Effective Financial Inclusion with Rodney Williams

Hi. This is Paul Doleser, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Rodney Williams, and our topic is effective financial inclusion.

Rodney is the cofounder and president of Solo Funds, a financial services company enabling community banking and lending solutions for everyday Americans. 82% of their members live in underserved ZIP codes. Rodney Williams, welcome to the Awarepreneur show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a absolute pleasure.

It's an honor to have you here. And before we get into this topic of effective financial inclusion, Rodney, what would somebody wanna know that goes, like, a little bit beyond the great intro? Okay. Yeah. You sound awesome in the, like, polished bio version. But what would somebody wanna know about your background, about why you're passionate about financial inclusion?

My background? Well, I'm originally from Baltimore. Where I grew up, my parents were originally from Jamaica. So I'm Caribbean. My family lived a ton or I think they had a ton of jobs, as you can imagine sometimes. We're a working class group. And, I think, honestly, some of the experiences that I saw growing up as a child were really important to to to my thoughts around financial inclusion, my thoughts on, you know, why I went to college and completed 4 degrees or, you know, even before I started this company, I started many companies. I think my entire life has been trying to address some of the financial things that I may have missed, in my in my childhood. Yeah.

And and one of the things, pitch and one of the things we talked about before I hit record is you're really zeroing in on helping people who are living paycheck to paycheck. And talk to us in 2024. Like, it seems like that's a growing segment of the population. Is that fair to say?

It's the vast majority of the population. And and I think that's probably you know, if you look at the US population of, some somewhere between 3 to 400,000,000, it's over 200,000,000 that are currently living paycheck to paycheck. So it's the vast majority of Americans have very, very limited savings or, you know, their savings isn't substantial to cover their experiences for any prolonged time period. That is the standard, and that is the current.

The 200,000,000, last I heard were, like, 330, 340,000,000 people. So we're talking about almost 2 thirds of the population. Let's call it 60% of the population. And and, again, before we get into the specifics of what you're doing, Rodney, you've been in the impact space for a while. And often when I hear financial and impact in the same sentence, I see 2 main things, and this is not on most people's radar in the impact space, the issue you're talking about. 1, either how do we invest for retirement? How do we invest surplus? And one of the things I hear you saying is more than 2 thirds of the population or 60% of the doesn't have any surplus. Or people are talking about impact investing. If you have a lot of surplus, how can you have positive impact with that? Now those are still important issues, but is it fair to say that sometimes those issues get a little more airtime than the issues that we're talking about right now?

11000%. To be honest, there's not enough attention to the correct issue or the correct problem. It's there's a lot of misrepresentation of what that problem may be, and I'm I'm hoping to provide some clarity. Yeah. Great.

So thanks for saying that in Impact World. So let's you know, if you like this interview as much as I think you're gonna like this interview, let's do what we do and help amplify Rodney's work. Because I'm with you, Rodney. I'm a little frustrated with the impact space in that, you know, we're missing 60% of the population and what their issues are, and that's why I'm thrilled to have you here. So enough about that. I'll get off my, you know, milk crate and you know? But this is a really big issue, and the vast majority of the impact space is completely overlooking it or just ignoring it. So thanks for the work you do. Now help us understand, like, if you go back a few years and you're saying, I wanna help these 200,000,000 people in US and worldwide, we're talking billions of folks who are going paycheck to paycheck, barely making it.

Like, how did you start into this space, and what were some of the, like, first iterations that didn't work? I don't I don't like just doing the polished version of, oh, I tried this and it worked, and now I have this awesome startup that's a unicorn, which you do. But wind back a little bit. What was some of your early thinking, and what were some of the things you tried that didn't work when you were thinking about helping people who are living week to week?

Well, I think this story started with me checking down on on solutions that you know, checking down on problem. It was like validating whether it was a problem and whether it was a true solution. And where most people tend to start out is financial literacy. Right? You know, we need proper education. They need, you know, they need proper x y z. And, you know, I would tell you that, you know, my my my own personal family and my own personal community became my my study ground. But, you know, I quickly learned that these were college educated individuals. I quickly learned that these are working class people.

