Real Money, Real Experts

$avvy: Women. Money. Freedom. with Robin Hauser

October 11, 2022 AFCPE® Season 2 Episode 19
Real Money, Real Experts
$avvy: Women. Money. Freedom. with Robin Hauser
Show Notes Transcript

In this week’s episode, we get to know Robin Hauser: an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a keynote speaker at the 2022 AFCPE Symposium. Her film, $avvy, was inspired by her own personal experience with money. It led her to wonder, why do women tend to abdicate major financial decisions to someone else (often the man in their life)? And why is that so dangerous?

Our hosts and Robin talk about the power of storytelling and its ability to eliminate shame and increase empathy. We also address the subtle microaggressions that women face even today, and how we can ensure that women feel included in the personal finance space. Tune in, and don't miss the screening at #AFCPE2022 by registering to attend today.

Show Notes:
1:58 How Robin got into documentary filmmaking
4:40 What to expect during Robin's session
6:30 How counselors can utilize video to spread their impact
8:55 What is the likability dilemma
11:39 Increasing women in a male-dominated industry
15:31 Robin's 2 cents

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Real Money Real Experts, a podcast where leading financial counseling and coaching experts share their stories, their challenges, and their advice for helping people manage money in the real world. I'm your host, Rachel Daon, executive director of the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education for A F C P

Speaker 2:

E. And I'm your co-host, Dr. Mary Bell Carlson, an accredited financial counselor, or afc, and the President of Financial Behavior Keynote Group. Every episode we're taking a deep dive in the topics that personal finance professionals care about, helping clients, building community, and your professional growth.

Speaker 1:

On today's show, we welcome Robin Houser, an award-winning director of documentary films at Finish Line Features. Robin's most recent documentary Savvy contemplates the historical, cultural and societal norms around women in money and explores why it's critical for women to take an active role in finance. Robin also directed the documentary bias, which delves into unconscious bias and how it affects our lives socially and in the workplace. And in 2015, her documentary code debugging the Gender Gap premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, screened at the White House and caught the attention of the international tech industry and of policy makers around the world. Robin's exploration into implicit gender and racial bias and artificial intelligence led her to present on the TED stage. She also delivered a TEDx talk on the likability dilemma for women leaders. Robin is a diplomat for the American Film Showcase and speaks about unconscious bias, the importance of diversity and inclusion. And on behalf of the women's rights at US embassies, conferences and corporate headquarters worldwide. Robin, thanks so much for joining us today.

Speaker 3:

Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Robin.

Speaker 2:

We're excited to have you at the A F C P E symposium this November, and this is going to be a topic that resonates with many. So take us back to the beginning and tell us how did you get into documentary filmmaking?

Speaker 3:

Well, I've been a photographer for years, Actually, if we go way back, I earned my MBA in my late twenties, and I worked in the, um, finance world for several years, and then I got married and, um, turned my focus away from personal finance and finance and onto children and family. And I always knew that I wanted to get into filmmaking or, or visual storytelling, but you know, you never know when that someday might be. It takes a little bit of blind faith, I think, to jump into something that you haven't been trained in. Um, but in 2010, my daughter was involved in an incident with her cross country team, uh, in high school and her coach who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. And, um, there was some filmmakers that wanted to make a film about this. So we did. I jumped in, got involved in and eventually took that project over. I mean, that was my first film it's called, called Running for Jim.

Speaker 2:

What an incredible change. Now tell us, you went from personal finance into filmmaking, but you've also now kind of incorporated personal finance back into it. Tell us a little more about that.

Speaker 3:

Well, I like to make films about pressing societal issues. I I probably owe it to my parents that I have this nagging sort of need to feel like I'm contributing to the world in one way or another. And so my films have all been caused based in one way or another. And I got divorced six years ago, and I was struck by the fact that I was not prepared to handle my own finances. I, you know, for 24 years I had pretty much abdicated long-term financial decisions to him, and suddenly there I was on my own. And I was shocked that even with an mba, and even though I'm, you know, very well educated and my father was an investment counselor, I learned about investing from him when I was young. He used to slide the Wall Street Journal across the for Micah table and at breakfast and asked me to look up the, the price of, you know, one share of Ford Motor Company<laugh>. So I, I learned about, you know, how not to chase the market and the value of long term holds. And then I got married and I sort of just turned a blind eye onto personal finance, and I was shocked by the fact that, you know, if, if I was having so much difficulty figuring out personal finances, there must be so many other women in this world that are even in worse situations than, than I'm in. So that's when I, I was in the middle of making biased documentary at the time that this was all going down, but I remember thinking, that's a film to be made. You know, there has to be a reason. We have to discover why women tend to abdicate major financial decisions to somebody else, and usually that's the man in their life and why that's so dangerous. Right.

