportunity to really step back and evaluate what are my kids being taught and who&#39;s teaching them and is that what I really want and I would say you know one of the instances I referenced in my book was we talk about how my wife and I have never paid an allowance you know we just have never given our kids an allowance just paying them to exist and to breathe we&#39;ve always tried to create opportunities for them to take initiative and to be entrepreneurial to earn money I remember we were leaving Disneyland and we&#39;d already spent a lot of money that day with five kids at Disneyland and it&#39;s the end of the day the firework show is done and we&#39;re walking out towards the tram to the parking lot and one of my younger children sees the Mickey Mouse balloons that are glow in the dark it says Dad Dad can we each get one of those Mickey Mouse balloons and and I was like uh no we&#39;ve already kind of spent enough money for the day so we&#39;re just going to call it a day and they&#39;re like well just go over to that money machine box over there and take some of the money out and then we can get our balloons and it kind of hit me like you know what if they think the money comes that freely out of the money machine box then we need to do a little bit more conversations and education about the source of money what money means and that was one of the kind of one of the moments where I said I&#39;ve got to do something differently obviously so yeah Chad what about yourself let&#39;s get a little history here how did you grow grow up I grew up in a middle income family pretty modest home my parents were married I&#39;m the oldest of four kids and we had about a 1,000 squ foot house when I was growing up my parents had a 10-year-old used car very frugal very responsible very charitable but not a lot of money background not entrepreneurs no entrepreneurs in my family I was kind of the more of a of a risk-taker personality kind of a go for it kind of kid you know we were taught to be responsible but I didn&#39;t know much about money growing up so this is something that I learned after I started my career post college so the other issue that came up at the same time as the motivation to write the book was your own observations at right at the beginning of the lockdown what happened to the school system system and how your own children who I guess are all in the school system so if they&#39;re six to 17 I would say they&#39;re all connected so what did you observe first of all it was a natural situation so there was disruption just caused by a general unnatural situation in the world but would you observe that just said even when it&#39;s natural there&#39;s something wrong here I think what was interesting is first of all school was cancelled and I live in the state of California so we have stricter rules than some of the states in the US but first school was cancelled and then it was brought back virtually and if you can imagine I&#39;m working mostly from home virtually and then I have five kids who are supposed to each be zooming from home so we&#39;ve got six of us my wife&#39;s trying to manage it and at the same time we&#39;re going through a major home remodel so it was like 15 to 20 Construction workers plus six of us on Zoom it was chaos but as we started observing a little bit about how the learning was going with this Zoom school and this new world it kind of caused me to pause and reflect and my wife and I said is this really what we want you know do we want our kids in this system and are we getting the value that we really want and do we have the freedoms that we want and basically the answer was no to all of that as we saw was being taught and the learning that was happening it was like you know what if we take this into our own hands if we find some potential partners and tutors that are experts in their fields could we create a curriculum could we create a program where we could teach kids about entrepreneurship and money and finance and you know communication and public speaking and lots of these things that aren&#39;t really taught in the school systems and so it coincided me with writing this book the decisions to really kind of check out of the Matrix for our kids and get out of that system and create a more Family Value focused program that we feel will serve our kids better in the long run well one of the things that&#39;s interesting is Shannon you probably remember it was a TED Talk and it was the person who talked about outliers Malcolm Gladwell it could have been Malcolm Gladwell but I don&#39;t think it was it was somebody else Malcolm Gladwell well wrote a book called outliers but this person and he said that you have to understand he said that for about the last 100 years we&#39;ve thought about processing people in systems that are very very similar to how factories process materials and products and you know that was kind of appropriate that was kind of appropriate because the type of Life the type of Lifestyle the type of work that people would do when they finished 12 years of the primary and secondary school Factory they would go out and they would get jobs in factories and they would live in housing areas and in communities where everybody worked in the factory but that&#39;s not been true now for a good 30 30 or 40 years and I think that education is the last system in society to change totally yeah it was Dr Ken Robinson&#39;s Ted Talk which was yeah phenomenal because he said