Industry sign banking hawaii word free
[Music] you to another edition of business in Hawaii my name is John Strandberg we are broadcasting live from the think tech studios in downtown Honolulu if you want to tune in live we are at think Tech Hawaii calm you can also sign up to get on our mailing list there as well the theme of business in Hawaii is to bring you stories of local business by local people our guests share with us their journey to building successful business in our sometimes challenging environment you know think tech studios today is chanda Park World Financial Group and China please tell us a little bit about yourself hi Jon thanks for having me here today yes I'm a marketing director with World Financial Group and I've been with this company for a little over two years now so what is the marketing director or financial you actually do while we focus on educating people so we have financial workshops in our financial center and we also bring it out into the community okay so as a marketing director you'd go out and find people to educate yes we bring it out into the public libraries we've also done public schools and big and small companies such as u H a and hiko to name a few you actually do it in schools too yes that's it's actually good because I've Junior Achievement I used to serve in there bored I'm all about financial literacy for the kids yes you concentrate more on the adults not the children right it's actually of all ages however the the bulk of people who are seeking the financial education are mainly adults yes so you be teaching about counting money how the interest works or what are some of the topics well some of the things that in our workshops specifically we teach about increasing cash flow and debt management we teach about building a strong financial foundation and for protection we teach about asset accumulation and building wealth and then we also talk about retirement planning and estate preservation retirement planning yes retirement planning that's a big one yes thinking about retirement myself yes I have way too many years to go I'll be working for very long time yeah as well that's the power of starting early so when I started in this company I have three children and my daughters were 15 and 17 so when I was able to receive this education I was able to set up my daughter's already for their retirement to start the planning towards their retirement there's in this literacy education you talk about all of the savings vehicles are available out there besides savings account yes yes yes insurance into it yeah yeah cuz I'm actually you study more in insurance myself like oh I could be this you know see for this later yes it's there even for someone that didn't we've been part of the business world for a long time I've heard a lot of these terms but I depend on my financial planning friends and my planner himself just to tell me what I need to do right so our focus is more on instead of your financial planner telling you what to do that you receive the education and then you can tell them what you need and what you want how about their pay to do that yes but who cares more about your finances damn are you dammit my kids okay so well financially tell me more about world financial group as a whole hmm world financial group is owned by Transamerica financial company and world system builder is actually a group that exists in within world Financial Group and we concentrate on financial education and our goal is actually to educate 1 million families by 2020 how far you long to go ah far but we keep working on it yes million families by 2020 yes because when you think about it can you think of even one person that you feel does not deserve financial education everyone deserves everyone deserves that were your money yes exactly yes save it yes so recently I think you shared with me the other day the statistic about who who out there doesn't actually have a savings account 69% yes I believe so so you're saying that 69% of Americans don't have a saving ago ah yes about there Wow so that that leads me to think that everyone's living paycheck to paycheck not exactly saving yes definitely well 39 percent carry credit card debt from went to mine yes a lot of people do they do especially here in Hawaii more so yeah the cost of living here is so high I mean it's I was on the mainland we say a gallon of milk was 225 I go in a Safeway here it's already $7 yes whoa I know okay so you shared some other statistics can you share as well about 33 percent or more than 77 million of Americans don't pay their bills on time yeah I'm sure those numbers actually pause an ethic that many people look at many people yes yes Wow yeah it's a staggering number it is yeah it's a huge deal and it's scary so we really want to educate our children to you know not follow in those footsteps it's a wonder why a lot of banks institutions take a long time just to give you an answer if you want to get a car loan or mortgage mm-hmm I mean go back to the early 2000s if you're breathing I had a job you can get a car oh yeah and a lot of people got mortgages that way right it was so easy and speaking of mortgages you know now about half they think it's acceptable to default on their mortgages just you know for the fact that they're unable to pay for it again it's a number of like half of the people out there feel it's okay to default yes has it not paid ever again or just decide to pay it slowly and still not pay it that's again that's a scary thing yes yeah the American dream is to own a whole another job raise a family and they're not paying for their homes yes we're definitely in a crisis so Wolford answer group was going out there and teaching everyone what it means to pay your bills on time how's your credit yes and how