Bridging the Money Confidence Gap

We just finished an amazing podcast with Shama Butan, a transformational wealth leader, co founder of the Wealth Catalyst Summit held in San Francisco, New York City, and salons nationwide, host of the nationally award winning Getting Rich Together podcast, and creator of the Wealth Catalyst Substack. Through her work built from head, heart, and community, she empowers women to speak openly about money, take control of their financial futures, and bridge the money confidence gap.

With women on track to inherit $30,000,000,000,000 in wealth, by 2030, Shama is catalyzing access, networks, and wealth building education for women bold enough to reimagine what's possible. Here's Shama.

Welcome, everyone, to the Power Up Your Life podcast. I'm Kelly Resendez.

And I'm Mandy McAllister.

And we are thrilled to bring my friend, Shama, onto the show today. And just welcome. How are you? Oh, so good. So happy to be here, Kelly and Mandy. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Well, in your words, you know, you've had an amazing career. You're making an amazing impact in the world. Would just love to hear a little bit about your story.

Oh, gosh. I always feel like you say your story and it could go back, you know, forty something years, thirty years, twenty years. But, you know, I think today I'll I'll jump into the story of of really how I'm in this work that I'm in right now, helping to really support and change the lives of women, families, and communities.

And honestly, guys, it really all started, I would say, from my divorce. You know, I had a divorce about six years ago. Had this moment where I wrote an email to 50 girlfriends and said, ladies, I need to know about money. How are you investing it? How are you thinking about it? What are you doing with it? And, unfortunately, 95% of those women did not wanna have the conversation with me.

So I did what any good girlfriend does is I started to raise my hand in all the rooms and said, well, if my friends aren't willing to share and divulge and spill the tea, I'm gonna have to get the information and be the person to share, divulge, and spill the tea. And so I have spent the last six years spilling the tea and bringing together women across the country for conversations around how we are creatively building our wealth, investing our money, and ultimately changing families and communities with our resources and living our life to our values.

So something that maybe was considered a tragedy turns into just the biggest hero's journey of my life. And so I'm really excited to get to be on this path and and share it with you all.

Yeah. That is so incredible. And I know you and I have so much in common when we think about money and abundance and and really just passing on this wisdom to other people.

You have created a business around this now. Like, tell our listeners because most of our listeners are high level leaders and female business owners. Like, what were some of those strategies that you really used to bring this idea? Right? The idea formed to the next level.

Yeah. It's a great question, Kelly. You know, I call this second wave entrepreneurialism. So this isn't my first time running and starting a company. In fact, I've run a few successfully, but with a really different framework. And those are probably frameworks that your listeners are used to hearing about, which is you build the strategy, you look at your competitive matrix, you start to figure out your p and l, and you kind of come at it from a very building blocks, let's call it first principle standpoint. Right? How am I gonna build this business from a traditional maybe MBA background?

Now the way that I've really approached the second business or the second wave of entrepreneurialism is through the lens of how can we create radical and lasting change in the world. And that means that we're actually making business decisions still rooted in the same business fundamentals, but not looking at simply short term gains. And I think that is really the difference between building in this capacity.

So in a longer term capacity, it's looking at what truly is the five, ten year impact and vision of this business. Who are the real aligned collaborators that maybe aren't gonna happen overnight, but are going to be the people who we wanna work with over time. And so I'd say, historically, at least in my business background, you know, one company I ran, we did $3,000,000 in six months from launching. You know? It was really around, like, how do you get the the the wins and and show those sort of quarterly reports and make everyone proud. But in this case, we're looking at still financially sound business, but looking at things from a long term sustainable standpoint. Very different mindset.

Yeah. Amazing. And honestly, I feel like that's kind of a feminine energy. Right? Like, the the masculine energy of just meet the one goal right in front of you. I think that that is what is going to contribute to capitalism here moving forward.

And your work is so incredibly aligned with what we do at Gobind and Swimming. We you know, one of our core pillars is financial freedom and talking about the number. It's it's such a faux pas sometimes to to talk around the dinner table about how much money something was, or I made $100,000 in x, or I just bought a 53 unit apartment building. You know, you wanna high five for it. So that open discussion, I think, is an excellent step one.