that&#39;s how the system was designed to produce people for factory workers but that is no longer the world we live in that&#39;s still our education system yeah it was very interesting I actually got on to this very very early so I was born in the 40s and started first grade in 1950 and I had a mother who was you know just totally that what you&#39;re interested in get really interested in it and you know things that you&#39;re really passionate about about really build some skill around the things that you&#39;re passionate about and I remember when my mother died my sister who was the oldest she&#39;s 87 almost 87 and she sent all my report cards that my mother had stored away so I 12 years of school 1 through 12 same building same more or less 50 students I went to school with so you got two report cards a year and so I had 24 report cards it was interesting because of mostly A&#39;s you know I was a good student but there would be a c every once in a while and I remember I&#39;d bring it home and show my mom and she says well I guess you weren&#39;t interested in that you know so the big thing is that I feel blessed that I think that I had two you know highly individual parents you know my father only got through to grade eight and he was a farmer and my mother graduated and I think she did a teaching program somewhere because she was a supply teacher but even then you know I could tell that the world was changing in my teens and my 20s I just said you know I don&#39;t think that these big monstrous systems these factories were these big pyramids and the office buildings that went along with them were pyramids and the big government pyramids and Union pyramids everything was a big pyramid and I just had a sense that things were changing because the technology was changing yeah so when you made the decision that the system was no longer doing what well the system was doing exactly what systems are supposed to do is your argument with your children being systematized you didn&#39;t want your children actually being systematized what did you focus on then as the replacement for them we started with the thought process of what are some of the values and skills we think our children would need to learn to be most prepared to be successful in their future and I think one of the problems is the curriculum like you said I don&#39;t think it&#39;s evolved much it hasn&#39;t changed much it&#39;s a systems based curriculum and you know in the book I talk about how teenagers graduate high school knowing how to dissect a frog and they know the inner parts of a cell but they have no idea anything about investing or taxes or borrowing or you know cash flow budgeting or things like that that every single adult is going to need to learn and so my wife and I essentially started from Ground Zero what do we want our kids what are the values and skills we want our kids to learn by the time they&#39;re 18 years old and then the next step was well who are some of the mentors and experts and one are the best minds and thinkers that they can tap into to teach those different values and skills so fortunately when it comes to the entrepreneurial things and the financial skills that&#39;s something that I can fill but there are many other topics that we&#39;ve looked at and had to bring in some who not how Partners so just as you talked about this in the social settings which you did I&#39;m sure you know friends family whatever was there a range of response to what you were doing definitely a range I don&#39;t think people are surprised with it now because they kind of know that I I&#39;m a eight quick start and I make decisions based on kind of what seems like the best route but certainly some people I think Express the desire to do it but they just didn&#39;t have the courage to I felt like that was one of the things I noticed was like man I would love to do that but you know they just don&#39;t have that next level courage to check their kids out of the system and really explore what&#39;s best for them you know we just went to New York City for a Thanksgiving break and my wife kept our younger three kids for an extra week there and went to all these cool museums and did these basically Hands-On experiential historical site visits for a full week she had it all mapped out and it&#39;s like my kids wouldn&#39;t never get that kind of experience if they&#39;re sitting in a classroom for eight hours hearing lectures out of a book but here they are they can say I&#39;ve been to the Natural Museum of History and here&#39;s the cool stuff I saw with my own eyes yeah you look like you&#39;re just at the beginning of your career but you&#39;ve actually got quite a number of years behind you clients kind of like you do you have clients the financial investment clients who are also dealing with the same issue yes I would say most of our clients I think in our business and this is my 20th year in business but in our business you kind of attract clients who were like you and so when I write down my ideal client if I&#39;m honest with myself I look at the list and I&#39;m like it&#39;s it&#39;s kind of like like who I would want to be close friends with someone who&#39;s like me but it&#39;s the ambitious it&#39;s the growth focused High earning entrepreneur family oriented goals focused coachable those kinds of people and those people are definitely seeing the same issues with what their kids are being taught and what they want their kids to