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sorry welcome dollars it says my name is Chelsea Gary I'm the program coordinator

in the office of student experience our speaker this afternoon will be Miss Pemra

Cetin she is with us from the VCU School of Medicine and is the financial aid

director and associate assistant Dean of Student Affairs before she begins just a

few reminders you all have an evaluation please take the time to fill this out we

do take those seriously so we want to make sure that we get those back from

you before you head out also hopefully you grab some information about our iGrad

financial literacy online resource we really encourage you all to check that

out it's free for all Health Sciences students also if you register for an

account you have the chance to win free money that's $250 a semester so if you

have any questions if you have any questions about that feel free to stop

by the resources table on your way out

but without further ado please help me in welcoming miss pemra cetin

thank you Chelsea Hi everyone

as Chelsea mentioned I am the assistant dean for student affairs and financial aid for the

School of Medicine so how many of you are medical students ok so my students

are here I know we had about 40 hours RSVPs but hopefully

so we have been partnering with the officers in experience since last year

to give some additional resources to NCV campus on different topics that one of

them is obviously today budgeting and sparks planning

I think majority of it is common sense and you already know it so we will

probably reinforce or refresh some of the things that we already know and

maybe come up with some new ideas how many of you are undergraduate are there

any undergraduates in the group okay so dental I have dental students

Pharmacy okay Health Sciences I know I have my medical students any any other

program I'm missing its ph.d program okay so welcome you all and so I would

like to introduce you to Jessie Jessie is in Health Sciences and she has a little

bit of discomfort about financial matters because she is not really making

a budget she's not spendimg her refund based on her oh you know paired budget

she has no clue about her loan balance and she also has no clue about her

credit information do any of you feel like you're more like just Jessie you

could be honest okay I won't hold it against you so you're like I'm just getting what the financial aid

people are giving me and I'll be able to have to pay this when I graduate so I'm

not even worried about you can be as honest

you want this is your safe environment okay so the so we know some of you are

that way and some of you are in our office all the time that you might

drive us crazy but so so it is fine the the goal of this presentation is

obviously to start thinking about what you can do to change that

so Jesse's situation is probably not unique majority of you could be thinking

like this however the fact that she has no idea about her student loan history

is not forgivable because as students I want you to know that you have access to

your own personal student loan history at any time you want all of your federal

loans are listed on nslds website which is the national database system you do

not have to take notes because this presentation will be can be emailed to you

you already gonna be posted on me of some student experience website so you

can have this presentation at the end not learning knowing about your credit

is also not a good excuse because you can go to any old credit report.com

and you can find out about your credit and it is a safe website to get your

credit so if you feel like you're Jesse please look at these two resources and

you will find out about your information now meet there Derek is a medical

student who's in the last year of his medical education for this patient

interview season now and then he will move on to residency and even though he

has done all his homework he kept in touch with the financial aid people he

was lucky enough to get a couple of scholarships but he's an out-of-state

student as you know out-of-state pays a lot more than the in-state students and

now he's faced with a huge amount of student loan debt

and even though he feels he follows everything and he did everything right

he is a little bit concerned about the amount of debt that he is going to graduate

with how many of us are in that boat okay some honest people okay I am little

concerned about the debt that I'm gonna have so we're gonna talk about hopefully

a couple of things that will ease your mind now professional schools have very

detailed exist counseling so I know some of you are dental I know mrs. Kennedy

does that when you're at the final stage or right before you graduate we do

that here at medical school but if you're attending a program that does not

have like either group or in-person counseling you can contact the financial

aid person of that school and you can request in for some counseling before

you move away from campus okay so it's usually very beneficial to have that

conversation with a financial aid person I know professional schools of this

management straight but not all programs do it in a mandatory manner so budgeting and some of the

components to understand when it comes to budgeting so your budget obviously

the main made up your income and expenses and your expenses are

categorized is like this so you have your fixed expenses you have your

flexible expenses which makes up your total expenses and then you have your

monthly income and your disposable income monthly income is basically

everything you have as income disposable income is what's left over after the

taxes are taken out so these could be new to you because you most of you may

not have earned income yet or all your life you were you want straight through

all the schools that you attended and maybe other than a couple of part-time

jobs they don't have you know regular jobs to

reach to that level yet but this is what makes up your budgeting your income and

obviously your expenses fixed expenses are always fixed since your students

your tuition is your fixed expense it never changes that you have no power

over changing it you're flexible expenses could be you have to I know you

have to I don't know maybe sign up with one of the cable providers or majority

of the students are not using cabling or you go just online to do stuff so maybe

Hulu membership Netflix membership something like that that is not a

necessity but you may choose to have it and you may maybe depending on what you

choose the expanse may change for you you may when it comes to fixed expenses

as a student you have the rent expense which is your major expense if you're

not living with your parents you may choose to live with a roommate or choose

to live in a little bit of a cheaper apartment to control that fixed expense

so so you may look into those things as well so you can play with it a little

bit what is budget you know what's budgeting

obviously budgeting is a spending plan for your money

so a budget takes income and expenses into account and provides estimates for

how much you may have spent over a given period most of you will be talking about

budgeting per semester because I know it means you be paid and we charge your

money based on the semester so majority of you are dividing your money ovals

over fall spring and then if you're attending summer that that's another

award that we do and you get your refund so your you will need to since you're in

budget main income is financial aid you will need to think about in terms of

semester based budgeting because that's when you get paid right

so when you think about budgeting you will also need to take into account okay

fall semester could be less number of months than the spring semester for you

or vice versa so whatever refund you're getting you

will divide it among those months and obviously you have your fixed expenses

in your budgeting you will need to have some cushion for your emergencies but

you don't necessarily have to borrow against your total cost of attendance

unless those emergencies that happen so what I'm trying to say here is you're

all given a certain cost of attendance that is the maximum financial aid you

can borrow if it's mostly made up of loans so if you are able to stay below the

maximum cost of attendance per semester then you're fine and majority of you do

that I see that majority of your are very conscientious about your

borrowing however if you're an out-of-state student and your cost of

education is much higher and you're out to get an apartment which is a little

bit more expensive or you're the kind of person who can't do well with a roommate so

you need to have your own place so it is very possible that you are borrowing up to the cost of attendance

