-
Long Island High School Prepares Students for Life and Business through Personal Finance Course
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
MINEOLA, NY (WCBS 880) — A private high school on Long Island is teaching financial responsibility – a real-world skill people often learn on their own.
Chaminade High School in Mineola requires a two-year financial literacy course for juniors and seniors. The class aims to prevent students from forming bad habits at a young age.
“I think for many of us, we learned how money works just by making the mistakes along the way and making those first decisions on our own,” said Chaminade president Brother Thomas Cleary who implemented the curriculum after Bloomberg proposed the idea in 2014. The financial firm sponsors the course and the school’s business center.
“We really want to empower our young men here to have the knowledge of how their money works before they actually have to press that button and put it into action,” he said.
A number of business leaders, including Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, have said they wish they had been able to take a finance class in high school. Bro. Thomas told WCBS 880 he would connect anyone interested in starting a financial literacy course at their school with Chaminade’s representative at Bloomberg.
Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso look at how sound financial principles apply to running a business on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by Dime Community Bank. Entrepreneurship can lead people down a path to financial freedom, but operating a business well requires financial discipline, as Chaminade’s class addresses.
“We have a number of young men, who are still in college, who’ve started their own businesses and have said that this financial literacy course really helped them navigate the ups and downs of starting a business while a college-aged student,” Bro. Thomas said. “We’re seeing in real-time the benefits of this course, and I think over the long-term, the benefits of our young men going into the business world with a solid understanding of how money works and how to make it work better for themselves and for our society is a win-win for everybody.”
The class focuses on saving for retirement, investing and avoiding credit card debt. Students at the all-boys Catholic high school also learn about the benefits of different types of investment accounts, including Roth IRAs and 401(k)s, and partake in a stock market competition in which the teens begin with a faux balance of $1 million to purchase stocks.
“You walk in the hallway, you’ll see kids checking on their iPad what their investment is doing that day and where it’s going,” the school president said of the enthusiasm he has witnessed first-hand. “These are 17, 18 year old kids who are really interested and that’s how the teachers keep them really interested in the course.”
The students monitor their portfolios through the semester with a close eye on movements in the market in real-time. The course’s instructors are experienced Wall Street professionals who bring their real-world experience into the classroom to relate how macro decisions affect people on a personal level.
“You know, where the market goes, it affects not only interest rates but how that affects mortgage loans and credit card debt and just the economy globally,” noted Bro. Thomas. “I’ve seen the instructors take one really minute detail in the news that day – you know, why did the stock go up or down – and they just show the ripple affect across the globe in so many different sectors.”
He told Connolly and Carousso that Chaminade’s objective is to provide a financial toolkit and a foundation students can build upon in their professional careers and personal lives.
“I got one email recently saying that his course at Chaminade was probably one of the most influential courses he had in terms of helping him decide what he wanted to study and where his passion was,” Bro. Thomas said.
See ideas on how to teach your kids about financial responsibility and get book recommendations for the holidays to make learning fun and engaging on the Small Business Spotlight video above.
-
Small Business Comeback Tour: PSE&G Offers Rebates to NJ Businesses that Improve Energy Efficiency
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW JERSEY (WCBS 880) – PSE&G is incentivizing small businesses in New Jersey to be more energy efficient.
The utility company is offering rebates to retailers, restaurants, convenience stores and others that make improvements to help the environment.
“We’re the only business that wants you to use less of our product,” said Karen Reif, PSE&G’s vice president of renewables and energy solutions.
The utility is expanding programs that have saved customers a combined $350 million, according to Reif.
“Many New Jersey businesses are missing out on opportunities to improve their facilities, reduce maintenance costs and lower operating costs,” she told WCBS business reporter Joe Connolly.
Most modernizations to electric and gas appliances qualify for PSE&G’s rebates, including HVAC systems, lighting, heating and cooling units. The utility will send a representative to inquiring businesses to make recommendations that could save customers more than $100 per month.
