Christopher Hensley:
Good morning everybody. I'm Chris Hensley. You're listening to Money Matters on KPFT Houston. It is now 10 o'clock and we have a great show ahead of you. We've got A very special guest who's going to be joining us later on at the halfway mark. Our topic for today is going to be adult learning, humor, financial literacy. We're going to spend some time talking about that. We're also going to talk about SOFA and introduce SOFA to any first-time listeners who have not been introduce yourself or know what we are about so we are going to spend some time talking about that. Then we are going to be joined after the break by professional speaker, coach, improvisational comedian, Steph DeWagner. So please stay tuned, keep listening, we'll be there shortly. But stay with us for the next half hour. So let's go ahead and get started right away with the introduction to SOFA. SOFA is the Society for Financial Awareness. Our website is www.HoustonMidtownSOFA.org. We are a non-profit 501c3 educational speakers bureau. And our mission is to fight financial literacy. So how do we do that? Well, we do that by going out to different organizations, different companies, different groups, anywhere people already congregate and provide financial education seminars as well as health and wellness workshops. Why do we do this? Well, one of the things that we're able to help companies and organizations satisfy when we go out and do a talk is a Department of Labor regulation called 404C. And 404C is really any company that has an ERISA-sponsored retirement plan has to offer a financial literacy piece, a financial education piece. And so by having SOFA come out and talk, we actually satisfy that requirement by the Department of Labor. But we don't just work for for-profit companies. We also go out and talk to professional associations. We go out and talk to churches, religious organizations. So anywhere people already congregate, we will go out and do talks. Now, how is SOFA made up? I am the president of the Houston Midtown Chapter, and I am a financial advisor. So if we go out and we talk about retirement planning, investments, cash management, budgeting, that's going to be me. But we have different speakers as well, and we like to change up the speakers and the topics. So, for instance, in April, if you wanted us to come out and talk about taxes, we would have a CPA come out and talk. If you were interested in wills or estate planning, that would be an attorney, and we would have an attorney come out and talk on those topics. If you have employees or members of your group that are interested in first-time homebuyers, we would have a realtor come out, and we also SOFA believes that your finances and your health and wellness are interconnected. We don't separate the two. We also go out and do health and wellness talks. We do one called Stress Reduction in the Workplace. That's going to be a healthcare professional who would come out and talk on that. And so, SOFA really, it's a group of volunteers. It's a group of pro bono, people who go out pro bono and volunteer their time to do financial education, financial literacy events in the Houston community. When do we do this? Well, often these are going to be lunch and learn, seminar, workshop format. So, this is going to be at your work, either during lunch We've done them in the mornings, we've done them in the afternoon. We like to make it as easy and as flexible as possible for the person who is hosting us and having us in as a guest. We've been out to city governments where the essential employees are the people that are 911 responders, firemen, ambulance people. And so there's only one time a year that they can actually all get together and attend something like this. And so they were able to piggyback us on the end of a safety meeting. We've also been out to companies that have shift workers that work around the clock and rotate out where we'll do 10 at a time. We've gone out to companies where the bulk of the people are machinists and so I've gone out, picture me, out on the factory floor with machines going off in the background and a training area right there on the factory floor with me doing a seminar with goggles on. So we like to make it very flexible. How do you get involved with SOFA? How do you have SOFA come out to your workplace, your organization? We like to make it very simple for you so it's as easy as getting us in touch with your human resource manager at your company, the executive pastor at your religious organization, maybe the president of a professional association or the planner, group planner for a professional association, that might be somebody that you would contact us with. But you would simply let them know that you are interested in having this organization come out and talk. Would it be okay if they reached out to them? Once you do that, let us know. Contact us. We will reach out to them, and if we are invited there, we will set up a talk and come out. We also do have some talks that are open to the public, though those are rare. Maybe once or twice a year we'll have some that are open to the public. Usually that's during Houston Money Week. Go to our website which is www.HoustonMidTownSofa.org and we have a calendar of events there so when those are coming up you can get on our newsletter. to keep you up to date when those things are open and you're welcome to come out to those as well. So I'm going to go ahead and switch now to our topic for today. And you are listening to KPFT Houston. I'm Chris Hinsley. Our topic for today is going to be adult learning and humor. And if you keep listening, we're going to be joined by a special guest at the halfway mark. Our topic is, we just got through talking about going out to companies and doing financial literacy events. Financial literacy is really just a flavor of what's called adult education or adult learning. At one point I worked for a company called Money Management International. That's a fancy way of saying consumer credit counselors. And it was an organization where I was a corporate trainer. And when I was a corporate trainer, I got very involved with adult learning techniques and ways to get people engaged. As a financial advisor by trade, my profession is one of the worst when it comes to going out and doing talks and seminars. Typically, when a financial advisor goes out to a company, you're going to see charts, mountain charts, bar graphs, statistics. And you might also see some Z's flying out of the mouths of the people who are supposed to be listening and supposed to be engaged. That was one of the reasons that I started SOFA was to kind of change that around, to switch that around. So when I was involved as a corporate trainer, one of the books that I used was called Master It Faster and it's by Colin Rose. You might recognize Colin Rose. He also wrote another book called Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century, and that was co-written by Brian Tracy. Both of those books, if you have kids, students, if you are a teacher or an instructor, an educator, I would recommend them. They're very, very good books. And I'm going to read a few excerpts from Master It Faster here. But one of the things we're going to focus on is left brain, right brain. This book really has a good way of describing the differences there. We all know left brain, right brain dominant people. When we talk about left brain people, that's going to be the more analytic side. So you know people who are CPAs, who are engineers, who might fit on that side of the fence. But you also know people who are right-brained. That's going to be more creative, more artsy. We're called intuitive. These are writers, actors, people who use that creative side. Now it's not as easy as just saying one person is this and one person is that. We're going to talk in pretty big generalities. But I like the way that it's described here. It says, imagine that you're looking down on the top of your head and you're able to see through your skull. thinking brain within, what you would see is the top thinking brain, or what's called the neocortex, consists of two distinct halves. The two halves are connected by a rich bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum. Research suggests that each half of the brain tends to have its own style of processing information for learning. It's important not to exaggerate the differences between the left and right brain because our brains are far too complex to be put into neat categories. Nevertheless, it is an important conclusion for this research. Some people prefer a slow, step-by-step buildup of information, and we call them linear type of learners. Others prefer or really need to see the big picture of the subject. So an initial overview, they can see where it all leads to. This would be somebody who would use, it's difficult to do a jigsaw without the picture on the box in front of you to put it together. We call those people global types of thinkers. One example that they give in this article, it says, when we listen to a song, the left brain will basically be attending to the words, the right brain will be attending to the melody. In addition, the emotional center of your brain, our limbic system, will be engaged. In other words, your whole brain is actively involved. And so when I hear that, I think of my son as an example. I have a two and a half going on three year old and picking him up from daycare one day, he's sitting in the back of the car in his car seat and I hear him singing in Spanish. At first I'm like, what is he singing? What is he talking about? And it turns out he was singing the days of the week in Spanish. And if you think about it, isn't that the way that we learn the alphabet? You think about the alphabet song. This is not a coincidence. There's a reason that we learn things better through song and that's because we're engaging both sides of the brain at the same time. This article goes on to state, Most traditional education materials rely heavily on linear presentation, which is a slow, detailed buildup of information. The more global learners can get frustrated, and they cannot see where it's all leading to. So they get bored, and then they just turn off. And we see that as we go out and we do talks, if you're not engaging people and getting them going. Emotions and learning are very, very important. If you think about your teachers when you were in school, if I was to ask you who made the biggest impact on you, do you remember those teachers? Usually those are the ones that were the most enthusiastic, had the most emotional appeal, or really what it comes down to were passionate. about their topic. They could take a topic that you weren't necessarily interested in and by being exciting and entertaining really get your interest and maybe that would go on to be something that you are interested on later on in life. And with that we're going to take a short break now and be right back with our guest.

