All right, his way up with Angela. Yee. I'm so excited.
You know, this is part of our insolidarity initiative, and Massacard has been partnering with iHeart to produce these priceless conversations with me and we're bringing together thought leaders, financial experts, and business owners to sit down and kind of share your expertise and share your stories. And so we're talking today about the role that financial literacy plays in building and maintaining wealth and sustaining legacy in the black community.
So today we have Nicole Turner, who is the Senior vice president of Technology Hubs at MasterCard.
Welcome, Thank you, so excited to be here.
I'm so happy to have you. And you know, just full disclosure.
She's from Brooklyn, yes, and the house Tanya band Court, the founder and CEO of Goal Setter.
Hey, thank you for having me, who.
Travel from Brooklyn today straight from best And then you guys should all know Stacy Tisdale at this point. You know she's my co She is my co host for Wealth Wednesdays, but also the CEO of My Money Media. She's a financial expert, author and broadcast journalist. Hello, Stacy, Angela, how's everybody feeling today because we always got to start with that.
I'm feeling excited, empowered, I'm ready to rock and roll.
Yeah, I mean, the pre conversation was amazing, just talking about different goals, finances, being patient.
But Nicole, let's start with you. As we're doing this conversation.
Financial inclusion is one of the key pillars of Mastercard's social impact strategy and in solidarity efforts. Can you talk more about Mastercard's commitment to financial inclusion and also we always talk about the tangibles the programs that you have that supported sure.
Of course, when I think about MasterCard and the commitment that we have to try to close the racial equity gap, tell me it's been something that's been important that we've been doing for a long time. I love the fact that not only do we talk it, but we walk it. We understand that in order for us to be successful in our business and what we do, closing that gap is equally important, especially when it comes to financial inclusion
and financial literacy holistically. And so when we think about the programs that we have and some of the partners, and we'll talk later with my friend that's here from Goal Setter, we understand and by supporting and working with these partners, not only do they help us continue and improve the digital divide that we need to say how do we close it? But then also how do we make inclusive products in order for us to do this as well?
And you know, I just want to put this out there first too, Nicole, just your background and how you got to Masteracre, because I love for people to know how everybody got to where they are today as well in this space.
Yes, so before I join MasterCard, I used to open up healthcare facilities and long term care facilities in underrepresented communities in Bushwick, Brooklyn and in the Bronx. And it was important that the agency that I work with at the time said, you know what, we're looking to put three and four hundred jobs in the communities. We realize that there's a change that's happening. But in order to do that, use your HR background to hire people from
the community and upskill them. In order when you upskill them, not only do you help the economic community, but you also help the real estate. And at that time, they were doing a lot of programs from a low income housing perspective. This company I was working with, so not only were we bringing jobs, we also was giving them mortgage grants as well.
I think it's important to know all of those things because we do care about the people who are behind these programs. And so when we're talking about MasterCard, just to see how much you care about the community outside of this and what got you here today. So thank you for sharing that, Tanya.
Let's move on to you. Let's talk about goal Setter.
What goal Setter is the need that you saw specifically in the black community, and how goal Setter is helping to close the wealth gap as well.
Absolutely so. Goal Setter is a family find nan and financial education platform. So for any of your listeners out there who may have a kid's debit card for their kid, goal Setter allows your kid to have a debit card, but to have that debit card with financial education. And I'll tell you why. My mother was an elementary school teacher. I did everything in my house that had everything to do with education, right. You know how it is when you live in the house with the teacher, right, everything
you do is like accounted, like everything is. So because of her, I ended up going to Stanford. I got two degrees in engineering, so on a great track from an educational perspective. But I came out of Stanford and there's one thing I didn't know about. I didn't know about money because my mama didn't teach me about money because she didn't know about money. So I'm in my
late twenties. I have a job in Silicon Valley. At that job, they give me a bunch of stock and stock options, and I don't know about diversification or asset allocation, so I just leave it there. I picked my head up one day that stock is worth a million dollars. That was at the beginning of the day. Because by the end of the day, the big tech bubble had burst and my million dollars went down to twenty thousand dollars in one day.
That's what I said to my million, to.
See, I.
Understand stuff.
You don't understand options, you don't understand vesting, and that you could sell them, and that you could diversify. So in that moment, I thought, Okay, this was stupid, but I can't turn back the hands of time. All I can do is make sure this doesn't happen to my own children. Fast forward, when I actually had my daughter, Gabrielle, I taught her everything I had since learned about personal finance from the time she came out of my womb.
