581. Empowering Change Through Financial Literacy + Entrepreneurship - Shelley Miles

Meet Shelley. She brings 30 years of experience leading entertainment and tech businesses to the Singleton Foundation for Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship, where she serves as CEO. Shelley shares how the foundation is redefining financial and entrepreneurial education with storytelling, engaging games, and innovative tools. From creating business plans to building productive habits, these resources make learning about money fun and accessible for all ages. 💸🎮 Tune in to hear how this org scales impact through media, helping people reach their full potential and create a brighter future!

💡 Learn

• Mission + history of the Singleton Foundation
• Mindsets + advice for leaders and entrepreneurs 
• The power of financial and entrepreneurial education  

Today’s Guest
Shelley Miles, CEO, Singleton Foundation for Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship

Episode Highlights

• Shelley’s journey and story to where she is today (2:45) 
• The Singleton Foundation's History and Mission (4:30)
• The Singleton Foundation’s program (6:50)
• The importance of financial literacy and  entrepreneurship for future generations (14:55)
• Mindsets shifts from CPA to nonprofit leader (18:10)
• A powerful moment of philanthropy in Shelley’s life (22:45)
• Shelley’s One Good Thing: I live by wanting to bring my full self to whatever I'm doing every day. + I like to surround myself with people that care about similar things, that are way better at what they do than I could ever be. (26:45)
• How to connect with the Singleton Foundation (27:55)

For more information + episode details visit: weareforgood.com/episode/581.

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Chapters

• 0:53 Innovative Programs for Nonprofits
• 5:24 Financial Literacy Through Innovative Programs
• 15:32 Evolution of Financial Mindsets
• 19:53 Life-Changing Philanthropic Experiences
• 25:31 Path to Nonprofit Impact
• 29:27 Empowering Through Financial Literacy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:53

Hey, I'm John.

Speaker 2: 0:54

And I'm Becky.

Speaker 1: 0:55

And this is the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

Speaker 1: 1:07

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

Speaker 2: 1:16

So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

Speaker 1: 1:26

So let's get started. Hey Becky, what's happening?

Speaker 2: 1:30

Living legend in the house today. Hope everybody's buckled up. This is going to be a good conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:36

Oh my gosh, the deck is so stacked and I'm so excited for this convo because we're talking today, you know, about something that I think we've really been trying to lift since we started the podcast inspiring entrepreneurial mindsets like into this work to move faster, to be smarter, to be leaned in about what's the opportunity, and this year specifically, we've been talking also about the power of media and how it can scale our impact. Well, yeah, we have found this juggernaut in the industry that's not only just talking and teaching these things, but like living it out through a lot of really incredible programs, and so it is a huge honor to welcome Shelly Miles to the podcast. She is the CEO of the Singleton Foundation for Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship and I mean, my goodness, her career is incredible More than 30 years leading the growth and development of entertainment and technology businesses, including, casually, the Walt Disney Company, where she started the interactive game business and managed the worldwide recorded music and music publishing businesses.

Speaker 1: 2:33

She is currently the CEO of the Singleton Foundation, whose programs include Million Stories, media, venture, valley, game. We're going to break these down about how these are intersecting and really educating people and getting people involved in learning these entrepreneurial mindsets and learning how to better handle our money and leverage it to create more impact in the world. So Shelly was one of the founders of the Pasadena Ronald McDonald House Thank you for that and served on the boards of many nonprofits, including Global Game, jam, national Children's Chorus and the Ronald McDonald House of Southern California. She is a USC alumna and a California CPA. My goodness, my friend what an?

Speaker 1: 3:05

honor to have you in our house. Welcome to the. We Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 3: 3:08

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for having me, becky and John. I'm thrilled to be here.

Speaker 1: 3:13

Well, the honor is all ours. We're a little bit obsessed with the way that y'all create this work, because you don't just try to create engagement, you're actually trying to change some of our habits of how we think and lean into this work, and so I'm really curious to get into that. But first we want to get to know you behind the story here. Take us to some of the formative moments of your life growing up and what led you into this work that you're doing today.

Speaker 3: 3:36

Well, you know, it's really interesting because when I was really little, all I wanted to do was sing and dance, but I also like math a lot.

Speaker 2: 3:46

Oh, I love that juxtaposition.

Speaker 3: 3:49

And I thought I was going to be a violin performance major and I realized I hated performing and so I didn't know what to do and so I went to my first music jury, got scared out of my mind and changed my major and I ended up in the business school and I still I thought I wanted to do marketing, and my brother actually talked me into taking three extra classes so I could have the opportunity to become a CPA. Wow, right, and it turned out that it was. It sounds boring, but it was a lot of fun. I got to go around and visit different companies and see what they did.

