Flipping the Information Game Banks Play/Brad Stroh - Achieve, Recession, Lacrosse ~ Spark of Ages Ep 44 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
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Rajiv Parikh (00:05):
Welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast.
Today, we're joined by BradStroh, the co-CEO and co-founder
of Achieve, who's been quietlybuilding one of the most
impactful fintech companiesyou've never heard of, and
that's exactly how he likes it.
Here's a guy who took acompletely different path from
the typical Silicon Valleyplaybook.
While everyone else was chasingventure capital and quick exits

(00:26):
, brad and his Stanford BusinessSchool classmate, andrew Hauser
, decided to bootstrap their wayto success, starting back in
2002.
Their reasoning they wanted tobuild something that would last
decades, not just until the nextfunding round.
And boy did it really pay off.
Over the past 20 plus years,achieve served over 1.5 million
people, resolved over $18billion in debt and funded over

(00:50):
$10 billion in loans.
We're talking about a companythat's approaching $8 billion in
annual revenue, with over $7billion in cumulative revenue
and over 2,800 employees, allwhile staying true to their
mission of helping strugglingAmerican families.
Brad's core philosophy centerson deeply understanding the
customer and building financialstability.
His passion lies in helpingstruggling and striving American

(01:13):
families deal with debtproblems.
Across various products likedebt resolution, home loans,
personal loans and budgetingapps.
He champions a customer-centricapproach, leveraging data and
machine learning to driveseamless, personalized customer
experiences complemented bygreat customer service.
Before embarking on thisentrepreneurial journey, brad
graduated from Amherst Collegein 1996, with majors in

(01:36):
literature and economics, andthen graduated from Stanford
Business School in 2002.
Some of the key takeaways youcan expect from this episode how
Brad Stroh and Achieve havepioneered consumer finance with
a first-party data advantage.
The critical importance ofdeeply understanding the
customer and adopting acustomer-centric approach to
build financial stability.
The impact of AI and machinelearning in fintech innovation

(01:58):
in transforming the customerexperience.
And, finally, how Brad'sentrepreneurial journey has
evolved from bootstrapping anidea out of business school to
running that company for twodecades.
So, brad, welcome to the Sparkof Ages.

Brad Stroh (02:10):
Thanks for having me A great intro.
I appreciate it.
That was a lot for a guy who'sonly had one job in his life for
real.
So yeah, I appreciate it.

Well, you've only gone through a few things in
getting here.
So I've known you since I metyou via Ariel Poehler, your
board member, way back in late2005, early 2006.
And I've known you since workedwith you for a period and love
what you've done with buildingthe company.
I think there's just so muchyou can share in terms of
insights and understanding andso just thrilled to have you

(02:37):
with me today.

Brad Stroh (02:38):
Yeah, happy to be with you.
And yeah, for anyone thatdoesn't know, we've been friends
for a long time and you guyswere integral in the early days
of go-to-market strategy andhelp us kind of refine what
we're doing.
And it's funny to bring backAriel that makes me smile, like
one of our first investors andwe're a bootstrap business that
we raised a tiny angel round.

I think it was like a quarter million dollars.

Brad Stroh (02:58):
Yeah, we did $250,000 at three and a half pre
for a business that now hasknow, now has a 10 digit, you
know, valuation.
But Ariel was one of those guysjust inspired me, you know,
made us want to be great on thejourney, helped us think
ambitiously but also execute.
And those early days which wereso fun, you know, fun yeah.

We're going to get into some of that because
you've been through so manyincredible periods of our sort
of US economic growth andhistory and regulation and all
that, so this will be fun.
So, brad, your entrepreneurialjourney began with a profound
light bulb moment.
You and Andrew realized thatthe $17 trillion consumer
finance industry had tremendousinefficiencies, particularly
where credit impaired consumerswere often exploited.

(03:37):
You uncovered that banksinternally model debt
settlements, yet the knowledgewasn't necessarily democratized,
and that's what led you tocreate Freedom Financial and
then Achieve, as a liabilitymanagement platform,
fundamentally the inverse of atraditional asset management.
So, for consumers who may notface overt distress but still
seek to optimize their financialhealth, what are the most

(03:57):
common information asymmetriesor hidden rules of the game they
unconsciously play within thefinancial system that prevent
them from maximizing theirwealth or cash flow?

Brad Stroh (04:05):
Well, I think you hit all of it right there, but
there's a data and experienceasymmetry, right.
So banks have, especially nowwith ML and AI, just billions
and billions of data pointsaround consumers' transactions
evaluated and extracting marginfrom a consumer, the individual
consumer.
You think about a major, highcost of failure transaction
buying a home, refinancing aloan, dealing with $30,000,

(04:27):
$40,000 of credit card debt,student loans these very, very,
very big, impactful parts of allin individual households life.
They go through thosetransactions maybe once, maybe a
handful of times in their lifeand therefore there's just
fundamentally an informationasymmetry.
You layer on top of that thatthese are pretty high margin
transactions.
Banks have brilliant datascientists devoted to acquiring,

(04:50):
attracting, targeting and thenenrolling, converting consumers
and there just fundamentallyisn't it wasn't back then and
still really isn't great Clarity, transparency to the consumer
of, first of all, what are yourgoals and needs and assess what
you're trying to accomplish,what are your constraints Credit
score, cashflow, loan to valueand then line that up against

(05:10):
what are your available suite ofoptions.
Even today, most financialservices companies are single
point products.
So if you happen to pick up thephone and get called by Quicken
Loans, you're going to get solda refinance mortgage.
If you're talking to Upstart,you're going to get sold a
personal loan.
If you're talking to a creditcounselor, you're going to get
sold credit counseling.
To us, a bunch of light bulbswent off, which, first of all,

(05:32):
just the TAM, the magnitude andsize of the problem.
We looked, by the way Rajiv,back in the day, I think you
know this but at a bunch ofdifferent industries.
We loved a lot of aspects ofliability management.
One was just the staggeringsize of the problem.
Fast forward to today there's18 trillion of consumer debt,
the inefficiency in the process,combined with the margins, the

(05:52):
economic rents that we saw, thatwere being extracted from
mortgage companies, banks,credit card companies,
collection agencies, we realizedmassive, inefficient, huge
margins.
And then you go and you dofirst person research and you
talk to the consumers and abunch of universal themes came
out, which is I'm scared, I'mconfused, I feel like I'm going
to be taken advantage of.
I don't even know whatdirection to go.

(06:13):
How do I even think about whatsolution, let alone what company
, and then let alone whatproduct.
And this was pre-mint, pre-pfms,which was sort of a wave for a
little while, and we realizedthat.
What a great opportunity tobring a multi-product approach,
become the liability managementsolution leader and try to level
the playing field and we thencan be the really significant
increase in recurrence to thescale of data business which all

(06:36):
the transactions we're going toaggregate for all of the
consumers, the millions ofconsumers we service.
We can then flip the dataasymmetry to.
Our consumers now know all theunderwriting models, all the
pricing models, all of thesettlement and concession rate
models that they would neverhave the ability to know on
their own, that we can bringthat to them and then do that
with a human touch, a personaltouch and all the kind of core

(06:58):
values that we can get into thatwe're near and dear to the
mission and what kind of sparkedthe initial.
We talk about heart and dollarsign, but about doing good in
the world and being a missiondriven business combined with
really believing in.
Oh, it's a big space.
It's right for innovation thatcan do great for consumers and
the need is just massive.

And I think what's interesting about the way you
both did it.
You were also in an industry atthe time, right Looking at debt
consolidation, in which therewere some unsavory characters
and you guys went in with no,we're going to do this in a way
where we care for people andwe're going to help them through
it, and this is a way to trulyget them out of debt.

