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While there has been rising awareness of the gender wage gap over the past few years, another important gender issue - the wealth gap between men and women – often goes unacknowledged.
In 2020, for every 1 dollar men had in Net Wealth, women had only 32 cents.
Financial plans are an option, but they are expensive and out of reach for many women. More importantly, most plans are created without taking the life trajectory of women into account. That is where Untangle Money comes in! Led by Kristine Beese, Untangle Money creates financial plans for women and helps them figure out how to optimize their finances in line with their life goals and personal plans. Untangle Money is a tool that Beese hopes to get into the hands of a million Canadian women in the next four years.
In this conversation, Beese talks about how the magnitude of the gender wealth gap became real for her, Untangle Money’s unique women-centric approach, and the joys and struggles of building a venture that isn’t all about the money.
The Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
Janice Byrne
You're listening to the entrepreneur podcast from the Western Morissette Institute for Entrepreneurship, powered by Ivey. My name is Janice Byrne and I will be your host for this new series, exploring exciting startups led by women entrepreneurs. While there has been rising awareness of the gender wage gap over the past few years. Another important gender issue. The wealth gap between men and women often goes on acknowledged in 2020, for every $1 man had a net while women had only 32 cents. When we talk about wealth management, financial plans are an important and useful to both financial plans are expensive and out of reach many women more importantly, most financial plans are created without taking the life trajectory of women into account. That's where Untangle Money comes in. Led by Kristine Beese, Untangle Money creates financial plans for women, and helps them figure out how to optimize their finances in line with their life goals, and personal finance. Untangle Money is a tool that Beese hopes to get into the hands of a million Canadian women in the next four years. In this conversation, Beese talks about how the magnitude of the gender wealth gap became real for her, the unique women centered approach of her startup, and the struggles and joys of building a venture that isn't all about the money. Delighted to be finally sitting down and having this conversation, which is so thank you so much for joining us, Kristine. today. And I guess I just wanted to start with a very just simple question of you just telling us about Untangle Money. In entrepreneurship terms, what's the value proposition? But I guess what, what do you do? What do you offer? What is Untangle Money about?
Kristine Beese
Yes, Untangle Money is about getting a financial plan into the hands of 1 million Canadian women in the next four years. And that is because the financial plan is our best tool to get help us achieve our financial goals and women need deserve a tool that helps them make the best decisions for themselves. And we can talk about what I've learned along the way about and why we've augmented that to say the best decisions for themselves rather than we originally wanted women to build a lot of wealth, so we could close the gender wealth gap.
Janice Byrne
Yeah. So I want to unpack that a little bit more. And full disclosure here. Yes. When I first heard about Untangle Money, and I first saw something I thought the feminist did me I got really annoyed because I was like, Well, what do we need, especially for women? You know, it was like the Bic pen right with what do we need the special thing for women? Right? And it was only then when I got to learn more that then I went, aha. But tell people more, because there is going to be that sometimes resistance to women needs something special.
Kristine Beese
Yes. Well, that's fantastic. Because I actually think women are brilliant that they have that instinct, because we have been trained by marketing, to learn that women's things are pinked and shrinked. Right, it's less value for more cost. And and you know, heaven forbid women, you know, I really dislike the girl math meme right now. When when we look when we dive into it, and this was really inspired by a book, I know you and I both like a lot written by Caroline Criado Perez called it's called "Invisible Women." And it talks about disaggregating data by gender. And when we dive into the data around women and men and the amount of money we have, we women earn a million dollars less over the course of their careers. And that was that's a stat from Bank of America, Merrill Lynch. So they would kindly compiled that for us. And... not for us, but like for the world. And and when as an investor, if I have, because I was a professional investor for awhile, as an investor, if I have a million or less dollars to work with, that means the strategies available to me are very different than the strategies available to me if I have a million more dollars, which are genuinely coming in, in the 40 plus year old timeframe. So when I saw that graph, looking at women's and men's salary curves for men and women who have a bachelor's degree, and I had my investor hat on, I thought, am I not allowed to swear? That, you know, women are not getting the information they need to to get to the end. And I found this wonderful again, wonderful not not in the fact that it's good news, but the fact that it was shoring up our position. The World Economic Forum said that when women, when women use plans designed for men, it'll fail them. And that makes sense because that plan is expecting a million more dollars over the course of career so you can be doing all the things right, but your career isn't keeping up with the trajectory that it's expecting. And that's going to make you fall short. So I know that's a lot of detail maybe to much?
Janice Byrne
No, tell us a bit about from even from a personal perspective. I know sort of like how Did you kind of even stumble? Or did you come at this from a personal perspective and find this problem yourself even on a day to day basis?
