Why Saving Isn’t Enough Anymore

Mary Wisniewski: Well, hello, it's me, Mary Wisniewski, editor at large at Cornerstone Advisors and host of Money Isn't Everything, a show that explores anything other than just holding money because, well, that's a commodity thing. Today on the show is Ronnie Green, CEO and co founder of Algo Para and that's a financial wellness platform for credit unions and banks. He has a fascinating story, from going to living in his car as a college athlete to learning to invest, making money, and founding his own company. On the show we talk about what younger consumers want from their financial institutions, where financial education goes wrong, and what institutions need to make sure they have right before going hard on Gen AI. Here's our convo. Ronnie, welcome to Funny Isn't Everything. It's great to have you on the show today.

Ronnie Green: Yeah, I'm so glad to be here.

Mary Wisniewski: Well, I know we've, we've had like a pre call, so I already know you're a great conversationalist, but I just want to, I want to get right at it. Your, your ambition at Algo Pair is nothing short of trying to democratize wealth. And, um, you've, you described a very pivotal moment in your early 20s when you were homeless and trying to figure out your financial future. And I guess I, I wanted to start there because, um, it feels very important. And I guess what was going through your mind then and how do you think it shaped what you're building now?

Ronnie Green: Absolutely, I'm happy to share. Wouldn't, uh, recommend for anybody out there, uh, don't live in your car. But, you know, if you are in that position, it, uh, doesn't have to be that extreme. Uh, you know, I had just made some young, dumb money mistakes, um, as most people do when they're in their early 20s, uh, no sense of direction what to do. Uh, so I had to end up living in my car, uh, while I was a student athlete, uh, in college. And so through that process, what was really going through my mind, especially at night, because I was also an athlete. So I worked out in the morning and at night, and I did have some clarity there. Right. And I understood that I needed to get out the situation, but just didn't know where to start. So the first thing I did was go to people I know were successful. I knew they were successful. Success was pouring all over them in their conversations and their lifestyle and their freedom. Those things that I noticed that I wanted for my life. So, uh, that was my first step. Like, if I don't know what to do, ask. Ask someone who, you know either they're where you're where you want to be or, you know, they represent something that you want to, you know, represent for yourself. Right. So I heard so many different things, right? Uh, real estate, stocks, you know, everything. And I was like, well, here I am in college. One, you know, I, uh, have school, right? That's what I'm there for.

Mary Wisniewski: Yeah.

Ronnie Green: Two, I have all these other things. Football, weights, my life, right. And I said I have to sacrifice something, right. And I wasn't willing to sacrifice, you know, football, that was my first love. And school, uh, was important to me. Education is important to me. Uh, but it was my social life that I had to sacrifice to start somewhere. And I said I need, I don't have a lot of time, so I need to be able to move my money. The money I did save up, uh, from working two night jobs to allow to grow, right, while I'm in college and doing the things that I'm there to do. And that's why I chose stocks. You know, real estate kind of have to be there in person. You kind of have to explore. There are so many different avenues. Real estate, uh, but investing in the stock market was one that fit my lifestyle at the time. Um, and understanding that I was a busy person, I wasn't going to be able to be on a computer or be present, um, at a real estate deal. So that's why I chose, uh, stocks. And um, you know, the story took five grand, turned it into 100,000. And I'm happy to get into the weeds of how that came to be and how I came to be a part of the 5% club of retail investors who actually can do it on their own and can produce a profit.

Mary Wisniewski: Yeah, that, I mean, I was just going to highlight that this is a, this is an typical story. It's definitely exceptional and I would like to go into that. But before we do, I kind of want to get into your headspace. I mean, usually when people are starting to invest, it's like there's a nervousness there, but your sort of storyline is at a different space. Right. It's not like necessarily fear of losing, fear of not making enough, um, in a certain amount of time kind of thing. But I'm wondering what was it like emotionally when you're like, oh, I'm investing now.