“The best part is it’s good for the environment so it’s a win-win for everybody,” said Reif.
PSE&G offers 0 percent on-bill financing. Typically, the upfront costs of long-term energy and money-saving improvements are deterrents for businesses and individuals. The energy company is hopeful their incentives will encourage New Jersey business owners to make such modernizations.
See how PSE&G can help your business save energy and money and contact them at BizSave.PSEG.com.
PSE&G is the proud sponsor of the WCBS Small Business Comeback Tour with Joe Connolly.
-
The New Age Word-of-Mouth Marketing
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Word-of-mouth can still be the most effective marketing for businesses.
Long Island Spine Specialists, P.C. discovered this when they were forced to find new patients on their own. The rapid consolidation of hospitals and physicians in recent years have left non-affiliated practices to develop their own marketing.
“Our referral patterns dried up in terms of private practice doctors,” said Dr. Thomas Dowling, founding partner of Long Island Spine Specialists. “I’d say less than 50 percent now of physicians are in private practice where the rest are employed and there’s some financial reward or incentive to stay in a system rather than refer outside a system.”
He told Joe Connolly on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by Dime Community Bank, that, like many businesses today, the practice uses reviews and client testimonials on its website to find new patients.
“What our practice has now noted is that word-of-mouth and your reputation now is more of how we get patients than actual physician referral; although, those are still out there as well,” said Dr. Dowling.
Long Island Spine Specialists keeps its servers in-house and has a full-time IT staff to manage its website security.
Dr. Dowling has been in practice for more than 30 years. Since then, the health care industry and his field of medicine has changed drastically.
“When I started, there was very little technology available in terms of instrumentation,” he said, noting there were few advancements between the 1960s and 1980s when he earned his certifications.
The hallmark of any entrepreneur, Dr. Dowling saw an opportunity to help people where there was a void for both surgical and non-surgical solutions.
“There’s some modifications but very few back then and there was a lot of opportunity to develop better techniques for surgery,” he said.
Robotics and stem cell procedures are used more commonly to treat herniated discs with a shorter recovery time, according to the surgeon.
“The navigation, basically, like your car or GPS, (is) a guided way to enter the spine as we’ve gone from open surgery where we actually see the anatomy to going through minimally invasive through smaller incisions or percutaneously, meaning not even making a real incision, we need special interoperative guidance to help us make sure that we’re in the right spot,” said Dr. Dowling.
The spinal surgery industry today is booming. It’s valued at $9.35 billion, and by some economic forecasts, the industry will reach $13.8 billion by 2025.
Long Island Spine Specialists has a small piece of the pie with four locations across Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The practice is made up of a team of board-certified orthopedic surgeons who have sub-specialties in spine surgery. Dr. Dowling told WCBS 880, though, most of their patients can avoid surgery.
“We have a lot of patients who present with neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain, hip pain, and sometimes, they’re doubly blessed. They have a shoulder problem then a neck problem, they have a back problem or hip problem, or really, their hip pain manifests itself as back pain and vice versa,” he said, continuing, “So, there are people I’ve seen who had hip replacements wondering why they never got better; it was really their back.”
Dr. Dowling said the field has grown as people incur back problems from poor posture and long hours hunched over a computer.
“The most common reason people go to the doctor is for a cold,” he said. “The second most common reason is for back pain.”
See more on marketing and running a medical practice on the Small Business Spotlight video above.
-
Small Business Comeback Tour: Bagels by Jarrett
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
WEST ORANGE, NJ (WCBS 880) – Jarrett Seltzer tapped into a “cult” following of bagel lovers.
Just before the pandemic, Seltzer started giving away his homemade bagels out of his home kitchen.
“I decided to make a dozen bagels and post (on Facebook) that I had them and give them out,” he said. “I said to everyone the rule is you get one bagel, you have to post a review about it and you have to pay it forward somehow in town.”
Seltzer told Joe Connolly on the WCBS Small Business Comeback Tour, sponsored by PSE&G, the response was overwhelming. He opened a pop-up shop where he continued to give away bagels to gain a following before opening his business about two years later in West Orange.
