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Kids are actually really more sophisticated than we give them credit for. So you learn to not talk down to them, right? Kids want to know about money and at goal setter, we are an education first finance platform for kids.It is all about how do we transform your kids from senders and spenders of money into savers and investors of money and do it in a way that makes it exciting and fun and engaging for them.
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All right guys, welcome to Financial Freestyle here on Yahoo Finance. I’m your host for All Smack. And look guys, no matter where you’re at in your financial journey, whether you’re a seasoned Wall Street professional, a retail investor, or just somebody trying to start out, every success begins with a single step and you’ve landed at the right spot. In this series, I’m sitting down with some of the most influential minds in finance to explore their paths to economic success.And today I’m super thrilled to talk with none other than the Tanya Van Cort, the co-founder of Goal Setter. This is an award winning fintech platform recognized as the best financial education platform. It’s on a mission to teach kids the value of financial literacy. Let’s dive right in. Tanya, thank you so so much. You know what I think about this one? One.We’ve talked a lot in the past, right, on Zoom, and you feel like you know someone, and this was our first time meeting in person, so it’s an
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honor. You do know someone, you just know them virtually. You don’t know.
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You know kind of the post-COVID world, like social media make you think you know people, but Zoom really is like intimate, right? And so I was like, wow, this is our first time meeting? And it was. Yeah.So you obviously have a very storied, you know, history. I obviously know you, but to our audience, who is Tanya?
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Well, you know, to our audience, Tanya is, yes, the founder of Goal Setter, but probably more importantly, Tanya is the daughter of an elementary school teacher. I love it. I say that because, um, so much of what we do at Goal Setter is really fueled by education. My mom was an elementary school teacher in Oakland, California, and at goal setter, weare an education first finance platform for kids. It is all about how do we transform your kids from senders and spenders of money into savers and investors of money and do it in a way that makes it exciting and fun and engaging for them. Um, as you know, Ross, my background is that I actually come from Nickelodeon and Discovery.Education and ESPN. So I had many, many years of honing this skill of creating gamification, entertainment, education, and putting all of that into really fun and engaging apps for kids and families. And so that’s what we do with Goal Setter, but now with Goal setter, we just do it around financial concepts.
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So let’sactually talk there, right, becauseIt’s kind of unconventional, right? I worked at, well, like I worked at ESPN, Disney, Nickelodeon, etc. Like how do you pivot? Like what are the qualities that you learned there to actually make your business what it is today?
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I think the very first thing is you learn about kids and you learn that kids are actually really more sophisticated than we give them credit for. So you learn to not talk down.To them, right? Kids want to know about money. You know, we are on the cusp of a maybe a TikTok ban, maybe not a TikTok ban, but kids are not just watching dance moves on TikTok. They are learning about financial concepts on TikTok. So I think the first thing that I learned in all of those spaces is you don’t talk down to kids. They’re very sophisticated. But then the second thing you learn is, even though they’re sophisticated, they’re not grownups. They’re not justMiniature grownups, they don’t want to be presented things in boring old school fashions. They want something that connects with them, that’s fun, that’s engaging, that’s funny, and that’s how they digest their learning. So taking both of those pieces of knowledge and bringing those into the financial services space, that has allowed us to really break through to kids in ways that no one was doing before goal setter came along.
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You know, one, I love what you’re doing. Obviously, we’ve worked together in the past and there was this funny quote or a funny thing that went viral on social media recently, right? Where it was like a picture of this flute, and they was like they was teaching us how to play a flute in, you know, elementary school when they should have been teaching us financial literacy and like I got that DM like 5 times, right? And I’m laughing becauseIt’s really facts though. We really should have been taught financial literacy. So what made you say, let me create goal setter and actually help fill a void?
