ProFeds Founder, Chris Kowalik, shares a behind-the-scenes look at the recent updates ProFeds has made to its website and resources for federal employees.
Key takeaways:
- We have a bigger message to share with federal employees preparing to retire,
- We embrace growth and change, so we continue to bring you helpful tools and resources,
- We want to give federal employees a first-class experience.
Additional resources:
- Local workshop locations and dates: FedImpact.com/attend
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Transcript of this episode:
Originally released on 10/11/2023
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Have you ever felt the need to change up what or how you’re doing things? Maybe you felt overwhelmed in the process, but you knew it’d turn out great in the end. Stay tuned for today’s short episode describing what we’ve been up to here at ProFeds and what it means for you as a federal employee. Hi, Chris Kowalik of ProFeds here, and welcome to the FedImpact Podcast, where we offer candid insights on your federal retirement. Boy, have we been busy over here. So, I wanted to give you guys a little bit of a sneak peek into what we’ve been up to in order to enhance the retirement journey that you are on as a federal employee.
Now, we’ve been away from the FedImpact Podcast for a little while. In fact, I know it’s been a little while because the last podcast that I did was about the Super Bowl, where the Chiefs and the Eagles played. We have a distinct mark in time of when the last podcast happened, but I wanted to take an opportunity as we get back into the podcasting world to give you an idea of what we’ve been up to and how it benefits you as a federal employee. I’m going to give you a little bit of a sneak peek into all of this, and then I’m going to invite you to go look at the fruits of our labor of everything we’ve modified over the last six months or so for you to really be able to get the retirement that you want.
On a podcast, of course, this is an audio version of our message, but I encourage you to visit fedimpact.com. There, you’re going to be able to see quite a bit of the visual changes that we’ve had, and you’ll notice logos, colors, and design. All of that is different, but I want to dig a little bit deeper to explain the why behind what we’ve done, and I can do that really in three ways, looking at our top three reasons for rebranding. One, we have a bigger message to share with you, two, we embrace growth and change here at ProFeds, and three, we want to give you a first-class experience. I want to walk through each of those thoughts and then give you a little bit of insight as to where we’re going from here.
As a businessperson, I was looking at our website, and I noticed that although it was functional and it had the basic information that you all needed to hear from us as far as who we were, why you should listen, that type of thing. I found that the bigger core message that we have here at ProFeds of taking charge of your own financial future wasn’t as clear as it should be. I sat out on this journey about a year ago, really considering this, and then really getting serious about six months ago to putting all the wheels in motion to refresh the website to give a better user experience. We’ll talk about the experience here in a moment. But what I found, even though I wanted a new website, that technology was upgraded, and all of that functionality was better. What I quickly realized was that although I needed a new website, I really needed better messaging because I don’t know that what we were putting out into the world was super clear and didn’t help federal employees to realize that it’s not about the information that we’re giving.
The information’s important, but it’s this fundamental belief that you have to be proactive in your decisions to get the retirement that you want. The government doesn’t create a great retirement for all of you because they don’t know the rest of your financial life. They don’t know the goals and aspirations that you have. They don’t know what your spouse might bring to the table. If you have children, if you have special needs children, if you’re caring for your parents, they don’t know any of those things. So how could any employer, whether it’s the largest employer in the world like you guys have or just a regular mom-and-pop employer, how could they possibly know what you need?
So, all of our material, whether it’s our podcast that you’re listening to now, or webinars or articles, or our flagship program, our workshop, the message is always, you have to take action to go get the retirement that you want. It might start with having information, but if we don’t have context for that information, it can fall on deaf ears. The Internet’s full of information, but if you don’t know how to distill it down into usable data, into usable intel, if you will, then that data is pretty useless. We had to clarify the message that we had for federal employees. It’s not just the information. It’s being proactive in becoming your own hero in your own retirement story. You have to be able to take responsibility for your future and know that you have what it takes to make that happen.
