In this episode, we hear Neil Vaswani talk about growing up in New York City surrounded by entrepreneurs, starting his first business at the age of 14, the growth of Corestream, and much more!

For the full show notes, head on over to:

https://www.salaryfinance.com/us/podcast/Neil-Vaswani-Building-Value-in-Each-Step

Anita Ward 0:00

Welcome to Working On Wellbeing, where we share stories of purpose-driven people doing good in the world. We'll meet change agents, entrepreneurs, students, teachers, and big thinkers to learn about their wow moment and how it got them to where they are today. This show is brought to you by Salary Finance. And I'm your host Anita Ward, cultural anthropologist, and Chief Development Officer at Salary Finance.

Everyone is welcome to join us in our work on wellbeing and our episodic series People on Purpose. Our guest today is a legendary entrepreneur. I am thrilled to welcome the CEO of Corestream, a famous innovator and a leader committed, as all of you know, to where my heart is in putting people first, Neil Vaswani. Welcome to the show, Neil. And thank you for being here with us today.

Neil Vaswani 1:05

Hello, and thank you for your interest in joining us. And it's a lengthy introduction. Hopefully, I can live up to the flattering terms you used to introduce me.

Anita Ward 1:18

Neil Vaswani 3:14

So my father came here from India with really little in his pocket and kind of built up a business from there a few different enterprises where and then he finally arrived in the jewelry industry which was fairly profitable. As a result, I got to see Dad expand that business when I was still young, and it was in New York, but we travel all across the United States. As a result, we moved about a lot. As a result, I spent time in India. But Thailand was divided in Europe at the time, and New York was always home base. But because dad bought products in different nations and sold them in other countries, we were continuously on the move all over the place and lived everywhere.

Anita Ward 4:05

So I have this romantic image of New York, if you will because I adore the city. But I have this image of you as a small boy, strolling down 47th Street with people arguing and a million different languages and so much passion and emotion, and I wonder how much of that you funneled into what you're doing now. Do you ever have that feeling that you're channeling New York and 47th Street?

Neil Vaswani 4:36

When you go through those two diamond lamps or posts on the street, it's as if you've been transported to a Middle Eastern weird. You're also dealing with old school Indians, old school Jews, old school Chinese, and old school Russians. It's just in an extremely antiquated industry. And so there are some very intriguing things that I acquired at a young age, being a part of that industry and witnesses, and when you factor in New York and the mentality in New York and how cutthroat it is, and some really profound lessons that I still carry with me. And that helped me in business every day, some learning about what to do and others learning about what not to do.

Anita Ward 5:23

I'm certain. I think back on some of it, and I had no idea you traveled to all those places. As an anthropologist, you had me going across several cultures. But getting out of that sort of ethnographic or ethnocentric focus on where you are, how did traveling affect the way you think, is a fairly great experience for a youngster as well.

Neil Vaswani 5:50

Anita Ward 6:55

But you still wanted to be one, didn't you? I heard you began your first business when you were 14 years old. And it's rumored that you're upset with yourself for taking so long to begin your first business at the age of 14. Is that correct?

Neil Vaswani 7:16

The news is mostly correct, although the sequence is a little off. And when I started feeling that way, but I was in boarding school at the time, and my family was experiencing financial difficulties, I had to figure out how to support myself. So I created a noodle company where I would bring these noodle packets from Japan, but I got them in the US, in New York, and sell them to hungry kids at my boarding school.

Anita Ward 7:44

Like ramen noodles? Like those ramen noodle packages?

Neil Vaswani 7:49

Yes, but I received a better sort, not quite that somewhat premium quality versus the traditional ramen. Yes, they were all hungry youngsters looking for a late-night snack. And it was such a fantastic, cool business that I was able to support myself for a couple of years solely on my personal expenses. And I competed against Chinese people. So it's quite cool.

Anita Ward 8:16

And a noodle business? There’s something ironic in there.

