Transcript
Welcome to Money Isn’t Everything. I’m Mary Wisniewski, Cornerstone Advisors editor-at-large and host of the show that explores early-stage ideas that could, if not already, shake up financial services.
What happens when a fintech founder of a neobank takes to TikTok to warn Americans about scams?
On the show today, I sit down with Kevin Nazemi, the co-founder and CEO of Charlie, to talk about why he’s embracing the social media platform many bankers dismiss.
We also talk about his TikTok videos on common scams, including the ways GenAI is making it much more chaotic and threatening.
We also chitchat about slowing down payments as a positive feature, and I asked him about a sweet backstory of how he interviewed the then-president, Bill Clinton, when he was an 11-year-old boy.
Here’s our conversation.
Kevin, welcome to Money Isn’t Everything.
Welcome to the show.
It’s wonderful to be here.
Great to see you.
Yeah, it’s great to see you.
It’s been, gosh, I think more than a year since we’ve seen each other, spoken in an “I see you in a video” sort of way.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So it’s nice to connect.
I wanted to frame up this conversation because, you know, I hear a lot from bank executives, credit union executives, and sometimes even fintech founders like, “Hey, what do we do about this TikTok thing?”
Or, it’s not for us because it’s not our audience.
Or just maybe viewed as, oh, it’s for a tongue-in-cheek sort of thing and it’s outside of my realm.
But here you are, a TikTok sensation as a neobank founder, and you’re talking bank security threats, trends, just general security things to help a consumer out.
I really want to explore all of that.
First of all, you’re at a neobank for older adults.
What brought you to TikTok?
How did that become part of your content strategy?
You bet.
And, you know, we actually started where probably most of your audience is today.
I’m the co-founder and CEO of Charlie, banking for older Americans, where we try to give them more for their money and help them keep it safe.
So you would think TikTok could be the last place we would go, given the audience that we focus on.
But really, our journey with TikTok started with some experimentation.
We ran some ads on TikTok to try to get people to sign up for our service, and we found that customers were there and, as importantly, family members of older Americans were there.
We started by putting content out with me just walking and talking about fraud because we felt two things about it.
One, we felt you’ve got to meet people where they are.
And two, we felt that it’s the place where we could have the most impact by getting people to engage around fraud and scams.
Because the data shows that if you’re aware of how a scam operates, you’re 80% less likely to fall for it.
So I just grabbed my phone, started walking down the street where I live near Venice Beach, and started to record these one-minute snippets on scams.
Those are things like toll road scams or USPS texts and scams, and we explain what’s going on behind the scenes and what you can do to fight back.
The great thing about TikTok, which makes it different than a lot of other platforms, if you’re someone in banking like me that doesn’t have a big audience, what’s interesting about TikTok is that if they see engagement on content that you create, they’ll amplify that.
They don’t give as much weighting to the size of your audience and your stature in the way that Instagram and other platforms do.
So we see actually about 20x the engagement on TikTok as we do on a platform like Instagram, where you would expect we would have a lot more engagement.
But that’s really because, my understanding is, a vast majority of the focus is on how that content is resonating.
As long as it’s resonating, they’re going to keep pushing it out there, regardless of whether you have one follower or not.
So we’ve seen over 20,000 people engage with our content, and that means comment or like or pass it on to somebody else.
We just started this a little bit over a month ago.
At first, my neighbors were looking at me a little bit sideways.
Now they’re used to it, and some of them are following me.
So it’s evolved there too.
Kevin, that’s really funny.
I think that’s a really important point because I remember when I had to self-film a couple things a few years ago.
I’m like, oh, I feel awkward.
It’s not like I’m crouching down on the ground trying to find my angle, but it’s still like, hi, hello, it’s me.
And we’re in LA, so you see a lot of influencers.
You do.
But I have people come up to me, ask me if I’m a real estate agent, if I’m selling something.
I had all sorts of questions.