SPEAKER_02:
You go to school to learn the rules on how to love and live your life I think about it twice. The push of push, the kicks of kicks, the judge of quits, the jockey meets his fight. Oh, for the dollar bill. For a dollar bill, for a dollar bill For a dollar bill, for a dollar bill You don't buy the life, you live the life A father knows much too late He was never home He worked his childhood way at home He had two cars I'm gonna stop it, I'm gonna stop it, I'm gonna stop it, I'm gonna stop it The. It will save the land. It produces air in the name of wealth. It will buy you a life, but not true life. The kind of life where the sun and the moon You are so proud of me.

None:
You are so proud of me.

Christopher Hensley:
And we are back. You're listening to Money Matters, and we are going to be joined now by Steph DeWagner. So let me make sure she is on the line here. Steph, are you there?

Steph Dewaegeneer:
I sure am.

Christopher Hensley:
Excellent, excellent. Well, let me go ahead and introduce you to the listeners today. Steph worked with SOFA back in 2012 during a financial literacy event that we had. called From the Boardroom to the Classroom and she actually emceed the event for us. So that's where we've worked with Steph before and just really a great person all around. I want to share a little bit of her bio with you. Steph is a speaker, a coach. She's trained hundreds of executives, actors, students. in improvisational interactive theater techniques over her career. She also is part of Comedy Sports, which is an improvisation company that goes out and does training and comedy events, as well as it says here that you were the Miss Plus America Ambassador in Miss Plus America 2009 as well. So Steph, I want to welcome you to the show and thank you for coming on today.