learn so I felt like the book smart not spoiled has been a great hit amongst those types of people because it&#39;s exactly what they&#39;re looking for you know I&#39;ve had lots of people reaching out saying hey I got a couple copies but I&#39;m buying another 20 books and I&#39;m going to send them to you could you sign them because I want to give them out to everyone I know who&#39;s got kids because it&#39;s something that we&#39;re thirsty for is teaching kids values about financial literacy and success and Entrepreneurship because it&#39;s just not being taught anywhere else so when you do this you were talking about Courage the people who don&#39;t have courage and one of the things that I find is that people who are courageous in the eyes of other people certainly it is courage I mean to do something something different but the other thing I always find that it&#39;s informed courage that they have a sense that there&#39;s actually currents that are going in a completely different direction and I want my children to be ready for those currents so what are you seeing in society that you may be not going against the norm at all but you&#39;re kind of taking advantage of something that will be the new Norm I see the currents taking it in a different direction in the that what these kids learn even in college let&#39;s say as a freshman at College four years later that stuff&#39;s completely irrelevant technology has changed and passed them by and so I feel like learning on the go my kids can look up something on YouTube and learn how to do something faster than taking a four Monon course in school and so I see technology collaboration free sourcing of information everywhere just really speeding up and accelerating the opportunities and so I want my kids to be on the front lines I want them to be on the edge of that technology growth and not to be sitting there just tolerating and accepting a system that is so slow moving you know I don&#39;t want them to get left behind so in coach we have some profiles the first one being the Colby profile and then the strength finder and to what degree have you taken advantage of analytical profile tools that you use yourself and you use them for your company probably use them for your clients have you also applied those to your children I have for my older two I learned a lot it makes more sense my oldest child is a lot like me she&#39;s an eight quick start she loves to get up in front of her room and speak and she can come up with stuff on the Fly she gave a public speech yesterday in front of a couple hundred people and I knew someone in the audience and they said I have never heard a teenager just get up and own the room like that and she had no notes she was just going for it and until I use those tools I just kind of could sense what she&#39;s good at but I could really kind of nail it down knowing what her scores are and what the tools are so we&#39;ve used that for our older two kids we used it for my wife and I in fact we recently had a call with chrisy and and Julian were just talking about and even Shannon about some of the ways that we can work together because I&#39;m a 7681 and my wife is a 7518 so she&#39;s not a quick and she&#39;s a high implementor and I&#39;m exact opposite so I think using these tools in the family is extremely beneficial the sort of beginning point of unique ability I think is crucial here and I know when all the talk you know the summer of 2020 when you had the riots you know it was starting to get intensely political and that even came I think from the personal lives of the people who worked at coach you know and I was talking because I was hustling to supply you and I were hustling actually to create entirely new content that summer for our entrepreneurs and I was appreciating that you know if this whole group Identity or looking at who&#39;s competing and who has the greatest claim for being victimized by Society you know and all of a sudden color makes a difference size makes a difference what you&#39;re attracted to makes a difference I said you know if you don&#39;t start with unique ability you&#39;re going to take a Ron road somewhere along the line and I think that the unique ability concept just in the way that our team has performed for the last two years Chad I told our team we had a start the new year meeting first week of Jan January and we had an extraordinary year last year I mean I think quality of sales last year combined with the quantity of sales it was the best sales here in the history of the company but just everything how we treated the clients how we stayed in touch with the clients and I told them I said you know I can&#39;t think of a single thing that this company could have done better over the last two years than you did and I said I just feel intensely proud but it goes back again that everything in Co starts with the individual&#39;s unique ability so I&#39;m wondering if specifically or just because you&#39;ve become very very clear about your own unique ability that whether this gives you a sense of safety about your children if that you can just get them in touch with what they&#39;re uniquely good at absolutely then there are certain skills I think there are certain skills I still think Reading Writing and arithmetic are sure really really important but that the individual really knows their own unique uness that they&#39;re an individual and that being popular with their group is not their standard