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Well, there were a couple of my own life experiences, right? I mean, our own life experiences are what lead us on our journeys, um, but one poignant thing in particular was I started teaching my daughter everything I could about money from the time that she was born because to your point, I was like, they’re teaching her about flutes in her school. I don’t, I don’t need to teach her about a flute. I’m going to go ahead and teach her about money. So I started teaching my daughter everything I could, um, and I’ve seen that you have done that with your kids too, Ross, so we are kindred spirits in that way.So my daughter, when she was 8, about to turn 9, I was wondering what to get her for her birthday because you know all of these kids, they kind of have too much and she said, Mommy, I know exactly what I want for my 9th birthday. I said, What? She said, I want two things enough money to save for an investment account and a bike.I love that. And I thought, wow, if I can get every kid out there to say that, I can change the world. And so that really is what led me to start goal setter. I didn’t want to be an entrepreneur. I probably didn’t even know what a fintech entrepreneur was at the time. What I wanted to do was I wanted to change the world for the next generation because I knew that my generation.I didn’t have any financial education. And I also knew that the financial education that I saw in fits and starts out in the marketplace, it was boring and it didn’t speak to kids. In order for kids to transform and get excited about learning, they needed to be presented with something that was exciting to them and I knew I could do that with my background. I love
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it. You got, you know, a veryAmazing background, right? Your resume is thick. So did you ever think to yourself that you would be anentrepreneur?
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Never. Absolutely not. One of the things that I think everyone needs to understand about themselves is they need to understand their risk appetite, right? And so my risk appetite, just in terms of my own financial life is I’m not risk prone, I’m very much risk averse. I’m the youngest of 6 kids, you know, we were raised in a house where we didn’t have a lot, you know, we weren’t struggling for our.Next meal, but we didn’t have a lot. And sometimes when you’re raised in that kind of an environment, and again, you know, my mom was an elementary school teacher, you become a little bit more conservative. And so for me, um, being an entrepreneur was a very risk prone journey that I wasn’t necessarily raising my hand for. I was an executive. I had a great salary, I had great bonuses. I could provide a great life for my kids. My calling as an entrepreneur was not a financial calling. It was really a mission oriented calling.
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So what qualities, right? So a person that is also like you, right? That is risk averse, but is actually want to solve a problem, right? Which Goal Setter is doing, what advice would you give to them when it comes to becoming an entrepreneur?
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Well, I would say, look, if you’re risk averse and you have a problem that you want to solve and are passionate about, then you just have to hedge your bet, um, in terms of becoming an entrepreneur and that’s what I did too before I became an entrepreneur, I stashed away every single bonus I ever got so that I could have more of a.cushion. When I became an entrepreneur, I cut off my cable, and I say that as you know, an analogy for all of the other financial decisions that I made in my life. Yes, cutting off cable was one of them, but I had to ratchet back a number of other things in my life so that I could continue to maintain that financial cushion.And not dip into my savings every single month. So if you want to become an entrepreneur and it’s something you’re really passionate about, that’s great, but if you’re risk averse, you need to be sure that you can, you can stomach the appetite for being an entrepreneur and the way that you can stomach that appetite a little bit easier is if you have a financial cushion.
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So I, I love Goal Setter, right to the people. I work with Goal Setter and the one thing that I enjoyed about it was how committed you were to actually educating the audience, right? The, it wasn’t, it wasn’t so much as saying how do we get users, it was more so saying how do we educate our users? How do we retain the users. So let’s actually get to goal setter, right? Like, what exactly is it? Walk us through.
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Absolutely. So Goal setter is a family finance app, and the reason I say a family finance app is because we actually have had a significant percentage of parents who are learning alongside their children, which for me is phenomenal because so many parents were never taught financial education. So parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle downloads the app. They then invite the kid in their lives, the kid who they love, um, they can send.An invite to them over a text message or over email to join the app as well. So then you have a family connected app. When you download goal setter, you can set up a savings account, you can set up goals or that kid can set up goals for themselves. They can save for everything from, you know, AirPods to Air Jordans to airfare, um, so they can save for whatever they want to save for. They get a debit card, butUnlike other teen and Twain debit card apps, um, goal setter’s debit card comes with financial education actually attached to it. And so we have weekly financial education quizzes, kindergarten all the way through college, every single week you’re going to get a quiz at your level, and those quizzes are all rooted in memes and gifts from popular culture, so they’re fun, they’re engaging, they are funny, um, but they’re all.So teaching. And the great thing about the debit card is we have a rule called learn before you burn.
