159: The Student Debt Crisis Will Change The Workforce Forever (How To Prepare) | Laurel Taylor

Laurel’s personal student debt story

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student debt is our wedge into wellness because it is so complex in domain

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expertise but we have gone well beyond student debt And so what's what's ahead

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for Candidly is creating firsttime wealth for users who are paying down their debt and helping them have

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$450,000 at the time of retirement 70% of today's seniors already know

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their career choices are being shaped by looming loan repayments And by 2025 this

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generation will make up over 75% of the entire workforce Student debt isn't just

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a personal problem anymore It's a full-blown economic crisis Welcome to the Learn It All Podcast the show for

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today's leaders who want to get ahead and stay ahead because we believe great leaders aren't born or made We are

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always in the making I'm your host Damon Ley two-time bestselling author and CEO of Learnit a live learning platform that

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has helped upskill over 2 million people over the past three decades Today's guest is Laurel Taylor She's the founder

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and CEO of Candidly Candidly is a company on a mission to crush student

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debt Laurel and I will be discussing why student debt is now a business issue not

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just a personal one the fact that candidly helps reduce employee turnover by up to 76% and how AI is powering the

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next phase of financial wellness So Laurel you've helped nearly $2 billion in student debt get wiped off the map

Why she founded Candidly

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How did this become your mission yes Well first Big D I'm so excited to be here again and I'm nervous So for those

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of y'all who are joining Big D and I go way back like over 20 years Big D gave me my first job I uh I when I share with

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friends uh my career they say Big D rolled out the red carpet for me So gave

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me a shot gave me my first job and I'm sure we'll talk about that But yes so

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the $2 billion of impact that we have generated today for the users that we

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serve really is born from my own personal experience And candidly

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candidly it is difficult and daunting to become debt-free which is the name of

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your company as well Candidly is the name of my company Candidly and we exist

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to crush student debt and empower hardworking Americans to go beyond debt

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into savings and retirement savings through simultaneous versus sequential progress So what I've built what we've

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built as an organization is everything I wish I would have had So I founded

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candidly I grew up in a household where I knew I was going to college and like

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70% of graduates today I never questioned how I would do that right i

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was going to access scholarships and grants and federal loans and private loans And I took out a loan and my mom

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took out a parent plus loan as a social worker I'm making $24,000 a year I went

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to Texas State That's what we could afford And ultimately I went to school at MIT and I was leading a global

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business unit at Google and was curious what an interest rate would be for me at

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the time to go back to school at a credit score north of 800 9% 9% uh which

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was the same that my mom paid on a parent plus loan And so you know when I took a step back and I'm so grateful for

The shame around student debt—and how it affects families

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the power of education which is absolutely the way up and out for the majority of Americans the number of

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years of schooling we have unlocks additional lifetime earnings But while I knew I would go to school what I didn't know is that between my mom and I we

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would miss out on two decades of compounding interest on wealth while paying down debt And candidly the name

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also is born from having authentic conversation because I had a lot of shame Uhhuh It actually took

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me four or five years into founding candidly to get over that Where did that

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shame come from so you know I think part of it is cultural Um I don't I didn't

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feel like anyone that I knew uh when I you know when you gave me my

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first opportunity my first job offer uh you know a after I the my my

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uh ejection from my day and a half at Dell which was a whole other story Um

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but nobody I knew had student debt Like I was the only one I knew that went to a state school Everybody else went to

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Ivy's and no one else seemed to be struggling with this problem And I think parents who you know we think about

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student debt as students but it's mom debt it's dad debt it's spousal debt

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it's great family debt it's family debt So I also think

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parents parents have shame around debt because they wish that their kids could

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go to school and graduate debtree But the reality is with a cost of education

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outstripping inflation by four-fold you know what is it 70% of households don't

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have $2,000 of savings You certainly don't have tens of thousands of dollars which is the cost of education a day So

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I think the shame is partly cultural Um it's weird that we think about financing

