Hi, everyone. This is Eddie Turner, your host of the Keep Leading Podcast, a podcast dedicated to leadership development and leadership insights. And today we are going to be listening to Joel Block. Joel’s one of the sharpest financial guys I know and Joel’s go share business leadership strategies with us, how we can lead as leaders with financial integrity, with financial intelligence and why it matters and other strategies that we can use if you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner. He’ll share all of that with us and more right after this.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, a podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Today I am really excited to speak to a fund manager, venture capitalists and keynote speaker who provides clients disruption-proof strategies to give their company the inside track. I’m talking about Joel Block.Joel, welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast.

Eddie, hey, thank you very much. How are you man?

I’m doing well. Thank you. before I get into this Joel, please tell people a little bit about your background because you have a phenomenal background. I want people know a little bit about who you are.

Sure. Well, I started in the CPA business but really wasn’t destined to stay in that business and when I was at Pricewaterhouse years ago started working as real estate syndicators. Those are people that raise capital by assets. And I just thought “Gee, that’s a business I want to be in. So I quit Pricewaterhouse, went in that business and then I felt into a venture capital transaction along the way and raised a bunch of money. So I really learned how to raise money and I learned how to acquire deals and be involved in the deal business and I’ve spent the last 30 years doing that and I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

Yes, I’d say, given some of the things I’ve seen you’ve accomplished in some of the things that you do. And I got a chance to actually hear you do what you do in front of a live audience not long ago. And you and I met because you shifted from just doing your work in the finance world to speaking about it and you are now a member of the National Speakers Association and you’re on international board. So tell us about how you use speaking in your business and why that’s so important.

Well, in 1995 I sold a company that I had raised a bunch of money for and that I had spent some years working on. And after that transaction I thought “You know, entrepreneurs and business owners across the country really could benefit from learning from what it is that I learned as an entrepreneur and what is that I did when I was out in the field.” And it took a little while to kind of get up and running but I started telling stories to different kinds of groups and explaining things and people really like this, they find it very inspiring, very motivating but they also really find it very tactical because I’m not making this stuff up as I go along. I mean I really did the things that I talk about. And as a result of that, I’ve just continued and then along the way a big real estate company called and asked if I would do a seminar program for them. And so that’s turned into something pretty substantially. I teach real estate investors how to set up syndications and funds and how to raise money.So, listen, I’ve been in a variety of businesses and I just talk about them and tell other people about them and I love sharing what it is that I do and I love helping other people learn.

That’s one of the things that’s so impressive about you. You do have just a vast amount of knowledge from your different experiences in this area. And when you are speaking you come across as an authority. There’s just no question that you know your stuff but then also you kind of have people on the edge of their chairs, they’re hanging on your every word because you really are not just sharing regular knowledge that people can get out of a book. You really are giving people the inside track, if you will, as to how things work on the back end and give a perspective that the average person wouldn’t normally hear.

Well, people in the money business are on the inside track. And everybody wants to be in the inside track but most people really have a hard time getting there. It’s one of the things that I talk about. I talk about that there are retail investors which is almost everybody and then there are professional investors which is me and the people that that I spend time with. And there are reasons that professional investors make more money in five days than everybody else makes five years and it’s because they know certain things, they understand certain things, they look at the world in a certain way and that’s the inside track. And the inside track, by the way, is not that you get secret tips from people and that people know everything because that’s not always true. Listen, we all have networks, we all know people, and we all have different kinds of capital. We have intellectual capital, financial capital, we have relational capital, reputational capital. We have all different kinds of things and we need to put those things to good use. And the inside track to me is the best, smartest and fastest way to get things done. And if you’re not doing it that way, then you’re going to lose to people who are on the inside track and they really have an advantage over you. So I hope that people will start to learn how to take advantage of being on the inside track.

Yeah, your formula for how to make more money in five days than some people we’ll make in five years, that was phenomenal to see you unpack that in front of a live audience. And so I’m going to encourage people to definitely look at your next offering so that they can learn from you directly. Now, they don’t have to wait until they’re sitting in one of your sessions. You actually wrote a book where you detail a lot of information that is just very straightforward, easy to read, it makes so much sense. The title of the book, share that with us, please.

Stop Hustling Gigs And Start Building A Business.

And then the subtitle is what I really love.

101 Tricks Of The Trade To Help Entrepreneurs And Self-Employed People Build A Money-Making Machine.

Yeah that’s powerful. I know a lot of entrepreneurs, I am one myself, of course, and self employed people both in the speaking business and outside of the speaking business. So, your 101 tips, it’s like “Wow! This is common sense stuff here” but you make it real and you make it tangible, something that we can actually put into action. Can you share with us perhaps, and it’s like asking a parent which one is their favorite child, but out of the 101 tips that you share, what’s your favorite?

Well, first of all, let me say that I spent a lot of years in venture capital, investing in companies. I’ve probably been inside more than a thousand companies. And I’ve watched what successful companies do and I’ve watched a lot of other companies that are not so successful and they consequently aren’t around anymore. And there are things, there are patterns that exist. So I documented that some of these patterns over a long period of time and that’s what the book is. It’s really a collection of all these different things that I learned being in the field and investing in companies and investing in management teams and being involved with these different kinds of people. I would really probably say the one that I go to the most often, there’s 101 or 105 or whatever, I forget what’s in the book, but “Money follows expertise. The better you get at something, whatever the underlying thing is, you need to get better and better and better at your craft. The better you get at it, the more money you’re likely to make.” Now does it happen once in a while that somebody’s mediocre and they skyrocket? Yeah, once in a while but for most people the trick really is to get really good at your craft and then things are going to take care of themselves.

So how do I know I’m good at my craft because I think I’m okay, right? The average person might be thinking what they should use.

