Episode 055
Marla Sofer
Is your money working for your values, or is it just sitting in a bank? Join Alice Tang as she speaks with Marla Sofer, a 25-year financial services veteran and founder of Knowmee. Marla reveals why “money is power” and how women can leverage their financial resources to become catalysts for global change. She shares her transition from big-name firms like JP Morgan and BlackRock to launching a startup at age 46, driven by a deep belief that wealth should serve a purpose. Learn how to find your voice through your money and why the most important life decisions are never just about the numbers.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
"Money is the opportunity for you to support the issues and the experiences that you want to create for people way beyond your bubble, your circle of influence".
0:27 Alice Tang: Welcome to Women’s Million Dollar Conversations with Alice Tang, where we share stories from successful business women who have saved, earn, or sold over a million dollars and discuss how they built their success and insights to help you achieve your goals. Now, let’s join the conversation. Good morning everyone. I’m Alice Tang in Portland, Oregon, the host of Women’s Million Dollar Conversation. Today I’m sitting with a wonderful new friend who have the same value regarding the financial industry and later on we’ll hear more about what she’s going to say. But first let me welcome Mar the founder of know me. Mer welcome.
Marla Sofer: Thank you so much Alice. Happy to be here. I am a financial services executive. I spent nearly 25 years deep in financial services, investment operations. I was a private banker and then I worked for six years at JP Morgan where I managed relationships with West Coast asset managers, not West Coast, everything Mississippi West, the entire western half of the United States. And then I went to BlackRock for five years and oversaw operations there with key providers. And then a decade ago, I jumped into fintech. very inspired by wanting to make our industry better for its clients and helping them find the right financial solutions. So have been in fintech for a decade. I ran partnerships at four companies. I worked at Microsoft focused on financial services strategy and two and a half years ago I launched a company called Nomi. I’ve been an insider in Wall Street for so long and I was very frustrated about how hard it is for an individual to really align their money with what matters to make the right investment and financial choices for the impact and the purpose that they want to have in this world. So Nomi is the antidote. We are the tool to help with that. We help people very clearly articulate what do they want their money to do and we guide them there using the latest financial psychology.
2:41 Alice Tang: Yeah, that is exactly what um before this recording what we talked about the holistic financial identity so that it’s not just to accumulate. We talk about how much we love the book die with zero. Not that we want to end up with zero dollar in our bank, but the fact that there are the usefulness of money to empower us to do the things we would like to do and to give or help the people around us and create the most important memories in our life. And I know you and I have talked a lot about that. The wonderful thing about that conversation is I know no me is based on that foundation in doing it.
3:27 Alice Tang: Could you speak to your experience about your first million dollars so that it could take us through the steps?
3:36 Marla Sofer: Sure. So I would probably be lying if I told you I knew exactly at what point my my bank account hit a million dollars. I don’t know. And I don’t think I was tracking it, which is probably the best thing you could be doing if you’re a client investing in the you just don’t look and then it grows and all of a sudden and you look and you’re like, “Oh, wow.” But I would say that I’m a very hard worker. I’ve always been a hard worker and I started pretty early in financial services and I worked full-time in Manhattan and during the time I was working at my first financial job anyway where I was working at a private bank. I went to school evenings. I was getting my MBA part-time and I would say I got into the right roles mostly by working my way up and hustling and having elbows sometimes and I was often surrounded by people who had Ivy League educations and had gone through analyst programs and came from a lot more money and that wasn’t my story. My story was very much I kind of I made my way to the right seats in great roles in the best companies in the world. I’ve worked at JP Morgan, Black Rockck, Microsoft. I ran strategy. I was involved in mergers and acquisitions at Invesco. I’ve had some incredible experiences and some of them paid me pretty well. So that’s I would think how I got there.
5:03 Alice Tang: Awesome. Awesome. If I were to ask you how can the financial industry can get better to seeing clients to do a holistic approach.
5:10 Marla Sofer: I think one of the things that the financial industry struggles a lot with is making the factf finding and discovery process delightful, engaging and helping the client understand this is totally about you. This is a way that serves you. Historically, our industry, we are required to do a know your customer assessment. I think for the industry to get better at seeing clients as holistically, there is an integrity and an authenticity in the way discovery happens to serve them, the client. I’m here to serve you. You’re the driver. The more I know about you, the more I understand your language and your goals and your values and what you want your money to achieve, the better we are going to be at helping you achieve those things. we are going to show up and make your money the tool to live your best life. So I think that is the missing component in the industry getting better at seeing clients as holistic individuals not just numbers. I think when you speak purely in the language of numbers they doubt their trust because it doesn’t it’s not about them because when you’re just talking about the numbers they understand that’s how you’re getting paid. But when you make it about what do you want this money to be a tool to help you do in your life, it turns the table and it centers their needs and it creates more stickiness and it supports your business so you can continue to personalize and engage them. But you can’t do that if you don’t have much better consistent delightful engaging discovery.