and therefore you need to divide that maximum refund that you get per semester

over the number of months based on your expenses and you're going to think about

all of those fixed expenses that you can't change which is your rent and tuition

fees and any other school related medical expenses and the other expenses which

could be a little bit of luxury that you may be able to change so I already

talked a little bit of this these are your choices you know when you're

looking at most of the time as the doctoral students so understanding your

needs and wants is a big thing on budgeting right so some of the things

are your wants you may not necessarily need to spend like some of the things

are on your other expenses list are your needs that you have to spend there's no

way out of it so rent obviously is what I need because you have to look somewhere

unless you're living with your parents is anyone living with the parents okay

that's very good you're saving a lot of money don't worry about leaving your

parents house yet save as much money as you can so there is nothing wrong with

you living with your parents even if you're in medical school if you can but

for those who don't and I know most of you don't you have your own rent so it is

an expense that you have to pay every month food obviously you have to eat to

survive a little something for the girls manicure

some may think that it is a necessity but maybe you can do it more you know

not every weekend but let's often as a student gym membership is big among the

guys they have to do the gym membership but you don't have to have one here

why because we see you gives you gym membership to VCU so it's all there

so utilize it to the max vacation okay

of course you're studying hard you deserve vacation but you're not supposed

to go on your vacation with student financial aid refund right so you're not

supposed to have these extravagant vacations on your financial aid refund

why because these are student loans you're borrowing against your future so

when you're planning a vacation and majority of it is coming from you're

student loan think about it and as far as I'm concerned if you're doing that it's

best that you don't share it with me or with the financial aid people new

cars so some of you are in it in some type of education that requires you to

have your own transportation I know medical students go to different

rotations you may be in a program that also requires that so you may need to go

train somewhere else other than the school campus so so cars are sometimes

necessity when you start a professional program so you most of you bring your

own car or you're you're good for a year or two without a car and when

you're in the third or fourth year you you need a car and what if what if your

old car breaks down while you're going through your education so now that

you aren't counting on having a car expense but now you're forced to buy a new car

and your parents can help you a little but you're gonna have to come up with all

these expenses so these are things to consider gifts for friends forget about

it you are all students you don't need to buy gifts for your friends you're

working off a budget that you're borrowing with

a little bit of a high interest rate from the federal government

why I said that because the student interest rates have been a little bit

higher than the market right so private student loans right now are providing

cheaper interest rates if your credit is good however you are majority of you

here I would say 90% of you who are here today are in some type of Health

Professions field when you're in Health Professions there are some loan

repayment programs that you may benefit in the future that's why we would like

to keep you in the federal student loan borrowing but the federal student loans

are good and they come with a lot of benefits but interest rates that you're

currently borrowing are at a little bit higher rate than the market so that's

why it's another reason you need to be conscientious about your borrowing and you

need to be conscientious about your budgeting so that hopefully you

don't always borrow up to the maximum that's available today right dining out

okay you're gonna have to do one or two things that it's just some type of

pleasure so you can't avoid everything but this is the main post most of you

have eating out basically when you're especially away from home if you're

packing your lunch that saves a lot of money so I would strongly suggest that

you prepare your own lunches here and there you will have

do many dinners outside but very most of you will be spending so much money on

your lunches if you're always eating out so I strongly suggest that you pack

their lunch some of you may have credit cards which is a good thing

if you're using your credit card to build credit history or you're using

your credit to use it for emergencies that's fine

you can also use your credit card to keep your track of your spending so you

can charge everything and at the end of charging everything if you're paying you

it in full that's fine that is if you pay the credit card bill within the

grace period whether it's 25 days sometimes it's 25

sometimes it's 30 depends on the credit card now that's fine it helps you to

build your credit as well as keep track of your spending why is it important to

keep track of your spending you can look at some of the things maybe you are

unnecessarily spending or charging and maybe next what do you change that and

maybe you have a aha moment hey you know I've been spending so much on lunch

eating out now I would have had to pack my lunch kind of thing tuition and fees

there's nothing you can do about it so tuition and fees are set by the by the

school and since we're a state institution is set by the Board of

Visitors based on the recommendation of the school so whatever tension piece you

have that year unfortunately I have to pay for it we have been good at keeping

our tuition increases to minimum but unfortunately the times have changed we

had a little bit of tuition increase in the medical school or especially the

out-of-staters this year so you need to you need to worry about that too

health insurance how many are still on your parents out insurance ok so once you're no

longer able to be on their insurance that's gonna be another cost per year in

most cost of attendances or budgets financial aid budgets we do provide

health insurance allocation corrigan so with the university does not

automatically charge you the health insurance but majority of the COTS

Professions programs require that you have a passenger's because you're

dealing with patients right so they have to shoot the delegate and then the cost

of attendance for you and you go out there and search for the health

insurance that you wanna purchase but that's that's a mandatory cost for you

so question your needs and wants that's where I'm coming with all of these items

so why do I want it if you're about to spend money on something number one

remember it's your financial aid money that you're borrowing against your

future number two why do you want it would this change your life if you had it

and which things are important and essential to me okay so do you have to

have that manicure so that you know is there any way maybe you can do it

yourself or do you have to sign up for ACAC rather than utilizing VCU

gym so or maybe it's as easy as you know achieving your health care goals maybe

it's as easy I was taking a walk okay so think about all of these things and

think about the interest rate on the most that you are borrowing so I suggest to think

about it for a day before you make that non-essential spending and if you still

have to have it do it and suffer the consequences because you're going to suffer the consequences there's nothing I can do at

that point if you thought about it you still want to do it you're all adults so

you're gonna do it okay so let's talk about where you're at with your life so

your reality is majority of you or all of you this is a true statement if I

said all of you have no income at this point because you're old full-time

students it's not a true statement so some of you are working okay so some of

you are working but I would still think that majority of you have no income so

you are relying heavily on financial aid you may be receiving some help from the

family but I know if they have already paid for your undergrad probably

they're done you're there like okay I'll help you some but you're pretty much on

your own in the professional or graduate school

and some of you may be working like I said part-time or occasionally having

the full time job so but pharmacy dental medicine

I don't know if I'm missing anyone else we do not recommend our students to work

while in school because it will greatly affect your success I know for sure

medicine would we tell our students you cannot work so if you do your grades

will suffer you're success will suffer and we don't want that to happen why

because most of you will have to take probably boards

medical students to move on with residency and how you did in medical

school affects how how well you will be matching to the specialty program that

you will match dental students may want to move on to postgraduate dental there

are so many other specialties that you can even be more specialized rather than

general dentistry so how you're doing in all of these schools will affect your

future careers so that's why we don't recommend you work that's why you don't have