to get out of debt and you know half the amount of time that you normally would we have a debt roll program that we teach people which doesn't cost them anything and they can do this on their own yeah I might need to sign up myself yes you do well I do have quite a few financial planning friends and are watching today are gonna call me leader what do you mean you don't know they'll they'll be bothering so well the Transamerica I'm trying or think that's the building in San Francisco it's iconic with the yes so if you watch a lot of action movies it's the building that always gets blown up in the movies that's well she's the one the answer yes it's in San Francisco I think the last movie I saw with it was San Andreas with Dirac mmm-hmm I'm tired of wave took it down oh okay yeah I think I remember that one yes so Transamerica has been around for over a hundred years and World Financial Group has been around for over 20 years a wolf Financial Group has started as an arm of Transamerica for the education No so that was created through wanting to build a new industry and you know because with the traditional financial industry you know we lost a lot of trust in in financial advisors and you know in every aspect of finances in the traditional industry because you know people lost a lot of money and so our focus became to educate people to empower them so that they could make more informed decisions on how to help themselves and how to help their families yes so you educate the people so that when you go talk to a planner or an advisor right that they know what they're saying yes because we want people to become their own money managers that way they can decide you know what is right for them what is right for their families what is right for their own financial situation I know a lot of financial planners do a life study now where you fill out information where you feel like you're in a retirement what's your what are you doing now what do you own is that something you'll go through as well yes we do a personal financial strategy and the reason why we do this well just to you know give an example so when you go to a dental office or a doctor's office and you have to fill out a health history because without it they don't know where to start in order to find out what your needs are and how to help you so it's the same thing with finances you know you can think of us as money doctors so in order to know where you want to go or how to get you there we need to know where you're at so we do the personal financial strategy and you have some other stats I remember reading something else the debt on time is I forgot what it was I was going to ask you have to do with people just pain their bills so you're saying that 33 percent of Americans don't pay their bills on time mm-hmm yes another 69 percent of Americans don't have a saving as a yes so where's all this wealth that America has going I'm not sure how to answer that because you know it's ironic that we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world and yet many people still have money problems so yeah I don't before the show we were talking about taxes of the different tax laws out there I mean this year I'm actually paying for the first time forever and some people are gonna be nervous do you cover taxes as well yeah we definitely do and in fact we have a book called saving your future and there is actually over 1 million copies in print so if you know I'm just going to show you real quick if you look at our table of contents there's a lot of things that we cover about taxes so taxing issues capital gains taxes tax now tax later tax advantages and you know just simple concepts like this that people don't really understand they heard about it they may think they know about it and however they they really don't so in this book we teach basic financial concepts that anyone from any walk of life whether you're a stay-at-home mom or you're a Harvard graduate you'll be able to pick up this book and educate yourself and have more of an understanding well speaking of Harvard I did see something that you teach these classes yes so our financial workshops are actually taught at Harvard and at Columbia University and Mercer I think I shared that with you already and most recently it is being offered at the FBI headquarters even our own FBI yes yes yeah ok mm-hmm and even to the military yeah he said locally there's other companies that we stopped to teach you go into local companies here yes their employer yes so Keiko is one of them and another one is UHA yeah very good are you actually know both companies pretty well ok and it's just impressive that someone to reach out and do that yes so when UHA it's part of their employee benefit package so as you know as an employee there they give this Blue Book to each and every single employee because they know that a person who has their finances in order actually makes a better employee so I I think it's quarterly I'm not too sure but they have people from our company go in and you know teach their employees because sometimes you have new employees coming in yes okay so we're gonna have to take a break something when we come back let's talk about your actual job there because you're the marketing director why don't you go out there and find the people to sign up and learn things all right so we're gonna take a short break we'll see you back here shortly Aloha and welcome to at the crossroads I'm your host Keisha King I'm live at 5:00 every Wednesday where we have entertaining and educational conversations that are real and relevant both here in Hawaii and across the globe I'll see you at the crossroads Aloha Stephens host of the cyber Underground this is where we discussed everything that relates to computers it's just kind of