6:46 Alice Tang: That’s awesome. I feel that maybe the industry I’m just speaking out loud not done enough research but based on experience the industry itself has tried very hard to maneuver the compliance component which you and I are handtight there are a lot of things we couldn’t do but then there are also there are a lot of things we could do but because of the load of the complant you run out of time you run out of time and sometimes energy if you’re older advisor to focus on so much because you’re asking the advisor to do a broader span. The advisor was trained to go deep, very deep, very deep. You have a goal of doing this. Let’s say it takes 500,000 to get a kid to go through college. So, we saved up to there. Now, you were hitting your goal and you’re using your money with the right purpose, but it’s about the rest of it. Not a specific goal of paying for college or buying a second home because, oh, my family can enjoy a pass through generation. It’s really the rest of it. There are clients who have left over of a million, 2 million, 3 million, 4 million. You read the book. What are they going to do with it? it might be more helpful for them to think through them and use them during the lifetime and enjoy seeing the fruit of it.
8:10 Marla Sofer: Yeah, I think even even those those goals that you referenced, they are still using your money as a tool for impact. When you pay for your children’s education, you are giving that money a purpose. You’re saying the purpose of this money is to make sure that my child is going to have their impact in the world and I want to give them the best education possible. Let’s say you you’ve already accomplished that you have enough money to, as you said, send your kid to the best college in the world for as many degrees as you want and you still have money. I think that the understanding for people who have net worth and they have enough capital to ask themselves this question. The important thing is to understand that money is your power. It’s your impact. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the world again and again, it is that money speaks louder often than your voice, your time, your attention. Money is the opportunity for you to support the issues and the experiences that you want to create for people way beyond your bubble, your circle of influence. And maybe you’ve already impacted all the people you want to impact. Maybe you’ve already contributed even to your circle of like your school and your local museum and the things that you really care about and you’ve tapped out philanthropically. You might consider investing. You might consider what is the change you want to see in the world and what is going to be my place in not being a passenger and bringing that change about. I want to actually be the catalyst to this change. That’s where your money comes in. Your money can help you be the catalyst to change. And I hate to say this, but men have known this for decades, generations. Men know that money is power and they embrace money as power. I don’t feel like women have awoken to that opportunity as and embedded it into their psyches and their realities as strongly as men have. But we’re getting there. We’re trying. I think we have conversations like these to make sure that women understand if you’ve got money, you are in a privileged seat of opportunity. That opportunity is to use your money as your voice. Make sure that it’s backing the things that you care about in line with the values that you have to con to should contribute to the change you want to see.
10:33 Alice Tang: I wholeheartedly agree with you. Money is power and also I think money is also a comforting piece to say I can honor my true self making this decision. And sometime the decision may be I have less because I made that decision honoring myself. And if today I’m living a paycheck to a paycheck, there is a reality struggle between what I truly want to do and what life demands me to do, which is pay the bills and the mortgage and everything at the end of the month and be a responsible partner to my husband and children for those who have children. I think money really is a comforting tool so that you can you can walk if you want you can stay if you want. Just to change a little bit atmosphere here I know going through different wonderful companies all the names you mentioned that you have worked for now you are the founder and owning your company. I’m sure there are times that you said you know what this is so hard can I hang in there? What kept you going?
11:50 Marla Sofer: Yeah, that happens a lot. That happens very frequently. It is so hard. And I would even say it’s harder starting a company at 46 than it is starting a company out of college at 25 because you know better. Like I know better. I know my worth. I know I can quit. I know exactly what I can go out into the market and make. But I choose hard. I choose this path. And what keeps me going is I believe in the power of what I’m doing so deeply. And I know coming from the industry that it is so needed. We talk all day about helping people make better financial decisions and helping them live a better retirement and having more impact and using their money as power, but it’s very thin. There are fantastic and Alice, you’re one of them. There are fantastic financial advisors out there in the world that truly want to do this and they talk to their clients. They do get to know their clients. they understand what their clients desires and wants are. I think that should be available to everyone number one. And I think that the way that it happens should really center the needs and the requirements of that client. After all, it is their hard work that they’ve done to accumulate that wealth. And when they’re in charge of making sure that wealth is empowering the future they want to see, we literally change the future. And so that’s what keeps me going is when more people have more say over each dollar and what it is going to change in the world and whether that’s within your own family or beyond you change the world. That is the power that I the technology that I’m building can help achieve. When you get that going at scale consistently, understanding how do I help you Alice create the change that you want to see in the world and give you the tools to empower it to make it come alive then I do think we’ll have a better planet. I think we’ll have a lot less opaque layered complexity jargonfilled products out there in the world and a lot more okay I just feel confident that my money is doing what I want it to be doing and that’s what we’re aiming for. That’s what keeps me going.