Ronnie Green: Uh, I cannot say this. I was pretty excited and that excitement turned into obsession because I just got out in the situation. I just saved up my first five grand. Right. So I'm feeling good. I got my first apartment, uh, at the age of 21. And so I'm like, all right, things are progressing. And I think that's something that, you know, I speak on a lot today on LinkedIn and to anyone out there trying to serve the next gen and on all the other platforms, too. When I talk and speak to next gen, is that you. Your mindset has to be. Because for us young people, it's instant gratification. I want it now. Right. But, um, kind of got to get out of that mindset and understand where you're trying to go and what you're trying to accomplish. And for me, it was really just an emotional drive, an emotional high, because I'm making progress, and that's where my happiness relied on. Or, uh, that's what really drove me to get up, is that, hey, it's kind of bigger than me. Right? But at the same time, I have to take care of me first so I can take care of other people. And that just gave me, uh, an emotional roller coaster. Right, right. Uh, the ups and downs, all that happened, uh, every different emotion I went through, um, but I kept on to the high emotions, the good emotions. Right. Of course, depression, those things happen. Uh, but for me, it was about how can I keep holding on to the highs in those moments. That way, if I hit another low, um, I still have that emotional drive, uh, which helps me essentially execute on what I'm trying to do and stay focused and stay disciplined and not get sidetracked by, you know, all the things in life that's designed to distract us, um, from our goals.

Mary Wisniewski: Well, Ronnie, this is where I want to, uh, introduce the segment. That's what you said, because you said this on a podcast, but it ties to what you just said, and, um, I think it's so beautiful. But you said jobs come and go. Maybe you get fired or laid off. What could have sustained me? So I said, I have to grow my money. I have to grow my nest egg. I can't just have a savings account that runs out. And, you know, we've kind of been talking about that already, but, like, walk me through that. Um, you know, I'll call it an aha moment. And, um, and how it shaped the

Ronnie Green: path you took, the mindset to go from savings to investing, which is my. Also my message is very strong message. Um, you know, we work with financial institutions at Algo Pair, and I know it's real strong to them to. To hear that, because, you know, we've been told, like, save, save, save.

Mary Wisniewski: Yeah.

Ronnie Green: Uh, what I realized, uh, you know, when I entered into living on my car, I had a savings, it depleted, right? And so I was. And it didn't move, right? Like the money I had saved, it didn't grow, right, Even with a cd, you know, from a credit union or a, ah, savings account at the time. And that was 2015. Uh, when I entered that stage, you know, I understood that if I want to build generational wealth, right, I want to help my family. Uh, I don't come. I'm not a trust fund kid. So if I want to live that life, I have to start thinking long term and I have to understand how does the wealthy move their money? What do they do? And we live in an age of information. So of course I googled it, I youtubed it and uh, learned that they invest, right? They're not just saving. And of course they have a savings account in a nest egg for a rainy day. Uh, but they are heavily invested. They don't keep most of their net worth in cash. I mean, some are 1%, 10% of their net worth is actually in cash. And so when I understood that, I'm like, okay, if I want to be wealthy, that's what I need to start doing. I need to start investing my money. Uh, because when those rainy days come when I, or you lose a job, or today when inflation is high and everything's expensive, like I'm trying to go get eggs and I'm paying, I'm paying a whole lot of money to buy some eggs, uh, then I need to understand that my money needs to grow. Your money has to grow. You, uh, can't reach wealth. Your version of wealth doesn't have to be Elon Musk, but if you are that ambitious, uh, you know, you definitely have to invest. But if you just want to have a, you know, four bedroom home, some land to leave for your kids, some assets, then you absolutely have to get out of the saving mode, right? You have to hit your savings target. I'm not saying don't save, but once you save up 6 months, 12 months of savings, you need to start heavily investing, especially if you're young.

Mary Wisniewski: Well, I want to talk about, it's, it's national, um, Financial Literacy Month. And so this is all very applicable. But also you mentioned how like you, you, when you were starting your investing journey, you were watching like YouTube videos and that kind of thing. But I'm kind of curious at Algo Pair, how are you like, um, making education? How, how is your educational offerings engaging with your customers? I know it's like one of those really hard things. Generally speaking of like, ugh, uh, no, no, don't talk to me about personal finance. But I'm wondering from, you know, what's clicking, what's cl. Your users.

