Did you know that the recommended amount of savings for retirement at the age of 65 is nearly $3 million? That number can sound terrifying, especially for those of us who have spent our careers working for independent restaurants that typically don't offer retirement benefits. But don't worry. Today I'm going to share with you some vital information to help you start saving or investing in your retirement plan, no matter your budget or age. In this episode, I'm chatting with Jess Dean, independent and licensed financial professional. The biggest portion of her time is spent working with individuals and groups to educate them on how money works. When Jess found financial education, she was broke and struggling to save money, working as a sous chef for a small restaurant. She strived to open her own business one day, but struggled to find the time and the funding. Eventually, she found the help that she needed. Eventually, she found the help that she needed and she recognized the opportunity to help people and make financial independence more accessible to all in the restaurant industry. In this episode, we're going to discuss what a financial professional is and what they do, address any hesitations that you might have about working with a financial professional and discuss how educating your restaurant team on how to be more financially savvy can increase retention in your restaurant.
Christin Marvin:Welcome to the No Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I am your host, Christin Marvin, with Solutions by Christin. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses without wasting time and energy, so they can achieve work-life balance and make more money. You can now engage with me on the show and share topics you'd like to hear about, leadership, lessons you want to learn and any feedback that you have. Simply click the link at the top of the show notes and I'll give you a shout out on a future episode. Thanks so much for listening and I look forward to connecting.
Jess Dean:Hi, jess, how are you I'm doing so well? How are you Christin?
Christin Marvin:I'm so good. Thanks for being here this you know we're going to have an amazing, robust conversation today around what you do and how you support people in the financial world and restaurants. But you know we I can't, I can't not talk about CHOW right and the amazing work that you do as the treasurer of CHOW. That's how we met and you're absolutely incredible in that role. So, anyway, we got to give CHOW a shout out on the show.
Jess Dean:Absolutely we do. I came into Chow because I got prospected. Really, I was in the finance world at that point and the CEO prospected me and said hey, we really need a treasurer. Can you jump on board? It was not something I was looking for, it's not something I expected, and I saw an opportunity to do something bigger within the restaurant industry because that's my background, that's what I love, and just being able to give everyone the tools and resources that I never had coming up in the industry has been incredible. So we just have to absolutely give a shout out to Chow.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, yeah, you crush it. And every time we have a board meeting, I just walk away with so much more information from you and just always appreciate your preparedness and thoughtfulness and yeah, you just crush that role so great job. Appreciate your preparedness and thoughtfulness and yeah, you just crushed that role so great job. Let's talk about your experience in the restaurant industry and then we'll kind of lean into what you do today and and talk about why we're here.
Jess Dean:Yeah, absolutely. So I started in the restaurant industry at a really young age. I kind of always knew that I wanted to be a chef. My big aspiration was to be a private chef and cook for rich people and show them how to cook in their own kitchens, do dinner parties, all that. So I started off in Panera. Actually, it was my first job. I worked there for a few years. I worked up the ranks and I felt like that was better in my small little town than just working at a McDonald's. So that's where I really started. And then I got accepted into Johnson and Wales, which was amazing. I loved my time there. I'm so grateful for it which is really where the beginning of my story is.
Jess Dean:I went to the Providence Rhode Island campus and transferred out to the Denver campus just to get the best of both worlds, and at the time Denver's food scene was up and coming. So I really felt like I could create a home and create a career for myself here. And then I found my first job after school, which was working at a wine bar. It was the smallest little kitchen. It was exactly what I wanted it to be. It was perfect for me, because I never saw myself working in big hotels or long kitchen lines or anything like that, so it was perfect. I quickly became the chef there, after the chef I was working under decided he needed to move on and I loved what I did there.
Jess Dean:And then the restaurant owner decided it was her time to sell the restaurant to somebody in real estate who had no restaurant experience whatsoever, and that was really tough. I got knocked back down to sous chef and she had brought in a chef under her who was, dare I say, male and he had a very big ego and made me question a lot about my position in the restaurant industry, and then he decided it was time to move on. I got my position back and then it was time for me to move on as well, because I wasn't getting what I needed to succeed, and that was another leadership topic that you know came into play. It was really tough working for somebody that had no leadership skills, had no restaurant skills and questioned my every move but also gave me no tools to succeed. So that was really tough.