Then in some ways, you get over it at some point and become a little bit more comfortable in what you’re doing.
But it was brand new for me.
That’s part of it too.
You’ve just got to go where consumers are.
You can’t expect to just engage in the reflexes that are comfortable to you, like send out a newsletter, right?
Or other things.
This is where people are.
So we’re going there, and we keep looking at where people are and how could we meet them where they are with the context of where they’re at.
Kevin, I think this is such an important point because there’s such a hesitation, especially about being on TikTok, it seems like.
Maybe it’s just like, I don’t even know how to be on it.
But any advice for someone who’s thinking, oh, you know, this is a silly thing.
It’s not for me.
What’s your advice to a person like that?
Yeah.
First, I’d say just get started.
The good news here is the potential impact is high because you’re now, I think, approaching billions of people on the social platforms.
On the other end, the downside’s so limited because if it doesn’t resonate, no one’s going to see it except you.
So just get out there and go.
I think that it’s really, really important to make things that are approachable to people, and that you’re not just taking and translating the motions and the information without context for people that you might do in a newsletter or on your website or in mediums that you might be more comfortable with.
I can give you examples of that in action because I think a lot of times what you might normally do is take something like, don’t share your text message password ever, right?
We see that blasted when we get a security code for two-factor authentication.
We see it on websites.
It’s one thing to get that.
We all know that, and if we get a newsletter around that saying don’t do that, we’re apt to be numb to that newsletter because you kind of go, I already know that.
Whereas on TikTok, what you can do is bring that into context.
Why tens of thousands of people fall for that text message scam of the two-factor authentication every day is because of the context within which the scam occurs.
What typically will happen is someone will send you a message or call you and say, “Mary, I’m calling from, pick your financial institution, Chase’s security department. We’ve seen some suspicious transactions on your account. Please get in contact with us immediately so that we can confirm whether your account’s compromised or not.”
You, like everybody, would probably drop everything and connect.
It’s at that point where the scammer will say, “Hey, Mary, for your own protection of your account, and I know you’ll understand this, I’ve got to make sure that I’m talking to you. So I’m going to send you a text code right now on your phone that’s on file and confirm that it’s you.”
What they’re doing in the background is resetting your password on the online account.
It’s a scammer.
You’re just like, “Thank you for helping me.”
“Oh yeah, of course you have to know who I am.”
You give that, and then they’ll even say to you, “I reset your password for you.”
They’ll ask you a couple of transactions that are legitimate and you’ll say, “Yes, I did those,” because now they have access to your account.
They’ll say, “Okay, great. Sorry, our fraud alert systems were a little trigger-happy, but glad that we got this resolved and your account’s not been compromised, Mary.”
Then they’re off with access to your account and money.
If you get it in that context, then you’re a lot more apt to be aware and react.
A place like TikTok gives you the ability to, in a minute, explain something like that.
What is going on?
Why is it that so many people are falling for this stuff day in and day out?
I think that’s where we’ve found, and been surprised, that people engage quite a bit because they either go, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that,” or they go, “I’ve got to share this with my family member or loved one because I could see them responding in that way.”
Frankly, we serve tens of thousands of people across all 50 states.
We see it today, as every financial institution does.
You see folks who are impersonating the financial institution.
They are using one’s concern about their account being compromised as the lead, and then you think that that person is on your side, but they’re actually the fraudster and the scammer.
They get you.
So you just have this ability to get out there.
In our case, I’m talking about scams and fraud, but it could be about anything where you bring context and humanize your organization, I think, with people and make yourself a bit more relatable.
That’s what we’re at least trying to do in what we put out there.
Because financial services are a lot about trust at the end of the day.
For our segment in particular, it is probably the longest commercial relationship you’ve ever had.
When we ask you to come to Charlie and move your Social Security direct deposit over, we are asking you to move over from what’s likely the longest commercial relationship in your life.