I'm wondering from you, from the kind of average people, the the people who are in their leadership roles, how do they what are some steps one and two to kinda get into that growth mindset if they're not already there?

Yeah, you know, I think one of the conversations that's probably not uncommon in your rooms are around longevity and really how long we are going to be living. And I think that especially really lands with high achieving women. Whether you're in the c suite of a company or you're a founder of a corporation, you know, really starting to think about, okay, how long am I planning to live and how do I really need to leverage this asset which is either my business or my job, right?

So whatever those profits are going towards, whether that's saving or investing, how can I start to really diversify and think much longer term than I've ever been raised to think about? Because historically, we all thought we would retire at five. That just isn't the case. I have a girlfriend who started a company at 65. You know, she's turning 70 this year. I mean, we are doing all sorts of things at all ages.

And so this idea of really, like, how long do I need to live and is my current investing strategy really going to get me there? I think is the very first thing to ask ourselves because ladies, we're probably gonna be living into our one hundreds, and that puts us at well past the expected lifespan of what we've been looking at today. Yeah.

Yeah. So good. Which I'm like, you know, my vision is, like, I'm one twenty playing pickleball and winning trophies still. So I I got a lot of passive investing that I've gotta do for myself between now and then.

What would you say what would you say some of the greatest miss or or, you know, just things that you've uncovered that women especially have around money that if they thought of it differently,

that they would be in a much better place. Well, you know, what's interesting is I've spoken to hundreds of women about this topic in the last, you know, five years. And women don't wanna share their successes because they don't want others to feel bad, and they don't wanna share their losses because they don't wanna look bad. And so there is a real need to divorce ourselves from other people in this comparison game because, otherwise, there forward, I think that's so critical.

The second thing I think is that we've been so attached to our LinkedIn profiles. The challenge with that is that it keeps us really divorced from this idea of approaching things with curiosity and humility. And so there is a duality between standing in your power and saying, I am successful. I can do all these things. I can run a $100,000,000 p and l for a company, and let me approach my life with some humility and say, you know what? I'm curious about how my personal financial life might be able to improve. I'm curious about how I can creatively pay for college for my kids.

And so I think we have to be able to hold both things as constant, which is, yes, I'm very accomplished and I've worked my ass off and I get I don't know everything and I get to approach life with a sense of humility, a sense of curiosity, and I get to lead by asking questions. And that is how I think we really allow for women to unlock each other's wisdom because all of us have something to share, right? We all have lived experiences caring for aging parents or whether that's going through a divorce or being a single mom or or starting five companies.

I mean we have so much lived experience and yet when you ask a woman about her financial life she'll typically say well I don't know anything about that or oh I have nothing to share or I have nothing of value. The truth of it is if you sit quiet listen deeply you have so much to share with other people and it's about time to reclaim your own narrative and stories for your benefit and for others.

Yeah. Oh, that is it's almost an identity shift, right? Like if you found success in the world, that connection to your LinkedIn profile, you are that LinkedIn profile. You are your accomplishments. And that that has been a lot of work that your girl, Mandy, has done over the years, to lead into that childlike curiosity, which is what gets you further faster.

Could not agree with you more on that. Most of our listeners are leaders or entrepreneurs and, you know, that that entrepreneurial mindset, it tends to be unconventional. You know, I'm I'm curious about the work that you do and the successful women that you get to work with. Talk to me about some unconventional strategies that people might disagree with but that you know to be true.

Oh my gosh. You know, money flows. Right? Like, I think it's so funny how people don't realize just just all the ways you can make money. Right? Like, I think, you know, at least from my background, I was raised with this, like, four zero one k, buy a house, like, very sort of simple, safe sort of things. But there have been some interesting things that I've uncovered throughout my journey.

