0:00:00.0 ANNOUNCER: So you wanna know the ins and outs of managing your money. Well, lucky for you, you’re just in time for another episode of Master Your Finances with certified financial planner professional, Kurt Baker. Kurt and his panel of experts are here for you and will cover topics from a legal and personal standpoint. They’ll discuss tax efficiency, liability, owning, managing and saving your money and more. Master Your Finances is underwritten and powered by Certified Wealth Management and Investment and Rider University. Rider offers continuing studies programs for adults who need flexibility. Want to add new skills to your resume? Take a continuing studies course at Rider University. Now, let’s learn how we can better change our habits with Kurt Baker.
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0:00:48.9 Kurt Baker: Do you wanna learn how you can assist veterans? You want a list of organizations that aid veterans? Jeremy Deck is a retired US Army veteran who has used his leadership, communication and team-building abilities in a variety of settings. With his military experience as the food service director for the United States Military Academy, he will share his knowledge of the resources available to veterans as well as volunteer opportunities to assist veterans. He will fill you with joy and pride as you give back to and assist veterans. Man, this is… Jeremy, just awesome what you’re doing.
0:01:29.1 Kurt Baker: I know you’re a very successful guy and all, but all that you’re doing for the veterans, and I think over the decades, I mean, I was born in the ’60s, veterans have been like not necessarily always upheld the way they probably should be because they’re put in really rough situations, and I know we lose, I think it’s something like 11 or so a day, I believe it is right now, because of the PTSD and all the issues that they have to deal with coming back from these experiences, let’s just say most of us would not want to endure and it’s a rough time, but the fact that we I think as a society have really come around where I think most of us are like, “Hey, we need to help these people.” They go out there and they basically protect the country, they keep us here and they allow us to enjoy… They provide that umbrella that allows us to enjoy all those privileges and things that we enjoy every single day and a lot of times, we tend to forget it sometimes, right? So anyway, I wanna just… First of all, I just wanna thank you for your service and everything you’ve been doing, man. So that’s awesome.
0:02:23.2 Jeremy Deck: Awesome. Thank you, Kurt, I appreciate it.
0:02:25.2 Kurt Baker: So tell us a little bit about how you got involved with this and how you got started and so forth.
0:02:31.2 Jeremy Deck: It’s one heck of a story, so…
0:02:32.2 Kurt Baker: There you go. We’ll have about 45 or so minutes to talk, so…
0:02:35.7 Jeremy Deck: Only 45? Those that know me might say 45 isn’t long enough.
0:02:40.5 Kurt Baker: Yeah.
0:02:41.2 Jeremy Deck: So I guess where to start, so I’m actually somewhat… I grew up somewhat locally. I actually grew up over in Berks County, Pennsylvania. I was… Grew up in the area. James Carville kind of said at one point, Pennsylvania is like… It’s two different make-ups. It’s Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in-between, I think was the line.
0:03:04.3 Kurt Baker: Pretty much. Yeah, it’s pretty much. Sure. [laughter]
0:03:05.6 Jeremy Deck: I grew up in the Alabama portion of the part of Pennsylvania between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But very early on, as I was getting ready to leave high school, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do for a living, to be completely upfront. And I felt the military… Oddly enough, I had some military recruiters show up at lunch one day. This is my senior year of high school, and I figured it was good enough for my father. I figured, “What the heck?” Didn’t know what I wanted to do, didn’t wanna pay off, for the college students listening out there, I didn’t know that I wanted to be paying off student loans for the rest of my life. And very early, I said, “You know what, I think the military is a good fit. There’s college money there, there’s some opportunity. And you know what, I can learn a skill at the same time.” So, left for basic training a month after graduating from high school and a couple of years in, I realized, “You know what, this is actually… I’m digging this. I could actually do this.” And very quickly…
[chuckle]
0:04:04.0 Kurt Baker: I’m glad to hear that. [laughter]
0:04:04.7 Jeremy Deck: Yeah. Very quickly, a four-year enlistment turned into 10 years. Just… Dare I say I was actually having a little fun.
0:04:13.7 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:04:15.0 Jeremy Deck: I was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. I had been to South Korea by that point. I had been on a bunch of little deployments here and there, mainly to Central America and the Caribbean, which was really rough, I gotta say.
[laughter]
0:04:29.8 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, whew.
0:04:32.1 Kurt Baker: That’s why you like the military so much. [laughter]
0:04:35.2 Jeremy Deck: Early on, the deployments were really good.
0:04:36.9 Kurt Baker: Didn’t send you in Antarctica right away, apparently, right?
0:04:38.8 Jeremy Deck: No, no.
0:04:40.3 Kurt Baker: That’s good. [chuckle]
0:04:41.4 Jeremy Deck: But yeah, the first 10 years kind of flew by.
0:04:44.2 Kurt Baker: Good.
0:04:46.3 Jeremy Deck: And right about the 10-year mark, it’s like, “Well, heck, I’m halfway through, might as well keep going, ’cause in 20 years, I got to… I get a pension.”
0:04:53.1 Kurt Baker: Right, true.
0:04:54.0 Jeremy Deck: And at the time, I was 27, 28.
0:04:57.1 Kurt Baker: Right, right.
0:04:57.6 Jeremy Deck: And you’re that age and you’re like, “Man, I’m 10 years away from getting a pretty consistent pension for the rest of my life. Why not?”
0:05:04.9 Kurt Baker: Right, right, right, right.
0:05:06.4 Jeremy Deck: So not long after that, I said, “If I’m gonna continue doing this, I might as well figure out a way to make an impact.” So I made the decision to become a warrant officer, still in the… So I was a cook my first 12 years in the military and I had the option to become a warrant officer, which is a technical expert in a specific field. In this case, I was a technical expert in food service. And what that really meant was I was expected to be a subject matter expert on everything food service-related from procurement to consumption.
0:05:37.5 Kurt Baker: Right. And that’s… Even though it’s a rough thing, you’re the desolate, the regular world. Here, you gotta move it too. You gotta know… People wanna get fed when they’re fighting, I’m assuming. [chuckle] It’s kind of important. [laughter]
0:05:49.8 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, and move it in some of the most interesting and…
0:05:54.9 Kurt Baker: Tough place.