Neil Vaswani 8:22

And I believe I realized that when I reflect on the whole affair, I learned some intriguing concepts that I kept with me, the first of which was that I had a higher quality product. And I did it by not only selling a higher-grade product that I believed was of superior quality but also by charging a higher price for it. So it was one unique edge I was able to obtain. The next step was to give credit. As a result, young children have money late at night. And the Chinese weren't ready to grant me credit, so trusting my customer came in handy. Finally, offering various promotions, such as buy four, get one free. Whereas the Chinese were unable to do so, I was able to increase my market share. So there are some fascinating strategies.

Anita Ward 9:07

So you figured it out yourself?

Neil Vaswani 9:09

Yes, and, well, I didn't really comprehend the concepts from a textbook standpoint at the time, but I just kind of ran with those techniques intuitively.

Anita Ward 9:19

I believe you could have written a book at the age of 14 because the noodle business and, at the very least, those three skills are important to everything an entrepreneur does in terms of pricing in the supply chain, listening to your customers, and figuring it out. Neil, you make the rest of us look pretty bad. But, as I mentioned earlier in the introduction, you ended up at Babson. Did you go into Babson thinking you're going to join the family business, reengineer the family business, and take it to the next level, or are you going to do the noodle business and take it a global noodle business? What drew you to Babson? And how has that influenced your thinking?

Yes, I believe that as well. It's difficult to scale the noodle company to support much more than a teenager's allowance. So, I went to Babson because I wanted to establish a business, and my father was revamping his firm at the time. So I wasn't sure if I was going to work in the family business. But I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was the president of my high school. And I've always felt like I wanted to follow more of an unorthodox route, kind of develop my own thing, and be my own leader. So that felt natural to me. And entrepreneurship was very exciting to me and just kind of felt like it was part of my DNA. Seeing my father, it is obvious that our family business is growing. So I was very enthused about and excited about everything that was going on because it was right around the time of it. That was intriguing. So I was at Babson studying entrepreneurship and finance in the hopes of being able to launch a company. And Babson was great for that because it actually gives you the practical experience of meeting with VCs and reading case studies and talking to entrepreneurs as well as having teachers who have started growing companies and it was a very hands-on education. That was incredibly useful and really provided you with the tools you needed to have a better degree of confidence to be an entrepreneur as opposed to having gone to Babson, which is a terrific school and provides a tremendous foundation. But when I graduated, I worked for my father for roughly a year and a half to two years. And I recall thinking at the time that I was going to be a part of the company. And my father kicked me out of the business because he felt it wasn't derivative, wasn't growing, and wasn't as inventive, or as dynamic, rather. An atmosphere wasn't dynamic enough for me to thrive. He sent me to Babson College to study how to be a successful entrepreneur. And then coming to the jewelry sector felt like I was hitting a brick wall very soon in my career, not being able to expand my legs.

What an amazing Dad.

Yes, but it was a difficult message at the time since I had the impression he didn't want me in the business. As a result, I misinterpreted it at the moment. In retrospect, he recalls it as one of the critical times in my life and an essential crossroads that started me on the path to start coursing.

I hadn't considered it, but you just mentioned the dot-com era. And we have a large number of younger listeners. But this is the original, the first dot-com. And, Neil, when I reflect on it, there was the Blue Nile? There were a lot of experimental jewelry firms that were starting online at the same time. Did you look into any of that?