And when she was eight, about to turn nine, she said, Mommy, for my ninth birthday, I really only want two things. I said, what's that? She said, enough money to say for an investment account? Wow, and a bike. Thought at that age, if I could get every child, you say that, I can change the world. And so that's what Goal Setter is. We provide, not us a debit card for your kids, because let's be honest, America teaches kids from the time that they are born how to send and
spend money. We can go to kids now and say, how many of you have cashp how many of you have themo how many of you have sending and spending mechanisms? And they do and they do. Excuse me, how many of you know about investment accounts? How many of you know what a bond is? How many of you know what a stock is? And they don't. And so that's
what we do at Goal Setter. Our debit card actually comes with a rule called learn before you burn, so your kids debit card will automatically freeze on Sunday morning if they haven't taken their financial literacy queens for the weekend.
Oh I like that for me.
And while you were talking about all of those things, I was thinking about, like me not having financial literacy when I was younger, and when I got my first bank account. And before we get to you, Stacey, do you guys all remember when you got your first ever bank account?
Absolutely?
I do. I remember it was I was so proud at the time. There was a program. I was going to school in East New York, but my mother had busted me to a school in Meal Base Shoes PS. Two thirty six, and what they did was they had given us they set up bank accounts for us. At that time, I felt so proud just to have a couple of five dollars or something that was in it. It gave me a sense of pride to open up my first bank account. I remember those days.
Absolutely, and I remember getting my first bank account because then I was like, oh, now I can get a job, so I can put some money in that bank account.
Right.
You associate a bank account with wealth and money, and that gives you the motivation. But you know, a bank account and investing are two different things, and that is what our community is lacking right now understanding of how to build wealth, not just how to make money exactly.
Well, now, Stacey, let's get to you.
And you remember your first time opening because that was my first foray into anything financial, like having a bank account, and it wasn't until I was in high school. And so that's why I remember it so well. I think I was like a junior in high school and I didn't have much in there. But imagine not even having that then, how was I going to be able to invest anything or learn about it? And so that was quite a journey for me. Yeah, and so Stacy, now let's get.
Over here to you.
You know, this is my girl, Stacy, so I can't assume that everybody knows everything about her. But in your work you've talked about financial behaviors developing at an early age, how messages from society impact our financial choices. Can you share some more insight about this and also some of the barriers that exist, particularly in the black community, and also because we like to be you know, just always think about solution tips on how to overcome them.
Absolutely, and I think all of the questions you just answered are in my story. So I'll share my story just as you ladies have a big AHA moment for me when it came to money was when I was in college and a friend of mine's father worked for
a brokerage company called pain Weber. That will really date me, and we walked into he was going to take us out to lunch one day, and I'd never been around Wall Street or anything like that, and we walked into his office and I saw my first trading floor and I was like, I have never seen anything like this before, and it was an incredible experience. I went back. I
changed my major to business right away intern there. Got a job right out of college at a commodities firm, and I was a cash manager and invested in the treasury markets, so I really learned how the economy worked and how the markets work within economy. Didn't want to stay on Wall Street. Came out of the womb loving writing, and I called the Wall Street Journal and I said, I know finance, I love writing, and they actually bought that story and they hired me and I started at
their newswire service. Eventually moved to their television department and I was there for seven years, and it was just wonderful to see now I've seen the corporate side of money. So CBS was starting a business news division called market Watch, and I got hired to be their first on air reporter, and that was a journalist's dream because I had to do every single CBS show, from morning news to evening news, everything in between radio and that really brought me to
Main Street. I was at CBS for many years, and then I went to CNN Global and I was really starting to have a lot of conflict about being a financial journalist, about doing this the information we were putting out, and from working on Wall Street, because I could see that knowledge does not translate into behavior, and especially all the big financial gurus at the time, I'm not going to name any names, but really kind of making us
feel bad. You're supposed to put this amount into retirement, You're supposed to do this, and I could see people can't do that, they don't do that, So why aren't we doing that? And I thought it was kind of a failure by the financial services industry and the financial media the way they were giving financial advice journalists, and we had to know why why do we do what
we do when it comes with money? And I went on what I had no idea was going to be a six year research project into what drives financial behavior. Because of my career, I had access to the greatest minds in the world. Psychologists don't remember Clinton Gore's addiction specialists, because that's financial behavior. Everything for my research problem became very clear. When we have trouble with money, we go straight to the numbers. I got to earn more, save more,
invest more. The real causes of our financial behavior have got absolutely nothing to do with numbers. We make our choices based on our beliefs, and our beliefs are the result of things that have nothing to do with money. How we saw it handled growing up, social messages to live a certain lifestyle, have certain things, or you're not whatever, gender, culture, race, all of these former beliefs about ourselves, and that's drives
our financial choices. So the dance becomes teaching people how to manage those choices, to become aware of what's really pushing their buttons, so that at that moment they can say, oh, I can make a different choice. So I wrote a book about that, and it came out in two thousand and eight, and I hate to say it was good timing. But it was a huge recession and a very emotional recession. And I started my book tour on the Today Show, and really, I think it just really resonated for people
to hear about money spoken in that way. So that appearance turned into a three year gig. A lot of people watch that show. So the White House contacted me and asked me to create a behavior based financial education system based on this holistic approach to money. Did that and then went on to create my own financial education program.