I can’t really give you a barometer for each industry. Everybody has to kind of know for themselves what that means. Maybe that means that they get a coach. Maybe that means that they have a teacher or instructor that helps them. Maybe they’re on a mastermind group with some high-level people. There’s probably a lot of different components honest to that but you have to really work hard to be near or at the top of your game, be the best you can be, and when you feel like you’re really on track to be the best you can be, other people are going to stand up and take notice and that’s when money starts moving in your direction. And that applies not only the people. It applies to companies. If your company is the best in the space, money’s going to be attracted to it. So you got to add value. You got to be really good at what you do. Do not go online and tell everybody how great you are if you can’t deliver, if you don’t have the goods.

Very good advice. All right. Well, in your career, in what you are doing now in venture capitalist, it’s been very successful and you have all these lessons around finance, around business. You told us that money follows the expertise but is there another key piece of advice you by yourself often giving leaders, giving entrepreneurs.

Money is a complicated thing. And one of the things that I tried to make people aware of is that you have to understand the character of money. And people look at me like I have four eyes when I say character. People are saying “Joel, money doesn’t have character. It’s green and it goes in your pocket and that’s it” but the truth is that money is very, very complex. I studied money in college for years and interest rates and accounting is how to write it down and then finances, how to organize it and get more. The difference between me and other people, the way I look at money in the way that non-professional money people look at money, well, let’s put it like this. To an accountant, for example, or most people in general, they tend to look at money like poker chips. It’s a way of keeping score. And that’s fine. You definitely can keep score with money. If one person’s really, really good and they do a great job, that’s fantastic, but to me, I look at it a little differently than that. I look at it as a tool. To me, money is the tool that I use to make more money. Most people do not use money as a tool. Most people just keep score with the money but I actually use it as a tool. And so the character of the money is very important and you really have to understand the money. And by the way, the federal government understands the character of money very, very well which is why our tax code is so incredibly complicated. There are hundreds of different characters of money and most people are sitting there and saying “I can’t even think of one” but I’ll tell you that it’s very complicated.And as you get into the nitty-gritty, there’s a lot to understand and the more you understand, the more likely you are to get a seat at the table, to keep your seat at the table, and to really be part of the decision making in a business organization because at the end of the day, businesses are about making money. Now I would go a step further and I would say as much as I’m about money, business is really not only about money. Business is really about people because people make money.

Well, tell me more about this idea that you use money as a tool because to your point, many people are probably thinking “Well, I just keep score with it?”

Well, I mean, look, investors give me their money. So I have a bank account full of money and then I take that money and I go buy things. I buy assets and those assets, we add value to those assets that makes those assets more valuable. Than we sell those assets to other people and then we make money and the money comes back in our account and we share that profit with our investors. So that’s how we use money as a tool. I mean, the fact that we have the capital ready to go, and I talk about there being a readiness premium, we actually make money because our money’s ready to go. If your money’s not ready to go, you’re going to pay more money. If your money’s ready to go, you’re going to pay less money when you go buy something. So the fact that we’re organized, we’re ready to go, we get a readiness premium and then we put the word out, the word in the marketplace, deals start coming our way because we’re the guys with the money and then we start buying things and then we start investing in things or we start in a moving money in a certain way. And those are the things that help us to make more money on the money itself. So we make money on the money and that’s what most people do not know how to do.

Okay, very interesting. So I’m an entrepreneur and if I’m an entrepreneur listening to this podcast who is a leader, who’s leading their own business, they’re leading their our own community organization, whatever it may be, can you tell them about something that you wrote in Chapter 13 of your book where you talk about building your revenue octopus.

Oh yeah. Listen, this is really important. A revenue octopus, the concept is that great businesses have multiple streams of revenue that are all derivative from the same origin. And what that means is that you want to repurpose your money and you want to repurpose your revenue streams in different ways. So you get one thing going and then you do something that’s similar but enough different that new money’s coming in, so you’re reaching new markets, new people and you’re really maximizing the way that the money moves. What you don’t want to do is spread yourself so thinly you can’t control what you’re doing. So you have a supermarket over here and a restaurant over there and some other kind of business down the street and you’re doing this and doing that, that doesn’t work, but a revenue octopus … Let’s think about a couple of great companies. So, for example, Starbucks is a great company and I think about Starbucks, how they might have got started. They first started brewing coffee, great coffee. And then a couple guys probably sat down together and said “Gee, we have this great coffee and we have these customers. So what are our assets? Well, one is the recipe for the coffee. The other asset we have is our customers. What else could we give these customers? How can we go deeper with these people and give me more? So what else do they like to buy? They’d probably like to buy maybe a coffee machine for their house or maybe they’d like to buy some clothing with our logo on it because now our logo is becoming popular or eventually down the road they’ll say “Well, gee, maybe people would like to buy gift cards” or maybe they’d like to get a credit card with our company’s name on it.” And then eventually Costco calls and says “Hey, could we sell your beans in bulk?” So you see where that goes. So over time they have many, many different ways for you to leave money at Starbucks. There’s a lot of ways Starbucks can make money on you. And that concept is what I think of as a revenue octopus. Great businesses have eight, sometimes even more than eight. I talk about put your faith in eight. You have to have a lot of revenue streams in order to have a really successful business. If you have only one, you’re subject to seasonality, downturns and other kinds of things including concentration which is really dangerous. So there’s all kinds of things that can go wrong and you want to be very careful that you’re strategically planning to be smart and ahead of the curve and really good. And when you do that, you’re going to find out that you’ve got a great business.