Kristine Beese
Yeah, so I definitely, you know, I was I've always been very high achieving I was an a bit non traditional, I dropped out of high school to figure skate nationally, when I was a teenager. So as a very mature person at a very young age, you know, that's a very expensive endeavor. And, and, you know, I got back on track, went into engineering went into oil and gas, and then, you know, was really belittled by a gentleman at a bank wasn't really enamored with oil and gas, I had originally done engineering physics in school, which was hired by a company called Nortel and they went bankrupt right before I graduated. So there were no jobs. But I made lots of money in this field. And I went to the bank, and the gentleman just kind of dismissed me out of hat. And it was just, it was this awful feeling of just feeling small, you know, and walking out being the you know, and then we hear this all the time, it didn't feel like finance, or the financial industry or investing was for me. And so that, that really, it that hit something inside me that was kind of I think I was already trying to figure out what my next thing was going to be. So I started reading all these books about money, I got into my MBA here at Ivey, which is amazing, got out got into a very prestigious program on RBC, or in RBC on their trading floor, which was a rotational program, which meant I got to sit in all these different businesses, and then I became a stock analyst for them. And then I had my first child. And, you know, I came back from that, and it really felt as if everybody treated me like I had been lobotomized. And from there, you know, we moved back to Canada, and I started investing money for, for wealthy Canadians and, and it was just sort of gendered issue after gender issue that kind of stuck out. So eventually, we got to this point where, you know, I really didn't want to work in finance anymore. And then we can talk about a bit later how we set ourselves up, my husband and I are my partner and I, so that we could, so that I could take a chance on a business. But my, my best friend at the time, or my girlfriend at the time, she came to me and said, You know, I feel like my relationship with my partner is breaking down. And I think it's going to be expensive. I'm not sure I can afford to leave him. I, I know, a financial plan costs $2,500. And I'm, I'm already not sure I have the money, you do money. Can you help me? And I said, yeah, yeah, I can. And that's sort of when I realized, you know, she's a professor, she's, you know, we're, we just don't have the tools available to us. If we don't do even people who have an MBA don't necessarily have personal financial tools, right? Even people working in capital markets don't necessarily translate what we've learned into personal finance. And, and I just feel like, it's really, it's really been sold to people of very high means. And then the milling company, or the rest of us are just kind of grasping at straws. And then you layer on top of that the fact that women have so much less capital coming in to work with, you just have this recipe for failure, you know, if you don't know what you're doing, and we have this expression, progress, not perfection, which I strongly believe it's not about being perfect. It's about taking steps that get you into the right direction. But if we if we're given poor guidance along the way, I don't know how we're supposed to get there. So I really just, I adamantly want to get this into the hands of every woman in the world. And in order to do that, we have to make it a viable business so we can continue to grow.
Janice Byrne
When I hear you saying that, you want to put this in the hands of every woman. Who is it? The typical customer who could benefit from Untangle Money as it stands today? And how is she going to benefit from it like concretely?
Kristine Beese
Yes. So we work with bank branch clients. So I think I don't know if a lot of people are aware of how the finance industry is structured. But in order for you to have worked with me, when I invested money, you had to write me a check for a million or the company, I worked for a check for a million dollars. And even then we weren't really that fast, right? We wanted multi millions. And I don't even think that firm was ever profitable, right? It was still growing its assets. So it's very expensive to manage money. How many people? I certainly don't hang around with people who are able to cut checks for a million dollars all the time. So that's what I consider a bank branch customer, people who can't access the wealth management industry, which generally has minimums in the mid-hundreds of 1000s. So we're starting with middle income women, that's how we call them. We would ideally love to get them young because that is the easiest time to to get your money working for you. You, but anything up to about 55. And generally, it's people that don't trust the banks, if you trust the bank, then you probably don't see a problem. And it doesn't mean you couldn't use us, it just means that you don't feel a need for a different solution. So you're likely not going to put in the effort to find us. And then you're probably just getting, you probably are getting started with money, or you just you want clarity around your money. So what I mean by that is a few questions you can ask yourself, if you're listening, if if, if we could help you? Do you know how much money you need to retire? Do you know what that means in terms of how much you need to put away per month? And how hard you need that money to be working for you in order to achieve that? Do you know what you can afford? After you've paid for everything? You know, you're, you've, we call it committed money, but the costs you've committed to spending before you've gotten out of bed, you've paid for your retirement, you've, you've done all the things, do you know how much money that is? And you know what that is per hour, so that you can figure out how many hours you need to work in order to purchase something. So that's the person that we're looking for people who want answers to those questions. And I think the really neat thing about knowing how many hours, or what you make on a per hour basis, is that instead of instead of saying, "oh, you know, this item cost 150 bucks, that's amazing. Or I feel like I deserve that." You can kind of flip it on its head and say, Do I want to work, you know, 200 hours for that? Because ultimately, that's and it just changes the paradigm a little bit. And I think for people who enjoy that metric, they feel it puts them in, they're in the driver's seat, and it allows them to think about purchases without judgment and without shame. And you know, we can talk about how attitudes around money and attitudes around spending impact women differently than men as well, because there's some really interesting research around that.
Janice Byrne
Well let us talk a little bit more about that. Because the personalized aspect, I think of what you have to offer is important, right? And the non judgmental aspect is important. (Yes) Go ahead...
