Personal finance: How to manage money during the pandemic | Sallie Krawcheck | Big Think Edge

Welcome everyone back to Big Pink Live. My name is Bob Cohen. I am the founder and CEO of Business Improv, a world-class leader in high energy, up-on-your-feet virtual classrooms, digital asynchronous learning, and open enrollment programs. I am excited to be here with you today. Our topic is money, jobs, equitable pay in the wake of COVID-19, and our very impressive guest is Sally Krycek.

Sally is the CEO and founder of Ellevest, a digital-first, mission-driven investment platform for women. Before launching Ellevest, Sally had a very successful career. She was the CEO of Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, U.S. Trust, and Citi Private Banks. She was CFO for Citigroup. She’s honored by Time magazine as a global influencer. She's on Fortune’s most influential people list in 2018, Vanity Fair's New Establishment list. She's considered one of the most influential people in ESG investing, and Barron’s. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Sally Krycek.

"Hey! Thank you for having me. I appreciate it."

So, Sally, I want to start by saying thank you. As the father of a daughter and someone who endeavors to focus on things being equal, I appreciate what you’re doing. How has COVID-19 affected you as an entrepreneur and how is it affecting Ellevest?

"Yeah, so, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s great to be here today. You know, the mission at Ellevest and my personal career mission at this stage of my life is to get more money into the hands of women. The reason for that is I can't think of anything bad that happens when women have more money, whether it's for themselves, their families, our society, our economy, the markets, nonprofits. You know, it’s just all good. The challenge is women have gone backwards financially vis-a-vis men during what some people are calling this 'she-cession.' Whether that's because they’re losing their jobs at a higher rate, or they're losing productivity when they're working from home, whether it's that we are a larger share of essential workers. We were making progress, at least in pay, not really in wealth but in pay.

You know, the truth is, it’s because running a startup, I've been through financial downturns. Running a business that you care so deeply about during a global pandemic and what was on the verge of being a financial crisis is pretty tough stuff. The business has done really well actually during the pandemic, beyond my expectations. We’ve had net inflows of investment assets every week, so it’s done well. But the sense of responsibility that I feel and the team feels, given that what Ellevest is doing was always important and is now crucial, is something I carry with me."

"Absolutely, it’s my company, I feel it as well, and those who are in the middle of the fight in the trenches don’t need to worry about their hair. We do a good job!"

So tell me more about this then—where do you see your company going? Where do you see investing for women right now, and where do you see it in the future?

"Yeah, so let me tell you where we started at Ellevest. We started as an investing platform for women, and it really was based on an insight that I had that in my entire career I knew women didn’t invest as much as men do. I didn’t realize how much it cost them. I sort of thought it was their fault. I mean, I never would have expressed it that way, but you know, women are so risk-averse versus men and, you know, not that good at math and, you know, not that good at investing and need more financial education.

Bob, of those four things I just said, only one is true, which is of course we need more financial education. So do men! So does every gender. But the industry? Women just weren’t investing as much as men were. They have initiatives, but they were marketing initiatives. They never really got to the core of, we know why aren’t they investing? Besides to blame women.

I realized one day, wait a second, not investing as much as men do—forget about even having less money to start with, but not investing as much as men do costs women hundreds of thousands, for some women, million-plus over the course of their lives. So wait, that’s life-changing money! That’s quit my job money, get your hand off my leg money, leave the relationship I hate money. That’s real money!

What if it’s not that there’s something wrong with women? What if in an industry in which 99% of investment dollars are managed at companies run by, owned by white men—not even just men, white men—and white men are amazing, amazing! But 99%? Maybe that industry is doing a better job for men than women.

We started Ellevest as an investing platform. During the pandemic, while we were sort of ‘whoa, here comes the incoming,’ we did at Ellevest take a step back and said wait a second, what else can we do? How can we, as a company, meet the moment?

The way we’ve met the moment is we've added additional capabilities: banking, yes, very importantly, coaching and learning to help women, you know, expand out to where they’re taking care of their money and moving ahead before they’re even ready to invest.