Put your faith in eight. Revenue octopus. All right, that’s a phrase that you own. You’ve trademarked the ‘Revenue Octopus’. Thank you for sharing that with us, Joel. So you’ve given us a lot of good things to think about here – Money follows the expertise, use money as a tool, and have a revenue octopus. We’re talking Joel block right now.We’re going to Joel Block. Right now I’m going to pause for a word from our sponsors.

We’re back.So we’re talking to Joel Block, one of the sharpest finance guys I know, and he’s letting us know as leaders, as entrepreneurs, as self-employed people some of the things that we need to think about when it comes to running a business and around the ideal of finances.

Joel, our good mutual friend Rochelle Rice said you asked her what in coaching I would call a powerful question. She said you asked “Are you building a business or hustling the next gig?” And she said it knocked her out of her chair.

Well, listen, that’s the concept of the book is that most people do not have a business. They really just have a job that they’ve given themselves. Now, we’re talking what about smaller operations. The middle-sized companies, they understand the concept of strategic planning. They understand the idea of having multiple streams of revenue. So we’re talking now about smaller companies or smaller groups. And it’s very dangerous. If you go out, you sell something, you deliver the service and then you run back to your office, get back on the phone and start calling more people, somebody else gives you a little something to do, you run out, you do it. That’s a really hard way to live for a long period of time. So you have to have some way of having the business do some of the work. If you’re doing all the work, that’s not really a business. That’s either a practice or it’s something else but you really got to have that business helping you. It’s got to do some of the work. Your reputation, your brand, they all have to be working for you.

Do you have any examples that come to mind, Joel?

Examples of which part of this?

You said having the business work for you.

Yeah, in any really good business, you’re going to develop referrals. So referrals might be one way that business comes in. And then your reputation, people are going to get to know who you are over a period of time. And you have to have different things that they can buy. You have to be able to productized yourself in a way that you have to turn some of your things into products where somebody says “You know, Joel, we don’t need a speaker right now but we need some advice” or “Our CEO wants to be part of a group of other CEOs, a private group that maybe like what I run” or somebody needs some sounding board or somebody needs this or … There’s the different ways that I interact with people that I deal with. That’s part of what it is. So you have to have lots of different ways that people can work with you. And then you might have your Marketing department using social media, so social media is helping drive leads. You might have lots of different ways that you’re generating referrals or you might have sales people that are helping you. So somehow or another you’re not doing all the work. The business is doing a large portion of the work.

Thank you for sharing that. Now you believe that everyone, as a leader especially, should prioritize financial literacy so much so that I’m told that you demand that everyone who works for you or sits on the board with you masters basic finance 101. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Well, that’s true. I can’t always demand it but I was the chairman of the board of the Los Angeles Boys and Girls Club which is a pretty big club in Los Angeles. We serve about 7000 children a year. Many of those children are from disadvantaged families. And the job of the board of directors, like the job of the officers in the company, really the job of those people is to make sure that our executive director had the resources that she needed to take care of the children that we’re charged with taking care of. And if you don’t understand how the money works, it’s very difficult to really be taken very seriously in a larger company and it’s hard to be successful. You could be great at many other things but at the highest level of management, in order to really be taken seriously, you have to bring some financial acumen to the table. And so when I was chairman, there were many people who were not financial people and we’d take out the balance sheet, the income statement, we’d do the financial report for the month and I would explain, I do a little less than a 15-minute lesson on some financial concept that I wanted everybody to understand. And there were people that didn’t like it because they thought it wasted a lot of their time but at the end of the day, after learning a lot of this stuff, people really come around and they say “Gee, it’s really good that we did this because number one, we’re stewards of capital, we’re responsible, we’re making decisions and if you don’t understand the decisions that you’re making, you’re going to find yourself in a pot of trouble after a while.” So I try to encourage groups do this. Not everybody is equally open to it but I certainly think that groups inside companies and there are particular sectors inside of companies, for example, HR, HR people, they bring so much value to the table but they’re not always taken seriously at the most senior level of the organization because they can’t contribute in a financial capacity. And they really need to bone up on these things because that’s the way they’re going to get their seat at the table and that’s how they’re going to keep their seat at the table as being able to understand what the financial contribution of their department is to the company because they’re human capitalists and that’s pretty much the most valuable component the whole company and they responsible for that. So they have to get above the compliance of the HR and really kind of get into the value driven component that they’re delivering. And when they get above that and they get into that new level, it really makes a huge difference and their performance starts to go up, their recognition goes up, the respect they get goes up. All the way around it works out for them.

So to be a leader at any level in any organization, we must understand finances. It’s inextricably linked to being taken serious. I like how you said that.

Well, listen, there are people that will take offence to “Well, I’m taken seriously and I don’t know about money” and you know what, you absolutely can be taken seriously but at the highest level of the organization in a business which is all about delivering value and converting that into profit, it’s very difficult to be a significant contributor if you don’t have financial wherewithal and capacity.

Okay, thank you.So, at times as leaders, we might not give a lot of thought to some decisions that that we need to make and we may kind of have a knee jerk reaction and just make a decision off the cuff. What advice would you say to leaders who are making knee jerk decisions?

I’d say “Count to 3.” A big part of the problem that we have in our society, Eddie, is that people, they do a lot of knee jerks. Now, I’m not talking about intuition, and you know I’m very intuitive and I make decisions based on my intuition, and understand you can never have 100% of the information. If you get 60%, 70%, 80% of the information, you have to be able to make a decision with the data level of information. The thing is you don’t want to make a decision with 10%. You want to gather enough information to be smart. And it’s really my opinion that if the people in our society in general just counted to 3 and didn’t blurb dumb stuff out and they just thought about what they were about to say, so many of the problems that we have as a society would subside.

All right. Well then, Joel, I really appreciate all this information that you’ve shared, these insights that you’ve shared with myself and the leaders listening to our program. What would you say is the big takeaway from our conversation station today that you want every leader to know?