Jess Dean:And then I ended up working at another winery that had opened up that year in the Denver area. I was the sous chef for a long time in a leadership role and that was amazing until it wasn't. You know, restaurants can be a tough environment. I always thought of myself as a pretty positive person working in a tough environment. So it was after a while time to figure out my next move, and that's when I found finance and started to make the transition. I just didn't ever feel respected in my role in the food service industry.
Christin Marvin:So it was a really tough place to be in. Yeah, yeah, thanks for sharing all that Gosh. I feel like you and I could do a couple more episodes just around leadership and confidence and self-advocation and all these things right. What was it specifically about finance? That was really attractive to you.
Jess Dean:Well, I had one of my co-workers actually she was a server at the restaurant that I was working at at the time. She came up to me and said hey, jess, have you ever thought about owning your own business one day? I said, well, yeah, of course you know that about me. I want to be a private chef and yada, yada. And then she started talking about what she was doing in finance. And it was really appealing Because at that point I was broke. I wasn't able to save any money, I was just in a bad position. So I offered to be one of her training appointments and just learn a little bit more, and then I became a client. But it was really appealing Because if I was feeling that way, how many of my other restaurant friends and counterparts were feeling the same way about their finances?
Christin Marvin:Yeah, absolutely so. How did you venture into the finance world?
Jess Dean:So, after I became a client first and I learned everything that I needed to know about money, things about where to save it, how to prepare for the future life insurance and how to protect my family all those different types of things that we never learn about in school I saw an opportunity to do something part-time and it ended up being an independent position. So while I work with a firm, I get to work completely independently, meaning I use their platform but I work with the clients that I want to, which is incredible. So after I found out that we were also very education-based, that really stood out to me, because I love teaching, I love guiding, I love even in the restaurants, I loved training new people and getting them out on the line, and I just saw an opportunity to do something a little more fulfilling in a role that everybody needs to know about. So it was the education for me that was really, really appealing.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, I love it. Would you talk a little bit about your role today and some of the clients that you work with?
Jess Dean:Yeah, absolutely so. My role today is a licensed financial professional. I've been doing that for about six years now. Gosh, that's crazy to think about.
Jess Dean:The transition was interesting. I didn't move into it fully. I still worked at a restaurant in the early years and just doing both was really eye-opening because my mindset started to change. I started to see the people around me struggling. You know, restaurants don't offer benefits a lot of the time. They don't offer a lot of education around how to utilize their tips and how to pay your bills and things like that. So while I was working both jobs, I started to see a lot of the reason why I'd moved into finance in the first place in all of the people that I was surrounding myself with.
Jess Dean:And what I do today is work with everybody that wasn't lucky enough to have a financial advisor and what I mean by that is the wealthy have their advisors.
Jess Dean:They always have advisors, typically have minimums to be able to work with them, and I saw an opportunity, because I didn't have those constraints, to be able to work with everybody that I cared about, everybody in the restaurant industry my parents, my family, the, the friends around me that I cared about the most because, let's be honest, everybody kind of struggles with money in one way, shape or form. Nobody in America seems to have it all together. So today my book of clients seems to consist a lot of restaurant industry people, because I care about them the most and I want to help the people that I was most like back in the day. A lot of them are word of mouth or referrals. I really try to find people organically, so it's been incredible to meet people along the way, meet people through Chow, even do classes for restaurants. I did one for a big restaurant group out here in Denver and was able to work with a lot of their staff through some of the things that they were struggling with too. So that's really who I get to work with.
Christin Marvin:That's great. What are you finding, jess? What are these restaurant owners and restaurant employees? What are they really looking for? Is it kind of basic knowledge? Is it a specific product that you offer? What do they want?
Jess Dean:Great question. A lot of them are looking for a foundation, looking for the basics, because it's really tough to budget when you are living off of tips or living off of a low salary. So a lot of them are looking for budgeting help, credit help, just basic understanding around how and where to save money, how and where to pay off debts efficiently, things like that. So really building a foundation and giving them what they need to move into that next part of investing, saving for retirement, things like that.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, what is the recommended amount that we need for retirement these days, assuming an age of around 65?