Now, I’m not saying you might not need some help, and we’re here to help guide you on your journey. There’s going to be other professionals that you’re going to need to guide you on your journey to have access to all of the tools and resources that are available out there. But you have to be the one in the driver’s seat. So, although I feel like that message is pretty loud and clear in our workshops, webinars, and podcasts that we’re always talking about, take action, take action, take action. It wasn’t all that clear on our website, and now it is. So again, at fedimpact.com, you can see the messaging that we have there, and I think it speaks to, really, the core belief that we have here at ProFeds that a great retirement doesn’t happen by accident. It has to happen on purpose, and the person driving that train needs to be you.
So next up, we embrace growth and change. This idea that if you’re standing still, you’re probably falling behind is something we deal with in business all the time. Really, in life in general, we always have to be moving forward. Our team needed to remain open to finding those areas where we could do better, so that we can continue to provide more and more value to the federal employee workforce. We know technology changes all the time, and with that technology, our capabilities to deliver better content and serve others better improves. But I knew that it was going to be worth the effort because, with clearer messaging, we can help a lot more deserving people like you.
Let’s briefly talk about the first-class experience that we want you to have. There’s a lot of content that we deliver on all these different platforms, and you happen to be listening to the FedImpact Podcast. But if I’m being honest, the content wasn’t all that easy to find on our website. You might hear about content in our newsletter, and it’s really easy when you just click and are able to get the content directly. But once that newsletter is passed, it wasn’t all that easy to go onto the website and find material. So, we fixed that.
Now, you’re going to find that it’s super easy to locate workshops in your area, webinars and all of the replays, the podcasts, episodes, articles, and here’s something I’m really, really happy about. We used to require an opt-in to listen to things like our webinars, where you’d have to enter some information, and it’s okay if you have to enter it once, but once you start having to enter it several times, it gets pretty annoying. So, we’ve removed that opt-in feature. Now you’re able to view all of our materials. No opt-in required, and we have a super helpful search function that allows you to find all these resources based on the topic that you select. For instance, if you’re looking for more information on TSP and you’re curious what we have available to you, you type in TSP or you click on the TSP function button, and you are going to see any articles, webinars, podcasts that we have on that topic. So nice and easy for you to be able to navigate.
So definitely, our commitment to federal employees has not changed. We remain committed to providing that candid, no-nonsense training for all of you, and you guys know, especially here on the podcast, we don’t sugarcoat your benefits. You have a lot of great benefits in many ways, but they’re not perfect by any measure. The opposite is true too. We don’t defend your benefits either. If there’s something wrong, a fundamental flaw within a benefit, or something that is a surprise to a lot of people, we’re going to point that out. We are happy to point out the good and the bad, but we’re not going to sway you one way or another. It just is what it is. We want to give you this straightforward view or straightforward assessment of how these programs work so that you can make the best decisions for you and your family.
Again, I don’t know that message was super, super clear on our website before, but you bet it is now. So here at ProFeds, we have been at this business of helping feds through the maze of all these goofy federal benefits for nearly 15 years. So next month will be our 15-year anniversary, and I’m super delighted to know that we’ve had tens of thousands of federal employees just come through our workshop. That doesn’t count the people who listen to webinars and podcasts, read our articles, and gain valuable insights to their federal benefits based on that content.
So again, this is going to be a short podcast, but I wanted to introduce all of our podcast listeners to the site. If you haven’t already been there, please go check it out at fedimpact.com. You can search for workshops nearby, see all the resources, like webinars, to watch the replays. Podcasts. Of course, you can listen to the podcasts either on the website or through your favorite podcast player, and then all the articles that we have as well. We’ve taken the time to remove content that is outdated because we know these benefits change over time. So, you’re going to see relevant content based on the current rules and regulations, and I hope that you’ll go check it out.
So super exciting time here for ProFeds. I’m back in the podcast game, so you can be sure that you’re going to be hearing from me more often, and I want you to know that we know that all of this was worth it to be able to help a lot of great folks like you. Thank you all very much for listening. Please go check out fedimpact.com and let us know what you think.
That is it for today. I hope our talk about the crazy business that we’ve been up to here at ProFeds has been helpful. I hope that you’ll go check out the site and stay tuned to the FedImpact Podcast to get straight answers and candid insights on your federal retirement. If you haven’t already, subscribe today so you’re sure not to miss an episode.
