Lauryn Williams is on a mission to create a space for young professionals to learn how to manage their money and have fun doing it. And she believes marrying financial planning and travel is the way to accomplish that.
The idea, she said, is to create a relaxed and friendly experience for people to learn financial planning in a less intimidating way. This summer, she plans to host financial retreats in Medellín, Colombia, and Bali, Indonesia.
“One of the biggest barriers why so many people are not getting the help they need is because they are intimidated,” said Williams, noting that many have turned to TikTok, Instagram or Google for advice, only to walk away confused and taking no action. “So they do need the help of a person. It’s not bad for people to get education elsewhere, but sometimes they just need to have a conversation about something that’s very private, and you need to create a space where they feel comfortable talking about it,” she said.
Williams, 39, a four-time Olympian and three-time medalist in track and field and bobsled, is the first American woman to medal in both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. But she ran into a series of hurdles early on when she began to seek help with her finances.
“I was fed up with the kind of advice I was given,” she said, noting that things did not go too well with the first two financial advisors she hired. “I didn’t feel more organized with these two guys and so I started doing a Google search to figure out how you learn about money stuff, and I found [the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards] online and blindly enrolled in the class just to teach myself,” she said.
Williams, who has a finance degree and an MBA from the University of Miami, said she was intrigued by what she was learning. “I didn’t know there was a different side of the industry and that there are different ways people are doing financial advice. It was a better fit for me,” she said.
She soon learned about the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and found an internship position through its website with an advisory firm in College Station, Texas. And though she was doing mostly tax-related work, she got a better understanding of the comprehensive approach to financial planning. “It really changed the trajectory of how I was thinking about money,” she said.
But Williams, who made a baseline of $200,000 while competing in sports (or more depending on what kind of year she was having) soon realized she could not become a client herself at the College Station firm because its clientele started at $1 million. She found many other smaller firms had the same or higher assets minimums.
“I just kept thinking, where does someone like me go and how do you get the assets if no one teaches you anything?” she said. “I was really financially illiterate, but I wanted to do the right thing.”
She secured another internship with a solopreneur focused on helping young professionals, which was more aligned with her interests. There, she learned about the XY Planning Network and attended the organization’s first conference in 2015, where she met others “who wanted to serve young people and they wanted to do it fun and they wanted to do it without all these rules and parameters,” she said, adding that she learned that the organization provided the infrastructure to start your own business. “And I was like, I want to do that.”
She launched her own firm, Worth Winning, in Dallas in 2016. Williams said she realized that she was taking a nontraditional path into the industry—that her financial advising peers often worked full time at a firm before branching off on their own. “But it was the athlete in me. I didn’t know to be afraid or how to be scared,” she said.
At Worth Winning, Williams focuses on educating and coaching millennial clients about basic financial planning, the sort of things she said she needed when she first began looking for help. She also has a certification in coaching and expertise in student loans, she said.
Her offerings consist of a 90-minute class where she will help clients with whatever they need, she said. That includes helping them build a budget and pointing them in the right direction so that they can have a touch point.
“I think the biggest problem with the industry is that it caters to a high-earning clientele, people with high-investable assets,” she said. “But what about everybody else who is trying to make that decision to get help? I am trying to close that gap.”
Williams also offers two 90-minute meetings for the single millennial client in the $150,000-ish earning area who is trying to get on track with her financial situation, she said. This begins with a 20-page financial plan Williams created that is given to the client. She then makes recommendations and suggests action plans. She offers corporate wellness workshops and runs a biannual 12-week online program that is similar to “money school.”
Williams said she began thinking about combining financial planning and travel after noticing that many of her clients often guarded their travel budget. “They were unwilling to compromise,” she said. But she understood why they felt that way because traveling is near and dear to her, she said. She had the opportunity to compete in many countries and she continues to travel. In fact, she hit her 50th country last year when she visited Nicaragua. So traveling and teaching financial planning are natural for her, she said.
“So, I started thinking, why not marry finances and travel? Why not go on a retreat so that you can actually have a good time, do the travel thing that you want but also return home with the financial knowledge that will move you forward?”
Financial retreats had been on her mind for some time, Williams said. In 2021, she hosted one on a smaller scale in Atlanta with four people. That was her pilot, and it went well, she said.
She has scheduled one in July in Medellín, Colombia and another one in August in Bali, Indonesia. She has visited both countries herself and is especially fond of Colombia, where she has spent the month of July for the past few years. The goal is to get eight people for each trip, she said.
The stay is for seven nights, totaling $3,200 for double occupancy (single occupancy is available for $3,800 in Columbia and $4,000 in Bali). The flight is not included. Williams said she has mapped out a curriculum for the week and attendees will each be given a workbook so they can fill it in as they go through the week. “You’ll go home knowing what your action items are,” she said.
In addition to the financial planning sessions, the costs include two meals per day and local activities in and around the country.
“I feel good about the idea. I can create an experience that’s really awesome for the people who decide to attend, and also teach them something about their money. So I just feel like it’s a unique skill set,” she said.
Williams said her goal is to meet people where they are, and the way that she can have an impact is to create space for people to get what they feel they need in the moment. “I have been listening to the clients that I have been serving and I feel like this is what they need,” she said. “[If] they tell me something different, then I will go in a different direction.
“But I have gotten confirmation after confirmation that this is a great way to serve people that other people aren’t doing. So it’s like I am going to be able to fill a gap and reach more people that would otherwise not have been reached,” she said.