Steph Dewaegeneer:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Christopher Hensley:
Now, Steph, when it comes to financial literacy or adult education in general, where do you see humor's role?

Steph Dewaegeneer:
Well, I think humor is probably, in my mind, the best tool for keeping people engaged and I also think it's a fantastic method of retention. You know, just look at all the things that people forward each other and post on the internet, you know, funny videos. Did you see that funny commercial? People will remember a funny commercial, and sometimes they don't remember what the commercial is actually for, but they remember the commercial. So what we try to do is mix the fun, mix the humor with content that is applicable. specializing in soft skills areas and really complementing a lot of the core training and compliance training a lot of times that happens in the corporate world.

Christopher Hensley:
Absolutely, absolutely. That's our next show. I went out to the HR Houston symposium and so there's a lot of people there who are involved with training and development so we're all kind of on the same page as asking these questions. How do you get people more engaged? How do you get them What are some of the things that you do when you are training those left brain analytic types? I'm thinking of the engineers, the CPAs on either theater or improvisational techniques or anything. How do you get those people involved?

Steph Dewaegeneer:
Well, you know, it's funny, and you don't want to make generalizations about people, but yes, there are definitely left-brain people out there. You know, it just so happens on Tuesday, I facilitated a workshop for about 30 personal investment officers.

Christopher Hensley:
Okay, I'm laughing just because I know the type. Keep going.

Steph Dewaegeneer:
Well, you know, the first thing I had to do was say, why don't you gentlemen take your coats off and relax? And, you know, regardless of whether I'm doing a workshop for the staff of a casino or a bunch of PIOs or some sales guys, no matter what in every group, you've got different personalities. And you've got the folks that start with their arms folded and the look on their face of, all right. And you've got your hams in the group, the people that are going to volunteer for the exercises. And the same thing happened with this group of personal investment officers. They've been in an all-day meeting. We were sort of the capper to their meeting, myself and another coach from comedy sports. And what we ended up doing was really injecting a lot of fun. really hitting them with the main points about how can they connect to the retail banks that they work with, and how can they talk to and communicate with the different employees and managers there. And we also addressed one of their primary concerns, which was how can they innovate some creative methods into their day-to-day sales activity.

Christopher Hensley:
Absolutely, absolutely. Now, when you go out and you do these types of training, if you had to pick a favorite group, are there any favorite groups that you like to work with?

Steph Dewaegeneer:
Well, I personally really love working with sales groups when a sales manager brings us in. Maybe it's a regional sales meeting, because those typically are really gung-ho, extroverted people, naturally. So half the battle is done in the beginning. But I also do love to see the transformations of people who are maybe a little bit more introverted or left brain in there, analyzing things. And to see a transformation maybe at the end of a workshop, where now they're high-fiving and laughing. learning that, hey, it's still okay to play. I'm an adult and I get to play.

Christopher Hensley:
That's always good to see people just getting them, sometimes when I go out and talk, just getting them to move out of their seats and move up to the front. You can see it just kind of chipping away slowly like, all right, do I really have to do this? And by the end people are energetic, they're enthusiastic. Are there any groups that you tend to shy away from?

Steph Dewaegeneer:
No, you know, I have to say in 20 years of being a performer and a workshop facilitator and speaker, I can't think of a group that I ever said, no, I'm going to pass on this and pass it to somebody else. One of the main rules, if there was ever a number one rule in performing improvisational comedy, since we are being spontaneous and making things up, is the rule of yes and. Basically, yes and is the concept that yes, I'm going to accept your idea and I'm going to build on it and see where it takes us. So I guess it would sort of be anti-improv to say no to a group.

Christopher Hensley:
Absolutely, and I know when you came out and we did the financial literacy event, you did an exercise with us where we were doing that yes and, and it was just really great to see. There were people that were a little, like you said, with the arms closed and that sort of thing, but some of those people ended up in front of the room and it really got things going. So I can testify that that's a really good thing. How important to you do you think it is to keep it entertaining while teaching or giving a presentation?

Steph Dewaegeneer:
Well, naturally, there's going to be times where you have some hard facts, some compliance information that you have to get out to people that no matter how you try to dress it up, it's just the facts and you have to get it out. But I think what you can do in that case is at least try to break up the information or to support it with Maybe something, it doesn't necessarily even have to be comedy or comedian. It could be just something that's a little more creative in how to restate the information. Maybe it's some sort of a small group breakout exercise that gets people talking or some sort of a table topic type of discussion during open time, but that at least restates or supports the material that you put out there, but I do think you have to speak to all different types of people's brains. Anybody who's gone through disc training or personality, you know, the colors. I know we do a lot of work with Chevron and people's email signatures at Chevron will have that they're a green over a red or a red over a yellow. And what that's saying is that they understand in our culture that not everybody learns the same way and not everybody communicates the same way. And typically in communication, it's not you that has to change. Well, it is you. It's you, how you communicate with different people and understanding that you can't make somebody else change, but how you communicate with them can. The same thing with learning. Sometimes you have to have multiple approaches to get the same information out to a large group of people.