Speaker 2: 4:39

I mean, first of all, I'm getting this nostalgia of my daughter coming to me when she was three and telling me she wants to be a scientist artist, and so I totally understand what you were saying and I love that you're writing. Your left brain have kind of converged in this space of financial literacy and entrepreneurship, and thank you for that, because you know we're looking at the stats and half of all jobs in the US are created by companies that are less than five years old, yet entrepreneurship has declined by 50%, and so you think about a really weighty stat like something like that. Talk us through how the Singleton Foundation is really coming into that space and talk to us about the history, about your mission and where it is today.

Speaker 3: 5:24

So the Singleton Foundation was started by Will and Carrie Singleton, and this was a personal passion project for them. Carrie grew up in a very entrepreneurial family that started a business in the bedroom on a card table, and Will grew up in a family that he realized he didn't know very much about how finance worked, and when he started reading the papers and seeing all the troubles of people having high credit card debt and all these other things, it concerned him, and so they really came up with the idea for this on their first date. Oh my gosh, what were they going to do for their legacy? And it's unusual, but it brought together two very important things.

Speaker 3: 6:12

So we all want our children to be able to stand on their own two feet. We want people to be able to thrive and be successful, and it turns out that you need both an entrepreneurial mindset and you have to have good financial skills, which is the financial literacy side. And we want people to grow to be confident, and we believe that comes from confidence and confidence that the confidence comes from confidence. You know and knowing it. So it's learning these basic life skills that are as important as eating or exercising and taking care of yourself, so that you can control the kind of life you're going to have and know how to make the decisions that can bring you to happiness.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Yeah, I mean, I love that they put a flag on the ground there, because a lot of the things you just mentioned are not on the typical educational platform. I went through all of public school up to college and a lot of these things were never talked about. All of you know public school up to college and a lot of these things were never talked about, and so I think there is a huge gap of understanding. Financial literacy Um, I want to. I want to talk for a second about storytelling, because y'all use the power of storytelling to engage and inspire, ultimately to like like we'd said at the top of the show like, transform our habits around these things too. Would you talk about the core programs that y'all are leaning into and how do they combine this entertainment with learning and what's been the response?

Speaker 3: 7:42

Yeah, so we have four major programs, and our philosophy was that learning happens best when you're enjoying what you're doing. And there's so much competition for people's attention today, and storytelling has always been a major way that people learn things, so we decided to use the power of entertainment to be able to get people's attention, to engage them, and we take that through everything we do. And we wanted it to be accessible for everyone, which means America's like a big chopped salad. So who can you relate to? Is it a problem you can relate to? Is it a stage in life? Is it who you're seeing? And so we're very mindful about making our programs accessible to everyone. So the first program we started was Million Stories, and it was. It's just that it's videos, it's storytelling. We use both celebrity and real people's stories. When people are talking about their issues that they've gone through and how they've succeeded or overcome the challenges, they're telling their true stories. They're not actors, and so Million Stories is available for free on millionstoriescom or YouTube or wherever you like to watch it, or TikTok or Instagram, and the idea was to make it fun. You know, one time somebody sent me a cat video. It had 58 million views and we thought oh, that's how we can get people's attention, make it heartfelt, make it entertaining.

Speaker 3: 9:14

And then we know that people like to play games, and so we built Venture Valley, which is a competitive, fast-paced business game where the idea is to out-business your competition, and you do that through making financial decisions. And each person gets to own their own company and they get to build it and see what it's like to be the CEO and an owner, and hopefully they can imagine themselves as entrepreneurs. But as they're moving up through the game, they're gaining all these skills. They're starting out with a simple business dog walking, and they might end up running a robotics factory, and so each one requires a different level of skill. And you're playing against your friends, either in just friendly games or it might be in one of our tournaments. So it's very exciting and a lot of fun.

Speaker 3: 10:08

And then we have two apps. So one app is Slingshot, and Slingshot's really neat. It's like playing Mad Libs in a little bit of a way, because it makes it very simple. You're using your phone to build a business plan, but it's got secret sauce, it's powered by AI and as you're building your idea and figuring out any kind of problem you want to solve and what's your idea to solve it. It's helping prompt you through the different steps and things you have to think about and in the meantime, it's giving you ideas for names. It's giving you potential logos so you can start to visualize it, take ownership of it and make it feel real, which keeps people in. And then it starts doing market research for you.

Speaker 1: 10:54

And so jump in here and say I really wish we had this when we were drafting Get on YouTube and look at our John and I's faces right now.