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education outside of the financial services experience when it's really core of how we begin that experience So

Why debt is a workplace issue and not just a personal one

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I wanted to get over the shame help families get over shame acknowledge we're going to finance education unless

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you were really really lucky and um you know worked hard but are lucky to be in

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a position to avoid debt to send yourself or your kids to school and um

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wanted to help employers help their employees Given that 75% of workers

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today are millennials 70% are graduating with student debt It's the number one need within the workplace that you know

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outside of candidly is not being addressed today So that's how we're generating the 2 billion It's really in partnership in community with employers

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who are really invested in their employees with the providers serving uh

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employers who acknowledge this is a major blocker to savings and retirement savings And because if you think about

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it you know student debt isn't just the only type of debt that individuals have

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right there's several other ones So it just adds on to it right there You're absolutely right Yes Student debt does

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not happen in isolation And when we think about the financial services industry like the experience you may

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have with your bank or CEOs as they think about the benefits package that

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they're offering to their employees they may be offering upskilling through tuition reimbursement to take advantage

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of AI and upskill They are likely offering a 401k 48% are offering a

What employers are missing in their benefits stack

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retirement match 71% are offering tuition reimbursement to upskill There may be maternity and paternity leave

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there's this weird gap uh in most employers require a degree to

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get the job and now most employees are bringing debt into the workplace and so

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it's not only the student debt What we see is there's a ton of other uh debt around that student debt The average

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user we serve has a 30% interest rate on their credit cards as an example right

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like that's the average today We kind of touched on the impact it has for companies but let's go a little deeper

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into that What are some of the impacts that you're seeing working with your companies as clients that is benefiting

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them uh with the you know engaging with your candidly yeah absolutely So we

The staggering ROI of Candidly’s solution for employers

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appreciate HR decision makers CHRO's VP of total rewards

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Almost every 10K and 10 Q is about human capital as a competitive differentiation

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and as part of their core strategy how they're going to win and HR um really

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now also thinking about you know what's the human job what's the job of AI how do those two things interact together

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what they're really challenged with today and has always been true but I do think HR is in like the Olympic sport of

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profession right now because of how rapidly talent and skilling is changing

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So they're thinking about how do they attract and retain the best talent in the world and retain it costs 90 to 200%

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of a person's salary to replace them at least Right at least And if you have a 10xer and you

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lose that 10xer it you know it's even more expensive So it's all about the

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efficacy of the benefits that they're providing And what we see now it's durable The data is durable We've been

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deployed across 1,400 employers And we we ingest and receive the census file of

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employees So we are able to see for employees who are participate who take

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advantage of candidly as an employee benefit is between 33 to

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76% reduction in turnover So the strongest ROI in the benefits package

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they're offering is through candidly And I think that's super interesting because

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this population largely is sidelined from the employee benefits package probably not going back to school

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because they have a ton of debt and they don't want to take on more Largely foregoing retirement savings because

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debt is a blocker and largely not maximizing if they are saving So the 33%

Tax-free employer contributions and new retirement match rules

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reduction in turnover is for employees who are lean and mean and want to give

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want to give their employees away to number I mean just honestly understand what the heck is going on with student

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debt right now after the last four years It's super confusing and employees are

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looking for guidance They're looking to lower their monthly payment and they're looking to get into repayment to avoid

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we're seeing upwards of 140 points drop in credit score right now I mean it's really we are in the midst of a crisis

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around how employees are managing their number one liability which is student debt So when tools capabilities through

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candidly budgetneutral 33% reduction for those who are offering a

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contribution employers can now offer up to $5,250 tax-free to their employee and as

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a business just like tuition reimbursement We're seeing a 76% reduction in turnover for employers

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who are offering a contribution Average is like 150 a month And now which is so

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exciting uh and goes back to the story of me and my mom what became effective January 1st of 2024 for employers who

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are offering a retirement match employers can now offer a retirement match where dollars are directed into

