The pandemic has forced many families to take a closer look at their spending habits as their savings are drained, income is tighter, and they’re desperate to remove a frightening financial burden from their shoulders.
It’s the year of the unexpected, the unprecedented, but the financial challenges of 2020 are ones that Anthony Sarandreaand his team are equipped to deal with.
Anthony has built a portfolio of financial literacy websites, with the goal of helping American families ease their burden. In addition to dozens of guides and industry insights, these sites compare, contrast, and connect consumers with options to get out of debt, expertly tailored insurance policies, and a host of other financial products.
Pocket Your Dollars serves as the backbone of this financial empire and has already helped thousands of consumers to reduce their debt, improve their credit scores, and find better credit cards, loans, mortgages, and insurance policies.
In His Own Words
My family was very religious, and I spent the first few years of my life dreaming about becoming a priest. In later years, I shifted to health and helping people lose weight or achieve their fitness goals. All these professions are focused on helping people, which was my goal above all else, but I soon realized that money/finances are the root cause of a lot of problems.
We live in a throwaway, consumeristic society, one where people spend what they don’t have, accumulate debts they can’t afford, and spend the rest of their lives in a cycle of credit, debt, and misery. This is ultimately why I switched to financial services. Every day we connect thousands of Americans to different financial/insurance products to ultimately put more money in their pocket or provide some peace of mind.
Below are a few principles for entrepreneurs to embrace during these uncertain times:
Embrace Failure
The best piece of advice I can give to aspiring entrepreneurs is not to fear failure, but to embrace it. Everyone wants to hear how great their business is and how well they’re doing, but insincere praise doesn’t help anyone. You need to look for the negative reviews and comments — seek out the complaints.
Negativity is great for growth and essential for survival because without it, you won’t fix the issues dragging your business down and your competitors will innovate and grow ahead of you. FAIL FAST!
It’s difficult to read negative reviews. You’ve put a lot of time and effort into your business. It’s your pride and joy. The last thing you want is for customers to trash it or get negative opinions on your startup idea. But if you can dig into that negativity and listen to learn, dive deep into where the person’s reservations are, it’ll benefit you in the long run.
Understand What You’re Up Against
The problem with the financial services sector is that most companies are there to turn a profit at the expense of the consumer. They profit from perpetual poverty, getting more and more people into debt.
Naturally, consumers are wary, and that made it hard for us to get our message across. However, we’ve now reached a point where consumers trust us to provide them with helpful information and transparent services.
The Future
As things stand, we’re fixers. We help to cure the problem, but we aren’t preventing it. Customers come to us when they’re paying too much for car insurance or life insurance or looking for help with mountains of consumer debt. In the future, our goal is to advance consumer knowledge with regards to interest, debit, credit, and loans.
A 21-year-old shouldn’t be taking out a new credit card just to get 15% off their purchase at a department store; an 18-year old shouldn’t be agreeing to a lifetime of student loan debt without even understanding how APR works. Don’t get me wrong, these products can be great if you need them and know how to use them, but most consumers don’t, and that’s what we want to change. Education is the next corner of the market for us to tackle in an effort to help American’s live a more financially free life.
Starting a Business Now
Piggybacking off of the idea around Failing Fast and Often. Jeff Hawkins, the investor of the PalmPilot is an excellent example of this.
If a modern entrepreneur conceived such a revolutionary device as the PalmPilot, they would have likely invested everything into production, raise funds, create multiple prototypes, and eventually arrive at a finished product, by which time the company reserves would be one disaster away from complete annihilation. Hawkins, however, simply carved a block of wood into a PalmPilot shape and carried paper sleeves to simulate user interfaces. Every time he wanted to take notes or schedule an appointment, he would whip the device out and pretend to use it.
The feedback he received from friends and acquaintances, and the real-world applications he experienced, allowed him to build the perfect prototype the first time, thus saving endless capital expenses.
This weird idea of carrying an inanimate object attached to your hip is what we modern-day couldn’t dream of living without, our cell phones.
