Today we’d like to introduce you to Christian Wilson-Poole.
Hi Christian, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My story began at Brookwood Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama on 05/25/1999. Growing up a black man from a single-parent Catholic household in Birmingham, Alabama, the odds are already stacked against you in a big way. Until I was about six years old, my mother worked in banking with a few side jobs to help us make ends meet, all while being a mother and finishing her MBA in accounting as well as her CPA. In May of 2005, our lives changed. My mother was able to open her own accounting firm, that has now been in business for 17 years and has done business in over 18 states and four countries. Everything I learned about perseverance, strength and resilience came from my mother and her day-to-day drive to create generational wealth for our family. I know you are probably wondering where my father was in this picture. My father was non-existent, as he was incarcerated or just blatantly absent for all of my life even when not in jail. With that being said, my mother was a father to me my entire life. I still wish my mother a happy Father’s Day and Mother’s Day to this day. To this day, I have a major love for sports! My mother sent me to Catholic middle school and high school to ensure that I received top-notch education. As much as I disliked the sports at my high school, I will never be able to take back the education that I received and how well it prepared me for college and life. My way of repaying my mom for paying to send me to private school was by going to college 100% for free.
Following my senior year of high school, I was awarded a full academic and basketball scholarship to Snead State Community College in Boaz, Alabama. During my two years at Snead State, I had the great pleasure of meeting a lot of great people from so many different walks of life. Being raised by a CPA, I had access at an extremely young age to basic money management and budgeting knowledge that most of my peers did not have growing up in their homes. I noticed a huge gap relating financial literacy and young adults that I became passionate about making a difference for specifically after seeing the amount of college students that simply did not even have a student checking account/Debit card. The only way majority of my peers could pay anything was through money apps and if they needed to make a deposit, they would Western Union their checks. After seeing this, I realized how blessed I was growing up to be taught these things by my parent and that Sharing my financial knowledge will be vital to empowering my community. At a young age, financial literacy became an interest of mine. It has always amazed me how the wealthy get wealthy and continue to amass ever-increasing fortunes. This is only feasible if you genuinely understand the importance of money and how it can work for you, as I soon realized. As a result, I decided to study accounting in school and obtain the necessary credentials to work as a professional accountant. I received my Bachelor’s in accounting from Metropolitan State University in Downtown Denver, Colorado, where I was also awarded an academic and basketball scholarship post my Snead State career and graduation.
After my graduation at Metropolitan State University of Denver, I was faced with a lot of tough decisions. Did I want to continue my basketball career overseas or use this amazing accounting degree that I worked so hard on in school and go make a difference in my community. Weeks of prayer, thoughts, tears, laughs and memories helped me leave my first love behind (basketball) and pursue my professional career as an accountant. As I began my career in private aviation, I immediately regrated my decision. Why? It is because it was something I was not fully comfortable and confident in yet as I was in sports. Slowly but surely, I found my niche in the accounting world. I have moved away from my work in private aviation as a staff accountant and am now the Founder/CEO of Young FINANCE LLC and the Lead Accountant for the firm that my mother sacrificed so much for, for me to have the quality of life that I did growing up. That is why, as part of our effort to create the building blocks to wealth is so important to put yourself in the greatest position possible for knowledge and success.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The life of a young entrepreneur is never easy, especially in the world of finance and accounting. Being a minority and building credibility in this field has been one of the biggest hurdles. As I mentioned in my story, being a black man from a single-parent household in Birmingham, Alabama, the odds are already stacked against you in a big way. Finding new ways to stand out and get noticed as such a young entrepreneur were some of my biggest struggles. Also, as an entrepreneur I had to learn that everyone is not going to be as passionate about your product or service that you are, you have to make everyone feel and relate to the message that you are trying to convey through your product or service.
As you know, we’re big fans of Young FINANCE, LLC. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Here at Young FINANCE, we offer financial coaching that effectively gets to the root of financial behaviors and patterns of our members. Through our financial coaching consulting services, members will find it easier to make wise money decisions. At Young FINANCE, we help our members reach their goals by teaching money management skills such as how to build a savings, understanding spending habits, credit management, debt management and much more!! Young FINANCE is about filling a hole in my community’s financial availability and making financial literacy education readily available to all of our kids, teenagers and young adults. Through our services, we specifically target teenagers and young adults searching for a way to improve themselves. We empower young adults by offering the ability to empower yourself through learning critical business skills. You will simply not survive in the modern business environment without financial literacy and key marketing/sales skills. However, basic financial information for young adults for the majority is simply not available. Only a few high schools offer such courses, and none are offered at the collegiate level. Here at YF, we not only offer 1 on 1 consulting in areas that help our clients understand credit, budgeting, marketing/sales, website development and much more, we intentionally target the younger community in an effort to close the wealth gap between all ages, ethnicities and communities with our fully automated semester-long curriculum that we will begin offering to schools and universities all over the world. We are also heavily focused on getting our foot in the door with athletic departments all over the United States regarding basic financial literacy. We are working with a few universities currently in an effort to make our 1 on 1 and group services readily available to their athletes year around with just one click of a button and no fee from the athlete themselves.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I believe that relationship building and networking will be the biggest key to my continued success down the road. Cultivating relationships has proven that once you start to build strong, lasting business relationships with your customers, you can utilize those relationships to help expand your network and grow your customer base. Connecting with customers and actively listening to their feedback on a regular basis is incredibly important because it leads to increased brand loyalty. Cultivating relationships with your customers through positive and authentic experiences will ultimately contribute to your overall business’s growth. Once you feel comfortable in your relationships with your employees and customers, you can start working on external relationships that help to expand your business presence within your community. Networking in business can supply resources for company growth. A high-quality business network may provide recruitment leads, opportunities for increased profits and key industry knowledge. By learning more fundamental information about business networking, you can ensure a company’s success and enhance your own entrepreneurial skills.
Pricing:
- 1 on 1 Consulting ~ Each session is $39.99 each or save $20 for our 3 session bundle for $99.99 (Members must complete all 3 sessions to receive fully automated budget Excel spreadsheet) Tier 1: Intro to personal budget Discuss monthly income Dissect monthly line items Introduce YF budget template Tier 2: Intro to Savings Plan Breakdown line item expenses Create Savings Goals Intro to member’s credit/Monthly credit card limits Tier 3: Intro to personal investments Go over member’s YF budget review Discuss ways to leverage member’s credit Discuss how much of our member’s monthly income could potentially be allocated to stocks/investments.
- Need help developing a business plan? Need help budgeting for your startup? Unsure of the perfect target market for your product/service? Here at YF, we find it imperative to support our young people in business to the best of our abilities. In today’s world, anybody can be an entrepreneur and we want everyone with business ventures to stay a step ahead. Here at YF, we will now be offering consultation for creating and maintaining a lean business model with our very own Accountant and CEO, Christian Wilson-Poole! Session 1: Discuss steps to developing company’s business plan, discuss company’s product/service, introduce company’s budget. ($39.99) Session 2: Review/breakdown Business plan, breakdown a target market, Put into place company budget plan finalize company marketing skills. ($59.99) Bundle pricing: $79.99 (Save $20)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://yfwealth.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yfwealth/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpcm42dblGwC4x0J2TxwNLQ
- Other: https://yfwealth.org/?post_type=product
Image Credits
Martez Nalls ~ Bold as a Lion Studios