And what I realized that it there there weren't a problem. There weren't a lack of understanding of what to do when they had money. It was the mere fact that they don't. Meaning, they were in between jobs or they weren't in the absolute career that they thought they would be in or, you know, you know, no one thinks that they're gonna be a single mother. You know? And and and these things kind of cause which were actually more consistent amongst this group than the consistency of an income. It was more consistent to have income variability. And and what I would try to what I really tried to understand is, like, wait a minute. So inconsistent cash flow and where working class people in today's market are very different than the working class community of of even my father's.

Right? It's very rare that you're gonna find someone who worked at 30 you know, worked at General Motors for 35 years in today's society. That is something that no longer exists. Today's working class mechanic will work across a number of mechanic shops throughout their life. And and that inconsistency in income creates the cash flow problem that that I started to unpack. So number 1, I'm unpacking the fact that it's not a financial literacy problem. I'm unpacking the fact that it's really an income problem. Like and I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, Paul, how can I get everyone jobs? And that's unrealistic. Right? Right? That's not that's too big of a problem.

But what I thought was, okay. Well, people need to be able to access capital without income because they need it when they're in between, or they need it when they have a reduction in income, or they need it when they have an increase in expenses that are not planned. And these this is when may need it because it seemed to be this is when they fall into significantly more expenses. Right? The simple, example that I always tell and I and I used to hear this was a single mom, you know, rushing to get her daughter to school and parks incorrectly and gets a $50 parking ticket. And it's really tight living and do not have the $50 to pay the parking ticket. Well, number 1, if that is not paid, that parking ticket will turn into a $250 problem. No one would ever tell you that a parking ticket is would be predatory. But because no one who has $50 ever experiences the $250 problem.

And even if it is a $250 problem, I've reached the financial security that it doesn't even matter. So what I'm ultimately saying is that these these these limited cash flow problems cause really expensive problems, and and and then they create traps. And then it creates a scenario where it's very difficult for them to improve their financial situation. So I really kinda dug down into that insight, and those are the things that we did in the beginning.

Awesome. So you really spent time getting clear on what was the problem that you wanna address because financial inclusion is a huge issue. And, you know, like you said, well, wouldn't it be great to get everybody jobs? But that's a big issue, and you felt like, I'm not sure that we can move the needle there in the way that we want to. But this issue of inconsistent and common when expenses arise, not having the cash in the bank to pay that parking ticket, the car needs tires, or you're gonna slide off the road and, you know, do down 100 or 1,000 of dollars of damage to your car. These are the kinds of things that you put your finger on. Is that fair to say?

Exactly. Exactly.

So tell us, like, how'd you build from there? Okay. You knew what the problem was, and you're looking around. And did you see models of people who were doing similar things, or was this, like, pretty much start from a blank sheet of paper?

You know, we we started to think, you know, where were other people getting it? And this is what led us to the other problem. So, today's environment, when it comes to this type of capital for to to meet this demand, number one option was a credit card, which tends to be pretty maxed out for this individual. If you just to give you a stat that's, you know, alarming, the bank the credit card balances today are at an all time. Right? So they're they're pretty maxed out, so there's not much room there for an emergency. When they could sell something, which they do, that's the entire market of selling things. What they could ask friends or family, and that is still, by far, the number one way. Today, the average household lends to another friend or family member over $3,000 a year.

Wow.

Right? So we were starting to uncover this thing. Like, wait a minute. Wait a minute, guys. So, like, there's so where are folks going? And so we this friends and family, people stepping up for each other, we really got we gravitated towards it because of the traditional products had limited capacity, very limited capacity in the credit world when you think about the high balances of credit card, but also the stipulations from institutional investors as it relates to giving someone money who doesn't have a job. Like, you just won't get it. Like, if you talk to any bank in this market, they would tell you this group is not deemed credit worthy or they're high risk. This was the the the general consensus. So but I we really got fascinated with this group of community.