for their judgment absolutely in fact in the chapter I talk about Learn to Earn I&#39;m talking about how to create value and earn money and it&#39;s all focused on these kids finding their unique ability what they like what they&#39;re good at and what someone might actually pay for and once they get all three of those as a kid the sooner they can learn that the better you know we talk about with my kids we talk about the results based economy and the time based economy which you&#39;ve mentioned many times through coach and my daughter is actually my 17-year-old is saving up money for a service trip a three-week service trip in Zimbabwe and it&#39;s coming up this summer and she&#39;s got to earn her entire $5,000 and fund it herself and it&#39;s a service trip you know she&#39;s not going to be earning money but she&#39;s a nationally sponsored Adidas sponsored basketball player she&#39;s a very talented basketball player and so she went on Saturdays or on non-school holidays like Christmas break she does Private skills training for kids who are ages 7 to 12 when she&#39;s doing these skills trainings she&#39;s making $140 an hour and I said you realize that you could be working at a local fast food chain like some friends of yours making $14 an hour doing something you don&#39;t enjoy you might be mopping the floor or cleaning the toilets or picking up trash $14 an hour minus taxes and you&#39;re making $140 an hour doing something you really love which is playing sports outside you know so my son the second one who&#39;s 14 he&#39;s engineer he&#39;s a Hands-On kinesthetic high implementer and he&#39;s doing a couple business things with a 3D printer where he gets to use his hands and he gets to make a lot more money than if he was just taking a Time based job and so I think you&#39;re spot on Dan that helping kids discover C their unique abilities and then thrive in something like that is going to give them more confidence and frankly makes me wonder if the whole College route is even the university route is even worth it I mean yes it&#39;s an important certificate I guess as a baseline but if they can discover what they&#39;re good at what they like and how they can create value in the world then I don&#39;t think that other stuff becomes as important how does this fit in with sort of family life what you&#39;re talking about because what I notice is that there&#39;s sort of a an attitude on the part of people who are looking at you know what holds everything together and I&#39;ve come down to an appreciation of religion as religion plays a part in people&#39;s lives the book that I just put out American happiness love that book by the way read it twice the whole point is I say there are certain mindsets that Americans have that the creation of of the country the activity of creating the country has forged certain mindsets if you didn&#39;t have these mindsets it was hard for you to be successful in the way the country formed the other thing is that it&#39;s an immigrants country so that a certain type of individual from far away in the world Europe or Africa or you know a lot of it&#39;s Asia now they are where they were born unique in a certain entrepreneu attitude that a lot of things are fixed in their life property for one thing in many places of the world if your family doesn&#39;t have property you&#39;re probably not going to have any property you know as you get to be an adult too they&#39;re attracted to a possibility and they you know the US has always done a good job of advertising itself around the planet you know through culture a lot through culture so when they came over we&#39;ve had now 400 years you know basically and 20 year Generations we&#39;ve had five times four so we&#39;ve probably had 20 30 somewhere between 20 and 30 Generations here and there&#39;s a certain kind of DNA that forms from that I go through seven mindsets the first one is individualism second one is ingenuity the third one is exceptionalism fourth one is teamwork fifth one is growth sixth one is transformation and number seven is winning the Americans don&#39;t like this participation medals they don&#39;t like showing up medals they like clean winner clean loser you know agreed but the eighth one is the one that I&#39;ve had the most conversation about is that Americans uniquely as a people uniquely in the world and uniquely and that it&#39;s totally voluntary uniquely feel they have a direct relationship with God the vast majority of americ even Americans who do not go to any particular church still have a feeling about that and my sense is that&#39;s one side of the political Spectrum in the United States right now the other political Spectrum has its values but at the center where my side and the side of most people that I talk to you know I have God in the center you know people say you believe in God and I said no I don&#39;t believe in God I experience God I said it&#39;s not a belief it&#39;s an experience and I said but I&#39;m also clear that there are other people who don&#39;t have the experience but what I notice is when they don&#39;t have that experience they tend to have sort of like governments in the center you know and I think that seeing government as a religion really really creates some very fundamental problems for someone with an entrepreneurial minded approach to the world would you say that that would be true 100% yeah yeah 100% there and to me and to my family we&#39;re faith-based family