My journalism career continued PBS Black and Enterprise, and one of my jobs right when I left Black Enterprises start my own company, a show called The Breakfast Club asked me to come on and talk about blacks and investing and what I had seen. And I'll just never forget this from the first time President Obama ran when it
became clear he was going to win. In the weeks before his presidency, the number of Blacks going to sign up for financial literacy courses, going to sign up for entrepreneurship courses, going to sign up for advice ten thousand tupled. So I love his saying the audacity of hope. So the X factor was actually the hope and I remember my first segment I did with Angela, and I was talking about the mentality and the Black community that you
need to be rich to invest. Totally understand where that comes from, and totally understand why we don't trust the financial markets. Though our story is told wrong and we are an incredible story of resilience. But now technology fintech is providing solutions that the government failed to and it guess what, it takes out that discrimination piece and now it's micro investing was created and now it's investing is
accessible to everyone. I mentioned one company's name in that interview, and I'm not saying that company now, but while I was in that interview, four million people signed up for that company's app amazing, and then we saw our community does have an appetite for this type of information and they're hungry for it. And talk we're always told as lax and at the bottom. Talk to us from our position of power, help us make empowered financial decisions. And
that's that's where the work has to go. So a holistic approach, you know people talk about behavioral finance or holistic approach, is like there's something different. That's the only way to learn about money you have to work on mindset and help people remember how strong they really are.
And go to trusted companies for companies. Yeah, and also because you know, it's there's so many people out there that call themselves gurus and listen, That's why it's so important to have these platforms here where Mastercard's been doing this work. And so we're going to get to that and thank you Stacy in a second. But Tanya, I want you to talk about your partnership with MasterCard over the years and more specifically the programming that you are doing and activating with HBCU students.
Absolutely.
Well.
The thing I love about MasterCard is that MasterCard is really focused on you know, through their Center for Inclusive Growth, they are focused on inclusivity. How do you include more people in the conversation and include more people in wealth
building in ways that meet them where they are. To the point that Stacy just made right, I know that that they're folks sitting in classrooms across America where some banker comes across the street and is teaching them about the stock market, but that banker is thirty years older than them, doesn't speak their language, doesn't come from their community, and all of those kids have their heads down on
their desk and are falling asleep. It's not because they can't learn, it's because the teacher can't teach.
And so, you know what they can relate.
They can't relate absolutely, and sometimes they can't relate to the stories. They can't relate to the you know, to the examples of what investing means or what investing will bring you and your family and your community. So all of that relatability is really important. All of that is to say, with MasterCard, we have just recently launched a financial freedom project with the HBCUs in the Atlanta area and so Morehouse Spelman Clark Atlanta. We have brought to
them this Financial Freedom boot Camp. So it's ten sessions where we are for twenty to thirty minutes in every single session talking about a different financial concept that is the core of wealth building and that people need to know in order to build wealth.
Right.