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the retirement savings plan in connection with student loan payments So what we're seeing is

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employers who offer candidly 14% net new employees are

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coming into the retirement savings plan as a result of letting those employees get a retirement match on their student

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loan payments So bringing in a broader population into the number one value prop that they're offering to their

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employees which is in retirement savings That's new So we don't have the data on

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retention yet But we believe that it will be between 67 to 76% reduction in

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turnover similar to when the dollars are directed to the debt because again you know the data show those who have

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student debt spend all of their income paying down student debt and forego that

How the sales cycle for Candidly evolved from 2016 to today

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retirement match their employer is offering until 100% of that debt is paid down So now employees while they have do

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what they have to do which is pay down their debt actually get upside Uh and the $2 billion of savings that we've

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delivered to date I'm so excited to celebrate when we get to $2 billion in

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firsttime wealth creation um by making that simultaneous progress Pay down debt and build wealth Now so where do you see

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push back from these companies when it comes to you know engaging and signing up with candidly so it's been a journey

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and an evolution And I founded Candidly in 2016 At the time it was a novel concept

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The idea of employers offering benefits that address education financing and student debt was novel Uh so at the time

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it was like what are you talking about and so we were in a 4year period of you know blood sweat and tears evangelizing

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This is a thing This is going to come It's a major need and was like how we're an employer What does it have to do with

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student debt then we transitioned into so the sales cycle is all about

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education Then we transition into how how does it work how do I operationalize

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this because I'm an HR decision maker and whether I have 25 employees or our average size today 22,500

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employees I'm only going to do for my employees what works what delivers ROI

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and does not make my life more difficult And so this has to be easily deployable

Distribution through major financial services firms

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across my population So then it really became a new category So we created the

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category of benefits within the workplace to address student debt And by the way 45% like you right with with

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Lucy and Wally 45% of those in the workplace have kids under the age of 18 So we're helping families prepare for

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and plan for college minimize the amount of debt that they take on and then address the debt they have And college

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isn't getting cheaper It is not It is not getting uh sadly it is not It is not

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getting cheaper That's for sure Uh my 14-year-old niece who I'm thinking about how to help her go to school in four

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years Um and now we're in that new normal So today we are distributed by the largest financial services companies

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in the world Vanguard Empower Schwab TIAA Bank of America Lincoln Financial

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Group PNC Guild Education Thrilling So Candidly is integrated alongside the

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401k offering 403b offering So that 100 million workers now we will be working

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on forever more 100 million workers gaining access to candidly so while they pay down their debt they can build

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wealth So now we're in that new So the push back initially was what is this and like this isn't equitable Why would I

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only help employees with student debt to oh okay this is like a real thing to now we're in the top two of three requested

Laurel’s story of quitting Dell after one day

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benefits So it's income candidly healthcare or income healthcare candidly

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top two to three benefits today There's this part of your story where you bet on yourself You know you left Dell after a

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whopping day and a half You bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco You moved into some somebody's house that

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you'd never met that I know very very well So where did this all come from with you where did you learn how to do

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this so I do think we have angels that come into our life and mentors that

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hopefully we all have the privilege of meeting mentors in our journey And so as

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you know you and my sister were sitting uh sitting at the it used to be at the

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bar at the W Exactly That's right I was thinking it was now the cigar lunch Yeah The bar of the W And called and I had

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just moved home to Ail Texas The day after I moved home I started at Dell As

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you know it's kind of a fun story Um and it was a a a day and a half in It was computer-based

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training My first day I saw like 500 other people walk walk into Dell right

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we're like cattle walking in the front door the the class the tranch of folks hired Dell is an amazing company and I

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have no doubt the other people who were sitting next to me in training have done extremely well everything inside of me

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was rejecting that experience I just wanted to flee I wanted to physically flee the building I just you know it was

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one of those visceral so y'all called and um and you grabbed the phone away

