In this episode, Jamie and Ana talk with Bill Crager, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Envestnet. For more than 20 years, Bill has been the mastermind behind Envestnet’s efforts to bring financial wellness to a broader audience through tech. In addition, Bill leads the expansion of the firm’s innovative financial wellness network.
With his late partner, Jud, Bill was always a big believer in technology – even during the age of slow dial-up connections. Bill believes advisors can bring true clarity and understanding to people’s finances by using data, tools and technology. Bill also pushes the industry to help people in every corner of the world find financial security.
Bill talks with Jamie and Ana about disrupting money, taking control of your financial life amid uncertainties and building business models that address diverse communities.
Key Takeaways
- The limitless possibilities in writing and storytelling.
- What is the relationship between people and money?
- How to disrupt money.
- The need for creating effective investment strategies for people.
- Dealing with uncertainties that lie ahead – good or bad.
- How to adapt to changes and responsibly serve clients.
- What freedom truly means, financially and in general.
- What it looks like to build business models for diverse communities using tech.
- Three ways to foster a genuine and open community.
- Rerouting traditional capital resources to a broader population.
- Dealing with loss and grief.
- The importance of having purpose in life.
Quotes
“People still have kind of awkward or strange or even dysfunctional relationships with money. So to me, it’s been about how do you solve that big gigantic question. And at the end of the day, money is a technology. It was invented to exchange value between you and me based on some transaction or some agreement that we had.” – Bill Crager
“We need to motivate and spark business models for people to go address communities and reflect that cultural identity of communities and do so in a way with the quality and skills that the highest net worth people in the world receive. It’s possible because of technology, because of data, because of the streamlined efficiency and distribution of all the infrastructure that we have today.” – Bill Crager
“If you’re purpose-driven, the rest of it just happens, you know, your financial world. All of it kind of happens because you’re driving behind something that’s meaningful. And if you have some luck, you’ll pull it off.” – Bill Crager
Links
- Bill Crager on LinkedIn
- Envestnet
- Jud Bergman
- Wired Magazine – December 1999 Issue
- The Essential Advisor: Building Value in the Investor-Advisor Relationship by Bill Crager
- Chase Bank
- Bitcoin
- 2021 United States Capitol Attack
- Georgetown University
- Lisa Bruce