Ronnie Green: What's clicking is what's already clicking for our users, right? Our members, right? They're, they're already playing games, they're already engaged with entertainment. You don't want to try to take them away from that habit and, and rip and replace. Um, and that's where I see some people that are building or some institutions, you know, they're trying to send newsletters, emails, uh, with the next generation, my generation, this is not happening. I'm not, I'm not about to read a, uh, long memo or email. Uh, right. Like when I was going to YouTube, the reason why I went there was because when I first saved up my five grand, I went to a bank and credit union. They had a brochure, they had some type of webinar, uh, and I think at the time they had some workshops, right? And to me, I was doing everything on my phone, right? That's where my attention was. I was already playing games on the phone. So how we do it at Algopeer is we don't change that, right? We gamify the experience, right? If you're getting education from Celine, which is our agentic AI that's educating you on what to do, she's, she sees your financial history, your habits and she knows your goals and she's educating you on how to take the steps and make practical progress towards those goals and then you get rewarded for those conversations, right? You get points. And those points don't only just go towards, you know, getting free, uh, dinner or uh, getting discounted trip to, uh, you know, your favorite location. But it also, hey, you get one month free rent, right? And when you start, when that starts to click, to the young generation that, hey, because I'm making progress, I am educating myself. If I want to go deeper, I can watch a video, Celine can send me a video. Uh, I can take a small course. You know, Celine can engage with me, ask me questions, and I'm earning points and those points lead to things that I want. Oh yeah, I'll do that twice on Sunday. Right? And so that's the engagement piece that, that I think a lot of the financial institutions are missing is that you don't want to say, hey, you need to come to this workshop, right? And you need to do this. No, you need to meet them where they're already at and they're on their phones 24 7. I think we got a name for it, uh, Mary is. It's called Doom scrolling today. And let's plug in and make financial progress. A game because they're playing games and their avatars on the game are making financial progress. Right. So let's turn that into real life but let's keep it gamified and you'll grab their attention.

Mary Wisniewski: Hi, I'm so glad you brought up Celine because I was just at Fintech meetup and so of course chatter, AI agents, everyone going like bonkers for it as an idea and you know, you have it out in the wild. I mean where from your perspective is this an overhyped area or what do you think people are getting wrong and what and or indoor? Where do you see the most um, opportunities for progress through an agent?

Ronnie Green: Okay, so of course there is gonna get good. Of course uh, there is hype, right? Cause I don't want to demean anybody's understanding of AI to them and what they see, but there is a lot of hype, right? And there's gonna be hype in every industrial revolution, right? When the Internet came out there was a lot of hype, but the Internet is still here, right? So there's some truth to what agentic can do. There is truth in the power um, to solve real world problems. But I think where people are getting a gentic AI wrong is just because they don't understand uh, the power of it truly and what it's meant to do, it's meant to enhance, it's not meant to fix. So if your strategy, you have a problem with your strategy or if you have a problem with your systems and how you operate, um, and you have messy data like AI is going to automate and uh, make it autonomous to mess up, right? Like it's, it's not going to fix what you have, it's going to enhance it. And I think that's where specifically in financial services is just a Ms. Big. It's a big misconception like you think AI is going to fix it, it's not, it's going to enhance the strategy that's in place. And if you already tested your strategy, you haven't tested uh, your systems, you haven't tested what it can do in the financial area, uh, then you don't want to apply AI to it because it's so powerful that it's just going to enhance it and it's going to make it even greater. But if you don't fix the things before, um, then you're just going to have a big AI miss.

Mary Wisniewski: You know what, this is really important because I do know credit unions and banks do struggle with their messiness of their data and I am wondering how. Ronnie, it seems like such a big to do. Oh man, I gotta untangle all this data so I can move along with what customers are going to expect next. Do you have any advice for a credit union or a community bank of like, oh, this is a good place to start, um, to be able to then proceed with an agent.