We just kicked off last week incredibly exciting, had all these amazing AUC students in the room, and we start with questions like who knows what the rule of seventy two is? Nobody's raising their hand and that's okay because we're now about to share it with you. The rule of seventy two teaches you how fast your money will
double based on where you invest it. And so now after that twenty minute session, everyone says, wow, okay, So I just can't stick my money under a mattress or in a savings account that's going to yield me zero point one percent interest. I need to do something better, So click, I got that right. Then in the second session we talk about okay, great, now you know you
need to do better. How do you do better? Where can you put your money where your money will have an opportunity to grow at seven percent per year for the next thirty years. Oh well, that's something called the stock market. But I don't have to be a stock picker. I can learn about ETFs and mutual funds and index funds. So then we introduce that language and we tell them
about that language. The reason all of this is so important is because we all know if you don't know the language of money, then anybody can sell you anything because you feel ashamed about not understanding the concepts, and you just sit there and do what we all do. Right, You go into the mortgage loan place and you just nod. They may have a really bad interest rate on that piece of paper, but you don't know what good is. And so we're teaching them the language of money, and
we're also giving them the goal setter app. MasterCard is putting one hundred dollars onto these students' accounts so that before they graduate they can be savers and investors. We are turning the next generation of AUC students from senders and spenders into savers and investors and giving them both the tools so that they can start investing and the knowledge to do so.
Oh.
I love that the confidence that comes with being able to know that you have that information too. I'm just now flashing back to the first time I had to do a mortgage and what that process was like for me. Absolutely, you're confident I did on but I did on my research ahead of time.
So it's interesting and I'm glad you said that you did your research because I didn't. So when you said, you know, it wasn't until you got older that you realized, Okay, how do I understand about numbers and financing? We were talking before. I wish I had this goal than when I was younger, right, because growing up I wasn't taught that. That wasn't the behavior in my family for us to sit down at dinner to have those conversations and say, let's talk about savings, let's talk about investing.
We didn't talk about money in my house, no, not at all.
It was like, don't open those bills because we can't do it. It was my mom my dad being like, your mother spends all the money, and then my mom hiding packages so that he wouldn't see her going shopping and bringing them in the house.
It was all that and then those early impressions that's I mean, that's what sets how you hand no money. I remember my mother hiding stuff in the trunk, so my father and so you.
Grew up the house.
And well was interesting for me. I grew up as a figure skater, I lived away from my parents and an athlete, and I always had that messaging you just worry about what you're doing. We'll worry about the money. You just worry about what you're doing. We'll worry about the money. And as I got into my work and I was like, oh, and I said, even in my adult behavior as far as worrying about the details and
getting into the nitty gritty. It's not natural to me, but you have to know yourself well enough to know your tendencies. And that's also a big part of the about financial literacy, exactly what you're talking about.
And you know, I'm so glad because we are going to get into this program more. But even just to piggyback off of what you said about a mortgage, you know, I actually got my real estate license, But part of the reason I did that was because I had been doing these deals for myself in real estate and I wanted to make sure I was as educated as possible on everything on every aspect, so that when I was going in and meeting with brokers and going to get my mortgage and mortgage and doing all of that, I
understood it so well that nobody could really try to get over on me. And it's just so much better when you can walk in there with the confidence of knowing that you know, I educated myself. That's why I love goal Setter and the fact that you're saying, Okay, you want to access this, so you want to do this well, first you have to make sure you take this course and you know it's information I think that kids will hold on to.
It's so cliche, but knowledge is power, and it really is.
I have to tell you this is so funny because I have kids, right and I see the impact that it has on them. And my kids are from eight all the way to nineteen. So my fourteen year old I picked him up from basketball practice the other day and his friend got in the back seat with him and he said, Miss Tanya, did Hendrix tell you that when we are in the line at Chick fil A, he's always trying to hurry up and finish his quiz so.
That I can access so levcard can get a lot of money.
He gets to the front of the line.
So that's on one side, and then on the other side. I have my nineteen year old daughter. When she turned eighteen, because she had been taking these quizzes for many years, she called me up and she said, Mommy, I'm eighteen. Now I think I need to pull my credit score. But I probably don't have a credit score yet because I don't have a credit card. So I'm gonna go get a credit card so I can build my credit. I need to go get a roth Ira, and I
need to open up a high Field savings account. Anything else mommy, and it was because she'd been taking these
weekly financial Yes, but that is the difference. And as we talk about creating products for our community, right, I'm one of the very few black women in America who owns a fintech company and an aed tech company, And so our company looks very different and acts very different than a standard debit card that you stick into kid's hands, because I know I'm not going to do that disservice to my children, nor to any of the other children in our community, of just teaching them how to spend
money without the other side, which is learning about building your credit, learning about investing, learning about saving. So it's great that they learn how to be responsible spenders, but we all know that being a responsible.
