David Klein: [00:00:00] And just — you just put one step in front of the other. And even if you can't see two or three steps ahead, you know what the next step is, the next step is, the next step is. And before you know it, you're building a company.

Andy Molinsky: [00:00:23] Welcome to From the Dorm Room to the Board Room, a podcast where we provide insights, tips and inspiration for college students and young professionals, so they can make a really successful transition from college life to the professional world and beyond.

Andy Molinsky: [00:00:40] My name is Andy Molinsky, and I'm your host. I am also a Professor of Organizational Behavior and International Management at Brandeis University's International Business School, where we record and produce this podcast.

Andy Molinsky: [00:00:59] So, today's guest is David Klein. David's the CEO and Co-Founder of CommonBond, a "FinTech" Company that gives students and graduates better ways to pay for higher education. Named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies and Times' Genius Companies, CommonBond has funded over $2.5 billion - that's B, billion - in student loans and helped more than 300 companies offer common bond for student loan benefits to their employees. It's also the first finance company with a one-for-one social mission. In other words, for every loan CommonBond funds, it funds the education of a child in need. Pretty cool stuff. David, thanks so much for being on the podcast.

David Klein: [00:01:44] Thanks for having me, Andy.

Andy Molinsky: [00:01:46] So, tell us about what CommonBond does. I just, kind of, gave the formal intro, but if you were describing it, if we were in a group of — in a class of undergraduate business students, how would you describe CommonBond?

David Klein: [00:02:02] Sure. So, the way I talk about CommonBond is that if you have a student loan or need a student loan, we can help. We follow folks over their entire higher education financial journey from the moment they need to take a loan out to go to school, to the point at which they graduate with a lot of student debt and are looking to refinance that student debt into what will most likely be a lower rate on the CommonBond platform. And then, thirdly, if you have student debt, and you're currently working, we provide employer-based student loan benefits.

David Klein: [00:02:46] One benefit, we call Student Loan Contribution. We've created technology, whereby we enable employers to contribute, say, $100 a month to their employee student loans. We also have a piece of technology we call Student Loan Evaluation, where employees can enter a little bit of information about themselves, and our technology can tell them how best to pay that debt off. Sometimes, it's refinancing. Sometimes, it might be a federal or state-based program. So, that's what CommonBond does. We help people with student loans. And it, generally, falls into the category of lowering your rate or helping you pay it down faster.

Andy Molinsky: [00:03:32] So, that's really cool. And I want to understand your journey as well, but I am cognizant of the fact that many of our listeners are not from the United States, and maybe don't have a sense of how much college costs. Can you give us some sense of parameters for someone who maybe lives in a country where college is free?

David Klein: [00:03:54] Sure. So, college in the US, predominantly speaking, is not free. In fact, it is very expensive. Undergrad in the US, it ranges from $15,000 to $35,000 a year. And that's just tuition. And that's based on whether you go to a state school, or whether you go to a private college, or university. That's just tuition. That does not include things like living expenses, rent, and textbooks, and things of that nature. Once you throw those costs in there, you're looking at thousands, if not $10,000 more on an annual basis. So, it's quite expensive, and that's every year.

Andy Molinsky: [00:04:45] Right. So, we can, now, see the great need of-

David Klein: [00:04:50] Yes.

Andy Molinsky: [00:04:50] ... a platform like CommonBond. So, tell us about your journey. I know this, that you went to Brandeis University, which is a fantastic university. I know that firsthand. I've been a professor there for 17 years now. Tell us about your journey. What did you major in? What did you do right after college? And then, bring us from there towards CommonBond.

David Klein: [00:05:11] Sure. And it sounds like you came into Brandeis as I was leaving Brandeis around 2002. That's when I graduated.

Andy Molinsky: [00:05:20] Right. We might have had one year. I think I was there 2002.

David Klein: [00:05:23] Okay.

Andy Molinsky: [00:05:23] So, we, yeah, might have had one year there but-

David Klein: [00:05:26] Briefly overlapped.

Andy Molinsky: [00:05:27] Exactly.

David Klein: [00:05:28] So, I ended up graduating, after spending four years at Brandeis, in 2002. Right after graduating, I had a great opportunity to live abroad and teach English. And so, I taught English in France. Did that for a year. It was a great opportunity for me really to experience what life in another country would be like, pick up another language, pick up another culture, and go from there. So, that's what I did. It was a great year, one I wouldn't give it up for the world.