Kristine Beese
Well, I just want to the other thing I forgot to mention is someone went, someone told me, but maybe I've positioned it incorrectly. Maybe I should say call it a financial one on one course, except all of the examples we're going to use or with your money. Yeah. So that way, you can figure out how money works. And you're probably more inclined to care because all of the examples are personalized to you. Yeah. But one of the things that we know is that men spending is seen as discerning and women's spending is seen as frivolous. Now, often when I say that you have images that pop up into your mind. For me, it's whiskey, single malt, whiskey, and nails. And I don't know why those do come up. And I know they're very generalized. But you know, no one is going to go I have a male partner and no one's going to go to him and say, hey, you know, all of those single malts are a waste your how frivolous have you? How dare you put that in front of your kids? How dare you? You know what your kids could buy a hockey shin pads? What but no one has any qualms in saying to a woman, hey, you shouldn't spend money on your appearance. Even though we know when you spend money on your appearance as a woman, it tends to lead to better earning potential. So it's this weird quagmire that we find ourselves in where women are really lampooned and lambasted for every spending decision they make. And so what by putting everything in, in dollar per hour worked, so you can use it, you can figure out how many hours it is, it kind of removes the noise for you for the individual, at least, you know, personally, that's what I really found happened for me, I have this. You know, it changes over time. And for me, I used to really like fancy coffees. And now, and now I have a cleaning lady who I adore, and my mom and my mother-in-law, really don't feel that I'm contributing to the family appropriately if I need help, and spending money on that help, but I know that it's worth that dollar per hour. And it's worth that and I don't have to listen to that noise. I can shut it off. I can say no, that's great, thank you. Or I can just say thank you, that's wonderful. But I have X number of hours that I can spend and I'm going to put it towards what I want to put it towards.
Janice Byrne
I think I heard you put it differently another time in terms of emotional inputs are just as important as mathematical.
Kristine Beese
100% and I think the finance industry at large has completely missed the point of that. And so it's there's it's actually research backed. We know that if you don't get joy, we call it joy, but it like it's almost like sustenance and this feeling that it's worth all the work you're doing if you don't get that from your money. The research shows we're gonna Go, we're going to reach for debt, we're going to go into debt. And I think the entire finance industry has missed that point. One that we need joy, and we actually have, they can quantify it. But that there, there's all this guidance out there. And what what we say to our clients is, you know, the model is trying to mathematically optimize your money. That's that's one guardrail. But the other really important guardrail that's really hard to quantify. And then sometimes it's money, it's an it may be opaque. Like, it's just a feeling, it's hard to define. But that's your emotional needs. And those are both really important in what's in any financial decision. So one of the things that we found, research says is we don't actually need that much money in cash. We don't need to be sitting on that much cash, women tend to sit on lots of cash. And because the industry is actually told us, we're supposed to sit on a lot of cash. Now we need access to money. So I'm not saying you don't need access to other things, but the amount of it that sits in cash is much smaller than we thought. Now, but if I'm working with you, let's say and you say, well, Christine, I'm glad you think I only need $4,000 in cash, but I can't sleep at night, if I don't have $20,000 in cash. And then I'll say, well, then that's the right number 20,000. That's your body and your mind and your heart telling you that that's the optimum amount. That's what we mean by best decision for you. Right? It's not about I want to help you understand how money works, so that you can get it working for you in a way that's emotionally available. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that every person that we're going to see is going to say, oh, yeah, I want to invest in the stock market. And I want it to be a growth portfolio. And I am going to put my investor cap on and be Warren Buffett, right? It's just not going to, it's not going to happen for everyone. And that's not wrong, but the finance industry. I'm generalizing, but really all the information we get from them, says it's wrong, and they kind of judge you for it. So we were really fortunate. We did this pilot with 17 Women early on. And one woman said to me, I did her financial plan. And she said, Christine, I don't want to live like that. That sounds awful. Right? She didn't have that much money left over to spend. And I took her that gem and gift away. And I thought, okay, how else can we do this? Well, you can work longer, you can get a roommate, you can work part time. And I saw I asked, we went came back and I said, you know, are you open to other things? And she's like, sure I am. Sounds lots of fun like to have roommates. She said, I've never thought I could retire anyways. Right? So all of these things meant, well, actually, for her the best decision was not to put that much money away. Even though maybe that's not necessarily the decision that the and she said she felt judged by us. Because we were placing this value system that you have to save money for retirement that looks like what how you live today. And we were putting that on her. And I just felt awful, because we had said, We're judgment free space. And and we don't shame you from your money choices. And she felt judged. And we had to walk away and say, That's not right.
Janice Byrne
So how practically speaking, how does it work? Then how do you deliver this the service?