Reap, P.S., I would make one note: money is women's number one source of stress today. It’s not just important for society—it’s important for them. The act of taking action, of saving and investing, is our number one driver of our confidence in our ability to achieve our future goals. So we’re operating right here for her. We quickly worked to expand out what we’re able to do for her."

That’s great! And you’ve always been tech-first, correct?

"Yes, technology, yes. And how did I do on the data on, you know, for individual investors who are beginning of their career, a mid-level of their career? Yes, we are tech-first, digitally driven. What really surprised me, Bob, is that we began a couple of years ago to get requests from very successful wealthy women who said, you know, and I said, oh, we’re not going to be in the private wealth business. I already did that; I ran Citi Private Bank.

You know, we’re going to help these women. But these successful wealthy women said, I’m tired of having my money managed at a company that hasn’t supported me. I’m tired of having my money managed at a company that I wouldn’t let my daughter work at. And so we then added to our capabilities by hiring some financial advisors to provide that relationship, personalized touch in a high net-worth business. So today, again, I’d love to say we can engage with women who are just starting out trying to figure out how to pay off their credit card debt all the way to women who, you know, are at the upper end of their success or financial success, I should say."

Well, you mentioned this before: there’s a difference between pay and wealth. Can you break that down for me?

"Super important! So, you know, the gender pay gap gets a lot of play— a ton of play, and it’s 82 cents for a woman to a white man’s dollar, moving in the right direction, too slowly, but moving in the right direction. By the way, the pay gap is smaller for Asian American women, larger for women of color, moving in the right direction—slowly. That’s what you earn. What you keep or what you have is the gender wealth gap.

Bob, if you can believe this, that number is 32 cents to a white man’s dollar. And for black women, brown women, it is one penny. It is one friggin’ penny, moving in the wrong direction! And you sit there and you say, wait a second—like every woman I know was leaning in and knowing their worth and asking for the raise, but we’ve been moving in the wrong direction. What’s happening?

Why we’re earning not enough, but more, but not keeping nearly as much? Where is this happening? So this is the big thing. The sort of big thought is that women have been negatively affected by things like not as much time in the workforce, taking more career breaks, not as many perks at work. But, you know, something that also unites how they’ve been affected is they’ve been on the losing end of compounding.

Compounding wealth historically has beget wealth. You invest in the stock market or real estate, you earn a return on that amount. The next amount of return you earn is on the original amount plus the return. The next return is the original return plus a return plus a return. So the snowballing effect happens where wealth begets wealth. Women have been locked out of investing, so they haven’t had the positive effect of that many, particularly black women locked out of investing in real estate.

So they haven’t had the positive effect and then on the negative side have had more debt, have had more student loan debt. Women have more student loan debt than men, you know, not because it costs them more to go to school, but because it’s a ripple effect from earning less. So we’ve not had the positive compounding, and we’ve had the negative compounding, which has increased the wealth gap even as the gender pay gap has gotten better.

And so that’s sort of why Ellevest is here—to get to these things in between pay and wealth in order to start to close that gap."

That's great and very important. So Sally, is there something that can be done present day, 2020, to accelerate this growth so that it’s not 82 cents to a dollar—so that it's, I mean, that's the whole goal: a dollar to a dollar.

"That’s right, that’s right. Look, you know, on the pay side, sure. You know, but the challenge is, let’s face it, you gotta have—you gotta work hard most days, and you know it’s tough. Again, if you’re in a pain in the pandemic, how do you close that?

If you're working from home, and today women still bear more of the in-home responsibilities and chores, whether it’s childcare or, you know, fixing dinner, etc. For those women who are privileged enough to be home, there’s probably not a lot of extra budget at work for ‘hey, I want a raise!’ And you need to have a pretty good boss, right? You know, and since we know so much more now about unconscious bias and people who really think they’re woke are, you know, closing those gaps, you know, it’s not closing fast enough for all the unconscious bias training.

So, you know, as CEO, I think you just have to mandate it. Just, we are going to look at the pay gaps, we're going to measure them, and then we’re going to close them. And by the way, even if your opinion is that someone who looks exactly like you is doing a better job, let’s look at the real metrics because that might just be your comfort level.