0:05:55.7 Jeremy Deck: Austere, yeah, terrain. Let’s use Afghanistan, for example. I actually spent my second deployment in Afghanistan in 2012. I actually supervised the distribution of, whew, to 90 different locations throughout Afghanistan. And most of them were ranged in size from about 10 or 15, all the way up to a couple of hundred. I was part of the United States Army Special Operations Command. We were part of a joint headquarters in Afghanistan. And I have to say, that was one of the most eye-opening experiences and most educational experiences in my army career, just having to figure out a way to deliver food to that many people that… So our task force was about 5,000 people. And delivering food to that many people across, and essentially all of Afghanistan, and I can’t remember correctly, but I think Afghanistan is essentially the size of Texas.
0:06:56.4 Kurt Baker: It’s pretty big.
0:06:57.2 Jeremy Deck: It’s a pretty big country.
0:06:58.5 Kurt Baker: And it’s pretty rugged from what I understand. I’ve never been there personally, but I’ve just read and seen movies and all that kind of stuff. So what are some things… I mean, I just knew it’s challenging. So what are some things you learned from that experience of like, “Okay, I’m gonna go… ” There’s no like… They don’t order takeout, right? [chuckle] There’s no Uber Eats or anything like that available. So what are some things you learned from a logistics standpoint? Like how do you get this done? Because you had to do it… You have to get there on time, you have to get the right amount… I mean, there’s a lot more to this in what I’m thinking. You can’t just stop at Costco if you’re in the war zone, right?
0:07:30.4 Jeremy Deck: That’s very true. I would say the biggest thing I learned from that experience was relationships.
0:07:34.6 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:07:34.9 Jeremy Deck: As crazy as that sounds in a country like Afghanistan where all of the people that you support are wearing the same uniform as you, the biggest thing I learned was relationships. Because, yes, I’m a subject matter expert, but getting someone on the other side of the country to understand that I’m a subject matter expert and I’m here to help is not necessarily always easy. [chuckle]
0:07:57.8 Kurt Baker: No.
0:08:00.2 Jeremy Deck: And it’s kind of funny because I’ve taken a lot of what I learned, especially in the last half of my military career, and transferred it to what I do now and what I’ve done over the last three years or so.
0:08:11.4 Kurt Baker: And you bring up a lot of points. For one, there’s a lot of duress out there.
0:08:14.7 Jeremy Deck: Oh yeah.
0:08:15.4 Kurt Baker: And you can’t say, “Well, if you’d get this food product to my men out there in the field of women, I’m gonna give you a bonus at the end of year. I’m gonna compensate you or whatever.” I mean, you’ve got a challenge, so to speak, because one, it’s a tough situation, and two, the tools in your toolbox are pretty limited on how to motivate that person. So you wanna give some ideas on, “How do you motivate me? I’m on the other side of the mountain and you want me to do something for you.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m not so sure, Jeremy. Maybe… I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.” [laughter]
0:08:42.3 Jeremy Deck: It’s about buy-in. It’s really… It’s understanding and getting them to commit to understanding that they have a problem or an issue, so to speak. And then on top of that, getting them to understand that the issue that you’re trying to fix… That the solution you’re trying to give them fixes their issue…
0:09:02.4 Kurt Baker: There you go.
0:09:02.7 Jeremy Deck: To a degree that helps them in a way that’s maximizing their available time to do what it is they need to do, especially in the military where you’re going out and you’re essentially fighting for your country in a foreign country. How I’m gonna eat shouldn’t be a concern if that’s your basic fundamental day-to-day responsibility.
0:09:27.8 Kurt Baker: Right, right. Well, that’s just awesome. Alright, so you’ve had some challenging experiences, and so now you’re a subject matter expert, you’re a warrant office, so what did you do now with that expertise? You went to Afghanistan, right?
0:09:38.8 Jeremy Deck: Yeah.
0:09:39.3 Kurt Baker: And you learned some things about… I think life comes down to relationships, just like… It’s amazing how this always comes back down to relationships, right? I mean, we can live in an electronic world, or we can live in this world we think is data-driven, but it really comes back down to, who are the people on each side of all this stuff, and how do we get along, and how do we interact as individuals? And I believe that’s something that all of us should learn, especially younger generations, where we tend to be disconnected because electronics tends to be the way that we like to connect, right? People texting in front of each other and they’re not actually looking at each other, that kind of thing.
0:10:09.7 Jeremy Deck: 100%.
0:10:10.5 Kurt Baker: But it all comes down to really building basic, solid one-on-one, look me in the eye, tell me how you feel and why I should be doing what I’m doing and help me care about what’s going on here and we’re gonna help each other out, and everybody’s gonna grow through that process, right?
0:10:24.5 Jeremy Deck: Exactly.
0:10:25.4 Kurt Baker: And no other place is more important than when you’re in the military, in a war zone and you’re trying to help people do what they need to do, which is a difficult job and people die. So you do get injured if we don’t do this correctly, the best way we can. So you went… You handled that one, I think you said like 90 different locations in Afghanistan. I can’t even… That’s a lot of places, man. [chuckle] And you got the food there, right?
0:10:49.1 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, thankfully.
0:10:49.6 Kurt Baker: Thankfully.
0:10:49.8 Jeremy Deck: In a lot of ways. [laughter]
0:10:52.3 Kurt Baker: There is a lot… Yeah. So any little quick stories you wanna tell us about some challenges you had while you were doing that?
0:10:55.9 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, so one of the biggest ways we distributed food in country was under a parachute. And to share the quick story that you asked for is, I learned very quickly that we were killing ourselves from an equipment standpoint. We were constantly throwing food out of airplanes when we had other resources available to us. So I think when I got there, I think over 50% of every parachute that went out of a plane into my organization had food or water in it. And I very quickly understood that that was very resource-intensive. So one of the things I did was try extremely hard to bring in other stakeholders to maximize and utilize other avenues to deliver that. And I said 50… I said… So one, or I’m sorry, five in every 10 parachutes had food or water in it.
0:11:53.5 Jeremy Deck: When I left Afghanistan six months later, I had dropped that to four in 10. So out of… When I first got there, 50% of all parachutes had food in it, when I left, 40%. So I managed to essentially create more space under parachutes for bullets and fuel and things like that that weren’t necessarily… That didn’t need to be taken up by water or food.
0:12:16.2 Kurt Baker: That’s just awesome, man. So efficiency is in your blood, it sounds like.
0:12:19.1 Jeremy Deck: Exactly what the focus was was efficiency.