Christopher Hensley:
That's right. I mentioned earlier that you had emceed one of our events for SOFA. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience emceeing and how or if that might be different than when you're training?

Steph Dewaegeneer:
Yes, and that was such a great event. I remember when I first met with you, and again, I'm sort of a spontaneous fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal.

SPEAKER_00:
I love that about you, Steph.

Steph Dewaegeneer:
Well, I like that you really appreciate and understand the training aspect of your field and your industry. You trusted me, so I thought, okay, Chris, trust me. I'm going to do this. I wasn't sure exactly what my place would be in that day. But what I was really impressed with at that event was how many people in the community really do want to get out there and share all this terrific information and really to educate the community and show people that there are resources to get their finances in order, no matter what your income level is. Because sometimes people think, well, I don't have any money. What do I have to worry about? But that's exactly... You'd be surprised. People who don't have any money have more than they think if they just got organized.

Christopher Hensley:
That's right. That's right.

Steph Dewaegeneer:
I'm seeing, to me, my job as an emcee is to not necessarily take the forefront of being in the entertainment, but to keep the day clipping along. Keep the show on schedule, give people that moment to kind of adjust and change maybe just a little bit. Maybe if the group needs a little bit of re-energizing, do a quick 60 second activity to get them up out of their seats and re-energized and ready for the next speaker.

Christopher Hensley:
Absolutely. As experiencing that and seeing that, I would say it's almost like the glue of the whole day because we had a lot of different speakers. Putting that many people and different personalities in a room together, I would say that kind of weaved it all together and it really just brought it together. Now, Steph, kind of switching gears a little bit, we talked earlier about having a teacher or a mentor, someone who is passionate about topics. Did you have maybe a teacher or a mentor who played a role in your education or your craft even that you might be able to share a story with us?

Steph Dewaegeneer:
Well, you know, I think naturally everybody would expect me to say it would be one of my theater teachers. And of course, I had a fantastic theater teacher in high school. And I attended San Houston State University, and they have one of the absolute best theater programs in the country. But when it all goes back to the first teacher that I really think of that made an impact on me, it was actually in seventh grade. I was living in Pennsylvania at the time. I went to a school that had such a small town that it was a 7th to 12th grade school and the art teacher there, Mr. Fred Coral, was fantastic. What I really loved about Mr. Coral is that he did treat us individually and recognized our individual talents and even though I was a 7th grader, quickly put me into a group with ninth graders and was already showing me, inviting me to come when a university, the Pittsburgh Art Institute, came to show a recruiting film, you know, invited me to come to that because he saw my potential at 13 years old. And so that always taught me to really look at any students I work with, whether it's high school students through our comedy sports high school league program that we do at 14 different schools, or whether I'm working with adults, to really always remember that people are individual learners.

Christopher Hensley:
I couldn't agree with you more. You said somebody saw you at a different level than what your grade was and kind of put you into that surrounding by people who were kind of on your level. I think with a lot of things it really just takes a person. taking the time to care and doing that. I've had similar experiences as well. We are actually right here at the end. I'd love to keep on going Steph, but we are right here at the end. So I wanted to say thank you for joining us on today's show. If you would like to contact Steph or find out more about her, you can reach her at steph, which is S-T-E-P-H at comedysports.com. Sports is actually spelled S-P-O-R-T-Z with a Z on the end. Steph, right before we go, do you have any parting thoughts for us?

Steph Dewaegeneer:
I would just like to encourage people that if you've never stepped outside the box to try something different during your conferences or your meetings or your trainings, do reach out. It doesn't have to be the comedy sports. Reach out to a theater group or a creative company, a meeting planner. Do try something different and you might be surprised at the result.

Christopher Hensley:
That's awesome. Again, I couldn't agree with you more. A lot of times doing this type of stuff is just jumping feet first and doing it, getting out of your comfort zone and doing that. Steph, thank you so much for being a guest on the show and have a good rest of the day there.

Steph Dewaegeneer:
Thank you.

Christopher Hensley:
We are about to wrap it up here, but I wanted to mention next week's show. We are going to have some live coverage from the Gulf Coast HR Symposium. We did some interviews out there with participants as well as the President of HR Houston, Tracy Frazier, and Executive Director Barbara Lane. We will be interviewing them as well. So please join us next week. That's Friday at 10 a.m. and we will go ahead and transition over to the BBC Already in Progress.