and there&#39;s nothing the government could say that would make them a higher authority in my life so that&#39;s definitely not something that I would look forward to is more and more and more government making decisions for my family when we feel that we can make those best decisions for our family as parents yeah do you have any sense that your example of what you&#39;re doing has influenced other families absolutely yeah absolutely we&#39;ve talked to many people because we did this you know it&#39;s been over a year a year and a half so we&#39;ve had other families who have kind of latched on and and made similar decisions I think sometimes it takes a few bold people to do things against the traditional system that will open up the doors for others to take those same steps yeah probably in your favor is the statistics from the rental truck industry as far as oneway trips out of California last year they ran out of trucks yeah we have many neighbors who have left California one of them they said to drive the U-Haul truck to South Carolina was going to be $111,000 one way to drive it back it was $800 and so he had to take two trips and he said otherwise how do they get the trucks back you know yeah yeah exactly so he ended up just buying a trailer because he had two trips and he said it&#39;s just not worth it yeah you know so I think we&#39;re seeing a change in the way people view education especially of their young children and it&#39;s just a it&#39;s a great reset I think to really question the systems that have been in place for so long and say what are my children being taught and what would I like them to be taught one of the things I really appreciate about your book Chad is that it educates parents as well as the kids it&#39;s like to do a financial literacy curriculum most people are like I&#39;ve got two or three of the seven things that you talk about and I know for me it took me until mid to late 20s like I understood spend spending and saving right investing wasn&#39;t even on the radar that was a completely foreign concept and I&#39;m still learning but much better now in my 50s what I love about it is it&#39;s yes it&#39;s for kids but you&#39;re going to read it as a parent and you actually equip you as a parent to be able to go oh this is what my kids need to know I probably need to Bone up on this this and this and I really feel like you&#39;ve given this amazing guide to people to give them confidence about what people need to know to be independent to be successful to actually accomplish American happiness you know and be able to participate in that so I know I really appreciate it from my own education standpoint so then I can pass it on my kids who are 18 and 21 I&#39;m like darn I wish I knew this earlier would have been really helpful Never Too Late yeah I just appreciate the perspective and the clarity and the models and examples you have in the book too as a parent it makes it way easier for me oh thank you I feel like we added a lot of little parent tips in there I put in a lot of stories from other parents but then at the end of each chapter I have something called try this at home family activities so just thrw in some little examples and ideas that families could actually try and Implement instead of just thinking about the topic as a philosophy yeah let&#39;s get a plug in here oh sure yeah smart not spoiled is there a preferred way that you want people to order the books or just go to Amazon just go to Amazon yeah I did this book stressfree money my first book I had a professional voice actor do it and this book was so full of personal stories with me and my kids that I did the voice audiobook myself went to the studio and did it here in La so yeah Shannon and I don&#39;t even bother reading the text we say you know if you want if you want the exact text read the text but Shannon just interviews me I&#39;d like to jump just a bit Chad and go to the collaboration yes with Scott because this is enormously scalable the next thing that you&#39;re talking about I think the book is very scalable and it will be a tool that accompanies but I think the thing that you&#39;re doing with Scott Donell is really extraordinary it&#39;s exciting so the company we started is called gravy stack gravy stack is reimagining finance for kids it Bloss Med out of him hearing about this book and he already had a business that was doing business fairs child business fairs for kids and then he heard about Spar not spoiled and we we connected almost a year ago flew out to Arizona my wife and I and met with him and his wife and just hit it off we had plans to have dinner for an hour and it was 11:30 it was like a 5 hour dinner and they kicked us out of the restaurant so gravy stack is we&#39;re planning to launch between April and May of 2022 it&#39;s going to be a financial banking app for kids I don&#39;t even know where to start Dan to be honest we&#39;re so excited about it I think it&#39;s going to disrupt the banking system in a very big way for kids just let&#39;s talk about two capabilities here because it&#39;s a collaboration between two entrepreneurs that you check off the boxes you&#39;re cash confident that you&#39;re actually in relationship to this you are devoted to the same hero Target here true you know and that&#39;s what holds collaborations together is that it&#39;s for the parents and children yes to acquire not only knowledge but working capability of how to work with the banking