That involves a lot of trust.
The idea that we’re not behind these thick walls and that we’re people like them, we think has resonance, especially in today’s world where everyone’s on those channels.
Yeah.
I just think it’s so interesting also because TikTok is also the place with a lot of bad advice, right?
The thing that blew up, of course, was the ATM fraud suggestion of how to get more money.
So I have to think you have found your way into a niche.
What’s the competition like?
Or have you been looking for, hey, who else is giving these fraud updates?
Yeah.
I mean, I’m a pioneer in some ways, for better or for worse, in the space.
I think that also reflects the opportunity for people in financial services because you could stake the area, the surface area, that you want to share with an audience around.
It’s very likely that it doesn’t exist, someone doesn’t exist there.
I agree with you that there’s a lot of junk advice on there, and there are a lot of fraudsters.
You even see, and the good news is these platforms have ways to control that, but you even see people come on the comments and say, you know, fraudsters come on the comments and say, “If you’ve been affected by this, I can help you through it. Call me now.”
Fortunately, there are controls where we can zap those sorts of comments out, but they’re there as well.
It’s so funny.
You know what?
I recently had to get my card canceled this week because it was like, oh, there’s a charge going on in Paris or whatever.
But I did take that moment of like, is this the bank or am I about to get scammed?
In this case, it was the bank.
But I will let you know, Kevin, I’m definitely going down for one of these scams, and I’m going to hit you up to be like, what do I do now?
Please do call.
My family members joke that I get so excited when I learn about a new one.
The basis of my excitement is, I get sad, of course, but the excitement is that we can share it with people because people are getting clever.
We had a babysitter who responded to an ad for an apartment that was priced much lower than comparable apartments.
In that excitement, they filled out an application and paid a $75 fee.
Of course, they had nothing to do with that building.
It was all completely fake.
You could see how someone could respond there in the excitement of not losing an apartment that’s $500 lower than the comparables.
If people know about that, then just like you said, they take that second to pause.
Because that’s what the scammers don’t want you to do.
They don’t really want you to think.
They want you to act.
If you just know, it might give you that couple of seconds where you’re like, well, is this my bank?
They initiated contact with me.
Why don’t I call the number on the back of my card?
If it feels off, before leaning into whatever action they want me to take.
Yeah.
I think this message is so important.
If I were a banker or credit union executive listening to this right now, of course they’re getting hosed by their customers falling for scams.
They want to get this messaging out themselves.
Kevin, you just mentioned you get excited about when there’s a new kind of fraud thing going on so you can share it.
How do you decide what to talk about in any given video?
Is it just something you hear right away?
Fortunately or unfortunately, there are just so many.
I’ve got a list of them.
Really, the criteria that I use is, is it something that could affect a lot of people or is affecting a lot of people?
Then, can we deliver that in a message that’s not just kind of dry?
Because if it’s super dry, no one wants, whether it’s on TikTok or anywhere, somebody to be parochial and talk down to them.
This is also why I chose to walk down the street.
It’s like having a discussion with a nephew or family member who’s saying, “Hey, have you heard about this?”
As I hear about those, I document them.
Then I always try to take a form of, what is it?
Explain it.
Then, what can you do to fight back?
Because I want to make it always really, really actionable in what’s happening.
As an example, what’s my next one?
Jury duty scams.
I just got called for jury duty.
It did feel like a scam.
Yes.
And I’m not claiming going to jury duty is a scam.
It’s a good service.
But what happens is they prey on this because you get this notice.
Like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do?
They’ll typically lean in and say to you that you’re late for jury duty and this is final notice and there will be a warrant for your arrest.
You’re like, yeah, maybe I didn’t check the mail or whatever.
Contact us now.
They’re trying to steal your information in that case.
When you get there, they’re going to say, “I need to confirm your identity, Social Security number,” if you call that number.
What can you do to fight back?
Go to the actual local court system site.