I want people to learn enough that they can take the inside track because there are people who are taking the inside track. Now you may not yourself know how to take the inside track but you need to get around people who are on the inside track, they can share with you how to take the inside track. And when you do that, you’re going to find yourself being a lot more successful. And actually, if I could give a little plug, my own podcast show which you’ve been on is called Profit From The Inside and for every single week we deliver different kinds of approaches and techniques for taking the inside track.

Thank you. So your podcast Profit From The Inside, strategies to give your business the inside track and then you’ve also provided for our listeners a list of your top tools for leaders for 2019. I’m going to put that in the show notes for folks. And you’ve got an impressive list of tools that you’re sharing.

Yeah. Smaller companies have to produce 20 times what our corporate counterparts produce. And we have to lean on really good tools to help us to do that. So many of our smaller companies, we don’t have janitors emptying our trash and we don’t have, I don’t know, technicians changing the printer cartridges in our printers and we really have to be good at doing more things in a lot less time than some other people do. So I just have these great resources that I’ve used over a long period of time and I always am adding new ones, different kinds of things that help me to be more efficient and optimize and stay on the inside track.

All right. On the Keep Leading Podcast we want to make sure leaders can keep leading. What words of advice would you have for them?

I would tell your people that money follows expertise and just make sure that you are the best that you can be and it will start to be recognized.

All right. Well, Joel, thank you so much. Where can my listeners find out more about you?

Probably the best place to go to is JoelBlock.com and there’s a lot of information about me. We produce weekly completely commentary beside the podcast. We produce all different kinds of commentary and most of the information about those things are available on the website.

Excellent. And we’ll also make sure we put links to your social media profiles so folks can follow you on social media.

Perfect.

Well thank you again, Joel, for being on the Keep Leading Podcast.

Thanks for having me.

And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast. I’m your host Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact.I’m dedicating this episode to women and those that love them. We’re going to talk about something many women may not be giving enough attention to – wealth creation and wealth management. You want to listen to this episode where we are going to talk about women and wealth. My guest today, Beata Kirr, is an expert in this area and she is passionate about helping women investors succeed. Beata will share her expertise with us right after this.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact.I’m dedicating this episode to women and those that love them. We’re going to talk about something many women may not be giving enough attention to – wealth creation nation and wealth management. You want to listen to this episode where we’re going to talk about women and wealth. My guest today, Beata Kirr, is an expert in this area and she is passionate about helping women investors succeed. Beata Kirr is the National Managing Director and Head of Private Client Core Asset Strategies at Bernstein Global Wealth Management. She oversees strategic asset allocation for high-net-worth, nonprofit, and family office clients. She holds a degree in Economics. She graduated magna cum laude from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and holds an MBA from my alma mater Northwestern University and she got there from the Kellogg School of Management. As a highly regarded expert, Beata has provided market commentary for the Chicago Tribune, WGN News, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.

Beata, welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast.

Thank you so much, Eddie. I’m excited to be here.

I am super excited to have you, Beata. I was so impressed with you when I met you and I thought “Wow! I have got to get her on the show.” Please tell my listeners a little bit about you and your background.

Well, thank you so much, Eddie, and I felt the same about you. We met at a wonderful panel here in Chicago probably a year ago but what can I say after that introduction. I’m honestly embarrassed. I have been in the financial services industry pretty much by entire career and the last 12 years I have been at Bernstein, helping clients invest their wealth, think about long-term goals, and all of the implications around that. And I would say in the last two years in particular I’ve really come into my own voice and spoken up about my passion of helping women engage, explore, interact with their assets. And it’s not something that I think women have naturally done and that is something that I feel very strongly about today because we need to do it and it sometimes can be intimidating and a lot of jargon, right? So I’ve spent the last couple of years really building out our efforts to engage with women and that’s under the context in which we met.

Well, yes, that was a fascinating panel of brilliant women there for the Women in Leadership Symposium at what used to be the world’s largest building, the tallest building, the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower and you clearly stood out and one of the reasons we wanted to talk with you but you said something there that I find interesting. You help women engage, explore, and interact with their assets. That’s a mouthful. Can you just give us a little bit more about that?

Yes, there’s a lot of adjectives there. The reason we use a lot of adjectives is because we don’t want anybody to think that we don’t think women are engaged already, right? And no way are we talking down to women or trying to oversimplify. It’s just based on an observation I’ve had being in the services industry my entire career. And I’ve been in many conference rooms and board rooms and client living rooms and I’m used to being the only woman in the room in a lot of those settings but I’ve also noticed that when I’m speaking about our views on the market and the economy, there weren’t that many women in the room and when there were, they weren’t asking the questions. And so when I had the one-on-one conversations with them afterwards, I would learn they had plenty of questions but just didn’t feel the environment was conducive to asking and sometimes maybe we’re embarrassed that their questions were too simple. And no question is too simple and no question should remain unanswered but really that’s what I mean. I mean just connecting with women about what matters to them, getting questions answered. And I have to say on behalf of the financial services industry, I hardly represent the entire industry, and it’s a big one, but I think the industry has done a great disservice to women investors over long periods of time by not listening and by not engaging, really not meeting women where they want to be met.

Well, you and your firm have certainly done a lot to address this. And so this whole area about wealth management, can you talk about what that really is and why it is uniquely important for women to focus on?

Absolutely. I mean, look, wealth management is for everybody. It’s not defined by gender or any other social category, right? It’s about achieving your financial goals. And our tagline at Bernstein is actually about “Making money meaningful.” And hopefully that’s not a mouthful. Hopefully that makes sense.

I like that though.