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Learn before you
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burn. On Sunday morning, if your parent sets up that rule, your debit card will automatically freeze if the kid hasn’t taken their financial literacy quiz for the week yet. And the minute they take the quiz, their card unfreezesagain.
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So I could literally be at the convenience store at Target and I’m trying to get a pack of gum and I just tap it.And it won’t go through unless I took my quiz. Listen,
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you can, you can ask my son Hendrixs if that’s how it works because I have to hear from him every week.Mom, I was in line at Chick fil A, and I had to hurry up and take my quiz so that my card would work.
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Howlong, how long is the quizzes?
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Uh, the quizzes take maybe about 4 minutes to take, so you know, it has to be a long line for him to hurry up and do it before he gets to the front of the line. Um, but you know, the other thing that I will tell you about Hendrix is he took his first financial education class in school.Um, in middle school last year, and the teacher came to me and said, Hey, I’m not letting him raise his hand and ask any more questions, and I said, why not? And he said, he knows everything. He knows about interest rates, he knows about compound interest, he knows about the rule of 72, he knows about stocks versus bonds. He knows about diversification, he knows about asset allocation, and it’s all because he’s taking these weekly financial education quizzes, and you juxtapose that.With a kid who’s just running around with a debit card. What’s that kid learning? That kid is learning how to swipe that debit card and how to ask you for more money. Send a little request saying, Hey, Pops, can I get more money? And so we are really proud of how our kids are learning and they are completely transforming their relationship with money.
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It’s important. That’s really important. I think uh quite too often. I love how you say it’s a family app, right? LikeWhen you look at the statistics, it shows that parents themselves, right? You know, half of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. It shows that they themselves aren’t financially literate, so the fact that the family as a collective can learn together is important. Look, we’re going to take a quick break. When we come back, we’re going to have more about goal setter. When we come back to financial freestyle. Don’t move.Welcome back to Financial Freestyle. And look guys, today we’re joined by my homie man, none other than the Tanya Vancourt, CEO and co-founder of Goal setter.Now listen, you were saying some stuff right now that your 15 year old son Hendrix knows a lot more than, you know, half the Americans right now, right, when it comes to financial literature. Let’s actually talk about some of the learnings on your platform Goal Setter. Like what could a, I don’t know, a teenager learn when it comes to downloading Goal Setter? Well,
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the thingI love about what we do.At goal setter is that it literally applies to every single kid in your family and you know me, Ross, I kind of have a lot of kids. I have a 19 year old, I have a 15 year old, I have a 13 year old, and I have an 8 year old, and I didn’t want to give them a one size fits all financial education experience because one size doesn’t fit all. You cannot teach an eight year old the same.Things that you’re teaching a 19 year old or teach them in the same format. So if you’re 8 on goal setter, you may be learning about needs versus wants. And so your question may be, hey, you know, the Avengers are going on a mission. What do they need to take on their mission versus what do they want to take on their mission? And so you’re doing it in context, it’s fun, it’s engaging.When you’re 16, you may be learning about the difference between APY and APR or you’re learning about compound compound interest versus simple interest. When you are 19, you might be learning about mortgage interest rates and points on a loan or what’s a 401k and what’s a 401k asset allocation. So we are really stepping these kids up.Age by age by age so that they essentially have a complete financial education by the time they leave school. I remember my daughter Gabrielle when she was 18, she called me and said, Mom, I’m 18 now, so I think I need to start contributing to my Roth IRA. I want to pull my credit score, but I don’t have a credit score.Yeah, because I don’t have a credit card, so I’m gonna go ahead and get a credit card in order to pull my credit score. And um, is there anything else I need to do and to make sure that I’m prepared for this next phase of my life, right? She knew what all of those concepts meant, and it was all because she had been taking these weekly financial education quizzes from the time that she was 10 years old.
