La Gaceta Newspaper

By Tiffany Razzano

During his more than two decades working in financial services for companies like Washington Mutual and Chase, John Seib was always drawn to educating his clients.
The Portland, Oregon, resident spent much of his career working with large mortgage teams across the country. “One of the things that I always was kind of moved by or broken-hearted by were individuals, young couples, young families who would come in and didn’t qualify for a home and didn’t understand why,” he said. “So, I’d sit down with individuals and try to coach them, help them understand. They don’t know what a credit score is or why they can’t buy a house. They just didn’t understand financial literacy at its base.”
So, Seib was excited by the opportunity to shift gears in recent years and focus on financial literacy among children.
He was an early investor and founder of Tampa-based Electus Global Education Co. and today, serves as the company’s chief revenue officer.
It was his nephew who tapped him to get involved with the then start-up company about eight years ago. “He told me, ‘You might want to take a look at this,’” Seib said.
Not only did he invest in the company, but he joined the advisory board. It wasn’t long before he got more involved in sales for Electus. And about four years ago, he was tapped as the president before becoming CRO. “That’s when I made the decision to really leave the career I had been a part of,” he said.
The company’s early years focused on finding investors, as well as research and development. “All around the idea of financial literacy,” according to Seib. “Could there be a solution? If there was a solution, what would it look like?”
During this time, Electus began developing its Life Hub financial education technology.
Initially, the company thought it might focus on adults, maybe high school students. “But all the research pointed the other way; it pointed to our youth and really hitting those formative years,” Seib said.
He added, “There’s a big difference between behavior modification and behavior formation.”
Modification is “very, very difficult,” he noted. “Once patterns or beliefs are set, it’s difficult to modify behavior.”
They realized they’d have more of an impact if they focused on forming “behaviors from the beginning, so you don’t have to go back and modify later,” Seib said.
Life Hub focuses on providing experiential learning through an app for youth ages 7 to 18. It teaches the broader philosophy of financial literacy, as well as entrepreneurship, career development and life skills. “Yes, it’s financial literacy, but to really make change and impact, it has to be more,” he said. “The solution would have to go beyond that.”
Through the Life Hub app, kids are paid to complete educational tasks on the platform. “Kids get excited when they’re earning money,” according to Seib. We’re not asking them to wash windows or anything. But they complete these tasks, these lessons, and once they’re completed, then they get paid real money deposited on a Visa card.
Most of the tasks pay between $1 and $3 and take anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes to complete. The budget for each task is set by the organization, often a nonprofit, that is utilizing the technology for the children they serve.
The tasks are designed to get students thinking about real-life financial scenarios. For instance, in one task, they’re asked to “buy a puppy” by a virtual pet store. They need to consider how much it costs to buy their pet food, take it to the vet and buy any other necessities for it. “The impact is when you understand the difference between what you pay for something and what it costs,” he said. “It’s a life principle.”
These virtual tasks get children participating in the program to think about their spending and saving. “The first foundation of making a chance is understanding and learning about money,” Seib said. “The other skills follow once they understand earning. That’s when changes to habits and beliefs and patterns happen.”
Electus launched its Life Hub technology two years ago in Tampa through partnerships with the likes of Big Brothers Big Sisters Suncoast and a private school, Academy Prep. “We launched it in a very, very controlled environment,” he said. “It’s brand new technology and a brand new concept. We wanted to feel out what was possible.”
Now, the company is growing rapidly, expanding its partnerships. They’re getting ready to work with Lutheran Services Florida and Friends of the Children in the Tampa Bay area, and even nationally, working with Big Brothers Big Sisters in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Chicago, and Friends of the Children in the San Francisco area. “We’re continually expanding not only in Florida but across the country,” Seib said.
While it might be challenging to get the Life Hub technology into public schools, it’s “perfect” for other educational spaces. “The areas that we’re really excited about are micro schools and home schools and even private and charter schools,” he said.
Within the next few weeks, Electus will move into the direct-to-consumer market, offering the Life Hub platform to individual families.
There are more than 1,600 tasks available on Life Hub and customization is available for each school, organization and student using the technology.
While the “sweet spot” for the technology is those ages 7 to 18, Electus is also exploring working with children as young as 4 and moving into universities and colleges.
The technology can be beneficial for a wide range of youth, Seib added. “Schools don’t teach financial literacy of entrepreneurship or career development … I think that the key is that what we’re doing changes the trajectory and it breaks generational habits and patterns, and I think that we’re changing the generation that is coming up. It’s what really drives all of us every day.”