Speaker 2: 11:03

Jaws are on the floor.

Speaker 1: 11:05

Our 30-page Google Doc of non-business minds trying to write a business plan. We did have a 30-page business plan.

Speaker 2: 11:12

What was our life? Yes, we needed this game. So in less than an hour.

Speaker 3: 11:17

You'll have like a first cut at one, and it's in this really nice online presentation that you can then share your ideas with others and get their feedback and their interests, and you can keep updating it. So it's really really cool. It's a lot of fun to use. And then we have Groove, and Groove is all about habit building.

Speaker 1: 11:42

So what are your hobbies? We're full time traveling right now, so our hobby is seeing the national parks and hiking and getting outside.

Speaker 3: 11:46

Okay, so you can read about all that, right? Yeah, but until you go and do it, you don't really start to learn it, and that makes you want to read about it more. And so that's the approach that we've taken with Groove is, we get you to start doing so you can want to seek information, and even before we do that, we get to know a little bit about your emotional relationship with money, because money permeates every part of our lives and it has a lot to do with how we feel things that happened to us in the past, our personalities, the experience of our parents. And so we take you through this exploratory process. We call that money personality and we come up with what is your money personality. It's deeply based in behavioral science, and we worked with the researchers at Duke University's Common Sense Lab to help put this together.

Speaker 3: 12:41

So we know how to talk to you now, we know kind of how you relate to money, and then we can send you on a learning and goal setting journey to help you build healthy habits, and habits are things that you practice and do automatically, so they become part of your life. Practice and do automatically, so they become part of your life, and then we give you bite-sized learning that are relevant to the things that you're trying to pursue. So let's say your goal is to buy a house. Well, what are all the things that you have to know to start to think about buying a house? Or maybe you're saving up for spring break. How do you do that? And so Groove is an app that takes you through all these stages and considers who you are, what your emotional state is and your health, and helps you build the financial, healthy habits.

Speaker 2: 13:36

I'm so obsessed with every part of this, of every part of you. I will never not see the United States as a chopped salad forever, I hope, with artichokes at some point, talking about money entirely on its head. And you've taken something that I think most people preemptively have an emotion when you even mention money, like something hits our nervous system. And, john, do you remember this conversation we had with Lynn she when we were talking about the mindsets of money, like the behaviors around money, money and, honestly, the possibilities that were within money, and that was episode 466, for anyone who wants to go back and listen to that. But it means something and the fact that we don't talk about it also means something in our life.

Speaker 2: 14:32

And you have taken this approach, which is so brilliant, and you've gamified it, this approach which is so brilliant, and you've gamified it and you have made it fun and you've brought joy and I I'm guessing a lot of people don't even know that they are probably learning so much.

Speaker 2: 14:47

I'm thinking about how do we get this into the hands of kids Because, john, can you imagine if you had had a class like this in high school or middle school? I just think what you're doing, shelly, is brilliant, and I don't even think we mentioned this, but you came to us through Jeff Hare and Sarah Adelson through the Artemis Agency, who always know that media influences impact, and so I'm so excited about what you're doing and the possibilities it's going to open up In your view, like talk to us about financial literacy and how entrepreneurship education needs to evolve to meet the challenges that this generation and the next generation is going to be experiencing. Especially, I think about I have a 14 year old and a 10 year old, and I need to know what their relationship is with money. They are going to have a different relationshipyear-old and a 10-year-old and I need to know what their relationship is with money. They are going to have a different relationship than I do. Talk to us about the evolution of what you're trying to bring this change into the world.

Speaker 3: 15:48

So I'm going to go back a long time back in history just for a second. So back in the days when we were hunters and gatherers and starting to learn how to do agriculture, what did we do? We had to look for opportunity. We also looked out for risks, and we learned that if we saved the seeds from the plants that we were eating, then we would have something in the future, so that part doesn't really change very much.

Speaker 3: 16:17

What's happened, though, is our systems have gotten more and more sophisticated and more and more complicated, and things are moving so fast. So the kinds of jobs that are available 90% of the jobs that will be available in 2030 aren't even invented yet, and kids are growing up in a world where they're going to be changing careers and learning new skills, and, with the introduction of AI, that's happening even faster. So getting those basics down and starting at the beginning, learning how to have a plan, starting at the beginning, learning how to have a plan, learning the basics of how things work, and having that entrepreneurial mindset of being a problem solver, looking to the future, knowing how to change course, which are very human skills I think that's going to set the course for our kids. We don't know what kind of services will be available to them. We don't know what the systems are going to be. But if they understand the basics and understand how they can learn the nuances after they know the basics, I think they'll be just fine. I'm very optimistic for our kids.