Kristine Beese
Yeah, so we can't you we gather, we gather a few pieces of data about you as we can largely around what accounting called fixed costs, which I alluded to earlier, we call it committed Money, money you've committed to spending before we've gotten it a bit could be rent could just as easily be Netflix, right? It doesn't mean it's your mortgage, could be a mortgage. But it could also be apps and subscriptions. It's not about importance. It's just your spending, it could be hair, even hair maintenance. And so we gather this information, and then we jump on a call and we in the app, we'll just continue on. But right now it's non scalable. So you we jump on a call and we walk you through our assumptions, we check our inputs, we walk you through our assumptions, and then we say okay, using these assumptions, this is our base case. And then we're going to look at different ways we can change it. So we'll say here's your now money, here's your future money, it says you run out of money at 87 says you have X number of dollars per hour to work. That's up four and a half percent, which is which is a conservative portfolio. That's what we would expect a conservative portfolio to give us and that is what most women invest in. So that's where we start. And then the first thing we say is we say okay, what if you got your money working a little harder for you? What if we got 6%, which we say as a growth portfolio, so it's about 80% stocks, 20% bonds, and then we show them how that changes their scenario. So now maybe they're, they have money out till 92. And maybe they have they probably haven't gotten any more flex money at this point. And then we say, Okay, well, you're retired for 30 yours. And we've put you into a low risk portfolio, which is 80% bonds, and three gives about a 3% yield, or rate of return. And we say, well, what if we got that working a little harder for you, meaning, you know, you take the money you need in the next 10 years, and you put that into low risk, and you leave the rest, we, we sort of estimate that by us just increasing the rate to four and a half percent. And we say, okay, so that actually brings down how much money you need. And so maybe now they're up to 95. And maybe now they've actually opened up some flex money. So now they have, they have put less money to work, and they've also covered off their retirement. That's those two decisions, getting your money working harder for you before and after retirement, may not be emotionally available. Some women say to us, Kristine, that's great. No, thank you. Right? Or, because we asked them, this does seem like something that, that you'd be open to? Does this feel like gambling? You know, there's a few ways and we don't invest the money? So we don't have any stakes here? Yeah, we don't have any stakes in the game. And then then we look at some other things we look at what if we could change your cost of living? Right? If we what happens? What would $100 difference in your committed money mean for your future money? So if you could find $100 less that you spend on every month? What does that do? And you know, often we also do it the other way, because a lot of us life is getting more expensive. And so we look at that scenario. And then we say, Okay, what about inflation? You know, we have? What does inflation mean for you? And so we'd say, Okay, we start with a 2% assumption, which isn't accurate at the moment. It's funny. When I first started with the inflation, we hadn't seen higher inflation yet. And nobody understood why I did it. So I used to say, This is why our parents or your parents and our grandparents, depending on their age, might have been concerned about this, or now everybody's like, Oh, tell me more about inflation. But so we show you what 4% inflation looks like. And it's really scary. So we say, you know, this part can be really scary. And then we show you and then we show you well, actually, some of that inflation works its way into the finance industry. So then we increase your returns, we increase inflation by 2%, we increase your rate of return by one and a half percent, because it doesn't happen right away. And doesn't all get in there. And then really the takeaway from that one is during periods of high inflation, it's even more critical that you're invested in some way. House, GIC, high interest rate savings account, stocks, the stock market lags a little bit in the beginning. But it's really important that we're keeping up with the goalposts that's moving further away. And so that's the big takeaway from that one. And then we say, Okay, what happens if you wait 10 years? What if you don't enact this plan for 10 years? Or what if it takes you 10 years of, of trying until you get put it to work? And we show them that? And usually, that's pretty stark, or dismal? And then, and then we open it up to them? Well, what would you like to see? Would you like to look at retiring later? Would you like to look at a part-time job? Would you like to look at? What if we could cut your expenses with a roommate says we use 60% instead? And at no point? Are we telling them which one to choose? Sure. And we don't want to we want to be options out there. And, and here, and we want you to pick it, pick one, right? Here are all the scenarios mapped out. And then when it's automated, they can you know, the neat thing is they're like, Well, can I take this home and play with it? And right now, the answer is not yet. But once it's automated, then then it will be. And for couples, it's wonderful. You know, they get this framework, and this language and these images to help them make the decisions and talk about money in a way that they both understand. Yeah, because they've gotten the same information.
Janice Byrne
Yeah... Why? Why do you think this hasn't been offered to date? Like what's really...
Kristine Beese
It's hard to do? Right? It was really hard. I think it's, you know, I have a background in engineering and a background in actually cost estimating, when I was an engineer, I used to cost out the, the, our bids that we were going to put it into to into the system, and we use what was called factor cost estimate, which is really not popular at the time. It's let's say I have, let's say I want to put a big splitter in or there's one large piece of equipment, say like a tower. I worked in the oil and gas industry. So you, you'd sort of siphon off a stream at the top and a stream at the bottom. And based on whatever big piece of equipment, I could say, well, the whole project is going to cost 4.3 times that roughly roughly and then we knew how to adjust for steel prices going up which is the main input and we knew how to adjust for labor that factor for labor prices. And so I and we we would bid really expensive projects based on this factor method. So I think I have a comfort with this sort of lack of precision required to give you some of this information. So whereas the finance industry, they want to know exactly what you think your bonus is going to be, they want to know exactly how much you're gonna put into your RSP. They're gonna want to know exactly how much you put in your TFSA. And then you have all these assumptions stacking up on each other, that you've lost track have the big picture of, I just really want to understand, you know, what's gonna get me there. And one of my big fears is that people get this once and they think they're good. Right, right. And yeah, and no model, even when I was a stock analyst, you know, we couldn't even see one year out. So this model 1-3 years, Max, right? Yeah, maybe five years, if nothing the world changes. And we're in a very static state, I think we kind of went through a period like that, with the low, low and low inflation numbers recently, where nothing really changed. And then COVID hit and we were like what? But those are really rare periods of time in history. So really, this is think of it as a compass. Right? It's going to point you in the north direction. Yeah. And then you want to check in as you march forward to see if you're still heading in the direction you want, because you will have changed.