system yes or the financial system in yes in general like you said we&#39;re both entrepreneurs who have cash confidence and Big Ideas I bring the financial expertise and the 20 years of experience there and he brings just an amazing visionary skill and the technology background he&#39;s a tech Visionary for sure and we&#39;ve hired experts from Amazon pay from venmo from PayPal we&#39;ve got some tech experts that have been in the financial industry we were just on the phone before this call actually and we&#39;ve got a hire to coming in that&#39;s one of the best tech and gamifying experts in the industry so it&#39;s going to be an app that not only is a banking app for kids but it teaches entrepreneurship financial literacy kids are going to be able to challenge each other we&#39;re actually going to be I don&#39;t know if we&#39;ve talked too much about it publicly yet but we&#39;re going to have an element of cryptocurrency and nfts for kids based on the financial literacy challenges that they&#39;re earning so a lot of exciting stuff you know when you were telling me about it because we also had dinner with Scott couple months ago in Scottdale Babs and I had just been on the trip with Peter DM amandas on the Breakthrough regenerative medicine but one of our stops was in Manchester New Hampshire with Dean Cayman and Dean Cayman is like a throwback inventor to the end of the 19th century I don&#39;t even know if he has a college degree but he&#39;s got 80 inventions to his name you know he has you can call it a wheelchair but it&#39;s not really a wheelchair but it can go up and downstairs you know he he vented this and go up and downstairs and a lot of his main customers for a lot of his health related products and that are the Veterans Administration it&#39;s for Battlefield wow individuals who are crippled on the battlefield and right now he is printing skin actually with 3D printers are printing skin for burn patients Battlefield burn and then also actually growing new bones using the original DNA of the injured person and ligaments and so that&#39;s what he&#39;s doing but he&#39;s got this very interesting thing that&#39;s called first f i St and if you want to talk about it crudely it&#39;s 1 million children worldwide who form into teams of usually around eight people and they&#39;re usually School sponsored it&#39;s a high school sponsored thing and as a team they&#39;ll create a robot and then they go into a worldwide competition and they have Local District Regional National and then World wow championships Babs and I sponsored two schools this year it&#39;s 10,000 and that brings in a skilled instructor otherwise everything is provided you know by the children themselves but it would be worth your while to watch their model and see if you can do this with gravy train gravy stack yeah gravy I&#39;m sorry gravy stack gravy train comes later this is gravy train is their outcome yes for both us and the kids that&#39;s right yeah yeah gravy stack is the skill acquisition and gravy train is the Breakthrough result of the capabilities absolutely but the big thing if you could think about it because you could actually use almost like the Scout movement or something that there&#39;s levels of capability and levels of competition certification certification absolutely Y in fact we planned have a certification program I&#39;ve been the merit badge counselor in the Boy Scouts of America for the personal financial merit badge for 20 years and so I modeled some of that certification progression in the gravy stack app and we&#39;ve got a team working on that but kids will be able to be gravy stack certified which eventually will mean something they&#39;ll be able to say I have some Financial Independence literacy some achievement that they can use in the real world so yeah I think it&#39;s enormous because the next educational system will not look like the educational system that&#39;s not working agreed okay it&#39;s going to be a completely different form Ag and my sense if you have this capability development and then a competitive aspect did I mention that Americans really like winning winning is the experience and I think it&#39;s quite natural so that&#39;ll put the team in it we&#39;ll lend you our eight American you know happiness mindsets to be part of the educational system I think you&#39;re spot on though Dan because if you include all those elements within the learning for these kids and that&#39;s what the parents want like you said the parents want this Independence this Innovation winning success all these different opportunities freedoms you know these are the things that they want for their kids and I think when we involve technology in a fun gamified way it&#39;s not like we&#39;re the banks today that the banks today are like the tradition Schools they&#39;re outdated they&#39;re corporate they&#39;re institutional they these big blocks of nothingness where there&#39;s bureaucratic stuff everywhere what they&#39;re doing at the banks is they just literally are giving kids a debit card and a packet of jargon sending it home with the kids the kids are never going to read it they&#39;re not going to learn and so as we&#39;re creating these really cool avatars and and the skins and the the coins and the fun gamification where they can actually choose what they want to look like in the game and compete with friends and challenge friends and see the leaderboards and things like that it&#39;s just a