the other income that we might earn if you are working part time as students so

again even if you're an undergraduate student which I think we don't have any

undergraduates but in case we have one or two I'll say working two modules

affect your GPA which will then affect your success in getting to the

professional school that you may want to get into it's almost the undergraduate

degree is almost absolute now nobody continues their likely that at least

having a master's degree so I see a lot of people now not leaving at the

undergrad level and moving onto masters or more so what you do as a

student at the undergraduate level will definitely effect you so your choices so if you rely

on financial aid I always say always apply to the beginning of the cycle

majority of this group right now is graduate or professional students and

honestly there's not much free help other than two scholarships that you may have

other than maybe something that you can find on your own or what the school

itself is providing definitely listen to the financial aid person because each

school is awarding their scholarships differently so here we have a separate

application and which is called profile I know dental is not doing that and I

know other schools are not doing that so whatever school you're attending

definitely follow the instructions that they are telling you to be at least

eligible for a scholarship if you're eligible for a scholarship even if it's

just $5,000 per years it does reduce the amount of loans that you're borrowing

right so it helps you with your future debt and you still get the cost of

attendance that is dedicated to you for your expenses but the variation of what

you're getting at least you will have a little bit of less debt upon graduation

again graduating on time saves you a lot of money so if you graduate from your

school's on time that is less expenses for you right so if your time within

your school is extended what is that what happens you have to pay at least a

semester or two more tuition you may need to borrow more loans and now your

expenses that we talked which is the fixed expenses tuition and

fees and your rent that now that you're you're here one more year so it's going

to go all up being successful graduating on time definitely gives you you know

it's a plus you don't have to spend as much so if if you're going to attend a

masters or a PhD program or a professional school if you're staying in

state school you're saving a lot of money but if your heart is attending to

that out-of-state school don't let borrowing defer you from your goal because

maybe you know you think the curriculum is a better match for you and you rather

attend there it would never hurt you to be in touch with the financial aid

office because the financial aid office may have something that you don't know

or you're not aware even a simple email to whoever your contact is in the school

that you're attending may provide you some type of guidance so keep in touch

with your financial aid people it could it could be hey what's available to you

and they may not tell you anything that's free that's available but it

could be a future advice don't have to pay your student on it could be sit down

with one of them work on a budget sheet for you for a year it could be any of

those help areas that you get help from the financial aid office if you make

usually if you make an appointment we have time to sit down with you at the

School of Medicine we try to see whoever walks into our office

immediately but if it's like hey can you sit down

with me and work on a budget with me we will do that but it's best probably to

make an appointment your personal goals so at this point your personal goals

will definitely affect your budget so I gave you a sheet that has the majority

of the goals the highlights of the goals your goals here at this point the main

job that you have is your obstinance so your main goal I would suspect is

educational you have social financial family health and recreational so these

aren't the types of goals that shape your life right so I don't know if I can

have probably a couple of minutes to work on an exercise so I told if you

think about your personal goals and what they are if you can identify what's most

important to you it can affect your future budgeting and you can budget

around those expenses or get rid of the expenses that aren't awarding you you

know from reaching those goals so these are your basic goals basically your life

is based on you can think of what are those goals and what goals are important

and how to prioritize those goals if you can take maybe at least a couple of

those goals maybe I gave you one two three four five six goals and maybe it

answered the three most important wants to you and I'm not going to ask anyone

to share so let's take two minutes and on the sheet just for your own good

write down what goals are important to you and what are you trying to achieve

it could be as simple as pass the exam pass the boards finish the years pay my

rent on time you know so it could be as simple as that I'll just give it two

minutes okay two minutes is up I know this is so rush but I don't have so much

time it's only a 45 minute presentation so

one one one more question before I move on how many of you actually create a

budget to spend your financial aid so you don't run out of money okay I see a

few hands how many of you don't create a budget but you don't run out of money on

your good even though you don't create a budget okay how many of you don't create

a budget and you always have financial problems and you always have to go get

more loans more loans because you didn't do and plan well nobody's brave enough to raise their hand

okay that's fine so how many of you can share what you came up with I'm

not going to force any more is that anyone who can share you wanna share it

okay we have one great person okay so and you hold any of the goals that

okay so for financial goals she has had her credit card debt paid and start

investing okay it's very important to see the picture and to have your goals

and have them clear why because based on what you have in your mind and what you

want to achieve you're gonna work towards is right so if

you didn't have my credit card that goal you're not gonna work towards it so

seeing it is half of the achieving that's why it's very important you'll

have a moment with your self and you look at okay when it comes to help what am I

trying to achieve you having your health or having less burnout while in school

may mean doing something more than attending the VCU gym okay so so those

are the things how everybody has their priority is different obviously your own

students or your education goal is very important but other than that your

financial goal is important that's why we're all here now it could be something

else that's important to you in your life that is affecting your budgeting

and spending and until you it's clear to you and you build your budgeting and

spending accordingly they're not going to be able to achieve those goals or

control your other expenses that are not important to you so that's why just do

that this exercise by yourself and you know come up with whatever you think is

important to you and prioritize accordingly so depending on where you

are in life right your budgeting and spending decisions change right so I'm

going to skip the undergraduate parts because I think all of you

professional and graduate students so as a profession student and your budgeting

and your spending relies on okay you know you're gonna finish school

maybe while in school you may have some emergencies and maybe you need to take

some tests before you get your diploma like medicine does the boards

does dentistry have anything you have the boards to pass as well okay so all of

those maybe extra costs for you maybe you need a prep course hopefully not or

maybe god forbid you failed it and now you have to take it again it's another

expense for you so those are things that as a professional student that are affecting