Brad Stroh (07:33):
Totally true.
So that was sort of the heartand the dollar sign side of it.
We teach this case at StanfordBusiness School, kind of the
founding story of the businesswe're also not dumb business
people, as we realize, by beingmission-driven, doing the right
thing.
Well, yes, you may give upmargin on an individual
transaction, but doing the rightthing for each individual
consumer, ultimately, with thecounterparties, you interact

(07:54):
with the banks and the creditors, with regulators, with your
employees, with your investors.
That long-term, if you take along-term view, and this will go
all the way back to being abootstrap business and we
weren't pushed in three to fiveyears to an exit by you know a
series A, series B, series D,investor with you know liquidity
pref and ratchets and you knowa clock ticking value that

(08:17):
doesn't force us to cut cornersaround values, ethics, customer
treatment and being that kind ofour core premise, which was to
bring a layer of trust andtransparency.
It just was the right thing todo for our business level.

Yeah, that's awesome, and so next question so
for some higher earningindividuals, debt may not be as
manifest as an overall struggleright?
Rather, they're invisibleliabilities like persistent high
interest credit card balancesalong with savings or
investments or inefficient cashflow management.
So what are the most commoninvisible financial liabilities

(08:55):
or maybe cognitive biases thatprevent people from optimizing
their financial health?
What are maybe two or threecounterintuitive data-driven
checks that a person can performthemselves to uncover these
inefficiencies before theybecome significant burdens?

Brad Stroh (09:06):
I mean, I just say like tactically carrying really
high interest, especiallynon-tax deductible high interest
.
That's after tax dollars,paying down.
If you did the calculus, yousaid how many hours do I have to
work just to pay the intereston my mortgage, on my auto loan,
on my student loans, on mycredit card debt?
Sometimes that's a staggeringnumber.
The other is, if you look atwhat is your cumulative cost of
paying off this debt, if youhave $30,000 of credit card debt

(09:28):
, it could take you 27 years,and that $30,000 today, which is
how you kind of process whatyou owe that could be $157,000
over the life of the pay downstrategy.
So the burden of inefficientinterest that you're paying and
then if you flip that on theopportunity cost, that's
negative cashflow because you'repaying that towards paying down

(09:48):
debt.
That's also you're notaccumulating wealth, you're not
accumulating savings.
So the sprint to get out ofdebt into inefficient kind of
asset optimization situation andthen build wealth.
But look, I spend a ton of time, rajiv, thinking about first
principles, thinking what arethe root causes of some of this?
You just look at the economytoday.
You're right.
In 23 years we've been throughso many economic cycles.

(10:09):
But you look at persistentinflation.
That has come down, but youstill have elevated prices.
You've got a K-shaped recoverycoming out of the pandemic
income inequality, wealthinequality.
You do have a population ofpeople where affordability
whether it's child care or rentor home ownership or their car
is just staggering.
They finance that withinefficient means, which is

(10:30):
short term debt.
Then you also layer on top ofthat is a lot of financial
instruments.
If you think deeply about it,the financial instrument is
secondary to the courttransaction.
So student loan debt you're notapplying for student loan debt.
You're trying to get a collegedegree because you think you're
going to increase youropportunity in life and income
potential.
You end up with $150,000 instudent loan debt.
Buying a home your goal is notto get a mortgage, your goal is

(10:52):
to buy your dream house.
A lot of times when you attacha financial transaction with an
incentive scheme to jam you withrates or fees and you have a
primary motivation that isn'treally the core financial
transaction a savings accountyou're not getting the maximum
rate returned.
You're not getting the lowestrate on your mortgage.
You're not getting the bestfinancial services product for

(11:13):
yourself.
So you evaluate that and youjust end up with a system that's
set up for the consumer to failor struggle unless they have an
advisor, a parent, an uncle, amentor, a friend that can help
them evaluate, that be reallydisciplined and then, if you do
get into trouble, to as quick aspossible get out of the burden.

So, like you're saying, a good way to look at it
is say I have this much debtthat I'm taking on and then I
have interest, which may be.
If it's a home, it could be arelatively low interest rate.
Right now it's a bit higher,quite a bit higher.
If it's credit card debt, it'sstill up in the 20 percentile
and if you do payday loans, itcould be ridiculous.
So how long does it take me topay that down is a good question
to ask.

Brad Stroh (11:51):
Yeah, the lens of the total cost of that debt, not
what's my monthly payment.
Unfortunately, most Americans,most humans, if you go into
behavioral irrationality,they'll think short term.
It's hard for us.
Look at global warming, look ata lot of the issues in humanity
.
It's hard for our species tothink long term and make those
long term tradeoffs.
Especially when you're facingstress, distress or uncertainty,
it's much easier to come backto and say what's my monthly

(12:13):
payment.
Financial services institutionsare literally constructed to put
consumers into an Americanhouseholds, into products,
because they are making adecision around what's my
monthly payment and the lenderor the financial institution is
optimizing their return onequity and their total value.
That's a little bit of whatwe're trying to disrupt.
So, yeah, I think a reallysimple, just quick act is never

(12:34):
think monthly payment, alwaysthink what's the total cost of
repaying this debt.
And if I didn't have this debtand I was earning on that income
, that cash flow, those assets,what would be my wealth creation
?
Instead is a much better way todo it.
We do simulations and we'll dokind of forecasting and then
choose your own adventure.
Especially now with AI, you cando that If you chose this path.

(12:55):
Here's what your credit score,here's what your cash flow,
here's what your debt, here'swhat your wealth will be in two
years and five years and 10years.

And here's what I can do years and 10 years.
And here's what I can do in it.

Brad Stroh (13:03):
And you then decide given your constraints, how much
can you realistically afford ona?

monthly payment.

Brad Stroh (13:11):
How much risk do you want to take?
What are you optimizing fortoday?
But let's make today's decisionalso grounded in what are you
going to look like and how doyou want to feel in 5, 10, 15,
20 years in terms of retirement,wealth, future?

So, brad, can you model that?
I mean before, and maybe thisis what you can do with AI
there's an optimism gap when Itake a loan for something.
If I go buy something, Ibelieve I can always get out of
it, and then I get into thisnotion of lifestyle creep as I
go, I keep buying new things andI keep thinking I'll make up
for it later, and you keeppushing that out.
Is there a way that you canmodel that with today's tools to

(13:41):
say you know, this is where Iam, this is where I want to be,
not just in terms of income buta sense of wellbeing and
lifestyle If I have kids.
If I don't have kids, what do Ido?
Is there like are you findingthat as something that we can
help people with, becauseotherwise it looks just like a
generic number to a person goingto buy something or get
something or deal with medicaldebt.
It's just a number right.

(14:01):
Or feeling that I solved fortoday.

Brad Stroh (14:09):
Let me unpack that into two variables.
If you just get into kind ofbehavioral and rational, money
does become emotional.
So you're in debt, you'restressed.
If you lose your job and you'rethe primary wage earner and
you're the husband in ahousehold, that comes with a lot
of stigma and emotionalattachment.
So to us, we're trying to takethe emotion out and try to bring
your rational brain into it andyou can simulate that as let's
look out in a few years, notjust on debt, on cash flow, on
credit, on wealth how are yougoing to feel?

(14:30):
Also, look at the things you'llbe able to do Pay your kids, you
know.
Fund your kids 529, save forthat, you know.
Dream trip to Hawaii, buy yourdream home in seven years
instead of in 27 years.
In three years, your cash flowflips from negative to positive
$1,500 every month.
And look what you can do interms of emergency savings plans

(14:51):
, your peace of mind, stability,but also fund those trips and
live the life that you want andtry to have consumers and the
people that we service is getout of.
What am I trying to transacttoday and what am I trying to
pay next month to?
Let's come up with a plan foryou, which basically is what
asset managers do you know?
And there's a lot of assetmanagers, a lot of companies

(15:12):
that get people into debt orlending companies.
There's not a lot that sort offlipped that on its head and say
let's come up with a vision, astrategy of how to get there and
then just start one step at atime.
As an aside you it's a goodanalogy for starting a business
it's not that different.
It's know where you're going togo, come up with strategy and
the execution and kind of theprocesses in order to get there.
In financial services andconsumer finance, without an

(15:35):
advisor, without the tools,without the resources, you
really are kind of alone in thedark, out in the middle of this.

That's one of the issues, right, because for folks
that are wealthy, it'sprofitable for a company to
offer you a financial advisor oran asset manager or someone
that can help you think throughit.
If you're in that category andI think you guys look at folks
between 75 and 200K is that likea fair?