0:12:21.3 Kurt Baker: That’s just awesome, man. We’re gonna take a quick break here. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. We will be right back.
0:12:28.0 ANNOUNCER: This is Master Your Finances with Kurt Baker, certified financial planner professional. Learn about tax efficiency, liability, owning, managing and saving your money and more from Kurt and his experienced panel of guests. Master Your Finances is underwritten and powered by Certified Wealth Management and Investment and Rider University. Rider University offers flexible education for adult learners. For more information, it’s rider.edu/nextstep.
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0:12:58.1 Kurt Baker: Welcome back. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. I am here with Jeremy Deck and we’re talking about veterans and how important they are to everything we do here, ’cause without our veterans helping us out, we wouldn’t be here, who knows what language we’ll be speaking right now.
0:13:10.8 Jeremy Deck: Which is true, it’s true.
0:13:10.9 Kurt Baker: Who the heck knows right? Very thankful to the veterans, Jeremy, and I appreciate everything you’ve done. So when we left off, I didn’t know this about you, you’re doing the logistic thing in Afghanistan, which had to be an extremely amazing experience just from an education standpoint, and it’s problem-solving, creating more efficient means to do things, get the food there using fuel parachutes which is interesting, so then you can deliver more other ammo and type things that are actually necessary in the front lines, which might be more appropriate to do a parachute drop type thing as opposed to maybe taking it by other means. So after that, so what did you do after Afghanistan? I know you’ve got more things in your story here. So what happened after Afghanistan in your career there?
0:13:50.8 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, so I left Afghanistan and fast-forward about a year or two, and I decided I wanted to revisit something I decided not to go into when I left high school, I decided to go to college. And the military offers some really awesome benefits to go to college while you’re serving. And I decided to take advantage of a program that essentially allowed me to unplug from the army for a year and a half and actually become a full-time college student. It was essentially a way to broaden myself, a way to give back to the military. Because there was obviously commitment on the backend. And I became a full-time college student for about a year and a half. I can certainly relate to some of the listeners out there. I went from not having a degree to having a degree in a year and a half.
0:14:39.6 Jeremy Deck: So I condensed… I did roll in about 20 or so credit hours, but…
0:14:45.4 Kurt Baker: So what were you studying when you went to… What was your area of interest?
0:14:48.8 Jeremy Deck: So I’m a business major. I have a degree in Business Administration from a very small school in Eastern North Carolina, an amazing school, I have to say, called the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. And one of the things that I picked up on top of the extremely busy class schedule, I think I actually took 20 credit hours, three semesters in a row, and then I also took summer classes. I learned a lot in terms of being able to give back and use… I’ll use data as a good example about that of my experience. As a business major, I really got into statistics and as corny as it sounds and as, frankly, nerdy as it comes across, I actually learned a lot about Excel and spreadsheets and using data to drive decision-making.
0:15:46.0 Jeremy Deck: And that’s one of the big takeaways I had from pursuing higher education. And frankly, one of the reasons why I’m glad I waited so long to go to college was because I had those life experiences and I understand there’s a certain degree of growth that happens in college, and frankly, I’m with a class load of 20 semester hours for three consecutive full-time semesters, that’s not something I could have done as an 18-year-old fresh out of high high school. I needed the opportunity to focus, and frankly, I was under the gun, the army only gave me a year and a half to do the schooling that I needed, but I got it done. And I was also an honor student. So I actually took part in the University Honors Program also. And consequently enough, I actually did a senior… An honors thesis in legalization of marijuana, so at the time…
0:16:45.1 Kurt Baker: Now it’s happening.
0:16:45.9 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, yeah.
0:16:46.0 Kurt Baker: Back then it wasn’t happening.
0:16:46.6 Jeremy Deck: Yeah. So I actually finished my undergrad in December of 2015, right as legalization was starting to kinda happen across the country.
0:16:55.3 Kurt Baker: So did you predict that would happen?
0:16:57.4 Jeremy Deck: Well, at that point, there was already some momentum and Colorado had begun to prove that there was, if anything else, a lot of tax revenue to be gained from legalization efforts.
0:17:07.1 Kurt Baker: That gets governments interested.
0:17:08.1 Jeremy Deck: It sure does.
[laughter]
0:17:10.0 Kurt Baker: Okay, alright. So you got the double degree in a year and a half which is pretty amazing, frankly. And so where did your career go from there in the military?
0:17:18.2 Jeremy Deck: I actually moved to South Carolina and actually spent the next year or so, at a little place called Fort Jackson. It’s one of the bigger basic training bases in the US Army, 6,000-10,000 students at any one time, depending on what time of the year. Had some regional oversight for a couple of different bases in the food service operation at each. And then I also decided while I was going back to be a full-time soldier, I also decided to move forward with my education pursuits and also became a graduate student at the University of South Carolina Gamecocks.
0:18:02.8 Kurt Baker: Oh okay, okay.
0:18:06.3 Jeremy Deck: So in addition to being a soldier, I was also still a full-time college student doing a lot of night classes and a lot of weekend classes.
0:18:12.6 Kurt Baker: Okay. This involved business as well?
0:18:14.5 Jeremy Deck: It’s all business.
0:18:16.6 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:18:16.7 Jeremy Deck: So I finished my MBA finally in 2019.
0:18:17.9 Kurt Baker: Okay. Alright. Alright, so this is where things get interesting, I think, right? I mean…
[overlapping conversation]
0:18:24.2 Jeremy Deck: This is where things start to get a little fun. I mean we’ve had… We’ve had the conversations before.
[overlapping conversation]
0:18:27.4 Kurt Baker: We’ve had a little of this conversation already. So 2019 and he’s like, “Alright, things are cooking now man”. Alright.
0:18:33.0 Jeremy Deck: No pun intended, but it’s the cooking for me.
0:18:34.8 Kurt Baker: They’re definitely cooking. So what was your shift there which I think was pretty cool?
0:18:38.7 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, so it’s weird. So I was in my office and I got a backtrack, so I actually managed to finish my degree in 2019 when I was already working at this point.
0:18:47.2 Kurt Baker: Right, right, right.
0:18:48.1 Jeremy Deck: So in… I think it was September of 2017, my boss calls me on the phone and he says, “Hey, I have a problem at West Point, I need you to go fix it.”