Jess Dean:Yeah, that's a great question. It changes for everybody depending on how much you think you're going to need every year in retirement, but we're looking at 1.5 to 2.5 million saved, and the biggest reason is because we're not sure Social Security is going to be there or what that is going to look like. It even says on the social security website it might not be available to us younger generations. So being able to prepare people and set a foundation so that they can move into that space and feel comfortable saving their money and investing for their futures instead of really focusing on the now is very important too, and something that I get to talk about every day.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, 1.5 to 2.5 million sounds like an extraordinary amount of money and I'll say you know spending the last 20 years in the restaurant business. Like you, I didn't work for. The majority of the companies that I worked for were independent restaurants that didn't have 401ks, and so when I walked away from those jobs, it didn't have 401ks and so when I walked away from those jobs, I walked away with whatever I had in the bank and nothing more. And I will say that, you know, financial advisors were something that I have to laugh because I've managed, you know, six, seven businesses at a time for years and been, you know, very confident, comfortable, coming through P&Ls. But I did not have that same level of detail when it came to my personal finances and my husband and I were pretty good about setting up a little bit of money every paycheck to just go directly to our account. So we try not to see it and we had a little bit of money set aside.
Christin Marvin:But, you know, when I would think about a financial advisor, I think about television commercials I saw for Morgan Stanley or, you know, chase or something that I just thought financial advisors were for the wealthy and that that was something that was so far out of reach for us and so expensive.
Christin Marvin:And it wasn't until we moved a couple of years ago that we started to entertain the idea of actually meeting with a financial advisor. And when we did, I was, I felt like a little bit of an idiot because there was just so much I didn't know that seemed to be common sense. I just hadn't really taken the time and gotten curious about it and thought about it. But the process was amazing and I didn't. I thought we had to pay a bunch of money up front to even work with a financial advisor. So I learned so much during that process and we're going to get into this in a little bit, but let's talk about you know, those were my specific reasons for not working with a financial advisor or even starting the conversation. But what do you find are the major roadblocks and what's the big elephant in the room here, why people, more people, especially in the restaurant world, don't work with people like you?
Jess Dean:I think you hit part of that nail right on the head. I think a lot of people expect there to be a large cost to work with advisors. They are really seen in the world as working with the wealthy, but I'm here to tell everybody too everyone deserves a financial professional in their back corner, and it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. I think a lot of the roadblocks come from the fact that we don't know what we don't know. We weren't taught in schools. If our parents weren't aware, they didn't teach us, or they just told us to save all our money in a bank account and hope for the best, and I think those are some of the roadblocks that we still see generation to generation today.
Jess Dean:I think a lot of the roadblocks are again dealing with tips and how do we structure a budget around money that's coming in practically every single day. That's hard to deal with when you're bringing in cash or bringing in money on a consistent daily basis. I also would say that it's just a mindset thing. A lot of the time, too, people don't like to deal with some of the things that are frightening or overwhelming and finance can be because there are so many things to think about. There are so many things to plan for, and it changes constantly as well. So what our parents knew, what our grandparents knew, is not what we know now.
Jess Dean:The industry is always changing and what we need to prepare for is a little bit different as well. So I think there's just a lot of mindset around it too, in believing that you're worthy of a financial advisor, being able to believe that you can be in a different situation and then wanting to take the next step to actually work with somebody. I think that goes for any struggle in life. It's not just finance. I think people, when they get overwhelmed or there's a big like you said elephant in the room, it's hard to take the first bite of that elephant. So just taking the next step in talking with somebody and having the conversation is what I recommend, because that's where it can actually lead to some eye opening results.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, talking about money is hard and I remember, you know, again throwing out that number of 1.5 to 2.5. You know, when we had looked at this a couple years ago, we had read 3.3 million and we were like, how on earth are we? You know, we're like we're 41 years old at the time. What are we? How are we even going to make that in the next 20 years of work? So it was really, really scary. But I think having the conversations and obviously one of the ways I manage stress is just by getting curious about something, and so once we really looked at, okay, here's our target dollar amount we want to have in retirement. Here's what we're currently working with today. How do we create that path and get there? It was like, oh, okay, cool, we can actually do something that's going to be super impactful here.
