He Helped Scale Schwab Bank And Has Now Raised $225 Million To Build Earned Wealth, A Tech-Driven Financial Services Firm For Doctors

In a captivating conversation with John Clendening, we delve into his incredible journey from the beaches of Florida to leading multi-billion-dollar companies and venturing into the startup world.

John shares his unique perspectives on leadership, the art of bringing differentiation in segments, and his experiences in corporate giants and agile startups. He also talks about raising $200M for his startup.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

Early Beginnings

John was born in Alabama but spent his early years in the warmth of Destin, Florida’s beaches. The simplicity of life, barefoot adventures, and a love for the outdoors characterized his formative years.

However, John’s family’s move to Wisconsin marked the beginning of a journey that would eventually lead him to the heights of corporate America. From a young age, he was captivated by the world of business and the concept of being part of a big company that was growing.

His fascination with brands and the stock market set him apart from his peers. By the time he reached Northwestern University, where he pursued an undergraduate degree and then an MBA at Harvard B School, John had already decided that business was his calling.

He found inspiration in the College of Commerce and Industry at Northwestern, where industry leaders shared insights on influencing people, leadership, and innovation, planting the seeds for his future endeavors. John also took Spanish for a couple of years, which broadened his horizons.

Consulting and Problem-Solving

John’s career began in consulting, where he honed his problem-solving skills working in large and smaller corporations. He describes this period as when he learned to approach any business challenge confidently, rapidly gaining a deep understanding of different industries.

John learned the strategy of thinking about big problems, breaking them down into small problems, and then tackling them. This ability to quickly size up businesses, situations, and projects and devise solutions became a cornerstone of his career.

The ability to jump in and think deeply about what was necessary to navigate the learning curve quickly allowed John to transition seamlessly between companies and industries. He built self-confidence and the art of viewing the big picture, which would be helpful down the line.

John’s career as a consultant helped him develop the right toolkit to size up a business in terms of its people, products or services, and economics. He observed how few people knew how the company made money, its consumers’ perspectives, or any new disruptive ideas that may derail it.

John could make a positive impact relatively quickly because he would go to the customers’ side and understand their needs–a valuable marketing approach.

Consumer Insights at Pepsi and Coca-Cola

John’s journey took him to the world of consumer packaged goods, where he worked for PepsiCo and Coca-Cola—two of the biggest competitors in the industry. This experience was crucial in sharpening his focus on consumer insights and differentiation.

John learned the importance of understanding unmet consumer needs and digging deep for even the smallest edges in a highly competitive market. This mindset of putting the consumer first became a guiding principle in his later ventures.

John was super sharp at segmentation and realized that comments and concepts can develop a sharp edge and orientation but are lost in financial services. Getting recruited from PepsiCo to work at Coke gave him insights into the rivalry between the two companies and their differences.

The Leap into Startups

In 1998, John made the bold decision to leave the comfort of large corporations and dive into the unknown world of startups. The potential of the burgeoning e-commerce industry was too strong to resist, and he found himself at the helm of innovative ventures.

Top-tier investors like Benchmark Capital backed these ventures. While these startups presented challenges, including the dot-com bust, they also offered John a crash course in the new economy and an opportunity to build something from the ground up.

John recalls how he had some really great concepts, which he shared with an individual he had worked with at Frito-Lay. This person had recently become the CEO of a new company that was already a couple of rounds into capital raise.

Working at this company taught John what needed to be done to build a sustainable and profitable business. He was also motivated to keep his career vibrant by jumping into what looked like the next wave–eCommerce.

In John’s opinion, the experience boosted his level of understanding in a way that would never have been possible in a traditional company. Looking back, he talks about loving the speed of startups and their concept of time-bound decision-making, unlike big companies.

John enjoyed the high-energy, massively committed people in startups and their level of engagement, which made it easier to lead the environment. By this time, he had built two startups but had been unsuccessful at raising funding for them.

Return to Corporate and the Lessons of Leadership–Working with Charles Schwab

Once the dot-com bust happened, John was ready to return to a bigger platform and re-establish his career. He was also motivated to apply what he had learned in the last four to five years to a bigger platform. Thus, John returned to the corporate world, joining Charles Schwab in 2004.

When John joined Schwab Bank, it had not yet recovered from the dot com bust when trading velocity had just collapsed and showed no signs of improving. His strategy was to use some of the lessons he had learned–a combination of electronic and human-led client experience models.

Schwab Bank had perfected online transacting and was an established brand in financial services. John moved to San Francisco with his family, where the company was headquartered. Six months down the line, Charles Schwab returned to the company.

John credits much of his success to the mentorship of Chuck Schwab, whose bold leadership, emphasis on a positive culture, and visionary thinking left a lasting impact on him. John considers him a true business icon, an amazing leader in that space, and a true innovator.

He relates an instance that is a testament to Charles Schwab’s ingenuity. When deregulation hits commission pricing, everyone raises their prices, which is the typical Wall Street response. However, Chuck would apply the appropriate amount of insights to help people trade.

John was instrumental in transforming the company into a new version–to become an advisory firm. He leveraged its lower cost structure and multi-channel model to steer the company to new heights boldly.