0:18:57.9 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:18:58.2 Jeremy Deck: And that was all he told me, and I got on a plane about two weeks later, I think not completely understanding what I was getting into. And I ended up taking over the food service operation at West Point for the next three years until I retired back in 2020.
0:19:19.7 Kurt Baker: Yeah, cadets like to eat I don’t know if you know that.
0:19:20.9 Jeremy Deck: They do, in fact, if you get a chance to YouTube the US Military Academy at West Point, Cadet Mess Hall, you would be amazed at some of the time lapse videos and the way…
0:19:34.0 Kurt Baker: Wow.
0:19:34.7 Jeremy Deck: The academy feeds cadets.
0:19:37.1 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:19:38.9 Jeremy Deck: My first three weeks of being there and learning the operation, I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose.
0:19:43.9 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:19:44.9 Jeremy Deck: I had never… And I had been in military food service at that point 21 years, and I’d never seen anything like what I had at West Point.
0:19:53.0 Kurt Baker: So what were your first thing that you thought were a little different about what you’ve been used to?
0:19:56.8 Jeremy Deck: So West Point’s being claim to fame and what they do and the way… So if you don’t know they actually feed the entire student body at lunch in one sitting in 20 minutes.
0:20:09.3 Kurt Baker: I did not know that.
0:20:10.0 Jeremy Deck: That’s why you gotta check out the YouTube video it’s pretty good.
0:20:12.3 Kurt Baker: Our school didn’t do that, I went into an academy too and our school did not do that. [laughter]
0:20:15.7 Jeremy Deck: Well, you guys were a little smaller if I recall.
0:20:17.7 Jeremy Deck: There were about fourth the size. Yeah.
[laughter]
0:20:20.8 Kurt Baker: Yeah, our whole school was one of your graduating classes. [laughter]
0:20:23.7 Jeremy Deck: Yep, that’s true. So one of the biggest things that I learned was serving family-style food. So it’s essentially going to a banquet five days a week throughout the course of the calendar year.
0:20:38.0 Kurt Baker: Right, right.
0:20:38.9 Jeremy Deck: Or the academic year, I guess I should say.
0:20:40.9 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:20:41.3 Jeremy Deck: And that was learning how we did that and then trying to figure out ways to be… Frankly be as efficient as possible while doing that was the biggest challenge. And there was a lot of other issues going on, we talk about toxic work environments, the leadership at the time was a little bit of an issue, my biggest… The biggest thing I needed to do was restore trust in what we were doing as an organization, and then two, get buy-in from the cadets that what we were doing was gonna be the way to fix it and to improve their dining experience, if you will.
0:21:22.8 Kurt Baker: Are you sure you shouldn’t be like an attorney, ’cause you seem to be a great arbitrator here. Yeah, so I noticed the leadership issue, there’s two things I’m seeing this, ’cause I remember we changed our food services at least twice while I was there. And it was like it started off grade and then it got work worse ’cause ours was contracted out, right? So that’s why I think it was a little different situation to yours, but if you have a leadership that’s like not doing a great job, and now the cadets are like “Oh what the heck’s going on here?” Right? So how did you start off like building back that trust? Once you break down an organization like that, it’s a lot harder to put that back in place, I think. So what are some things, what are some of the steps you took to help bring that back?
0:21:57.0 Jeremy Deck: Well, so you almost have to be a Chief Marketing Officer, the Chief Executive Officer or a CFO, you have to be all of those things. And one of the things that I immediately started to understand when I got there was, as weird as it sounds people were getting hurt almost on purpose just to…
0:22:16.9 Kurt Baker: That’s not good.
0:22:17.3 Jeremy Deck: Just to get out of work.
0:22:18.0 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:22:18.9 Jeremy Deck: And one of the things that I started to understand was changing the culture in the organization was the first thing I needed to do. Getting people to understand that the leadership was listening to you, getting to understand and essentially become approachable. That if I have an issue and I’m an employee of the food service organization that I’m gonna come to my leadership and expect that they’re actually gonna do something about it, and not just blow me off. And that was the biggest change, was being approachable, being somebody that could listen and that could enact change.
0:22:54.8 Kurt Baker: Yeah. No, that is really key. So you literally just said, “Hey look, come tell me what’s going on here.” I’m paraphrasing, I’m sure and the difference, I think would happen is people are like, “Yeah, I’m gonna tell him, he’s not gonna do anything, right? This has been going on for blah, blah, blah, so so long.” And they’re gonna be like almost like, “I don’t believe you.” But then you have to show. So what are some of the things you did initially that said, “Hey, I think this guy is for real and he is actually gonna help us out.” What were some of the gripes you heard, without getting any more specifically than you can? But and then how did you respond to some of the concerns that were obviously telling people, “Hey I’d rather injure myself than go to work today.” That’s pretty bad.
0:23:27.8 Jeremy Deck: Well, what I… Yeah, one of the first things we did was actually recognition. So one of the…
0:23:32.1 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:23:32.7 Jeremy Deck: I think the first month I was there, we actually decided to get the entire staff together and just give them a certificate that said, “Hey, you know what, we appreciate what you do.” And that extended through my time there, and we also any time someone performed really well or did something that was going above and beyond, we made sure we called that person out and gave them some type of award or recognition for what they did. And it seemed to me… And this was clearly an outsider’s perspective when I took over that, that just wasn’t happening, I had employees tell me that wasn’t happening or wasn’t happening with any regularity. So that was one of the big things that we initially used to get buy-in and to help change the culture, to make sure we were approachable.
0:24:18.7 Kurt Baker: And that’s amazing, that didn’t cost you very much other than…
0:24:21.0 Jeremy Deck: Nope.
0:24:21.4 Kurt Baker: A paper and a printer, right?
0:24:22.0 Jeremy Deck: That’s exactly right.
0:24:23.2 Kurt Baker: That’s just amazing and saying a few nice words and you don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money to make employees happy. We’re gonna take another quick break, you’re listening to Master Your Finances.
0:24:33.7 ANNOUNCER: This Master Your Finances with Kurt Baker, certified financial planner professional, learn about tax efficiency, liability, owning, managing and saving your money and more from Kurt and his experienced panel of guests. Master Your Finances is underwritten and powered by Certified Wealth Management and Investment, and Rider University. Rider university offers flexible education for adult learners, for more information it’s rider.edu/nextstep.