Janice Byrne
Well absolutely, That's what I was just about to say to go on with that compass analogy is like, you know, walking through the woods, but it could start to rain. Right? really heavily on me. And then what do I do? So yeah.
Kristine Beese
Yes, exactly. Exactly. So we, the other thing is, banking owns the budget, and wealth management owns the retirement plan. And they don't talk to each other. But this is an iterative thing, right? You got to think of, okay, the thing that bothers me about this whole, no, your client and women don't take risk, and we push women into conservative portfolios. And Merrill Lynch actually did a lot of work on this. So I'm not inventing the wheel here and like to credit them for the work that they did. They really talked about how female advisors are more likely to talk to women about the bigger picture, meaning is it worth taking a little bit more risk with your money today? If it means mitigating the very real likelihood that you're going to run out of your money if you don't get it working for you harder, right? I was listening to you know, I listened to a lot of money podcast and Rational Reminder is great. But the gentleman they had on was talking, you know, he had wealth. Yeah. And when you have wealth, you want to preserve it. But when you don't have enough money, you, you may decide to take a little more risk to try and get there. versus, you know, absolutely. knowing you're not, you know, you're gonna run out. And again, different strokes for different folks, some people would rather we read lots of women, I'd rather just stick with a conservative portfolio. And I want to figure out what I need to do to make that work. So we say, great, you can retire at 67, you can downsize to, you know, a one bedroom instead of a two bedroom. And knowing what we know, now that should be good enough, right? We best best information. Who knows, maybe in the future, two bedrooms or, or one bedrooms cost the same time? Yeah, making things that, again, we don't know. But, you know, we're helping you make those financial decisions with what you're comfortable with. But zooming out enough, so you can balance today, with tomorrow, instead of sometimes the focus is just on today, because they're so worried that you're gonna get upset that you lose money. And you're not looking at the fact that, you know, a lot of women run out of money in their 80s and then live for another 10 years.
Janice Byrne
I think the whole concept of the life course and kind of decisions you make over your life course is so important to what you do and what you provide. from your own perspective. Life course-wise, when you set up your own business like Hey, I guess Tell me a little bit more about your your early days of Untangle Money and launching it and how you kind of set yourself up to start up?
Kristine Beese
Yeah it was it was (you were there in corporate you had) Yeah, yeah, I used so I was an engineer," I got in, did my MBA, I got into RBC I was in the UK looking at oil and gas companies. For them as a stock analyst. We moved back. I managed money for people. I had another son and then I went, I did the return to be street program through Women in Capital Markets. And I was at Scotiabank as their director of strategy. And I had now three little kids, one, three and five at home. And again, if you think back to that time when that gentleman in the oil at the bank when I was making a lot of money in the oil and gas industry was very dismissive. Well, I took that money and I put it into real estate in Calgary and set so I have two properties there that I rent. I have a condo and a townhouse there. And that covers off the kids education. And that's how I think I think I've started think about well, this will cover this and this will cover this that's how I've always kind of done money. And then we were fortunate enough to save up a lot of money in England when we came back with our pounds here. We were still early enough that we were able to buy a house, and we put a basement apartment in that, then that basement apartment rents out. And that pays my portion of the mortgage. And so when my friend came to me, and I'd read Caroline Criado Perez. And I'd gone to a hackathon and met, who was my original co founder. And she was 20 years younger than me, or she was 25, I guess, 15-17 years younger than me. And she was this brilliantly talented, Accenture consultant in the finance, business line of them. And she went to the bank and was just as dismissed. I thought, right? There's something something something it's been almost 20 years and nothing's changed. Yeah. And let's do this. And so we originally thought, well, we don't want to compete in the wealth. And like, we thought, Wealthsimple, (yes) Questwealth, they're doing a great job on the investment side, it's a really busy space, we just feel like people don't know how to get going. And we're at how to start and how to put it all together. So maybe we could just put this nice path forward. And just we thought all the information is out there, all we have to do is make it a little lighter and funner, and maybe a little sassier. She liked the word zouche, which I also like, and she was she was great. She is great. And, and so that's what we thought. And that's where that original 17 women came from. But you know, my husband and I, on the personal side, you know that those early investments really set, set myself up that I wasn't trying to work to get my kids education done. I wasn't trying to work to pay my mortgage, I had this time, the, and then I had also built up my own amount of money. So I've put about $150,000 into the company, which I had saved over the course of my career. And I asked him, you know, I didn't ask my husband, I said, you know, I want to put it in to company. And I want to see what we can do with it. And that's sort of how we set it up.
Janice Byrne
So you set yourself up, you set yourself up with a runway. Is that scary?
