Today we’d like to introduce you to Rob Boyd.
Rob, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’m originally from Durham, NC and later attended Howard University where my passion for financial literacy and economics was sparked. I quickly realized that my childhood as the son of a single parent working in the banking industry had subconsciously directed me toward finance. Although my mother worked in the banking industry, we still were classified as a low to moderate income household. This created a curiosity in me to figure out how someone could work with money all day but not have a lot of it themselves. After completing my undergraduate studies in Communications and Economics, most job opportunities were in the economic field post-2008’s financial crash. Again, my path directed me toward finance. My initial experience in the corporate world was not as favorable as I envisioned. This is when my entrepreneurial bug began to itch. With confidence and a vision to help underserved people, I began to financially prepare to quit my job and go into financial coaching.
Luckily, my vision and passion was matched by a college friend and we partnered to open offices in Washington, DC, and Philadelphia, PA. Our goal was to offer financial guidance to those that are overlooked by the large financial firms and begin to uplift individuals financially so that they would be in better positions to live out their dreams and create legacies. My partner called me one day saying “I got it, ‘Empify,’ empower and modify put together”. That was the day the brand was born and we immediately gave our team of 50+ associates the title of “Team Empify”. After jumpstarting our entrepreneurial journey with the financial coaching offices, our focus shifted to younger generations. We saw how misinformed adults were and thought we should begin teaching children the personal finance concepts that adults were learning too late in life. The standalone entity, Empify, was then created and now we’ve provided programming in 50+ schools nationwide as well as juvenile detention centers. Its been an amazing journey so far and our recent expansion into juvenile detention centers has pushed us to get involved in disrupting the school to prison pipeline using financial education.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There have been many challenges along the way. Entrepreneurship is often glorified as unimpeded freedom. Thats far from the truth. Each day presents a unique challenge that requires constant growth. During the stage of working solely with adults, we received push back from mentors that felt we should only focus on adults because of our unusual success with helping low to moderate income families use financial products. The financial services industry and some of its top leaders had previously deemed our unique client demographic as unenthused about long term financial planning due to lack of economic mobility. However, our passion to help the underserved plowed through those yield signs and ultimately led my business partner and I to focus on the youth. The uncertainty and lack of examples for this transition forced us to move with faith and will like we never had. The move from financial services to financial education seemed like a backward move to most. Also, the school systems we looked to engage had budgetary issues that made it difficult for us to hone in on a business model that supported Empify’s sustainability. Over the last five years, we’ve worked tirelessly to find funding solutions to ensure we can best prepare the next generation of leaders for success in our economically driven society. Now, we’ve found that philanthropic initiatives of Fortune 500 companies can boost our ability to reach more children.
Please tell us about Empify.
Empify teaches individuals, both school age and adults, personal finance and business concepts that will empower them to live with less limitations that stem from lack of economic mobility. We specialize in 10 and 20-week financial literacy programs for middle schools and high schools as well as an online community for adults that are seeking financial education. Empify is known for creating “Wealth Builders”. Each one of our program graduates receives a wealth builder shirt but also a gift card that is only redeemable for stock purchase. The standard for participants in our school programs on online community for adults is that you become an investor. Our belief is that financial prosperity and independence is a key to living a life of freedom and growth. Our curriculums set us apart from others. We embodied a constructivist teaching philosophy that enables our “Wealth Builders” to grasp complexed financial and business concepts in a simplified way by leveraging pop culture icons and real-life examples that eliminates their self-doubt during the learning process.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If we started over, we would have asked Fortune 500 companies to support our financial education initiatives earlier. We felt like we had to perfect our idea and business model before asking for financial support. During this journey, we learned that companies believe in our work and are willing to help with Empify’s infrastructure development, not just sponsor our programs in schools.
Pricing:
- Our online community for adults, Wealth Builders 101, is only $8 per month which gives you access to Live Q&As, webinars, ebooks, book clubs, and checklists.
Contact Info:
- Address: Empify (Southeast US office)
384 Northyards Blvd, Building 100
Atlanta, GA 30313 - Website: www.empify.com
- Phone: 919-306-3357
- Email: info@empify.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/empify/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/empify/
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/empify
Image Credit:
Felisha Carrasco, Krista Forbes
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