Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Change Maker: Entrepreneur Brit Morin on Teaching Your Kids the Value of a Dollar and Relationship OKRs

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

Nicole catches up with Brit Morin, founder of Brit + Co and co-founder of Offline Ventures. They cover what it’s like to be romantic partners with your business partner, how to teach your kids how to save $$$ and which Silicon Valley strategies Brit uses at home. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Money rehabbers, you get it. When you're trying to have it all, you end up doing a lot of juggling. You have to balance your work, your friends, and everything in between. So when it comes to your finances, the last thing you need is more juggling. That's where Bank of America steps in. With Bank of America, you can manage your banking, borrowing, and even investing all in one place. Their digital tools bring everything together under one roof, giving you a clear view of your finances whenever you need it. Plus, with Bank of America's wealth of expert guidance available at any time, you can feel confident that your

money is working as hard as you do. So why overcomplicate your money? Keep it simple with Bank of America, your one-stop shop for everything you need today and the goals you're working toward tomorrow. To get started, visit bofa.com slash newprosmedia. That's b-o-f-a dot com slash n-e-w pros p-r-o-s media. bfa.com slash newprosmedia. Hey guys, are you ready for some money rehab? Wall Street has been completely upended by an unlikely player, GameStop. And should I have a 401k? You don't do it? No, I never do it. You think the whole world revolves around you and your money.

Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. As you know, every Friday we talk with a celebrity, a public figure making change in every sense of the word,

and along the way has been in or is still in money rehab. So today I'm talking with my friend Britt Morin. Britt is a badass boss, an entrepreneur, an investor. She left a comfy cozy job at Google when she was just 25 to start her own company, Britt & Co., which is this really cool online hub for classes, startup accelerators, and lifestyle topics. For Britt & Co., she raised $50 million in VC funding, and now she's funding projects herself with a new firm she co-founded called Offline Ventures. She's also business partners with her romantic partner and a mother of two. And like Britt, my household is also two finance nerds, so I wanted to talk with her about how she takes her business and her business strategies home with her.

Britt, welcome to Money Rehab. Hi. Oh, my gosh. Are you ready to play Money Rehab? Never have I ever. Yes, I'm ready. I'll ask you a question about your finances, and you can tell me if you have or you haven't made this money move. Never have I ever won a cash prize. I don't think I have.

Yeah, neither have I. But the day is young and I'm still very hopeful. Never have I ever asked how much a friend makes. Oh, I've definitely done that. And have friends asked you how much you make? No. Never have I ever sold a stock at a loss. I don't think I have. Did it, girl? Like a boss. Yeah, I'm a winner. Never have I ever argued with a child about money. Oh, I've definitely argued with my children about money. Never have I ever argued with a parent about money. I've definitely argued with my parents about money. Never have I ever been lied to about money. Haven't we all been lied to about money? And here is our fun layup. Britt, never have I ever pitched an investor. I definitely have pitched an investor probably too many times.

And you've raised 50 million bucks in VC funding. I mean, you're so impressive in a zillion ways, and that is quite an impressive feat. But you're on the flip side now. Yeah, I am on the flip side. I'm on both sides. There's a straddle going on here. I was always a great gymnast. Yeah. So Brit & Co is my company of 10 years. And, you know, I get pitched on the media side for that, like for coverage of other brands, a lot of PR companies, et cetera. Offline is a new venture fund that I started about a year ago with three other partners that is a hundred million dollar venture fund aiming to invest in early stage technology companies that are building new

types of products and services at the intersection of our online and offline lives. And we believe that over the last 10 years, some of the best investments were things like Airbnb and Uber and Peloton and DoorDash and all of these technologies that made our offline lives better, which is definitely the type of future we want to see more of. Who's we? Oh, well, we is myself, my husband, Dave Warren, which is so controversial to be working in a venture fund with a married couple. And then two other partners, Nate Bossard and James Higa,

who I've known for over a decade. So what's it like to work together and sleep together? We sort of have been doing that since the day we met. I mean, we literally have probably at least ideated 30 companies, of which we've launched probably five. And we've co-invested in probably 50. and we've co-invested in probably 50. Our very first apartment in North Beach of San Francisco had a ginormous nine-foot whiteboard across our dining room because we would eat dinner together while brainstorming business models. We're that nerdy. I love that. It's like co-creation in all senses.

Exactly. And we've literally co-created humans as well. So there's that. Yeah. You have two little boys. Yeah. Our two best investments of all time. And then did you guys really get on the same page? Because you grew up in Texas, you grew up in Montana, not from a lot of money. And as you were growing and building your own brands and companies and bank accounts and then bringing humans into the world, did you guys have a discussion about how you were going to raise them when it came to the value of money? Oh, it's so interesting how we grew up with totally different money mindsets and how those mindsets get entrenched in all of us

humans from such a young age. To your point, yeah, Dave grew up with parents on welfare, had to literally use food stamps at one point in his life. His grandfather, though, was fairly wealthy. So he always aspired to be super rich and wealthy like his grandfather one day. And he has this like pin it to the man mentality about money. Whereas I grew up totally middle class. Writing a $20 check for a field trip was kind of uncomfortable what we could do it. I paid my way through school. I had to use my allowance for all my clothes and extra spending.

So I was like always on a budget. And so what happened now, like fast forward, I live in this budget mentality, which is like, okay, like how are we going to budget our household spending every month? And this much for groceries and this much for blah, blah, blah. And this much, you know, like I want to be profitable each month in our family budget. And Dave is like either totally anti-spending money or let's spend a bunch right now. It's like very much the two extremes. So how did you rethink the money mindset that you guys had growing up and say, hey, this is not the way it's going to be moving forward? I think it came back to like therapy, to be honest. Like we weren't really aware of how we were raised until we dug into it a little bit.