David Klein: [00:06:02] I, then, came back to the States. I wanted to put myself in corporate America for about 5 to 10 years. And I was fortunate enough to start working at McKinsey, the management consulting firm when I came back to the States. I was there at McKinsey for about three years, working with a host of different companies across multiple industries. The companies I tended to work most with were financial services companies. 

David Klein: [00:06:30] And from there, I, then, went to American Express. I spent about five years at American Express, did a host of roles over there, everything from strategic projects to membership rewards, partnerships, marketing, et cetera. I even had a stint as a chief of staff to one of the executives over there. And while McKinsey was a great opportunity from a strategic thinking perspective and exposure to a wide range of business problems and outcomes perspective, American Express was good from an implementation and execution perspective. I got to feel what it was like to be in the corporate trenches, as I like to say, and make things happen on the ground for consumers, for partners.

David Klein: [00:07:26] And so, that was my corporate experience. And at that point, I decided to — I said, "I want to go start my own thing." I always wanted to start a company. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. So, I knew that to be the case. It was really just a matter of when and how. And I thought after spending close to 10 years in corporate America, the time was finally right for me to take all the learnings from corporate America, and then apply them to entrepreneurship.

David Klein: [00:07:59] And at that point, I had a choice. I could either leave my job at McKinsey and just start a company, or I could apply to business school and use that as an opportunity to incubate and accelerate an idea. And so, I was fortunate enough to get accepted and, ultimately, go to school for business school at Wharton. And I used that as an opportunity to build the company from there, CommonBond.

Andy Molinsky: [00:08:26] So, let's pause there. That's a great story. So many questions pop up in my head. I mean, the first I just have to ask, where were you in France? Because I also lived in France.

David Klein: [00:08:33] Oh, yeah. So, I was living in Paris, but I was teaching English outside of Paris in a banlieue, in a suburb between Paris and the airport in a place called Aulnay-sous-Bois teaching English there.

Andy Molinsky: [00:08:49] Cool. That's great. I lived there for a year after college, and it was also transformational for me. And in fact, I think, this summer, we're going back. So, I'm very excited about that.

David Klein: [00:08:59] Okay, fascinating.

Andy Molinsky: [00:08:59] So, I also didn't get what you majored in when-

David Klein: [00:09:03] Oh, yeah. So, while at Brandeis, I majored in Political Science. I minored in Economics. And I was a part of the International Business Program.

Andy Molinsky: [00:09:12] And was that — do you feel that that, sort of, gave — like tell us about the connection between that and what you've done since then. Like, how did that, sort of, help you? What background did it give you?

David Klein: [00:09:27] Sure. When I think about my Brandeis education, it's a small liberal arts education. It's also a scientific research institution, but it has the small liberal arts college dynamic as well. And I was more on the small liberal arts dynamic side of things than the scientific research end of things. I think what Brandeis gave me, many things, but the one I'd focus on the answer to this question is it instilled in me a genuine curiosity to learn more about a lot of things that are important in the world that I didn't necessarily have strong knowledge base for.

David Klein: [00:10:05] And so, I'm very grateful for that because, not only did it help me learn a lot while at Brandeis, it's helped me learn a lot after Brandeis as well. And I feel like it's that genuine curiosity that developed at Brandeis that, I think, served me very well in life, in general, and then, specifically, in starting this company. When you start a company, there are a lot of things you don't know and need to know. And you need to pick those things up fast. And so, to have that genuine curiosity, which I view as the motor to figuring out a lot of things quickly, consistently over time is invaluable.

Andy Molinsky: [00:10:46] So, it's an interesting path that you led. And it's funny, before I started doing this podcast, I would have anticipated that the path that you describe is a fairly typical path. Like in other words, for someone in your shoes going to a really good liberal arts or university, taking on some impressive, interesting work experience that provides you tools, and insights, and sort of exposure. And then, sort of go into business school to tool up again, and then launching something.

Andy Molinsky: [00:11:18] It's interesting that many of the people that I've interviewed for this podcast didn't follow that path. And in fact, they started something literally in their dorm room, dorm room to the boardroom. Tell us about - I don't know - just about the why you didn't start a company right away. I'm not saying you should have, but you did say entrepreneurship was in your genes, and in your blood, and so on. Tell us about that.