Speaker 1: 17:39

Yeah, I agree, and I think that is an abundance mindset, you know, like that there is possibilities and just being hopeful. We've talked a lot about optimism the last few weeks on the podcast, which I think is a through line of those that really are going to meet this moment and come in with creativity and not just stay small, you know, and come from a place of fear. So I want to talk about mindsets actually. Yeah, get up in there.

Speaker 3: 18:02

You know, if you, if you think about the future, all this change causes not only a lot of problems, but it creates tremendous opportunities for people.

Speaker 1: 18:13

Yeah, yeah, I, I love coming from that place.

Speaker 2: 18:16

That's the beauty of entrepreneurship, like the, the creativity, the, the ability to shift, and I think that these are wonderful skills, that, whether you're an entrepreneur in business or whether you just have an entrepreneurial spirit in the way that you move through this life, these are very important skills. So I agree with you. Sorry to cut you off, john.

Speaker 1: 18:36

No, it's all good and I think it. It really parlays into where I'd love to go is talking about mindsets, because you know you have this incredible career that you're at one of the most, dare I say, famous organizations in the entire world. You know to have that kind of as your backbone of experience and then move into the nonprofit sector. What mindsets for you personally have evolved over the years from your different experiences and now doing this work today?

Speaker 3: 19:01

Well, you know, as I said, I started out as a CPA and so I was trained in a certain set of skills and I found that I was always looking backwards and one day I realized that, wow, the people that are planning the products and making the things and building the things. They're going forward and I realized I wanted to do that and look forward. And then I realized how much fun it is to help be a part of that change, when you see what the possibilities can be. And I was at the Walt Disney Company at a very wonderful time, so there were so many opportunities available and we were all encouraged to think that way and to have big ideas. So I'm a person that's curious.

Speaker 3: 19:53

Whatever I've done and I've done a lot of different kinds of things I've been in startups that have fallen flat on their faces. I've been in startups that we've been able to sell and everything you do. You learn so much from it and it's interesting. So I love new opportunities. I love taking on new challenges and getting the opportunity to come to this particular nonprofit. You know it was very serendipitous for me because it used a lot of the things that singletons were very interested in entertainment. They were interested in having a game. You know I was lucky that I'd done some of those things, but some of the other things I'd done it helped too.

Speaker 2: 20:36

I'm just so proud of you, if I can say that, like I I'm listening to you and I'm watching you and I am seeing, like little Shelly in my mind's eye, like dancing around and trying to create this harmony and joy, and it's like the fact that you found this conduit to that joy and that rhythm and the possibilities through this foundation, through this work. One it's beautiful to see. Through this work One, it's beautiful to see. And two, I would like to know how this has changed you. This experience at this foundation, what has it helped you reimagine?

Speaker 3: 21:19

You know, I had never really thought about financial literacy before, or entrepreneurship, and hadn't realized that these were missing pieces. But it's changed me because it's first of all, it made me look at my children differently and wish I'd given them more of an education in this.

Speaker 2: 21:40

Same. I'm having that panic now, so thank you for having that.

Speaker 3: 21:45

It opened up the conversation for us so we could talk about these things and we'd talk about what they were learning and what I was learning and what's important to them, which was great. But I imagine like what would happen if all of our towns and cities could have thriving economies and then if everybody had the skills to be able to lift themselves up and we've always been a country of optimists and dreamers and people that came here to work hard and strive. My grandparents were immigrants. A lot of my friends come from immigrant families and people come here for opportunity and the chance to apply their brilliance and their hard work and to create a better life for the next generation and create opportunities. And they're creating jobs and opportunities for people.

Speaker 3: 22:40

Our little Ronald McDonald house, you know, we had our first fundraiser 20 years ago when there were like 20 people in someone's backyard and I went to an event for the 20th anniversary of it and there were 500 people there all trying to make it better. So immigrants come and they plant all these seeds and grow them and what could happen if we could grow this for everybody?

Speaker 1: 23:08

I mean you're doing it, you know, I think of that analogy is really beautiful to think of all the seeds that are getting planted through this content, through the engagement, through the gaming, through the way that y'all are showing up. So I'm excited to stay in touch as your mission continues to grow. But I want to ask you about a moment of philanthropy in your life. I mean, you've had a lot of experiences serving, through your board service and through your organizational work too. Is there a moment that sticks out to you of philanthropy that you saw, generosity or kindness that really has stuck with you?