Brad Stroh (15:55):
That's about right.
That's about right Across ourproducts.

That's your market , and so they don't have that
ability necessarily, and maybethey don't even have the
education to know to look forthese things.
There's no high school coursefor financial management that
you have to take, so how do youmake them aware of these things
and help them think through someof the like we talked about
optimism, gap, some of theseissues that they have to go

(16:17):
through?

Brad Stroh (16:18):
Yeah, Well, I just first validate that you're
exactly right.
The problem statement, which isif you have $10 million of
liquid net worth, you areprofitable to a bank, you're
profitable to an asset managerand you're going to be well
serviced across your whole stackof needs because the fees and
the margins that come out ofthat, and then there's a lot of
competition for those consumers.
And then we're efficienteconomy.

(16:38):
Rents kind of get traded downand that is a pretty efficient
part of the market.
You get down subprime, nearprime or the populations that we
serve, including people thatare struggling or striving.
They're just preyed uponbecause a they are in that
precarious position wherethey're trying to solve a
problem.
They don't have the third partyfinancial advisor or the
resources to do that.
So back to bring education,which root cause too.

(17:00):
You don't graduate from highschool in America in most states
to this day with acertification or education
around FICO scores, yield spread, premium, aprs, cost of debt,
cost of financing student loan.
What, realistically, will beyour lifetime earning potential
if you graduate from AmherstCollege with $250,000 of student

(17:22):
loan debt and you're a liberalarts major and at least make a
rational decision versus kind ofblindly going through a lot of
these early life financialdecisions which have huge
downstream implications aroundfinancial health.
And then all of your options ofcareer potential, move
potential, household formation,all these things.
And so the gap I'd say ineducation, combined with the gap

(17:43):
of an efficient market, is yeah, that's who we serve, but
that's what we do.
You try to educate thoseconsumers, upper funnel, help
them understand options.
You try to get them into anecosystem with multi-products,
to help them understand theirpressing need today but how
bright their future could be inthe future.
And if it's not, if there areconstraints, just being
transparent and honest about allof their options and how they
can manage that today.

(18:04):
And then us, being amulti-product company, is put
them on the path to.
Here's what we think yourjourney should be and how we can
support you.
Or, if there's better products,that's part of our mission too.
Is we're going to refer you outto other companies to say we're
not the right fit or ourproducts aren't the right fit?

It's like helping them think through things like
the game of life.
Right, if you play the game oflife enough, you'll see that
going down a certain path is alittle better than other ones,
and you can help peoplevisualize where they're going to
.

Brad Stroh (18:27):
I think that's right .
But if I touch on that, analogyis A, it's not a game.
These have big, high cost offailure.
And back to the informationasymmetry.
These consumers have short termperiods of time to make a
really complicated decisionwithout full information,
without understanding the longterm consequences, and you make
a mistake early.
You spend the rest of your lifeor a decade trying to

(18:49):
recuperate from and that can bemedical-driven divorce, loss of
job, too much debt A lot ofthose complexities are what we
see every day.

It's a real-life situation and I think you're
probably-.

Brad Stroh (18:59):
And growing.
I mean obviously yeah.

And you're catching them.
Like most people, you catchpeople when things are tough,
right.
It's harder to catch peoplebefore they're thinking about it
.

Brad Stroh (19:07):
Some of our products a HELOC is a pretty low APR
product.
I mean you're talking about midsingle digit, high single digit
APR on a home loan.
That's truly an optimizationproduct.
Where don't refinance yourfirst and consolidate your 2899
APR credit card debt?
That's a high FICO,sophisticated consumer and a
great product.
Our personal loan product runsthat gamut too.

(19:32):
Sometimes it's a very rational,well-serviced consumer and the
digital experience, the advicelayer, combined with apps and
tools, helps them understand.
This is the right part,Definitely when you get into the
debt resolution, debtsettlement side.
That's a consumer where theiroptions are limited and it's
almost triage at that point andwe're trying to help them
understand what are youravailable options and how do we
get you back on your feet asquick as possible within your
constraints.

So do you find that you are getting people at
the time where they're lookingfor a HELOC product or a
personal loan product, versus Iknow, when you originally
started, it was all aboutcontrolling your debt and then,
as you went along and you wentmore towards your vision, which
is going towards full financialeducation, lots of content to
help people and lots of tools tohelp people with multiple
products like that.
So are you finding when you'redoing the marketing for it or

(20:13):
when you're capturing theconsumer, you're capturing them
for those different areas andhelping them understand?
Here's the value difference andhow it can help you take a
lower interest loan now versusgetting yourself in trouble and
having to deal with a muchhigher interest restructuring
situation later.

Brad Stroh (20:26):
Yeah, look, you can tell me more about this than I
can tell you at this point.
But now you're going to getinto the complexity of the
evolving nature of marketingbrand marketing, upper funnel,
app-based acquisition, bottom offunnel, mid funnel,
multi-product partners andwholesale partners and
affiliates who they will referus their turndowns because we
have better products or betterfit for some of their TAM that

(20:48):
they service.
So the quick answer is yes, allthose touch points.
I mean we still do bottom offunnel marketing and it works
really well.
We still have partners who bigpartners, who refer us and
because their turndowns theywant to find a better home for
that consumer.
And we do a lot of broadawareness campaigns of just
upper funnel.
Hey, do you know how to manageyour debt?

(21:08):
Have you ever spoken to anexpert advisor?
Do you know the cost of whatyour total cost of debt will be?
And then helping you tools andcontent and it's part of our
business too is we have 2000people that are licensed,
certified experts in doingconsultations, that are there to
just pick up the phone for freeand answer questions to
consumers and help them evaluate.
I would say all of ourbusinesses, though up and down,

(21:29):
that they're still very debtconsolidation focused.
The HELOC is typically debtconsolidation, small home
improvement component of thebusiness.
But even the super primeconsumer that's trying to
optimize that is kind of thecore use 80% of the use of post.

You're staying true to that segment of the
market, the underserved.

Brad Stroh (21:46):
We think it's a big segment that's underserved and
still needs service.
Now there are contiguous kindof segments that will serve of
the person wants to do a homeimprovement project or a kitchen
or something, and a home loanis just more efficient than a
personal loan on their productand debt consolidation is a
small component of that.
But I would say we are stillvery core Liability optimization

(22:08):
, multi-product to try to getthe right fit, right consumer,
which I mean going back to 02,aeropolar, 06, rajiv and Brad
talking about the growthstrategy of the business.
I just think it's a massive TAMthat still is very inefficient
and I think we're well suited tocontinue to just stay very
focused there.

This actually hits on a question I've been dying
to ask you.
Right, You've gone through,you've seen so many phases of
the economy.
I think in the time that fromwhen you went to business school
to now, we've gone throughmaybe three or four, maybe four
recessions for major we found itin the dot-com bust.

Brad Stroh (22:40):
We went through the great financial crisis, we've
been through the pandemic, wehave been through cycles.
Man, yeah, it's wild, yeah the.

FTC cracking down on the industry, which I
remember you calling a nuclearwinter that you will not only
survive and thrive through.
But I want to go into a littlebit more about how that has
changed.
Well, there's two ways.
One way we can go down, whichis the regulatory path.
The other one is more of likehow has the nature of people's

(23:06):
debt changed?
So, for example, achieve'slatest survey said that 58% of
respondents using credit cardsare using credit cards for
essential costs.
40% are carrying that debt forover six months.
Has the composition andseverity of debt problems that
your members face changed,beyond just the overall increase
in overall debt, because we'vebeen in this period of sustained
inflation, right?
So you guys have a lot of deepdata.
Are you seeing the nature ofdebt change?

Brad Stroh (23:26):
Yeah, I think we've also been through.
You know, buy now, pay later.
It wasn't a hot product in theearly days, you know.
That's why we've seen explosionthere.
Since founding the business,we've seen credit card debt go
over a trillion, student loandebt go from $1 trillion to $3
trillion.
Auto loan debt, you know,almost double since we've been
running the business.
Home loan debt go from 10trillion to 16, 17 trillion.