And so one of them is, you know, I have, one of our our speakers and a good friend of mine, she is a serial business buyer, like, serial business buyer. She has bought in businesses, you guys, anywhere from $10,000 to $300,000. And she has done something so cool, which is basically understand how all these businesses are interrelated so they can all really support each other and everything has a really shared sort of back end. And she now manages 10 companies. I'm like, how do you do that? And she manages to take care of her family and she only works like ten hours a week. So women are incredible. We can do incredible things.

The other really interesting things I have found have been women who have been starting to moonlight, their businesses and I know this has become so much more popular these days as we went through this tragic COVID period together, but we're seeing women who are really maximizing not only their, let's say, nine to five job, but starting to put lots of experiments out in these five to nine hours is what we call them. Right? You're nine to five and you're five to nine. And so we're seeing a lot of different kinds of businesses come out of these really simple market tests.

And that I think is fascinating because a lot of later stage entrepreneurs, I think are somewhat trepidatious to jump off the cliff. But what we're finding is, you know, starting to dip your toe in the water in these things, right, while you have something safe, is really the key to sort of start to to have your business and start to do product market fit without cutting off a lifeline.

So I think the big question, you know, and a lot of the women I get the pleasure of working with are about 40 over. Right? So we've had lived experiences and a lot of us are saying, okay. We've been told to play it safe. But some of the more interesting ways of looking at investing and money have been come through things that are maybe not sexy. Right? So I have a girlfriend who's buying a laundromat. Like, not sexy, but sexy. Right? Like, I mean, that is, like, real cash that's flowing in.

So I think we're seeing the rise of, like, ingenuity and confidence to step into other arenas because we realize, hey. I might be forty, fifty, or 60 right now. I've got at least another forty, fifty, or sixty years in front of me. What else can I do, and how can I start to play?

That is so incredible. Our girl, Mandy, here owns a car wash. So definitely you're speaking our language, and we'd love a connection with your friend with the 10 businesses. She's right up our alley.

We've got one of our members of GoBundance down in Florida is in basically crime scene cleanup, and now she's added multiple verticals. She's got a YouTube following. She's also got, you know, service that picks them up, like, all sorts of stuff. And vertically integrating

Vertically

integrated in Yes. Yes. We love it. So much so much wisdom there, and I think you you nailed it in that we don't have to drop into scarcity to create our life vision. And so, you know, jumping off the cliff to start a business before you have the reserves in the bank or where you feel like you're more in power is such such a great point.

So I wanna I wanna dig into the wealth transference that's expected. So so many women are expected to inherit or through family offices just a massive amount of money. And I think the one thing about women that I know to be true is we have way more power than we realize.

If you had a magic wand, how would these women be investing this money so that we can systemically change all of the absolute corruption and nonsense that's going on in this world from health to, you know, food to, you know, poverty to to whatnot. What would your magic wand do at your level of consciousness, Sharma?

Yeah. You know, to anchor that, so this $30,000,000,000,000 wealth transfer is expected to hit the hands of women by 2030. That's in, like I get goosebumps. That's in, like, less than five years. Right? So $30,000,000,000,000. The pay gap, we make about 85¢ on the dollar. When we go to Whole Foods, we don't get a 15% discount. You know? And it's not like, oh, yeah. You get price adjusted shopping because you make less money. So these are some interesting anchor points. Right?

Like, this is it's it's almost to the point where understanding and exercising our wealth is no longer just a nice to have sort of idea. Like, oh, that would be great, but I don't have time. There is a real a real sense of responsibility here with women to be able to take control over this capital for a number of both, like, personal and external reasons. Right? External reasons would be $30,000,000,000,000 of wealth is transferring hands, but only 28% of women feel confident investing their capital. That means 72% of women are gonna see an influx of capital and not know what to do with it.

And if we were to take any sort of, like, historical, reference points, we would know that, okay, women tend to play it safe, which isn't really true, but it's the narrative we've been told. And if we don't stop to break away from the narrative, we're gonna think our job is to play it safe. We're gonna fill into that. And so that means we might take money out of the market. That means we might keep it in stocks and assets that are, let's call them, you know, thirty years ago trendy, but these days not aligned with innovation. Right? Historically, the stock market is where you can really support the vanguard of these companies that are creating change.