Money can be viewed as a burden or it can be viewed as an opportunity. And I think one of the areas that I’ve seen sometime split by gender is that women view it more as a burden. It’s a chore. It’s something they have to understand, investigate, work on but instead we’re really trying to flip that conversation and say use it as an opportunity. Think about it like everything else. Time is an opportunity. Money is an opportunity. So in wealth management we work with clients who have acquired enough wealth, high-net-worth clients, where that money really can be used as an opportunity and they think about business investments, furthering their family goals, of course their own retirement goals, and oftentimes there charitable goals. And we really act as a trusted advisor across all of those different ways in thinking about how to deploy their capital but the most basic thing that we do, if you will, is invest their money.

Is there a relationship between wealth management and leadership?

Sure. I think there’s a lot of different ways to think about it. First of all, I’m thinking about how we deploy wealth management and what vehicles and conversations we’re having with our clients. I think it takes great leaders in the business of wealth management to connect with clients and create a platform of offerings that makes sense for clients. This is a big market, wealth management. There’s thousands sounds of firms that do this. So I think it does take great leadership to differentiate yourselves and to communicate in a way that’s clear too. I think great leaders are not just executing leadership. They’re communicating leadership. I’m sure you spend time talking about the importance of communication in leadership, right?

And that’s the parallels that I see that at Bernstein we feel it’s really our job not just to deliver on investment results but to make sure that we’re communicating clearly, honestly, openly with transparency about what we’re doing and that shouldn’t be difficult but sometimes it is. So I think that’s the corollary.

Thank you. Now, if you could put your finger on one singular thing, I’m sure there might be a couple, is there one mistake that you see surfacing more than others when working with women in their finances?

Well, I have to say the biggest mistake is that women aren’t paying attention to their finances. And so what do I mean by that? If you’re a single mom, you’re likely very much paying attention to your budget. You know exactly what it takes to run your household and you’re striving for your kid’s success but oftentimes what I see in, let’s say, a traditional marriage, I see the husband being responsible for the finances and the wife are not meeting for a decade or longer while they’re a client and then reality strikes. And what I mean by that reality is women are outliving men. And we see a lot of tragic situations in our client base where unfortunately the first time we’re meeting the wife is after her husband’s death. And she may or may not be in the financial position that she would like to be in. She may or may not know what position she’s been in or where the assets are, right? And so I think that’s really what I refer to when I say women need a wakeup call on engaging with their assets, joint or individual assets, right? That’s the biggest mistake I see is that we have to own it, we’re outliving men oftentimes whether it’s divorce or death, the chances that women and are going to be the primary decision maker on their assets in their lifetime are enormous. Surveys show 95% of women will be making financial decisions for their household at some point in their lives.

Wow! That’s a staggering statistic.

Yeah, it’s overwhelming. So, yeah, everybody’s busy and they want to kind of delay that engagement because it takes work and time but if you start early and often, you build up knowledge. So don’t wait. Don’t wait until it’s the unfortunate circumstance that drives you to focus on it.

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for that statistic. There’s another statistic you shared at our event and I won’t put you on the spot by trying to ask you to remember it but closely related, you said this and I fell over my chair. You said 80% of men die married while 80% of women die single.

Yup, I did say that. I have to say I don’t own that statistic. It was a survey, I forget which company but it was in the insurance industry, right? When you think about an industry who’s very focused on getting statistics about longevity right, it actually helps giving even more credence to the data because you better believe the insurance industry is extremely interested in understanding longevity by gender as they’re underwriting life insurance, right? And so when I started creating materials for our women and wealth efforts, I really did go out in field and say “What are the most interesting and compelling statistics out there?” and that one, I nearly fell out of my chair too. So that is right. That is the one.

Well, thank you for sharing what mistake you’re seeing most often being made. And I certainly can see why that would be important for women to correct immediately as you suggested. What’s the number one thing you see women doing well?

I guess it’s on the flipside, right? It’s not surprising that that’s my answer but I think that women are doing well when they are engaging and when their owning their decision making. And I think the real challenge with investing … By the way, like many things in the world there’s no certainty in the outcomes. And I think when women really accept that there’s a range of outcomes and they’ve planned for those outcomes and they’ve made the best decision possible based on that range, usually in partnership with an advisor, then they feel confident in their choices. And studies have also shown that actually women have tended to be better long-term investors than men.

Really?

Yeah and that one is interesting, right? Sometimes controversial but pretty well known studies are out there that show this. And one of the reasons for that has been that when women make decisions around investing, they tend to stick to their plan and not ebb and flow. This is one of the differences by gender that men tend to want to make change more often and more volatile trading, if you will. And when they’re doing that, a lot of times it’s not the right decision. And so it’s as simple as understanding the long-term premises of investing. There’s a reason they’re long term. And you don’t have to get very cute with a lot of short-term changes to that to actually have good outcomes.

Well, based on your answer here and the previous answer that my wife is going to outlive me, I think I’m going to have a conversation with her after this is over and let her take over.

It’s probably really good idea, Eddie.

So do you find that many women have financial advisors?

Well, these are some interesting surveys that have been done. I pulled a lot of information from the Center for Talent Innovation. They had a survey called ‘The Power Of The Purse’ back in 2015 and they actually showed that the majority of women do not have financial advisors. I think the statistic was around, I think, it was just over 50% of women.

That’s significant.

Yeah, I mean it was the majority, right? And women under 40 even more don’t have financial advisors. And the survey did ask why, what’s the problem or what has their experience been with the financial services industry. And one of the answers was that women felt that their advisor do not understand them, do not listen to them, or was not interested in them. The investment advice industry grew up in a way where there was a sale of product as opposed to a partnership around advice. And at Bernstein, I feel that we’ve really delivered on that partnership of advice and stayed very true to that concept but not every the organization has historically been set up that way, right? Just the incentives for the advisor were not aligned with the incentives for the client. And a lot of men run the industry and are still are, right? They dominate investment management. So it’s easy to see why women feel they’re being sold to and there’s a lot of jargon and complexity. You can kind of pull back and detach and say “Forget it. This isn’t worth it” or “I’m just going to try to figure this out on my own.”