And and it gets to the other problem that we realized is we started to see that the same group that needed capital, you know, during tax season, they had capital. They started or or said differently, they would be saving couple $100 or $500 or a $1,000, but the capital that they were saving wasn't growing. So if it's not growing, they can't protect themselves in the future problem. You know? So we we took a wild guess, and we really said, no. What? I think the other problem is the solution that we need to address. And the other problem was that when someone does have a little bit of savings, it's not growing. They're they're related. So that means it's very easy for them to get back into the debt trap.

Prime example, you know, and I and I have many examples of this, but there was a software engineer in Silicon Valley who got laid off in COVID, 6 months out of a job, wiped out of savings. He was doing a ton of gig economy work. He found Solo. Solo was his lifeline. Eventually, he got a great job, and he became a lender. And that is the real dynamic of what happened in today's environment. And we and we've seen that on even micro scales. You know? For example, there's seasonality with a lot of gig economy workers, like Amazon workers during the holiday season.

So, what we saw, for example, is Amazon employees had a lot more savings. They had a lot more overtime. They had a lot more hours, and they had a lot more savings during that time period, but it was just sitting in their checking account at Chase. It wasn't growing interest. They weren't even investing it. They weren't growing it. So when those hours tend to be cut back later on in the year, they're wiping that savings out. So what we learned is that you kinda have to create a way for this market to also grow the capital they do have, And and that's what got us to a peer to peer marketplace, to be honest.

We landed at the peer to peer marketplace by by checks, checking, you know, out of certain things because it was just as important that the both the problems were interrelated. No.

At certain phases of the year, people didn't have enough to cover the basics. And then at other phases of the year, there was some surplus, but that surplus was at very low or no interest. And it wasn't growing, so they couldn't get ahead and protect themselves for the next time things got a little lean and there was an unanticipated need. Is that okay, Harry? You got it. Yeah.

You got it.

So you landed on SOLO. Like, the it that that's the start up. Tell us a little bit about what you launched, and when did you launch it.

Yeah. So, you know, we initially launched solo in 2018. We launched solo after probably participating in about 6 different accelerators across the country. We traveled to Columbus, Ohio and participated. We traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio. We participated in Techstars and Kansas City. I mean, if you there was an accelerator that we could gain guidance and assistance, we didn't. But we launched in 2018 with a very simple version of the product.

I will tell you, it didn't do much well. But what gave us when we knew we had something special, we launched it on the the App Store. And within the first 5 minutes, someone requested a loan, and within the first hour, someone funded the loan. And they were complete strangers to the company. And and that was very magical to see.

But you said, oh, look at this. Something's happening here. Even though it wasn't an optimal launch, you know, it was, it was an early iteration. And what would you say to other entrepreneurs who, like, want it to be perfect at launch and get all the bells and whistles and, you know, are like, oh, I don't have enough money to launch the version I want, so I'm going to go chase more money. What would you say to somebody who's a little bit caught up in that cycle?

It's the wrong cycle. Yeah. I I promise you at every step of the way, we approach things that, like, just what we gotta do today to prove tomorrow. Right? And we still approach it like that. You know? I would tell you, we still haven't built the product that we intended to build in 2018. We still have it. We still are operating on our original road map. And it's because, you know, you have to kinda focus, especially in things that are tackling really massive problems, which I hope, as a start up, you're addressing something that has a massive problem and a massive opportunity.

You know? And we're we're all social entrepreneurs here, so we're addressing things that inherently are difficult to do. And and and I to us, to get a chance at doing something that it would be considered impossible, I think it starts with a very, very phased approach, a daily approach. And and that has been, honestly, been the key to our success.

So we're gonna get into a little bit more how this works. But, like, at a very top level, Rodney, the question that if I am a listener, I'm like, wow, this sounds cool. But the question that comes to my mind is around trust. How do you get people who don't know each other? Like, that very first loan that happened in 2018, you didn't know either party, you didn't know the person borrowing money, you didn't know the person lending money, and they didn't know each other. How do you get complete strangers who I would assume have an understanding, like, hey. This makes sense, and I understand somebody might get a parking ticket or need tires or, you know, their kid has to go to the doctor because they're sick and you didn't say for it. I understand that in theory, but, like, this is my money. Like, how do you build trust with complete strength?