you when you're in here early in your career your choices will differ the

things that are important to you probably will change because now you're

no longer a student you have a little bit of income hopefully or if you're in

a profession where you need more training that you're not making as much

money yet but you're stuck with all these student loan debt which applies to

medicine unless dental also chooses to do post grad dental so in early career

you're more worried about establishing yourself in life right okay

finally I have a career finally I finished school I have all these fixed

expenses but I also want to do a couple of other things with my with my income

and my money that that is about when you it may seem early but that is when you

should also be started started thinking about retirement right whatever little

money you have as as a professional early in your career you start thinking

about your retirement and whatever the employer is offering you I would suggest

try to maximize it if you can mid career you're now making more money

you may have kids in school you may be a parent by then

so you're thinking about other expenses in life you're thinking about the cost

of maybe you want to keep your job so you don't want to be a stay-at-home mom

or dad so you're still working that's the cost of daycare that there's saving

for kids education they're saving for life's emergency is always see for

life's emergencies because those things always happen the roof may leak in the

house that you just bought the car may break down I actually had my car break

down two days ago I was sitting nicely on the 3rd street for two hours

waiting for a tow truck so those things happen it was the

alternator by the way if anyone is wondering so those things may happen a late career it's

definitely you don't want to be in a situation where you're in your late career and

then you are about to retire in a couple of years but you're finding out because

you didn't use your budgeting and smart and habits wisely and you didn't save

enough you need to now work extra number of years and you cannot retire

don't say it will never happen to me I don't say I'm in a profession where I

mean I will make a lot of money it can always happen to you I'll give you an

example we I will not say where and when I had a student who had a medical

student who graduated with half a million dollar debt don't say how that

happens and when I sat down with the student and calculated the value of her

loan repayment if she pasted out-of-pocket she were paid over 20

years and it will cost her up to 1 million

so for someone who's starting her life like this it is very possible even

though she may be in a well paid specialty that she may need to work extra years to

achieve that retirement goal purposes so the decisions that you're making human

as students now but you're financially borowsing I can only say that because

that's the main income that you have or with any other income that you may have

the decisions that you're making right now or going on that vacation with that

credit card rather than you know with your saved money is is going to

drastically affect you in your future you you never want to be in a situation

where you don't have the financial freedom that you want so you can

actually do the things that you want in life

well we already talked about this I'm not gonna talk about it again think

about it also in terms of time frame when it comes to your goals to achieve

those goals obviously short term could be very short

mid term to be 2 to 12 months and long term could be a year and longer it

wouldn't hurt to make plans based on what you want to achieve that you can

you can look at 5-year plan and you can look at where you want to be and see if

I mean you can do a mental plan obviously if you like or put it on that

paper and then refer back to it 5 years later and see if you have achieved any

of those things that you thought you wanted

she again prioritize your goals why I keep saying all these girls go scores

all the time is because you're budgeting and your spending habits will shape you

know all of these goals if you're gonna be able to achieve that more now ah

the basic goal obviously is get out of debt or don't be in debt right it's

almost inevitable if you're a professional graduate student that

you're gonna have some student loan debt okay that is that is reality right now

majority of the students have student loan debt and it's even in every election

that the candidates are talking about we're gonna make College free because it

is it is it is a major thing when it comes to education now so it is the fact

that majority of you will graduate with debt you may have other debt as well

such as credit cards and and down the road when your early career mid-career

you may have the first house that you buy after you buy your first house you

may want a nicer one so here that is a part of your life always it's not

realistic to get out of your mortgage that fast because majority people cannot

afford it in in a very short time but maybe you can make it a goal of

getting move out of your other debts such a such as credit card debt fast

student loans is a different subject you may want to get out of it fast depending

on what you're doing or if you're utilizing one of the resources that are

available to you at the comes your repayment such as public service loan

forgiveness maybe you will take the longer route for a reason definitely

same money for retirement as early as your first job as early as residency for

medical students whatever the hospital is offering you make sure you match it

up to the max okay so save at the maximum level as early as possible so

Bob will that give you eventually your financial freedom

financial freedom is the best thing to have why because you can do basically

anything you want to but if you're thinking about changing jobs you can

change your job because you have the freedom you don't have to stay in that

job that you're so miserable because financially maybe this job pays more or

you can't afford to relocate so on and so forth so it gives you all the

freedom that you want budgeting sheet I give you a copy of

this budgeting sheet could be as simple as this you can write your monthly

expenses on a sheet every month and see where you're spending or it could be

like this on an Excel spreadsheet this is an actual budget i sat down and did

with a medical student okay so this is a true story basically okay this is an

actual medical student who kind of had to borrow up to the maximum as you can

see there is a cost that I can't get over the parking cost so where she's

renting she's paying hundred and twenty-five dollars parking per month

which is a huge cost I gave this to you for you to see you can do an Excel

spreadsheet on a monthly basis based on this is cash from financial aid but to

get to be on refine edge phase spread it over the number of months and some

months she has higher expenses because at some point our medical insurance with

the parents is gonna hand so she's stuck with the insurance herself at some point

she has the board board exam that she has to take

that's an additional cost that month so you could do this by yourself or if

you're not comfortable you can make an appointment with one of us and get help

for the first time if you like so I just wanted you to see how it works okay I am

almost done because we want to finish on time

the most common rule is fifty twenty thirty when it comes to budgeting 50

percent of your income should go to your living expenses 20 percent your

financial goals could be you know paying on that credit card debt and thirty

percent of your income should be used for a flexible spending so so maybe one

one month you're going out two times for dinner one time you you're going out

with friends and spending money on dinner and movie let's get crazy okay all of those things

okay I'm being sarcastic because you're students and you shouldn't spend so much money

cannot you cannot be burned out you need to enjoy life as well right so you need

to do the things that also charges your batteries so I'm not saying don't do

them at all just do them in a manner that's not gonna affect you in the long run so

seven tips for effective and stress-free budgeting obviously I kept saying

understand your goals this is from different resources everybody is saying

understand your goals because that ties in to your budgeting and spending and how you're going to

spend your money track spending for a week that actually may give you an epiphany

moment okay I do an exercise with the undergraduate students I have

a two-day workshop we track there's that we send them a workbook and check their

spending for us for a week they end up with so many aha moments so this you

may have an aha moment on your spending if you keep track it for a week use the

three category budget so if you want to change something in your budget and you

have a financial goal that you want to achieve select three items that you can

control and maybe you can spend less on those to achieve your other goals okay

so you cannot target everything because not everything is up to you to

spend you have your fixed costs but maybe select three of them and see what

you can control charge it I mean it in a nice manner which is charged it to see

your spending okay so not charge it to charge it and go on that extravagant

vacation but charge it to see what where is your money going Savers always save

always save always have emergency cash if you're a financial aid students now I

know that's not a correct statement some of you are not because some of you are

PhDs who are already having income but whatever income you have always give

yourself first even if it means I'm gonna put away $25 every month and I'm

not gonna touch it kind of thing even if it is as little as that because over

time that will grow again Elizabeth Warren made that famous Senator Elizabeth Warren

try the 50 20 30 plan and use the right tools so I give you some tools here this

presentation we'll be posted on the website as well

as it can be emailed to you if you request it so I gave it some tools here

you can go online and look at these apps and I think this concludes my

presentation so if you need to reach us these are our contact information my

office is actually at the fourth floor of this building any questions

For more infomation >> Smart Spending and Budgeting - Duration: 41:25.