Christin Marvin:Before we jump back into today's episode, let's shine a light on a pressing issue in the restaurant industry employee retention. If you're grappling with the challenges of keeping a solid team together, you're not alone. I would like to extend an invitation for a quick 15-minute discovery call to discuss your specific situation and explore strategies to boost restaurant retention. Your team is the heart of your business and retaining great talent is crucial for your mental and physical health, as well as the health of your business. Visit my website at kristinmarvincom. Slash contact to schedule your call. Let's collaborate to enhance your retention strategies and create an environment where your team thrives. Now back to the show.
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Christin Marvin:So let's talk a little bit about when you I'm assuming that you do consultations or you know first sessions with people. What does that discovery process look like? What happens during those conversations?
Jess Dean:That's a great question. So usually my first conversation will be very light 15 to 20 minutes, sometimes over the phone, just getting to know somebody. What are you trying to accomplish? Where are you at now? What are some of the struggles that you're seeing with money? Why are we having the conversation in the first place?
Jess Dean:I really want to know kind of what they're feeling and where they're at, because in that first conversation I can tell some of the money mindset that they have and some of the things that we may need to work on. So that's what we do first and then after, if I feel like there are some recommendations I could give over the phone really quickly. If it's foundational based like budgeting or getting out of debt or things like that, I talk through those things over the phone with them. But if I feel like a more in-depth strategy could be of value to them, then we move into another hour-long conversation. Usually that's either in person or over Zoom. I love being able to work with my out-of-staters too. Zoom has been such an amazing piece of my business over COVID. It increased because I was able to meet people all over over Zoom back to back. It was incredible, and that hour long conversation usually consists of what are their goals and dreams. You know, what are they trying to accomplish? Because I think as adults we start to lose those dreams again. We start to feel the pressure of, you know, having to save for retirement or having to buy a house one day, or how am I going to pay for having the children that I want to have, and all of those pressures really diminish what we can allow ourselves to dream about. So really diving deep into what they would want to accomplish if money were no object both short term, midterm and long term Because when were no object, both short term, midterm and long term Because when we're stuck in the short term a lot of the time it's really easy to get bogged down with oh well, I can't do that until I have this debt paid off, or I can't save money until my debts are completely paid off, or I would like to do that thing but I don't know how I could do it. So we really dive into what those things are if you weren't thinking about money at all, and we dive into their cash flow. You know I need to find out what they're bringing in and what their expenses are every single month so we can see if there's a cash flow problem going on. Somebody needs to cut back on their expenses or maybe make a little bit of extra money. That's a huge, important part of our conversation.
Jess Dean:I do move into their debt picture, finding out what they're paying on currently, if they're paying extra on their debts or just making the minimum payments if they need their credit score for anything in the future. Of course, talk about emergency fund. When I was in the restaurant industry, I had no emergency fund ever and it seems like things popped up all the time for me that I would just have to deal with borrow money, put it on a credit card and have to owe later in order to deal with those emergencies. And that is a huge part of our conversation as well. How do we pay down debts and save a little bit for emergencies at the same time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems like Sorry. I have to think.
Christin Marvin:I don't have internet issues, no you're okay.
Jess Dean:I think there's a little lag here. Yeah, no worries, but I think emergency fund is super important, and when you don't have one, it seems like those emergencies tend to come up a little more frequently. We also talk about life insurance and how important that is. When I was going through my friend's initial consultation and she was teaching me about life insurance, the biggest thing for me as a single young person was if something happened to me and I passed away, I wouldn't want my parents to have to come up with $10,000 to $20,000 for a funeral for me or have them have to pay for my big student loan from Johnson and Wales. So that was a big, important part to talk about too, as a young single person, but especially as talking about families or people that may have some debt or people that want to protect their families. And then, of course, that retirement conversation too when do you see yourself having to stop working or when would you like to stop working? How much money are you going to need to have? Do you have anything currently in 401ks, iras, anything like that, that you've been able to save so far?