Speaker 3: 23:37

You know, there was a generosity given to me when my oldest daughter was four. She got sick and she couldn't breathe and we ended up in an ambulance while they were handbagging her going to Children's Hospital in Orange County and she quickly got admitted to the pediatric ICU and it was very, very scary to be in an emergency room and having the doctors calling code blue and shuffling you out of the room. In an emergency room and having the doctors calling code blue and shuffling you out of the room. And while we were there, we were sitting in her room and there was nowhere for us to be and one of the doctors came over and took us to the Ronald McDonald house down the street and we stayed there.

Speaker 3: 24:27

We met other families experiencing similar kinds of emergencies and when it was time to leave they handed us a handmade quilt and we said you know, can we pay you because we've been so lucky to stay here and it's made a big difference as our little girl was healing. And they said no. They said if there's something you want to do to pay back, you'll find a way in the future. And that stuck with me, which is why a group of volunteers in the NICU when we had a premature, another little girl who was premature, and the parents there would meet and we'd have coffee and we'd talk to the other parents. And you know, my way of giving back was I asked a question when the question was why don't we have a Ronald McDonald house in Pasadena? And this other woman took the charge and gathered people around her and started to make that happen. And that moment changed my life.

Speaker 2: 25:31

What is your eldest daughter's name? If you don't mind sharing.

Speaker 3: 25:34

Her name's Gabrielle and she's a very healthy adult.

Speaker 2: 25:37

We're so glad that she's doing well, but to know that this terrifying experience and that is, you know, so human that we all go through incredibly terrifying experiences, especially related to our children that Gabrielle's you know issue turned into this opportunity.

Speaker 2: 26:01

You're literally walking us through how this literacy and entrepreneurship creates opportunities and possibilities. How it planted this seed is so poetic for you to go in and create that opportunity alongside so many others. John and I have worked with the Ronald McDonald House too, because we worked in health care, philanthropy and another life, and John has had both sets of twins in the NICU and understands that experience. But that is where community shines and I just want to thank you, shelley, for listening to your nudge and knowing that that was the moment that you were called into and to be a light to someone else, and now just understanding the breadcrumbs that you've laid about the Ronald McDonald house throughout this conversation Into the nonprofit world, because you know being the for profit world is a lot of fun, but you know how much stuff can you sell when you want to do something.

Speaker 3: 27:02

that means more.

Speaker 2: 27:04

Yeah, I just think this is a beautiful legacy that Will and Carrie and you and the team are giving to so many and I thank you for it. And I just have gotten so much out of this conversation and my children and I will be grooving tonight. I can tell you that much. We like to end our conversation with a one good thing, and this is asking one of our guests to just give us something that you would give to our audience. That would be maybe a quote or a life hack, something that you live by. What would be your one good thing you'd?

Speaker 3: 27:40

offer up today. You know, I live by wanting to bring my full self to whatever I'm doing every day, and a lot of days don't go so well, and a lot of days go really, really well, and I like to surround myself with people that care about similar things, that are way better at what they do than I could ever be, and I get so much joy from the people that I get to work with and and I like listening to people and and fully hearing where they're coming from, so that we can work towards finding solutions to things, and so that's kind of what I do, and so that's kind of what I do. You were born for a nonprofit.

Speaker 2: 28:31

That's what you believe we need. You Lucky us.

Speaker 1: 28:36

I mean, Shelly, yeah, you've given us so many nuggets throughout this convo that I'll just sit with me. Thank you for the work you're doing. I wonder if you'd connect our listeners to where do you show up online?

Speaker 3: 28:49

How can people connect with the programs that y'all are producing at the Singleton? If you go to singletonfoundationorg and go to the program section, there are links there that will take you to each of the programs to fully explore. People can have the opportunity to use them for free, and what we want is for people to use them and get the benefit from them. One of the things we didn't get to talk about is the impact of our programs, but we see that it changes people, it moves them forward, it changes their attitudes, their plans and we can see them starting to take action. And if that's something that we can give to you, to the listeners, and something that will help you take the steps to take control of your life in this not so hard way I know it sounds complicated, but it's just a matter of getting started It'll help give you the decision-making skills to lead you on a happy past life.

Speaker 2: 29:52

I feel like that was the coup de grace, like if you did miss that. This is all free. This is entirely free. Please come check out the Singleton Foundation, please come connect with Shelly on LinkedIn and just get involved in this work. Share it with somebody that you know, and the one-to-one on this is going to ripple out in many profound ways that I'm sure none of us can imagine. So, shelly, thank you for this incredible conversation and just for what you're giving to the world. It is such a gift.

Speaker 3: 30:25

Oh well, thank you again for having us and allowing us to tell our story.

Speaker 1: 30:29

It's our honor, such an honor.