scary you out of your mind so come join us every week here on think tech Hawaii com1 p.m. on Friday afternoons and then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube just look up the cyber Underground on YouTube all our shows will show up and please follow us we're always giving you current relevant information to protect you keeping you safe Aloha hi welcome back to business in Hawaii joining us today in studio is Shonda Park director of marketing for World Financial Group so we talked earlier about what World Financial Group does yes but how do you go about your daily job finding as a marketing director just sharing information that's you know mainly what we do sharing information sharing the education and when we share it with people it's kind of like word-of-mouth when you find something good you and to end up sharing it with your own friends and family so it's just you know the word and the mission continues to spread yeah so you're teaching this I read something about public libraries yes you're actually setting up a little classroom yes we actually have one coming up I believe this Sunday at the Pearl City Public Library and prior to that we've done the Waipahu we've done Salt Lake Library and probably more than that but those are the ones that I can think of the top of my head okay so your approach is just reach out educate a million families so you're trying to be where families are so are you there to register families to attend to class somewhere or do you want to set up a little mini classroom wherever you land it doesn't matter it just depends on people's schedules because here in Hawaii people are so busy you know most people work two to three jobs some people even work four jobs so in our office we have our financial workshops every Tuesday from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. and every Saturday from 10 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. however there's many people that are not able to you know - they're scheduled to come into our financial centers so that's why we you know work on setting up other locations and other times to be able to accommodate accommodate this island I come from a technical world have you thought about creating a simple webinar you can log in at anytime instead of live in person we actually have a web webinar for all of our members that we call in to every Tuesday and Thursday morning so we are in contact from our offices all over the United States and Canada so you know we call in and we share information on how to better serve our community okay - what have you done in the recent past that because we met through Junior Achievement where else would you have been just so that whoever's watching this could say oh I remember seeing that in terms of did you step in an expo a family fun fair no not me personally not to say that another team member in our office has not me personally no though I have not yes yeah you saved yourself from sitting under a tent aha one of my favorite things to do by the way awesome not really well best place to do it here is in Hawaii right yes yeah learn about finance and paradise yes so let's go back to the million family thing is that that number just seems what weren't a billion people the United States whether they're here legally or not I don't even go there okay but a million families is a lot it's a lot it's it's doable though you know it's we just keep sharing and we have other people who join our campaign and share in our mission then you know it's it's very very doable so how many people are actually out there doing it Asian peace well right now we have a Facebook community and we have I want to say about 60,000 members so that's just the people who are on our Facebook community you know however I know that there are many more because if I'm on the Facebook community I may not have my family and friends on however they you know understand what I do and they spread the word as well you know for the financial education yes okay so I know everyone's job is that you're working in a job because it's work mm-hmm but what do you do for fun within a company because every company's got a different culture this one's about education it is so with our company we actually do a super trip once a year so it's not a convention it's not learning it's just pure fun so last year last May was actually my first super trip and we went to Vietnam and Taiwan and I was able to bring my kids because you know they promote not just working hard you know but to actually have a lot of fun and to enjoy life while you can and not just think about I'm gonna work hard all these years I'm gonna travel later so our company is huge on traveling so you know Vietnam and Taiwan was just absolutely amazing that was my first trip I was able to bring my children and we all
had such an amazing time that they especially my son who's 12 he constantly talks about it and this year in September we're actually going to Israel and Greece install yes well yeah sorry places yes yes so how do I get in on that you can come along you actually don't have to be part of our company to join us yes so they want us to be able to share you know this enjoyment and this fun and this lifestyle with our friends and family so even if you're not part of our company you can still join us on our super trip but yes shucks it's worth it so your company's focused on education obviously it's about family because you were able to bring family on these trips yes what else do you do locally in the community in terms of give back by volunteering you know going into a school volunteering for food bank here well us as individuals we are all big on you know volunteer work as a community though we've actually we marched in front of the State Capitol to mandate that you know