Kristine Beese
Terrifying. Especially now, you know, having that pot, and then you know, it trickles by as the longer you're on, the more you stick into it and the pot done, right? Like there's it's all it's, it's coming to its end. And we don't have that many months of runway ahead of us. And now it's time to find other people's money. And it's scary. It was a lot. I never actually thought I would get through it all I thought we were going to find investors. So we originally set out to get venture capital, and some angel, angel investors, all the all the different stages. And we thought, right, this is a no no brainer. We actually had our first client, this is this is how great this was a bit of a false positive. But this was how great we thought our idea was. We put a web page up there. And we were looking at using Stripe to integrate the payments, and Stripe emails us and says you have your first customer, you have to finish the integration to get access to that money. And we're like, they've bought your product. And I looked at Rihanna. I'm like, what product? We then go build anything. So we made we I you know, I've done some things for myself. And that's what it started from. I did that the whole time. So really this product has been co created with the women that have been trusting enough to let us help them with their money. That's kind of cool.
Janice Byrne
Tell us a little bit about those early days then work. Like I know you said you had those 17 women? And what was that about? I guess that's your minimum viable product. Right.
Kristine Beese
That was our so we we asked that those ones I don't think we charged that was we just ask people, if we could help them. Okay, give them give them a financial plan. We took FP Canada's financial plan. And we walked them through those stages. And I read all the books. And, and it was a disaster was like it was terrible. The first thing they want you to do, and you'll hear this everywhere in finance, the first thing they ask you is what are your financial goals? And we know from research that women don't talk about money and goal oriented language, we actually don't talk about a lot of things as much and goal oriented language, but certainly not money. The two questions we have about money are what can I afford? And will I be okay? Those are women's main concerns when it comes to money. And so... And the interesting thing is, if you don't tell the financial planner that you want to plan for retirement, they don't have to put retirement in there, which I just think boggles my mind. (Right) Right? And it's just not the way it doesn't make any sense. Especially when you don't have enough you don't have that million dollars extra coming in. So what we what we realized is women come to us say well, what do you mean by a goal and we say, I don't know think about something you have to save up for you know, you can't buy it with one paycheck. You know, what would you like? And they were like, oh, okay, well, you know, grew up with a cottage or car or something and you know, if you really nice to have Car, like, Okay, we'll get back to you. Bad news. You can't afford the car. You can't afford to retire either. But, you know, thanks for coming. And that's when we really, you know, I didn't think figure this out till a while later, in retrospect, I realized FP Canada's financial planning procedure is really great for people who have lots of money. And it's a prioritization exercise, right. So if you have $10, and you want to buy three $1 items, I can do that, right? If you just want not mine and the other things, whatever, but I can prioritize that for you. Now in the middle income, we also want to buy three $1 items, but we only have $1. Right to do it with. Yeah, so we realized it's not about prioritization, it's about trade offs and expectation management. And that's why we start out, we don't even ask you what you want. We say, here's what it looks like using these assumptions. What do you want to change? And then, and we use women, generalized assumptions, we use what women generally do with that four and a half percent, that conservative investment that sounds so nice to us, right? Even myself, I don't want an aggressive portfolio, I want a conservative portfolio lines with everything I've been taught about being a nice woman, right, so. And so. Yeah, that's the first 17 Women was really interesting. That was to build our minimum viable product, the first thing we created was just a calculator. And then we gave it to them at the end. And we said, okay, then they just look at it. That's what we now have as their base case. And they're like, oh, okay, we're like, do you want to change anything? Do you wanna see what happens if you like? I don't know. But they didn't even know enough what to change. Right? So that's why we want to walk them through some of the things that we want you to know about money. Yeah, whether whether you're going to go there or not. Yeah. But we that's part of that financial education one on one.
Janice Byrne
I was just about to say, so the financial education is a big part of what you do in terms of for your, for your customers. Was it also a big part of what you had to do when you were trying to attract investors? Or get people interested in your company to do that? Did you feel like you had to convince people that this was an issue?
Kristine Beese
I'm laughing because I'm the number of people. So we desperately have a five minute pitch, let's say, right? There's a standard, there's two or three common standard (pitch) pitches. And there's 10 slides normally, right? And we could never get away with spending less than two and a half minutes on the problem. And the problem is not supposed to take that long, right? But whenever we so we had these three slides we showed and like, or we have the story that we got to and we kept trying to like, trim it or shorten it. But if we didn't do all of those ones, we'd always get well, I don't believe you. Right. I don't think there's a problem here. I don't think women need help with their money. I think their husbands are doing it right. Like all like we heard the worst things like people just yeah, you know, off the just, you know, the worst things, or, and I strongly suspect that in the beginning, we were just Well, I met with I met with X number of women founders, so they've never intended they didn't believe the premise, they didn't believe the problem. They didn't believe any of it. They didn't think it was worthwhile. They didn't. Or my favorite is, why would you this such a weird or interesting niche you've chosen here? Like why would you? Why would you cut your market place in half? And I was like, Well, if you had paid attention, and there's there's some there is some validity to it, I will admit, but you know, women's financial lives are very different. And they're not being addressed currently. So there's a bigger problem for women, right? Because the current solution actually doesn't give them the right answers. That's an engineering like you've put the the wrong tool into the wrong application. That's like what I see. Yeah, but then the other thing is, women have much bigger pain points around money, women are much less satisfied. Women have much more anxiety around money. So you know, you want to you know, if I tried to sell this to men, I'm not sure men are as concerned about their money. They don't have the same levels of stress around it. They so we're trying to solve that problem. And not just yeah, we we didn't get anywhere with that. And perhaps that was in the way we told it. But we we didn't you know, and Rhea, what used to be the picture. And she was very compelling and very articulate and very, she really got on her feet. Yeah. And she tried, we all we both like every different angle. And I think we talked to I don't know, 70 people didn't get anywhere and we thought okay, well. Let's bootstrap it then.