Speaker 1:

Robin, you're going to be screening your documentary savvy at this year's symposium. Tell us a little bit more about what you learned, you know, as you're putting this film together and what we can expect from that session. Well,

Speaker 3:

The film is really made with a female audience in mind, but what I've found is that men are responding to it as well. And so that's, that's exciting, right? That's huge for me. And we can go into that a little bit later, but I think, you know, it's fair to say that many men feel societal pressure to take on the primary role of managing finances, and that they would really actually welcome input and participation from their spouse. So some women don't have a choice, right? There are obviously some financially abusive relationships where women don't necessarily have a choice to know how much money there is or where their money is kept, But in, in many healthy relationships, there is the opportunity for full transparency. And women, you know, they might say they're too busy, or maybe it's a sense of ambient belonging that makes us feel like we just don't belong in the world of finance. Because traditionally and historically women have been marginalized from money. But let me just go back to say that yes, the film is character based and we go through several different stories of women who have in one way or another, run into financial difficulties, whether it's too much credit card debt from credit cards that were easy to attain when they were in college, parents taking on really expensive student loan debt because the parents weren't financially literate or someone being in a financially abusive relationship. So we have different personal stories that are told that the audience can relate to in different ways, but we also have a woman in the film who is suddenly widowed at a very young age, and we watch and hear about the difficulties that she goes through because she didn't even know if their wills were signed.

Speaker 2:

You know, Robin, the thing that amazes me is you've really found your voice in film and it's impacting so many others. Often as financial counselors and coaches, we help individual clients, which does a lot of good, but I see film and video as being able to impact many, many more for good. Can you help us maybe give us some tips for financial coaches and counselors that wanna utilize video in their own businesses to impact more people? Yeah,

Speaker 3:

I think that's a really interesting point. I mean, as a, as a financial expert, you could sit down with a client and tell them all day long why it's important to keep up with personal finances, why it's important to understand credit and debt and compounding interest. But to some people that sounds like, you know, the, the Charlie Brown parent, you know, character just like wa Wawa<laugh>. And, and I think that through visual storytelling, especially when it's character based and you have real people telling you about their stories with money and what they went through, I think it's a more number one entertaining but impactful way for the audience. You know, without, we're not pointing a finger at the audience, it's really just saying, Look, we're welcoming you to listen to these stories from other women and to learn and to decide, you know, which story relates to you. Some will, some won't, but without a doubt, through the different, the various stories that we have in the film and some of the financial lessons, the takeaway is what we've noticed through exit polls is that the audience is motivated to take action. And I think that that's the power of storytelling and filmmaking.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And I think storytelling really humanizes what your people are learning and what they're talking about. And it takes away some of that shame. You see yourself and other people and, and even when you don't see yourself, you might see your friend or your neighbor or your spouse. And so, you know, it really brings us closer and, and makes, kind of breaks down some of those barriers.

Speaker 3:

Well, that's such a good point because we absolutely need to eliminate shame from our associations with money, and we all have it. I mean, I, I set out, you know, to become once again, to to to retake and to to be in charge again of my personal finances after being married for 24 years. And there was shame. I did feel shame that I hadn't really kept up. And maybe I did that because that was the way that the relationship was gonna be the smoothest. But regardless, I've worked hard to not blame myself.

Speaker 1:

Robin, you have really powerful Ted talk about the likability dilemma. And this one really resonated with me, both as a female leader and as a woman who's raising hopefully a really strong willed daughter. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about this likability dilemma?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so in 2017, I had done a TED talk about bias and artificial intelligence, and it's very much of a niche subject. Um, but that was my first sort of my foray to the TED stage. And it was a, an interesting and challenging experience. I learned a lot from it. Several years later, TEDx came to me and said, Listen, we'd love for you to do another talk. Is there something that's interest you? And I said, Oh, I've been down that road and, you know, thank you, but no thanks, give somebody else a turn. I mean, let me tell you, it's like, it's like getting a PhD. And so they came back and they kept sort of persisting, Please, will you, will you, will you submit something? Yeah. And so I sat down and I thought, Well, what's really bugging me lately? What's really bothering me? And it was this microaggressions when it comes to gender bias. And so I sat down and wrote a script and I submitted it and I had, you know, I'd been trained from, from Ted, so I knew how to write a Ted's speech. And when they first came back to me, the producers, who by the way were really amazing people, but when they came back to me the first time, they said, You know, your examples are sort of subtle. I mean, do you have any more egregious examples like<laugh>

Speaker 2:

Side?