Spend is not that is definitely not.
Check to checheck, right, you cannot do that. And so you know that having black people and black women who are bringing a different lens to how we create products for our community is essential. And that's the other thing that quite frankly, MasterCard has done by being an investor and goal setter, right, MasterCard has powered us to do this work in a way that other people, quite frankly can't do it because they come with a very different lens.
Well, Nicle, have a question for you now, all right, we've talked about the MasterCard Start Path program and how it helps early stage underrepresented founders a bit on previous episodes. Why is it important to invest in underrepresented startups and how is this beneficial to Mastercard's overarching financial inclusion strategy.
Of course, love that question, Angela, And first you so eloquently talked about the work that we do holistically as one of our start Path Right partners. When we think about start Path, when we think about connecting with some of those fintech startups, those education startups, it's helping us connect with the community and power with the community on
a broader scale. And some of those digital products, although I call it inclusive products that we have, it's helping us say how do we touch everyone and have equal access to everyone? And so I just want to take us back for a little bit. In two thousand and six, Right MasterCard Foundation was founded. In twenty fifteen, we made a commitment to connect five hundred million people to the digital economy. Since then, we've exceeded that goal. And what we wanted to do is say, how do we have
one billion people by twenty twenty five. How do we connect Well, we also said, let's push our goals a little bit further. We want to connect with fifty million small business owners, one billion underserved individuals, but also twenty five million women entrepreneurs. Now, think about this start Path program and what it can do when you connect these entrepreneurs and these FinTechs together to create these digital products that can help our communities. More broadly, we're in the
digital age right now. So I mentioned earlier, how do we close that gap? And so some of the partners and the products that we have, we have goals. That is, we have Wealthy, we have SUMA. Right, there's different fintech organizations and products that we have that's out there that not only if you think about can I access it, but also can I see individuals who look like me who are teaching me and educating me on these products?
Holistically, fintech is really the game changer. Yeah, yes, really, we've been we've been talking about been talking about fintech for a long time. And it was really wonderful to see post twenty twenty the black community when everybody was locked down and we saw how bad things really were really it was like there was a collective decision. The traditional economy was not made for us. It does not work for us, and we migrated to the digital economy
and it was explosive. And then you saw for the last I think three years in a row, the first largest number of first time investors to the stock market are black. It's because of fintech. Yes, and we've been on Wealth Wednesdays. We've been just raising that tech, bringing that fintech bell for a year so that this MasterCard that really applaud you on what you've really been a pioneer and a leader in this.
Yeah, we have to walk the talk, right, we can't, you know, in order for us to be effective in our business, it's the authenticity around it. But it's the commitment as well, and it's not for the short term. It's for the long term gain for us, for our communities. We were at as an organization where we put our money at our businesses or our locations, but it's also important to affect the communities is at large.
Well, let's talk about some of those locations. Let's talk about MasterCards, tech hubs and all of those things. My main thing when we started these conversations was for people to have real tangibles and to see how can I access this for what I do and where do I need to be and how can this benefit me? What are the different programs based on where I'm at in my business? So can you just give us some insights into that.
So when we think about mascoret global Technology hubs, so there represent almost forty percent of MasterCards employees in these locations around them. We believe in the locations where we're at. So we're in New York City Saint Louis and I'll just talk about those two locations for starters. And also we have work that we do in Atlanta as well.
When we think about the locations of where our physical presence is, we also understand the commitment in partnering with not for profits government agencies on a community basis as well. So our tech cubs unite diverse talent from software engineers, FinTechs, you name it. In those tech cubs. All those creative and innovative products that we're creating or producing and developing, those inclusive products, they happen and they're develop at the
tech cubs that I manage. And so looking at the people that we bring on board, but then also what are some of the programs that run out of these tech cubs. So we have master your Cards not only are to run at the tech cups, but they also in the community because we want to meet people where they're at. They could be online, they could be virtual.
And we had an activation at clock Atlanta University and ensuring that how do we reach out only students as well, but how do we reach adults for them to understand the inclusivity around financial education and financial literacy and so the broadened aspect of where we're at and the continuation isn't yes, it's us. We're also global in nature.
Man.
I love that because I feel like nowadays kids are also teaching their parents.
Yes, oh for sure, the big time.