David Klein: [00:11:43] Yeah, for me, I just — it wasn't the right time. And I think the right time is different for everybody. The reason I say it wasn't the right time is because I made a very conscious decision while in my year in France to put myself in corporate America for 5 to 10 years. I wanted to know what it was like inside of a great company at scale because I knew I, one day, wanted to build a great company at scale. And so, for me to have not understood, appreciated, experienced, felt what that was like didn't make sense to me. And so, that was my personal calculus.

David Klein: [00:12:23] And so, when I was done with my year in France, post-undergrad, I inserted myself in corporate America, spent my 5 to 10 years there. And I'm am incredibly grateful for the time I spent in terms of what I learned, of what I experience, the people I met, the collaboration in an environment with people inside of an organization at scale. And so, I learned a lot through doing, and I'm grateful for that because I use a lot of that. I have used a lot of that in building up the company, and I am using a lot of that as we continue to scale the company, CommonBond, that is.

Andy Molinsky: [00:12:59] So, you're a real planner, it sounds like.

David Klein: [00:13:03] That's funny. Yes and no. I kind of have a vision of what I want to do. And sometimes, I remember that vision, and sometimes, I don't, but it's always planted in my subconscious, and I always find that in retrospect, things go according to plan in a long-time horizon more than I thought they would. In retrospect, it feels like it goes according to plan. And when you're in the middle of it, it doesn't, right. It feels more organic, more natural than that. But to your point, in this case, no doubt, I told myself to put myself in corporate for 5 to 10 years, come out, use that experience to start a company. And in retrospect, that is exactly what happened.

David Klein: [00:13:43] And then, while I did start a company from the dorm room, it wasn't the undergrad dorm room, it was the grad school dorm room. And that was the right time for me. It happened to be that at 31 while a student, living off the student loans himself inside of grad school with the 10 or so years corporate experience under my belt. That was the right time to start something.

Andy Molinsky: [00:14:11] So, that's cool. So. So, you're in business school. You've got this experience. You've seen what it's like to be in a big company at scale. You've got this problem of student loans maybe yourself, and, also, you written as others do. You want to do something better. Like, what do you do? Do you just, kind of, go to Starbucks, order a coffee, and say, "All right, sitting down here, starting a company." Like, what do you — how do you actually do it?

David Klein: [00:14:37] So, I was ready. I mean, I was ready. I quit my job, right. I've taken the GMATs. I applied to business school. I got in. I quit my job. I went to business school with the expressed purpose of starting a company and running it at or before graduation. And so, I was prime for this. And so, everything I did really went through that lens.

David Klein: [00:15:03] I mean, before business school officially started, there was a month of pre-term, and I used that as an opportunity to connect with all the rising second years who were a part of the entrepreneurial scene at Wharton and in Philadelphia to understand, "Hey, what's the best way to navigate the scene here? Because this is why I'm here. And I want to figure out the landscape and figure out the best way to navigate it." So, that's what I did.

David Klein: [00:15:26] Before school officially started in that pre-term month, after getting some really good advice from some folks, I ended up doing my first market research. And the great thing was, given the idea that I had, which we now know is CommonBonds, I had around me over 1500 potential customers were were squarely in my target market, who either had debt currently in business school, or recently graduated with student debt. So, I was able to speak to many of them, not just in interview and focus group fashion, but in market research leveraging online tools to get a lot of survey responses in a short period of time.

David Klein: [00:16:09] I applied for a startup incubator on campus, which forced me to think that much more deeply about the idea and the business model because of the questions they asked. I took that first quarter entrepreneurship course with a professor, Ethan Molik, who used to be an entrepreneur himself, read many case studies, used it also as an opportunity clinically to write a business plan, which is what the capstone of that particular class was about. I was out socially and knew in the back of my mind I'd want to find some co-founder. So, I was able in that first quarter, as I was out talking to a lot of people and talking about this idea, I was able to connect with Mike and Jessup, who ended up being my co-founders.