Speaker 3:

Have you ever been like sexually harassed? And I said to them, I said, Well, with all due respect, I think you're missing the point. You know, it's, it's the microaggressions that get women. It's these little everyday things that sort of tend to make women feel, you know, lesser and they're often unconscious, right? People don't really realize that they're doing this to women. Anyway, that talk came out and, uh, in 2019 and it was on the TEDx platform and it received a little bit of attention, but not too much. But the funny thing was when I came off stage that night in front of 750 people, the audience stood, the women in the audience especially stood up and were giving me a standing ovation. And when I walked off stage, my producers were like, Awesome. And they go, Wow, the audience really responded to that<laugh>. They still, they still didn't quite get it. Anyway, since then, I think it's up to like 1.5 million views. It's gone all over the world. I have people reach out to me on LinkedIn because women can relate, they can relate to the fact that it's not as blatant. It's not necessarily blatant sexism like being slapped on the dairy air or you know, someone saying, Hey, hey gal, don't you look cute today? It's much more subtle these days, but it's just as painful for women and it's just as annoying and it's just as damaging.

Speaker 2:

And you know, Robin, one thing that I think well and know statistics prove that there's a dearth of women in the financial industry. We are very lacking in gender equity in both as financial counselors and coaches, but also in hearing the female voice as clients. And so I'd like to know some of your thoughts, especially thoughts that you're gonna share around symposium about increasing women in a very male dominated industry.

Speaker 3:

So there's a term called ambient belonging, which basically means whether or not you feel comfortable in a certain environment. And historically in the money world in the United States and many Western cultures, in fact, eastern cultures too, women have been marginalized. I mean, they, it wasn't until 1974 that women in the United States could have a credit card in their own name without a male cosigning. Think about that. That's crazy. So the stock market was made by men for men, not intentionally to leave women out, but that certainly seems to be the result. The acronyms, the warlike analogies, you know, 401k, 5 29 IPO etf, these terms and jargon and the war like analogies tend to make women not feel like they belong. And so it's the same thing when you think about it with like software engineering, right? And so women tend not to pursue finance as a career or not to get involved in financial counseling. I'm hoping that this is beginning to change, but a woman knows that if she's gonna get into that, she's getting into a male dominated industry. So what happens then is you have men that are in the industry, well-intended men in the industry, but they can't necessarily relate to their female clients. And one of the reasons, first of all, it might even be hard for them to get their female clients into the room, into a meeting on the phone, on a Zoom call. And women might say they're, that was, we discussed before, Women might say they're too busy. Women might say they just, you know, uh, sorry, I'm gonna let my husband take this. There was a recent study that came out that said 85% of married women believe their spouse knows more about financial matters. And we all know that men are not innately more savvy about money than women. If a woman isn't feeling comfortable, she's not gonna put herself in a situation. It could easily be the jargon that's thrown around in those meetings. It, it can also be the fact that a financial advisor, especially if he's a male, might pretty much speak almost exclusively to your husband. And you feel, again, you feel marginalized. So we need to, number one, change the fact that it's taboo for women to talk about money. And two, we need to train financial advisors how to understand the issues that women face when it comes to money and how to speak to women so that they feel included really in what, in what we need to do is change the jargon, changed the lingo, changed the way that, that we even talk about money, which will then hopefully change ambient belonging in the world of finance. Yeah,

Speaker 1:

That's so interesting. And all of your film has sort of revolved around this idea of bias too, and what, what you're talking about, sometimes those are biases that I think, you know, personal financial planners are probably very well intended, but don't even realize, you know, that they have those underlying biases that have just been built throughout the history of our industry.

Speaker 3:

I agree. I bet you could even film without anybody knowing, film a discussion between a couple, a heterosexual couple and their wealth manager and afterwards played that back for the wealth manager and they'd probably be completely shocked that they were faced and spoke almost exclusively to the man, right? They probably don't even realize they're doing it, but innately they sense that he's gonna get it and she might not.

Speaker 1:

At the end of each interview, we always ask our guests to share their 2 cents. If you had one piece of advice to leave with our listeners, what would it be?