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0:25:05.7 Kurt Baker: Welcome back you’re listening to Master Your Finances, I’m here with Jeremy Deck, and we’re talking about right now we’re at West Point. And really just be nice to employees and recognize them and listen to them, it just sounds so simple and so basic, but you have to actually do it, right?
0:25:20.0 Jeremy Deck: That’s true.
0:25:20.2 Kurt Baker: And when you do these things, I think the rewards significantly outweigh any little bit of effort you have to put it in. Hey, look someone does a good job just hey, look. Even they just wanna be… People who wanna be appreciated, again, this is a relationship, we talked about that earlier. Relationships are key and recognizing people and letting them know that you appreciate what they’re doing and what they’ve done, I know that just in general, the veterans, I know that this almost feels like automatic to say thank you for your service and all that. But if you really, really mean it, that actually means a lot to that person because they know what they went through and they know what they’ve dealt with. And I can see that on them, if you really mean it, they will… You can see they’re like, “Wow, I’m really glad you recognize that… You understand what I’ve been through and what got me to the point that at now.”
0:26:01.9 Kurt Baker: And then with employment is the same type of situation, people probably are working much harder than you think they are, doing things that you’re not seeing. And if you just recognize them, say “Hey, look, I notice that you’re doing a great job”. And you give them a certificate and recognize in front of their peers, then that…
0:26:16.8 Jeremy Deck: That’s huge.
0:26:17.7 Kurt Baker: Then they’re gonna be like, “Oh, that’s really cool.” So you did all this and now what happened after that, so I’m assuming things change a little bit.
0:26:23.7 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, we started to turn the ship around to borrow a pretty famous leadership book, that’s actually the title of it.
0:26:30.3 Kurt Baker: You can’t go to the merch when we did alright, you got stand in oversight.
[laughter]
0:26:33.7 Kurt Baker: You can’t… That’s not fair, you can’t do that. [laughter]
0:26:35.2 Jeremy Deck: Well, I actually had a mentor actually used that book pretty regularly so to James plug.
0:26:41.8 Kurt Baker: That’s fine.
[laughter]
0:26:45.7 Jeremy Deck: But yeah. So things started to turn around, we actually started… One of the big takeaways I had from my… At that point, my pursuit of higher education was the ability to understand data and data analytics was huge for me. And potentially we essentially developed a marketing campaign, how do I get cadets and the student body to interact with us? And we use social media, essentially social media engagement to drive some decision-making. What we were putting on the menu, how often we were putting it on the menu, when we were taking it off the menu. To a degree, we even use data to understand what products we would add and take away from the catalog. So if we had a specific product to eggs that was not necessarily palatable or enjoyable, we actually took it off of the catalog and found a replacement. That the cadets themselves would actually do a tasting of, do some number-crunching, or we would do some number crunching on the back end to figure out how the cadets have rated it before we would…
0:27:48.8 Kurt Baker: Interesting.
0:27:49.4 Jeremy Deck: Add it as an option.
0:27:50.8 Kurt Baker: That’s just amazing, I never would have thought that you would go on to that extent, because you can… I don’t know if the Military is like, sometimes you feel like they don’t care about what you’re eating what you’re doing, it’s like, you get what you get, enjoy.
0:28:02.7 Jeremy Deck: And one of the… Yeah.
0:28:03.7 Kurt Baker: But this is different, I’m just complimenting you. That’s awesome.
0:28:06.8 Jeremy Deck: I appreciate that. One of the other approaches we did too, from a data perspective, is we also got cadets involved.
0:28:11.7 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:28:12.1 Jeremy Deck: So obviously West Point was an institution of higher learning in addition to being a Leadership Training School for the United States Army. We actually went out to… And one of their big claims to famous engineering, and I actually went out to the engineering department and actually had classes do time motion studies of the way we process cadets through the serving area. How fast they got their food, what products they gravitate through, how to make the serving processes, efficient as possible. And then one of other things we did was we actually took a look at minimizing waste. So we would reach out to the student body and have them do case studies on our operation as a way to build involvement and awareness across the student body.
0:29:01.3 Kurt Baker: Exactly, you may have just answered that question, but I was thinking about this, everything you’re doing it sounds like it’s gonna optimize for the cadets experience. But how did it look as far as the balance sheet at the end of the day, so did you see any of… How did your cost structure change? Did it change it all, go up, down, same what happened? I know the cadets were probably… I’m gonna guess the cadets were happier with what was being delivered, what about the accountant in the back room looking at the books, what are they thinking?
0:29:22.8 Jeremy Deck: Well, so it’s funny, so the unique part about the academy is the way our operation was funded. So each cadet actually donate support and make sure you put it out there. West Point is not the typical university.
0:29:36.7 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:29:37.0 Jeremy Deck: A cadet doesn’t necessarily pay tuition in the same way a conventional college student would. But every cadet actually donates a portion of money back to us to prepare and procure their food. And one of the biggest things we did as the menu start to improve, we actually got added justification for improving and making changes to the product and getting more I say expensive products, but a wider range of products, a little bit higher quality. So when I got there, we had roughly $18 million a year to procure food for the cadets, and when I left we were at 24. So we actually put together.
0:30:20.9 Kurt Baker: So is this… Just to make sure I’m clear, now the cadets… Let’s say I had an allowance, food allowance or is it just part of my compensation?
0:30:29.2 Jeremy Deck: It is.
0:30:29.7 Kurt Baker: Do I get to decide how much? ‘Cause in our school it’s slightly different, I do remember that with doing that but then our school just paid everything and we didn’t really have any say in it.
0:30:36.6 Jeremy Deck: Pretty much how it works at West Point also.
0:30:38.5 Kurt Baker: Oh okay. Good.
0:30:39.1 Jeremy Deck: In a similar way.
0:30:40.0 Kurt Baker: Okay, but I didn’t actually say, “Hey, I’m gonna… I wanna buy that egg platter or whatever it is, right?”
0:30:47.2 Jeremy Deck: Correct.
0:30:47.7 Kurt Baker: So how did you get to have that number go up like in the internal side?
0:30:51.7 Jeremy Deck: It was justifying the expense through or the accountants as you called them, and it’s a team of accountants that do it.
0:31:00.8 Kurt Baker: I’m sure, I’m sure.
0:31:01.7 Jeremy Deck: But it’s essentially justifying to them and to the student body itself.