“We are absolutely continuing to grow by word of mouth,” he said, pointing to a fall surge in bagel sales.
Seltzer said growth accelerated when they were forced to do curbside only in the pandemic and discovered how they would separate themselves from other bagel shops. Bagels by Jarrett added sliders and fried chicken sandwiches with bagels, which became big hits among their regular customers.
“It’s almost this interesting cult of people that love food and I don’t put anything out that isn’t incredible,” he said.
Bagels by Jarrett is expanding its kitchen in January and will add dinner takeout service.
-
INTERVIEW: Soledad O’Brien talks new HBO docuseries ‘Black and Missing’
By Lynda Lopez
Produced by Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — The recent coverage of the Gabby Petito case grabbed headlines across the globe and also helped shine a light on other missing persons cases that have not received the same attention.
The Black and Missing Foundation works to bring awareness to missing persons of color and their activism caught the attention of Soledad O’Brien, who has now produced a four-part HBO documentary series titled, “Black and Missing.”
On this week’s 880 Weekly Rewind, anchor Lynda Lopez spoke to the award-winning documentarian and journalist about the series, which chronicles the work of the organization and follows sisters-in-law and Black and Missing Foundation founders Derrica and Natalie Wilson.
As Lopez reported, Derrica and Natalie Wilson are not just figureheads. They are on the ground doing the work helping families find their missing loved ones.
“This is their second jobs, this is not even their job. Derrica works in law enforcement, and that’s really what she was able to bring to the table — that she had this tremendous experience of law enforcement. Natalie works in PR, so she was able to sit with families and say, ‘Let me give you some of the scoop on how these things work so we can get publicity for you,'” O’Brien said. “Often they’re just a conduit between law enforcement, which some families in some communities just don’t trust, and the media, and the families themselves. I’m always blown away by the importance of the work they’re doing and also it’s a side gig. Like, it’s insane to me that this is a side job for them.”
The series has been three years in the making and recently debuted on HBO and HBO Max, where it is currently streaming.
“We decided that we would reach out and see because of the number of stories of missing white women over the years had gotten so much attention, and I was well aware that there were lots of stories about Black people and people of color, generally, that just never really got any traction and so we met with them,” O’Brien said. “About a couple of months before the doc aired, the story of Gabby Petito became the latest well-known case of a young White woman who had gone missing, and of course she was later found dead. And I remember her dad saying, I thought it was amazing, really at the worst moment of his life before they found her body, he said something like, to the media, ‘You should be looking for all people.’ Even he thought the attention was amazing on helping find what had happened to his daughter, but there were so many other people who also deserved the same kind of attention and so I do think the needle is beginning to move in people’s awareness of the issue.”
The series not only chronicles the work of the organization, but also highlights the disparities in the media coverage of white and Black missing persons and how the cases are handled by law enforcement.
“On the media side, I would love to see people really analyze why do we not think this story is important? I do think the media needs to figure out let’s have a conversation about bias and how we think about these stories,” O’Brien said. “I just hope that people really want to understand the issue and walk away recognizing how unfair it is. I knew that progress was being made when Gabby’s own father sort of put a plea out for covering other people. The number of people who were found while they were searching for Gabby, I think it was like eight people, it was insane and so it clearly is an indication that we have to search hard for everybody.”
Listen to The 880 Weekly Rewind podcast above to hear how the organization is fighting for equal coverage and treatment in the media and by law enforcement of missing persons of color and what needs to change.
Guest
Social Feeds
VIDEO: Told the airline to book us on the next flight out (SPONTANEOUS TRIP!)
VIDEO: The Taylor Swift Effect | WCBS Business Breakfast
VIDEO: Future of NYC | WCBS Business Breakfast
VIDEO: Reasons for New Yorkers to be Optimistic | WCBS Business Breakfast
VIDEO: NYC's AI Chatbot | WCBS Business Breakfast