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from from my sister and said you know if I hire you I'll reimburse you for the flight and so The next day I'm like "Mr

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Olympia I'll be there at 8:00 a.m on Monday morning." So it was a week-long interview a

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week Unbelievable right learning the fundamentals uh learning the fundamentals of discipline of how do you

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prospect how do you call how do you use your CRM system how do you organize your day who are the other leaders you can

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learn from And fortunately you gave me that offer And of course at the time I

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couldn't afford first last month's uh in the month's rent So oh no don't you know

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just don't worry just move in with my sister who I had never met right So here I am Sarah picks me up at the airport We

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drive into the city I knock on the door Sammy Lindy that's scampers He'll probably run in And um best roommate

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I've ever had by the way And I I don't know if I would have had

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the confidence to do that had it not been you invested in me that week and

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took me on walking meetings and cared like invested your time So it was scary

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Uh I did move to San Francisco with a blowup bed which your sister had never seen cuz most people haven't but that's

“I have nothing to lose but my pride”: Laurel’s mindset shift

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what I could afford right uh and it just you know changed the the

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course of course of my life So what advice do you have for people who want

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to make a leap like that want to get out of their comfort zone but haven't stuck their neck out there and actually done

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it yet i think it's it's this sounds very obvious but it's a choice It's a

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you know it's a deliberate choice So that moving to San Francisco which was actually really intimidating

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um taking my first job cold calling making you know 50 cold calls a day tons

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of rejection uh very uncomfortable to realize that kind of rejection getting over yourself

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realizing nobody cares Nobody cares Put the ego aside Put the ego aside Uh and

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what what came to me one day when I did not want to pick up the phone that has stayed with me ever since when I was

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having a hard time picking up the phone and making a call Um this is true I think in any major decision was um I

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have nothing to lose but my pride I lost that a long time ago Like just getting over yourself

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right and so I think at the time I mean really talk about that a little bit more

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What do you mean you lost your pride a long time ago and getting over yourself yeah I think you know when I because

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when we think about risk it's usually when we really think about it it's if we

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ask five ways Well why why do I not want to pick up the phone well it's embarrassing Well why is it embarrassing because the person's rejecting me Well

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why do I care if the person rejects me well because I need to do a better job Well why do I care about being doing a

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better job well maybe I don't feel like I'm good enough Well why do I feel like I'm not good enough so like really going

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to the five ways and why do I need to I I think um it was it was just an expression that

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really embodied truly not standing in your own way and the cost of pride is

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really expensive When I left Google to found candidly that was completely

How loss shaped Laurel’s perspective and mission

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irrational made no sense Um I was like a vortex for people

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telling me that it didn't make sense right like why would you lose why would you leave the job everyone wants so how

telling me that it didn't make sense right like why would you lose why would you leave the job everyone wants so how

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did you push through that how did you push through that because there are so many haters out there or people who want

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to put up roadblocks but you push right through that wall There are obstacles every step of the way There are haters I

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I have you know I've got them right now Um I you know big D I think part of it

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is um learned and I think part of it is innate and so I have always had my

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series B lead um Altos Anthony lead Lee who's wonderful and I'm so honored and

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grateful to have an opportunity to work with him when he decided to lead around

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our series B he told me you know you got a you have a chip on your shoulder um and we like that And so I've I've kind

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of always had a chip on my shoulder of like

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I there's just something within me that continues to raise the stakes Um but

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also it's the power of suggestion right and power of expectation So you and I walked together in San Francisco before

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I found it candidly and you made a you know subtle comment of like I'm

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surprised you haven't already started your own thing And so as we think about leaders the power of expectation

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of you saw something in me when I started my first job and then when I came back to lead your sales

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organization and then when it was time for me to move into the purpose of my

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life which is what I'm doing now that power of suggestion or expectation is so

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important Um and then I think it's just a choice It's like I don't think that

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there's any magic to it It's one step in front of the other and realizing the biggest risk is not doing it at all