Okay, I just have to jump in and say to that point. MasterCard just recently did a research study about goal Setter users. Let me tell you what they found. Eighty five percent of parents said their kids are better
savers because they use goal Setter. One out of two parents said their kids are better investors because they use goal Setter, but seventy five percent of parents said they are more financially healthy themselves because their kids use their goal setter, And thirty percent of parents said they are using a different financial instrument or investment vehicle that they learned about on goal Setter.
Oh my gosh, see this is a generational like it.
So when you said the kids are teaching the parents, we never got how many of you all got financial education?
And in college all I did was sign up for things I shouldn't have.
I want to say, is we're also doing something like for the stem right for girls for tech black girls who code, because again, how do you touch that demographic those students in that age, and it is diververse mentoring and educating, cating their parents. That's something that was never the case for us. Think about the impact that we're doing right now. So sometimes we say were worried about the future. I'm not.
I was when I.
Told you when I came on the show the first time and I mentioned that technology company for micro investing. Who told me about that company?
He told me what I'm using.
I want to ask you guys a something because the other day, my friend's son, he's fourteen years old, and you know, he wasn't there, and I was with his son and we were just having a conversation because he said he's interested in real estate.
You know, he's in high school.
And he says to me, my biggest fear is that one day I could be homeless. And I don't know why he said that because his family, you know, they're good. He lives in a house. It's not like there's ever been that. But I do feel like a lot of times people have this fear. I know I used to always have this fear, like what if something happens, What if I don't have a place to live, what if
I'm not set up properly? And I really did used to think that when I was living check to check and not even check to check, you.
Know, until I got myself in a better position.
But let's say a fourteen year old came to you today and was like, look, this is my biggest fear that one day I'll be homeless.
What would your answer be to that child.
My answer to that child would be, you can eliminate that fear by managing your finances appropriately. And we're going to teach you how to Most of us, because we don't talk about money in our families. As we all just talked about, it's scary, and of course that could be your biggest fear because it's that money is a black box and it's an unknown. But if somebody sitys down with you and says, okay, the day you get your first paycheck, let me tell you what we're gonna do.
We're gonna start putting away at least twenty percent out of every paycheck until you have an emergency fund. That emergency fund will be three to six months of your expenses. So if you get fired from your job, don't worry about it. You got three to six months that you can live on right there. And then after you're done with the emergency fund, the next dollar, we're going to start investing that. You aren't a stock picker. You don't need to be a stockpicker like Stacy over here, right.
You want to be a stock for a black station. You can invest your money in a mutual fund or an ETF. And here's how you do it, and this is what it's done for the last thirty years. If you invest one hundred thousand dollars in thirty years, it'll be seven hundred and sixty one thousand dollars if you put it into the stock market. And the stock market
returns what it always has. When they see a path, then it's like, you know, after I was pregnant, when my second child, and I was like, oh my goodness, I got on his weight on me that I need to get off. All I needed to do was go to a boot camp and somebody need to show me. Okay, you jump that rope one hundred times and then you run around. We have to give them a path so to get them away from that fear. And if we give them a path, then they can see what their lives can look and what's the.
Gold gold, gold, and what you just said. Your relationship with money can teach you how to manage fear. Yes, and it's managed fear. It's not real, that's right. And we can show you how those fears aren't going to come true. And that's what's so powerful about all of it is really unpacking. Your relationship with money can teach you how to manage fear and how to not let it run the show.
Absolutely, absolutely, I agree.
And it goes back to what you were saying is you have to show them because sometimes we can have conversations with those fourteen year olds and if we're talking at them without having conversations with them to bring them in and give them relevant examples. You can't see it, you can't be it right.
That's right, blinding, Yeah, it's blinding, right.
And so we goes back to fundamental each one teach one. If each one is going to teach one, let's make sure we have that step by step process. And I'm bringing you along the journey. I'm not trying to kick you to the side at all.
And don't you love when they see And that's what was so eye opening on Wall Street because it was like Wall Street that I didn't meet a single rocket scientist on Wall Street. Nor is money rocket science. This is it's not hard. It's fears. Great about goal setter, what Mastercard's doing. When they stuck, they're like, oh that's easy, seventy two, all that stuff's easy.
Exactly, that's right. And then we need to show them Angela Yee and her many businesses. So we're going to reframe his fear. His fear is going to be like, oh no, I might only have two houses as opposed to three, and he can see what's start to set up his goals, and he reframes what his goals are. My goal is not to not be homeless. My goal is to have three houses and two businesses and this and that.