Oh, man. We trust could be its own road map in something like that. You know? What I think we under we discovered early on is that, in the absence of trust, humans were way more empathetic than you could ever imagine. So when that first transaction and many transactions thereafter were about the human insight, and that's what we learned. And what I learned is the same reason why there are people who scroll GoFundMe or see a GoFundMe of something that they're related to, where they find a connection to the person, they they tend to to to, you know, give them money or donate or, you know, they see someone on the side of the road. So in the beginning, a lot of the lenders were doing it. They they felt a relationship with the person. We saw a lot of women lending to other women.

We saw a lot of, you know, if someone said, you know, I'm looking for a $100 to pay a pet bill. They usually were being funded by a pet owner. Right? Like so they were like this natural human insight. And I honestly say it was beautiful. Still beautiful because it's there. The the second phase is when we created a score, And it was we were trying to develop a score based on the risk of the borrower so that the lender could understand the likelihood that they would ultimately get repaid. And we're creating this score, you know, needed to predict the score on things that were very easily understood. So for us, that became cash flow.

And but as you can imagine, things like an algorithm and a and a and a model takes time to work. So the score had to take it needed time to develop, but it was part of this road map. And I would tell you the one of the the final pieces and or the I would say the third so there's 3 2 more pieces that really nail trust. But the 3rd piece is something that we created called lender protection. And this was Solo stepping in to say, I'm gonna help you establish trust. So, basically, for an additional fee, in the event that you weren't paid back, Solo stepped in and credited the lender what they would have made in return. That was a huge multiplier for a business. It it it it kinda gave the individual lender the this concept that Stelo is in it with me.

Right?

Yeah. And almost like an insurance mechanism that if somebody wanted that, they could ensure that they would get paid back.

Exactly. That was an extremely important piece. And I think the final piece for us was to manage the schedule repayments of the borrowers more intelligently and more thoughtfully. And and and that means, you know, allowing them to preschedule, making it very easy for them to repay, things of that nature. And and that once we kind of that was kind of the basic floor model of establishing Shreds. But those are, like, the the four things that that kicks in. And as a new user today, you you come in and, you you know, you see people helping people. You see the score.

You can trust the score. You say, wow, there's protection services. Wow. And then you actually we have this global marketplace where it's a timeline. We have a global timeline. You can actually see where everyone who's repaying their loans in real time. And and that's that that page is very powerful when people are new. That that is a real time feed of people repaying well.

Very cool. So, like, 2018, 2019, 2020, like, how many loans was Solo doing in those first couple of years?

You know, I I would tell you that we were probably doing, you know and and and 20 in 2018, we we did a few thousand, maybe a few 100. And when I mean a few thousand, I mean, like, cheetah. Right? I think in in 2019, that increased to, like, probably, like, around that 8 to 12000 loan range and in 2020. And with us being turned off for a portion of the year, we we we crossed over a 100,000 loan.

Wow. So from 2,000 to 10000 to a 100,000 in your 1st 3 year. Wow. Wow. And what was, like, the average size of the loan as you were getting started? Were they $50, or are they $500, or a $1,000?

We kinda control that. There's some there's some things that we learned across the way that that that we implemented. For example, every other credit product in the market, if you go and say you know, you go you you even fall. If you go to a credit card comp I mean, apply for a a credit card and you say, I only want a 500 dollar credit card. They're gonna try to give you a $50,000 card.

Right.

We we think that is predatory because because you're you you may be giving money to someone who doesn't need it nor doesn't want the temptation of having it. For example, when we when you come to Solo, you only can request up to $100 in the beginning, and then you ladder up. And we are very we are we communicate you should only request what you need and what you can pay back, not what you can have. It's a very different mindset. So we're what what I'm saying is that we kinda create this ladder system where it ladders users as they and then it it's it's correlated to the score. So when you pay on time, you're scoring pieces. Your amount, you can request on pieces. If you pay late, the amount you request decreases, and and it continues like such.

