Growing up in a family of doctors, I wanted to be a brain surgeon for a while. But ultimately, I get most excited about creating things, which is why I decided to become an entrepreneur.

It's important to have a really clear strategy so when you are in business, you only have to make micro-strategy changes.

This isn't like cancer, where we don't know the solution. Financial planning is math. We have the answers, yet it's this huge cause of stress.

We're providing planning to a huge audience who's never had access to financial planners before. This was always my plan for LearnVest. It was in my very first pitch deck.

Because I didn't have much money, I bought a small shop that fit my budget. The previous six owners had closed their business in three years. The store had no people traffic and, because of that, I was able to focus on figuring out how to provide a better service to each and every one of the customers that did come through.

Sometimes you can just not spend that much money or do a minor change with color on a certain room, and it just can open up and brings people a lot of joy. They can go from hating a room or hating a house to loving it.

It's hard to tell with these Internet startups if they're really interested in building companies or if they're just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don't really want to build a company, they won't luck into it. That's because it's so hard that if you don't have a passion, you'll give up.

I've got two children, and if my voice is still out there, I want the money to go to them when I die.