0:31:04.2 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:31:05.3 Jeremy Deck: So there was some buy-in from the student body…
0:31:07.0 Kurt Baker: Gotcha.
0:31:07.3 Jeremy Deck: Also to improve the offering, offer more… And the justification to that was offering more products, offering food at times when a cadet couldn’t make it to a specific meal to eat. We actually opened a, call it a to-go area where you could swing by and grab something on your way if you for some reason, missed meal. And that option was available in between breakfast and lunch, and then lunch and dinner.
0:31:36.3 Kurt Baker: And I do recall when my daughter was getting ready to go to school, it seemed like when you went to look at colleges they always took you to their cafeteria and they always wanted to show you what the foods. I felt like it was almost like they wanted to show you more about the food than about the academics, it felt like I go… Because apparently, we found out that is a big part of the decision-making process for many people, like how are my kids gonna get fed and are they gonna be happy with whatever food system you have, right? So was that… Is this almost like part of the competitive part of the academy? ‘Cause a lot of the people go to the academy there, obviously, they’re highly educated and they can go pretty much to any school they want. If they get in one of the academies they pretty much can decide where they wanna go to school for the most part.
0:32:17.6 Kurt Baker: Is this one of these ways where they say, “Hey look, come on in man.” [laughter]
0:32:21.0 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, so we…
0:32:21.6 Kurt Baker: We’d like you to come here.
0:32:22.2 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, so there was a lot of opportunity in the summer for potential applicants to take a look at the academy and judge. And I don’t have a real intimate knowledge of how they would recruit, but I do understand that there was a summer program where they would bring prospective applicants in.
0:32:40.2 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:32:40.6 Jeremy Deck: I wanna say it was called the Summer Leader Experience, I’m not sure if I’m getting that acronym right, but…
0:32:46.3 Kurt Baker: Okay, I gotcha.
0:32:47.3 Jeremy Deck: It was essentially an opportunity to bring in perspective students to take a look at the academy, and we would essentially give them lunch every day, they were there. It was really an awesome opportunity, in fact, I know some cadets that are some student, now students that actually applied at some point over the last couple years.
0:33:06.2 Kurt Baker: Okay, so now you’re at the West Point, you turn around their whole eating experience, the cafeteria, the Mess Hall whatever we wanna call it here, it is why we’re civilian or military. So, now you’ve done that, so where did things head from there? I know you’re a… Yeah, talk to me man.
0:33:20.4 Jeremy Deck: Yep, so all good things must come to an end.
0:33:22.7 Kurt Baker: Right. [laughter]
0:33:23.6 Jeremy Deck: And going into 2019, I realized that I was in a very good place professionally. I had joined the military for a specific reason to go to college to get those life experiences. And I started to realize that I wanted to have a second career after the military, so I started to entertain potentially retiring from the service and looking to civilian employment. And there was a lot of build-up to that, the military tries to arm you when you leave service with the skills necessary, with the knowledge to reach out to perspective employers, interview techniques, networking opportunities, resume writing. They put you through a set of courses that help prepare you for entering the workforce, and one of the biggest challenges I had leaving was understanding how what I did in the military transferred into the…
0:34:22.9 Jeremy Deck: Essentially, corporate America. I knew I was… I knew I spent my first 12 years or so as a cook, I knew I was essentially a policy expert in terms of food service operations and multi-unit dining in the military, but getting me to understand that while I’m still wearing a suit. And before I’d actually had this training, I wouldn’t have known, it was just, you don’t know what you don’t know and really trying to take what I was doing and quantify that for someone that has no idea of military jargon.
0:35:01.0 Kurt Baker: And I think that’s a big thing I think you’re touching on it right now, is I think one of the things that employers don’t seem to understand is just how much training that military people have, and even though maybe they learn… I don’t know, a they drive a tank or something, “Oh, I don’t need anybody driving a tank in my office, I need somebody that knows how to do Excel or something.” Right? So can you walk through why military people tend to be very good material to train to do pretty much anything you can think of? And I think the corporate world I think is missing the boat on this, there’s a lot of talent there that they don’t seem to be tapping into that they should be. Can you speak to that a little bit?
0:35:36.7 Jeremy Deck: Oh I would say… Yeah, I would say the biggest thing that I noticed through interviews and networking opportunities I had, was our veterans frankly ability to adapt. And that’s it’s pretty open-ended what does it mean when you say, adapt? Well, it’s really trying to step back, take a look around and understanding the operation, understanding kind of like what I did when I got to West Point, it’s really understanding the bits and pieces. And what I did at West Point, there was a lot of things I did at West Point, and one of the biggest opportunities I had in that assignment-specific was understanding HR. Understanding how the employees benefits, what makes motivates them to do their job, understanding the discipline, disciplinary system within the military organization. And oh, by the way, I didn’t mention that I was the only guy wearing an actual uniform at West Point in the food service operation.
0:36:38.6 Kurt Baker: Oh interesting, I didn’t know that.
0:36:39.5 Jeremy Deck: All of the worker, the food service employees at the cadet mess hall were civilians.
0:36:45.7 Kurt Baker: Civil servants, right?
0:36:47.1 Jeremy Deck: Civil servants.
0:36:47.7 Kurt Baker: Yeah, I got you. Okay.
0:36:48.2 Jeremy Deck: I had one military NCO that worked with me, but we had 80 civilian employees.
0:36:54.2 Kurt Baker: Wow.
0:36:54.5 Jeremy Deck: And it’s not like I can just go in and boss around civilian employees.
0:36:57.7 Kurt Baker: No.
0:36:57.9 Jeremy Deck: And I think that that’s a common misconception in the military that you… All you do is tell people what to do and they do it.
0:37:05.5 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:37:05.8 Jeremy Deck: It’s still a choice.
0:37:07.0 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:37:07.7 Jeremy Deck: There’s… And now obviously, I have tools that maybe a civilian employer in corporate America doesn’t have, but at the same time it’s still a choice. If I tell somebody to do something, they have the option to say no.
0:37:18.8 Kurt Baker: Right, absolutely.
0:37:19.1 Jeremy Deck: And I have, other than the disciplinary action that can potentially follow, I have no other recourse than trying to figure out a way to motivate them to get them to do what it is that needs to be done without having to go the disciplinary route. So that’s a very last resort and an option you certainly don’t wanna go down unless you absolutely have no other choice.