-------------------------------------------

Ex Googler Explains Google Ads | Smart Partnerships - Duration: 13:59.

(energetic music)

- Today is the very best day there has ever been

to be in the floor covering business.

On the Floor with John Weller

How you doing Todd, welcome to Sarasota.

I see that you've settled in very nicely

with your short pants.

Todd is the CEO of AdHawk in New York City,

he's down here on vacation and he was gracious enough

to come spend some time during his vacation

and hang out with us at FloorForce.

- Yeah, I got to get out of the snow,

we had, I think, eight inches of snow in New York.

So coming down to Florida, had to rock the shorts.

- Awesome man, so let's get into it.

So, for people who don't know Todd's story,

Todd was a Googler, worked at Google

and worked on the AdWords team.

And I gotta ask the question, what prompted you,

what inspired you to start AdHawk and actually jump

out of the work heaven environment?

- Yeah, so a little on my background,

and then I'll get into that.

So my confounder and I both came from

the AdWords team at Google, there we worked

with, you know, thousands of small businesses,

helping them grow their AdWords accounts

from a couple hundred dollars a day to a couple thousand

to tens of thousands of dollars a day.

And our job was to help them do that profitably.

Google's a great place to work, right?

You can sit on beanbags, you get a free lunch.

There's really nothing not to like.

The real honest truth is, if you wanna have a bigger impact,

if you wanna do more than just your day to day job,

you wanna kind of get into the grind a little bit,

have an impact with individual businesses,

dive a little deeper, really help them explore

the opportunities outside of just Google,

you obviously can't do that within Google.

So, for us, we knew that Facebook was important.

We know that AdWords is important.

We know that websites are important for customers.

And it's really, you're kind of pigeonholed

a little bit while working at Google.

- What would you say to a flooring retailer who says,

hey man, I've tried AdWords, I've actually done it twice.

It doesn't work in my market,

and it just doesn't work for us.

- Yeah, I would say a couple of things, right?

When people come to us and say that,

we're able to look under the hood

and within a couple of minutes, identify why it didn't work.

So, the first thing I would look at,

if you think it doesn't work in your market,

I would really look at yourself in the mirror and say,

did I give this a professional and expert level setup?

Was I optimizing this every single day or every single hour?

Or did I just watch a YouTube video online

and try to get this set up?

So, at it's core, was it set up correctly?

I think something we've done really well for customers

that say that is do an audit, right?

Data speaks for itself, so we can look in the account,

and say, hey, here are the five reasons why it didn't work

and actually give you an honest answer

if it's gonna work for you in the future.

But I've seen AdWords, I've seen AdWords specifically

in this industry work for over 700 retailers,

so I'd be really hard pressed to say it doesn't work.

Now, you might get a higher CPA based on your location

just because it's more competitive

or you might get a lower CPA in your location.

But to say it doesn't work and you can't do it profitably,

I mean look at Google, right?

They're a massive business, we see hundreds

of flooring retailers doing it well.

You just might have to take a different strategy

than what you're typically used to.

We have some retailers that search campaigns

work really well.

We have some retailers where marketing works well,

call only ads, Gmail ads, and that's also part

of why you need to work with, you know, an expert.

Because there are so many options out there.

Almost too many options that, yes,

search might not work for you or marketing

might not work for you, but you need to know

all of the options that are available

before you just say, this isn't going to work.

Because the truth is, if this

isn't gonna work, then what's gonna work?

You're not gonna advertise in the Yellow Pages anymore.

You know, Google really is where people do their searching,

they type in, flooring store near me.

Or they type in, you know, buy hardwood flooring,

you need to be there.

- So Todd, I think we have about 700 flooring retailers

that we now work on together with AdWords.

You know, and I think about this all the time

and we do a lot of testimonial videos,

but in your mind, does any story stick out

as one where we really did have an impact on one

of these flooring retailers that you wanna talk about?

- Yeah we actually had a flooring retailer come to us,

that you brought to us, I think about two years ago.

They were managing themselves,

they were kind of hesitant to work with us, if you remember.

But they came to us, I think their CPA

was about 60 dollars per lead.

Came to us and the account was done pretty well, right?

It was optimized well but we knew for sure

that if we put technology and algorithms to the account,

we could see better performance.

And I remember, after about two months,

after, you know, we were working together

on the account, we saw the CPA drop

from about 60 dollars to 35 dollars.

And when I looked at how that was done with our algorithm,

I mean we really leveraged the data

that you guys provided us on the location level.

So what happened was, they were targeting this one city

but what they weren't doing is using

what's called location bid adjustments

across all the small neighborhoods.

So instead of targeting one city with one bid,

what we were doing was targeting over 150 neighborhoods

with individual bid adjustments

that were changing on an hourly or daily basis.

And then, on top of that, with some of the information

you guys provided us, we were actually

layering income levels on top of that.

So we kind of leverage the power of demographics

of customers that we have at scale that you provided us

on top of the bid adjustments we're able to do in AdWords

and we saw the CPA decrease by about 50 percent.

- We do AdWords right now

with about 50 percent of our clients.

So there's 50 percent of our clients,

over 500 of them have never done AdWords,

have never done digital marketing.

So, being that you're an ex-Googler and you're here,

I'd love to hear just the basics

from a very high level view, how does AdWords work?

And if you've never done it before, what should you expect

in your first endeavor of advertising on Google's platform?

- Yeah, so AdWords works, when someone types something

into Google, there's text ads on top

of the Google search results.

Now the really awesome thing about AdWords is

it's pay per click, sometimes in the industry known as PPC.

And what that means is you only pay when a customer

actually clicks on your ad and gets to your website.

