We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Angele Gerten a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Angele, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career

I’m passionate about financial education. During the presentations, workshops, and classes I teach, I ask how many people in the room had a personal finance class, investment class, or a class on money management during their time in high school or college. It never fails, less than 1% raise their hands. Those that do, tend to say something along the lines, “We did a budget once,” or “For a week we followed the stock market in my Econ class, does that count?” What do you think, does that count? Did that prepare you to understand how your mortgage works, or the interest on revolving debt vs. fixed debt? Or understanding how inflation works and how to prepare for the rising cost of living?

School can do a great job in career development, preparing us to interview, shake hands and make eye contact, and how to build a resume. Once we land that job, that paycheck – now what? What’s a 401(k), and what’s a match? Should I do that or pay off my student loan debt?

I’d love to see our education system set students up for financial success by teaching basic financial literacy classes. High school seniors could graduate knowing how to budget, how to invest, and the importance of compounding interest. I meet a lot of people living with regret, wishing someone would have helped them start saving, investing, and working towards financial goals when they were younger.

Angele, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Starting out in life, I lacked a financial education. I didn’t know how to read my auto insurance declaration page (I nearly died when the annual statement came, not realizing I paid monthly), and I thought balancing my checkbook just meant starting over whenever the numbers didn’t work out. My husband and I have made purchases we shouldn’t have, including 100% financing a house in 2007, only to lose it in 2009 after job losses. Through a lot of trial and error, we figured out how to budget. We paid off debt and started saving. We learned from our mistakes and slowly started to improve our financial picture.

I started enjoying learning about how money works, and even more so – encouraging and teaching others the concepts, hoping to help them avoid mistakes I had made. I decided to start part-time in the financial industry, hesitant at first, as I didn’t have a lot of faith in the industry. I decided I would be different. I would be a trusted resource. An educator. A financial friend & advisor, not a salesperson.

I quickly went full-time as the need grew. Now I love to say I have an education-based financial firm. That’s what sets us apart. We don’t push a product. We talk about goals & dreams. So many couples have never talked about a dream vacation, or if they want to send the kids to college, or retirement. I love sitting with them and discussing those things together, watching them open up and realize they can put a plan into place to hit those dreams. And we develop that plan. I love the quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Well, we only live once, so let’s not wish, let’s plan.

I help people in all stages of life, whether they need help budgeting and paying off debt, protecting income, or saving for their children’s future or retirement and beyond. Planning looks different throughout life – and I enjoy helping clients move confidently through every stage.

Any advice for managing a team?

Managing a team has been the highlight for me of owning my business. I’ve learned so much along the way – this is one lesson that seems to continually unfold.

One thing I’ve learned is that everyone has different feelings towards the word “teamwork.” I dropped it and have instead focused on “collaboration.” Think about it, what comes to mind when you hear ‘teamwork?’  Some people feel left out immediately, some think they will be doing all the work, and some think about college courses where minimum participation will get them the same grade as everyone else. There’s limited ownership. One of our core values is “collaboration,” which is much more inclusive and emphasizes creative thinking and joint problem-solving. This has been a great shift for us.

In addition, we are making it a priority to keep our mission/vision/core values at the forefront. During our weekly meetings, we review these statements and values, share stories that highlight them, and even break down our values and talk more in-depth on one specifically, asking for feedback from the team.

If everyone knows their role, that their input matters, and what we are all about, then we are moving towards making our vision a reality, keeping the team’s morale high along the way.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

We all have our COVID story, and at the risk of sounding cliche and choosing that – I’m going to! Before the pandemic, our sales team was thriving, meeting in person throughout the week. When things shut down and we went to Zoom, we lost the energy, the connection, the fun – that environment is challenging to build virtually, at least it was initially.

That pivot made me more intentional in building relationships with our team, staying in contact throughout the week, running incentives that drew people together, and finding ways to collaborate in new ways. We play games during Zoom meetings, have fun with virtual backgrounds, and build in time for conversation – the worst is just sitting in a virtual presentation and missing the relational aspect of being in an office together!

Lastly, as we continue to settle into this new hybrid model, I believe the value of phone calls and handwritten notes is appreciated more than ever. Especially in this digital world and virtual workplace, taking the time to reach out for a conversation or the personal touch of writing a card and sending it in the mail, it lets people know you’re thinking of them and you value them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.angelegerten.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/moneymatterswithangele
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angele-gerten-251a155a/