So that’s on pay. You know, on the wealth gap, there are actions we can each take individually that we don’t have to have a great boss for, right? We can look at our expenses hard, and particularly in this pandemic moment, go back to what’s really important to me? Do I need all the streaming video services? Do I need all the new clothes?

You know, do I need, you know, bump up above as well as begin to work on paying down that debt and putting together a real plan? And if you’re able to, once you pay down your highest rate debt, the best time to start investing is yesterday, but if you didn’t do it yesterday, then today is an awfully good time too.

I’m gonna back up for a second. For those who are like, ‘Oh my gosh! But the markets, stock markets are so volatile!’ I understand, with that volatility, have come outsized, you know, returns of nine point seven percent annually since the 1920s, not every year, obviously, with volatility.

And we even see, you know, as we come through the pandemic, this country has a lot of problems—the economic growth, the drive to grow it, you know. Capitalism has been really effective in driving the stock market higher on a trendline basis."

You’ve mentioned so many great things in this—I feel like every time you’re saying something, it’s an education instantly. So part of the thing for me, though, as you look at the wealth side, is that I go to an improvisor adage: needs versus wants. You know, there’s what do you want, and knowing how to cut that is super important. So for everyone out there who has questions, please start sending your questions and we will have an open forum with audience Q&A toward the tail end of this. For now, whatever platform you’re on, send them in. We’ll collect them and we’ll get to those questions soon enough.

Sally, I have another question for you though before we open it up to the audience. With one of your children being a prominent comic, how has that informed your leadership style?

"Well, I’m sure he’d be thrilled to hear you say prominent; he might say, you know, he is, he’s on his way! You know, it’s a good question. I’ve used humor for any number of years since I found myself—shouldn’t say found myself, I worked my way into senior leadership roles at a relatively young age.

So I was running Smith Barney and the Citi Private Bank, etc. in my 30s. I was CFO of Citi, if you know, in my 30s or early 40s. And so what was important to me then was to be able to connect with people and to recognize also that, you know, my gender worked against me sometimes.

So you’re probably, Bob, aware of the research that when men are more successful, they’re viewed as more likeable. And when women are more successful, they’re viewed as unlikable. You know, I could go through all kinds of examples in the press of how I seem to be so much more damn likeable when I got fired and was tossed out of places versus when I was in the senior roles. And so I desperately want to change this. I desperately want to change it.

But there’s, you know, at the time, well, what am I gonna do? It is what it is. And so I used humor as a way of connecting with folks. I figured that if we were laughing together, if I was showing some vulnerability—I hate, you know, the word ‘authentic’ is overused—but if I was my real self, that connection could potentially take away that view of, “Oh my gosh, if she is, you know, she’s—."

You know, ‘cause the other piece of research that says when women are seen to be looking for power and/or attention, both genders, all genders view those women as being, or they look at them with, I think it’s called contempt and disgust. And so the humor in a way was a defense mechanism to try to cut through that and form a connection.

You know, in order for any of this change to take place, you said before, it’s gotta come from leadership. It’s gotta be assistant, and it can’t be hiring people who remind you of yourself. I think great leaders look for people who challenge their core beliefs. They do challenge their beliefs, though—I mean, that’s the celebration of diversity of perspective. So intentionally mixing that up—I love that you use humor as a way that, kind of, level the status event.

Self-deprecating humor can definitely raise other people's status because they see you as more vulnerable and more sheep, as well."

There’s an important point I'd like to make, which is that, you know, I’ve got to this stage of my career in my life where I think you just have to do it. You have to dictate it.

We as a country, mom, apple pie, and meritocracy—and that sounds great, right? The cream rises to the top, the best and the brightest, the smartest of the group. Well, okay, Wall Street’s best and brightest, smartest in the group, topped of every Ivy League plum jobs. And if it just so happens that 90 percent of the best people for the trading jobs are men and 86 percent of the best people for the financial advisor jobs are for men, and you know it's similar percent for the top leaders, you know, men are just great at that, except that that’s not what the research shows us.