So our average has historically been have have always been between that $20250 range.

And that's one of the vaguely built trust is that somebody comes in at a100. They can't request $50,000 at their first interaction with solo. They can do a 100, and then when they pay back, and then they can if they goes well, they can do more. Is that fair to say?

You got it. I mean, by the time they get to our max, there's a lot of muscle memory there. There's a lot of consumer behavior memory. Their entire mindset is rewired. You know? They're not thinking about, you know, I can get this loan to do some luxury. It's very specific. I need this loan to address this need. And I'm going to use it, and then I'm gonna pay it back because that is the right thing to do to make sure I pause hold.

Exactly.

Very cool. I got so many more questions for you, Rania. I particularly wanna lean in a little bit on the investor side because we haven't talked much about that, as well as what's happened since 2020. But before we get into those specifics, I just wanna take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing 1 or more important decisions in your impact business? And you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living. But you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's gonna cost you many 1,000 of dollars. You're looking for an affordable, targeted, and time efficient type of support. Through paulzellizer.com, I offer a strategy session package.

These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 1 to 3 immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, or refine your pricing structure so it's both inclusive and provides you with a great quality of life. You can find out more by clicking below, and thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back, everybody. I am here with Rodney Williams, the founder of Solo. We are talking about effective financial inclusion. Rodney, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for, like, kinda opening the book and sharing how this works. So give us a little snapshot now.

Here we are. We're recording this in April of 2024, 6 years after you started. Like, how many loans are y'all doing, and how's the average loan changed, Eddie, in that time?

Yeah. Hey hey, Paul. Do you do you mind if I if I take ownership of what you know? And and maybe we can revisit this podcast a year from now. But, you know, I firmly believe in my myself and my cofounder firmly believe that there has not been a financial company that can quantify a bigger impact than I'm going to tell you. You know? And it's really important to say that because when you talk about all of these companies that make all of these promises, all of these public announcements, and we talk about what they've really done, I cannot find a measurable piece of data that's better than what I'm gonna tell you. So number 1, we have enabled over $300,000,000 funding for people who live paycheck to paycheck since now beginning.

Wow.

Right? I think all of the donations of the Black Lives Matter movement all together were just under 300,000,000.

Wow.

Right? But we have done 300,000,000 or over 300,000,000 of $200 loan. That is over 1,500,000 loans. I mean, that just last year alone, that was a 165,000,000. And it wasn't us. It was the community that did it.

Yeah.

So when when I I'm just a voice of a community who's decided that they they number 1, they decided that solo can help them make an impact. And number 2, they're doing it because they feel connection. They're like, I'm the same guy here. They're like, I know what this other person is going through.

Yeah.

And all Solo did is made it make it safe. And you know what? I had a $1,000 sitting at Chase anyway, and I wasn't helping anybody with it. To and to be honest, no one even thought that I could even help anybody because I only had a $1,000. But guess what? I can't. Like, we kinda, like, completely unlocked something here. And we're really proud about that. We're chasing a $1,000,000,000. We we we believe we can get to a $1,000,000,000 impact.

And I don't know a financial company in the world that can articulate anything better.

That's beautiful, Ronnie. And it's also the the dollars are incredibly impressive, but it's also who you're impacting, and it's on both sides. Sitting over here, you're helping people who are living paycheck to paycheck, but you're also helping people learn how to be impact investors who the impact investing world mostly doesn't give a damn about, or it's not even on their radar. Right? That person of the 1,000 or 5000 or 10000 in the bank. That's not you know, like, to be an accredited investor in the United States, you have to self certify that you are either making $100,000 a year. You have a 6 figure income and or you have a $1,000,000 of assets. If you're married, it's $200,000 as a couple, where $2,000,000 as assets. Right? So there that's who the investing world is skewed towards.