I did write a business plan regarding E-commerce, a jewelry store would have been one of the first few, and I wrote the business plan when I was 21, or 22. And I was seriously thinking about it. But the deeper I got into the jewelry industry, the more I wanted to get away from it. I mean, as I previously stated, it was such an ancient society that even if I were to start an E-commerce company, I would have to deal with some of the folks there. That's exactly what my father said to me. He told her, "Look, I don't think you'll be able to flourish in this industry.” That's when I turned to him and said, "Well, I'd like to give it a chance." And he says, "Look, try it for six months and see how you like it." That's exactly what we did. So we spent six months in the business, thinking about E-commerce, drafting the business plan, meeting with other industry people, and seeing him manage his interactions with various industry people. And it was dreadful. The individual who was willing to scream the loudest was the one who would win a bargain. But that's who would win the bargaining. There was no explanation. There was no logical reasoning. And it was a zero-sum game, as no one wanted you to make a penny whether you dealt with suppliers or customers. And so, basically, there's a lot of shenanigans going on where individuals are trying to create margin by tricking each other, rather than simply allowing each other to generate some profit, right? Everyone has to make money in the equation; else, it will not be sustainable. So seeing that firsthand and seeing how toxic the interactions were and how zero-sum the negotiations were just kind of led me to the concept you mentioned earlier, disruption without disintermediation, which we can talk about later, but getting back to your question, yes, that's when I decided to leave the jewelry industry. And, eventually, that was exactly around the time the dot-com boom was peaking, and so I thought when to check this world out. Obviously, there is a credibility dynamic.

What was the reason for Corestream? Because I'm attempting to link jewelry and voluntary benefits. There's a bit of a leap there. So, what brought us to Corestream?

After leaving the diamond industry, I began working for a small new media company to learn about the internet. And those were the years when I was dissatisfied with myself because I didn't establish a company. I remember living downtown or taking the subway to Grand Central where the office was, and every day, I'd be upset with myself because I didn't start a firm. As a result, I was always on the lookout for the proper chance. And one of the things that always piqued my interest was figuring out a model that genuinely provided value for every constituent or every single person who came into contact with the company model. And I was reading a book about what Google would accomplish around that time, and I was learning about how Google grew its business. And a lot of it was based on providing value to everyone. And by utilizing Google, they're really kind of boosting all industries and enabling everyone to communicate with each other. And that was really appealing to me in terms of a business plan. So I was always looking for it. And as I entered the startup world and learned about the dot-com boom, I joined a company that evolved into a flexible spending account, debit card company, and began to learn about benefits and client needs as well as the friction with administration and the lack of engagement from employees with benefits packages that employers offered, which eventually led to clustering.

So, what was the issue you were attempting to resolve? Did you start working on the problem immediately away? Was this the original thesis centered on the billing construct?

In a way. I spoke with several significant organizations. And we're doing some research and advising for some of them, and they were wanting to expand their benefits. In particular, one I spoke with was trying to offer health club discounts to their employees. And one of their executives was a member of the Equinox club, which paid far more than one of their competitors. Executives were paying, and I wasn't happy about it, so I protested to HR. HR had asked me to investigate the possibility of extending Equinox and other health club discounts to its employees. So, when I went out and did the research, I discovered that while all of these health clubs were interested in delivering reduced programs to employee populations, they also wanted payroll deduction as a mechanism to raise their monthly dues. And, that made sense to me. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that health clubs, for one thing, wanted to safeguard their brand. As a result, they were willing to offer their program at a reduced rate, but they desired payroll deduction to help safeguard their brand from degradation. They also wanted to benefit from the advantages of payroll billing in order to reduce their costs and pass some of the savings on to the employee. So they are some of the most important things I discovered. And I returned to the customer with a package of health clubs to build up an offer for their staff, which they felt was fantastic. They went down to the payroll team and said, "Hey, let's set up payroll slots and billing interfaces with these five or six different health clubs." That's where they ran into trouble. And that's when their payroll department threw up their hands and said, "Well, there's no way we can handle five or six separate payroll slots, our system can't support it, our technology can't support it, and we don't have the resources or time to manage this on an ongoing basis." So, because we can't support all five of these, choose one. So there was a message to HR, and when HR got back to me, she said, "Hey, we're not going to offer any of these." When they finished telling me the whole scenario, I said, "Well, why wouldn't you offer one?" They indicated that if we offered one, we'd have to choose one of these. Furthermore, because the health club business is so fragmented and concentrated in a specific location and economic level. If we offered one of these, we would appear to be partial or biased towards that particular sector of the workforce population. And since we have tens of thousands of staff distributed around the country. We cannot afford to do so. As a result, it's all or nothing for us. So, sadly, because our systems can't provide this or because our systems can't manage it, we're going to cancel the program. And that's when the light bulb went off in my head, and I thought, "Well, what if I could create you guys a single point of integration for you to put up on your end that would enable you to access all these merchants holding different health clubs, but there was only one point of integration?” And they responded, "Hey, that's fantastic if you can do that and deliver that." And so the initial idea for the issue was essentially an aggregation approach to help or enable employers to grow their benefits while only having to integrate with one rather than having to integrate with every single benefit that they choose to offer for their boards.