And so really, I think from the fundamental first step, a woman needs to understand her own values. And that I think is really critical. And when I mean values, it's what's important to me in my personal life right now? What are the issues and causes and things that I believe in? And then also what is my risk profile? Right? Can I actually afford to be conservative? In many cases, you might not be able to afford to be conservative because you need your money to exponentially grow because you don't have as much money as you would have liked, right? So we need to reframe what we think about risk tolerance and how we think about how we adjust our investing strategy into that risk tolerance.

Now the next thing is, you know, understanding your values is super important but then actually starting to, you know, get a little bit more engaged, right? So your values will tell you both like the categories, the areas of business. Guys, I'm sure you know this already but when you invest in like women CEO companies on the stock market there is a comparable if not oftentimes higher performance. And so there are funds like ETFs like WCEO where you can invest in publicly traded companies, I think it's maybe clocking at $30 a share now, publicly traded companies. I think it's maybe clocking at $30 a share now, and you can actually be supportive of these companies led by women that are, you know, providing excellent returns.

So this idea that your values are divorced from returns is no longer the case. It used to be that concepts like impact and returns is no longer the case. It used to be that concepts like impact investing or investing for good meant that you had to take a hit. Doesn't work like that anymore.

So I think it's values alignment, starting to do a little bit of research to figure out, like, how do I marry these values with these asset classes and then speaking up and joining rooms and groups and conversations where you can hear and learn from each other. I'm a real firm believer. If you can't hear it from someone or see it in other people, you just don't know it's possible for you. And that is what I think is so valuable about helping wealth expanders in your life, right? You get to see what's possible and go oh yeah, Kelly's doing that. I think I'm gonna try that or you know what? She did this other thing and that didn't really land with me right now but I know it's possible.

Yeah. One thing on that, Mandy. Sorry. Just to to interject. Only two and a half percent of venture capital is going to female founders right now. Do you see that being the biggest opportunity for us to shift the leadership numbers?

Yeah. So what I think is interesting is and and it's a controversial thought that I have, which is the people who should be investing in venture capital, the women, let's say, who should be investing in venture capital, are not. And this women who should not be investing in venture capital are. And so that means when we get caught up in this, you know, hypeiness of it all, right, venture capital is a seven to ten year game. Mhmm. It is the highest risk asset class of all the asset classes.

It is extremely powerful and important to fund venture capital because it is actually taking the risk on the innovation of the things that we're going to be experiencing in the next ten, twenty, thirty years eventually get to go on you know, let's maybe it gets on the S and P 500. Right? Let's say it goes public in twenty years. So when you take a bet in venture capital, you're taking a bet in the long term vision of the world, which means you have to have a vision of the world yourself that you're yourself that you're building into to be able to know what that thesis should look like.

Venture capital in women is such an important, important topic, Kelly, and I think it is even more so today because we are now more emboldened as women to say we deserve to have more research in health care and innovation when it comes to our lifestyle. We no longer are satisfied by testing that's just done on men and maybe lab animals. We wanna have real testing and real things done in the areas of women's health care, which I think is one of the most underfunded and one of the most important areas for women to be putting venture capital in, as well as other areas of, like, big research, you know.

So I think that VC funding in women will help to really catapult us into this next level of leadership within women, but ultimately it's gonna balance out the world. And so I'd like to see this as like, yes, we need to move the numbers on women, but more importantly, we need to move the numbers in terms of like women's health research, like all of these different components for us to thrive.

You are speaking Kelly's language because she is now president of a company called Minerva that is telemedicine for women's health, and they're collecting tons of data and using AI to make actionable decisions for women's health. So that that was I don't know if that was set up, but it was perfect.

It was not set up. But I think I think the conversation for the women listening out there is that the numbers are pathetic.

And the only way that we do something about them is to educate ourselves and start having that bigger vision. So thank you, Shama, for that. You know, I'll add this, which is most of the time, people are thinking about investing.

If they're new to venture capital, you know, they're thinking about investing with, like, oh, I'm you know, with my my salary, my take home, that that five to 10% or 20% of their overall assets. But there's been so many more creative ways in investing in venture capital.