Don’t engage.
Don’t assume that where the paper directs you is where you should go.
Certainly don’t default to calling a phone number.
And if there is a phone number, you can Google that phone number to check, as an example.
These are the things that, unfortunately, we’re going to have to do more and more because the surface area with AI is just making the scams and fraud increase.
Before, you had to have a call center or really put, to some degree, one-to-one labor behind the attempted scam.
Certainly scammers figured out, and there’s a wonderful Economist podcast series called Scam Inc. that talks about the whole world behind these scam call centers that exist.
But folks found out, how do you make it cheaper?
By outsourcing the call centers abroad and da da da.
Now with AI, one person can write a prompt that says, go to everyone named Mary and claim that they’re late for jury duty in the greater LA area.
Then for those who respond, do this.
Then if they respond this way or that way, then do this.
You get down a chain where their attempt is to get, you know, 10 identities that they then quickly open accounts against, drain money and create havoc because of identity being stolen.
AI just frankly expands the surface area.
What’s tough is it flips things too for banks, credit unions, others.
It wasn’t that long ago where using voice as a means for authentication was considered a best practice.
It’s kind of futuristic and forward.
I wanted to ask you about this.
Yes.
I know you’ve talked about Sam Altman’s recent statements around it with OpenAI, and I completely agree because, in fact, some of the futuristic, forward-looking best practices are now the biggest doors of vulnerability.
I think all of us have to continually be thinking about evaluating the approaches that we take in an AI world.
What made sense before, and not just assume that it carries over in what happens today.
In some ways, I think the stakes are just much higher.
I think every financial services institution is going to face a tsunami, and we’ve got to be constantly evolving to the fact that it just doesn’t take much effort to initiate fraud anymore and scams.
We’ve got to have mechanisms to be responsive to that.
Now, the gift, though, I’ll say this is, we have visibility and responsibility and some level of authority at every transaction.
That puts us in a very unique place if you’re a banking app like we are, or a bank or a credit union, including even as money’s about to come out of the ATM.
That gives us interesting data and a responsibility to try to act on that data.
As an example, we’ve talked about this feature set we have at Charlie called SpeedBump, where we add friction and slow things down at times.
If you see somebody who’s added a new payee all of a sudden and then sends money the second after that payee, that has the fingerprints of a potential scam that’s utilizing urgency to get money from someone.
So what you can respond there to that transaction is bring context and say, “Hey, scammers prey on urgency. You may want to test the urgency of this.”
Two, scammers often pretend to be someone they’re not.
They might pretend to be a grandkid.
Here’s a best practice of how you can verify identity of somebody who claims to be someone.
Someone might text you and say, “I lost my phone. This is my new number, Grandma. Send me some money. Don’t tell anyone.”
Well, the best practice is to contact them via a mechanism other than the one they initiated contact on, one that’s known for that person or that company.
When it’s a company, you could use Google and the like.
So, a lot of work for all of us.
That’s how I look at it.
But a lot of opportunity.
Definitely a lot of opportunity.
I think that’s really good.
Check the source.
That’s always good.
But it’s easy to get tricked.
I fell for a terrible scam years ago where I got locked out of my apartment and I just hired the top search on Google for a locksmith because my dog was inside.
It was a hot day.
That ended up being a criminal circle that I hired and came to my front door.
I was like, “You’re welcome, neighbors. I did that.”
And I think you’re laughing about it because you’ve got such a positive disposition, but it’s fitting that your podcast is called Money Isn’t Everything.
There is such a psychological toll, and it’s different for especially our audience, where typically people are living off a very fixed income.
Yes.
They’re not in a phase where they’re generating income.
So if you’re hit by something like that, where then they take your money and they don’t open your lock, or then they give you a key and use the copy of that key to come in and take your money, there’s a huge psychological toll.
That gets, in my view, underreported because it is very hard to quantify.
Typically, people, especially in the demographic we serve, they’re ashamed.