In fact, diversity and the diversity of perspective that comes from a diversity of background, you know, orientation, gender, ethnicity, nationality, perspective, you know, experience, introverted-extroverted, drives superior performance. And there's not one of us who thinks in the world—you know, I can’t imagine there's many things—oh my gosh! If those trading floors had been more diverse, if it had been 50-50 percent women, 45 percent people of color, does anybody really think the financial crisis would have been worse?

No, the research points us that way. And yet we are so wed to meritocracy, right? But I would say, you know, this is gonna sound controversial, but I think it's pretty clear: diversity outperforms meritocracy.

Right, diversity outperforms meritocracy! And so we can wait for middle management to get it—that it’s just gonna be one more unconscious bias training class, and then they’re gonna drive the diversity. But you know what? If it was gonna happen, it would have happened.

And what I did at Ellevest is, yeah, I know you want to hire the person who, you know, when you only make two hires a year, maybe promote one person a year, then I’m thinkin’, you know, that I’m gonna, it’s gonna burn into you that diversity is in fact better. When every fiber of your being says the person who reminds me of myself is the better candidate, it’s just how we're wired.

So I can wait for middle management to get it, or I can just say, you know what? It’s a Rubik’s Cube that we’re trying to solve here. Look at that next promotion or that next addition. We’re not just solving for the best person for the job; we’re solving for the best person for the team.

Adds a different perspective. And maybe if, if I just had that one decision to make, I might hire, you know, Jordan. But in fact, because I have to fill out the team in a certain way, it’s gonna be, you know, X person instead."

Absolutely! I think that whole holistic view allows you to actually see things from different perspectives and become more enlightened as a leader.

So tell me about your leadership style now. Is there a difference when you’re on-site with people versus leading virtually?

"Oh yeah, and I think we’re all trying to figure it out. I was a big management-by-walking-around person. You know, I’ve always in my career had an open-door policy. I’ve tried to drop in. When I used to manage, you know, large groups of people, I’d try to drop into different branches to sort of get a feel for what was going on.

I’d be, you know, on vacation someplace, I’d stop by the, you know, the Merrill Lynch office just to drop in and see what was up. And you know, it’s a little hard now to manage by walking around, and so I end up, you know, calling people. You know, hey, what’s—so it’s tough.

I mean, you know, it takes away so many of your tools. I was in a leadership team meeting the other day and somebody said something—I went to catch my head of people outside and I’m like, oh, you can’t catch an eye on Zoom. You know, I’ll have to, you know, secretly slack her during it and say, can you believe what just happened?

So, I think whoever figures out a Zoom where you can connect with people, you know—we’re all trying to do Zoom drinks, what a disaster! You know, what a disaster. You’re sitting there with a drink and you’re talking one at a time, which is not at all how drinks work. That's another how they work!"

Yeah, there needs to be—there needs to be the volume controls. They need to be evened out enough that you can't actually have a group conversation.

"Somebody will fix it, but not yet. Nah! And I think there’s definitely room for change. There’s room for evolution. It’s got to come through this medium, and it’s gonna start here. You’re hitting it around the head, yes, leaders have to change. We have to understand it worked on-site may not work virtually as well for those reasons that you just mentioned.

There’s not the, I bumped into you at the elevator, and there’s not the impromptu meeting—let’s get together and walk for 15 minutes. But I will tell you, as you know, for the part of my job; it’s, you know, my individual contributor part. I’m writing the newsletter, I’m working on an hour, you know, Excel model for projecting out a new product launch. I mean, the stuff where I need my deep thinking time, it really is interesting because the quarantine has been so useful.

You know, because now instead of waking up in the morning, exercising fast, jumping into the shower, getting to work, catching a plane or whatever it is, you know, I’m finding that I am so much more productive when I wake up in the morning, grab the coffee, and begin to work right away—getting three or four hours of work in before the day starts.

So the product personal productivity is way up. I'd say our team's productivity—I’m so proud of them because we are hitting those deadlines, hitting them. People are working, you know, and just producing.

