IAM1761 – Co-founder Teaches About Financial Literacy

Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/2020/08/10/iam728-co-founder-teaches-about-financial-literacy/

Transcription:

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Ron Curtis Teaser 00:00

One thing that I can definitely say, that quality or trait that makes me unique is transparency and also former relationships with my clients. With that being said, especially being in the financial services industries, finance is something that they don't teach us in school.

Intro 00:15

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, You've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:42

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners, or what I like to call the CB Nation architects. Those that are looking to level up their organizations.

In this month, we are focusing on knowing thy numbers. I could hear the phrases from Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank, and if you understand or don't understand exactly what numbers is, think finance, economics, accounting, capital, investment funding, bootstrapping, anything that's around numbers. So, We have to understand how important it is to know your numbers and how important that is for you to forecast, make decisions, and to be able to truly strategize around your business and do that successfully.

So things are gonna be a little bit different obviously, this month. So look for CEO hacks and CEO nuggets and interviews that focus around this. But more than everything else, make sure that you know your numbers because they're extremely important to the life of your business.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Ron Curtis of Wavy Tech. Ron, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Ron Curtis 02:06

Thanks for having me on the show, Gresh. I really appreciate it.

Gresham Harkless 02:09

No problem. Definitely appreciate you for taking some time out. And before we jumped in, I wanted to read a little bit more about Ron so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

And Ron is an author of Financial Lit Volume One Understanding Credit. He also is a credit repair consultant of Max Credit score, and he's the co-founder of a nonprofit called First Base Inc.

He's a natural-born leader and also a serial entrepreneur who has a passion for helping others. He aspires to teach as many people as he can about financial literacy. So Ron, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Ron Curtis 02:39

Yeah, most definitely. I'm ready, I'm ready to talk to them.

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Gresham Harkless 02:41

Awesome. Let's do it. So, to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through your CEO story? What led you to get started with your business ventures?

Ron Curtis 02:51

So basically, as long as I can remember, I've always had like a natural born hustle. Pretty much working the nine to five job, I realized that wasn't the lifestyle for me. I have been blessed. I went to Virginia Commonwealth University and graduated majoring in business. I received a couple of internships that led to full-time jobs that placed me on the career path that I am now.

But I can honestly say that reading different books such as Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, different business mind-focused novels like that helped inspire me to wanna become a CEO and pretty much lead an entrepreneur lifestyle.

Gresham Harkless 03:28

Yeah, that makes so much sense. It's so funny that each of those books that you mentioned are definitely classics for me. I didn't necessarily grow up in an entrepreneurial background, but felt I had those tendencies when I was younger too.

But I think it was those kinds of books that, for me at least, made me feel like it was definitely possible. And of course, exactly how you can make that happen.

Ron Curtis 03:48

Definitely, definitely it starts with the book. Knowledge is Power.

Gresham Harkless 03:51

Absolutely. So I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper, and hear a little bit more about your ventures. Could you take us through the different ways that you help support the clients that you have?

Ron Curtis 04:00

Okay, so, the most focal point in my business right now is financial literacy. As you stated, I have a passion for financial literacy. My goal is to teach over a thousand people this year, financial literacy. So in that aspect, I'm really focused on financial services.  I'm a credit repair consultant for max credit score. I teach people how to leverage their credit, how to increase their score and also how we should be using our credit on a day-to-day basis to provide them with that literacy.

I'm also a broker for Primerica where I teach people in my community about the importance of life insurance. Try to get us to change the narrative that life insurance isn't something that should be looked over, down or frowned upon. It should be looked at as this income protection to protect your income. When you're not here, you're no longer here to support your family.

And last but not least, I'm currently in the process of studying for my securities license so I can deal with teaching people how to deal with their retirements and investing and things like that. So I am also working on my second novel, Financially Understanding the Stock Market.

So that's pretty much what I focus on in terms of my business.

Gresham Harkless 05:05

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. As you said, knowledge is power and I think, I don't know what, but it might have been enriched at poor dad that and I know Kiyosaki always talks about how important, how you don't really learn that financial aspect. They should be teaching it in school, but they don't teach it in school.

So a lot of times people graduate from high school, college, and so on and so forth, and they might have all the book knowledge related to other things, but they don't necessarily know how to, at the very least, even balance a checkbook. So it's great that you, devoted so many different ways to empowering people.

Ron Curtis 05:33

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 05:35

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for you personally or your ventures, but what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

Ron Curtis 05:44

One thing that I can definitely say is that quality or trait that makes me unique is transparency and also forming relationships with my clients. With that being said, especially being in the financial services industries, finance is something that they don't teach us in school. So, pretty much by the time that we're 13, 12 years old, we're handling money every day, elementary school and they never teach you about money.

So if you're not gonna learn about money in school, if your family does not have that financial literacy and that expertise to teach you about money, and you don't go seek it yourself, pretty much that's where my expertise comes in to give you and provide as much value as I can to you wholeheartedly. Pretty much teaching you about financial literacy.

Like I said, those are the things that we can't, and we're not gonna learn in school. Society's not gonna teach us. Sometimes they say experience is the best teacher, and I'm trying to pretty much get my community to understand that you have to be proactive instead of reactive in terms of financial literacy.

Gresham Harkless 06:39

Yeah, absolutely. That makes so much sense, which again, I appreciate you for creating the books and working on your book and all the continued learning that you're doing as well to help out people in the community and correct me if I'm wrong, finances is something that can be learned.

I think sometimes even if you don't grow up in, or understanding exactly what you can do with a dollar or different ways you can invest and so on and so forth, you still have the opportunity to really learn, to be able to increase that knowledge and of course, increase the ability to be able to execute on that knowledge.