We actually use this app called Lasting, which I really highly recommend people download. It is a couples therapy app that takes you through modules, everything from like communication to money to sex, basically all the things you would ever fight about in a relationship. You go through modules and each person has to answer a set of questions about how they feel about certain topics and then it aggregates your answers together and it gives you discussion topics based on like where you might have vast differences. And this was probably the first time we really talked about money because like I said, Dave can be like a totally free spender

or he'll be like very money insecure. Whereas I'm very like baseline, but really like rational with money. And in fact, it, it freaks me out to be a big spender. This was a hurdle I had to get through on the investing front. So just rationalizing the way we think about dollars versus the impact or the sort of like net return opportunity. And that can go for everything like groceries to making investments and everything in between. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money rehab will be right back. Now, back to business. It has been really interesting to think about how are we raising kids and what kind of money mindset are they going to get from us? And how do we align on the best type of mentality for our family?

And we've come to realize like that, that could mean separate bank accounts. So Dave can have his like highs and lows of his spending moments. And I can sort of manage the operational costs of the day to day. And we sort of can navigate it in that way. And then with our kids, it's also sort of like, you know, they're young, they're five and six, but when you start doing allowance, how do we do like a give, save, spend jar situation where we're teaching them the importance of saving and giving in addition to spending and how they're allocating their dollars. So that's all stuff that we want to start actually implementing in the next couple of years now that

they're finally learning a little bit of math themselves. So instead, we're doing it physically by saying, right, we're actually making things or giving things away, physical things that they already have. So I'm asking them like, okay, every month, let's pick a toy and pick who we're going to send it to, you know, and like just getting them into the mindset of giving and, you know, picking something that really means a lot to them that they really like and cherish. And, but they see that another kid might want, might need that more than they do. So, so starting stuff, and then once we do create an allowance for them, maybe moving to quarters next, are they getting it regardless of what they do

for chores? Or are you thinking about like a little tiered system? So there's actually a lot of psychology studies that say you should not reward kids for chores because it's creating the idea that they only are supposed to do work for money instead of building in a habit that doing work is just part of how you should live your life as a human. And so imagine them now going off to college. They don't get an allowance anymore. Are they still going to clean their room?

Are they still going to like bathe? I don't know. I have boys, you know, so I'm like mostly worried that they're going to like not know how to cook or won't take showers when they're in college. So we are going to probably do this based off of like some qualitative and quantitative goals because this is the problem of having entrepreneurial parents. Oh, these poor boys. We have family OKRs. Do you know what OKRs are? I was just about to say that. I was like,

I'm assuming you guys have OKRs. You're going to have OKRs for the fours. Objectives and key results. Objectives and key results. Nerd central. Total nerd central. We do this personally. We do this for our relationship and we do this for, well, we want to start doing this for our family. We haven't started that yet, but we think about quarterly, what are the goals we're setting and how do those accrue annually to our big annual goals? And we actually set them at our anniversary. So, which is in July. So it's not well, we do like our annual review at our anniversary. And so which is in July. So it's not calendar year. Well, we do like our annual review at our anniversary. And so we're like, how was the last year? Did we hit our goals

qualitatively and quantitatively? What goals do we want to set for the next year? And, and yeah, we, we do like little check-ins throughout the year. Nerd alert. I know. Oh my gosh. Nerd alert. And so what are your objectives and key results for the boys? Well, that's, yeah, those are the ones we haven't started that. But I would say things like on a scale of one to 10, did you treat other people with kindness this quarter? One to 10, did you try, were you open to trying new things? Right now we're just trying to get them to like eat any vegetable possible, not

be freaked out by like playing a new sport that they might not be good at yet, all that stuff. Maybe we would do, did you do things without having to be asked twice, like getting in the bathtub. But we also love creativity and ideation and invention. So we really want to reward them for coming up with like new ideas or figuring out a way to do something that that no one else has thought of before. And for instance, my son Ansel is always thinking about like a better way to build something like

in his bathtub, we have a faucet that's kind of not working. So he used duct tape to like make it spew out the right way because it was kind of going everywhere. And so like that was like a task of ingenuity that could get some bonus points in his OKRs. So we'll have to figure out how we quantify stuff like that. But I want to sort of like reward them for being really brave and courageous and creative more than I necessarily care about

cleaning your room every day because I really want them to be self-expressive and kind before they are taskers for the rest of their lives. Here's a tip from Brit you can take straight to the bank. Make an OKR for yourself, which is objectives and key results. Here's how you do it. an OKR for yourself, which is objectives and key results. Here's how you do it. Choose one of your objectives. Like Britt said, it could be a money goal. It could be personal. And then think about what the key results would be along the journey of reaching that goal. What you want to do is make key results that you can use to track your progress. Like if your objective is to start a business, a key result might be getting an LLC. Or for a personal OKR, if you want to run a marathon, a key result might be signing up for a 5K.

So today, decide on one objective and then decide on your key results and tell me about them at Money Rehab Show on Instagram. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartMedia. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Catherine Law. Money Rehab is edited and engineered by Brandon Dickert with help from Josh Fisher. Executive producers are Mangesh Hatikadur and Will Pearson. Huge thanks to the OG Money Rehab supervising producer, Michelle Lanz, for her pre-production and development work. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all. You spend my money, money, money, money, money, money.