Jess Dean:After that whole conversation happens, where I collect information, then I get to do the fun part research, put a plan together, come up with some ideas for my clients, and then we get back together one more time over Zoom or what have you to go, over those recommendations, but again with education, so they know what I'm recommending, why and what it's going to do for them in the future. And then I don't just set it and forget it. I am constantly meeting with my clients, at least every year. So everybody has my personal phone number. They know how to get a hold of me if they have questions, if they have struggles, if we need to make adjustments on their plan. But I'm there every step of the way to make sure somebody feels comfortable.
Jess Dean:Going back to what you said, it was hard for you to go meet with an advisor in the beginning because you don't know what your expectations are. It's really good to know that somebody has your back the whole way. They're not going anywhere. You have their personal number if you need anything. So I pride myself in that and that's, I think, what makes me stand out more and more from other advisors is that I'm always there and I'm not going anywhere.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, I love that there's just so much hospitality in what you said. And I think you know, again, learning about our you know, talking about our experience, you know we went into the conversation with the financial advisor just again kind of not knowing what we were looking for really, what our goals were. We kind of had a retirement plan as, as far as we wanted, we knew we wanted to retire around the age of 65. Just the thought, though it is very much a mindset shift, like you said just the thought of, you know, we've been used to having money flowing in and out constantly through work and in our over, you know, our career. Now that I've started my own business, money doesn't flow like it used to, and so the thought of being at the age of 65, and no longer having money coming in and just having to live on the money that you've got in your savings sounds terrifying, especially now that we've kind of experienced. Months go by and money doesn't come in right. It takes the time to build business, as you know, you know right. And so I think when we first went into our conversation with our advisor, you know we had said we, we don't have any money here to invest. We want to have you look at everything that we've got going on and give us your best recommendation, because we just didn't know what we didn't know right and again, there's so many products and services out there that we just didn't even know were available. And so we started very easily by just saying, hey, let's look at our home and auto insurance and see if we can shop around and save some money. And if we can save any money there, then we'll look at rolling it into something like life insurance or something like that. And that's exactly what we did, which was perfect.
Christin Marvin:And so, you know, again thinking about having the, you know, I think leaning into those tough conversations, like you mentioned earlier, is really important, right, like sitting across the table from my husband going shoot if something happens to me. He's not ready, he's not prepared financially on top of the emotional aspects, right, and same thing for him. You know, we wanted to make sure that we were setting each other up for success in, you know, if God forbid, something happened there. And you know, I think, as we get older too and we we see our parents get older we start out, you know, having those conversations with them. What's the plan?
Christin Marvin:You know we had that tough conversation last week. You know what? What's the cost of a funeral versus cremation? What do we do, right? And, like you said earlier, that's 20 to 30 grand versus two to three grand. I mean that's a lot of money that you need to be prepared for, you know, down the road. So there's. I think the more people have conversations about this, the more doors open, the more you can get curious about it. But it's also complicated, right? Like you start realizing that there's a lot more to plan for in your future than you think that there is Right, and you and I talk about this.
Christin Marvin:They don't teach us this in school, right?
Jess Dean:No, they absolutely don't, and the unfortunate part about all of it, too, is everybody's situation future plan is all different, so that's why it's so important to work with somebody who's licensed, who knows what they're talking about and can give you proper recommendations is so important, too, because if you try to go at it on your own, you could hit some of the points that you need to make sure you have prepared. But being able to work with somebody who has been in the industry and is licensed for a reason is important to make sure you have that full conversation about things that you weren't even aware of before.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, yeah, I love that you're taking time to go educate restaurant groups, particularly because and you and I have talked about this too money, the mindset around money and the relationship to money. When you're an hourly employee, it's easy come, easy go, especially when you're in the front of the house. When you're an hourly employee, it's easy come, easy go, especially when you're in the front of the house and there are not retirement plans set up into place. A lot of people don't save money early on in their career because they're just not thinking long term. Right, but talk a little bit about the impact that you've seen some of these education platforms have with restaurant groups.
Jess Dean:Yeah, I think it's just eye-opening. You can see, when I'm teaching out in the crowd, some of the facial expressions that are going on like oh wow, I didn't realize that before or oh my gosh, I need to really do something about this. You can see some of the emotions that are going on in the crowd and then being able to have one-on-one conversations after that. A lot of the things that are going on in the crowd and then being able to have one-on-one conversations after that. A lot of the things that are coming up specifically in the restaurant industry crowd that I work with are how do I create a budget? What does that look like when I've got money coming in constantly, and that's a tough one. I don't think that I've still mastered that one.