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Because when we really think about the intimidation or the failure or the

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embarrassment the biggest risk is being at the end of our life and looking back

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and realizing we never did the things that we really wanted to do and that was really important to us and we don't have

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the time to do anymore It's done It's over The time is gone So I don't know I

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think that was a big part of it too Yeah What I hear you saying a little bit might be either self-doubt or an imposttor syndrome And it looks like

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early on in your life you learned how to step through that Um and realize that hey you know this is an opportunity You

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don't want to look back when you're 80 years old wishing you didn't pass something up I learned that a little bit

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later on in life you know maybe in my late 20s or 30s even where it's like hey

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you know don't pass up any opportunity if it makes sense get out of your comfort zone It's okay to um be okay

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with failure Um because at the end of the day I call it purposeful awfulizing You look at the worst case scenario It's

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really not that bad Now I'm not saying I didn't take chances earlier on but I've gotten much better at that over the

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years So do you have any advice for individuals who maybe right now continue

Her framework for overcoming fear and taking risks

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to have that imposter syndrome i know you said some is innate um but some is learned What's some of the learning part

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that uh somebody that you think you've had that could help others yeah I think um it's a great So I I really like and

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you articulated the exercise that I went through when I was at Google and I decided to found Candidly which is

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what's the worst thing that could happen what's the worst thing that could happen i fail I'm embarrassed Um okay And then

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most of the time when you take yourself to the worst thing that can happen you realize it's actually not that bad And

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the fallback plan of okay well then what would I would do what would I what would I go do okay well that's okay That's

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that's reasonable So I think that exercise of taking yourself to worst case outcome is really helpful I think

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the other experience that that you and I share and for me was really central to

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there's part of going for it um and part of who you are as a person that you know

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maybe you're just you're just born with as part of your DNA or makeup or psychology or emotional whatever it is

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formative experiences and upbringing and the part of it is perspective being forced on you and the p perspective that

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was forced on me and what really drove me to shift from you know one of the

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best jobs in the world at Google to crossing the chasm and starting something from scratch was you know

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losing my sister And when you go through loss and you're you are there um at the

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deathbed and you go through the horrifying process of all that that is

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wow that gives a lot of perspective and right so it's like what the heck am I doing with my life does it matter does

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anything I'm doing matter right now and really coming to that it really I think

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is the forcing function of the Being concerned about failure or

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embarrassment is such a vanity metric for how we live our life versus like

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what am I here and what can I uniquely do to make my life of value to others

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Yeah No and what Laurel's referring to everyone is her sister Sarah who worked for me for a long time lost her to

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cancer And as tough as it is it really helps put things in perspective It's not

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the same because a sibling is different than a parent but you know I felt the same experience when I lost my my father

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at an early age It really just makes you put into perspective what is important in this life and how can we make an

25:44

impact and you look at the world differently Now we talked about this a little bit I mean Laurel you've

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literally built a category defining company during really chaotic times

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What's been able to keep you grounded everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face I mean I just I've

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been like punched in the face every day since I founded the company Um

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and because we're operating the problem that we're solving we're operating in such a complex macro But what does that

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mean from a product let me give you an example of what that means for a product because we're a platform strategy

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offered as an employee benefit So for example when the SAVE program was

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introduced uh the SAVE program is an income-driven repayment program that was presented under uh Biden's presidency

26:35

that was designed to be the most forgiving program the most forgiving program in lowering monthly payments

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commensurate with 5% of discretionary income versus 10% when that program when

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that new incomedriven program became available So when users when workers come into our platform we personalize

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the experience for that user and provide guidance on what unique programs are

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available to them to help them lower their monthly payment get out of debt faster claim a benefit from their

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employer And so at the time we had changed our algorithm so

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that users who were eligible for the save program would see the save program as one of their you know most compelling

Leading through chaos: student loan reform and AI adoption

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options because it would lower payments for example from $900 a month to $65 a