They don’t laugh it off.
They’re ashamed.
My mom had a family member send her a message saying that she needed money and immediately, please don’t tell anyone, I’ll explain later.
She drove, sent money via Western Union to Cyprus.
My mom is a doctor who’s giving advice to people in 15-minute increments around their well-being every single day.
She was just so ashamed.
The $2,000 certainly is material, but more than that, she just felt like, oh my gosh, how could I fall for this?
The reality is most people fall for something.
I’ve fallen for things.
It’s the reality of the world that we live in today.
Yeah.
I’m glad you brought that up because I’ve been robbed in other ways, and it is embarrassing.
But I imagine as you age, or there’s something like maybe you’re encountering memory loss or something, it’s going to affect you psychologically when something like that happens.
You would be embarrassed, or you’d likely be embarrassed, and you would want to hide that.
So that is a real challenge to actually know what is the number.
How pervasive is this problem?
Other than we know that it’s big.
That’s where I think that the headline numbers on how much people are affected from a dollar standpoint is underreported because people are so ashamed that they’re not reporting it.
So it’s only the subset of people who report it or file a police report or get it into some sort of thing.
If someone calls you asking you if you’ve been defrauded, you may not respond to the survey in the same way.
But I’m hopeful because we’re in the very early innings.
The feature that we launched called SpeedBump, where if the data gives us an indication that there could be potential fraud, be it that example I gave you about someone adding a new contact and then sending money right away, we pause it for six hours and notify them of best practices.
We have documented over a million dollars in fraud that’s been prevented.
Wow.
And we’re a tiny startup.
We aim to be big.
You can have real impact if you think things through.
There’s an adjustment period for the customers, which, if you want, I’m happy to take you through.
But it’s one where there’s a lot we could do.
I’m optimistic.
Yeah.
Kevin, I do want you to take me through because I’m also curious.
I’ve now seen a couple other examples, mostly in other countries, of the neobank or challenger bank adding a little bit of a pause button before a payment goes through.
Would you recommend this for a broad brand, even for a brand that’s not just serving older adults?
Would you recommend something like that?
I totally would.
Let me just maybe start in saying that friction is kind of like a dirty word in our industry, right?
Everyone wants to move things faster, and it’s like now.
You’re making friction.
Oh, it’s the best feature.
Right.
So it was, for us, a risky move.
I mentioned the results that we’re seeing.
Again, we don’t just pause, but we couple that with alerts in multiple ways, email, text message, in-app, and then that contextualized education that happens.
So if it’s a new device that’s logged in, we would give you information that it’s likely that your password could be compromised in this scenario.
Then afterwards, six hours later, the transaction happens.
So in an ACH transaction, it doesn’t actually slow it down.
What it does do is just give you that second to pause.
I think that’s valuable for everyone on every platform.
At the end of the day, it’s a mechanism for consumer empowerment.
At first, and this is where I think the important thing is, if you just add it with the person, your customer, not comprehending the basis for why you’re doing it, the first reaction is going to be like, why is this slowed down?
What happened?
What the heck is going on here?
Because it is so counter to everything that you would expect.
When they understand what it’s for and see it in action, we find that they love it.
So for us, it’s another mechanism of empowerment.
You can turn it off.
Most people don’t.
Some people do.
But in this particular scenario, it doesn’t really compromise the experience because it’s not like your money gets there any slower.
It just gives you the ability to pull it back before it...
I’m oversimplifying, but it’s not that different from putting a 10-second pause on your outbox in your email.
Yes.
Which I also love because I could have written something sloppy, or like, oh, that came out harsher when you can’t hear my tone.
Yeah.
Like you were flooded in a moment or, yeah.
Exactly.
Or, how dare you ask me for this?
Exactly.
Or even you included someone that probably shouldn’t have been included, which again could happen in a financial transaction.
All those parallels kind of apply.