Jess Dean:Like you said, running your own business is tough. I don't always constantly have money coming in every week either, so it's really dialing in what your goals are, what your budget looks like, what your expenses are. And here's what I'd say too Go on a date with yourself, grab a glass of wine, light a candle and know what your financial situation is. It's tougher when you're not hitting it on the head, you know, when you're not looking at these things. Every day, it becomes harder to know what's going on, and so that's my first piece of advice to everyone in the restaurant industry is know what your situation is Really, find out what your average income is when you're bringing in tips and your paycheck. Know what your expenses look like and have the ability to take control back over. That really gives you a good sense of what's going on so that you can have a little more control over that.
Jess Dean:And I think the other thing too that I see a lot is people get themselves in a lot of debt because we don't know how to budget properly. In the restaurant industry, it's easier to have that credit card that has a limit on it that you can spend rather than rely on a tip that may come in tomorrow or that you may get tonight. So the problem we see a lot is people going into massive amounts of debt when they don't necessarily need to and figuring out how to pay that off quickly and appropriately, because it really is the interest rates that are killing us. The last credit card interest rate that I saw with a client was up to 30%. That's not even money that we're spending and money that we still owe, unfortunately. So it's the interest rates that are really killing us nowadays, and helping people put together a plan where they can pay off their debts a little bit quicker or a little bit safer or easy has been a great practice of mine too, when working with restaurant people.
Christin Marvin:Nice. Yeah, I think I agree with you wholeheartedly on both points. The budgeting aspect has been something that I leaned into when I started the business and I would say everything you know, agree with everything you said. I would also add to that that writing that budget is incredible. Every budget is incredible, every business is seasonal, and so check in on it once a quarter, just spend 10 minutes and see where you're at, if you're tracking along or if anything's changed, because if you wait till the end of the year, you're going to miss something, and the more you check in on that, the more you can pivot and the more confident you're going to feel and the less stressed out you're going to feel, for sure. So, absolutely, let's also, you know, I'd love to talk about what. What are your thoughts around how this, this knowledge and education in the restaurant space can help restaurant owners retain their employees?
Jess Dean:I have started to actually see a lot more restaurants and hospitality places have benefits nowadays, and I think that is a huge part of retention. When people feel valued, when they feel like their employers are seeing them, it's a lot easier to want to stay at that job as an employee and you as an employer can see that retention a little bit further. So I think if more employers are able to have any sort of even the smallest benefit package, I think is really important, something that all leaders should consider and so that we can start to help our employees feel better too. I think when our employees have a better mindset about things and they feel a little more confident and a little bit more structured in their money, then they're able to feel a little more secure in their job as well and want to stay there a little bit longer. So I would say you know, figure out what amount you could put towards some benefits and treat your employees as you would want to be treated.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, that's a great point. One thing that was really eye-opening for me during the pandemic, when I was working in the ice cream world the majority of our staff were Gen Z and many of them the pay structure was like it is in a lot of food and beverage places it was hourly and tips and some cash chips they would take home, but the majority of credit card tips would go to their or their credit card tips would go to their paycheck and we would have a few employees come to us and say I'm not making enough money. I see the sign across the street at McDonald's that says that they're paying 15 or and this granted, this was a couple of years ago 15 or $17 an hour. I'm only getting paid 11 or $12 an hour. I want to raise, and we would, and so the managers would would they want to raise? I'm like no, no, no, no. That like hang on a second. They're actually making x amount of money 18, $20 an hour, whatever and they're like well, they don't understand that because they don't understand the difference between tips and hourly and they don't see it as one big picture.
Christin Marvin:So we would spend time sitting down with those employees going let's go over your paycheck and let's talk about what this means in the big picture and I think you and I have talked about this too. How many times have we, as managers, had employees come to us and say I'm not making enough money, I quit. Or I found a job across the street that's going to pay me a quarter more or 50 cents more, found a job across the street that's going to pay me a quarter more or 50 cents more. I bet you if that employee had some education and financial knowledge around how to budget and that was something that came from their employer that that would be a layer of support and a benefit to them. That would help build trust and build that relationship, and they probably wouldn't care about an extra quarter an hour going across the street. I think it can really benefit restaurants.