(23:47):
Just the numbers are staggeringof the growth in the amount of
debt.
I'd say that there are somepersistent themes Lack of
affordability and financialhardship really does drive
people into challengingsituations.
That's been true for 23 yearsand I'd say that a lot of stuff,
you know social changes,instagram purchases, cost of
living is we're just a moreconsumptive society.

(24:09):
We always have been, butcontinue to be, and so we are
seeing that severity of theissue when it comes to us being
higher than ever before.
And I'd say the thing we alsosee that isn't a bold statement,
but just you know I mentionedearlier wealth inequality and
income inequality.
It really is a big, big, bigproblem that we continue to see
growing when kind of the bottomthird, bottom half of the US

(24:32):
workforce real wages have notkept up with the cost of living
and cost of higher education hasjust exploded.
Cost of health care hasexploded and a lot of that's
financed with debt.
So we see the problem, someconsistency that the problem is
always there and people willalways hit periods of struggle
at some point in their life.
And the severity just becauseof consumerism, marketing new

(24:53):
financial products, thebrilliance of lenders to, you
know, acquire consumers a lot ofthat has been, has been,
significant.

Do you feel like, with all these things getting
worse and worse, like with thesenumbers, inequality increasing,
levels of debt increasing, doyou see that you get a lens on
the economy based on what yousee every day?
Are you seeing this hitting apotential breaking point,
because the GDP is estimated toslow down from a 3% growth rate
to maybe a 1.5% growth rate?
Who knows what's going tohappen with tariffs?

(25:21):
A lot of that impact is delayedin the future.
There's deregulatory changes.
There's a lot going on.
So one of the things peoplelove to know is, like folks like
you, what are your thoughts onwhere things are going based on
what you see?

Brad Stroh (25:34):
Yeah, I guess we've headed to a recession.
I mean, when governmentspending, which really kept us
out of a recession the past twoor three years, starts cutting,
I guess we're going to get closeto we see slowdown.
I would say that we on ourlending portfolio pretty good
credit performance.
The consumer does stay prettyresilient, but it's human nature
too.
And then you compound that ontimes of macroeconomic

(25:55):
uncertainty and then you get AIand job uncertainty.
Consumers do not likeuncertainty and insecurity and
their responses to pull back andthat will hit economic growth
and tariffs, cost of living, allthe stress on the system, which
is pretty high and thegovernment can't continue to
come in and bail us out.
You've got $36 trillion inconsumer debt and all the

(26:17):
conversations we're having there.
I would guess you'd be in asituation where Japan in the 80s
, you ended up with a decadeplus two decades of stagflation.
But we've got to be verycareful that we don't lose lift
in the economy when you don'thave international trade and the
efficiencies from that.
Tariffs and uncertainty.
And then investment pulls back,consumer pulls back spending

(26:38):
and if unemployment ticks up,you're kind of on a precarious
edge.
So I'd say consumer resilient.
We feel reasonably confident inthe next couple of quarters,
that consumer will stayresilient while the bottom half
of the US population strugglesmore and more.
But the amount of uncertaintythat's weighing on the economy,
I would guess that we're headedfor certainly GDP slowdown, gdp

(26:59):
below inflation levels, andwhat's that going to turn into.
And you've got to be carefulthat we don't end up with a
decade of debt where thegovernment can't invest and has
to cut services.
The consumer can't investbecause they're over levered,
especially at the 70% ofconsumers who are buying
groceries and make a lot ofspend, and then corporate
investment starts coming down.
You just got to watch out.

I think this is a great, yeah, it's a great time
to talk about two things.
One thing is on the other sideof this is that there's
regulatory relief potentiallyright.
The Consumer FinancialProtection Bureau, cfpb, has
essentially gone.
It's not there, which may begood or bad, depending on your
point of view on it.
Regulations during anadministration like this will
drop.
Sometimes regulatoryconstraints can be helpful to

(27:41):
the consumer.
Sometimes it can be hurtfulbecause it denies you
information that you need tohelp you build better financial
products.

Brad Stroh (27:47):
And it's important to regulate financial markets.
There's no question.
I mean, if you get into theCFPB, look good and bad.
Definitely removing regulationis going to stimulate innovation
.
We can get into stable coinsand crypto and USDC.
I think that's real and that'sinteresting.
You can get an AI adoption,which was heavily, heavily
discouraged by regulators in thepast cycle, especially in

(28:08):
financial services.
That is very real andtransformational for all these
companies to serve consumers.
On the other side, the CFPB andregulators serve a very
meaningful function, which isregulating markets, regulating
bad actors, regulating companiesand protecting consumers who
are vulnerable.
So the answer is the same asmost it's not all good or all
bad.
It's both.
In terms of driving innovation,you're seeing it already.

(28:30):
I mean, just look at theproliferation.

You're talking about AI, right.
I think you've mentioned at onepoint the notion of zero-click
personal financial insights,right, and the ability to
transform with that zero-clicknotion of a very AI machine
learning and how Achieve wouldleverage it.
Brad, you can not only justoptimize product delivery, but
you can educate consumers moreeffectively and maybe help
change some of those behaviors.
Add a Duolingo element to howyou manage your finances.

(28:55):
Help me think about how you'redoing this, because I know
you've always been one of thosefolks that when you see one of
these things going, you'll playwith it, you'll innovate with it
, you'll invest in some of thesefirms.

Brad Stroh (29:05):
I'm upset by the way all of the above is true.
I'm on a few boards.
I'm an investor an angelinvestor in OpenAI's investment

(29:33):
platform and stay pretty closeto what they're doing and really
obsessed with of a worldignoring Achieve and my company
and how successful or notsuccessful we continue to be.
I would hope that there's aworld where you go on Amazon and
it knows what you want todaybased on your buying behavior.
And when you run out and itjust shows up at your door and
you have to just return thestuff that you don't need, and
it continues to.
With AI, understand you betterand better and it can predict

(29:55):
better for you.
Whether your goal is stated tobe healthier or be on a diet or
go for a workout, it just startsdelivering to you what is best
suited for your needs.
I would pray that financialservices goes in a similar
direction.
Where products aren't sold, youstart to have agents that we
can all write or theyautomatically be delivered to us
, meaning AI agents, and they goout and they shop for us, but

(30:24):
then that eventually evolvesinto zero click financial
services, which is I don't haveto return on my savings, a
better portfolio allocation, abetter loan or cost of financing
the instruments that I'mfinancing, or the tools and
resources to tell me you got topump the brakes, you're spending
too much this month.
Zero click, these things justget delivered to me.
Or maximally one click becauseI say, yes, I accept this 5%

(30:48):
lower APR on my auto loan, yes,I accept this 20% reduction in
consolidating my credit carddebt into this new personal loan
, and that sweep automaticallyhappens.
And all the way back to wherethe conversation started, that
data asymmetry flips from banksand lenders owning up into cloud
to consumer owning that.

(31:10):
Ai agents just drive efficiencyand improve the consumer's lives
and people don't get takenadvantage of.
You just can't, because there'sa layer of automation and data
power that just does the rightthing for you and when you start
going off the rails, flagsraise immediately so you can
then grab the steering wheelagain if you're in.
You know self-driving finance,which would be my dream?

(31:31):
It's definitely, you know.
I would love the world to go.
Now there's a lot between hereand there Data efficiency,
consumer adoption and regulatorsstill don't.
They get confused with AI.
Rightfully so, because youdon't want to have redlining,
you don't want to haveasymmetric outcomes based on
where you live or race or gender, and so how that gets managed

(31:52):
and rolled out is going to be.
You know you got to be verycareful with that Everyone.

We've had to do this with some of our FinTech
clients is as much as we want totarget a particular age group
or a particular income group,you get into discrimination
right and you have to be verycareful about how you do that.
So you're totally right.
Thinking about this overallview that financial services
they can be fundamentallyinefficient.
Big banks exit profitable linesof business, consolidating into
lower risk areas.
So firms like Achieve that yourun fill these gaps.

(32:24):
Do you see a fundamentalreshaping of the entire consumer
finance landscape?