0:37:44.0 Kurt Baker: Good, good point. We’re gonna take another quick break. You’re listening to Master Your Finances.
0:37:49.2 ANNOUNCER: This is master our Finances with Kurt Baker, a certified financial planner professional, learn about tax efficiency, liability, owning, managing and saving your money, and more from Kurt and his experienced panel of guests. Master Your Finances is underwritten and powered by Certified Wealth Management and Investment and Rider University. Rider university offers flexible education for adult learners, for more information, it’s rider.edu/nextstep.
[music]
0:38:22.7 Kurt Baker: Welcome back, you’re listening to Master Your Finances, I’m here with Jeremy Deck and if you want a good food go to West Point, ’cause Jeremy definitely set up a good system there. You’re gonna eat like a king or a queen, right? So thank you for that, thanks for really helping the cadets out, ’cause I know they definitely appreciate it. I remember what I was going to school it’s like, “Oh my gosh, thank goodness it’s something good to eat.” But so to walk us through what happened, now you give you the prep thing, and I think this is really, really important. Is that military people have a lot of skills and a lot of training that helps them learn almost anything, you said adaptability, which I think is really important, and I think like most of us, you come to get a job how many people walk into that job having the skill set for that specific job. Everybody goes through some type of training, there’s some type of period of training. The question is really, are you gonna learn what I want you to learn even the company… In fact, I know in different interest I’ve been in, it’s like I don’t wanna hire anybody in my industry ’cause they’re gonna have bad habits coming in.
0:39:16.0 Kurt Baker: I’d rather hire anybody who clearly doesn’t know anything about what I do, because when I hire them and I bring them and train them they’re gonna listen to me and they’re gonna do it the way we do it. Because we found that that works best for us, right? So in some ways, that’s actually another positive a topic, ’cause you’re gonna come and listen, “Okay, this is the way our company does it”. So now you’re going through all this process. So what happens now you had some opportunities afterwards, right? ‘Cause you were doing a great job at West Point, which we just moved to know.
0:39:37.7 Jeremy Deck: Yeah, I actually connected with… Fast forward to summer of 2019, I actually met the President and CEO of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield on a tour of West Point.
0:39:50.7 Kurt Baker: Relationships.
0:39:51.8 Jeremy Deck: Relationships.
0:39:52.0 Kurt Baker: There you go.
0:39:52.3 Jeremy Deck: That’s 100%, and I realized very quickly that I needed a mentor and he served as that mentor for me. He’d actually had some previous experience in the British military, in fact, if I remember correctly, he was a Merchant Marine to… I think I recall you saying it.
0:40:11.0 Kurt Baker: But it has to be awesome. [laughter]
0:40:11.8 Jeremy Deck: Yeah. Had a great experience with him serving as a mentor, and realized very quickly that the mentorship had potentially blossomed into something greater. Realized there was a potential job opportunity there, and that’s how I got into… In such a weird way, I went from food service to health insurance.
0:40:36.8 Kurt Baker: Right, okay.
0:40:38.1 Jeremy Deck: And I actually got into the health insurance industry leaving West Point, I knew I didn’t… I knew food service was gonna be an option for me, but I had gotten to the end of my military career and I realized, you know something, I wanna do something different. I had been to school, I had gotten my MBA, and I really wanted to figure out how to put my best foot forward in corporate America. And I figured what better place than New York City.
0:41:03.7 Kurt Baker: Yeah, that’s definitely a lot of business going on there and they love Excel in New York City.
0:41:06.7 Jeremy Deck: That’s yeah…
0:41:07.2 Kurt Baker: They love spreadsheets, man. [laughter]
0:41:08.7 Jeremy Deck: Not just spreadsheets, but a whole bunch of other stuff too.
0:41:10.9 Kurt Baker: Yeah, for sure.
0:41:12.3 Jeremy Deck: But yeah, so I actually started working in the health insurance industry space and I felt like at the time I wanted to change health insurance, I wanted to make an impact.
0:41:22.7 Kurt Baker: Good for you, man. Let’s do it. [laughter]
0:41:24.6 Jeremy Deck: I wanted to change health insurance, and I had an incredible experience, the team I worked with was absolutely out of this world. I really enjoyed being able to give back, and frankly at the time, I was also giving back to a bunch of military opportunities and not-for-profits. And one of the biggest, what we were talking about opportunities to help veterans early on, and I would say one, in fact, this is actually how I met my mentor at the time, was through a program called or a not-for-profit called American Corporate Partners. They are a large national not-for-profit that actually pairs industry, corporate American mentors with separating service members and their spouses. It’s an incredible program, if you wanna volunteer as an individual, there’s literally no commitment other than your time.
0:42:21.9 Kurt Baker: That’s amazing.
0:42:22.1 Jeremy Deck: No monetary commitment, all you have to do is reach out to someone at the company or the organization and fill out an intake, and they will pair you. They’ll assign you with essentially Your relationship manager who will take a look at your qualifications and figure out who aligns best. In fact, I’m now on my fourth… I like to give back. I’m actually now on my fourth mentorship arrangement, in fact I’m connected with a site director for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University down in Jacksonville area, North Carolina.
0:42:55.7 Kurt Baker: It’s Florida. Okay. Oh not… Okay.
0:42:57.2 Jeremy Deck: North Carolina, new camp resume. So her… In fact, she’s a spouse of a Marine Corp.
0:43:03.8 Kurt Baker: Okay. Cool.
0:43:04.7 Jeremy Deck: Or a Marine, I say Marine Corp. But and this is my fourth mentorship arrangement, I’ve had three others. The arrangement last for a full year and you essentially give up an hour of your time, they ask for an hour monthly. And then you can do more if you like, and then continue the relationship beyond the year if you like, but the program itself really just has… Is for one year and then.
0:43:33.7 Kurt Baker: And that’s just amazing.
0:43:34.4 Jeremy Deck: Yeah.
0:43:34.9 Kurt Baker: Well, I think it’s amazing, one is, again, you get back to relationships, which is I think it’s cool. And I think another thing and you can speak this a little bit, but I mean when you help others, you tend to learn a lot from their experiences, right? I think that’s a key part of it too, it’s a two-way street, you’re obviously helping them with whatever transition they’re going through, but I think you get a lot back from those people that you’re helping as well. So it’s really… That’s why I think as a country we tend to be very generous with helping others, ’cause I think there’s a whole other side of that that sometimes people don’t really pay attention to, but it’s really there and it’s awesome. So, okay, so you’re doing all that and I want you talking a little bit more about now, you’re being mentored, right?