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That’s remarkable. Look, I, I one, right, I think it’s so important becauseAnd I say it all the time, the reason that I do what I do with Macronomics is like we have to fill a void, right? In order to bridge the wealth gap, we got to bridge the education gap. Uh, and so I find that to be remarkable. But when it comes to Goal Center, I understand, right, you’re not just have the ability for a person to download it, you’re also working with financial institutions as well as some schools. So like, help me understand that. Let’s talk, talk about
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that. Absolutely. So when youLook at what’s happening in financial institutions now, right? COVID changed the entire game for financial institutions. It changed the game for families too because families were the last bastion of cash. And what happened during COVID? You couldn’t even go to a pumpkin farm in Wisconsin with cash during COVID. They were like, no, no, no, get that cash away from here. You better come with a card and swipe the card because everyone was so concerned, right? So.Post COVID, what financial institutions have realized is finance now has to be family finance. You cannot offer financial products to adults and not include the entire family. So goal setter is partnering with financial institutions and banks and credit unions to enable them to help reach that next generation of customers. But the other thing that we’re doing is we know.That in school systems across America, these kids are learning how to play the flute, and they’re learning NACL and the periodic table, right? How many of us know what NACL is? We probably are like, you know, you don’t, OK, sodium chloride, but that’s OK. But the bottom line is we’re learning the periodic table. They’re learning the periodic table, but they’re not learning financial education. So we are now, we have an entire.curriculum in middle schools, in high schools, we have curriculum for college students that we are deploying in 10 different states now throughout the country because we know that young people need these financial concepts and they need it in a way that connects with them.
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What doesgoal setter look like 5, 10 years from now?
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What does goal setter look like 5 or 10 years from now? Goal setter is in the hands ofMillions upon millions of kids across America and it’s reaching those kids in every channel you can think of because Ross, you and I both know financial education is not a rich person’s issue. It’s not a poor person’s issue. It’s not a red issue. It’s not a blue issue. It’s an every, it’s not a rural issue. It’s not an urban issue. It’s an everybody issue and everybody right now in this America that we live in, everyone needs financial education and they need it by the time they’re 18 becauseBecause we don’t have social safety nets in place anymore. Remember that generation ago when there were, there were these things called pensions. And so, you know, even if you didn’t start saving towards your retirement with your first job, you may wake up when you were 30 and go, Oh cool, my company’s got me. They have a pension for me. That doesn’t happen anymore. So goal setter has to be in the hands of millions of kids across America and millions of families across America because that’s how they’re going to.Learn what to do with that first paycheck they get, because if you don’t know what to do with your first paycheck, you’re already behind. So that’s what’s happening in 5 to 10 years.
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So what was the light bulb that bade you start Goal setter, right? You’re chilling, you’re working, you’re an executive. Nickelodeon, right? That was the last one. But you worked at ESPN, Disney, etc. What was the light bulb that went off, right? Like that made you say, I got to
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do this. So I went to Stanford. I got two degrees in industrial engineering. Everybody thought Tanya’s the smart one in the family.Um, they thought that I did, but you know, and so I come out of Stanford. I get these amazing jobs, including a job in Silicon Valley. They gave me a bunch of stock and stock options and I’m in my late twenties, and the truth of the matter is, Ross, I did not know what an option is. I barely knew what.Stock was. I certainly didn’t know what diversification meant. I did not know what asset allocation was, and I had no idea that when that stock vested, I should be thinking about how I should sell it and then diversify my portfolio. So what happened instead was the stock shot up.It was worth about a million dollars by the time I was 28 years old. But that was at the beginning of the day, because by the end of the day, the big tech bubble had burst and that million dollars went down to $20,000 in a single day.
