About John Seib
John Seib is the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Electus Global Education. After 20 years in the financial services world watching firsthand the effects of financial illiteracy on our society, he started researching to find a solution. The results of his research revealed a few basics about what a solution would have to look like.
In this episode Steve and John Seib discuss:
- How to solve financial illiteracy
- The limits of teaching
- Waking up without an alarm
- Formation rather than modification
Key Takeaways
- The best solution to address people’s financial illiteracy is to start young. Educating people while they are still young is what’s going to break unhealthy generational habits.
- Though it’s almost impossible to teach work ethic to a person who’s hard-wired to be lazy, that doesn’t actually mean that a lazy person will not be successful. They will always find a way to do things in the easiest and fastest way and there’s a market for that.
- Success means different things to each person. It could even be being able to get up in the morning to go to work without needing an alarm because of the fulfillment you feel from what you do.
- It’s difficult to modify behavior that has already been cemented through the years. Therefore a child must learn how to earn, save, spend, give, and invest while in their most formative years.
“Teach a child to earn, teach a child to save, teach a child to spend, teach a child to give, and teach a child to invest” - John Seib
Connect with John Seib
Website: https://lifehubjobs.com/
Connect with Steve and Jason
Website: Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
Email: grow@rewireinc.com
---
Listen to the podcast here
John Seib: Learn To Earn
I'm excited about this interview. I get to interview some cool people and hopefully, the questions that we ask and where we get to go are of great benefit to our audience. We're getting more and more downloads. Hopefully, that's true. The goal here is to draw out some insights not just from others but for you. In this episode, I have an awesome guest. I'm super excited to introduce you to this person. John Seib, say hello to our audience.
Hello. It's a great pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Steve.
John, it is so great to have you. I'm excited for our audience to get to know you and hear your story because it’s super intriguing. As a precursor to the story, John has gone through some pretty amazing transitions in life. John, would you say that's accurate?
That is a very accurate statement.
It's super cool when you interview somebody who has been at their work for 30 and 40 years. There are other people who do things for a little while and then transition. There isn’t one right way to do life and do work. We hope to bring all kinds of stuff to the table, but I'm eager to hear about some of your transitions and what you've come to and where you are. Before we even get there, my first question for you, John, is what are you grateful for on this day?
Living up here in the Pacific Northwest, I'm grateful for the ability to look out my window now and see a little bit of the blue sky. I say that tongue in cheek, but I also say that in reality. The things that I wake up in the morning and now being one of those that I'm the most grateful for is my family. I have an awesome family. I have a wonderful and very supportive wife. We've been through a lot of good things. I don't say that we've been through a lot of life, but we've been through a lot of wonderful things. We have three absolutely incredible children.
If I can brag for a moment, I've got a doctor, a nurse, and a junior officer in the United States Navy. I’m very proud of my children. What I'm equally proud of that’s not only what they're doing and where they're at in life is that they have all carried on where my heart goes every single day and that's giving back. They're all in fields where their sole or primary purpose is giving back by what they do in their occupation. That's probably at the top of my list every single day of what I'm the most grateful for.
I'm grateful for you for even having shared that one little bit, as we so often hear in the show. I sometimes do it at the end, John, but sometimes in the middle of it, I'll stop and just go, "Did you catch that? How can we be giving back more?" To hear the pride of a father that brought up kids like that is amazing. Thank you for those insights. It makes me want to ask myself, how am I doing now?
I did this when we first spoke. I went out and learned a lot about you. I can read your bio. I can read your curriculum vitae but I choose not to. I would love to hear from you. Give us a picture if you could. I know that can take a long time. I'm asking you to synthesize, but what's John’s side story. How did you get where you are? If you wouldn't mind synthesizing for us your story. You don't have to take hours. Take a few minutes as best as you can.
Financial Illiteracy: Behaviors are hard to change when they’re already set in place. To break generational patterns, habits, and beliefs, you must start young.