Right, how are you careful with the e effect? My son has grown up around her and she's created a financial nightmare. Why don't we have ten houses?
No.
One thing I did.
Show him, though, was I showed him like the first brownstone that I ever bought, and I showed him what I paid for it and what it's worth now, and also that it was a two family so I was like, this is what my mortgage was. And then I had a tenant downstairs that was paying this much money, so really, this is what I was paying every month, And so I was showing I actually showed him that so he could see what it is, and the brownstone that I
purchased recently. I was showing him, you know, all of that. So he's like, now he wants to be an architect.
He probably wants to be your architect.
And listen, one of the things that people ask me all the time, if I could go back to my younger self and do things differently, what would it be?
And I always say, I wish.
I would have started investing earlier, you know, because I think that when I first was, like I said, living tech to Chech, I wasn't investing.
And it wasn't until I was like twenty nine years old.
That I started a roth Ira and I got a lot more confident and it didn't have to be a lot of money that I was putting in it every month, you know. So that was just something that if I could have seen exponentially how that could have grown, and if I would have started at a way younger age where I would be now, if I could go back in time and do things differently, I would have.
I agreed you a good point you made. So many people think, well, I don't have the money to start one.
You don't need that much, little fife.
I want something that we're talking about a lot lately, is a lot of this is systemic. Like what we were talking about, people not understanding like their work benefits and things like that. Companies aren't educating people. Companies have the power to offer all sorts of benefits. I'm so glad so many are now focused on financial wellness. Systemic discrimination put us in this place. It's going to take systemic solutions to pull us out of this. You know, really help from company, so.
Walking Wave and that's what I love about the work that we do holistically to enhance, rite and educate the communities across the board, to give access to everyone. There's nothing.
Yeah, and some of that is on us too, write to go out and seek this information and this knowledge because you know there are that like you said, massacred, you have these programs that are available. And I do want to ask you, Tanya, how did you end up even approaching or did they approach you?
Yeah, so I applied to the start Path program.
And I want to hear this. I want people to see how it can happen. It was like you had it in. I knew this person. It was a hookup.
We were at a conference one time and I remember her walking up to me was like, oh you work in MasterCard. Well, this is my business and this is what it is that I do. I'm going to partner and work with you. I want to have give me some names.
Right.
So, the way that she is now, this is a long time ago. The way that she is now, she's the same. Meaning I'm driven, I'm focused, I believe in myself right right, yes, And I believe in my product yes, and guess what happened and now we're partner.
Look at that, Wow, and that the same story.
And it is true. I mean, but what I have found is God doesn't put you in any place where you're not supposed to be, But it is up to us to take advantage of every one of those offices.
You will that networking.
Networking is so important, and there are times, you know, I actually nobody will believe this. I sit on the line between being an introvert and an extrovert. So there are some days where I walk into a room of a thousand people and my introvert side is screaming out like, oh Lord.
I just want to be at home. I just want to go.
Home, right.
But in those moments, I say to myself, I am not leaving here until I have talked to five people who can move this business forward. And the reason is because I am so committed to transforming our community. And I know, you know, we've raised thirty million dollars. We've raised money from MasterCard, but also from Robert F. Smith, the chairman and philanthropists of Vista Equity, from Kevin Durant,
from Chris Paul, from Carmelo Anthony. We have extraordinary investors who believe in goal Setter, but they believe in goal Setter's power to transform the next generation of kids in our community. And so it is my responsibility every day when I took one of those investment dollars, it's my responsibility to go up to folks like Nicole and make sure that I am getting the kinds of partnerships that can help goal Setter to get in the hands of
more kids across America. So, yes, I may have been a little aggressive.
Because that excitement can translate.
And let me ask you this, the goal Setter start off when you first launched it, right, I want to know also about how it morphed because a lot of times you have an idea, you start something, but then you end up kind of having to adapt to what you see is necessary, is needed absolutely.
So one of the things that we realized is that not only did families and kids need our product, but banks and financial institutions need our product. And so goal Setter is now white labeling our platform for banks and credit unions across the country so that they can give our platform to all of the families that they serve. So that's been a huge part of our pivot. The second thing has been that we're actually serving school systems now.