Right. So what advice would you give to a woman listening to our discussion right now who does not have an advisor?

Well, I would say that everybody should seek out advisors partners that they feel comfortable engaging with. And in all my speaking about this topic around the country I have been presented with some thorny questions where women have come up and said their husband hires the advisor team and she really doesn’t like them but the assets are joint and she doesn’t have individual assets. So how do you make that change? And I don’t have the ultimate answer that other than raising the awareness and saying there’s not a reason that you should be working with any professional advisor that you don’t feel comfortable with. And to start to bring that up in that setting that particular question with your husband and see if change can happen but if you don’t already have an advisor, there’s lots of great options out there for you. And just understanding how advisors are compensated, understanding and feeling that your best interests are aligned with the advisor’s interest. It’s very possible to get that in the industry and you just have to ask around, I think, for other people that your friends trust. And those are probably great people and partners for you to have.

Well, thank you. We’re talking to Beata Kirr, the National Managing Director and Head of Private Client Core Asset Strategies at Bernstein Global Double Wealth Management and we’re talking about women and wealth.We’re going to pause now for a word from out sponsors.

Okay. So we’re back and we’re talking to Beata Kirr and Beata is discussing with us, we’re talking about women and wealth.And so, Beata, you were sharing the number of women who don’t have financial advisors and given us an advice around that right before our break. When I began my work as an entrepreneur many years ago, my attorney told me I needed to learn my ABCs. He said there are three people I have to have in my life if I’m going to operate successfully as much manure. He said I had to have an attorney, which of course is him right, get a good banker, and get a CPA. And so we were talking about women needing to have a financial advisor. Is there anyone else they should have in their life to be successful?

That’s great advice that he gave you. One of the five things that I advise on when I talk about the five things you need to know for women, one of them is build your dream team. And I did not come up with that same acronym of ABC but many of the people are indeed the same overlapping set of advisors. I want to expand on the A though. The attorney is an interesting point because the type of attorney that you should have as an advisor will vary over your life cycle and depending on where you’re at. So, for example, a corporate attorney could be extremely valuable to you as an entrepreneur that you have outside of your business. An estate attorney is going to be important to you. It should be on your list. And estate attorneys are not just for people that have … Today’s lifetime estate exemption is very high, about 22 million dollars for a household. So I want to make it clear though. You shouldn’t just engage in estate planning attorney if you only have over 22 million dollars of joint assets in the household. It’s not just about the estate planning. It’s about your intentions. So you need a will and you need a power of attorney and women in particular need healthcare directives, right? An attorney is an important partner to you and there’s a variety of attorneys that you should engage. And the last type of attorney I would point out is an employment attorney, negotiating contracts being prepared if you are subject to a layoff or need to resign and have ability to negotiate that exit. And oftentimes it’s too late to find that employment attorney once you’re in that situation, right? So network to identify the appropriate attorney for you depending on where you are in your life cycle.

Wow! So you’ve given us a lot of rich information there and I love the concept of coming up with your own dream team. So those three were just one ideal I’ve operated under but I like the concept of having multiple attorneys and especially some of the things you highlighted thee become really important, people don’t realize. You said a power of attorney, healthcare power of attorney and there was another one that you had mentioned in there.

The will, your basic will. And your will should apply to everybody, not just be based on estate planning because people think an estate attorney is really just for people with enormous amount of assets. And while they incredible work to help clients prepare for their ultimate demise and their estate tax consequences, a will is critical for making sure your intentions are met. And there are just too many stories about people dying without a will. And we’ve seen some very, very famous celebrities recently in that situation and you see years later they’re still arguing over their estate because there was no will.

Yes. And I’m glad you mentioned that. There’s a couple of pieces I want to unpack right here. So we’re talking about the dream team but what if I have someone who’s listening and she’s thinking “You know what, this is great for if I had money. I don’t have a lot of money right now. So this doesn’t apply to me. And in terms of a will, I don’t even like to think about dying and I’m much too young to think about that. So this really doesn’t apply to me.” What advice would you give?

Well, it is difficult to talk about these issues and we’re all in the same boat, right? So I don’t know that you need a corporate attorney in that setting but I do think you need basic legal protections. And even if you don’t want to tackle the will concept, maybe you don’t have family that you’re worried about how money would be split up, the healthcare directive would apply to you nonetheless. And I am not a lawyer and I need to insert that disclaimer right now. I should not officially be giving any legal advice but we also see those horrible scenarios where you become incapacitated. Who is making decisions on your behalf? So absolutely everybody should have a healthcare directive because that’s a terrible situation to be in when your own intentions are not being met on yourself, let alone who the beneficiaries are.

Thank you. Yes, you’re letting us know that we need to find the right type of attorney and this is something many may not have considered. You said though that there are five things you have on your list and I only asked about one. Can you tell us what those five items are that you believe every woman needs to know?

Yeah. This might be a long answer though, Eddie.

Take your time.

So, get ready. We’ll have to go back and forth.

Okay.

So there are five things. Build your dream team is clearly one of them, right? And we covered that and variations around it but the single most important thing, number one, on my list of five things is what I call ‘Know Your Numbers’. And so for the women listening to this episode, my guess is that most of you know your height and your weight but do you know how much you spend in a year? Do you know your net worth? And do you know how much you need to retire if you’re working or if you’re not working how much you and the members of your household need together to retire? And I’m going to take a pause there because it takes time to learn those numbers and it can be painful. Nobody wants to know their spending. It’s kind of like you know your weight but you don’t want to know your weight.