Ron Curtis 07:10

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 07:11

Awesome. And so, I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Ron Curtis 07:24

It can be definitely a number of things, but one that comes to mind is constant. Constantly engaging with mindful content that adds to your value. So an example of this can be a number of things. It can be listening to books, it can be podcasts, it can be reading. It can be going and just doing research perfecting your craft daily. So the one that definitely sticks out another great podcast to listen to is something called Earn Your Leisure Podcast.

I love how they have about 80-plus episodes where they go in and they break down all these different business opportunities that are available for people like you and me, every day. People can pretty much tell their story of how they became successful.

What I love about it is they give you so many valuable gems and they drop all the valuable knowledge that you need transparently to achieve those goals and become successful as well.

Gresham Harkless 08:15

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I almost feel like it's a lot like what we were talking about in the beginning where you at least for me when I started to read more and hear about more, sometimes you think that maybe it's not possible, but when you start to read and see as you said, everyday people that are able to create these businesses, it helps make it experience that we all can learn to do and actually create in our lives.

Ron Curtis 08:37

That's definitely a fact. Most definitely.

Gresham Harkless 08:40

Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Ron Curtis 08:53

The one thing that I would definitely tell my younger self based on all the research and knowledge that I've acquired over the years is pretty much, you cannot be successful or acquire anything you want in this life without discipline.

Discipline is definitely the foundation to get you to achieve your dreams and your goals. And it can be something as simple as waking up every morning at a certain time and season a day. Deciding not to, snooze your alarm.

So I pretty much try and test myself daily, weekly, monthly, and also yearly with different goals to make me more disciplined. So I would definitely say the key is discipline.

Gresham Harkless 09:29

Absolutely. And do you find those challenges that you have, does it translate over and obviously make you more disciplined in that thing, but also does it seem to carry over into other aspects of your life and of course in business as well?

Ron Curtis 09:41

Most definitely. An example, this could be the book, the Compound Effect, right? So it talks about how pretty much we used to start with one task and you continue to do it over and over and over. There's that compounding effect where of course things are not gonna happen overnight, but as long as you keep pulling in that debt that works from day to day, you will reach the achieved result that you want.

So, it does have a piggybacking effect on other things. A perfect example could be waking up every morning and just making your bed, you can start there. I've been able to withstand and pretty much refrain from partaking in certain activities from in terms of eating habits spending habits just daily rituals, and listening to something valuable each day. It really does have a snowball effect when you start with discipline, you can start with something small and it'll compound and continue to grow.

Gresham Harkless 10:29

Nice. Appreciate you for breaking that down. I think, was it Darren Hardy, I think that wrote that book? I can't remember who wrote The Compound Effect, but.

Ron Curtis 10:36

I can't remember off the top of my head either.

Gresham Harkless 10:37

It's a powerful book because I think that so many times, as you said, we think about overnight success. We think everything just happens overnight, but in reality, it's those little small things that start to add up and create those compound of those watershed moments, I guess you can say where things start to really move.

Ron Curtis 10:54

Definitely, yeah. It's definitely Darren Hardy. I have his book right here.

Gresham Harkless 10:56

Okay, perfect. Yeah, I thought so. Yeah, it is definitely one another great hack because I think, again, so many times we get caught when we see everybody's finish line, we don't see the process that it took for them to get there.

Ron Curtis 11:07

Exactly. Yep.

Gresham Harkless 11:09

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote CEOs on this show. So Ron, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Ron Curtis 11:20

Being a CEO means to me pretty much that you're a leader. When you're a CEO you're usually the head of an organization. That means a lot of times you have employees underneath you that rely on you. They're pretty much what you are responsible for.

The second thing that comes to mind with being a CEO is you have to learn to hustle in every environment. An example, of this could be right now with the COVID 19 pandemic, just because the way of life has changed for a lot of us, that doesn't mean you stop. Life doesn't stop for anybody. The clock keeps ticking, the world keeps revolving. So I would definitely say being a CEO to me is being a leader.

You have to be able to lead so people can follow you, and then you have to be able to be innovative and hustle in every environment.

Gresham Harkless 12:02

Absolutely. I love those two perspectives just because I think they definitely overlap as well too. Because I think true leadership is in times when there are difficulties where there's disruption and changes.

You show your leadership by how you're able to lead yourself, but also of course lead the people that depend upon you. Whether that be team members or investors or whatever, or however that looks. I think when you start to incorporate that and do that on a regular basis, you're able to hustle, pivot, change your way towards the wage you need to be to reach whatever that goal might be.

Ron Curtis 12:32

That's definitely true.

Gresham Harkless 12:34

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. Ron, truly appreciate the definition, appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find about all the awesome things you're working on.

Ron Curtis 12:48

Okay. First of all, I want to thank you for your time today. I definitely enjoyed coming on your show and giving your some insight on what a CEO is to me. In terms of what I'd like to share with you guys, if anybody ever wants to reach out to me, If they have any questions regarding their finances, I can make personalized budgets for them.

I can also do a free consultation pretty much to go over your credit profile where we can take an in-depth look at your credit profile and talk about some ways of how we can increase your score. And then you can contact me at roncurtisg@gmail.com. And you can follow me on Instagram at Wavy Ronnie.

Gresham Harkless 13:30

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much again, Ron. We will have the links and information in the show notes just so that everybody can follow up with you. But definitely as you said, being and understanding the different ways you can leverage your finances or know about your finances is an increasingly important and insanely important for everybody.

So I appreciate you for doing that in so many different ways, and of course giving us so many words of wisdom today as well.

Ron Curtis 13:51

I will thank you for your time today, Gresh. I definitely appreciate you as well.

Outro 13:55

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast, powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamco.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

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Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating. Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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