I’m trying to sum it all up so I'll try to go through it as quickly as I can and pick out some of the things that have helped me along the way. One of the first things that I'll point out is I have a very strong work ethic. I believe that it came from my beginnings. I spent every summer and every spring break growing up through high school on my grandparents’ farm and I learned how to work. My dad was a gifted mechanic and worked very hard and long. Growing up in that environment, I developed a strong work ethic. That is one of the things that has propelled me throughout my life.
The other thing is I don't consider myself at all to be necessarily a religious individual, but I do consider myself to be very spiritual. That is something else that has been the backbone of my belief system coming along. I started my career in the grocery industry and I moved up quickly in that industry from stacking groceries to being a store manager, eventually going down and running the buying department for one of the major grocery chains that are out there.
I made a transition. I got on the sales side of that business. I started a food brokerage business in Denver. It was very successful. I built it to be number two in the marketplace. That whole business went sideways when all of the grocery stores consolidated to compete with Walmart. I reinvented myself. I got into the crazy financial services world with a special emphasis on the mortgage business, through various different channels. I stayed in the mortgage business for the balance of my career up until a couple of years back.
I worked for Washington Mutual. We all know it's not where I started. I started on the correspondent side, for those who are familiar with the mortgage business. I then worked for Washington Mutual. I was a senior vice president for them. We all know what happened there when that meltdown happened. I was one of the fortunate ones that made the cut and transitioned over to Chase. I spent ten years with Chase. I had a marvelous career there. I went out on my own and started an independent broker shop in the mortgage business.
Throughout all of that, the one thing that I noticed over and over again, and didn't even realize I was noticing until I finished out the story here was the results of people not understanding money and being financially illiterate. Individuals are not being financially capable. It didn't hit me how much that was there and present in my life until I got a call one day from my nephew and said, “There's a company that I'm involved in. I would like for you to take a look at it.” I said, “Sure.”
I invested early in a company called Electus Global Education. I started listening in as an investor to some of their management calls per request. I used to text my nephew back and tell him, “What about this? What about that?” He goes, “Why aren't you saying anything when you're on the calls.” I said, “You didn't ask me to say anything. You only asked me to listen in.” I started giving some input and ended up being asked if I would serve on the advisory board, which I did. They asked me if I would step into a management role, which I did.
I was still in the mortgage business at the time. A few years ago, I got a call from the executive committee and they said, “Would you consider stepping in as president and leading this company?” I stepped away from my career to take on a company as a startup and try to take what we were doing out to the streets. We took a dream and I am happy and excited to say our first piece of technology, we launched our MVP in October. We finished up version 2 and we're adding two more organizations with their youth that are going to start doing what we're doing.
What Electus is all about are financial literacy and financial capability. It's focused on where their solution has to come from and that's our youth. A lot of the efforts that are out there are all about behavior modification and that's tough. I'm a certified financial education instructor and I get how hard it is to change the behaviors when they're already set in place, whether that be a high school or certainly on into adult life.
We took a look at that and we said, “If we're going to make a difference, if we're going to change the trajectory, if we're going to change and break generational patterns, habits and beliefs, we've got to start young. The younger the better.” We have developed an experience transformational platform that takes a child from 3 to 18 and allows them the opportunity to learn financial capability as they're growing up. I'll stop there and then take a deep breath. It was a lot in a short amount of time.
I'm going to go back because I don't want to diminish Electus Global Education and what that is all about. I had a lot of questions about that, but I love the idea of a strong work ethic. You got that from an environmental perspective at an early age. I am the CEO of a coaching company and we don't coach youth. We totally could. We probably should. It's a function of focus, etc. That strong work ethic, hard work and learning how to do that, you got it by being on a farm in spring breaks. Is it your opinion that it can be coached or taught?
There are certain things you cannot coach. It’s either you’re hard-wired with it or not.