14:01 Alice Tang: That’s awesome. You have just reminded me of just a recent article I read about negotiation, but it could apply to anything. People become 30 to 40% deadlock if they haven’t known each other well. But if they begin with getting to know each other, so what’s your favorite movie? What’s your football team? I don’t do football. So we can do other things, right? when they get to know each other better just to that extent knowing deeper than just this is the person I serve this is the person I negotiate or talk to that lock shrink to only 6% there will be time that is that lock from 40 to six it’s pretty amazing getting to know deeper
14:46 Marla Sofer: yeah I’m sure you work with sales people I’ve worked with sales people most of my career and on very big deals the best salespeople in the world know exactly how to do this repeatedly. They build relationships. They get to know you. They build trust. And I think that getting to know you consistently to build trust to help you live your life is the key to unlocking trust at scale.
15:11 Alice Tang: That’s this is a good place to to just do a little bragging about your podcast. Knowing me, knowing you. Is that right?
15:19 Marla Sofer: Yes. So, I recently launched the podcast. I knew I wanted to have a podcast for a couple of years and it took me two years of building the company and saying, “Okay, now’s the time.” And honestly, I love it. It has been an incredible opportunity. I bring on all kinds of great people to talk about the future of wealth. What is the future of money going to look like? And what are we missing in the way that we’re addressing wealth today? And what I found super fascinating is that leaders of multi-billion dollar huge organizations and advisers and therapists and I had a futurist on they’re all saying the same thing. It’s all about getting down to the level of the human. We need to better understand our clients. We need to understand each one one by one. And that’s what the future of wealth is going to be about. What our podcast is really to there to emphasize and talk about and drive change is what if we talked about solutions. We’re not in the business of selling products. We’re in the business of building trust so we can solve your problems so we can help you achieve the impact you want to achieve in life. What is that going to take? And so that’s what we like to talk about and that’s where I think we come down to the whole purpose of like why is it called knowing me knowing you is because I think that is the key to unlocking that future.
16:40 Alice Tang: Beautiful. Beautiful. Looks like that is your financial legacy, right? You believe it so much into it. That’s why you build your company. One of the things that we when we close the podcast we ask people what are you grateful for today?
16:57 Marla Sofer: I’m very grateful for health and family, the opportunities that I have to be born, when I was born, where I was born. There’s so many small things that we take for granted. And and especially when you deal with people and money, you have no no lack of people who look around and want more. They want more. They complain. How come my portfolio dropped X% on a volatile day? I wish I could afford XYZ. And I think when you take a couple of steps back and just realize there are so many things to be grateful for, it is at the end of the day about living a well life, a happy life. And the correlation between living a well life, a happy life, and gratitude is much stronger than living a well life and the number in your bank account. And so I think it’s really important to recognize for me. I’m very grateful for the opportunity that I am creating a company. It’s very hard. It is extremely stressful and I chose it. I am the person who went down this path of my own free valition and will. So I’m very grateful I have that opportunity.
18:08 Alice Tang: We are grateful for you Mara. We’re so grateful for you taking your time running the business and doing all these important things. I know building is not easy, right? is really intense. But thank you for the time that you have invested with us and our audience. Is there any other final things you would like to tell our audience before we sat goodbye?
18:28 Marla Sofer: No, I’m super grateful for the recording. I’m grateful to you, Alice. I’ve enjoyed every conversation we’ve had. You’re a special soul. You have kind of this spark of connection. It’s not a surprise that you built a great business. Thank you for having me on.
18:42 Alice Tang: Thank you, Marla.
Marla Sofer is the Founder and CEO of Knomee, a transformative platform that empowers financial institutions to unlock the full potential of their client relationships. By providing deep insights into the values, motivations, and financial priorities that drive decisions, Knomee enables firms to strengthen connections, improve client retention, and accelerate growth through precision data discovery.
With over two decades of experience in financial services and fintech, Marla has led billion-dollar partnerships at industry giants like BlackRock and J.P. Morgan. She has a proven track record of leveraging cutting-edge technology and human-centered design to drive business growth. Marla’s leadership at Knomee reflects her commitment to transforming how financial providers connect with their clients, blending behavioral science and AI to deliver personalized, data-driven client experiences.
Named a 2020 Woman of Silicon Valley and a 2021 Woman in WealthTech to Watch, Marla is a sought-after advisor, keynote speaker, and advocate for gender diversity in finance. She holds an MBA in Business Strategy and International Business from Rutgers University and lives in the Bay Area with her family.