As John recalls, Charles Schwab’s philosophy was to put the client at the center and ensure that the company was consumer-centric. At Schwab Bank, this work ethic is not on a piece of paper or a placard; it’s how the company operates.

Segue to Blucora

After his 10-year stint at Schwab Bank, John worked for a while at Blucora and then segued into his next project–Earned Wealth. The way he sees it, turning companies around requires the right amount of discernment to understand why they are fatally flawed and if they are fixable.

John recognizes the power of resilience and the ability to work through difficulty when things seem to get darker just before the business is performing again. He also points to the challenges of raising funding, orienting the team around optimism, and finding a way to win.

Having an optimistic edge is essential in challenging environments and has served John well. He believes in going back to the consumers and aligning the business model with them. That’s the sure-shot way to be accountable and make the business profitable.

The Birth of Earned Wealth

John’s experiences in corporate giants and startups eventually led him to found Earned Wealth–a company focused on providing differentiated wealth-building and protection services for doctors and solving their most pressing needs in their practice and individual lives.

Drawing from his time at Schwab and his early experiences at a large bank, John realized the need for a holistic approach to financial services that considers the entire financial picture, including taxes and investments, to serve the client’s best interests truly.

John saw that, for the bank, a consumer is a set of digits in a flat file that’s associated with their profitability. There’s no sense of segmentation or providing any real value to the customers.

At Blucora, they had been experimenting with a technology that empowers a channel of CPAs to capture tax alpha or tax advantage across the entire life of a consumer. John used this concept to build a segment-driven financial services firm providing bespoke products and services.

Doctors have a unique career trajectory that impacts every aspect of their financial life. Earned Wealth’s vision is to build and leverage deep technology to automate broad advice-giving and optimize it across interconnected decisions involving investing and taxes.

Earned Wealth also assists them with getting the right insurance that links to their assets and advises them on optimizing the sale of their practice. Most physicians and dentists need this service since they have no idea what their practice is worth.

They struggled to recalibrate their entire financial life after that. And that’s where Earned Wealth comes in–to leverage tech to make it reliable, predictable, and scalable.

The Earned Wealth Business Model

The Earned Wealth revenue model is essentially a percentage of assets model for personal wealth management, much like a large registered investment advisor. The difference is that they have a roadmap that includes taxes, insurance optimization, trusts, wills, and estate planning.

At Earned Wealth, they optimize the client’s balance sheet to demonstrate their loan profile versus opportunities to invest and a lot more. They also do financial statement preparation, retirement planning, and optimizing their financial life with regard to their practice.

Earned Wealth also helps increase the cash flow of that practice so practitioners have more to invest in the markets or alternative investments so that, over time, they can double or triple their money by retirement.

Raising Funding for Earned Wealth

To date, the company has raised around $225M. Juxtapose, the creation-oriented investment firm that partnered with John to build the Earned Wealth concept, backed the seed round.

Further rounds were led by Hudson Structured Capital Management and growth equity firms–Summit Partners and Silversmith Capital.

John explains how he was keen on working only with top-tier investors despite the deep scrutiny they did. Earned Wealth has pivoted from venture-backed, having gotten to Series A, into a good-sized growth equity round based on the strength of the unique approach that they are taking.

John specifically approached investors backing financial services and FinTech companies, particularly healthcare care investors. He has taken his time building trust with them and did his due diligence, looking for the ideal alignment around vision, mission, and unique purpose in the world.

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Vision for Earned Wealth

Working closely with his team, John has also built an acquisition-driven strategy for the future. He wants to accelerate his vision to be fully comprehensive with the capital to build up the tech and extend reach to thousands of additional doctors.

As John sees it, becoming a doctor involves severe financial stress and the possibility of student debts worth $350K or more. His vision is to ensure that more people make it through med school without opting out of actually getting into clinical care.

Once more, doctors should see medicine as a fantastic profession with the assurance that their finances will be secure. Earned Wealth can transform how they think about their careers, financial lives, and long-term well-being.

Conclusion

John’s journey is a testament to the power of adaptability, the importance of consumer-centric thinking, and the value of bold leadership.

From his early days in consulting to leading iconic brands and pioneering in the startup world, John Clendening has consistently applied these principles to achieve remarkable success.

Today, with Earned Wealth, he continues to innovate and push the boundaries of what’s possible in the financial services industry.

Listen to the full podcast episode to know more, including:

• John Clendening gained invaluable confidence and problem-solving skills through his diverse consulting experiences, enabling him to adapt to new business environments rapidly.
• His time at Pepsi and Coca-Cola taught him the power of deep consumer understanding and differentiation in competitive markets.
• Transitioning from large corporations to startups allowed John to embrace speed, innovation, and the importance of timely decision-making.
• Working alongside Chuck Schwab reinforced the importance of bold moves, positive culture, and visionary thinking in driving business success.
• His turnaround experiences highlighted the need for resilience, optimism, and a consumer-first approach to revive struggling businesses.
• His banking and financial services experiences inspired the vision for Earned Wealth, emphasizing a holistic, client-centric approach to wealth management.
• John’s career reflects a continuous journey of learning, adapting, and applying diverse experiences to create impactful business solutions.

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Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.