So you don't pay for customers just to see it,

you know, you think about billboards

and other things like that, you're paying for impressions

or people to see it, they're not actually physically

visiting your store or visiting

your online store, your website.

Whereas with Google, you're actually paying

for someone to come to your website.

So it's a much more qualified visit

than your typical billboard or

Yellow Pages ad or something like that.

Now once you launch your first AdWords campaign,

I gotta be honest, you shouldn't

expect results three days in.

Anyone that promises you that is selling you snake oil.

You know, once you launch your AdWords campaign,

it takes time to optimize it, find the right audience

because we don't wanna just get you leads.

It's important to get quality leads,

if they're not quality leads, your phone will ring

with people asking you nonsense questions

and kind of wasting your time.

So, I tell all retailers and businesses

that are just starting up, the first 30 days

is all about data gathering.

Making sure we have the right data on your customers,

on the demographics, on what a qualified lead means to you.

You know, 30 to 60 days is really optimizing

and trimming the fat, trimming all the wasted spend,

really narrowing focus in

on the most qualified customer for you.

And then from then on out, I would say about 70 days

or so on it's kind of a race of, how can we push the needle?

How can we move the budget?

How can we get more leads into the funnel?

And that's kind of how we look at it,

but again, the really great thing about AdWords is,

at bare minimum, these people are clicking on your ad,

going to your website, and learning more about you.

Sometimes we can track these leads, right?

If they call you, we can track that lead.

If they fill out a form, we can track that lead.

If they don't do either of those, we can run retargeting

which is when that ad follows them around the internet

and says, hey, don't forget we offer

this really awesome flooring, come back to our website.

But I think the one thing that I've heard most

from retailers is they've seen their in-store traffic go up.

So a customer can go to your website, click on your ad

and decide, alright, this is really awesome,

I'm not gonna call them right now but I'm going that way,

I'm gonna pass their office when I go to work tomorrow,

maybe I'll stop in their store.

So there's this brand initiative with Google,

with AdWords as well, this brand awareness

that isn't very trackable but from what we've seen

over the last, you know, couple of years,

it's pretty impactful.

- The number one question I get from retailers

when we're having a conversation about AdWords is,

I'm a retailer, I've never done AdWords.

It scares me to death, what should

my budget be to start doing AdWords?

- Yeah, it's definitely a tough question

and we definitely get asked this a lot.

I think, in order to come up with your budget,

you should first look at what is your goal, right?

Like what are you trying to accomplish?

Is it five qualified leads every month?

Is it 20 qualified leads every month?

And then based on that, we have a ton of historical data

from the 700 somewhat retailers that we're working with,

you know the conversion rates that,

you know, we see on the website.

We can analyze the website traffic,

the cost per clicks in the location

and then we can actually back out an answer

to what the budget to be based on all of that.

Now, you know, if I was hard pressed to give an answer,

I would probably say a thousand dollars a month

is a good target to start.

But that said though, Google takes time to optimize, right?

We need statistically significant data

in order to make good decisions and in order to optimize

to decrease the cost per lead over time.

Now if you're spending 500 dollars a month,

we might not have statistically significant data

for six, eight, or even ten months.

However, if you're spending a thousand

or two thousand dollars, we may be able to get to that

maximum level of optimization in just three or four months.

So, really what I would tell anyone who's thinking about

starting on AdWords and, you know, trying to figure out

what their budget should be, I would focus

on your goals rather than the budget.

And then from the goals, the FloorForce team

can kind of do a deep dive in your website traffic,

the demographics of your customer,

the cost per clicks in your city.

And they can actually back out a number

of what your budget should be.

And we've done that for a lot of customers

and we've seen, you know,

pretty good success doing it that way.

- When Todd came for the interview,

he said to me, can I get to do a fun fact?

(both laugh)

So what is the fun fact that you would like to share

with our audience here at FloorForce?

- Yeah, I've had to practice fun facts for awhile,

you know, working at Google, you do a lot of ice breakers,

you do a lot of these games to get to know people around you

and the fun fact I always go with is,

I have over 140 brothers and sisters.

- Wow, what is that?

- So when I was growing up, my parents did foster care.

So, from about the age of 12 to 18,

we had different people living in our house,

and that was either one day, sometimes it was a week,

sometimes two people actually stayed with us

for over a year.

I still keep in touch with as many of them as I can.

But when I tell that fact, I get the same type of look

from you which is like, how in the world do you have

that many brothers and sisters?

But yeah, it was definitely impactful for me growing up

and it's something I hope to continue later on in my life.

- That's awesome, that's really cool.

Thanks for coming while you're on vacation,

hanging out here at FloorForce.

Tell your girlfriend, thank you for letting you come

at seven o'clock in the morning and hang out with us.

I think it was insightful, I hope everybody

got value out of this conversation

and we hope to have you back.

- Yeah, thanks so much for having me

and I know, a couple months ago,

we brought a couple of FloorForce retailers

out to our office in New York.

We actually gave them a tour around Google,

did a little digital marketing summit.

I'd love to make an offer to anyone watching this video,

if you sign up with FloorForce and end up,

you know, getting online with digital advertising,

we'd love to take you on a tour of Google in New York.

Our doors are always wide open, so please feel free

to come by, reach out to John,

I'm sure he could help get that set up.

And for anyone that's still considering getting online,

I'm willing to offer any FloorForce retailer

365 dollars in free AdWords spending.

- Who's paying for that?

- We're gonna split it.

- Deal.

- So, any customer that's thinking

about spending money online and is hesitant about it,

again, we are going to comp your first 365 dollars

in ad spend and on top of that, please come to our office

in New York, we'd love to tour you around Google.

And in the next few months, we're gonna put together

a FloorForce AdHawk summit at Google

for FloorForce customers only.

- Thanks, Ben.

- Yeah, take it easy.

- Good seeing you.

For more infomation >> Ex Googler Explains Google Ads | Smart Partnerships - Duration: 13:59.

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Flooring Retailers instantly Increase Sales and Profit | Smart Partnerships - Duration: 7:49.

(upbeat music)

- Today is the very best day there has ever been

to be in floor covering business.

- [Narrator] On the floor,

withh john weller.

- For those of you who don't know my name's Jason Goldberg

I own a company in Columbus, Ohio called

America's Floor Source.

We're about a 90 million dollar flooring company.

I started that company 18 years ago.

I'm third generation and I run

a fairly successful flooring business.