Jess Dean:I 100% agree. Yeah, I think it's hard because a lot of leadership and restaurant owners don't necessarily know either. So if they're willing to educate themselves and make that next move, to have all of the information themselves, but also rely on the people who are educators they don't have to know everything, they just need to know the right people, right. So I think if they're able to rely on the people that have the information and be willing to bring those people in to have those conversations with their staff, then number one, the employees are seeing value in that employer. They're seeing that their restaurant owner cares about them. A little bit more helps. And then everybody has a place to ask questions. Everybody has a place to have conversation and open up amongst staff too.
Jess Dean:I think restaurants are moving in a good space where a lot of the time I've seen that your tips can go right on a debit or a credit card nightly so that you have your cash every night, or they're tip pooling so you have a little bit of a more average paycheck, which is good. Or I've also seen restaurants move to putting tips in a bi-weekly paycheck altogether and I definitely think that helps. And I also would implore people to look at that pay stub, see where your taxes are, see what's coming out every single month, see what's coming into your bank account, what that paycheck actually looks like. But again, being able to rely on the people that know. I would never say that my expertise was in baking and pastry. I relied on the people that I knew had the information and could do that work better than I could. The same thing goes here. If people are able to rely on others that their field is, I think we could go a lot further.
Christin Marvin:Yeah, that's a great point that you just bring up too. You know, just thinking back to my early days as an hourly, I'd look at the computer or my report at the end of the night and go, oh great, I made $100 tonight or made 150 or whatever. And then I'd go spend money like crazy, thinking about that number, not thinking about the taxes, not thinking about the you know the fact that it was going to be 30% less than that. So that's a really valid point. Let's, let's let listeners know here how can they get ahold of you if they're interested in having one of these, having you host one of these educational classes at their, their restaurant in Denver or in I'm not sure you know if you work outside of the Denver area, but feel free to mention that. How do they get ahold of you? And, yeah, where? Yeah, give them all the good information Fantastic.
Jess Dean:Yeah, the best place to reach me is email. I can always accept emails and I look through that many times a day, so you can reach me at jessicadean D-E-A-N at wealthwavecom, and please feel free to check out my link tree as well. It's linktreefinancialstrategist, and on there you'll find ways to connect with me on social media, ways to participate in the monthly virtual classes that I do as well, and a place to schedule a discovery call too. If you have any further questions, I'd be happy to do a free call as well.
Christin Marvin:Nice, and then are you working specifically in the Denver area.
Jess Dean:Good question. I am able to work outside of the Denver area altogether. I have clients in Washington over to New Hampshire. As long as it's in the United States, I'm able to work with anybody.
Christin Marvin:Okay, perfect, amazing, jess. Thank you for being here. If anybody, if you missed any of that information or you're driving or what have you Jess's info will be in the show notes. I'll put a link to her information in the show notes. At the very top of the show notes, too, you can click and send me a text message. If you'd like to get connected, feel free to send me your email address, and I'd be happy to connect you two together. Thanks again, thank you for just the great work that you're doing for the industry. Love the educational piece, love your passion around this and just knowing again how organized and diligent and how great of a communicator you are. Anybody highly recommend anybody work with you. So really appreciate you taking the time and being prepared today to talk to me about this very important subject and just wish you all the best.
Jess Dean:Thank you so much, Kristen. It was my pleasure and I'm very grateful to be on the show today. I think if anybody needs anything, please reach out to me. I love having conversations, especially with restaurant people, because that's where I come from. Those are the people I care about most. So thank you again, Kristen, for hosting me today.
Christin Marvin:You bet I'll look forward to seeing you at the retreat, the Chow Retreat coming up here.
Jess Dean:Absolutely, I'm looking forward to it.
Christin Marvin:All right. Thanks so much, everybody. If you know anybody in the restaurant industry that can benefit from listening to the show, please feel free to forward it over to them. Would love to have them listen in and learn a different leadership lesson every single week. Thanks so much.