If you just have a second where that information is reinforced, you could have mistyped.
Yeah.
Right?
We all do.
You could have done $600 instead of $60, and it’s a real pain then to go try to pull that back.
Yes.
The coordination involved.
So I would recommend it.
The challenge is, how do you build that functionality in an elegant way and then communicate within that context what is happening so that they see it as a feature and not a bug?
You could take it anywhere in life.
If you’re driving down a road, any road, and then all of a sudden I add speed bumps to the road, your first reaction is going to be like, whoa, what the heck’s going on?
What are these things going on here?
Now, if I’ve got a sign that says, children at play or new school going up, you’re going to go, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense.”
Because I hope that someone who’s unfamiliar with this street comes here, I think the speed bumps are a really good thing because they’ll just make them slow down and then be aware of what’s going on in context.
That’s not the easiest thing to do because all of us don’t read everything that’s put in front of us.
No.
We just don’t.
We just kind of go.
You have to just continually work on bringing...
We’ve got a wonderful colleague, Jenny, who is a designer with a lot of experience in financial services, who’s constantly thinking about how do you get that message across in a way that makes sense.
Part of the challenge is we’re swimming in this stuff all day.
So for us to understand it, it’s like an increment.
We have to go from living it every day to this one new feature.
We’re on the fifth stair, we’ve got to go to six.
The average consumer has to go from the ground, first stair.
That can get lost because they’re kind of coming in and being like, “Wait, what? You slowed it down? Is this fraud? Do I need to call you?”
It’s the worst thing that could happen, right?
Where then it just makes it so that they’re now concerned that something happened that wasn’t supposed to happen.
They’re calling.
We try not to keep people on hold, but certainly they wait a few minutes to talk to someone.
They have to validate their identity with that person in the call center.
Then it’s just wasted time around what’s happening if we could just do it there in the app.
Marketing things is always a trick, but that one would be especially tricky.
But I do feel like it’s a very significant feature.
Kevin, I don’t want to guzzle your time, and I still want to take you down a few different paths.
One is the segment of “That’s What You Said.”
This was a while back when you said this, and I think you were talking about when you were launching Charlie.
You said, “Whenever you launch a new company, it’s nerve-wracking.”
Do you still feel that way?
I’m super excited now about where we are.
The biggest thing when you launch something new that drives me, the nerve-wracking component, is you don’t know if you’re building something people want.
You dream of it.
You talk to people.
Frankly, it’s a challenge because most people are nice.
They’ll say yes.
But then they actually have to sign up for the account and move things over.
When we started, it was our moms, the co-founders’ moms, and now we have tens of thousands.
So I’m past that stage of the most nerve-wracking part.
I always feel it with every new feature and everything that we’re doing.
Right now, we’re doing something that’s kind of fun where you can gift a coffee or an ice cream to your best friend using our payments platform if you’re a Charlie member.
It’s a moment to enjoy the summer, engage in delight, and commercially it’s an interesting way for us to have friends of customers who trust us experience Charlie, not hearing about it via an ad, but seeing the practice of moving dollars to create a delightful moment.
We just launched it to 20% today, this morning, and it’s always nerve-wracking because you’re like, I want people to be having ice cream this week.
Is it going to work?
Are they going to understand it the way that we intend to express it?
Is the tech going to work?
Is it going to show up as a black screen on Android phones?
Those sorts of things.
Yeah.
I think that’s a really sweet idea.
I didn’t mean to make it cheesy, but I did.
Yeah.
I just saw in American Banker another headline about they’re giving free metro rides to New York City residents, up to five or something like that.
I’m like, oh, that’s so smart.
You’re a digital brand.
You’ve got to get awareness.
Those are two great examples.
I did want to frame up how the nerve-wracking part, because to me, you really embody an entrepreneur.
I think the evidence, of course, was in what you’re doing now, very obvious what you’re doing now.