That's a great question and not one that I haven't pondered. I will tell you yes, but. I’ve spent many growing-up years coaching kids and youth sports. I used to tell the kids all the time, “There are certain things that I can't coach. You either have it and you're hardwired with it or you're not.” A lot of work ethic is a part of how a child comes into the world and how they're hardwired. I think the coaching piece of that comes into play when they get the right exposure and they start to learn that work in many instances equals reward. You can coach that. You can help people understand that and get that concept.
You can't coach work ethic in somebody who by nature is hard-wired lazy. You asked and I'll give you a straight answer. Yes, it can be but I think that you have to always take into consideration how did they come into this world and what were they hardwired with? Lazy doesn't mean that they're not going to be successful because lazy people will find the easiest way to get something done every single time. There's a great place in this world for people who take that path. I just don't call that a strong work ethic. Maybe it is. It’s just in a whole different environment.
What does it mean to be spiritual but not religious?
An understanding for me is that there is a greater power. There is an energy that is greater than we are and you can trust it. If you have put yourself in the right position, you can open up and ask for guidance. You'll receive that guidance, you'll sit back and go, “Where did that come from?” The gist for me when I talk about being spiritual is it's a recognition that I'm guided by a higher principle. I'm guided by something that is outside of and greater than I am.
We could do a whole episode on that. I could even go back to your point because I do spend a lot of time thinking about how we coach some of these soft skills in adults because that is our work. It wasn't for me to agree or disagree with any of your theories. It's super because you've walked this stuff. It was fascinating to hear how you thought about that.
One of the questions I have is about you transitioning away from WaMu. It was not your choice. That just happened. You were doing good and you had this career. You were doing this successfully. Was there something about being in the success of financial services that had you go, “No, it's got to be something different?” I heard about the call, being part of that board, and then being asked to speak. Why move away from something that you were successful with? I hope you don't hear that like I'm challenging that.
I don't hear that at all because it's a great question and I don't want to sound like Pollyanna in my answer. What it boils down to is what you would look at and say, "That is successful or that person is successful," would be different than perhaps what I would say as successful. In a work term in the business that I was in, yes, I was successful. Did I wake up every morning fulfilled and excited about doing what I was doing? I have to be honest and say, no.
It hadn't been very long when I stepped out of the business to take on and lead Electus. I'll never forget what my wife told me very early on. She goes, “Do you one thing I've noticed? I said, “No. What's that?” She goes, “You don't set an alarm anymore.” She goes, “You get up earlier and jumped right out of bed. In the last several years in the business world, you have to set your alarm and then you still didn't want to get out of bed. That probably sums up what I'm trying to say more than anything else. Since I started this with Electus, I still have never set an alarm and I was at my desk at about 5:15 in the morning.
Thank you for that. What a great answer. My job is not to put different words in your mouth. I only want to make sure I'm clear. What I think I heard you say is not everybody defines success the same way. By me even implying like, “You had the success,” you were like, “That could be seen like that.” It’s being fulfilled and excited. Maybe you and I can write a book together. There’s something about the alarm. I know this is an oversimplification, but if you're still setting an alarm, maybe you have to ask yourself about success.
Financial Illiteracy: Lazy people will always find the easiest ways to get something done. There’s a great place in the world for people who take that path, but it isn’t a strong work ethic.
As a side note, I'm not a morning person by nature. That's not my natural strength.
Your wife was saying, “There's your sign,” like the comedian Jeff Foxworthy. If you're not even using an alarm and you're not a morning person and you still don't use an alarm, I think you might have found something that you feel successful at.
I'm going to throw the counterbalance to this because I think it's fair for people reading this going, “That guy is full of fluff and blue smoke.” There is a counterbalance to this. I'm going to be honest about this. Do I miss the money I was making? Yes. I'm in a startup. Is there a reward coming? Yeah. Am I doing what I'm doing because of the mission and the drive? Absolutely, I am. Am I a majority stockholder or have a big share of the company? Yes, I do. Am I very hopeful that it is going to set not only me but my family up? Yeah, absolutely.