Brad Stroh (32:30):
Yeah, well, just start with the finance landscape
because, yeah, look at privatecredit.
What is there?
$6 trillion of private creditnow raised.
Yeah, that's traditionallending just seeping outside of
the banks because they can lowerregulation and you can then get
more leverage and get higherROEs or take more risk.
Do I see that continuing tohappen with Achieve?
There's no question.
I think you're going to havebanks continuing to exit the

(32:53):
subprime, the near primeconsumer, continually to focus
just on the high net worth, highincome consumer and household,
which is a shame because you dowant to bring the best products,
the lowest cost of capital tothe masses.
But look on the other side.
You've got Chime went publicrecently, circles IPO and
Stablecoin development'sinteresting.
You've got, you know, chimewent public recently, circles

(33:14):
IPO and Stablecoin development'sinteresting.
You are pulling through somelower cost platforms and
innovation driven kind ofcommoditization of financial
services industries which helpsimprove the consumer experience,
transaction costs, all of that.
But yeah, I think you continueto see the debanking of the
financial services landscape andthen you'd end up with this
parallel financial servicesuniverse, which opens up

(33:37):
opportunity for us, though, noquestion.
The other is there's just noway that Wells Fargo and US Bank
and Bank of America are goingto be nimble and rapid to adopt
consumer impacting AI in apersonalized way that
commoditizes their services andcannibalizes the margins that
they can.

It makes no sense to them to burn down their
current businesses that quickly.
You'll get to lead therebecause you can jump into a
bigger market.

Brad Stroh (34:03):
Exactly Bigger TAMs and serve those consumers and
then keep the consumers thatwe've rehabilitated in our
ecosystem for a longer period oftime and reward their
successful behavior.
That's awesome.
Yeah, Lots of opportunity.
I'd say that I mean you startedwith my economic view.
There's a lot of debt.
On the other side, there's alot of opportunity.
I think the economy will change.
The labor markets will change.

(34:23):
I've been doing this for 23years, though that's the one
consistent story is every singleyear is not what you predicted,
and every single period of timearound the company it's just
different.
You just got to adapt.

Keeps going.
Yeah, all right, brad, we arenow going to take you to one of
the most fun parts of this.
It's the game.
It's called the Spark Tank.
So, brad, welcome to the SparkTank where entrepreneurial
excellence meets athleticexcellence, and today we're
discovering what happens whenyou combine CEO leadership with
lacrosse legacy, oh boy.
So today we're thrilled to haveBrad Stroh joining us, a

(34:59):
financial services powerhousewho's turned debt resolution
into an art form and lacrosseinto a family dynasty.
You captained the lacrosse teamat Amherst College and now both
your college age children arecontinuing that lacrosse legacy
at a collegiate level.
So you're not just buildingbillion dollar companies, you're
building champions on and offthe field.
So I know you have Brooke atNorthwestern Brayden at Amherst.
So now we're putting both sidesof your expertise to the test.

(35:20):
It's called the CEO LacrosseLegacy Challenge.
We're going to test yourknowledge about the explosive
growth of lacrosse, from itsNative American origins to
becoming one of the fastestgrowing sports in America.
Your job is to tackle ourtrivia questions about
lacrosse's incredible growthstory.
Let's see if your lacrosse IQis as sharp as your business
instincts.
You ready, brad.

Brad Stroh (35:39):
Let's do it.
I'm a little worried, but Ican't wait.

This will be great .
Which country was the first toform an organized lacrosse club,
and in what year was it founded?

Brad Stroh (35:50):
Oh boy, so I think I'm going to cheat here, because
I'm going to go all the wayback to.
It's the only sport nativeNorth America played by
indigenous populations, whichcarries all the way through the
Haudenosaunee.
So if I didn't lead off and sayit was Iroquois National and
Haudenosaunee, I'd have to saythat, okay, a country though
that first had a team, I'm goingto have to say Canada.

(36:11):
Lacrosse is the national sportof Canada.
So I'll say that.
Guess what year?
Oh my gosh.
Okay, lacrosse was named by theFrench missionaries because
they thought the sticks lookedlike crosses.
Okay, I will say so.
Canada had a national team.
Boy, I'm going to say boy, Icould be off by a century.

(36:32):
Here I'll go 1810.

You know, brad, this originally was set up to
have three choices United States, canada and England and you
nailed the answer, so you gotCanada right.
And maybe you were a littleahead of your time of when it
started, but it was actually not1810, but 1856.

Brad Stroh (36:50):
All right, I'll take that.

But this is our information.
The first organized lacrosseclub was called the Montreal
Lacrosse Club, which was foundedin 1856 in Montreal, Canada.
This club helped formalize thesport by introducing
standardized rules andorganizing matches, transforming
lacrosse from an indigenoustradition into a modern
competitive sport.
Canada is widely recognized asthe birthplace of organized
lacrosse, the sport eventuallybeing declared the country's

(37:14):
national summer sport.

Brad Stroh (37:16):
So you nailed it, brad.
All right, I learned somethingthere.
Thanks for sharing.

There you go Now.
I was going to the secondquestion.
I had you pretty much nailedtwo, which is which native
confederacy is most widelycredited with developing the
game of lacrosse as it's knowntoday, and you answered.

Brad Stroh (37:36):
I'd say Haudenosaunee.
You know who I hope can play inthe Olympics and the LA
Olympics, but you know that's anorganization of a lot of tribes
, but I'd say Haudenosaunee.

All right, it is Haudenosaunee, which took me
about 20 minutes to learn how tosay correctly.

Brad Stroh (37:45):
Can I tell you, I've said it wrong for many years.
I finally know now it.
I finally know.

now it's also known as the Iroquois
Confederacy, which includes theMohawk, oneida, onondaga, cayuga
, seneca and later the TuscaroraNations.

Brad Stroh (37:59):
You nailed it all by the way, by the way, and all
that's sort of right on thatcusp of like upstate New York,
you know, and kind of you knowsouthern Canada region.
If you don't know, by the way,la Olympics are going to have
lacrosse.

And it's something that the lacrosse community is
really hoping.

Brad Stroh (38:16):
That Is it demonstration or the actual.
It'll be the actual sport.
They'll play sixes.

I think, is it a demonstration sport, or are they
actually going to award goldmedals?
Compete for gold medal?
Oh, I love it, I love it.

Brad Stroh (38:25):
Yeah, Every host nation is allowed to introduce a
handful of sports that theyadvocate for.
Lacrosse is one of those thiscoming year.
There's a complexity that Idon't want to get too much into
and politicize this, but theydon't issue passports and
they're not internationallyrecognized by some of the sports
federations.
But the lacrosse community issignificantly behind.
Letting the Haudenosauneeparticipate and play in USA

(38:45):
National Lacrosse and theCanadian Olympic committees have
all advocated to the IOC to letthe Haudenosaunee play.
I love it.
We'll see how that shakes out.

But okay, we got to All right, I got another
complicated word.

Brad Stroh (38:57):
I'm trying to spell long enough not to fail.

Another answer All right, go no no, no, as part of
this, there's this word calleddihutnishigas, which is called
the creator's game, theiroriginal game.
So you may be able to say thatword better than me.
So I'll learn that.

Brad Stroh (39:17):
I've never heard that word.
We would say Bagataway.
I think that was sort of theorigin term which is a little
easier to pronounce.
But I won't make you say thatterm one more time.

You're doing great In 2023, here's the next
question how many lacrosseplayers were there in the United
States?
I'll give you three choices A300,000.
B 1.2 million.
C 2.5 million.

Brad Stroh (39:38):
I'm tempted to go B just because of B.
But how about this?
Just because the game has grownso much, I'll go 1.2 million.
I'll go 1.2 million.

Oh, 1.2 million.
You're absolutely right.
300,000 is closer to the highschool player count, not the
total, and 2.5 million is higherthan the current verified
participation numbers.
But you never know in terms ofthe unverified number.
You got that right, nailed it.

Brad Stroh (39:59):
I was not prepared for this.
All right, let's go.

That's what I love All right so since its founding
in 2019, how much has thePremier Lacrosse League, or PLL,
grown in terms of ticketrevenue and attendance according
to the latest data?
So A ticket revenue up 25%.
Attendance up 50%.
B.
Ticket revenue up 60%.
Attendance up 5%.
C.