financial education be brought into the public schools so there's a lot of things that we will do you know on our own time and volunteer our time and otherwise you know food bang yes it's definitely one of them I can't think of a lot of others but like I said individually I know that people in our company give back a lot yeah shout out to Ryan over at the bank here oh okay drugs coming up mm-hmm yes so recently something that I did just over the weekend was we went out to Kaneohe and they were having us collect donations for the homeless keiki mm-hmm and after that we went to the Korean care home and actually passed out flowers to the seniors there the residents and just spent some time you know talking story giving them massages or things like that giving massages giving massages yes good add add that to my list okay so going back Transamerica World Financial Group all of the companies out there that's financial planning but now you're operating in this educational role yes and it's you're okay with that or are you a financial planner yourself I help people with solutions I am a licensed professional so yes oh gosh I didn't know that about you southern new today so you are planning so for an advisor well once we educate people and they know what they want they actually can sit down with me to go over their personal financial strategy and yes I am able to help them with solutions that's a great business model to get into I know a lot of companies out there are starting to adopt the education educate their consumers or any buyers and then hopefully they stay in yes and we provide all of our financial workshops in a non solicitous matter so it's up to the individual because our financial workshops are free whether you come into our financial center or if we bring it out into the community so they are not obligated to us I'm looking at the cover of your book I don't even see anything on there that says financial planning yes no it's a purely education it's purely educational yes yeah so do other financial planners refer anybody to you to educate or help their own clients ah not to me personally has it been done before that I'm not sure I would definitely take advantage of that oh yeah have your financial planner call me I probably will you like that yes we can educate all his clients have them come back yes exactly so that the whole education piece I know within my own company that's how we've been operating is let's educate you as much as possible so that when time comes to make a decision you're informed and you can make that decision yes that's the model that you're taught anything yeah like I see a future for that because everyone's too busy buried in their tablets or their their phones to actually think about other things that's they're gonna need something yes we really put it in their mind and we you know also stress the part of not just coming in to learn but actually applying this knowledge because if you just come in and you learn this information you don't apply it into your own life and it's basically useless information yeah unfortunate my lines got a lot of useless info apply knowledge is key that's the key word applied yes I just have a lot of knowledge okay so if you had two minutes to tell me what you want ever our viewers to know what would it be in terms of anything could be about whether you teach me if you want to flip through a couple pages and point something out because capital gains is one other words you used earlier listed in your book and you hear all the time in news in the past okay capital gains tax right you want to increase that they want to increase this tax so I think I'll just go with something simple here and this is a financial foundation so we teach people how to you know build a strong financial foundation so I like to relate this to dental so I like to relate this to tea so you know some people will ask oh I want to do whitening or I want to get veneers and you know what do you think about that and I say well how's your gums in your bone and if they can't answer that I say check that out first because why would you want to spend all this money on top if your gum and bones are not gonna hold so it's you know it doesn't make sense to make that investment it's so same like with homes right if you're thinking of building this mansion you want to know is it going to be built on a solid foundation you don't want to build it on and then place them on quicksand right so it's the same here so the first step is protection you need to have proper protection and then we teach people about debt management so again helping people get out of their debt and half the time or maybe even less and then setting up an emergency fund you know because emergencies as we all know is inevitable right then investment from there so when people they don't have this basic understanding a lot of people will jump into investment first and we feel that's you know the ones that will actually lose a lot of money because they didn't build it from the ground up they didn't do it right yes you jumped into investment first a lot of people are prepared to lose it yes exactly the best are guaranteed right yes it's not that's just one of very many much it's a great foundation I love how you use teeth because I do know you used to be a dental hygienist yes it works out well with that because I was just thinking about a house foundation and they built mm-hmm thank you yeah well unfortunately we're out of time okay I want to thank you Shonda for coming to with us today if you like like to be a guest in our show please feel free to email all your information the shows that think tech Hawaii comm business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at 2 p.m. we're looking forward to seeing you here next week [Music]
