URI Annual Career Day, Ben Navarro-7

What are your incentives going to be? What is going to incentivize you? Is it money? Is it learning? Is it where I’m at? Is it who I’m working with? Think about what are the things that are going to incentivize you. In my case, I want a path. I want a path that hopefully is going to get me to a place where I can start my own business. That was my incentive, my primary incentive. So think about what those incentives are for you.

Ben Navarro Charleston. I’m huge on this. I stink at it. I have for most of my life and I’m trying to get better at it but when good things happen, make a fuss. When you accomplish something in school, make a fuss about it. Make sure you feel good about it because if you’re going to be your own worst critic, you sure as hell better celebrate the good things.

Be the dumbest guy in the room. What do I mean by that? First of all, you want to work with as smart people as you possibly can. In my case, I want to hire as smart people as I possibly can. I also don’t want to be afraid to be the person who asks the question that might seem a little goofy. As a leader, I’m always willing to do that but I would suggest you should do the same thing.

All right, another growth tip. Please, please listen to this one. Smart is not what you think it is. Being smart very simply is knowing what you do know and knowing what you don’t know. What you don’t know can be fairly easily found out. Please listen to this one. So this does not mean you don’t have to do your part. You’re a business student; you ought to be reading the Wall Street Journal and other business publications. You ought to know what’s going on in the world, no doubt about it.

But when I was your age, I thought the smart kid in the corner who could bang out math like nobody’s business – I thought that was the smartest kid in the room. What I’ve learned later actually is and if you ask me now what do I look for when I hire people, I look for people that are obviously self-motivated, can solve problems, and probably more than anything else, can make the people around them better . . . can make the people around them better. It’s a lot different definition of smart than I thought of when I was 21. Fact-based learning, it’s important. You gotta’ do it. It’s not what drives the train at the end of the day. I hope that’s helpful.

I’m going to take you through lastly some significant milestones as we grew the company and hopefully these are things that will be helpful but also help you understand how did you go from a one-bedroom apartment with a phone/fax machine to what the company looks like today. How does that path happen? Go HERE:- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/363947213622325292/

Schoolhouse Rock – Ben Navarro at TedX Charleston-4

Extended school day: What are kids doing after 3 o’clock? Well, we believe at our school that kids should be engaged in extracurricular as well academic activities. Here are some examples of those. You compare this to an under-resourced child let’s say at a public school who’s leaving at three o’clock, maybe has a working mom or something, has unsupervised, unstructured time, and I think you can tell the difference. Combining these two things, a child can spend 30% more time in the classroom – obviously another game changer.

Family involvement: So how do we get families to become more involved? You know, when I started this project I traveled around the country and visited schools that were successful working with the under-resourced demographic. And I was surprised when I asked the question, “What’s the most important determinate of success?” The answer was not a child’s aptitude. The answer was an invested caregiver.

So we developed a parental contract. And more than a contract – it really says, “Hey this is how to partner with us at the school.” If you want a great education for their child – and these parents absolutely do – here are some of the things you can do: read with the child at night, do homework, volunteer at the school, be involved. We believe things like parental contracts and other ways to get parents involved are absolute game-changers. Look, schools utilizing ideas like these work. I know. I have visited many of them and we are doing it right here in Ben Navarro Charleston at our sister school in Spartanburg where we are seeing under-resourced kids perform significantly above grade level.

You know when I started this project I had hoped it was possible to have a school where under-resourced kids could have the same expectations put on them that my own children have put on them and I’m thrilled to be able to stand here and tell you it’s possible. And here’s a great example – remember Byron? Well, here’s Byron today at one of Charleston’s top independent schools – happens to be my daughter in that picture as well – where he earned a full scholarship based on his own merit and record of academic success.

We know what works in educating under-resourced kids. I want to jump up a down and wave my hands! We know! Yet our system in South Carolina is failing them miserably. It’s got to change. To me this is not about race. This is not about income. This is about taking care of our children. It’s about giving the kids like Byron the chance that they deserve.

And so I’m asking you, the silent majority, to become involved. Be a mentor. Volunteer at your school. The next school board election, take a hard look at who’s running and what their record is and what they want to vote for. Maybe run yourselves. That’s who runs schools in South Carolina. Get involved. It’s too important to ignore. Thank you. Go Here:- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/363947213616184703/

Private group could take the reins at struggling Burns Elementary

Teachers preach the gospel of grit to their students at Meeting Street Elementary @Brentwood, a unique public school under private management in an impoverished section of North Ben Navarro Charleston.

What’s grit?

“That means you’re never giving up,” said 7-year-old Kayla Jackson, who recently transferred to the school. “You just work hard.”

Administrators are quick to give students praise for strong academic performance, but part of their success may also be ascribed to an infusion of private money and a blue-sky approach to innovation — facets of Brentwood that could represent a new model of public education for low-income and minority students.

“Burns has been a poster child for the achievement gap, and we want to take them off that poster as soon as possible,” said Ben Navarro, founder and CEO of Meeting Street Schools.

