There is a story of a flea in a jar. The flea once could jump three feet high, but after it was placed in a jar, it could only jump high enough that it wouldn’t hit the jar’s lid. Gian Saunders and Brett Pipkin, the owners of a successful financial advising firm in San Diego, have used this analogy to explain the struggles of financial illiteracy in impoverished communities across America. Together, the business partners and fiancées are working to spread education about having a healthy relationship with one’s finances.
“Breaking generational curses is not easy, otherwise everyone would be doing it,” Saunders remarks. Saunders and Pipkin grew up in separate parts of the country, Nebraska, and Louisiana respectively, but each experienced the negative effects of poor money habits. “We were taught to live a certain way and taught to think a certain way,” Saunders recalls. Realizing that the lifestyle they were being taught to live wasn’t how it had to be. Exploring lives in entrepreneurship, both Saunders and Pipkin knew that this was the path for them.
“You need a vision or ‘why’ large enough for you and everyone else that you’re going to be working with to fit into it,” the couple advises. Future generations of entrepreneurs can look to Saunders and Pipkin as a blueprint of sorts to pave your own path and pay it forward. For the couple, their mission focuses around on strengthening those underserved communities that they were once a part of.
Learn more about Gian Saunders and Brett Pipkin, as well as their financial education mission, by following them on Instagram: @fierce_female_financier and @pipkinbrett