So a couple years ago I didn't like the way

we were handling our retail sales leads.

I didn't know a lot about them.

We were managing with pen and paper,

the way that most flooring companies

still manage their leads today.

I looked across the marketplace at various tools

that could solve the problem, a bunch of different CRMs,

but they were either too clunky, too difficult to use,

too expensive, a combination of the three

or just to built to work for a bunch of different things

but not specific enough for what I was trying to accomplish.

So after looking at all those I came to the conclusion,

look if I wanna get what I want and what we need

in the flooring industry I'm going

to have to program it myself.

So I have a guy who owns a tech company,

he used to be my chief technology officer.

I had dinner with him one night.

I told him the challenge and I had,

I had diagrammed this thing out already

so I said, here's what I need to build

and I just gave it to him.

I said, he said I can build that for you.

The intent was to build a very nice,

very functional lead management software

for America's Floor Source but what ended up happening

is he built the tool and we started using it

and I was like holy cow, this thing is awesome.

After about six months I said we are separating this off,

we're making this into a separate company,

this is needed in the flooring business.

It solved all three of those initial challenges.

One, it was extremely easy to use.

Two, it was not clunky at all.

And three, we were able to get it down to a price point

that any retailer could afford.

So it was just by accident I got into the software business.

Now that being said I'm a pretty tech savvy person.

I was a 4.0 student in school, we've built

some other softwares for my flooring company,

we built our own custom

scheduling field management software,

we've built an analyzation software to analyze our numbers

so having to do things like this was not uncommon

but it's different when you're building you know

a piece of software to work within your own company.

When you, we're building a technology company.

Now as a guy who's built companies before

that's the natural, right, I mean,

building a company up and all those things

that go along with it and the strategy behind it

and what you need to get done you know,

that's right up my alley.

So I understand the segment, I'm a third generation

flooring person, I understand technology,

I can't code it but I can certainly describe it

and I understand it well enough to get down the path

of where we need to go.

Specifically how we did it?

I'm the owner of the company,

of a 90 million dollar flooring company.

I have a whole layer of managers.

I took it upon myself to look at every lead

'cause I get a notification on every lead

that comes in the system 'cause I have

those notifications turned on for me.

I picked up the phone.

I called every person who put in one of those leads,

not the customer, but my salesperson.

I would say, hey John, great job on putting the

Jane Doe lead in, I would give 'em a compliment

and then I would say, by the way,

and then I would give them the corrective action.

Next time you talk to Jane ask her how heard about us

and that should be part of your process.

When you're talking to a customer build that in,

hey Jane, how'd you hear about us

and then make sure that gets in the system.

Then I'd explain to them why that was important.

You get that data on a manual lead, 'cause on a digital lead

we're gonna capture that data hopefully automatically.

Then you're gonna give me data that I'm gonna analyze

through the system that's gonna allow me to market better,

which is gonna drive more leads into the system

which overall's gonna make you more money.

And that's what I always tie it back to.

The second thing we do when we're training

is if I've got a salesperson who's put 20 leads

into the system and they're working those leads,

I will purposely go through those leads,

I will find the one that I believe

is going sideways, right, he's gonna lose that deal

or she's gonna lose that deal, I will review the information

in the CRM, I will not pick up the phone

and call my salesperson, I will review it all in the CRM.

Remember I've got the notes, I've got the history,

I've got all the documents, the diagram,

the work order, the quote, before pictures,

I have all those things that I need.

I'll pick up the phone and I'll call Jane

and I'll have a conversation with her

and lo and behold, I'll convert her right on the phone.

Then I'll call my salesperson, I say hey,

since you used the lead management system,

since you used the CRM I was able to call this customer,

I just closed this $9,000 sale for you,

you just made a $900 commission.

And that's one of the other reasons this becomes important.

Look, this is a two-way street.

You expect a salesperson to change the way

that they're doing business.

They're going from pen and paper

and maybe an Excel spreadsheet

to a new system that's easier, but it's changed

and some people don't like change.

Well you gotta expect the same thing

from the management team.

If you're doing what you're supposed to

as a salesperson, shouldn't I do what I'm supposed

to be doing as a manager?

And as a manager should be helping, reviewing,

making sure that this things working as best it can

and ultimately which is the salesperson's goal

and my goal, is to close more deals

so we both make more money and then we utilize

that information as we gather more and more.

Imagine having five leads in the system

or a year from now when you process 5,000.

Before we started using RLM and then after we started,

remember I've been on it for a little over two years

so year number one we had a 36% increase

year over year on sales.

Now remember we went from one year not using one,

so pen, paper, manila folders, to completely digital,

everything running through the CRM,

a 36% increase in sales.

Year Two we had a 13% increase in sales,

now that's system against system so,

we're up against the technology

that we had used for a year.

We're now in year three and we're currently up 22%.

So the gains that you get from a mark

are significantly higher than I say

if you look at just regular industry growth,

whatever that number is, 3%, 5%, whatever,

we're getting double-digit increases

you can see on two of the three years

that I've described, some of those increases

are pretty massive.

And you wanna know what I attribute it to?

We know every lead that we're working on

and nothing falls through where 2 1/2 year ago

to know what anyone was working on

I would have to go out and start talking to 'em.

I was amazed, we work over 500 retail leads,

between my three retail stores in Columbus,

at all times, I think this morning I looked

and we're working 547 leads.

Now you tell me how you manage that with pen and paper

and as a manager and owner, how I possibly

get my arms around that, going from desk-to-desk,

can't do it but you can with the right CRM tool.

(clicking)

For more infomation >> Flooring Retailers instantly Increase Sales and Profit | Smart Partnerships - Duration: 7:49.

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Lexis Smart Forms on Lexis Practice Advisor® Show Me How Video Series - Duration: 3:34.

Lexis Smart Forms is a collection of automated legal forms available through Lexis Practice

Advisor.

Smart Forms come in the form of interactive interviews and assist you in building your

document with the right data and clauses based on your responses to a series of questions.

To access Lexis Smart Forms, navigate Lexis Practice Advisor as you normally would, browsing

for forms through the Task List, using the Search box or by searching for forms under

Content Types.

If there are Smart Forms available in your browse or search results list, you will see

a "Lexis® Smart Forms" check box at the end of the list of filters.

Check the box to see just the Smart Forms in your browse or search results list.