I don't want it to come off as something that's unrealistic. There is a balance there and I get that and I understand it. There were many conversations in my household before I made this move around that very subject. I want to make sure that everyone is seeing the balance of those types of decisions because it's not all purpose-driven. There is a reality check to it.
The day I asked the editing team to edit out transparency and honesty is the day we should end this show. I appreciate that. We need more authenticity like that. I still like the idea that a lot of people, me included, we're still asking, “What is success for me and how do I not succumb to what the world says success is?” It might be what the world says. You and I can't say that it's not that, but I envisioned a guy that's not using an alarm and is not even a morning person. There's something about it that's got to be particularly rewarding.
It is and can I share a quick story?
Yeah. It’s what I want to hear.
This just happened and it ties into that. One of the organizations that we're working with is Friends of the Children. It is a great mentor-mentee organization. They work with underprivileged and underserved youth, and they do amazing work. The first technology that we launched is Teach a Child How to Earn. It’s the first of five pillars of this whole youth financial literacy. It's teach a child to earn. They earned by doing edgy tasks and then they get paid for it. It's sponsored and that whole thing, just as a quick overview of that. They learned how to earn and they earn how to learn.
I want to paint the picture of this twelve-year-old girl who lives in a home that's in the third and probably the fourth generation of poverty. Her way of living, which has now become a pattern is living off of the system. I'm trying to be delicate by doing this and that's who we're talking about. This twelve-year-old has not seen anything other than that. I got a call from her mentor. She said, “She's having a hard time resetting her password.” She forgot her password. She goes, “She's kind of upset about it. Can you help?” I said I will. The problem worked out, but here's the reason why.
One person’s success may be different from your own version of success.
Now, I want you to catch this because this is why I don't set an alarm. This is a twelve-year-old girl who's in a poverty home. Here's the reason why she wanted to get back on the system. She's going to be thirteen and her parents told her that at thirteen, she was old enough to have acrylic nails, but she was going to have to earn the money herself.
This thirteen-year-old who had never been shown anything but that lifestyle had now our platform and sponsorship that’s going to pay them to earn how to learn and learn how to earn. She had mapped out how many edgy tasks she had to do and had the schedule all written out so that she could earn the money to get the nails on her 13th birthday.
I stepped back from that and I shared that with our team. I said, “How many times in life have you heard a professional athlete or somebody that will just stop and pause and say, “This person did this back at that time in my life. It changed my life. That's why I'm here today.” I said, “We got to grab ahold of this. We just changed that young lady's life. She's now seeing something she would have never seen before. It came at the right formative time that now she gets a work reward. We gave that to her.” That's why I get up in the morning, and don’t need an alarm clock.
It leads me into asking even more about Electus Global Education. You've shared a little bit about that. Tell us what it is you're excited about doing. That story itself is cool that you're doing that. What else about it? We want people to be able to access that and be able to talk to you or figure out if they want to get involved or whatever. Tell us a little bit more about what you're doing over at Electus.
The two original founders started off with a single question. That question was, is there a solution? Identifying the problems is easy. If there is a solution, what does it look like?" What we quickly got and realized is there was no solution and every effort that was out there was starting too late with the wrong approach. It was starting in maybe high school into somewhere to the grave. It was all about behavior modification, which I talked about earlier.
The irony of the whole thing was if you go in and research and study the experts across the globe, they'll tell you the opposite. They will tell you it changed with our youth, especially in those formative years of 7 to 9-ish. That's where you make the change, yet nobody was tackling it from there. We took a look at that and said, “If this is where the effort is and this is where the solution lies, where's the gap?”