When you said that, what went through my mind is “That’s one of those questions I’m never supposed to ask. Even my own wife slams the door when she goes to do that.”

Well, I’m in the business of asking people all kinds of uncomfortable question and I do say that meeting with us is sometimes like going to the doctor, right?

I could only imagine.

It’s painful. It can be painful like a financial checkup. Instead of your annual physical, it’s an annual financial physical.

Yeah, that’s why we’re looking at it.

Yeah, the same way you take care of yourself health wise, you got to take care of yourself financially. There have to be hunches of what those spending numbers are. We’re not here to judge your spending but we’re here to help you calculate it, figure it out. There are some great apps you can use. I tend to recommend Mints. I think Mint is terrific. Again, don’t work for them, they did not pay the here for an endorsement but I think they are a practical app. You can aggregate all of your financial assets and you upload your credit cards, you can see your spending over time. You can set a budget and they will give you alerts if you’re exceeding your budget. Nothing’s perfect. You have to spend time on it categorizing information but you can know your net worth every single day, if you want to, with technology, right?

Thank you for sharing that app because some may be wondering how they can do that on their own and get help. So thank you.

Yes. So knowing your numbers is really the beginning. And spending is a critical number to know because once you know your spending, then you can with the help of an advisor really understand what is your number that you need to sustain your spending for your whole life when you no longer have income. We’re all going to get there at some point somehow. And so that’s the beginning of the building blocks of knowing what you need. So that was just point one – know your numbers.So you want to go to point two? What do you think?

Yes, I love that. So know your numbers is number one. What’s number two?

Protect against worst case outcomes. So you’ve already heard me describe some terrible scenarios that we see in working with the hundreds of clients I’d seen over many years, as you can imagine, and just meeting lots of people on lots of different scenarios and some of those are wonderful and some of them are terrible. And what this is, is, again, I’m not here to sell anybody insurance, but insurance can be very meaningful to protecting against those worst case outcomes. And in fact, long-term disability insurance is oftentimes more important than life insurance.

Interesting.

Yeah, we’ve found people are much likelier to tap into that. It’s likely at some point in your lifetime you’re hit with an injury or an illness that does take you out of the workplace for more than six weeks. And oftentimes just understanding do you have a benefit from your employer, how much is that benefit, is the benefit paid out and still taxable, is the benefit on your base salary or is it on your total compensation including bonus? Those are the questions you want to ask when you log into your benefits portal and you download. If you have all of that information, it’s worth taking the time looking into it and contacting your HR team to just get the facts. And if the answer is you’re not comfortable with how much you have, then you may have to go outside to supplement.

Okay, thank you for sharing that as well.

So that’s number two – protect against worst case outcomes.Organize your financial house. I like metaphors. So it’s a bit like spring cleaning. You got to do that here too. And again here there’s an overlap with that technology recommendation. I can’t tell you how many times I meet clients. Again, our clients tend to be quite blessed with wealth of assets but I had seen many situations where clients have literally forgotten that they have IRA from former employers or 401Ks that’s are still at former employers from decades ago.

Wow!

It can happen. And so where is your money is the simple question here. Organizing your financial house is knowing where the accounts live and knowing their passwords. Oftentimes, it’d be the biggest barrier, right?

Know where they are and be able to access them.

Be able to access them. And I am still searching for the magic solution here that’s foolproof because there isn’t one. We do hear horror stories upon death where people can’t access their spouse’s accounts. So you need to have kind of a master password system or every six months print into out a list of accounts with a password and keep that in a safe place. So I think here it’s a combination of paper and electronic that can be the most helpful.

Yeah, I’ve seen some digital vaults that have come available. There’s a C Suite audience that I’m a part of and they made a vault available to help families with this particular one. I don’t remember the name of it but I would suggest that listeners look online for digital vaults and there are some apps that allow you to store not only passwords but different types of accounts in those apps. Then you’d of course make sure it’s unbelievable to the family.

Yes. I think one of those apps is called Last Pass. And I think that has been good password manager but you’re absolutely right about the digital vault concept. So thank you for bringing that up.So we’ve gone through three – know your numbers, protect against worst case outcomes, organize your financial house. And then we had already covered build your dream team. So last but not least I’m going to come back to honestly where we started the episode and thinking about money is less of a burden and more of an opportunity. And my takeaway there is really fund your favorites. Fund your favorites. So know where your money goes. If 30% percent of your spending is going to shoes, is that bringing joy to your life? Maybe it is or maybe it is. Maybe it’s just accidental spending, what I refer to as accidental spending. It’s impulse buying. It just happens and you just don’t realize how much of your budget it’s taking up. So, first, figure out what makes you happy and what are you passionate about. Is it spending time with your kids? Is it experiences. Is it investing in your kid’s? is it investing in yourself – do you want to go back to school, take a sabbatical, is there a nonprofit you’d like to be more involved in? And then make sure when you see that pie chart at the end of the year that says “This is where my money is going,” can you point to the pie chart and say “A large percentage of where my money is going is something that makes me happy. I’m happy about seeing where that money is going.” That’s not easy to do.

Yes. Wow, that’s a great list. Thank you for sharing the five things everyone woman should know – know your numbers, protect against worst case outcomes, organize your financial house, build your dream team, and fund your favorites.Now of course once a woman has given attention to all these five things, she’s done, right?

No. Work is never done.

What should they then do with this list periodically?