0:44:11.8 Jeremy Deck: Yep.
0:44:12.2 Kurt Baker: You’re mentoring other people. So tell me where you went from there.
0:44:15.8 Jeremy Deck: Well, so I had actually gotten progressed through the company I… And I think November of 2021, I actually became an Account Manager with the company. I had actually worked with current clients as a way to work through issues with their health insurance coverage, and this is all employer-based health insurance programs. And I very quickly started to realize and understand that I wanted to be… I wanted to do, I guess I say something different, I wanted to be more consultative, I wanted to work directly with employers essentially to find ways to improve their benefits offering. So I told you when I was at West Point I had done a lot of HR work, when you have that many employees.
0:45:07.5 Jeremy Deck: 90% of my time at West Point was with employees working on HR-related issues, and I felt what better fit than an HR and benefits company. So in November of last year, in fact, at this point, almost four months ago, I made the decision to move to USI Insurance Services. Which is essentially a large HR and benefits brokerage, we compete with some of the biggest names in the industry.
0:45:34.8 Kurt Baker: Right, okay. ‘Cause that kind of fits right in with your experience, right? Which is interesting, right? So who would have thought a warrant officer from the military would be now handling HR benefits because you have all that experience from all those people that you were dealing with throughout that time frame. So you do have a lot of relatable experience which is awesome. So what’s… We’re headed forward for you now at this point, it’s how you’re getting ramped up on this whole thing, right? So this has gotta be an interesting career change for you again.
0:46:00.7 Jeremy Deck: It is. But one of the big things that I take away from my new employer is our unique approach to servicing clients.
0:46:09.0 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:46:09.3 Jeremy Deck: And one of the most unique features of the company I work for now is data, going back to and revisiting some of our previous parts of the conversation is USI utilizes data in a very unique way relative to the rest of the industry. And I’ll use one example, we actually have a benchmarking survey that we allow employers to take part in. And really it allows those employers to measure the effectiveness of their benefits across competitors nationally. So we actually… A company inputs their contribution percentages, their individual benefits into our system, and then we actually look across the entire… Essentially our entire book of business and understand based on industry, geographic location and employer size, and really find the best fit that companies like you are doing. And we essentially benchmark each one of those companies against the greater pool within an industry.
0:47:17.3 Kurt Baker: So that would probably make your… The capital you’re rolling out as far as the benefits goes, more efficient.
0:47:23.7 Jeremy Deck: Correct. Exactly what I’m saying.
0:47:23.8 Kurt Baker: ‘Cause now you’re spending more on the areas that are actually something the employees want and less on the areas that maybe they’re not paying as much of attention to it.
0:47:31.3 Jeremy Deck: 100%.
0:47:31.8 Kurt Baker: So they’re seeing any trends out there now with how… What employees are kind of looking for that maybe an employer hadn’t really thought about as much, it’s maybe coming to the forefront a little bit now?
0:47:41.8 Jeremy Deck: Yeah. So one of the big drivers right now is wellness and pharmacy benefits are huge, in fact, most large companies spend upwards of 30% just on their pharmacy benefit alone. And there’s a lot of opportunity for savings, especially the bigger the company, the more you can save. In fact, I know of a couple of companies locally that spend $2 million or more just in pharmacy benefits for their employees, which is huge.
0:48:13.1 Kurt Baker: Yeah that’s huge, of course.
0:48:15.3 Jeremy Deck: It’s a big number.
0:48:16.2 Kurt Baker: Absolutely.
0:48:16.8 Jeremy Deck: But that’s incredibly important, and benefits are extremely unique, ’cause it’s not… For a lot of people there’s a certain level of passion for what you do for the company, but on the flip side of that you don’t necessarily… As long as your benefits are working you don’t necessarily completely think about them. As a long as I’m not paying too much for my benefits it’s not something I’m thinking about. What becomes a friction point for a lot of employees is when I’m getting to a point where I’m spending seven, eight, nine, $10,000 a year just to make sure I can go to the doctor.
0:48:55.8 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:48:56.4 Jeremy Deck: And that’s minimum… Finding ways as an employer to offset those costs or minimize those costs to your employees is an incredibly powerful recruiting tool and a retention tool for that matter.
0:49:10.9 Kurt Baker: Absolutely.
0:49:11.2 Jeremy Deck: Because let’s face it, a lot of employers are fighting for talent right now, and one of the biggest ways to help attract talent is through benefits. And one of the big, I guess, call it resources out there is fertility benefits, I actually worked a good portion of time in New York and worked for a New York-based insurance provider and fertility benefits were huge. Not just for heterosexual spouses, but same-sex spouses, that’s a huge benefit and in fact, not only as a way to grow a family, but also for actual fertility-related treatments and that’s… For a long time, those were optional procedures that weren’t covered and the expense on the employee was huge in case, in some cases, 10, 20, $30,000 just to start a family, and that’s not something that it’s easy to put a price on.
0:50:10.9 Kurt Baker: Well, that’s amazing Jeremy, we’re running of time. You got any final thoughts before we head out for today. You just did a great job, thank you.
0:50:15.8 Jeremy Deck: No, I just I appreciate the time and one of the things that I hope showed through in our conversation was my passion for people. And that’s one of the things that I wanted to leave with is just, throughout my career and now in the civilian world, it’s all about helping people.
0:50:32.8 Kurt Baker: Absolutely.
0:50:33.7 Jeremy Deck: And that’s what I wanna do.
0:50:34.7 Kurt Baker: Well, you do a great job Jeremy, keep it up with the great work. You’re listening to Master Your Finances have a wonderful day.
0:50:39.8 ANNOUNCER: That was this week’s episode of Master Your Finances, with Kurt Baker, a certified financial planner professional. Tune in every Sunday at 9:00 AM to expand your knowledge in building and managing your wealth. Missed an episode? No worries, you can subscribe to a free weekly episode of Master Your Finances to listen to on your favorite podcasting platform, Apple, Spotify, Google podcasts, whatever. Master Your Finances is underwritten and powered by Certified Wealth Management and Investment and Rider University. Rider offers Continuing Studies programs for adult who need flexibility. Want to add new skills to your resume take a Continuing Studies course at Rider University.