So you used case, correct? You were aware of the issue at hand. But how did you get the startup money? How did you go about starting your investment journey?

Yes. So I learned a little bit more about the health club industry. And when I did so, I clearly learned more about the benefits and what was going on in that entire ecosystem. What I discovered is that there are other benefit providers who require access to employees' payroll slots and would welcome the opportunity to be offered as an employee perk. As I opened the door to that world, I found all these merchants waiting for me; they're really thrilled about delivering their programs through a platform like the one I'm thinking about establishing. As I dug deeper, I discovered the other clients. In fact, every customer with more than a few thousand employees at the time had to deal with various sorts of demand within their employee population, different sectors of their varied demographics within their employee population that required different benefits to meet their needs. And so I discovered that there were all these clients out there, as well as all these merchants. And the more clients and companies I wanted to partner with, the more clearly the possibility was revealed. And it was all green fields because this was a novel concept that was still in its early stages. So I took, made a business plan on it, called my buddy Zach, and said, “Hey, I think I've got a nice concept there.” So we simply wrote the executive summary and began spamming these pages across the country. He simply grabbed it and ran with it. And we have to have emailed everyone. And I was about 25 or 26 at the time, and he wasn't much older. So all we wanted to do was get it in front of a number of VCs, have some meetings, and see what they had to say in reaction to our presentation. That's how we got started.

So, did you find a venture capitalist early on?

For the first round, we ultimately chose an Angel Network, which is similar to a family fund based in Louisville. Rick Pitino's son was on our board, which was a testament to the generosity of our Louisville angels. We ended up randomly tapping into the high net worth persons, other people in Louisville who helped us with seed cash. And after we got rolling, we met with a bunch of VCs and got some really good feedback, eventually narrowing it down to one VC from upstate New York and an Angel fund from Louisville, and then closed with them in 2006.

It's incredible. Neil, who was your first client? Was it the Equinox people?

Equinox is, without a doubt, one of our first sellers. But when I think of clients, I think of my first workplace, Applebee's. And keep in mind that it takes a lot of tenacity and perseverance in the beginning when no one knows who you are, especially in the business world, because we produced a very fantastic product but no one knew who we were. As a result, while we made it to the finals presentation in a number of cases via an RFP process, we were rarely, if ever, chosen because we simply didn't have any brand recognition and employers thought what we were doing was cool, but didn't necessarily have a comfort level of trust in us to give us access to employees' paychecks. So it was difficult to gain traction in the industry during the first several years. But we did get a chance at Applebee's, but they went with another vendor. They issued an RFP and hired another vendor. I called them because I believed I was getting close and pushed my way into a lunch meeting, flew to Kansas, and met with them. And I'm not sure why he agreed to my meeting, but I kind of forced the subject. I was also able to turn around.

Was there a client who provided you with a tipping point? I was thinking about getting your brand out there and people getting to know you. You persuaded Applebee's to work with you. Was there been a point when a specific client just made everything change? And you said to yourself, "Oh, that's great. Life is now different.”

I believe the first one was Applebee's. They helped to put us on the map. Because market relevance is perhaps the most crucial factor, especially when launching a SAS company. It is critical that if you do not have enough end-users or scalability, no one cares about you. Right. So you've got to establish yourself in those first few wins because they start to put you on the map and offer you a reference point, or at the very least a reference for new clients to validate what you're telling them. So Applebee's was the first client, and they placed us on the map and started the ball rolling. So each client after that was crucial, but I guess the next one that was incredibly significant was Pfizer. And, of course, a fantastic brand. And it was the first time we worked with a brokerage firm and developed a revenue share plan to partner with them; previously, we were unintentionally attempting to disrupt them. And when we first began the company, I was about 26 or 27 years old and had no idea about distribution in this environment. So I just figured, yeah, you made a wonderful product, and you go pitch it to clients in the wind. I entirely misjudged the stickiness of the brokers' connections and the value that they have. I just wasn't aware of them. As a result, we had a difficult time growing and gaining momentum in the first several years since we were unknowingly competing with brokers. And if we wanted to scale distribution, we needed to figure out how to connect ourselves with them. And Pfizer was the first client where we tried it, and it worked incredibly well.