Ronnie Green: Yeah, this is such a big topic right now. Um, the word is out, right? Everyone's talking about how credit unions, core data is messy, it's clunky, um, it's not organized. Right. I um, think you start there first because everyone's excited about AI. But when you work with a fintech that can implement AI in your systems and you have a old core system that cannot interact with it, well, um, that leads to what we just talked about, right? It's going to be messy. But uh, for now I think the data needs to be structured. Like you have to clean it up and then you have to understand it. Like every leader, not just at the board level, but the executive level, needs to understand their data. Uh, you need to look at it, spend some time with it, study it. Um, so that way you know how to implement strategy, create strategy and adjust your strategy. Uh, but if your data is messy, it's not clean. If you don't fix it, man, it's going to bite you later. It's going to bite you in the butt and it's going to be a big chunk because you have to fix it anyway, right? To interact with these Agentix systems. And so there is a lot of conversation that I see on LinkedIn, um, and a lot of conversations from the direct core systems that are, you know, providing this data. Right. Um, and creating these systems, uh, if you are having those problems with your core and they're not moving, you know, sorry, you may have to, for the betterment of your members and your institution and the employees at the credit union who want to do great work, you have to start exploring other options, right? You may need to do a sidecar, right, with another data provider that's more cloud based, more structured. Um, and I hate to say that because I have friends that work at these behemoth cores, right? But you know, we're in a time where things are happening faster than the dot com boom. Like every week, every day there's a new launch of a new product that can really help and if you keep your members in mind, sometimes you have to make sacrifices, right? Just, just how you have a family. Right. I had to sacrifice something in my life to get to where I'm trying to go, and that was my social life. You know, for your family, you may have to sacrifice, um, you know, whatever it needs to be to make sure that your family members are taken care of. Make sure that you're taken care of. And so such a tough conversation because there's a lot of rip, uh, and replace language that's been thrown around. Um, and I know Pfizer's doing some great work. I, uh, know the CEO will over there and he is starting to make changes and do them in increments instead of rip and replace. And that's good, that's healthy because it allows the fis to digest what's going on. And like I said, learning that data, understanding your data, but making sure it's structured and organized. That way you can scale out into this new era of AI and you can implement those a lot faster.

Mary Wisniewski: Um, this makes me have two questions. Um, one, you mentioned product being, you know, being able to develop it faster. How, how are, how is that showing up for you at, ah, Algo Pair? Like I, I keep hearing, you know, the entrepreneurs being like, whoa, we can go like, what does that mean? I mean, how much quicker is quicker? Like, what's, what's an example that you would cite to be like, wow, it helped me do this and I couldn't do that before. Or, or, or something along those lines.

Ronnie Green: Yeah, so I can speak for Algo parent. I know a lot of other founders, specifically in the fintech space. Uh, you know, what used to take three months to build, it can happen in a weekend. Right? Like, that's, that's the power. Because, you know, another thing with, you know, fintech founders as well too, is that, you know, if you don't know what you're coding, you don't know how to code, you don't know how to structure your infrastructure. Like, you don't know what's going on and you're just out there vibe coding and trying to build apps and you don't understand it, it's going to crash, it's going to be buggy, it's going to have cyber security attacks. Um, so you got to understand that too. So not just for FIs, but fintech founders. Because I've seen some people build some AI slop and it's like, man, you're exposed, your data is exposed. And so, uh, yeah, what used to Take six months, three months. No, it happens in a weekend. Especially if you know code. You, uh, know the knowledge of what you're building. You have deep, deep tech knowledge into what agentic AI is and what the power that it can, uh, accomplish. And so when you know that, and you can vibe code or you can use anthropic, right, Cloud code and you can use, um, I think, uh, OpenAI system, Codex, right? You can code these things, but then you can understand it and clean it up. Because AI is not perfect. It's going to make mistakes. But if you have the knowledge, you can go in there and fix it and it can even help you fix it and you can code it within minutes to an hour rather than you having to spend two weeks trying to debug something. Right? And so that's the power and that's why things are, it seems that things are moving a lot faster. It's because they truly are. And the companies that you'll see be successful and launch great products that can actually solve real world problems is the Deep Tech founders or the Deep Tech, uh, executives that know what they're trying to do and they can move really fast and use these tools to help them achieve their goals a lot faster.

Mary Wisniewski: Yeah, I confess, if I tried to do coding with this, I would be generating a lot of slop. But, but when I use it, when I use it for writing, I'm like, oh, like editing something. Um, I'm like, oh, this is so much better for me. Cause I can tell when it's complete junk or, you know, otherwise, like, it's like you almost need this. You need the skill to be able to use it well, to know what is lacking. Um, or, yeah, spectacularly off. In the case of me trying to code.

Ronnie Green: I can relate to that. Yeah, I can relate to that. I'm not the best writer, uh, if you see me write on LinkedIn, I, um, had to go back and learn, you know, how to structure, you know, sentences, paragraphs, because that's not my strong suit. Math was my strong suit. So even then I was like, hey, Ronnie, you're, you're putting out AI slot, right? Because I didn't understand writing at, at the deepest level. And so you do. So writing must be great for you and you can write great content. Me, it's going to take me a little bit more time. You, we have, we can use the same AI tool and yours is probably going to be 100 times better because you have that deep industry knowledge of what writing is and what good writing is, right? So that perfect example, I'm still working on not producing AI slop in other areas.