Brad Stroh (40:24):
Ticket revenue up 149% attendance up 13% Ticket
revenue.
Wouldn't that correlate withattendance?
Help me understand the gapthere.

I think you could charge more for premium seats,
so that's why there's such adisparity except for A, where
attendance is up but ticketrevenue is actually not up as
much.

Brad Stroh (40:39):
Okay, here's what I'm going to do here.
Okay, because I've been to someof these PLL games.
They're fabulous to go to.
It's an amazing product.
They've done a great job, but Iwill take the under here.
I'm going to go A because Ithink it exploded out of the
gates with excitement andthey're still trying to find
their footing on how to maximizethe growth of the game.

But I don't know this one.
My team finally got your ownone.
It's actually C Ticket revenueis up 149%.
Attendance is up 13% Revenue in2025, $82 million as of mid
2025.
We don't have exactly thepublic data on attendance.

Brad Stroh (41:12):
You guys are good on the research team here.
I'd like to audit the numbers,but okay, I like it.

Let's go for it.
We'll do that, but the growthis attributed to significant
successful media deals,strategic expansion into home
markets, strong increase in fanengagement and sponsorships.

Brad Stroh (41:27):
That's attributed to these two great founders I know
this is spark of.
Ages butul and mike rabel,interesting guys that you know
founded the, this new league,and they've done a great job.
Yeah, they just signed amulti-year deal with espn for
coverage for the men's game, thepll, and the women's game, the
wll.
That's awesome well.

I see it so much more in the top 10 right.
They show a lot of what's suchan exciting sport to watch when
they're playing?

Brad Stroh (41:49):
yeah, it's behind the, behind the back moves for
highlights?
Yeah, you would have been aringer back in the day.

Yeah Well, I didn't have it in lonely
Goffstown high school.
Okay, so which professional orcollege lacrosse team is
currently the host?
The most popular based onmerchandise sales.
This is most popular college orlacrosse team based on
merchandise sales.

Brad Stroh (42:08):
I feel like you'd have to give me a year.
But okay, Are you going to giveme choices here?

This is going to be the most current year.
Okay, here it is.
A Maryland Terrapins, which arethe NCAA.
B Boston Cannon, pll.
C John Hopkins, blue Jays, theNCAA.

Brad Stroh (42:25):
I don't know how great jersey sales are for the
PLL, so I'm tempted to goMaryland or Hopkins Hopkins
because it's kind of the marqueepreeminent team that sells a
lot of stuff and Baltimore isloyal.
Or Maryland because I made itto the national championship
game this year.
I'm going to go Maryland.

Okay, your logic is great, but it's unfortunately
incorrect.
While the Maryland Terrapinsare the most successful and
recognized college lacrosseprograms, college lacrosse
merchandise sales are generallylower and less widely reported
than those of top professionalteams.
So it's B the Boston Cannon.

Brad Stroh (43:01):
All right, good for them.
I've got a friend playing fromthem right now, Ben Ramsey,
who's a great player from NotreDame, so I need to buy his
jersey and support the cause.

I love it yeah and you're out there a lot.
Apparently, they've wonback-to-back PLL championships.
Their 2025 PLL ChampionshipSeries reported the highest
merchandise revenue in leaguehistory, with 103%
year-over-year increase inon-site sales and 163% increase
in e-commerce sales.

Brad Stroh (43:25):
I love it.
Way to go PLL, way to goCannons.

You are learning a lot about the sport of lacrosse
here cannons, you are learninga lot about the sport of
lacrosse here.
I'm having a blast.
I get to learn in concert withan expert at this.
So this is great.
All right.
Now we're going to take youback to some questions about
yourself.
Did you always know that youwanted to work in technology?
Was there a specific moment orproject that sparked your
passion?
How'd you discover that passion, and was there something that

(43:49):
just drove you?
What got you sparked?

Brad Stroh (43:50):
Yeah.
So I know your spark of ages isthe title here.
There are a couple of sparks.
I'd say there's sort of two orthree.
There's not one defining moment.
I just start there.
But I just always knew I wantedto be an entrepreneur.
So you let off the question,you framed it as in technology.
I didn't grow up behind aterminal, I didn't grow up with
punch cards.
I grew up with a lawnmowerbusiness and then a bunch of

(44:12):
random startups.
I just had that DNA of alwaysbeing scrappy and wanted to be
an entrepreneur.
So I'd say, somewhere in thereI knew that I wanted to be an
entrepreneur.
My first two jobs out ofAmherst before I went to
business school were in ventureand private equity and to see
the passion and the excitementof the founders and the CEOs and
the people running theseinnovative companies.
Layering on this was 95 to 2000.

This is internet like the browser.
Right, we were Netscape browser, Netscape went public in 95.

Brad Stroh (44:39):
So it was like you're talking about the just
one of the biggest.
I mean we're in one of themright now with AI but one of the
biggest, just seminal,transformational moments driven
by technology of the web, theinternet and then mobile is.
I knew that I wanted to be andI was doing technology,
investing and venture.
I just knew that I wanted toapply technology and all these

(44:59):
great innovations to kind ofhelp fuel that spark that I had
of wanting to be an entrepreneur.
And I started seeing patternrecognitions of markets that are
great, businesses that aregreat.
So I'd say I'd sort of combinedan analytical framework of
understanding businesses,business models, markets, with
seeing a bunch of CEOs andfounders and saying I like their
job better than being a ventureinvestor.

(45:20):
That's what I'm built to do andthere's something in my DNA,
coming back from my family, myparents, sports, that I just
love to be with a team competingin pursuit of a goal.

Was there like one of your parents kind of made
you go that way of I want tostart a business, or was it just
that feeling that you couldjust do things yourself?
I feel like business is like aform of free expression.
Yeah Of self-actualization and Ifeel like sometimes people look
down at business saying, oh,they're just out there to get
money from us.
But I see it as a form ofexpression.
I'm getting to do something,I'm getting to express myself

(45:52):
freely.
The success and failure isbased on what I do and what my
team does.

Brad Stroh (45:59):
I could go through my family's story, which is
truly the American dream of myparents grew up in a dirt, poor
farm town in Western Ohio.
My dad, first person in bothfamilies to go to college to
play football at Ohio State,worked in a Kraft Foods factory
and we moved around the countrywhile he rose up the chain to
become effectively the COO ofKraft and the COO of two other
publicly traded companies andjust to watch his success and to

(46:21):
me see anything's possible andto watch his hard work and
pursuit of that.
At the same time, my mom wasequally phenomenal, inspiring.
She got her undergrad from theUniversity of Illinois, her
master's from McGill, her PhDand postdoc at Northwestern,
published professor on a bunchof boards.
For me to see the opportunity,but also, I think, for them to
hold me to the standard ofexpress yourself, find your
passion, find that spark and youdon't just go with the flow.

(46:44):
That's not in your DNA or ourDNA.
So I'd say that they were very,very impactful to me around to
this day.
How I lead to reframe what youjust said.
I just read Rick Rubin's bookthe Creative Way about the
creative process.
He's got 12 rules for beingcreative.
But this is about Dr Dre andthe Beastie Boys and the Red Hot
Chili Peppers.
Can I tell you that book was asclose to being an entrepreneur

(47:06):
in terms of idea identification,in terms of being in the flow
of ideas, being receptive tomarkets and innovation as
anything I've ever read.
So when you say like a founderis a capitalist, or just in
pursuit of profit, I couldn'tdisagree more, especially as
someone that's been running thisbusiness for 23 years.
That's not my primarymotivation, never was it it's.

(47:27):
Can you express that spark Likeyour podcast has a great title
and can you have the canvas toexpress what impact you want to
make on the world, how you wantto grow a culture, team, what
products you want to be, how doyou want to deliver the services
?
And to me, there is a beauty increativity, in self-expression,
in team and leadership.
That's way deeper than acynical view of entrepreneurism,

(47:50):
which I don't share.
I think the greatest.

What's the book's name?
Again, when did you read it?
Rick Rubin, it's out right now.
I think it's called theCreative Way.
Rick Rubin, creative Way.
We'll make sure we highlight it, rick.