Janice Byrne
Yeah, yeah. And, more generally speaking, and for aspiring women entrepreneurs out there. I'd like to hear a little bit more about what you think about the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Canada for women entrepreneurs?
Kristine Beese
Yeah, well, you have to. I mean, I do want to caveat that I'm going to be biased by my experience, but I found it to be very sexist. And you know, you, I had the experience of having tons of investors in my breakout room once and they didn't ask me any questions and you know, your prep for what are the use of funds? What are you know, what is your strategy for, you know, capital outlays, what are you know, what are your biggest pitfalls? Like, what are you most concerned about? You have all these? I haven't done in a while, so I can't remember all of them. But use of funds for sure. Like, number one question. It's kind of like when you go for a job, and it's like, tell me about yourself, and why do you want to work for this company? Right, like, in some way, shape, or form? Those are the two questions that are always going to be there. Yeah. Nobody asked me anything. Right. So I just started talking about it. Or, you know, what's the potential of this? Tell me about your aspirations? No, it's they all they did was identify all the things they didn't like about it, and how it could fail. And I thought, you have it this is like a global problem we had in one of our other pilots, we had women from all over the world that said, you have to come here next, you have to come here next. And, you know, I think there's a pain point that is universal, somewhat around the world. So what happened it has huge legs, if you can, if you can crack the nut. There's a chance that this could be an Airbnb for, for Finance, Financial Literacy for women, but no one, no one even wanted to paint that vision. And they just, it was silent. So for women who are out there, I think, one if you have a gendered product, you should really find impact investors, people who have who are really trying to do something with their money in a philanthropic way. So there's, they not only want money that, you know, these have to be viable businesses, but they want to do it in some sort of impactful way, maybe an SDG, or something like that. The other thing is just be forewarned that you may not get the questions you like. And there's a lot of people that can help you transition them. We just weren't ever good at transitioning it in a way that was compelling, or in the way that landed with the investors we saw because we never got more follow up calls. But...
Janice Byrne
Tell me a little bit about your own personal story to go back that with that first piece of advice with respect to you know, finding those investors. So how did you find those early supporters or the people that did kind of get on board with you? Who were those people?
Kristine Beese
Yeah, so one of them Fion, she, she actually was at the hackathon where I met Ria, and she just followed our story. And she's been trying to give us money for a long time. Yeah, because she believes in the problem. She had a similar problem herself a little bit different. But similar, she wanted help managing her money and couldn't find it. And she has, you know, she is a wealthy woman. So she's not part of our target market. But she has daughters, and she really wants this solution or something like it. She she liked this thesis, right? She wanted to invest in this thesis. She wanted something like this to exist in the world for her children. Yeah. And for women. And similarly, another one of our angel investors. It just really loves what we do. It's been following us for a while and, and came to us and said, I'd really like to support financially let me know, when you're when you're open to taking money. So they they came to us. Yeah, it wasn't really about us finding them.
Janice Byrne
So what are you spending that those funds on right now? And what are you doing? What are you busy doing?
Kristine Beese
Yes, so we are spending the funds on? We're really busy with the development? Yeah, that is our focus.
Janice Byrne
And when you talk about development, it's the tech end. (Yes) So ability of somebody putting this in the hands of like, in app?