Didn't you also collaborate with ADP? I know you've got a fantastic API adapter for ADP as well, and that you're making good use of that technology. And we've discussed a little about what that entails.

So when we first launched the firm, the first few years were probably our first four or five years, from zero to 75,000 end users, when we tried to go direct to clients. And, as I had stated, we were inadvertently disrupting the brokers. As a result, we shifted and landed Pfizer. And, as a result of that pivot, we received another VC investment from a New York-based company fund called Abundance. And we took on extra business capital and focused on a broker partnership model that needs revenue sharing with a broker. And it worked well. So, during the next five years, or three years, we increased from 75,000 to 750,000 users.

Wow. Okay, Win-Win really works.

Exactly. As a result, you gave up some margin on the distribution model that allows the existing incumbents and me to work really well. As a result, we observed a tenfold increase in growth over the next five years. Then there's our really ambitious group here. As a result, we continue to seek faster growth. And the difficulty with a broker community is that it is so fragmented. And even at the huge stores and some of these large organizations, such as Aquasure, and so on. They're fantastic companies, but they've essentially rolled up Mom-and-Pop shops over time to become a part of the larger ecosystem. As a result, its producers retain a strong business spirit. So it's very difficult for the mothership of that brokerage company to prescribe what each producer will sell and how they'll sell it, and simply to challenge based on the cultural values of rolling up entrepreneurs into that consolidation model. So, on the broker side, what we did well, we just found it difficult to scale that distribution because we literally had to go and create connections with every producer out there. Gallagher alone has almost 5000 producers. So it can be a tremendous challenge to create a relationship with each and every one of them on the street, and brokers take their business and their clients extremely seriously. So, if they're going to enable you to work with them on a certain customer, they're going to want to get to know you. As a result, scaling that company model is difficult. It simply takes time. So, as we considered going quicker, we sought distribution partners with greater control over their sales force. The second market phenomenon we noticed was that benefits administration systems were expanding the sorts of benefits they offered. There was also considerable overlap between benefits administration, platforms, and Corestream. So, rather than competing with them, we chose to permit such admin platforms. So we identified ADP, a firm that has a Benefits Administration platform that wanted to go into the voluntary number one and number two, control of their sales force. So we reached out to ADP in 2016, and it took us about a year to work our way through their process, but we won that bid. And we were chosen as their sole voluntary benefits provider for their large market clients. And it worked pretty nicely. And from 2017 through 2019. We grew from 750,000 to 1.5 million users. So it contributed additional fuel to the distribution model and validated that, you know, disruption without disintermediation theme if you will.

Yes, that philosophy fascinates me. And the more I learned about you and Corestream, the more I wondered, "What is the purpose of Corestream?" But now, when you talk through the entire process, by providing value and not distinguishing intermediation, distribution partners not disintermediating the broker channel, and attempting to figure out how to put value into each stage, that's the secret sauce, Corestream, and you do it so brilliantly. It's a fantastic lesson that I believe we could all benefit from. And I believe it is fundamental to business. But that strikes me as quite a contrast to winning the deal because you didn't shout the loudest; in fact, it's exactly the contrary. Right? We all carry our lessons in our own unique ways. But it appears to me that you went to the opposite end of the spectrum in determining how to add value to everyone along the route, so congrats on that. What is your present business model? Perhaps we should discuss it briefly so that everyone understands the difference between a price per employee per month plan and a SAS model. And because I heard you mention that just now, perhaps we could share a little bit with our audience on how Corestream out works.