It’s that intangible that we’ll never know what creativity we missed because someone didn’t bump into someone else and have a casual conversation."

Yeah, with spontaneous conversations, good talks, there's a challenge in this event, that’s for sure.

So let's go back to the leadership aspect of this. What leadership traits are you looking for now in a virtual environment? What are your top leadership traits?

"Well, you know, I don’t think those have changed. It’s, um, you know, who is creatively analytical, who is risk-tolerant to, you know, to a degree, who can help sort of come together and project out the future, who can motivate hiring, and then motivate a talented team.

So, you know, those things are pretty typical. You know, what’s been really fascinating to me during this pandemic and the civil rights movement, renewal of the movement, is who has found the ability to find the inner quiet and the inner strength to know—chart a path forward despite the chaos—and who hasn’t been able to do it because of the worries, the concerns, the family issues, the challenges, etc.

Who is able to see through the chaos? And so then helping, you know, trying as a leader to help other of my leaders find their way through. You know, what’s I think more important than ever is visible leadership.

Now you just say positive, visible leadership, but positive only to the extent that it’s warranted: frank, open communication, and then charting a path through that—might have to pivot and adjust because of how the world is changing. And then I’ve urged our team to be more visible than ever before on Slack, just so there’s a sense of, you know, almost an ongoing company conversation that’s occurring.

We don’t have—and by the way, we’ve taken our All Hands, which we were doing once a week, we’ve taken it twice a week. So there’s a rhythm to the week and sort of a connection by everybody."

Yeah, that’s great. I think that visible leadership is super important, and it’s not to dismiss not being positive; it’s to acknowledge that things are hard for a lot of people right now, and it ranges anywhere from financially to emotionally.

Yeah, and that shouldn’t be ignored. This should be acknowledged, and then maybe that sense of we will get through this.

"Well, and it’s every emotion. It’s, you know, it’s the concern about our families, health, their own—how their teammates feel—anybody who when the stock market was going down that said that wasn’t driving them a little cuckoo is just making that up.

That was, you know, there were moments of real concern verging on panic on the part of the markets. There’s, you know, obviously clear anger about the police brutality against black people that, as it reemerges, there’s hope that perhaps we're making true progress. There’s boredom, you know, there’s fatigue from being in our—yet.

You know, I was talking to our investors—how are your people feeling? I’m like, every way there is to feel. Yeah, that’s our feeling! It’s every feeling, you know, and sometimes sort of all in the same day. And so honoring and acknowledging that and giving people that space—then, you know, I think more important than ever, particularly for young people, is, ‘What’s our mission, and how are we meeting this moment? How are we making the world a better place?’

The, you know, what has really stood out for me as Ellevest is people like, ‘Okay, I’m feeling these things, but you know what? I got to get back to work, because the more successful we can make all of us, the more we can do for our community, the better off the world is.’ And I very clearly see my connection as an individual to positive change—I mean, I don’t know; I think it would be much, much harder if it’s like, ‘You know, I don’t really know what our mission is. I just sort of show up to work.’"

Yeah, yeah! Alright, so we’re gonna open it up to audience questions momentarily. I have a couple that I want to ask you. In Business Improv, we define improv on three core competencies: reacting, adapting, and communicating.

Alright, reacting, adapting, communicating. How have we—and you can interpret this in any way you want to—how have we been reacting? How are we adapting? And how strong is our communication as we move forward?

"Who’s we? You and me?"

Sure!

"Well, alright, we can start! I think as a society right now—yeah, it’s a loaded question. I said we can unpack this a little bit and say, you know, how are we and Ellevest reacting at that in communicating or how are we as a larger group?

Yeah, so, look, Ellevest—I can tell you right—and it’s interesting because I don’t know why I prefer the word responding to reacting. Reacting probably for me means, you know, sort of that reaction that’s slightly negative. You know, things are happening, and so I’m not—proactively engaging.

We talk about responding, and at Ellevest, you know, we changed our entire product offering and our entire pricing schedule on our digital side—more to come as soon as next week on our private wealth side—for responding and really meeting the moment.