Mary Wisniewski: Yeah, well, we both have our own versions of AI Slop, but I guess at least we're aware of it. So that's, uh, so that's a starting point. And Ronnie, I wanted to go back of like, how Celine is being used. Like, what are some popular ways? Um, it's being used.

Ronnie Green: Yeah. So Celine is purpose built for community financial institutions. Right. Our vision is to free minds financially because we know young adults today, um, they need simple guidance, they need access, they need agency, um, in a financial system that wasn't built for them. But into this new system, we're opening up that door and giving them the guidance without a middleman, uh, without high minimum fees to get guidance. Um, and so that's what we're doing in a practical sense, uh, but on a individual level, uh, we start with investing, right? And we can look at what's saved, Celine can look at that. But then we need to understand where you're going, right? We need to know your goals, like what do you want to accomplish in, uh, the short term, but more importantly in the long term. And once we understand that, um, Celine, once she understands everything about your financial life, it's one or two clicks, she knows what's going on. Like she knows what you're spending your money on, what you're not doing. And then once she understands where you're trying to go, uh, man, it's powerful, right? Like she can set up a portfolio that makes sense to you. Right. It's not going to be cookie cutter, that something that you may get from an advisor because they have so many clients. No, it's going to be specific towards you, um, and she's going to help you build it. And it happens in minutes, it doesn't happen in weeks. Um, and then she's autonomous, right? So she's always looking at the market, real world events and understanding. Hey, we may need to adjust the portfolio because of this. Uh, we may need to, uh, maybe add a little bit more savings. So let's pause on the investing or let's slow down the investing in your contributions every week and let's focus on that. So she's looking at everything in the world, tying it back to where you're at today and where you're at currently, and then where you're trying to go and mapping that out for you instead of, you know, versus you trying to talk to an advisor who doesn't want to talk to you because you don't Have a lot of money, right? Like they prioritize, um, big deposit accounts. So if you're not there yet, if you're not past 100,000, some FIs require more, right? Uh, you have Celine today. And that's how we're using it from a practical sense and from a mission standpoint, you know, crypto digital assets open up a door, right? That door is to give people agency where they can transfer, um, money if they're underbanked, right? They can hold money, um, and they can own it, right? And now, you know, Algo pair is using Celine to open up that door through institutions, right? Like institutions can plug Celine into their, their banking app, you know, because that's where the young people live and they can get the guidance that they're looking for. Um, and it helps, it helps the FI's also solve their problem, right? They want to impact, uh, these young adults who are just starting out, right? And they want to keep them engaged because they actually want to help. And that's why we are purpose built for the community institutions because they have a mission behind it. And uh, we don't work with institutions who don't understand that mission, right? Because the whole point of what's going on in society today, and we see it, right, like inflation is high, uh, it's probably not going to go down for a long time. There's always financial market cycles just like we had in 2008 when I was still in high school. I remember that. I remember the stress from my parents, um, what they were going through. And that's gonna always happen at some point in time. But Celine is gonna make sure they're prepared. She's gonna give them guidance, encouragement as well too, because she's very conversational. She's not just a robotic conversation. She understands you. Um, and she has the ability to also just create this system where it's automatic, it's autonomous and you can stop thinking about all these financial problems and start focusing on why you was here, why you were born, your purpose, uh, the things you love and want to do, whether that's spend time with family or whether that's art or whether that's being a doctor, right? Practicing medicine. Doesn't matter where you're at in life, whether you're blue collar, white collar worker, um, she's designed to free your mind from that and create those disciplines for you and build those habits over time. Where in 10 years and 15 years you're in a great position, right? Um, you're in an outstanding position. You have the confidence that Life is good. Right. And it goes back to my story when I was making progress. That emotional high that I was talking about, it outweighed the emotional lows. And it gave me confidence to know that I'm moving in the right direction. I wish I had Celine back then, but that's why I'm building it now.