But also I did see your segment with Bill Clinton back in the day when you were a young boy interviewing him when he was then president, which I have to imagine was nerve-wracking, or it would be for me.
What did that feel like?
Yes.
So just a quick second of context on this.
CBS just did a story on a deep friendship that came out of that experience for me, of the person in the White House Media Affairs Office who granted me that interview as a sixth grader who was pestering him.
Without a doubt.
But, you know, there, in some ways, I was more nervous reuniting with the president, which is part of a segment a few months ago, than when I was in sixth grade.
Because you’re in the flow, and in that moment you’re overtaken by just, you’re in the game and in the moment.
I didn’t have time because I pestered him for several weeks and then I got a call on a Friday to get there on a Monday.
Wow.
So we scattered to get the questions that we were going to ask and the logistics.
I hadn’t told my parents.
So I had to get their permission.
Like, what’s going on?
But yeah.
I think you hit on something that I don’t think anyone’s ever said to me before, but I feel this.
I genuinely think that it was my first foray into entrepreneurship, which is, you think of something that in today’s world would seem unattainable or certainly different than what typically happens, and you try to get great people to believe in you who have experience and reach that you don’t have.
You just kind of optimistically take a step forward in what you do.
That’s what we do at Charlie, and we’re really blessed that customers trust us.
We work hard to make the experience better.
You’re in this mix.
Your audience just, it is tough to run financial services businesses because they’re, in some ways, I joke that if you’re building a banking app, it’s like building a skyscraper sideways, and then you’ve got to lift it.
That seems fair.
Right?
You can’t start by being like, oh, we’ll let you use your debit card at Walgreens, but you can’t use it at the ATM.
Sorry, we can’t handle ACH transactions or other things.
You’ve got to do it all, just in terms of basic money movement and the like.
There’s an expectation and the experience that’s there.
So it’s humbling that we build something and people trust us with it every day.
We know with our segment in particular, two-thirds of retirees live off their Social Security check exclusively.
When you’re bringing your Social Security over, that is the start and end for most people of their financial world.
The fact that they bring that over to Charlie means a ton to us.
The most nerve-wracking part at the beginning, which is, is anyone going to trust us?
Got a lot of skepticism.
People are like, yeah, right.
Somebody who, by definition, they’re going to be the absolute most skeptical, understandably, audience, and the last audience that you’d want to serve with a tech-forward sort of approach.
But hey, you know, everyone who’s got them, never underestimate Grandma and Grandpa.
I agree.
I agree with that.
I think another through line with you is champion of counterintuitive things, starting with, or most recently, with TikTok.
So you are proving people wrong, Kevin.
Two quick questions.
If someone wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way, or to find out more about Charlie?
You bet.
So me personally, I’m on pretty much every social platform.
Go to Banking on Kevin, Banking on Kevin on all the platforms.
My DMs are open.
So love to hear from anyone on that front.
Then Charlie is Charlie.com.
You can find more information there about everything that we do.
Awesome.
Last question.
What’s the image on your phone’s lock screen?
It’s my daughter, who is two.
So the interchange between my daughter and my son.
I have a four-year-old son.
So it is my daughter at the moment.
Oh, that’s really sweet.
Well, Kevin, it’s been such a joy to have you on Money Isn’t Everything.
Thank you so much for the time and the candor and the good times.
Yeah, thank you.
It’s a pleasure to reconnect.
Okay.
I loved all of this interview, but one striking line from it is his stance on tech and older adults.
As Kevin says, never underestimate Grandma and Grandpa.
If you enjoyed today’s Money Isn’t Everything episode, make sure to hit that follow button on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you’re listening or watching.
I’ve got more great conversations coming your way, and you don’t want to miss them.
Next up, I’ll be in conversation with a founder who’s working on gambling payments in a way to help someone avoid what could be an addiction.
Catch you then.
Enjoying Money Isn't Everything?
Subscribe on your favorite platform