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When I was very young, maybe 12 years, I began to make investments.

Well, when I was very young, maybe 12 years, I began to make investments.

I started LearnVest with a tiny savings account where I paid designers, technologists, and even bartered... Because I started with paying for things myself with my own savings, it sharpened my focus of how to spend money.

I learned how to lend money by cleaning up the messes of others who had made loans before me.

Whenever I made money I invested in myself... I bought whatever I needed to make my career better. I never really spent money on other stuff, like buying expensive cars.

And at a relatively early age, ten or so, I invested my first share of stock. And I used to follow, look at companies and so forth. But throughout the whole period, and indeed right through my college years, while I was involved in the stock market, always interested in finance, I never thought of it as a full-time job.

I enjoyed high school and college, and I think I learned a lot, but that was not really my focus. My focus was on trying to figure out what businesses to start.

Every single thing I learned about marketing and building my business, I learned from my mom, and she had never been in the workforce. She just had great practical sense.

Early in my investment-banking career, I realized I was on a path that others had set out for me.

If there is anything I would do differently in my life, it is that I would study business more. I'm trying to teach my daughter Chloe at an early age about investing and money so she's not afraid of it.