Mary Wisniewski: Well, I do want to revisit your first comments. But first, before we do that though, you mentioned the advisor versus the bot. And I have to imagine it could be so much more accessible to someone to be like, I'm talking to a bot versus a human who might be judging me severely, um, and I can see it in their face kind of thing. But do you think, um, communicating with a bot opens up the door to more people to feel comfortable in their first interactions and financial services?

Ronnie Green: Yeah, I would say the, the young generation is way more open to it, uh, than the older generation. But at the same time, what Celine is. And other systems too, like other products, what it's doing is just giving them agency and access to it. Right. Instead of them having to wait until they reach that milestone. Um, and that's why we made it conversational. Um, that's why I can speak and talk back to you. Um, you're not just getting a kind of Siri type of response, but, uh, you're getting something that just understands you from the bottom line level and understanding where you're going. And that really does help because if not, you don't have access to it. And then you have to search through YouTube like I did. And now, you know, Gen Z is More so on TikTok.

Mary Wisniewski: Yeah.

Ronnie Green: And there's a lot of great TikTok content, but we don't know where. You know, you can't just filter everybody on TikTok and understand, is this true? Does this help? Does this work? And, um, that's where Celine comes in. Because it's personalized. Right. And so every advice is not good advice for you. It can be good advice, but it's just not for you. And that's what we try to make sure that Celine understands. You need to understand this individual, um, from a, you know, very meticulous level. Because what someone like real estate. Real estate was not good advice for me. It's good advice. Right. You know, I'm getting into real estate now, but at the time it wasn't, it was, no, Ronnie doesn't have the time. Right. He's working two night jobs, going to school, playing football. He doesn't have the time. So stocks, right. Digital, online investing. That was for me. And Celine can help map that out and give people agency to where they have access. They don't have to wait on a middleman or a big institution. And so we want to give that power to the community institutions and make it affordable for them to offer this uh, to people so that they can help. And Celine has that training to understand like there's buckets of advice and we need to understand where this person's at so that, that way they're not, you know, put it, put in a bad bucket where it just doesn't make sense for them. They're not seeing progress. And then they say, hey, Celine sucks. Like it, it's very cookie cutter. And we didn't want that. And so that's why we designed Celine the way, um, you know, to make it really personalized for the individual.

Mary Wisniewski: Yeah, the general advice, I used to write for a bankrate and so it's like these general pieces like maybe apply, maybe don't. But you brought up TikTok and I think it's still interesting because you just, um, we just saw that Nubank hired a TikTok executive. So I gotta imagine that's gonna be part of their US expansion plan. Um, so I'm still kind of bullish on short form video for personal finance. But to your point, there's a lot of messages there, uh, on TikTok and definitely don't follow everything that you see.

Ronnie Green: I love TikTok too. We're on TikTok as well. Um, we have a nice size, uh, following on YouTube. Short term, uh, short form video. I say this clip forming is the clip forms. That's how people learn. Uh, not even just the young generation, older generation. You know, I see my dad watching clips, right. Pockets of information. And it's quick. It gives the young generation who has a, uh, short attention span, a time to digest and hear information. Then when they want to dig deeper, then yes, like. And so we don't turn away from TikTok at all. We just know that, you know, Celine has to be able to verify this person, understand where this information is coming from, understanding that person's situation. And Celine is having those capabilities today to where no quick research. If you were on TikTok, Celine can look at the video, look at the script and see what you're saying and then tie it to your life, your story. Because a lot of information is out there. And then your TikTok may be for 20% of the banks or the credit union's members. It may not be for all. And so we're not against the short, uh, form content, but we need to just verify if that information is right for that individual and then that individual can make a decision to understand, like, hey, this person is selling, say, hey, this is great advice. This person did this and did that. Does that match with where you're trying to go or does that match with your current situation and give people the option to understand the advice that they're receiving and then helping them make that guided decision?

Mary Wisniewski: Yeah, um, well, I want to, I know we're wrapping up here, but I want to go back to the front of the call when you, you know, you turn that $5,000 into more dollar bills. What was the strategy here? How did you, the rare people who made that work?

