We were lucky to catch up with Zachary Trebbi recently and have shared our conversation below.

Zachary, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with 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

This is a great question! I have often thought the educational system here in the United States is flawed. The school system will teach children music and art but doesn’t make financial education a part of the core curriculum? That is the biggest disservice the school system does to the youth. Yes some people may become musicians or artists but everyone needs to know how to manage the money they do make. It’s one thing to have money it’s another thing to know how to utilize it so it lasts you a lifetime, as well as creating generational wealth for your children. Most people don’t even know about something called a Roth IRA, which is a tax free savings account, that if teenagers start contributing at 18 years old they could easily retire a millionaire just from that one account. Now don’t get me wrong. Life isn’t just about money, but financial freedom can allow you to live your life with peace of mind of not having to worry about putting food on the table for your kids or making sure rent is paid every month. Life is stressful enough for most people, having to worry about basic necessities should never be apart of that. That’s why we at CEO Watchlist are pushing for the school systems across this country to start implementing mandatory core curriculum classes on finance and business. Teach kids how to start their own business and then how to utilize that capital and invest. This shouldn’t be privileged information for private education and/or university. It should be taught in all public schools because right now a kid in public school can tell me the Pythagorean Theorem but has no idea how to create a budget sheet or how to invest in the stock market/real estate. I’ll tell you this much, a majority of people would be financially better off with the knowledge of the latter.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I was born and raised in Miami, Florida and was surrounded my entire life by a family of business oriented entrepreneurs and investors. My father, uncles, and grandparents were big in the investing space as well as entrepreneurship. I started college early at the age of 16 and went on to get my Doctorate. When the pandemic took place in 2020 I met Joshua Kiley and through social media we went on to form our online financial educational company CEO Watchlist at the beginning of 2021. The name CEO Watchlist came about because we follow and research what the wealthiest CEOs and Senators are investing in and we share that information with our audiences. Just by having that information is not enough though if you aren’t educated in how to filter through all the data and then how to utilize it, which is why a huge part of our program is financial education. Being the Co-founders of CEO Watchlist we envisioned a way to bring education on investing to the masses while still making it entertaining. By utilizing our knowledge of the hospitality industry and data aggregation we found a way to deliver a one-of-a-kind experience to students all over the world. Gathering the data was important but more so we knew how to utilize that data to maximize our efficiency in teaching in such a way to keep our students entertained while learning complex subject matter. Through the data we have analyzed we have been able to find a cost efficient and time efficient way to teach the stock market/investing to brand new investors in a shorter time frame than a majority of our competitors. We cater our services to the average Joe and Jane that were never taught how to invest in school and we make it simple and enjoyable for them to learn, as learning should be. A big part of our success is thanks to social media and being able to reach the masses with our education much more efficiently. Thanks to platforms like TikTok, Instagram. Facebook and YouTube we’ve been able to reach people from all over the world interested in learning more about financial education. We even give FREE daily classes on our Instagram page @ceowatchlist for anyone who wants to learn some tips and tricks for investing.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Growing a social media page to over 1 million followers in under a year is no easy feat, I’m not going to pretend it is. To build a big social media following you need to be all in. It becomes a full time job. The key is consistency. When we first started we were putting out one video a day and we were not seeing the results we wanted. We knew something had to change and we went all in on the content. We ended up at one point upping it to 7 videos a day, but thanks to this we started seeing results. Now that’s just the content side but knowing how to gather, analyze and utilize all the data is a whole other aspect of the social media game. If you want to be successful on any social media, no matter what the model is, you will need these three things: 1. Consistency which we already spoke about 2. Understanding data and how to acquire it. Data is the most under appreciated asset people have at their finger tips and 3. Listen to the negative/constructive feedback. Do not live in a echo chamber ignoring anything negative people have to say about your content. Listen to the public they are your audience. Learn from what they like and what they tell you. It’s never easy adjusting your content on social media but when enough people have the same feedback it’s time to consider listening. My biggest advice would be this though; show up everyday and post about something you are passionate about but also brings value in some way to other peoples lives. For a random stranger to follow you you need to bring value to them but that doesn’t mean you should neglect doing what you love. Find the perfect balance of both and deliver everyday. Don’t be afraid to go all in with it either because don’t forget everyone had to start at 0 followers when they created their account.

Any advice for managing a team?

The biggest piece of advice for managing a team and maintaining high morale is your mental fortitude as their leader. A strong mind can overcome almost anything in business. Perfect example is being able to have a “cool head” when times are good just as much as when they are bad. A leader who remains calm when winning or losing is a leader who was born for that position. If you cannot remain calm and in control when things go wrong, your company will more than likely not make it. For example at one point our company hit a huge road bump and our team was panicked but I reassured them not to worry as what had happened was out of our control. While I worked on getting that issue fixed I delegated responsibilities to them to focus on while one aspect of our business was shutdown. This way when it came back online we had built out a lot of underlying infrastructure so the business would be even more successful. Take on the burden of the stressful situation as the leader and guide the team as to what to do in the meantime. If the leader falls, just as in chess, it’s checkmate. Maintaining a calm demeanor and reassuring your team is crucial but so is having open communication and transparency. There is not a day the team does not have full access to us. Keeping in constant communication and having an open line for your team to freely express any feedback and concerns is crucial. Thanks to our amazing family at CEO Watchlist we have made some incredible changes to the business based on their constructive feedback. To conclude the key pieces of advice is to lead with a cool head, listen to constructive feedback from your team/customers and always be transparent.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ceowatchlist.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ceowatchlist
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR2TERj4/