And a lot of women who don't feel like they're in control of necessarily, you know, the overall p and l of their household are often in control of the p and l of their philanthropic giving. And that philanthropic giving can also be used as a vehicle to invest into startups.

And so what's interesting is like I think that we're also seeing more people share, hey, you can invest in this way and you can do it through a DAF and you know it's it's so much more creative and I think a lot of the times we're told that there's so many rules and yeah there are rules and there are important rules there to protect you but it's also a lot more creative and there are a lot less rules than there are more rules. Rules. And so I think it really just takes being a little gutsy to to to figure all that out.

You know, I think that the play it safe thing that we were talking about, that is so kind of insidious in women's heads. You know? And I think that there's this real opportunity for a reframe that instead of playing it safe as take your money out of the stock market, it's it's mitigating risk. You know, I buy apartment buildings and the people I get to work with helping them buy apartment buildings, it's how do we plan for those big worst case scenarios. And you can absolutely do that in stock market investing too. Actually, we shared something for GoBundance Women on Instagram recently of, you know, mister wonderful from Shark Tank. He was talking about how all of his returns, the not even the lion's share, all of his returns came from women owned businesses because we do a better job of mitigating risk. So rather than play it safe, let's mitigate risk.

So let me tell you how many things I am taking away from this conversation, Shama. Number one, just your energy and your giving, and it's it's untouchable. I just, I love what you're doing for the world here. And this idea of having first principles and understanding my values. And that is how I'm gonna filter all decisions of what I'm doing, not even with just my life, but also, my investments that are going to fuel my life into my 100 when I'm versing Kelly in pickleball.

And this idea of the confidence gap, the you know, I talk a lot about trusting your own judgment. And we, as women, need to figure out how to do whatever reps it takes to trust our own judgment with our money because I see that as a real problem as well. Kelly, what did you take away? Oh my goodness. So much. But I think the most powerful thing is that Shama

just is the change that we need to see in the world today. You know, she went through something tragic. She transcended what she went through, and now she shares it to educate and and bring more people around these tables to have conversations about money that we need to be having.

And so if you're listening, you know, that is the greatest takeaway is that money is not something that we need to hide. You know, the power of money, the power of our confidence is is set up to change the world. And if if we're not gonna do it, like, who is? Like, it's our turn, ladies. Let's go.

Mhmm. But Shama now then when? Yep. Absolutely incredible, you know, having you here. We always wanna make sure that we know the best way that we can support you. So if there's a connection, a resource, an event, anything that you've got, how do our listeners get in touch with you and support you on your mission?

Thanks, Kelly. Thanks, Mandy. You know, so we've got our wealth catalyst summits, and it's wealthcatalystsummit.com. And we're doing them in New York and San Francisco and bringing together leaders and founders and women who are just brilliant to just, ah, let's relax and have fun. Let's have some champagne. Let's talk about money. You know? So we have our wealth catalyst summits. We'd love to invite everyone to come.

And then I love to share what's going on inside of our world and my head and my heart, on our Substack. You know, it's been a place this year that I've just started to really share from really intimately and I've realized that it's good to say the things that are on my mind because not everyone says what's on their mind and we need more examples of bold women who are gonna share what's on their mind and their hearts so that we can all light the torch for each other. So come read. Come come hang out. Come see how wild my brain is.

I love it. I love love it. And, you know, one of the major things that we do in GoFundMeWomen is ask the question, who do you know that I need to know? And that's how I got to meet Shama was through Alice Chen, one of our amazing, women in the group that that's always out there. And then now we've got doctor Betty come to your event. So many things, and that's really how we're all gonna help one another. So Right.

If you love this episode, do the same thing. Who needs to hear from Shama today? Who needs to power up their life? And for those of you that are really looking to grow your influence, head over to Power Up Your Life Now or GoBundance Women. We've got all the things to be able to support you on this mission and helping you create this vision for making the world a better place.

So thank you for joining us on the Power Up Your Life podcast, Shama. Thank you incredibly blessed for the time we do today. Thank you. Bye, everyone. See you next time. See you next week.