To your point about yelling the loudest and the lessons gained, what I experienced in the jewelry industry was this really corrosive attitude that I said earlier about not wanting your partners, customers, or suppliers to make money. And it was so minuscule that it stifled the entire sector. And so that really spurred my desire to establish a far more inclusive business model that truly leverages technology to empower enable, and truly be creative to any constituent within the ecosystem, even if they are competitors or pseudo-competitors. So it is undoubtedly a lesson that has aided me in the development of a company concept. But, to answer your question about the present business model, we do not charge any costs to the employer, thus there is no ppm or subscription price like you could see with a SAS company or SAS model. Instead, we capitalize on the transactional money generated by employees who participate in these initiatives. We leverage the transactional revenue generated by the Commissions linked with the programs we provide. So, every time an employee enrolls in one of the benefits, we are compensated with either insurance commissions or through the technology piece, and we use those revenue streams from the vendor side to offset our development and administration overhead costs and to ultimately generate revenue and profit for the organization.

This brings us to the other leg in the stool; I'm not sure how many legs we're up to now in your mind. With a win-win situation, the employer wins, the employee wins, and neither of them pays any costs. And you're doing it through a route where you're also benefiting that channel. So that's a fantastic model, Neil; it's incredible.

See the employer, and we're allowing them to give more advantages to engage their employees, right? For the employee, or allowing them to enjoy value propositions that are not available to them in the retail market, or as an individual, it is ideal for the vendor. You're giving them access to distribution, a captive audience, and the efficiency of payroll and payroll billing, and on the broker side, you're assisting them in playing attack and defense. So the offense, by allowing them to offer more to their clients and providing a high-tech answer to their clients, is growing on the services they supply, while the defense is keeping their competitors out. So it's a very inclusive approach in terms of putting four distinct stakeholders, employer, employee, vendor, and broker, and I feel that's a big part of our success.

And, as I expected, how you choose those relationships is as important. So, what advice would you give to businesses as they develop their partner strategies? Do you want to meet individuals who share your values? How do you choose partners, investors, or even employees? How does that look in your model?

When it comes to selecting suppliers, we're a lot more loose and fast about working with vendors to find as long as we have two real criteria, right? Number one, the vendor was willing to deliver a value proposition that is not available to the general public. Right? That's important because it allows us to reposition the service as an employee benefit; otherwise, it's just an advertisement, as in, why are you receiving access to this program? If you work for Pfizer or Applebee's, you'll have access because your company is providing it, and the reason it's marketed as a benefit is that you're getting something you can't get on your own, but that's the bottom line; otherwise, it's an advertisement. So we're searching for vendors who offer payroll deduction as a way to bill employees. We felt payroll was incredibly important for engaging employees and producing cost reductions for the vendor to be able to pass deeper savings back to the end-user. And we witnessed it time and time again. So we really concentrated on products that employees required on a daily basis, kind of basic insurance items from the start, products like auto, house, and pet insurance, and things like that. As we grew as an organization, our curation process became far more robust and focuses on many things today; we're really focused on demand and mapping to a demographic within the employer population, making sure that it actually creates value for the employee by enriching and protecting their life and livelihood. As a result, that's a rather broad term. So a lot of things can fall in there, everything from preserving their financial well-being to protecting their pets to allowing them to get access to their Netflix account at a lower cost than they can acquire on their own. So it might be pretty broad, but we search for providers who offer high-quality services and do not present any products that could harm employees or be regarded as dangerous. And, once again, something that will be considerably more competitive and appealing to the end-user than what they can buy on their own.

And we're honored to be a member of your team. I really appreciate it. However, Neil, this is a show where we frequently discuss financial well-being, and you've revealed the ups and downs of your family business. But, along the way, did you experience a personal "wow" moment regarding your own well-being or financial well-being that you'd like to share with everyone?

