The following is an interview I did with our most successful Master Licensee, Rachana Thamanker, in India. I’d like to thank her beyond words for taking the time to answer these important questions.
If you’re considering licensing our financial education programs, please read through the questions and answers below. It should help you get an idea of what is involved.
1. How do you conduct the programme in India?
Well there are different platforms we conduct primarily Schools.
- Schools : After school/summer programs
- Currently working with some schools who have shown interest in incorporating the lessons in the regular curriculum.
- Worked with few not-for-profit organisations.
- Corporate Social Responsibility projects funded by major corporates.
- Summer camps outside schools say housing societies, for kids of defense personnel in their townships.
- One program under employee engagement of a multinational where the employees brought their children to the campus for our workshop.
We are exploring many places/events where we could conduct Camp Millionaire.
2. How many camps do you do per year?
Considering a size of about 25 kids per batch we do somewhere around 40-50 camps. The number growing exponentially since the year we begun i.e, in 2015.
3. How many kids attend each camp?
25 – to 30 per camp as advised by Elisabeth seems to be a good number for two trainers to handle and keeps effective.
4. Do you run all the camps yourself? How many helpers do you have? Have you extended what regions you operate in?
I do have about 5 full time trainers with me and about 15 part time(contract) during Summer vacations. I operate in whole of India which is quite vast , exploring sub-licensing opportunities. Please note I have already sub- licensed Pune (a metropolitan city I originally belong to) and talks are with prospective partners in three more cities.
5. What have you achieved financially?
I have had return on my investment in the first year itself and stayed profitable since.
6. How long did it take to grasp the content? Did you find it easy to follow?
Creative Wealth’s online Train the Trainer videos are so hands on that it doesn’t take much to get the hang of the program. The workbooks and trainer books with the videos are self sufficient. I sort of binge watched the training videos for a week with the books and that pretty much gave me a clear picture. And after conducting the first couple of batches the content comes naturally to you. Plus you can always revisit the videos whenever stuck.
And Elisabeth is pretty swift on email if you have any questions in the due course.
7. How long did it take you to get up and running once you had the go ahead from Elisabeth?
The interest to License took about three months for me (note I was working full time then and had other formalities to finish before taking this up) and also I had to set up an registered entity here to be able buy License. Depends and varies from countries we operate in.
But ideally if you have an entity and the fees ready, it’s as simple as signing the agreement and transferring the fees and you would have your login details in your email to access the Creative Wealth material the very next day. That quick is the turn around from them.
8. What is your background?
I was a researcher in Molecular Biophysics and then did my MBA in Finance and Project Management, held different roles in Multinational companies for about 10 years before I turned to doing this. But I always had this inherent love for teaching and working with children 🙂
(Note from Elisabeth: you do not have to have a background in finance to be successful running Camp Millionaire, Money Camp, Moving Out for Teens and Money Game events. It’s helpful but not required. You have to remember that we’re not teaching kids HOW to invest, we’re teaching them the basic financial skills, information, habits, principles and beliefs that are going to need to be financially successful as adults. All of this you can learn while learning the program.)
9. Have you had to change the content to suit the Indian market place or is it pretty generic?
I would say 90% of it is universal…applicable globally. I had to make changes with respect to the currency representation and a few terms that we differently use here in India. However since she provides an open file its pretty straight forward. More like an copy paste activity on changing your workbooks.
10. What advice would you give to me looking to start up?
Go for it if you have the passion for education and creating the change this program enables. The feedback from parents and the excitement kids show while playing the Money Game is heart warming.
11. If you could do anything differently, what would it be?
Well ,you have too keep improvising with respect to the content which we do. In India we are witnessing a drastic shift towards digital payments so we keep adding new topics to keep the kids updated. We run some entrepreneurship pitching contest to keep the kids engaged. I could talk about this at length. Exchange programs between countries is one such idea we are exploring.
12. What is your most effective way of advertising?
I try everything, word of mouth, social media, schools, sponsorships, articles in newspapers and portals bring great leads.
13. What age groups do you teach?
8 – 16 years olds
(Note from Elisabeth: the keys to deciding what ages you can teach in any particular country as many. First, know that the more kids you have in a program and the younger the kids are, the longer your programs will take. Also, every country educates its children differently and some areas understand money and numbers at a younger age than others. You will also find that if you have many volunteers (parents, additional teachers/adults), it’s easier to teach the 8-10 year old range.)
14. What has been your biggest success?
Signing up a couple of school chains and repeat enrolment from students gives me great validation.
If you have other questions you’d like to ask about our Creative Wealth International Licensing Program, please give us a call at 805-957-1024 or send us an email. We’ll get right back to you!