And sitting over here, what you're doing, it's on both sides of both helping somebody who is living paycheck to paycheck be more proactive in avoiding some of these predatory practices through, you know, whether it's the credit card company or a car title loan company. Oh my gosh. You wanna talk about predatory. Right? And those are the forms of capital that are oftentimes available to somebody in that situation. But you're also helping a community that wants to be proactive and help the communities and the issues they care about find a way to do it and get a return, which is oftentimes called impact investing. But you're making that available and helping people learn how to do it and build those muscles in a way that the impact investing world keeps scratching their head and say, why is the impact investing world so white and so male? Right? And so limited in terms of the numbers of the population that people are participating in. You're you're really unlocking multiple challenges, not just one, which is awesome. I'm just I'm sitting here just kinda like, wow.

This is really cool.

Thank you. And, you know, you you uncovered something. I mean, like, you you know, to your point, and we we we have huge impact on them that have these focus areas and hasn't made the impact that I just articulated. You know, we we have these organizations that have decided, and and and it's because they it's it's you can allocate all the capital you want, but if you don't address the core problem that the the core financial problem that Americans are facing, and it's and this problem doesn't have an a color. This problem doesn't have an ethnicity. This problem doesn't have anything. It's just the way a capitalistic market works. It means that people will not all have jobs.

People will have cash flow issues, and it is a survival of the fittest. But at the same time, people will dream and aspire. And one day, they will get better footing of their financial situation. It happens. That's the American dream that we all signed up for. But no one has been interested up until us to try to address it in such a way. And and but to your point, that's I I do not believe we have grown because we have a celebrity endorser. We have not grown because we can pay money on advertising.

You know? We've only grown because if you go to your next Uber driver and say, if you heard of SOPA, then he he might tell you an incredible story. And that's why we've come.

Beautiful. Well, now I wanna help you grow. So we'll talk about that on another absolutely stop the recording. I have all sorts of ideas. But give us a sense, like, you're hinting at it now, Rodney, but look ahead, like, a year, 3 years. Like, where do you see Solo going?

Yeah. I mean, can can you imagine Solo as a public company with millions of community members who believe are users of the product, are invested into the concept, and can direct their impact to where they achieve?

Oh, hell yeah. I can. Matter of fact, I'll help that happen.

Yeah. I mean, that that's where we're gonna go. You know, I think, you know, for us, we're gonna enter our 1st global market later this year. You know, we want to help people across the globe that this is a this is a human problem. That's my like, it's it's not even just an American problem. It's a human problem across the the globe. And and then we want this to be a public company. And and and it's a public company that has multiple tiers of how people can invest in its future.

Right? Where you got the public markets, you have the markets markets. Right? And, you have our own market, so to speak. So I think that's our intention. Our intention is to bring a a public financial service company that is actually truly, truly built by the people, and the people are in control of the impact in which it makes. And, you know, I will tell you, Paul, we get approached by institutions all the time. Hey. Would you would you like to have institutional capital? Well, why don't you be a lender? No. Why don't we wanna turn you into a lender.

How about we give you 1,000,000 of dollars to turn you into a lender? And and we aggressively deny because that is not the that is if you that is not the that is not just the problem we're trying to fix. It's almost equally important. You have to give regular people the ability to grow their money. Because everybody today who has the ability to grow their money are wealthy. So you wanna you wanna close that gap. You wanna, you know, so the next time that that that single mom gets that $50 parking ticket, she's gonna go, I got that. I got that. I got that.

I can pay that now because I made a little extra $50 over the past 6 months lending on Sola.

Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. You wanna look at the people saying, hey. Let us give you a million. Do you wanna say no? Why don't you go on Solo and go make a loan?

Right? Stop it. Exactly. Exactly.

I love it. I love it. It's so contrarian, and we need that. So so, like, you were talking about going into global markets. So I I think what I'm hearing, but I like to ask obvious questions, Rodney and Nadasim. I think what I'm hearing is you've been US focused over these past 6 years since 2018, and now you're expanding beyond the US. And if that's the case, would it, like, tell us a little bit, if you can, where are you expanding to?