totally different approach to the education and financial systems that like the school systems and the banking systems are just kind of old school outdated yeah it&#39;s very interesting the history I&#39;m sort of a history buff and I looked at the history of the American public school system and it actually has its roots in Germany Germany was the first country country that really put in a public school system and that was in 1830s 1840s Germany wasn&#39;t actually a country until about 1870 they were all these little duchies and and then it was all melded together and they created this system and it was very very german-based it came to the United States because even today the largest ethnic percentage in the American population is actually German 46% of the American population has German ancestry so there was this connection and part of it which actually triggered it was that when the Catholics came to North America they already had a school system the Catholics always had a school system like I had 12 years 1 to 12 in a Catholic school and there were two Catholic parishes 50% of the population in my town was Catholic and they had the system right from the beginning when the Catholics planned it they brought the school system with them you know America is essentially a Protestant Christian Country Canada is actually more Catholic than the United States and so they saw a real worry that in the marketplace for opportunity and the marketplace for achievement that these Catholic kids were going to run ahead of the Protestant so there was this rush move to make sure that they had their own system and that it was funded by the government you know that it would government funded system and you know it did what it needed to do for when the main objective were these big systems you know I have no complaint but when the big systems are no longer the model of the world that anyone is going to go in and you&#39;re becoming even more that way in your school system it seems to me that there&#39;s a worthlessness to the activity totally and I&#39;m leaving this conversation about smart not spoiled about Gra we stack really encouraged about how things to use our criteria Dan could be faster easier cheaper bigger results for our kids yeah because it does feel like existing systems are slow and bulky and bureaucratic and not so much really focused on the output for the kids but rather for the benefit of the people in the system so I&#39;m I&#39;m even more excited I was coming in about the possibilities and the speed you know between YouTube and gravy stack and all the ways that people can learn now and gamification is completely the way to get kids attention you&#39;ve really I think contributed a major element to assisting parents with their kids to get a new better reality for their children which was what all of us really want thank you yeah I think it&#39;ll grow itself through entrepreneurial networking first of all it&#39;s a elective system I mean you have to pay for this system so it&#39;s not subsidized it&#39;s not a subsidized system but you know entrepreneurs are also the most charitable of individuals I mean that&#39;s proven by this Statistics that people who own their companies are the most charitable and generally contribute the most to their communities because they&#39;ve got the freedom of time money relationship and purpose to do it it seems like you&#39;re doing something that&#39;s a perfect fit right here between the exponential growth it&#39;s not the number of people who are entrepreneurs but the capabilities of entrepreneurs that are being multiplied by technology and networking and a lot of the concepts that we&#39;re teaching in strategic coach about collaboration and teamwork I think your timing is just really good right here thank you thank you I&#39;m excited and like Shannon said I feel like these Innovations and these concepts are going to be more attractive as people are realizing kind of that old staunchy traditional system is not creating the output and the outcomes for kids that our kids deserve in a changing World in a high-tech world where the world is more flat than it ever used to be yeah we need to be moving quickly you know these kids their attention spans are short you can&#39;t sit them in a classroom and treat them all the same when they&#39;ve all got like you said different unique abilities and different interests well their attention span is short except when they&#39;re hyperfocused and when they&#39;re doing what they love when they get to choose electively like you said when they choose what they&#39;re learning and they choose what to focus on the sky is the limit when they&#39;re stuck in a box it&#39;s not the same thing yeah yeah that&#39;s awesome Chad thank you so much for joining us today it was really fun to have this wide ranging conversation about education but more importantly just how to get your kids to be financially literate which probably means you&#39;re gonna be more so show the book again sure yeah here it is there you go Shannon even brought it look on the Travel I appreciate that I brought it with me on my trip so go to Amazon yeah it&#39;s on Amazon all the good sources and also looking forward to gravy stack that&#39;ll be pretty exciting thank you thank you very much I&#39;m excited thanks Chad

Transcript for:Financial Literacy for Kids with Dan Sullivan and Chad Willardson

Transcript for:
Financial Literacy for Kids with Dan Sullivan and Chad Willardson