Speaker 3:

Well, I would say if you are not investing, start investing. Yes, the, the stock market is, is volatile right now. But there are ways to, to diversify in hedge. But, and you don't have to decide yourself, you don't have to stock pick. You can find a financial advisor. You don't have to be a millionaire to have a financial advisor, but you have to get your money out of just the savings account and into investing. Cuz women need to learn how to grow their wealth. It's essential. We need more women investors. When women invest, they actually outperform male investors because we're more risk aware by almost four basis points a year. So women need to get involved. We're in the middle of the great transfer of wealth where over the next 20 years,$30 trillion are gonna transfer from baby boomers into the hands of millennials and mainly into the hands of women. So it's essential that women take an active role in managing this money. And when women do invest, they, they prefer to invest in ways that help the environment or do social good. So think about the positive influence and the positive effect that we can have on the world when more women invest.

Speaker 2:

And I would say to that, Robin, anyone that is wanting to get in, make sure that you find a financial advisor that listens to you if you're a woman and understand you because there's plenty of advisors out there, and if they don't move on to the next.

Speaker 3:

I absolutely agree.

Speaker 2:

Robin, this has been fantastic and thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Please tell our listeners where they can connect with you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, my website is finish line features.com and you can send me an email through that. We're gonna set up a pay review fairly soon, I think maybe in the next couple months to Savvy. So if anybody's interested in seeing it that can't get to the A F C P E symposium, then they'll have an opportunity to watch it through the website for, for a small donation.

Speaker 1:

Thanks Robin. Yeah,

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 2:

You know, Rachel, I love so many of her thoughts in this discussion. I think it's gonna be such a powerful session for our conference this year. One of the things that I really liked was her statement of visual storytelling. I, I hear storytelling a lot, but the visual component of it adds just such another layer and element of where there's not shame, there's not judgment of yourself, but you're seeing yourself through other stories. And it really allows, I think, in so many ways this opportunity of video for advisors, for counselors, for coaches to make changes more globally. You know, we can only impact so many on a one on one basis, but through video and through your voice, quite honestly, you can make such a more powerful change to many others for those who are inclined to do that. You know, the other thing that I thought was interesting is she said, the audience is motivated to take action. We talk a lot about motivational behavior and how we get people to change. And really through research we know that really only 20% of individuals are ready and in that action phase of change. And yet this visual storytelling is a way to help motivate in a way that you don't have to tell someone what to do, but where they're coming to you saying, I'm ready to make the changes that I wanna see. I think it also increases empathy when you hear and see the stories of others allowing you to kind of process what that would be like or experience would be like. And finally, I love her discussion on women. I think that this is such an important component right now in the financial planning industry. There's only 25% of the population of financial planners that are female. And this is not just needing representation on the female financial advisor side, but also listening and hearing female clients. I see this so often as I teach financial counseling and coaching classes that so many times we have a, even our office setup is a very dominant, quite honestly, uh, stressful situation for a lot of women. So I love this thought of how do we change and make this the profession more accepting of women, yet also have a discussion of how we help our clients that are female feel more comfortable in wanting to share and open up about money and talking about these important things. Just like Robin had to learn the hard

Speaker 1:

Way. Mary, I couldn't agree more. And I, I just found it really intriguing too when she touched on those invisible biases that surround us. You know, it's, it, it's in every industry, but even in the personal finance industry, you know, I hadn't thought of the stock market being made for men by men or the fact that women had to have a cosigner on a credit card all the way up until 1974. And so I think oftentimes even as women, we don't understand, you know, we don't catch our own biases that we bring towards people within our gender, other women. And so I think the, the work that she's doing to break down and bring awareness to these biases is so important, especially within our industry. The other thing that I'm really excited about too with her is just, you know, bringing this film to our audience. I think you, you said it really well with the idea of visual storytelling, but a lot of, of our community, we're working with women and families every day. And so hearing these stories and how they resonate with the examples that she's bringing forward, but also with our own clients is so important. And as with someone with the communications background, you know, visual storytelling really does break down these barriers. You can talk about something, but to actually show it and hear it from that first person example just really helps resonate. So really important session. I'm excited to bring her to the symposium and so happy that she was able to join us here today. For anyone who is interested in hearing Robin speak or watching the Savvy Documentary Symposium, registration is still open. You can join us virtually or you can join us in Orlando, Florida, and that's November 16th through 18th. And we look forward to seeing you there.