What we came down to was the difference between two words. The difference is between teach and learn. You teach a high school or a class and then you give them a certificate and you pat them on the back and say, “You're financially literate,” and they’re not. You teach but that doesn't necessarily mean that they learn. If you're going to hit the right generation at the right age or the right time, you've got to get them a platform and an environment where they learn because that's where you get into the formation of behavior, as opposed to the modification.
We took a look at that and we said, “If the problem is financial illiteracy, if the solution is youth financial literacy, then what is youth financial literacy? We broke it down into five major pillars. Those five pillars are teach a child to earn, teach a child to save, teach a child to spend, teach a child to give, and teach a child to invest.
We looked at that and we said, “That's what we'll build and we'll build it on an experiential platform.” We then stepped back and said, “If that's the solution to youth financial literacy, then where does it start?” In my opinion, and the research that we have seen, this is probably where we are starting to make an impact because 4 of those 5 are dependent upon one. That one is to teach a child to earn.
Financial Illiteracy: If you hit the right generation at the right age and at the right time, get them a platform and environment where they can learn. That’s how you get them into formation as opposed to modification.
There are some efforts out there around save and spend, but not so much around give. Nobody wants to touch that one, but we still believe it's important to teach the kids. We took a look at those and said, “You can teach those kids those other four things, but if they never learned what this young lady learned that I shared with you and they never learned how to earn, what good are the rest of them? That's where we'll start.”
We mapped out our entire technology. We said, “Let's build the first pillar. Let's build the first thing.” That’s what we call Life Hub Jobs. If somebody is interested, they can go to LifeHubJobs.com. Electus Global Education is where you'll find the whole website. Either way, you can go find us and see what we're doing, but we built Life Hub Jobs. The whole idea around the Life Hub Jobs is to teach a child how to earn and for them to be rewarded for that. They're paid for doing these edgy tasks.
I'll give you an example of one of the edgy tasks. I'm going to give this one to you because I'm going to tie it in with a small little story. One of the edgy tasks is to design your lifestyle. It’s very simple and what they do is they go in and they watch a small little video. At the end of that, they have to do some sort of a recap. On this recap, it was five questions. They do those on Microsoft and we teach them productivity skills, Microsoft 365 because Microsoft use us as a school. That's a whole side note, but we're giving them even more than just teaching them how to earn.
That particular job, people are going, “What does that have to do with it?” Let me finish out the story. We had one of the mentors call us with two of their other youth that had done that. We had already seen what they had answered to those five questions. If somebody wants to reach out to me later, I'll share completely anonymous what those 12 and 13-year-olds answered. It will give you goosebumps.
The mentor came back to us and she said, “Here is what struck me. There are two things. First of all, as a result of these kids being on the platform, I'm having deeper and greater relationships and conversations with them than I've ever had. Number two, both of these kids that did that one edgy task said in different conversations almost an identical thing, ‘No one has ever asked us those questions before.’” Imagine a 12 and a 13-year-old that no one had ever asked them, “What do you want to be when they grow up?”
It goes back to what you had talked about early on, Steve. I think it was before we got on this, which is a core belief of mine. In fact, I have a picture of a sunset and I have this written below it, “To dream is to see, to see is to believe, to believe is to create.” It all starts with a dream because if you can dream it, you can see it and if you see it, you can create it. What happened in that edgy task for these two youth is they had the environment and the place where they could go, “This is what I want my life to look like.”
Now that dream is there and no one can take that away from them. At that particular moment, those two lives were changed. When we talk about teach a child to earn, that’s one. Another one of them that I like is, “How much does my puppy cost?” What that whole exercise is a life skill about what you pay for something isn't what it costs. This whole exercise is you go in and you buy the puppy and that's what you paid for, but guess what? Now we got to go to the vet, and buy pet food and toys.
Their task is to do quick research on what it costs to take a puppy to the vet and what pet food is going to cost. They have to do this quick recap. The whole gist of that is whether it's a puppy, their first car or their first home, what you pay isn't what it costs. It's giving them a life skill that they wouldn't get in school and probably wouldn't get at home.