So, you know, what we really tried to do is, you know, to some extent when the pandemic started take a moment; take a breath; take a pause! You know, just everybody get home, be safe! Alright? Think through how the world is going to be different here.

And for us, it was clear, right? Women are moving backwards. Alright, so expand out the product, change the pricing, make it more approachable, make Ellevest, which was already inclusive in terms of engaging women, women plus non-binary allies, in, you know, moving forward financially—make it even more!

Take it past investing; do it fast! Right? You know, make some mistakes along the way, communicating while we’re changing our entire product mix.

All of you over to this side of the boat because we—what one thing we do know is that women need us—not want us, must have us moving back financially. So while we’re changing, company over here, Instagram Lives most Thursdays at 3 p.m. on with a career coach, you know, with our certified financial planners, with our investment professionals. One after the other, let’s get to LinkedIn life; let’s open up a questions at Ellevest.com in which we have pledged to answer any and all money questions from our community—got thousands of questions, hundreds of thousands of views. Be responsive here, change the business over there, which was really energizing and exciting!

You know, as for our country, you know, I’m sitting here in my hometown of Charleston, Carolina, having ridden out, you know, the first—not maybe not the first stage, but the first part of the first stage in the New York area—and in this moment of renewed movement to racial, you know, told civil rights and racial justice watching how things that didn’t change here for a long time change almost overnight.

Taking down the statue of John C. Calhoun, which was unthinkable, like unthinkable three months ago, was voted on by City Council and it came down that night. And so, you know, I think in our culture, I’m hopeful that we are learning and beginning to react or respond—not clear yet, you know how far that’s gonna go."

Yeah, I hope so too! If you give me, as my backup over here, also has the questions from the audience, and it just went to hibernation now, so I’ll—

"I'm hopeful too! I'm hopeful too that we continue to learn from this and continue to grow together. And also to your point before, that leadership around us says mandates that this is the way we’re going forward so that the mid-level managers of our society step up and take ownership of this change as well."

Yeah! Yeah, look, I think it’s—but it’s on all of us to have difficult conversations, yes. You know, I was at a dinner party at my sister’s home, a socially distanced dinner party, last week in which I literally made a man storm out!

I thought, yes! Good! His worldview—"That's great!"

"That’s great! These conversations have to take place, you know, not just in the broader media but person to person, where we challenge each other. Yes, and learn as well—not being right—not having all the answers!"

Alright, speaking of that, though, you have answers, and they have questions so let’s get to some of them here!

How do you get over your fears around investing?

"Um, you know, I first of all would advise you to jump in with a small amount of money and begin to see how you react and respond to market volatility. If you aren’t already, maybe start with 1% out of every paycheck, 2% out of every paycheck, into a diversified investment portfolio.

I’m not talking about buying Bitcoin, I’m not talking about making bets on this sector or that sector. Those are for individual investors; those are losers strategy. And look, I would keep in mind that even with all the bad stuff that has happened, you know, when we think of the equity markets as doing this, they’ve actually historically done that.

And so let me give you an example that might motivate you: if you and I, Bob, were to get into a time machine and go back to 1900, and we were to invest $1,000, and we were to know—we invest the money—and then someone reveals for us here’s everything that’s gonna happen for the next, why don’t we stop at the end of last year, 119 years—like, oh my gosh, pandemic of 1917, World War I, World War II, Great Depression, Great Recession, crash of ’29, Vietnam War, Korean War, oil shocks, Russian ruble crisis, presidential impeachment, internet bubble burst, subprime crisis, you know, stagflation, inflation. You’re like, wow, that’s all kinds of bad stuff—how much do you think your money would be worth in 2019?

Are you asking me? I want to answer!

"I would just invest in on the Cubs winning the World Series in 2016, there! That's there we go, by the way, the right answer was not that! The right answer is a thousand dollars because of compounding, which we talked about before, because capitalism, for all of its faults, you know, drives economic, and therefore, market growth over time.