Kristine Beese
Yes, because we can't I you know, I my lifetime, I, I've worked with hundreds of women so far, I can maybe get to 1000s. I don't even think have enough time to get to 10 this the 10s of 1000s. Right? So I can't really move the dial as a service. You know, you're not working one on one, it's just not gonna happen. Yeah. And then, you know, you could train the trainer, you could train people up to do it. But, you know, does it get diluted? What, you know, how many of those you need? The fastest way to do it is to get something that's no touch. And I think, you know, there's actually research that says, and it's really interesting, because they thought it was gonna be young people that would, that would want to talk to a robot or, you know, an app out there about their money. And they actually found that everybody would rather talk to a robot or an app about their money versus a person and I liken it to bein... you don't have to get financially naked in front of a human and that's a huge barrier to getting help. And we've had a ton of... so most of our clients have not been friends and family. We've done almost no first connections. Yeah, they've all been strangers. And when you know every now and then I have friends check in and say, hey, when is that automated version gonna be ready because I don't I don't want you to see my number. Right, right. I don't want, I don't want you to know. Yeah. I get that, you know, I don't, I don't necessarily want anybody else to see my numbers either. Yeah, I keep, I keep pretending I with my shirt and realize nobody can see it on the podcast. But, you know, it's a very vulnerable thing. So we're hoping there's no shame, we don't know, we it's a big test. Because there's one thing to say there's the other thing to do it, but might be that it'll actually be easier for women to do this in their pajamas at home in the safety of their house. And so the numbers and get this learning without, and knowing they're not going to be judged right there. Yeah, there won't be that person looking at you and saying, Well, you do, you'd been smart like me and lucked into back fell backwards into an opportunity that you never saw coming, and then you too can be unemployed. You know, it just, it just feels like there's something really great there. And so that's what we're doing, we want it to be a no touch solution. There's an idea that later we'd add group coaching, just to help because some people do want that personal, maybe q&a, but maybe not maybe not so specific, right? Or maybe once all is said and done and most nine times out of 10, they realize it's not so bad. Or even if it is it feels better knowing than not knowing it's really interesting, then then, you know, augmenting it slightly that way. But really, to get into a million people this quickly. It has to be an on touch solution.
Janice Byrne
Tell me what the future for Untangle Money mean, what what does success look like? I know you're working on the development now. But where ultimately would you like this to land?
Kristine Beese
I want to be so successful that the titans of the industry have to change the way they handle women and the way they work with women and the way they deal with women and the information they give to people that success to me. And then I also want to make sure everybody has access to this tool. I want to do a better job of explaining the tool and the value of the tool. But I want everybody and so you know, lower income was is a high priority for us. But it takes a lot more resources. We unfortunately aren't there yet. But when we mean every woman in the world, we mean every woman in the world that will be that we're able to get to Yeah, man.
Janice Byrne
And finally, final question for you. What is your biggest takeaway, I guess, from this whole experience so far? You know, taking into account that your background I mean, we didn't get into that. But you have I love listening to the story of your career trajectory. You mean I dropped out of high school to the figure skating and then the career the engineering degree undergrad and then career in in wealth management and finance and engineering. And then finally ended up doing your own thing with Untangle Money, but I'll what I guess I earlier I said to you know, like, is that scaring you were like, yes, of course it is right to start, right. But But now you're doing it. But from when you look back, like from the start I've just taken when I've talked about the Untangle Money journey, I guess what is your What's the biggest plus for you of doing what you're doing right now.
The biggest pluses is, you know, and I will miss it, if we stop offering it is that one on one impact is is sitting, being in the Zoom Room because it's in zoom, when that penny drops, and that person feels like they don't be scared of their numbers anymore. And and then when they, you know, this was transformational, you know, or they say, you know, I feel like, the path is so clear. You're ahead of me and being in that moment. And just, we've had several people break down in tears, they just are so moved in. Me Not everybody's that successful. But it just having that knowing that you're changing lives is I know it sounds. You hear it a lot, but we get to see it day to day. That's just amazing. And I think my biggest the other Yeah, that is one. And then the other thing is just how long it takes for an overnight success to happen. We've been grinding away for four years. And it takes a really long time for some of these opportunities to culminate. Yeah. We'll be on OMERS' pension podcast later this summer, where we got some really great things that I'd never would have dreamed of coming down the pipeline. And it really took a lot of time to build this sort of momentum and ecosystem that it's spreading that far. And so I think sometimes some of these ideas just aren't given enough breathing room to get off the ground running and maybe they are a little slower to get started but the momentum they pick up it can be really large. And maybe we're giving up on some of these ideas too early. Yeah. Because maybe some of those founders don't have the capital to get into it. I just wish we, I just wish we gave startups more money. Like, yeah, you do what you want to, you're gonna make mistakes with that money. Yeah, you know, I made lots of mistakes with the money. Yeah, and when I deployed it, but I learned and I don't make them again, I make different ones. And so when I reflect on it, it's just, you know, how lucky I am that I get to do this kind of work, you know, my partner was really willing to, you know, it's a pretty big hit to us economically, that I'm not working and thought that this was a worthy thing for us to take on as a family, being able to have that impact on people. And then just, if there's people out there that are also wondering if they're doing the right thing, but they're getting something out of it. I, you know, I encourage you to try to keep going. I think failure is okay, as well. But some of these things just take a long time to get momentum behind them. So yeah, that's been really fun.
Janice Byrne
Grit and resilience, and you've got buckets of it.
Kristine Beese
Yes. Sometimes... Sometimes too much. My one concern is will I know when to when to call it a day?
Janice Byrne
I think that that's a whole other podcast right? (Yeah) For for now, I'm convinced of the importance of what you're doing and and genuinely find it. So just inspirational listening to you and exciting and I'm sure lots of other people will take so thank you.
Kristine Beese
Oh, thank you for having me. Janice. This is amazing.
Janice Byrne
Cool. Thank you.
Eric Morse
The Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Quantumshift 2008 alum Connie Clericci and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group. To ensure you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player or visit entrepreneurship.uwo.ca/podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.