David Klein: [00:16:56] So, the bottom line here, I'm saying a lot of things, and nothing is a straight line. But I feel like once you know you want to start something, and you have that motivation, you have that clarity of conviction, everything you do happens through that lens. At least, that's what happened in my case. And you just put one step in front of the other, and even if you can't see two or three steps ahead, you know what the next step is, the next step is, the next step is. And before you know it, you're building a company.

Andy Molinsky: [00:17:26] Yeah. Great story. Really interesting. So, let's shift gears here. I'd love to hear, you've got a lot of experience, and you probably have some good insights about this. What misconceptions do you think college students have about either entering the workplace, being a successful entrepreneur, just really being successful in making that transition from college to the professional world?

David Klein: [00:17:54] It's a good question. I think there are a couple different answers. One is I noticed that young people equate leadership with how many people they're managing. And that is a wild misconception. Wild misconception. Leadership has a lot to do with how you carry yourself in difficult or ambiguous situations. It has a lot to do with your clarity of thought in those situations. It has a lot to do with your business judgment and the decisions you make in in those environments. It has actually much less to do with how many people you are managing. Some of the most impressive leaders I know don't even have people to manage. And if they do, they are very small teams.

David Klein: [00:18:46] And so, I think that's one misconception that the more people I manage, the stronger a leader I am. Absolutely not the case in reality. And the funny thing, just that quick aside on that, I saw something recently float around. I don't if it's Twitter or Instagram. There's this quote that says, "When you're young, you want to manage as many people as possible. And as you get older, you want to manage as few people as possible." That is a true thing.

David Klein: [00:19:14] And the reason that is true, I think, is tied to this misconception that early, everyone thinks that if I want to be a strong, respected leader, I need to manage a lot of people. And in fact, what you realize is that it has less to do with that and more to do on the other. So, that's misconception number one.

David Klein: [00:19:30] What else is important for people who are entering the workforce? One of the things, I'll just make it personal for a second, I remember entering the workforce, and this is entering corporate America, and realizing very quickly that there were certain things that you had to conform to. The idea that in your day-to-day life with friends, you'd say, "Hey, so-and-so, I hope you're doing well," the whole nine very colloquial, informal kind of interaction with people. I learned very quickly inside of corporate America that, hey, no, there's actually a more formal way, a more corporate way to approach people and communication.

David Klein: [00:20:23] And that was a little jarring for me. And I think one of the reasons why ultimately I wanted to start my own company is because corporations, once they reach a certain size, tend to rely on human conformity in order to work effectively at scale. And that can really start to encroach upon an individual's human creativity. And I feel like entrepreneurship, starting a company, or a company earlier in stage is an opportunity for people to exert, express their creativity in a workplace environment more than a very large corporation. So, that's, I guess, a consideration, if not a misconception, a consideration for people to make as they think about, hey, do I want to go into a big corporation at scale immediately, or do I want to go into a smaller company, or start my own thing from the from the get-go?

David Klein: [00:21:21] And then, the final thing I'd say is there definitely — while we learned a lot about communication in grade school, grammar school, high school, college, we learn about how to write an essay, we learn about an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusions, when you enter the workforce, I feel like the sophistication of communication and the variations of contexts within which you communicate increase in complexity and is a wonderful learning ground through doing to learn and figure out all the various kinds of communication styles and structures that exist. And the most effective one's based on audience and communication context. That, to me, is something that you pick up in really strong organizations, large or small. And it's something that I think folks graduating college should really look forward to and embrace.

Andy Molinsky: [00:22:22] Can you give an example of that? Like, I-

David Klein: [00:22:24] Sure.

Andy Molinsky: [00:22:24] ... totally get what you're saying, but like what's an example of a communication style? 

David Klein: [00:22:28] So, at McKinsey, I'll give you the example. And I'll kind of simplify it. So, at McKinsey, it's a professional services firm. It's offering strategic perspective in frame to people inside of corporations. And one of the things you learn when you enter McKinsey is, hey, if you're communicating to an executive, you want to give the answer first, and then you want to give supporting bullet points or supporting evidence in a highly structured way. So, here's the answer, right. Here are the three reasons why this is the answer. Now, let us give you three pieces of evidence for every reason, so that you understand why that's the reason, right?