Yeah. You know, we we are initially initially expanding to Africa. And I will tell you, South America will be a very, very fast second. And Southeast Asia will be a 3rd. You know, that that is our that is our plan. But I I think it could be changed at some point in time. We'll see we'll see how how how how how how we do this. But we we we believe in in in this.

And, you know, we have active interest to go into Canada and the UK and, you know, parts of Eastern Europe. There's a lot of interest in this model. And and and and, honestly, the only thing that stops us or limits us today is our capitalization. We we kinda have to take our time and and in getting to our ultimate road map. But in the event we ever get the capitalization that I think we will require, I don't we will we will do our best to be everywhere that is there's a there's this problem of, cash flow.

Yeah. So tell us about, like, solo now. Like, tell us about your team and, you know, are you do you have an office? Are you distributed? Just give us a little bit. Like, what is the infrastructure of Sola, the company, making a 180,000 loans and growing quickly a year?

Yeah. So we are just under a 100 employees. We are a remote team because we had to be efficient, and it's not that we want to be. We opened up our first office, which we share with a animation company here in Los Angeles. We have 12 desks in that office. We have about 12 to 15 employees in the Los Angeles area, so those tend to get used pretty frequently. We have a a small group in New York, about 6 employees in New York City. And then the rest is all dispersed all over the world.

We have a group of incredible, bright engineers in Croatia. We have a group of engineers in Canada. We have a group of engineers in South America. We have 2 engineers in in in in Africa. We basically would hire you wherever you may be if you were proficient and you were passionate about our purpose and you thought you could add value. Our customer service team is split between the Caribbean, Mexico, and the Philippines. You know? What we have learned how to do remotely is actually pretty pretty it could be a case study itself.

Very cool. And when you do have an opening, I imagine, that might be on your website. I I get emails, especially from young people looking to work for Impact Organizations, and I think this would fit doing work at scale all the time. So go check out the solo website. I'll put a link in the show notes. So, Ravi, like, give us a sense if you this has been an incredible ride from, you know, conception to a 100 employees going global. You know, 1,000,000,000 I mean, 1,000,000 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars of loans unlocked and on your way to 1,000,000,000, like, in 6 years, that's really quite fast. If there's an impact entrepreneur who's you know, let's say where SOLO was 7 or 8 years ago, you know, starting to think about the problems, starting to do their research, really trying to refine in on the problem they wanna build, what 2 or 3 suggestions would you say to somebody who's very early on?

Yeah. You know, I would say connect to a problem and a purpose that you would do even if you lost at doing it over and over again. Meaning, the mere attempt to fix it is fulfilling you. I think it's big that means it's big enough, And that means it's a real passion of you. It's not something like, you're not doing it for the wrong reason. Because I I really believe you gotta do this type of work for the right reasons. Like, if you're being called to a life for purpose, you have to be stewards of that purpose. I think the second piece is that when you're being asked to do something that hasn't been done before, you have to learn things you've never learned, and you have to learn things that all your mentors haven't learned.

And you have to learn things that the industry hasn't learned, and you have to push people. You have to push people. You think about all of our, like have you have you ever wondered why I all of like, everyone that's an activist is really young. You know? From the beginning of our time, like, all coops, all activism, that it's driven by the young people. It's before they're taught to stay in their place. They still have the ability to dream. They still believe in something that should be fundamentally here that is not here, and they and they don't believe in the limitation of what they see. The older you get, you start to get PTSD a bit and, and you start to hold off.

So the third point is, please, please, please, please, do not lose your ability to dream of the place that you aspire to be or dream of the solution or dream of what you want. Yeah, I think I think those are the 3 things, that's connecting with that passion even in failure, and 2, to failure to learn and continue to learn. And 3, don't forget to hold on to the dream.