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month Those are real examples So when that was available it was part of our uh

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platform in conjunction with you know u hundreds of other plans

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Then there was a court injunction Um as of maybe yesterday or the day before the

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saved program is no longer available Period So there have been lots of

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different so many changes lots of different movements on and off the shelf of different federal

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programs treatment of applications in those federal programs And I I I joke

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that you need a you know a PhD in mathematics and the student loan industry to understand what's happening on a daily basis It's it's not funny

28:06

because it's true And the only way to really personalize the experience for the user based on changes that are

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happening real time is through the power of technology and AI to present those

28:18

changes real time within the product experience But what does that mean that means that we have had to

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nurture various aspects of our core product every day for years in order to

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be able to provide up to-date guidance at a time where 57% of borrowers don't

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know who their serer is or student loan serer which is where they send payments They don't 46% don't know how much they

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owe Uh borrowers do not know um employees do not know Today we're seeing in the data that there was a ninetime

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extended moratorum where federal student loan holders didn't have to pay their student loans Then there was a one-year

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on-ramp They have to pay If they don't pay uh the servicesers are now reporting that to the credit bureaus So we're

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seeing a 140 point drop in the credit scores of employees who may not have

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paid their student loans for 5 years without consequence and now all of a sudden are not going to be able to rent

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in the future So um it has been a

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thankfully for my team we have about 105 can doers now We are wartime peak

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performers I've learned I'm a wartime CEO It has been wartime almost every day Now it's wartime in both the macro and

29:39

the application of AI and leading the world and moving faster than anyone else can while being secure compliant um and

The real-time complexity of student loan programs

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appropriate for the enterprise But my team I so honor and I I cannot emphasize

29:53

enough how deeply appreciative I am of their stamina of rolling with the

30:01

punches and being super agile and nimble and responsive every day based on what's

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happening real time So it's become it's become a real strength of the organization to be able to perform

30:15

during multiple punches I heard you talk about your Slack channel It's it's all about impact right and I I what I'm

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hearing is that you know they're modeling the behavior they see from their leader which which is you which uh

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uh is so crucial And on top of it if you're going to be survive these days you got to be adaptable and continuously

30:38

change And before we jumped on the air I love the story you told me Uh share that

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one about what you the little retreat your team just had Yes Retreat Retreat

30:49

is a very generous description Uh given we know what we were uh I'm going to

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share here for the live interview a sneak peek into what kind of retreats we

31:02

take at Candidly So this would be an all-in-one for those of you uh on audio

31:07

she's showing a picture of her uh all in allin- five shampoo including deodorant

Wartime CEO: how her team thrives through rapid change

31:13

So yes the it is all about impact Um and that's super generous Damon I think we

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as a culture the mission really is the heartbeat of the company the mission

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Some of the smartest people in the world choose to work at Candidly with a fierce work ethic because they deeply care

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about what we're doing which is impacting lives at scale and offering real financial relief that delivers a

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measurable and powerful ROI for our clients So we're free to the end user

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We're paid for by the employer as a workplace benefit And because we're at wartime and we're at wartime this was a

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conversation Jim Day and Anthony Lee of Altos Um we were having a discussion

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around around the speed in which AI is moving and we decided I've always wanted

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to have an offsite Uh we're a distributed team I've always wanted to pull together an

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offsite with a B hag a big hairy audacious goal um that that we're

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targeted you know we're focusing on achieving And so our Ben Lavine who's our chief product officer took our AI

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team It was a multidisciplinary off-site with engineering design front end backend um

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our AI team our data science team We had a very specific goal which was in 3 weeks to deliver uh the a multi-agentic

A three-week offsite to prototype AI-powered personalization

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AI system and architecture that would present on the front end as a highly personalized user

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experience for users that are on a 401k provider's website ingesting their tools

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their white papers their calculators their methodology and personalizing this

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AI experience consistent with the methodology of again one of the largest financial services companies in the