David Klein: [00:23:14] And it's a communication structure that you use when executives are already bought into the fact that something needs to be done. They're just searching for the right answer. So, you start with the right answer, and then you fan it out from there with support and rationale. That's different than when you're dealing with an executive, or a board of directors, or a leadership team who aren't yet convinced that something needs to be done. And so, their mind, individual or collective, is not ready to hear an answer because there is an alignment on whether something should be done in the first place. And so, there, instead of starting with the answer, and then fleshing out the rationale from there, you kind of work backwards.

David Klein: [00:23:59] So, you look at the the context or the landscape of something. You start identifying trends, or preferences, or data that help give you a sense of what's happening. And from there, you build up to the need for a specific answer. And then, when you built the context for why an answer is needed, you can come in and deliver the answer and why you think that answer is the best to address all these issues that you've now gone through. So, that's just one example of the kinds of communication frameworks and contexts that I think you deal with in really real and in a real way in the corporate setting that you likely don't deal with in an academic setting, let alone learn about in an academic setting.

Andy Molinsky: [00:24:52] Yeah, that's a really interesting example. I think that's going to be very helpful for our listeners. Helpful for me too, actually. We're nearing the end here. I just want to ask you one last question. You seem like a super productive guy. You've done a lot, very organized,  great planner, and so on. Can you share any productivity tips for our listeners?

David Klein: [00:25:12] Sure. And I may or may not be the best expert to talk about this. But that being said, I'll just share a couple of things that I do personally that help me keep things organized, and then keep me on track. One is I have a system as it relates to e-mail. There is a lot of e-mail back and forth that happens on a given day. My system is that if I open up an email, I either answer it right there, or I don't answer it at all. And that way, every time I open an email, I don't get caught up in opening e-mail, opening e-mail, opening e-mail, and then never answering and saying, "I'll get back to it," because then there's gonna be a lot of work on my plate, and I probably won't get back to it. And so, I've made a commitment that once I open an e-mail, either I'm going to answer it, or I'm going to dish it off to somebody else, or I'm not going to answer it. So, that's number one. When I open an e-mail, I address it before moving on.

David Klein: [00:26:13] Number two, there are a lot of productivity tools and apps out there that a lot of people like to to use. There's Monday, there's Asana. There's a whole host. I'm much more primitive and simple than that. I use the notes app in my iPhone. There are certain things that I need to do before the end of the day, or before the end of the week, or before the end of the month, I just keep it in my notes app. And I know to go back to my notes at once a day, twice a day. I know to go back to my notes app over the weekend to make sure that I've cleared everything off my plate over the weekend or to give me a heads up of what I have coming up in the following week, or to realize, "Oh crap, I didn't get to what I needed to get to. I better finish up before the week ends." And so, something as simple as the notes app in Apple is something that I find pretty effective for me. Those are the two things that pop at the top of my head that I find are pretty helpful and pretty useful.

Andy Molinsky: [00:27:16] Very interesting. That's exactly what — it's so funny that I do both of those things.

David Klein: [00:27:19] Is that right?

Andy Molinsky: [00:27:22] Yeah, very interesting. All right. So, we're at the end of our chat. This has been really insightful. And I'm so glad that you took the time to speak with us. If listeners are interested in learning more about you or CommonBond, where can they go?

David Klein: [00:27:35] Sure. So, I love Google. You can Google CommonBond, or you can Google David Klein. Also, if you wanted to go directly to CommonBond, you can go to commonbond.co. That's commonbond.co.

Andy Molinsky: [00:27:49] All right. And we will check it out. Thanks again for being on From the Dorm Room to the Board Room.

David Klein: [00:27:57] Thanks, Andy.

Andy Molinsky: [00:28:00] Thank you for listening to From the Dorm Room to the Board Room. If you're interested in learning more about the work that I do in helping people step outside their comfort zones and transition successfully into the professional world, please visit my website, www.andymolinsky.com. That's A-N-D-Y-M-O-L-I-N-S-K-Y dot com. And also feel free to email me directly at andy@andymolinsky.com with any feedback or ideas for guests for future podcasts.

Andy Molinsky: [00:28:30] This podcast is brought to you by Brandeis University's International Business School. By teaching rigorous Business, Finance, and Economics, connecting students to best practices and immersing them in international experiences, Brandeis International Business School prepares exceptional individuals from around the globe to become principled professionals in companies and public institutions worldwide. Thank you so much for listening.