Well, you’ve got to know where you’re at. Think about keeping that list as the master list and if you’re checking in on those things once a year, you’re doing the right thing – Do I feel good about my team, do I know my spending, is my spending aligned with what makes me happy, and where is my money? Those are the basic questions you’re asking and you’re maintaining that relationship with money. And once you have that checklist, I think it becomes a better relationship with money where you know your long-term plans and you’re really orienting towards those goals rather than every day turning on the TV and worrying about where the S&P 500 closed. What does that have to do with your goals and your long-term outcomes?

Absolutely. So, yes, getting these five items, giving them the proper attention, getting them in order is the step one but then periodically, as life changes occur, births and things, there’s a need to revisit this information. And something I have seen several of my executive coaching clients, this tax law that recently was passed is something that should have triggered people to go back and make adjustment but several did not. They had a little surprise this year.

Oh boy, did they? Always saw a lot of that, yes. Yes, we spent a lot of times … Well, absolutely and I’m here in the state of Illinois where I’ll tell you that our property taxes are quite high and the constraints on the amount of deductions available on estate and property taxes really made a dent in people’s taxation. There’s all kinds of reasons why but you’re totally right that people were very surprised by the ramifications of that. So if you had a good dream team, you would have known about it.

Goes back to the dream team. I love that. I’m going to be using all five of those but I’ll definitely be stressing the dream team. That is fantastic.So you’ve shared just a lot of great information, Beata, and there’s a lot of things that I want to talk to you about. One thing I do want to mention to people because I want them to follow you in a lot of different ways but in 2018 your firm recognized that women … well, you recognized it before that but recognizing that they invest differently, in 2018 your firm Bernstein expanded its suite of Bernstein Insights Podcast for high net worth investors and private clients by launching podcast entitled Women And Wealth and that’s I named this episode that. And you are the host. Tell us about that please.

I am and that is all true and you’ve done great background research, Eddie. I think our firm had recognized for a long time that the tides of change were upon us and what we saw was more and more female financial decision makers. So women are earning more money, women are outliving men, and the bottom line is that more women were controlling assets. And engaging with those women has always been important to us but I personally felt very strongly that we had a lot of value to offer and content. And so we decided to launch this sub-series of our podcast called Women and Wealth and we recorded about one episode a month since the fall of 2018 and it has been fabulous. And it has also led to opportunities like this where I get to be a guest on other people’s podcast. And I do spend time really traveling around the country sharing what I’ve learned and I love it I love meeting women and feeling like we can lift everybody up at the same time by empowering and engaging.

That is just wonderful. I saw some public data that said that you all were pulling down more than 4000 downloads on each of your initial episodes and now you’ve kind of balanced out but you’re still pulling down an average of a thousand downloads for every episode, which is fantastic, but I want to know what other impact has your podcast had on the Bernstein Podcast series overall.

Well, to be fair, Bernstein Insights series was getting great traction with our clients. We really were focused on market and economic outlook and have a constant stream of information about our views on the economy and markets and we branched out to Women And Wealth and then we simultaneously branched out for another sub-series called Inspired Investing which is for people that are on nonprofit boards or working in a nonprofit. And so we really have these three different hosts with these three different areas of focus. And what’s happened at that time is that by branching out to meet our clients in what they’re interested in, we’ve increased our listening base for the whole podcast. And I have to admit that I thought and I feared somewhat that when I launched Women And Wealth that it would have half the listening base of our traditional Markets Podcast but the opposite happened and expanded the base of the Markets Podcast and we had a whole new listening base for my series as well as Inspired Investing. So it’s been great.

That is wonderful to hear. So I’m going to definitely encourage my listeners to subscribe to the Women And Wealth Podcast sponsored by Bernstein Insights. And so, wonderful.Now women who’ve listened to this show are probably wondering “I need to do something about my financial status and my finances.” Where would you recommend they get started? What’s a good next step?

Well, selfishly, I’m going to say that I think if they go to www.Bernstein.com/Women, they’ll find a lot of content, they’ll find all the podcast episodes as well as numerous blogs to go along with that and then really can access our broad portal of investing advice and if it makes sense can ultimately find a Bernstein advisor who could be part of their dream team but I think that’s a good place to start.

That sounds like a great place to start and you have every right to be selfish. So we went encourage our listeners to go to that link. I’m going to put it in the show notes so that it’s easy for them to find it. Visit Bernstein and look for one of their fine advisors to put on your dream team.Indeed, it sounds like the overarching message of this episode is that women need to own and engage with their finances and do all they can to educate themselves long before they have to. Don’t wait. Do it now. Is that what you’d say, Beata?

You said it very well, Eddie. That’s a great summary.

Okay, I was trying to capture everything you said there.So on the Keep Leading Podcast we like to give leaders something to think about that helps them keep leading. What would you say to our leaders?

Well, I suppose this message is really for your female leaders, in particular.

Yes, that’s what today’s episode is for.

And I’ve seen a lot of great speakers over the years and once speaker that really stuck with me was Madeleine Albright who had been on a book tour about her own family’s history but in that speaking engagement she did comment on her views on women and leadership and the obligations that women had. And she has a pretty memorable quote here. And she uses some not so nice language in it. So I’m going to edit that out but basically in short what she said is that “There’s a special place for women who don’t help other women.” And I can just edit that to say there’s a special place that is not a good place. It is a bad place to be, right? So she really loved the audience with the notion that she feels quite strongly that the women that have made it to the highest ranks of leadership really have an obligation to support women. And I feel strongly about that as well. So I think it’s a great takeaway.

That’s a fantastic takeaway.Beata, thank you so much for taking time to be with me on the Keep Leading Podcast today. You have enriched my listeners both women and those who love them. Thank you very much.

Well, thank you so much, Eddie, for having me. It’s really been a pleasure.

Thank you.And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is about action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it emanate ion all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.