The Brentwood experiment

Opened as a neighborhood school in fall 2014 on the former Brentwood Middle campus, Meeting Street Elementary @Brentwood exists in a league of its own, offering two teachers per classroom, an extended school day and school year, and an in-house crew of therapists and social workers.

Meeting Street Schools, which also operates private schools in Charleston and Spartanburg, gets leeway from the district to spend public money, make curriculum decisions and hire and fire teachers at Brentwood.

The Brentwood leadership has made some bold hiring decisions, including an on-staff speech therapist and Pamela Pepper, the school’s director of student and family support. A doctor of clinical psychology, Pepper — yes, Dr. Pepper — works with students on behavior problems, helps families navigate Medicaid paperwork and helps enroll hungry children in the Low country Food Bank’s Backpack Buddies program.

Last school year, the school gave its kindergartners the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) test in the fall, and only 34 percent scored above the national median for their grade level. When they took the test again in the spring, 85 percent beat the median — including 60 percent who made it into the top quartile.

Just a year after a shaky start, the students had blown the test out of the water.

“If they can stay in that quartile, that means USC, that means Clemson, that means a Life scholarship, that means they’re absolutely employable,” Navarro said. “That means, to some extent with these kids, the world is their oyster.”

The Burns plan

At Burns Elementary, district Superintendent GerritaPostlewait said she hopes to expand on “a partnership that has proven to be tremendously successful.” Following the pattern set at Brentwood, the school would be governed by an executive board consisting of herself, Navarro and Brentwood Principal Sarah Campbell.

Navarro said that while startup costs can be high at his schools, education leaders won’t be able to argue with the strong results.

“People are looking for solutions, and if we can be that solution, then all of a sudden it becomes pretty powerful,” Navarro said.

Big money

When Meeting Street Schools first took control at Brentwood, it was reported that private donors furnished $1.3 million to help renovate the aging campus. But that wasn’t all of the private investment in the public school.

The district gives Meeting Street Schools about $10,000 per pupil to spend as it chooses. That’s not enough to meet the school’s intensive staffing demands, particularly with a school day that lasts until 5:30 p.m. for most students.

Meeting Street Schools had nearly $30 million in assets in 2014 and spent nearly $2 million that year, including $35,000 on lobbying, according to IRS paperwork. It has received sizable donations from Navarro’s own financial services company, Sherman Financial Group.

Despite the unspecified startup costs, Campbell said the Brentwood model can be replicated elsewhere.

“All the things we’re doing can be replicated in schools within the district,” Campbell said. “Whether it’s a Meeting Street Elementary @Burns type of school or it’s another type of pilot that Dr. Postlewait comes up with, the idea is that you have to do something different for kids who need more.” https://www.pinterest.com/ShermanGiving/meeting-street-schools-in-the-news/

Ben on SFG from URI talk

I learned what excellence looked like and felt like. I learned – I met great people that I could eventually recruit to work with. I learned how deals got done – absolutely critical part of my development. That led to the bottom picture there which is the best picture I could get of my dog Sherman but that led to the start of Sherman Financial Group. That’s what I’m going to kind of focus on going forward, what that experience was like.

Let me tell you about what it looks like today. Then this will be the “wow, how does all this happen and how did you get here?” We’re going to go through that but let me tell you first what we look like today. So I’m not going to spend a lot of time but we have a number of different businesses. We are one of the largest private financial services companies in the country.

On the far left, we have a bank called Credit One Bank. We have 7 million credit card customers at the bank. We’re the ninth largest issuer of MasterCard and Visa cards. Second is Resurgent Capital Services where we’re one of the nation’s largest buyers of distressed consumer debt. We’re purchased about $200 billion of distressed consumer debt from all kinds of different consumer finance companies. We have a consumer finance business in Mexico where we’re partnered with a Mexican family down there. It’s a pretty neat business. Lastly, we have a bond-rating agency. You guys are probably familiar with like S&P and Moody’s. Ring a bell? It’s a smaller version of an S&P and Moody’s. I’ll talk about that a little bit later.

On the upper right hand corner is something that’s become very near and dear to me is my/our philanthropic effort in education. We serve under-resourced kids through four different schools today and have about 900 kids that we are responsible for educating, under-resourced kids in South Carolina. So I think it’s easy to look at this and sitting where you’re sitting and going, “Holy crap, I could never do that.” But here’s the thing: This whole thing started in a one-bedroom apartment with a newborn baby and a phone/fax machine and I’m not some genius. So if I can do something like this, there’s no reason that you can’t as well.

Yes, it is another personal growth tip. It’s hopefully consistent with the message I was just sending. Again, you can sort of write this off as cheesy or whatever but come up with the biggest dream you can think of. Start down that path and see where it takes you. Again, I had no idea where I was going. I knew I wanted to start my own business. I knew I wanted to work with people I liked. I knew I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to enjoy it – those sorts of things. I had a certain skillset that hopefully I could take advantage of but that’s about it.

And that dream, that thought process, led to the org chart you just saw in the last slide. I would say to each of you, more than anything else, get a picture in your head of where it is you’d like to end up, what it looks like, what that feels like for you. Having that picture in your head is a super powerful thing. I can’t stress it enough. Find that passion. https://www.pinterest.com/ShermanGiving/