So we have goal se Goal Setter both the APP and financial education curriculum in ten states across the country in twenty five school systems throughout the country. We partnered with Nike and UBS and other financial institutions to help bring this content in this curriculum into school systems that need it most. So those are the two of the things that we have done to make sure that we are getting out there and really meeting the need.
And Nicole has to feel great for you to be doing this work that obviously it's right, Yeah, top talk, that's it is.
I mean, when you realize that you work for a work at MasterCard, I understand that the work that we do and I'm touching the communities and I can see that tri factor of education, financial literacy, the community involvement, community development. When you witness that, and then you also turn it into what are some of the products that
we're doing and we're touching generations, we're touching communities. For me, it's something that I will continue to being with pride and what it is that we what we do in working with our community partners with our FinTechs with our startups is key.
Yeah, all right, well Stacy, you know, Stacy's with me every single week on Wealth Wednesdays. But honestly, when I go out and about, people always approach me and talk about how helpful our platform has been with Wealth Wednesdays.
And then now they're coming up to me and talking about these priceless conversations with MasterCard also, and so that means a lot to me just for me to have this platform, to be able to give people this valuable information, give people a place that they can go to get the assistance that they need when they're at that point that they're like, Okay, I'm ready to bring my business
to the next level. Or I can speak confidently on what it is that I have going on, or maybe I need to learn how to speak confidently, because that's not always something that's a given, either being able to pitch, being able to.
To hear you talk about that was a little entrepreneurship one on one and I hear the you know, the partnerships and the investors and things that you made. How did you do that? Wow?
I'm like, oh, it.
Was a long journey and truly, how I did It is meeting good people, telling them what we're doing and why we're doing it. Right, It is often the why behind your product, not just the product that you're offering, that gets people engaged and wants them and makes them want to help you. So getting good people into our ecosystem, and truly, I'm not even kidding you asking each person, can you just introduce me to one person? And then that next person, can you just introduce me to one person?
I mean, that is what networking is. You don't go to someone and say, Angela, can you introduce me to all five of the people who were on your show last week?
Right, be like, no, I.
Have other things.
Take exactly literally.
But you know, when you are doing the work, and you're doing the work for the right reasons, and then you get people engaged in that work, they do want to help you and they are willing to help you. And so that's how we were able to get it done, just one by one by one. But that's why it's been You know this, this work is not for the faint of heart being an entrepreneur. It is not for.
The before you get to yes.
A whole lot of nose, before you get to a yes. And the funny thing about me is I didn't come from the fintech space. I didn't come from the finance space. I actually was a Nickelodeon. I ran nick Junior dot com and nogging dot com before I came over into this space. But I knew that if I could bring all my skills of making content and making fintech products fun and engaging, then I could bring that into the financial services space and transform the space in a way
that no one else had done. And when Angela was talking about, you know she had a two family brownstone, I thought about one of our videos. It's called get a Renter to pay your Mortgage. So those kinds of videos, they're fun, they're engaging. We have one that's called life Insurance. Isn't just for dead people?
Right to the point true.
So we have all these this great content because I came from the content space absolutely and brought that over into the financial services space. Which is why goal Setter can bring this content to people in a way that makes y'all have and it's fun and engaging, but it's still informative.
About creating a trust.
Yes, we do have one trust will trust that you need trust in case you have kids that you need, that's important as well. First, I want to say just thank you for the opportunity for MasterCard, for even having us to have the opportunity to amplify our message and
the work that we do in this space. I think you heard from some of our partners that join you previously, you had Troy Dennis, you has a lot of guss and and definitely for the work that they do holistically, So I just want to give them a shout out.
But thank you. I think that when you have the masses that can hear the wealth content what it is that we can do holistically and with some of the tools and resources that you can educate right and learn from, I just think that this is a fantastic platform for us just to share and amplify a message.
So thank you, well, thank you.
This means a lot to me. So I appreciate you all for being here with us today. I know our audience on way up appreciates this too. We're gonna get our investments way up. Yes, yes, and again this is priceless, this information. So now what are you going to do? That's the question, you know for everybody listening, what are you going to do. It's time to take some action.
But thank you so much for joining us. And I know this is going to be amazing and I cannot wait to hear some of the success stories and people who are just listening and are inspired. So thank you so much.
Thank you.
I'm inspired because you know, I'm already like, okay, in solidarity.
What am I doing?
Stop path?
That's right, you car This building did great.
Thank you.