Brad Stroh (47:59):
Rubin is this brilliant mad scientist, big
beard producer who's doneBeastie Boys, ll Cool J, dr Dre,
johnny Cash, ll Cool J, dr Dre,johnny Cash I mean he's just an
iconic guy, but kind of hismessage, If I sum the whole book

(48:20):
up, it's be in tune to theuniverse and these ideas are
going to come to you, and don'tjudge them, don't be
self-critical, make availyourself to them and then find
kind of in your flow, the onesthat resonate with you and then
just go crush it.

This kind of matches your thinking about
Tibetan Buddhism, right?
I mean, I think there's a flow.
I remember when I met with you,there was a point you're like I
took six weeks off to go toTibet, right.

Brad Stroh (48:39):
Tibetan Bhutan.

I wrote, didn't you do something like that and
you wrote a book on it.

Brad Stroh (48:53):
I did.
I wrote a novel about thepursuit of the Panchan Lama, but
yeah, this is for anotherpodcast sometime.
But yeah, I think founding abusiness is the combination of
analytical chops and really deepthinking, with understanding,
problem statements and beingopen to markets, problems,
opportunities and the creativejourney along that.
Yeah.

That's great, okay .
Next question I have is asAchieve scaled at first it was
freedom financial scaled fromtwo broken tables to nearly
3,000 employees.
You've highlighted theimportance of strategically
knowing what to say no to infostering innovation, alongside
aligning your best and brightestaround key leverage points.
So how do you communicate andreinforce these specific no

(49:23):
decisions across your large anddiverse teams?
What mechanisms are in place toensure that prioritizing
focused innovation doesn'tinadvertently stifle the
entrepreneurial tinkering atheart that likely fueled
achieves early growth?

Brad Stroh (49:36):
Yeah, well, I'd say there's different phases, right?
So idea identification zero toone, validating a business,
scaling a business running ascale, running at mega scale
kind of where we are now.
Where I am now, it's resourceplanning, it's ICE frameworks,
it's probability weightedoutcome with complexity, knowing
the constraints of resourcesand capital, and kind of talent

(49:58):
development.
That's kind of how we say no.
Now is an analytical frameworkto risk and return, and you
still do want to have atinkering budget and innovation
budget, so you're taking theright risks.
A lot of that for us right nowis in AI.
Look, if I go back to the earlydays, though, what you say no
to is incredibly importantbecause you have such limited
resources.
I think the way you get to knowin the early days, when you

(50:20):
really don't have product marketfit or you're just trying to
validate viability of aneconomic model and consumer
situation, you got to fail fast.
I would say shortening oriteration cycles in the early
days was a key determinant ofsuccess.

What's a win that you had.
What's like something where youI mean you've had many
victories, but what's one whereyou tried, it didn't work.
You thought it was going to bea winner, it just didn't work
out.

Brad Stroh (50:43):
We've launched a couple of products that didn't
work.
They're too labor intensive orinefficient or we didn't think
the value prop was high enoughfor consumer.
The wins that we've had, youknow we don't.
We don't win the Superbowl.
There's not an end state whenyou're running a business like
mine, it's a journey.
So I'd say it's more ofaccumulation of millions of
microscopic wins, which is aclient testimonial that says
you've changed my life and yourteam's great.

But I remember you still had the handwritten
version with their picture justup on the wall.
It was beautiful.

Brad Stroh (51:09):
We still do.
I think storytelling is sovaluable in running a business
and CEO in life is telling.
Our customer stories are waymore important than CEO story
and our employees stories.
But look, I got a good one.
I just saw the text from you inprep for this pod and the one
right before that was you hadtexted me not too long ago
saying one of your friend's sonswas an engineer in my company I
don't know who it was and thatthey love the culture and they

(51:30):
love the team and they loveworking here.
To me, those are the wins thatI think stack and, you know,
keep me motivated and keep megoing and consistent with
running a business how I want to, and values with a team and,
you know, personally growing andbeing challenged.
Those are all wins for meAnother one.

you're a product guy at Heartbrite.
Is there a favorite that youhave that specific product
innovation most proud ofembodies?
You have this passion for userexperience.
Is there one I know you've donea whole bunch of products or
many iterations of a similarproduct innovation.
Is there one that just gets you?

Brad Stroh (51:59):
I know you did billscom I got a couple I'd say
like recency bias.
I am loving the personalizationwork that we're doing with AI
of mapping journeys and helpingconnect a consumer to the best
path to move forward with thebest product.
I just like loving and thevelocity of testing in a purely
digital environment where youcan just launch lots of variants
and watch consumers be happy ornot as satisfied.

(52:22):
I'm loving that.
I really like our digitalbudgeting tool called Money
Leftover free for consumers.
I think it's super powerful Alot of the stuff we talked about
in the early conversation ofhelping a consumer set up goals,
understand their financialconstraints, set a goal each
individual month for how muchthey want to save and then
helping them set up theconstraints and helping them see

(52:43):
in the future.
It literally has a roadmap, likea roadmap street visualized of
your bills that are upcoming andwhat your financial future is
going to look like.
I'm a big fan of that.
I think things that reallyimprove the lives of the
customers we serve those areprobably the ones that I love.

I think the most fun now.
I'm with you.
I've tried so many differentproducts in my own business and
I'm having the most fun with AI,because a lot of things that
I've dreamed up for years thatwould take forever to build, we
can build really quickly andtest really quickly and put it
out to market quickly.
Yeah, the velocity is soexciting.

Brad Stroh (53:11):
It's addicting to just constantly now be
innovating and changing andtrying to drive out.
This is real, you know.
I mean, I've been in financialservices for a long time.
I was cynical on Bitcoin not asa speculative tool I mean,
obviously that's paid off but asa transaction value AI, I could
not be a bigger believer in andtotally transforming the way

(53:31):
that we interact, transact andcompanies like mine deliver
services to consumers.
So yeah, recency bias would beall the AI stuff that's great,
all right.

We always ask our guests to name a significant
historical event or person ormovement that inspired you.
You answered anyone who ledwith heart and drove change
Gandhi, mandela, mlk, lincoln sowhat in particular about them
lights you up?

Brad Stroh (53:52):
I think all those would be.
You know, the Dalai Lama todaywould probably resonate, which
is standing up for what youbelieve in in the face of
adversity, of sparking amovement and kind of lighting
the fire and the passion forthose who are following you,
speaking truth to power,changing society through your
personal beliefs and doingwhat's right.
Certainly everyone on that list, I think, would check that box.

So having courage.

Brad Stroh (54:16):
I think there has to be selflessness.
I think there'd probably besome humility that would
probably flow through all ofthose incredible leaders as well
, combined with a deep passionand persistence.
I think you know all thosepeople.

I think would inspire me in many ways and many
more, but those would beexamples of why that's great.
I really appreciate that andrespect it and definitely see it
.
I love learning about gamechangers.

Brad Stroh (54:39):
What was your answer to this question?

It depends on the day, but I would agree with you
on these game changers.
I'm a big fan of Gandhi,mandela.
Of course I know MLK.
He embraced the nonviolentmovement that Gandhi brought
about and thought he could makethat change and had to deal with
all the violent consequences ofthat Lincoln.
I mean, what an incrediblydifficult decision to have your
country be torn up and thensticking with it and have

(55:02):
everyone go against you, butthen sticking with your beliefs.

Brad Stroh (55:05):
How about a sad?
Common theme is a lot of themultimately sacrificed their
lives for pursuing us.

You have to be willing to, I think, one of
these things.
You have to be willing to go tothe end, otherwise your
followers won't be willing to goto the end, or the people that
join in your movement.
So you have to be willing totake it all the way, and these
folks just have that, and so Irespect anyone that is willing
to go against the grain, andthat's why I do this show,
because I want to bring that tothe world in a business context.
So, brad, I got a bunch ofquick Q&A, so I'm going to throw

(55:33):
a bunch of questions at you.
You're really good at thisanyways, but think about it as a
quick, one-line answer.

Brad Stroh (55:38):
All right, fire away .