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world And so Ben took his team off site for 3 weeks to do just that And of it

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was so you know it's so and we achieved our goal By the way we've got a a demo coming up in in an hour to walk this uh

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partner through the experience and why Candidly is leading the world and can lead them

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into bringing AI to market which is so thrilling So it was a 3-week offsite It was an eight uh eight bedroomedroom with

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bathrooms eightbedroom eight bathroom uh lodge couple hours outside of Seattle

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And you know this team people were coming in from from different places with jet lag So frontenders would wake

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up at 2 a.m to action on the work that the data science and design team had

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created during the day And then they would go to bed you know at one in the morning two in the morning 3 in the

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morning they would wake up and the front end would be done And this rapid the

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goal was radical progress in 3 weeks It just it's just uh it's

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thrilling and so exciting and and a blast And talk about the bonds built across that team from rolling out of bed

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and seeing each other around the kitchen table If I'm a CEO small business owner

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leader of a team and maybe we don't have 15 uh days or three weeks to do a

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retreat what would be one t one or two takeaways you recommend for them to make sure a retreat like this has the impact

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that you're looking for uh going into it this is the first time we've ever done this So 3 weeks to your point is a huge

Candidly’s next wave: AI + wealth creation at scale

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investment of time and it was a massive experiment um an experiment that's

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paying forward lots of takeaways that we're applying now across the organization but highly unusual So let's

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assume two days two days or three days First which you've already touched on is the the power of getting together So

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we're a distributed team So we're not walking into the same office together every day but that's true for many

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employers across the world now So the power of being together with a purposeful agenda that's established in

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advance where there's a clear goal It's a stretch goal It's stressful because

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it's a stretch goal that is designed to stretch But also because of

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that because it's a stretch goal there's kind of a fundamental understanding that

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likely the way that we would typically approach problem solving is not going to

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work because of the dimension of time is abbreviated So um you know socializing

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the agenda understanding what everyone uh and and also just having buyin that it's going to be a pretty intense

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experience acknowledging that it's an investment and an ask for for people to be away from their family So

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importantly what is the impact to the company in the goal and the objective of

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that off-site how does each person contribute to that goal how does that goal contribute to the outcome of the

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company and to the mission of the company and how is that going to break through and enable new possibility or

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greater impact So alignment of that individual contribution to impact I think is really important Yeah What what

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I hear you saying to kind of repeat that back is set up the expectations upfront

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You know be very clear on what the purpose and the goal is of the retreat

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and also get everybody in the mindset that hey this is going to be a lot This isn't just going to be you know fun and

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hanging out We got to get in mindset and be ready Um so when you get there you kind of hit the ground running and get

How to run a purposeful, high-impact team retreat

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the most out of it So I'm sure it it was incredible I know we're coming up on time but I got a couple more questions

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for you So if a CEO is listening right now who still thinks student debt loan

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benefits are optional what do you need to tell somebody like that to help them understand yes So thank you This is the

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number one need within the workplace today as and as we think about student debt and the full life cycle of

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education financing Candidly addresses now 100% of any given employer's

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employee population because we're addressing the 45% who are thinking about how they're how are they going to

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afford college how are they going to send their kids to college what can they do to better prepare for that for those

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who have student debt We know in the data that financial stress and distress

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costs employers uh you know over $183 billion annually

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But what that looks like is on average 7 hours of productivity a week lost due to

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financial stress The other thing is we are all experiencing rising health care

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costs Unfortunately financial stress is is inextricably interwoven into

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increased health care use Higher rates of depression higher rates of anxiety So

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obviously as CEOs we don't want to compete for mind share with our

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employees is we don't want them to to have to walk into work thinking about all the financial stress and distress

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and do what we can to help employees address that burden And unfortunately

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today is not the same as yesterday And what I mean by that is employers really

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could put hit the snooze button on this issue within their workplace for about