That thousand dollars would be worth $57 million, right? And so we can again—we think about it this way: it’s not really it’s not how much I risk by investing, it’s how much you risk and give up by not investing historically!"

Thank you very much! Another question from the audience: what skills and support are needed to have a career as successful and resilient as yours?

"You just have to be as stubborn as I am. So first of all, I’d say skills: you know, look, we're all smart enough, right? I hoped when I was coming out of college that I was smarter than most people, and I'm not. I worked hard—always, because I loved my work.

I've always had a growth mindset. You know, I may not be the smartest, but I’m smart enough and I can learn and I love to learn. And so, you know, even at this stage of my career where so many of my contemporaries are doing bored stuff or in the same job they’ve been in for 10 or 15 years, I am delving deep into marketing analytics, you know, for Ellevest and, you know, learning through that, pushing myself through that.

So I think it’s, you know, the bigger risk again is sort of sticking still, but push yourself to learn. And then it’s a full recognition that we have all been so fortunate, so privileged—we won a lottery—and that, you know, failure to me is just another great day. You know, I’ve been fired twice. I’ve been, you know, successful as I beyond my wildest dreams.

And those two things are the different sides of the same coin, that if I wasn’t taking the business risks that I took, took Sanford Bernstein out of the investment banking business the Research Analyst cause I thought it was a conflict, I almost lost my job because during the internet bubble we did this well when it burst I was on the cover of Fortune magazine as the last honest analyst! We did that, those are the two sides of the same coin!

You know, running, taking the risk to be able to run Smith Barney but then getting pushed out later because I was trying to do the right thing for clients—two sides of the same coin—so smart. You’re smart enough, work hard, growth mindset, take reasoned risks, and when you fall down, say score! Score—failed! With, you know, and onto the next thing."

That’s awesome! Everybody I know who’s successful has a growth mindset. Everyone is focused on learning—and you know, you take the licks, right? You beat sometimes and then you get back up, you dust off and—well, there's a rule, okay, let's get back to work!

And we all fail! You don’t succeed without failing! And some are big visible failures that people read about. But in general it’s mostly, you know, 100 failures a day and just, alright, let’s keep going!

Absolutely! Alright, another question from our audience. I want to get a couple more of these in here: how can you make money if we lost our job during the pandemic?

"Oh, what a terrible situation to be in, and so many people are. I mean, the very tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny slightest silver lining to this is that there is, you know, no stigma to it now that whereas, you know, a handful of years ago, what happened and how was it you’re falling, you like craft your narrative?

Today it is like, okay, got it! This does give it, you know, provide people with an opportunity, if it makes sense for you, to pivot your career. I’ve had enormous pivots in my career. I went from being an investment banker to a sell-side equity research analyst. Doesn’t sound like a big change; it was a massive change.

I never would have done it if I’d kept working straight through, and so it gives me the opportunity to sit back and say, what did I like about it? What did I dislike about it? What did I, you know, what was I good at? What was I not so good at? Where do I see myself when I’m on my deathbed? What do I want to have done?

And so when you think about setting yourself up to make money again, you know, the other thing to do is there has never been so much online education as there is today. Whether, you know, it’s Master Class, whether it’s some of the free classes that some of them Ivy League’s are making available, whether it’s short courses that are available at General Assembly, etc.

You know, taking advantage of this time, while you’re networking, sending out your resume, honing, you know, talking to people, honing your skills, etc. You know, what are some very tangible additional learnings and skills that you can add to your resume to, you know, when the economy begins to loosen up a bit and jobs are available to help you on that other side?

And then, you know, the final thing is take a look at your dang expenses! You know, when you’re going through this period of time, it’s worth taking an afternoon to make sure you’re spending your money where it really is meaningful to you. And by the way, spend an afternoon calling, you know, places that you know your cell phone service, utilities, your landlord, etc., because we’re seeing many more people getting cuts in price even from big companies that you wouldn’t expect right now, given where the economy is. So that’s a pretty broad range of things to do."

That's great! And you know, I think part of this is to remember as well that if you, you know, as a small business owner, I got hit. We were bulk was experiential, on-site learning.

