What Are We About?
I’ve thought long and
hard about what Capital Good Fund is really about. Yes, we provide financial services to
low-income families and we often say that we are about financial
empowerment. But that’s about as
imaginative as saying that Apple is about selling software and hardware. No, if
you really want to explain why Apple is the most profitable company in the
world, you have to understand that, in essence, they are in the business of
delivering a magical experience to its customers.
Does that sound
hyperbolic? Like I’m just another Apple
fanboy? Maybe, but have you ever looked
at the eyes of a child the first time she picks up an iPad and starts playing
with it? Have you ever considered why so
many people spend so much money just to have a beautiful and functional object
they can keep in their pocket or their backpack, even though there are
equally good and cheaper alternatives out there? Of course it’s because of advertising and
consumerism—of course, but that’s missing the point. And actually, irrespective of your opinion of
the company and its products, the main point still remains: what Apple, or any
other enterprise, produces and sells is not necessarily the same thing as what
it’s about. As Simon Sinek puts it, people
don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
So what is Capital Good
Fund about? Opportunity. Hope.
And, it occurs to me, behavior
change. Just like AA, just like
Weight Watchers, just like book clubs, just like church groups, just like any
other places to which people go to better themselves, we empower people to make
the changes they’d find hard to make themselves. After all, couldn’t anyone, in theory, work
out at home using some elastic bands, a yoga mat and maybe a $50 kettle bell? Lose weight by forcing themselves to eat less,
or deepen their spirituality from the comfort of their home, or quit drinking
cold turkey? And couldn’t anyone stick
to a budget, manage their debt, build their credit and savings balances and
prepare their taxes, for free, by themselves? Yes, but it’s hard.
Which is precisely the
point. We are not in the business of
behavior changes because we feel superior to our clients, or because we want to
force particular behaviors onto them.
No, we are in this business because, just like Weight Watchers, there is
a need to be filled. Those that partake
in our Financial Coaching use it like a gym membership for financial fitness,
like a means of learning skills and, more importantly, having someone to hold them accountable to their own goals.
Weight Loss
I started thinking
about this after my recent annual checkup.
It turns out that since my last checkup I’ve lost four (4) pounds (and
actually lost far more from my waistline than that because I’ve built a lot of
muscle from cycling.) What’s interesting
is that over the last year I’ve also used something called the Jawbone UP—one of a growing number of
wearable fitness devices that track steps taken, calories burned, hours
slept, etc.
I use the band in order to keep tabs on how
long I sleep, how many steps I take during the day, how many calories I burn
and how many I consume. Doing this
requires an investment on my part: though the band automatically tracks steps
and sleep, I have to manually enter (into the accompanying iPhone app)
information about cycling and calories I consume. So dedicated am I that I’ve catalogued over
98% of food I’ve eaten the last 14 months.
Perhaps this sounds obsessive, but it’s actually become second
nature. And the upsides are tremendous:
simply being aware of what you eat relative to how much you move makes it much
easier to make healthy choices. Want to
drink a soda? Go for it, but keep in
mind that you’re burning 5-10% of your caloric budget right there! Want to stay up late watching a movie? Go for it, but you know from the data that
you are far less productive when you get fewer than 6 hours of sleep!
(I want to acknowledge that there is a danger in all this, especially
for those with body image or eating issues…So please be sure you use these
tools for the right reasons and with caution).
The Power of Data
I’m confident that I’ve
lost four pounds, and am the fittest I’ve been in years, because of the extent
to which tracking this data has held me to my goals. After all, behavior change of any kind is
hard to initiate and even harder to maintain—the more tools that can help us, the
better. Data supplements our own
imperfect observations of ourselves with objective information that, used
properly, can be transformational; you can’t change that of which you are
unaware!
At Capital Good Fund,
therefore, we can sum about our business by saying that we’re about empowering our
clients to make the changes they want in the interest of meeting the goals they
set for themselves.
I’d like to conclude
with the following thought. Everything
we do online—every book we buy, every movie we stream, every Google search we
make and everything on which we click—is tracked by a company that uses that
data to understand our behavior and serve up ads for products it thinks we’ll
buy. This troubles some people; some
people recognize that this is the tradeoff for free services online; and others
are unaware. Either way, it’s a
fact. Big data now rules, not only the
online world, but also really much of the corporate world. So if data is so powerful when it comes to
making money, why not leverage it to better our lives? Why not use it to make healthy eating
choices, provide better services to the poor, improve health care, reduce
traffic, and so on? We have the tools,
and they are affordable. So let’s get to it!
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