Beautiful. Thanks for that, Rodney. So similar question, but for the founder or the leader who's in growth stage. Right? You're in growth stage. A 100 employees. You're going global. It's working, and now it's about scaling. What would you say to that leader?

You know, funny thing is the same rules apply. I I think if if if I wake up tomorrow and think I know everything, I'm gonna we're gonna stop succeeding. Or if we wake up tomorrow and believe that or I lose my purpose, I may not make all the proper decisions that protect my users. Like, I think you have to hold on to the same things that got you there partly in terms of, like, the fundamentals. But, you know, I think what's different is that to get to the next level, you do have to create balance in your life. You have to take personal balance, and and and and and and I think that's important. That's what I would tell the person that reaches this stage is that they they gotta develop what personal balance means. I think they have to treat what balance and the culture means.

And I think the other thing is that I do think that companies need new things to get to the next level. So what they needed to get to this level is going to be very different. And what I'm probably talking about is the town around them. I'm talking about the team. You do need different things, and your job is to figure out those things as fast as possible.

So one other person I'd love to hear your thoughts, Rodney. That person who's never made a loan. Right, that person who's gonna be on the lending side of the peer to peer interaction that you're brokering at Solo, What would you say to somebody who's like, that sounds kinda interesting. I'd like to help somebody out. I've got $1,000 or $500 in the bank, and I could make a loan, but I've never done anything like this. What would you say to that person?

Number 1, take your time. Come to the platform. Learn. Browse the website. Browse Reddit. We have a loyalty program called Solo Gold. Join it. There's a Discord channel where you can talk to other lenders.

Talk to them. Ask them questions. This can be a great opportunity for the for you, even at $1,000. But take your time. We do not need to rush it. There will be a point in time where you start to feel comfortable and create a strategy for yourself, and and, and then align and execute. That's what I ask. Of any lender that comes into your platform, I promise you a couple of things.

I promise you it's easier than getting on Robinhood and being good at investing in the stock market. I promise you that it's easier to understand a person's need and their ability to repay than they understand the fluctuations in crypto. Those are 2 promises I couldn't tell you. And though for those institutions or industries, promise you democratize access to investing, I promise you are easier than those. So that's it.

Very cool. Well, Rodney, I could hang on and talk to you all day. You're doing amazing work. And I know you're busy, and our listeners are busy as well. As we start to wind down, if there was something you were hoping we were gonna get to on this topic of effective financial inclusion, and we haven't talked about it, or is there something you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye? What would that be?

Wanna lead our listeners with holding your political politicians accountable to addressing real problem and and, the regulators, to addressing real problem. You know, the lack of innovation is a direct result to the lack of innovation that is being accelerated at the government level. To me, again, I'm a no color, no party type of guy. I'm all about who wants to fix real problem. And I'm on I'm on the I'm on the side of people who fix problems, not talk about them, not, you know, get funded by all of the like, all of the other organizations that don't wanna bring things for the people or the the the working class. You know? But my message is that real innovation can address and fix our problems, but it takes regulators and political leaders that want to really fix those problems, not anything else. Nothing else matters, to be honest.

Rodney, if somebody wants to find out more, where would you suggest they go?

Well, Rodney, b as in Bernard, Williams, essentially across all socials. I'm always accessible. Follow me. Follow my story. I promise you, it's only gonna get louder.

Great. I'll put a link to Rodney on socials and the solo website as well. So go check it out. Let's do what we do, folks. Tell your friends, and go take a look about possibly being an investor where you would have an opportunity to do good in a real human being's life when they've hit a hard time and get some return on your investment. So go check that out. And, Rodney, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Awesome. Thank you.

So, again, let's tell our friends. Let's spread the word about solo. This is an awesome opportunity to have positive impact at scale. And a reminder, we love listeners suggested topics and guests. So if you have an idea for an episode, please go take a look at the Awarepreneurs website. And on our contact page, we have 3 simple guidelines. And we try to make it really transparent about the kind of stories that we like to feature here. So if you have an idea, go take a look.

And if it feels like a fit, I'd love to hear your ideas. As we say goodbye, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.