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four years because 92% of student loans are held by federal student loans and

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there was a reprieve Employees didn't have to pay it Employees have to pay it now And the average monthly payment that

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we see in the workplace is $8 to $900 a month per individual So employees are

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scrambling to find $800 and $900 a month that they likely repurposed to multiple

Why ignoring student debt is no longer an option for CEOs

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other needs And then finally if you're offering a retirement match we will offer a complimentary retirement plan

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assessment to help employers understand who is really benefiting from that value

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proposition of a retirement match which is a huge investment by employers And in the retirement plan assessment we'll

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also help employers see who's eligible but not participating who's participating but not

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maximizing and enable a broader set of that employee population which tends to

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be a younger demographic to actually take advantage of that value prop and and take advantage of what they're

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already offering but are not uh not you know just not participating because of their student debt It's just it's table

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stakes Like if you haven't implemented a solution yet doesn't have to be candidly um then you're behind frankly in terms

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of a competitive benefit stack So Laurel I'm incredibly proud of you I remember

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walking up the hill um to go to the I think it was accidental to get a a drink

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with the team uh several decades ago I think now almost two decades ago And

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you've you've done so much you know you've candidly has won a ton of awards

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You've spoken at Davos You built a platform that's changing tens of

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thousands of lives And so much at Candidly what's your vision for the

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future or or maybe what's just the next step yes So the next step student debt

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is our wedge into wellness because it is so complex and domain

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expertise but we have gone well beyond student debt And so what's what's ahead

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for Candidly is creating firsttime wealth for users who are paying down their debt and helping them have

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$450,000 at the time of retirement just from getting a retirement match on their student loan

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payments That's four times what boomers have today by the way That's secure 2.0 That's what Secure 2.0 is enabled Just

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four times what boomers have today if they just go work for an employer who offers a retirement match on their

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student loan payments So wealth creation help employees with their debt beyond

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student debt Um and really help our where we are right now which is so

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exciting We've gone through the process of securing and serving the largest

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financial services companies in the world that serve employers as their clients and the employees of those employers Now we are in the privileged

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position of expanding the way that we're of service to these organizations which is helping them get

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AI to market and personalize the experience across a very

Student debt and the retirement gap

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complex siloed um product set of financial solutions and actually

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bringing that together for the user in a way that's seamless and actionable So that's a big goal big vision uh that

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we're super excited about Laurel it was such an honor to have you here today And like I've told you several times over

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the years I'm incredibly incredibly proud of you and all you've accomplished and some people at Learning might get

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mad at me for saying this but I would have to put you up at the very top of our success stories um through our

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30-year career So you've been amazing And to kind of recap what we talked about today we talked about your mission

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to crush student debt and how it's deeply personal to you That debt shame is real and it's also widespread We

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talked about how the benefit is not just for the student or the individual with debt but it's also there's so much

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benefit out there for employers and how it helps retention and you shared some great numbers We talked about how you

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have a wartime CEO mindset and really the future for Canalie and how AI is going to impact it So thank you once

Candidly’s mission for the next decade: from debt to wealth

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again You are awesome Where can our uh audience connect with you at to learn more oh yes Okay So LinkedIn uh please

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connect with me on LinkedIn and also get candidly.com

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uh if you want to learn more about how we can be of service and Big D it was so

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wonderful to see you again today and have this I'm so admire your work and

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have watched and listened to multiple of your podcasts and uh apologize I wasn't

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more uh brief in my responses and answers since we go way back I was a bit

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lax days ago And for our audience you should seriously look into candidly and

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maybe if you're part of the decision-making process or you want to go out reach out to your HR see if it's

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something that you can implement internally at your company because there's benefits all the way around And

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do me a favor as well And if you haven't already like and subscribe to the Learn It All podcast It really helps us out a

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great deal And until next time everybody stay curious keep learning and have a

44:07

great day And I had literally never once in my life thought about going into PR

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Um but I started thinking about it a little

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