What's something you thought you'd have figured
out by now, but are stillcompletely confused by Parenting
Nice.
It's complicated, it iscomplicated.
You can do everything right,and they'll still go a different
way.
I love that answer.
If you were to give yourcurrent anxiety or biggest worry
a name and personality, whatwould you call it and what would

(56:00):
you say to it?
God?

Brad Stroh (56:01):
probably excess ambition combined with
impatience that just want to doeverything all at once.
And 23 years in, to justunderstand, it's okay to take a
breath.

Nice and you are taking some of those breaths,
right, I think you're traveling.
No, I think you're spendingtime on the East Coast.
You're spending time with yourkids.
I think it's a really Family isalways first.

Brad Stroh (56:23):
Family always will be first.
But I do have just a burningdesire personally,
professionally, with Achieve, tojust do more, make a bigger
impact, that's right.
To just make a bigger dent onthe world yeah, that's awesome.

What's a piece of conventional wisdom that
everyone around you accepts butyou secretly think might be
wrong.

Brad Stroh (56:40):
I'm going to stay out of politics for a brief
moment because I think there's alot there that is scary to me
and, I think, misplaced.
If you do first principles,thinking how about this?
I'll say AI is going to be anincredible impact on companies
and society.
I'll bet it'll be slower tochange than we think, not
because of the technology or thecapability, because you're

(57:02):
gonna have to change humanbehavior, business process,
reorganization of some justlong-held beliefs that I don't
think society's ready for.
So I'll bet you the tools arethere and available and it'll go
slower than we think.

I run into this every single day with my own
team.
My team loves to innovate, butevery time I see something I'm
like you know, why couldn't youdo this?
Can you do this as an agent?
Right, and they embrace it, butthey have to be nudged a bit
because you're so used to doingthings a particular way.
So I'm with you there.
If you could have a 30 minuteconversation with any version of
yourself from the past, whatage would you pick and what

(57:38):
would you want to discuss?

Brad Stroh (57:40):
That's a great, these are great questions.
Totally unprepared for this,but okay, I'd say old enough and
wise enough that I couldprocess the wisdom or the
feedback in a non-defensive ornon-threatening way and not be
freaked out that somehow there'sa time machine built in the
world.
So I'd say somewhere whereprefrontal cortex is formed or

(58:02):
you know along the way, butyoung enough where the wisdom
could drive change in behaviorand impact.
So I will say on my collegegraduation day, Nice.

What would you discuss?
Just a topic that you discuss.

Brad Stroh (58:17):
Probably just self-awareness, some things to
develop and work on and thinkabout and reflect on Be more
aware of others' needs.
Don't try to be too ambitioustoo early, it'll all happen.
The power and importance ofrelationships and friends and
maintain those friendships thatyou've got there and probably a
little bit about what's comingin the world.
I'd probably say buy Bitcoin atlike 10 cents.

Buy a bunch of things when they're cheap and
throw a little bit into thoseAwesome, that's a great one.
Do you have a favorite lifemotto that you come back to and
share with friends, either inwork or life?

Brad Stroh (58:47):
I got a bunch of things at work that I say a lot
but is be intentional, bedeliberate.
Don't let circumstances kind ofdrive your behavior in your
life, Like you don't own outcome.
You are in charge of yourdecisions where your energy is
what you choose to focus on.
Just because it's something wedid yesterday does not mean we
have to do the same thing today.
But that goes for life, family,for everything.
It's just first principlesthinking, and it's never too

(59:09):
late to change.
Always just kind of firstprinciples thinking.
And I think, as a CEO, theadvice of wisdom I give to young
founders is don't let theurgent outweigh the important.
Wisdom that was given to me byAriel but Chuck Holloway, one of
our early board members andkind of a legendary
entrepreneurial advisor inStanford community in our first
board meeting, kind of reallybeat that into me, which is

(59:33):
you're going to have constantstruggles, but you got to make
sure you're focused on theimportant things, not the urgent
things.
You don't want to be afirefighter, you want to be an
empire builder, and to be anempire builder you got to be an
architect of your own life.
You got to have a vision, yougot to stay true to it.
And back to one of your earliergreat questions was you got to
know what to say no to, which isyeah, don't let the urgent

(59:53):
outweigh the important.

I love that.
All right, If you were to teacha masterclass on something
that's not your job, somethingyou're genuinely passionate
about, what would that course becalled?

Brad Stroh (01:00:03):
I'm so passionate about so many different things
right now but I'd say my latestreally just deep curiosity is
the evolution of ancientcivilizations and different
leadership models, howcivilizations kind of formed
Roman empire, most relevant, butHellenistic British empire you
go back to Assyrians.

Rajiv Parikh (01:00:24):
What's one that you're on right now?

I think like kind of the Genghis Khan, I think is
really really interesting.
Famous, but really for 20 yearshe was inside of another
leader's ecosystem and was justa great conqueror, but then to
conquer for his next 20 yearsand have one of the largest
empires, spanning Mongolia,China, all the way to Japan,
obviously, all the way throughMiddle East, Turkey.

(01:00:46):
And he did not have a capitalcity, he did not have a central
government entity how differentis that than the Roman Empire?
How different is that?
Everything flew through RomanEmpire and to me, but there's
also some aspects of commonalityand then different leadership
models.
So I think it'd be leadershipand evolution of ancient
civilizations Something that I'mjust really intrigued by right

(01:01:08):
now.
There's something in there thatI think is really interesting.

I would go to your course.
All right, brad.
Final question what's yourpersonal moonshot?

Zero click financial services, yeah, but to make the
biggest dent that I possiblycan in my lifetime on improving
consumers' lives who don't havebetter alternatives and put as
many people as possible on abetter financial path, that's my
moonshot.

I love it, brad.
As usual, you're always greatto talk with, always great to
learn from and have greatconversations with.
I know it's been some timesince we've last talked, but it
felt like another day with youfrom years ago.
It's such a thrill to see whatyou and Andrew have achieved,
what you've built with yourfamily and your life and your
employees, and how many millionsof people that you've affected
in a super positive way.
So I really appreciate havingyou on.

I appreciate that.
I appreciate the time, thebeauty of old friendships.
It's great.

All right, brad, thank you so much.
Thanks.
So that was a gem of aconversation, Brad.
Such an interesting person,from his roots his
entrepreneurial roots to hisfamily and his care about family
, to how he's built his companyalong with his co-founder and

(01:02:14):
how they've stayed together allthese years.
If you look at his managementteam, his leadership team many
have been with him just throughdecades he's the type of person
that has been able to combinelow capital to start seeing a
great business opportunity,having a vision for helping
consumers in a very underservedsegment of FinTech and serving

(01:02:35):
them successfully over decadesand continuing to build and
being excited about what he'sdoing because it has such an
impact and this willingness tochange as he goes.
Things we didn't cover would besome of the amazing go-to-market
innovations that he's had.
He's a master of that.
It's one of the things Ilearned about him the discipline
of how he runs his business,but I think there's a heart and
soul to Brad that I think isimportant for all of us to learn

(01:02:57):
about and embrace, and so Ilove how he's always thinking
about first principles, beintentional, be deliberate and
emphasizing the important overthe urgent.
So these are just things thatyou should live by if you're not
just being a business personbut building a great life.
So excited to have him on theshow.
All right, thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the pod, pleasetake a moment to rate it and
comment.
You can find us on Apple,spotify, youtube and everywhere

(01:03:20):
podcasts can be found.
This show is produced by ArunShah and edited by Laura Ballant
.
I'm your host, rajiv Parikhfrom Position Squared.
We are a leading growthmarketing company.
Lots of AI capabilities thatwe'll be releasing to the market
soon.
Based in Silicon Valley, comevisit us at position2.com.
This has been an FNFunnyproduction and we'll catch you

(01:03:40):
next time.
Remember, folks, be evercurious.

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Flipping the Information Game Banks Play/Brad Stroh - Achieve, Recession, Lacrosse ~ Spark of Ages Ep 44

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Flipping the Information Game Banks Play/Brad Stroh - Achieve, Recession, Lacrosse ~ Spark of Ages Ep 44