At just 31-years-old Alexa von Tobel is the CEO of LearnVest, a financial planning and resources company that she founded herself, and last year she sold her company for a cool $250 million. She was a quarter of the way to being a billionaire by the age of 30, all from her entrepreneurial skills and business acumen. Simply stated, Alexa von Toble is a total badass entrepreneur and when she says there’s ONE key piece of advice that young entrepreneurs need to succeed then you should listen to her because she has a proven track record of success.
Even after selling her company for $250 million Alexa von Tobel has stayed on as CEO of LearnVest, and she sat down with Portia Crowe of Business Insider to offer up her one piece of advice that every young entrepreneur needs:
“Get mentors.”
(She) told Business Insider how she found her own mentors — and how she knew they were keepers.
“How I started that process was just being really open to my environment, just paying attention,” von Tobel said.
When she met someone she clicked with, she tried to make it really easy for them to agree to meeting again.
She’d say something like: “Hey, do you mind if I take 15 minutes? I will bring you coffee on any schedule — I have three questions.”
After getting her foot in the door, von Tobel found she could really get her mentors onboard long-term by making them fall in love with her company and the problem she was trying to solve with it.
“I think what you have to find is one or two or three people that are going to give it to you straight and push you harder,” von Tobel said. “You have to be comfortable with people telling you that you’re not doing well.”
The key, she said, is being willing to take negative feedback and say, “Thank you for telling me things that I can do better because now I can actually do them better.”
It’s easy to get out of college and dive into your career, thinking you have all the requisite skills to get ahead by doing everything yourself. If you’ve got a boss or colleagues you don’t believe in then this can often be the case, because you don’t look around you and see a wealth of experience and knowledge. That’s why you should really heed this advice and always be seeking out mentors, specifically the mentorship of successful people who also have balance in their lives outside of work.
Anyways, for more advice on entrepreneurship and starting your own company you can click on over to Business Insider’s interview with Alexa von Tobel, and to check out her financial planning and services company you can CLICK HERE.