You can also see a list of all Smart Forms available in your Lexis Practice Advisor subscription

by clicking on the "See your Smart Forms" link on the practice area page.

You will be able to identify Smart Forms because the words "Smart Forms" and an icon providing

more information will sit right underneath the document title.

Now that you've located your Smart Form, you are ready to begin building your document.

Look for the blue "Build Your Document" icon to begin the drafting process.

Each Smart Form includes a form summary that provides a brief description of the form,

what it is used for, and any key details or nuances the drafter should be aware of.

You are now at the first question of the interview.

Each screen in the interview will show you the name of the form, the topic you are in,

and the number of questions answered and remaining.

Each Smart Form contains practical guidance in the form of drafting notes.

Drafting notes provide key details and drafting considerations to assist you in answering

your questions.

You may Preview your document at any point in the Interview process.

You can preview your document in two ways: (1) within an interview screen by clicking

on "Preview" to see the document with the answers entered so far in the interview

and (2) at the end of the interview, when a preview is generated with all the answers

supplied in the interview.

You may also save your document and responses at any time by clicking on the Save button.

When you save a document, an answer file will be saved to your hard drive.

The answer file can then be imported into any Smart Forms interview, with answers populating

the interview to the extent the fields match what is in the answer file.

Open the form you wish to work on, and select Import Saved Answers.

Choose the file you have previously saved and select Next.

If you no longer wish to utilize this form, you may conclude the interview at any time

by clicking Quit.

Your answers will not be saved and you will be directed back to the main Lexis Practice

Advisor page.

For more infomation >> Lexis Smart Forms on Lexis Practice Advisor® Show Me How Video Series - Duration: 3:34.

-------------------------------------------

Trends in digitization and smart farming - Swiss Future Farm - Duration: 6:00.

We are here in Tänikon, the location of the Swiss Future Farm.

The Swiss Future Farm is a demonstration farm for new technologies and aims to show farmers

the benefits and added value of digitisation.

There are a lot of new things to see.

In this video I would like to present some highlights.

Some of these ideas will be implemented in practice; some maybe not.

But I am sure you will be fascinated by all these new ideas.

Highlights at the opening of the Swiss Future Farm

Automated overseeding of meadows

You probably all know the problem that we have gaps in meadows.

You can see uncovered areas here.

When you're overseeding, the seed only germinates where the soil is uncovered.

The solution works like this: a camera mounted on the front of the tractor takes the picture

and detects the places where sowing is necessary.

The seeds are then placed from the back of the tractor using a "Krummenacher"

air seeder drill with eight sowing pipes.

Now sowing takes place only where the camera has detected a spot.

A flap opens and closes and the seed is placed in the right place.

At seed costs of around 300 Swiss francs per hectare, we can save around 200 francs

if we only have to sow 20 percent of the seed.

Electric tractor

We are standing here in front of the hood of a special tractor.

It doesn't run on diesel but on electricity.

Some people may think that electricity is not so important in agriculture.

But together with an electrically powered forage mixer, for example, this can also be

very interesting for agriculture since it can use renewable energies to charge these batteries.

Christian Wolf from the Solar machinery ring will explain how to charge these batteries.

With photovoltaics, we can now produce electricity at production costs of less than 10 cents.

This is cheaper for the farmer than buying the energy.

With the restriction, of course, that electricity is only produced when the sun is shining.

This is where the battery comes into play: we can store electricity temporarily in such a battery.

Such an electric tractor is, of course, an ideal prerequisite to optimizing farm energy use in the long term.

Automated data acquisition

You are all familiar with the problem of paper chaos.

This here will be the field book of tomorrow.

We have GPS on the tractor, we know where we are.

We have all the equipment parameters.

Here, for example, for spreading liquid manure.

We see how the tractor spreads the liquid manure.

In the future, you won't have to write this down on paper;

all the data can be collected directly on the tractor.

This data will then be available to us for the various administrative tasks, e.g., for the FOAG.

I think all tractors will be equipped with such terminals in the future.

That is why this will now be put into practice very quickly.

I am convinced that this will make things much easier for farmers.

Combine harvesters

We are standing here in front of the newly developed combine harvester – IDEAL.

What distinguishes this combine harvester from others is that it is packed full of electronics

and provides the driver with a lot of support.

You could even say that the automatic system takes over most of the driver's job.

It's very difficult to adjust the individual units of a combine harvester

so that we don't have so much broken grain or chaff in the wheat.

The simulator offers the opportunity to demonstrate everything.

In practice, drivers are often too overwhelmed to exploit the full potential of the machine.

The driver can be supported, e.g., from a control centre that can be anywhere on earth.

People at the control centre can look into the cab via telemetric systems control and

optimise the machine parameters.

Field robot

Agricultural technology has the reputation

of becoming bigger and bigger.

These are precision seed drills.

Each of these robots sows a single row.

What is interesting about them is certainly their low weight and that they therefore cause

hardly any ground pressure.

In addition: such a robot works day and night, makes no noise and is electrically operated.

So it certainly has some advantages.

However, it remains to be seen whether it will be able to be able to compete

with large tractors with seed drills, especially during time-critical work.

We believe that this system also fits with small-scale farms in Switzerland and could

be implemented into practice within five years.

SMARTBOW - the intelligent ear tag

This is a special ear tag this cow is wearing.

It contains an acceleration sensor.

The cow's swaying ears are used to measure whether she is eating, ruminating or resting.

If there are any unusual data, e.g., if the cow does not eat for a long time, then perhaps

she is ill and then the farmer receives a warning.

Every cow is a green dot.

Yellow dots show that there are abnormalities with the animals.

In this case, the animal has an acute decrease in ruminating.

This cow, Eva, had acidosis.

The system sends a message to the farmer and he could then act accordingly.

Weather stations

This is a weather station.

It measures precipitation, radiation, temperature, humidity and wind speed.

The special thing about this weather station is that it not only sends the data to the

internet, but also receives commands from the internet.

We can use it to manage irrigation.

The advantage of the internet connection is that you can link weather forecasts:

if it rains tomorrow, I have to water less today.

If it's very hot tomorrow, I have to give more water today.

So we can control the irrigation very flexibly.

Conclusion

As you can see, the potential of digitization is considerable.

The aim now is to implement useful innovations, step by step, so that everyone, including

the farmer and the environment, can benefit from it.