This is going to sound wild but look at the time? You know how hard it is going to be for me to go, John. First of all, that's so much for me to chew on, the stories that I’ll keep thinking in my brain. Thank you for all of that. It’s really powerful. I hope one of the insights that people have walking away from this is passion. I got a question for the audience. Do you speak about your job, tell stories and get excited about whatever it is you're doing the way John does about what he's doing? You don't have to do what John is doing. We can get excited. I just love the passion with which he speaks about that. Earn, save, spend, give and invest. Even, what does your puppy cost? You do understand that that's an incredible thing to get to kids. How many adults still need that education?
Everything starts with a dream. If you can dream it, you can see it. And if you can see it, you can create it.
Do you know what? Look for us in a few years.
I'm not inviting you to do anything different. I'm glad that you as an adult took this on because we couldn't just ask kids to do it. The fact that you took this on and are making this difference in the world is huge. I've got good friends where I used to work. They did a lot of life planning. I'm a big fan of the Life Design Lab that's out at Stanford and these are for college kids. Interestingly, a lot of the questions that come out of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University are what you're asking 9, 10 and 12-year-olds. It's brilliant.
We have a hard stop. I want to make sure that we get to our next thing and I want to have you back on. As I told you before, I want to go sit down with you and hear about what you're doing. You make a huge difference in the world and it's fantastic. Was there anything that I didn't ask you that you were hoping I would?
For me, it's the opportunity to share what we're doing. For those who are reading this, if you want to figure out how to get involved, there is a way and a lot of different ways. Don't be shy about reaching out because there are ways that we bring people in. Our content is we use job designers. "How much does the puppy cost?" I didn't design that. That's not my skillset. There are a lot of different ways that someone can get involved. If they see the vision if they grasp the mission and they're saying, "I think I've got something that I could contribute to this,” we would love to have that conversation.
Maybe I should end it with this. I liked what you said about teaching and learning. I'm going to adapt that and give you all the credit in the world. I have asked this question because this was asked of me. When they go through a workshop or whatever that we put them through or when they're in coaching, there are two questions to be asked at the end. One is, what did you learn?
The other question I got asked of me by one of my coaches and mentors is, what did you learn about yourself? The suggestion is, “What did we learn?” We can list off like, “I learned what financial literacy is.” If I'm hearing you right, John, if you teach that, people can learn the mechanics of that and still not become financially literate, even as children, until we take what we're learning and bring it into who we are.
The question of, what did I learn about myself is more important than, what did I learn? You are doing a beautiful thing with our youth and you're making a huge difference in the world. I am grateful to you. I want to thank you for your time. I'm walking out with all kinds of cool insights about how you help people, some of the transitions, and what success mean to you. The cool thing about podcasts is hopefully, people get to go back to them and listen again. I hope you have a lot of questions too. Thank you very much for your time. Hopefully, we'll be able to do it again and go even deeper.
Thank you, Steve. I would love to be a guest again some other time.
That would be great. Thanks so much and as we always say at the end, it doesn't matter what insights John has or even me, what matters is what insights you have as you're reading this. John, thank you so much and we'll see you next time on the show.
---
Thanks for tuning in. If you've got any value at all from this episode, a little nugget, all the way up to some huge insights, please do us a solid by subscribing, recommending, rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google or wherever it is that you receive your episode. That stuff matters to us and it allows us to continue interviewing more and more awesome people. Thanks for reading and we'll see you in the next episode.
Important Links
- https://LifeHubJobs.com/
- Jason Abell - LinkedIn
- Steve Scanlon - LinkedIn
- Grow@RewireInc.com
- Apple Podcasts - The Insight Interviews - Powered by Rewire
- Spotify - The Insight Interviews - Powered by Rewire
- Google - The Insight Interviews - Powered by Rewire
- Friends of the Children
- Life Design Lab