When our family faced financial difficulties. My father was an entrepreneur who taught me a lot about saving and being financially stable, as well as the importance of security. You could think that money isn't going to make us happy, but not having it makes happiness difficult. So having the security of knowing that you have a place to sleep, that you can support education and health care, and that your family's livelihood is critical. So, clearly, that was my first revelation or encounter with financial wellness in the last two years with COVID. Yes, it has absolutely connected with or reconfigured each of my frameworks for how I conduct my life. So, now that I think about well-being, I've made a lot of changes in my life in terms of how I balance the various areas of my life. So I created a framework in which I have to click a triangle in order for it to visually follow me. Consider it a triangle. On the left, I have my professional being, and on the right, I have my personal being. Then, on top, I have my family, with a different angle on my family. And so, throughout COVID, I learned that in order to be my best at any of things, I needed to achieve the equilibrium and balance of being right in the middle. So work-life balance has become even more important to me since if I skew too far in any direction, I'm essentially suboptimal in all three. So he found that balance and a lot of it were because COVID forces you to, you couldn't travel for a long, and you spend more time with the kids, and he found various activities to do. And it sort of forced you to rethink how you were spending your life and find a better way. And so, in general, that's what I got out of it, in terms of my well-being and framework. So I really aim for that balance and want to instill it as a cultural value and Corestream. And that very much extends into what we offer to our employees, which is helping them manage their work-life balance, and it's changed so dramatically with people working from home, that employers really had to rethink the types of benefits they were providing to the end-user because their needs had changed, then you add in the financial angle of people losing their jobs and potentially losing time at work, and being furloughed, and the kind of financial mess they were in and having to weigh their 401 K's. And that's where your program really filled a void, by giving employees a very cheaply cost credit facility as a substitute option to all the other hazardous stuff in the retail market. So that's how my adventure on the well-being side began, and what have we seen in the last couple of years on the financial side?

That is very appreciated. Maslow is definitely twisting in his grave because I believe you just reinvented that. That's quite incredible. What will the following step be like? Let's face it, the big difficulty of humanity that we need to solve for you seems to be figuring out how to make win-win situations all the time. Do you have any huge goals that you believe we should all work together to achieve?

Obviously a broad question; I have a list of business concepts that I want to create and implement, but I'm so focused on Corestream. And because I actually live, breathe, and sleep it, my response will be biased toward our business model. And our purpose and vision here are analogous to someone sitting down with their guidance counselor to assist them to plan out their life and understanding what they will need to acquire in terms of insurance and financial wellness to support that livelihood. As a result, becoming a guide to the end-user through digital experiences is the next Corestream. That's essentially what we're focusing on here: giving employees the ability to purchase the correct benefit at the right time while also ensuring that they're not purchasing the wrong benefits. So I think that's a pretty significant aspect of what we do because so many people in our sector are really connected with simply selling to employees, whereas we're also aiming to guide employees. And so, building that platform that gives that hyper-personalization to tell you what you should purchase, what you shouldn't buy, and then once you get it, teaching you how to use it, are really important components of our mission.

So, Neil, I'm looking forward to seeing the Corestream Digital Sherpa. I think it's very cool, and I'd love to have one along the road. As a result, I am quite appreciative of your time today. Thank you for being this genuine individual, for revealing your beginnings, and for sharing all of the amazing work that Corestream is doing. And I want to express my gratitude to you and Corestream for your collaboration. Corestream can be found in a variety of locations. Would you mind sharing? Where should we send them if they wish to learn more?

Yes, you can go to [corestream.com](http://corestream.com/). And, of course, visit my LinkedIn page and connect with me; I enjoy connecting with people, and they're eager to chat with anyone who wants to learn more.

Great. Thank you very much. Neil. Thank you for being here with us today. And, until next time, everyone, keep working on your well-being.

Thanks for joining us for today's episode of Working on Wellbeing brought to you by Salary Finance. I'm Anita ward. At Salary Finance, our mission is to improve the financial health of working Americans by providing access to socially responsible financial products in the workplace. You can learn more about how you can partner with us to help improve your employee's financial well-being at salaryfinance.com. Don't forget to subscribe or follow so you don't miss an episode.