So even though we were building virtual instructor-led training virtual classrooms for three years prior to this, still a huge education process! You know, we’re hitting that same thing, and it’s for me focusing on what we can do. And I love the fact that part of what you said is, look, if you can’t afford some online classes, use tons of free classes out there just to learn, continue to make yourself more marketable and go back to what you just said before: stay focused on purpose and something that drives you because otherwise—we’re just kind of lost around in the dark.

And there are some things that we can do for ourselves to continue to stay focused, motivated, and move forward past this. You know, the research says that people on their deathbeds regret not what they did but what they didn’t do.

And so I did find it when I’ve been in career transitions, again which I’ve had a number of. Trying to do that sort of deathbed exercise—what am I going to regret not doing? That’s one of the reasons I founded Ellevest, because, you know, for me, even though I thought at the time, shouldn’t you know, I’m a big company gal? I run large complex global organizations, that’s who I am!

But seeing these gender money apps that are affecting women’s lives and their families’ lives do not buy a little bit, buy a lot. Seeing, you know, a chance to build something that can help them with that and not seeing a lot of other people who either had the skill set to do it or more importantly the, I guess, stupidity—I don’t know—to tackle something like that.

You know, if I didn’t do it and I’m on my deathbed, I would regret not having done it. I mean, I’d just be ashamed of myself frankly. I mean, how do you have the advantages I’ve had and see something as big as this that no one is solving this problem and just say, you know what? I’m just—I’m good! I’m good! I’m gonna do a couple boards, I’m good!"

"So, deathbed thinking."

Yeah, yeah! Alright, so we’ll do a rapid-fire question because I think we’re coming close to our time before we transition over to Big Think Edge. And I for one quick bounce this off again from the audience: are there any reliable resources for personal finance for absolute amateurs?

"Oh yes! Yeah, you can sign up for our newsletter, you can go over to our website, click on magazine up in the nav, and we have articles there that, you know, start from the most basic on to much, you know, sort of sophisticated.

And, look, that’s part of what an Ellevest membership is too, which is a couple of the pillars of it are not only the investing and the banking, but also the learning and, for those who need to coaching. So that’s what we’re all about! And in part because of your question, I was the same, wait, what are the resources? I didn’t love what was out there, so I went ahead and we did it ourselves and threw those out there."

There were questions about paying off student loans right now, and all sorts of questions. Remember, what Sally said before—that they’re answering questions on Ellevest. So if you get on there and become a member or somehow get in the community and you’re asking questions, she said that they’re gonna get back to you, so you can get an answer to your questions.

"Ship is a question at questions@ellevest.com. We will answer it."

That’s right! That’s awesome! Alright, I got the last rapid-fire question for you right now, Sally: what excites you right now about Ellevest?

"You know, I just—I’m so fortunate that I was sitting there this morning, you know, working for a few hours on, you know, our next phase of growth. And I thought, I’m just so lucky that I get to work on something that I care about so much with a team that I have such great regard for.

I’m back when, you know, back when we used to travel, and I would walk through airports, really, you know, starting about six months ago, eight months ago, I would have women stop me and say, ‘Is that an Ellevest bag? Or are you Ellevest? You know, or you would Ellevest—they’re changing my life!’

We had one young woman a few months ago email me and say she invested for the first time, and she started to cry because she’s a first-generation, you know, comes from an immigrant family, just didn’t think this was available to her. And for her, this was part of the American dream.

So how do you not—you know, I always love to joke. I probably shouldn’t say this: I always love to joke that I’ve made people cry before I worked at a big bank! But see where I get myself in trouble, Bob—

"But, you know, to have a career in which you literally change people’s lives? What, what, you know, besides my wonderful family and my two great cats—what’s better than that?"

That's amazing! Sally Krycek, thank you so much for joining us on Big Think. Now, for anybody who’s part of the Big Think Edge exclusive members, we’re going to transition over to there after a very, very, very short break.

For everyone else, please be safe out there. Go check out Ellevest! Thank you very much, Sally Krycek.