We were lucky to catch up with Elliot Gindis recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Elliot, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

I am a financial advisor and educator, and I run a number of small businesses that all have to do with educating the public on personal finance and investing. These include a YouTube channel called the Keystone Financial Academy and an educational textbook called the Keystone Financial Guide. I also have a Udemy.com class on personal finance that I offer, and I teach online corporate education webinars that are run in partnership with SelfReboot.com. Finally, I also do one-on-one advisement.

My mission is simply to bring financial education to everyone I can. I feel that the U.S. educational system fails students in preparing them for the “real world” in many ways, and lack of any financial education is chief among this. What I teach in my textbook, Udemy course, YouTube channel and corporate webinars should have been taught to high school seniors and college freshmen. It is the basics of personal finance (credit, debt, savings, etc.), financial and real estate investing, entrepreneurship, and insurance. Literally, the fundamentals of a persons financial life. Sadly all of this is completely lacking in any formal education our students go through, from high school to college.

My inspiration is my own background. No one showed me any of this when I was in my teens and 20s. I made a ton of mistakes, and had to figure it all out on my own. Once I became a financial advisor, I set out to change the culture of financial ignorance and misinformation, and I continue on this mission today!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My background and career is engineering. I have a bachelors degree in aerospace engineering and a masters in engineering management. Growing up in New York City, I wanted to work on Wall Street, but engineering (and airplanes) seemed so much cooler, so I chose that path, but maintained an interest in finance and investing all my life, and consider it a parallel “2nd career”. How I came to teach and advise, and have a textbook and a YouTube channel is bit of a separate story.

As far as teaching and textbooks, I had plenty of experience to fall back on. I taught AutoCAD, a drafting software used by engineers and architects, for many year back in the late 90’s and into the 00’s. Then in 2009 I scored a contract with a major publisher and wrote an AutoCAD textbook. It was published the following year, eventually becoming a bestseller, and adopted by numerous colleges and universities around the U.S. and internationally. The series, called “Up and Running with AutoCAD” is still in print 13 years later, and is an industry standard in AutoCAD education, selling over 15,000 copies thus far.

Using my experience, I wanted to self-publish a finance and investing textbook, and just needed and opportunity. That came in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic. I was working for the Air Force at the time, and we were sent home in March of 2020, with nothing to do for 7 months but stay home and collect a paycheck. I immediately settled into a pattern of daily writing, attempting to distill my 25+ years of experience in personal finance and investing into a comprehensive guide. Around that time I also became a licensed insurance agent, and a licensed real estate broker. While I never worked full-time in those fields the knowledge gained while studying for all the exams got me interested in also becoming a qualified financial advisor. In late 2020, as the book was getting published, I began to study for a number of financial exams and ended up taking an passing my SIE, Series 6, Series 63, and Series 65 exams, all within just a few months.

Finally, everything came together. As 2022 came around, I was a federally licensed Investor Advisor Representative (IAR), a real estate broker, life insurance agent, and had a book and a YouTube channel to teach with. The contents of the book was used to create the videos, as well as spin off into Udemy courses, and SelfReboot webinars. I am now busy adding a Mortgage Loan Officer qualification to my roster of credentials, and continue to grow and expand my teaching businesses.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

This is an endless challenge for any business, especially one that does consulting and teaching. I have had to grow clients, subscribers, and followers in every branch of my business. The most effective approach (at least for me) was to create a SYNERGY across all the platforms, so each of the businesses cross-pollinate and support each other. This is done by promoting each of the branches across all the others. My YouTube channel advertises my textbook, Udemy course and Instagram, while the textbook’s website cross-promotes the YouTube channel and Udemy as an example. This appears across everything, giving potential clients/customers a unified front, where they can choose how to get their training or advice. The core financial and investing knowledge is the same, but having many ways to teach it is what grows the business.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I ran a consulting firm many years ago as a Sole Proprietorship, and it gave me priceless entrepreneurial experience. I also had a lot of inspiration from my uncle who built a software company in the 1980s, and sold it in the 90s for millions of dollars. As far as books, there were serval that inspired me and I highly recommend them. Probably the biggest inspiration was The Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ DeMarco.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://keystonefinancialeducation.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ejgindis
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/keystonefinancialacademy/videos
• Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/keystone-financial-academy-personal-finance-masterclass/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email&utm_source=sendgrid.com
• SelfReboot: https://selfreboot.org