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Are you able to comment on what company itwas?
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Sure, it was Cova Communications.Is that?
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Wow.So because you’re from, uh, I know the West Coast, you’re from uh Oakland, right? So a girl from Oakland, youngest of 6, overnight you’re a millionaire with stock options, and that same night, you just lost it all. Wow.That’s sick.
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It was.
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I never knew the story.
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That’s insanity. I was literally like staring at the computer screen and like, wait, what goes down must go back up. Like, how does this work? And I just did not know the basics of personal finance. And so I came out of that experience and I said, this is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous that I was never taught, but it’s ridiculous that I didn’t know enough to teach myself and to say this is important for my life and I need to go and figure this out.But you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. And sometimes it’s those hard lessons that teach you in those hard ways. So, so that was a tough lesson.
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That’s a real lesson.
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That’s a real lesson. I know, but that was the lesson that made me say, I will never let this happen to my children.
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That’samazing. Well, one, I’m sorry to hear that.So, right, let’s pivot, right? Because we got a few minutes left and I think it’s important that we’re sitting here with a, you know, a former, you know, executive, now turned entrepreneur, CEO that is trying to solve a problem. But let’s actually talk about your role to becoming an entrepreneur.
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So, um, the first thing I would say about my road to becoming an entrepreneur is just because you are entrepreneurial in your large corporation.does not mean you are an entrepreneur. It means that you have great ideas. It means that you may have an entrepreneurial spirit, but there is a lot to learn about how you manage a project or a new launch in a large corporation versus how you would manage that from scratch, right? When you become an entrepreneur, you have to come up with an idea, come up with a brand, come up with funding, come up with a team, and you.Have to do all of that with little to no resources. When you’re working in a large corporation, at least 4 out of 5 of those are already supplied to you, right? You already have a budget to get something done. You already have a team that’s surrounding you of some form. You already have a brand that your project is leaning on and leaning into. So the one thing that I would say about, you know, really deciding to become an entrepreneur is understanding and doing some reading first, you know, listening to how, how I built.This, right? Listen to podcasts, do some reading, understand what all of those steps are so that you know what you’re getting yourself into. I don’t think I really fully knew what I was getting myself into when I jumped into entrepreneurship. I thought, wow, I’ve built amazing products, amazing businesses inside of these larger companies. I have, uh, what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and ultimately I did, but I had to do some of that learning along the way as opposed to doing the learning before I made the leap.
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So we talked about missteps as an entrepreneur. Let’s talk about, right, you’re a young mom of 4 beautiful kids. Let’s talk about some of the missteps that parents make.When it comes to teaching their kids about money.
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Ohmy goodness, um, so I would say the major misstep that parents make is saying yes too much, um, and you know, if you tell your kid no, just, just that, if you tell your kid no to the things that they want, to the material things that they want, in and of itself, you are automatically teaching your kid about finite resources, delayed gratification.The power of their own ability to earn creativity and entrepreneurship, saving and potentially investing. I mean, 5 lessons just because you told them no to something that they wanted.And so the power of know with your kids creates a grit and a creativity and a drive for them that you may have in yourself, but you can’t give that through osmosis to your kids and they need to develop that on their own.
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You can’tinherit that drive. You got to learn that it’s nature versus nurture. That got to come from nature. So I love that. I’m going to clip this, make it go viral and show this to my kids, you know, 10 years from now because mine are young. I can’t wait to say, Well, you know.He told me to tell you, no, I’m going to put it on you, so I love it, but I truly, truly appreciate it. Look guys, that’s it for this episode of Financial Freestyle. I want to really, truly thank the Tanya Van Cort for coming on, for sharing her insights and inspiring us today. And guys, I hope you were able to actually learn something and truly continue on your own financial journey. Make sure that you tune in week after week for a brand new episode here on Yahoo Finance.
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This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.