Ronnie Green: Right. So today I don't mind sharing my edge, right? What did I do? So I didn't go, I went to school for business and psychology. I did not study computer science, but I'm a very self taught person. Uh, I believe that if you put your mind anything you can learn. So I actually built an algorithm. Uh, and this algorithm, it wasn't as powerful as, you know, our algorithms today and agentic. Right. Uh, but what it, what it was able to do, uh, it was able to find me pharmaceutical companies that were producing like life changing products, right? Life changing medicine. And if they reach clinical trial 3, 80% of those companies during the 2017, 2016 era, most of them were getting FDA approval. And so my algorithm will find these companies that had this clinical trial 3. I would look at the medicine, I was like, this medicine is great. If they get FDA approval, the stock price is going to shoot up. So it will find it in the morning and then, you know, I will click a button and then it'll run it and it'll invest in, you know, the top three. Right. And then once the FDA approval came out, it was usually like a month or two later, boom, it skyrocketed. And uh, you know, out of the $103,000 I made in that eight months, two of those were big, big, you know, home run hitters. So most of it, I, uh, want to say about half of it was not just me always hitting home runs. I was hitting very short wins, right? And they were just stacking up. But then I hit twice because I focused on, you know, a certain area and that was pharmaceuticals. And so two big investments changed my account. And uh, I was investing with a group too. So I always encourage, if you're out there investing, you're trying to learn, be a part of A group, um, that is learning with you, right? And that has some knowledge because it did speed things up for me. And, uh, that was my edge. Uh, I don't know if people still use it today. I don't use. I have, you know, by now, like, I have about 10 strategies that I use for myself. But, uh, you know, the edge is out there. Uh, that's how I got into the finance industry. I went to go work for Charles Schwab. After that, I got recruited by them, uh, because we were on online forums. I verified all my profits, showed the world what I was doing, because I was excited. Remember, I was obsessed. Uh, and I was like, this is crazy. I didn't know you can make money like this, right? And so, uh, that was. That's how I did it. Uh, was your family, like, crazy?

Mary Wisniewski: What's happening, man?

Ronnie Green: I shot my dad a text message, and it was my first. So my two big wins were 35,000 and then $10,000 on one investment, right? Uh, so my first $10,000 profit day, I text my dad because I invested in this pharmaceutical on Friday. And then on Monday, stock price just shot up. Uh, I saw the message. It was like, hey, FDA approved. And I shot it to my dad. And I said. I said, dad, is this money real? He's like, yeah, it's real. You have a broker account. You invested in it. Uh, he said, did you. Did you sell the shares? I said, yeah, I sold. Like, it was just crazy. I made $10,000 over the weekend. And he said, well, if you sold it, it's real. But he said, you got to pay taxes on it. Don't go crazy.

Mary Wisniewski: Well, Ronnie, for those who might want to, like, work with you or learn more, how should they reach you? Um, yeah. How should they reach you?

Ronnie Green: Yeah, so you can reach me by email. It is ronnie, ie, um, ronnielgopair.com. uh, Ronnie M M. Green is my social tags, so you can find me on all social media platforms. Don't be a stranger. You can email me directly. Uh, I will respond. So, uh, we can have conversations. Yeah, yeah, I will respond. And if you're a credit union, um, and you're a community bank, regional bank that's truly trying to impact people, man. We have a solution for you today. Uh, we have a solution that's really helping the next generation. Uh, we're already in market, so let's have a talk. Let's see what we can do to help you engage the young adults who need you.

Mary Wisniewski: And finale question. What's the image on Your phone's lock screen.

Ronnie Green: All right, let's do it. All right, so I'm a big anime fan. So I have. I don't know if. Oh, I got on do not Disturb. Let me turn that off. And I'm going to show it. It is Goku, right? And he's in. All right, so I'm an anime fan. That's Goku highlighted in neon. Um, me and my co founder, Ben, we're big anime fans, and so we always, you know, if you watch Dragon Ball Z, you know anything about anime, you know that they power up and they reach a new level, but they only reach a new level after they went through trials and tribulations. And so that just speaks to our story. Um, so you know that we're ascended sands, as we would say. So that's my lock screen. A little bit about myself.

Mary Wisniewski: Oh, I love hearing about that. So, Ronnie, thanks so much for joining me today. It's been wonderful to have you on the show.

Ronnie Green: It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me on there.

Mary Wisniewski: Okay, here's one thing I learned. Messy data needs to be taken care of first before getting into AI agents. As Ronnie says, it's meant to enhance itself, not meant to fix up. Next in May, a conversation about gig workers at a time when gas is surging and the fintech implications of it all. Catch you then.