My Vault

alexa-von-tobel

3 min read

LearnVest Founder Alexa von Tobel

My Takeaway Worry the problems that most others do, and solve this

problem that most others can’t.

Podcast

  • Resouces
  • Alexa’s mom manages budget, dad manages investments. When her dad passed away, her mom “didn’t have a clear handle on where everything was and what the picture looked like”.
  • As a trader in Morgan Stanley, Alexa asked:
    • “Do I put money in my 401k or my IRA? If I feel this way, and I don’t even have a family, a mortgage, kids, I feel pretty lost with my financial planning. How do other people feel?”
    • “I asked everyone who would talk to me, how do you feel about your wallet? Is it stressing you out?”
  • The 2008 financial crisis
    • “Actually kicked my courage into even higher gear because this is literally a time when anyone in my family, anyone I knew was like, should I be selling all of my retirement into cash? People were putting money under their mattresses. Everyone was terrified.”
    • “This is a time when America needs more financial planning than ever.”
    • Alexa then took a leave of absence from Business School.
  • Alexa’s risk taking motivation: Ninety-year-olds never regret for what they did, but always regret the rest they didn’t take.
  • Business model and uniqueness
    • Online talk line, open 24/7.
    • Customers can spend $5k to get a financial plan, generated by software. “GPS for your money.”
    • Software developed by engineers and certified financial planners.
    • An innovative way to build financial plan by “kicking your butt.”
  • Competitors vs Achievers
    • Achievers wake up with their own to-do list of things that they want to do by the end of the day and focus on getting those things done, within your own swim lane.
    • Competitors actually are looking to the people in the other swim lanes and want to beat them.
  • Sold to Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance for $250M.
    • “When my dad passed away, it was a Northwestern Mutual life insurance policy that stabilized my family.”
    • “If I can put it in the hands of their 8,000 financial planners to provide more of what I felt at 14, I can really get behind that.”

When a really big, stressful, stupid thing is happening, I'm like,

are we alive? Are we breathing? Okay, next.

When you shift into the perspective that, there’s still oxygen in your veins, you’re still breathing. the people you love are still alive, nothing’s that big of a deal. I think you do your best work.

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