Speaker 1: Welcome to Getting Rich Together. I’m your host, Shama Bunton. This show was born for my own journey. Coming out of a divorce, I reached out to 50 women to talk to them about money.

95% of them did not want to go there. That’s when I realized we need spaces where wealth isn’t hidden in silence but shared in possibilities. Here, you’ll meet women from all backgrounds, trailblazers, risk takers, visionaries, each expanding what wealth can look like. This is your place to be inspired to discover new pathways and to remember that we rise by building wealth together. Getting Rich Together is a wealth catalyst production.

At Wealth Catalyst, we bring together education, networks, and great opportunities for women to build wealth and change the world. Now, on to today’s show. I am here today with an incredible pioneer in this conversation of women in wealth. Laura Nixgerson is the CEO and co-founder of Nixgerson Media and the host of the Venturef podcast where she champions women investing in women.

Laura, you come to this conversation with decades of experience in production, in connection, in community, in driving home conversations that match serve to us the most. I’m so honored and so pleased to get to have you here today on Getting Rich Together. I’m just so happy from the first moment that we connected. I was like, this woman is my woman. Laura, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 2: I’m just really, the feeling is mutual. Everything you just said, I feel the same way about you. It’s like kismet. This friendship was meant to be my friend.

Speaker 1: I love the words that I love to describe you around purpose and media and community. Like you drive home such a powerful conversation around the things that matter to us most. And while I’m so excited to dive into the things that you’re working on currently, we both know this show starts from the beginning. So my darling Laura, take us back to an incredible young little girl somewhere between the age of eight and 12 years old. Where were you? What was life like around you? Paint the picture.

Speaker 2: You know, my father was in the military. So he served in the army for 26 years, followed by another 22 years. He was a total of 52 years in the military service, both as a civilian and as an officer. So my childhood was growing up all over the world. And it was such an incredible experience that we got to explore different cultures, learn about different food, understand different people and really just embrace all the beauty of the world that has to offer. We lived in places like Korea and Iran and Germany in my high school years, which was super fun as a teenager. In the States, we were in Savannah and my family’s favorite, which was Albuquerque, New Mexico. I think my mom might have left part of her heart there.

She left New Mexico. So for me, every three years, three or four years, I had to create a whole new set of friends. I had to go and meet new people. And I really think it was a major part of who and why I am, how I am today.

I don’t love the word super connector, but yeah, I guess that’s how you would describe me. It’s really about getting to know other people. I truly believe that relationships matter. And so it’s about asking the questions and understanding who the person across from you is and really what makes them tick, what they’re interested in, what they’re doing in the world or what they would like to see happen in the world. Like all those conversations that happen just naturally, I think that started for me really at a young age, like just asking a lot of questions and getting to know people. And so I built that skill set.

Speaker 1: When you were younger and obviously like, I’m sure there’s a certain point where you start to say, okay, now I realize I’m sure the first few moves were like, man, we got to move. And it’s like, how do you get over the reality of this like changing circumstance? And then there’s obviously the predictability of the changing circumstance and this understanding of, okay, now I need to create my own anchor points or my own stability within this movement. How did your family and how did you start to think about your own anchor points of stability within these three to four year moves? Were there key things that you did? Was there like a playbook? Was Laura like, all right, I’m in this new city. I’m in Albuquerque. Here’s how I’m going to approach this. How did you start to navigate the development of your stability factors?

Speaker 2: Well, family is key, right? It really encourages, I won’t say forces, but it really encourages you to focus on your family and spending time with your family. And that’s definitely a core tenant for me still. My sister is really like my grounding point. We definitely had our years in our childhood where we were not the best of friends, but she is my best friend and my business partner. And so we always had each other to ground each other in that process.

And I don’t know. I think also it’s the sense of adventure. My mom has this really incredible sense of adventure about everything. And so everywhere we would move, it was explore things, try things, let’s discover things. And so it was, it’s the way you look at the change. It could be a sad or a negative thing or it could be an opportunity.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. That’s a real, it’s a real like mindset. It’s like a real concretized way to look at mindset so early on, like you can really choose your experience of what it is that you’re doing. So then moving on to sort of how you were then approaching now launching yourself into the world and choosing a path and getting into university. You certainly by that point had a great taste of the world and taste of things.

And all of a sudden it’s time to say, okay, I’m going to put myself out there. This is what I want to study. Here’s why I want to go to school. How did you decide? It seems like that you would have had this global opportunity to pick and be and do and try anything. How did you decide where to go to school and what you would end up studying?

Speaker 2: I will say in my middle school and high school years, I ended up being the vice president of the sophomore class. I was planning the school dances. I was on every committee, very committee and planning and event person.

So looking at college, I thought I really want to go into journalism and I had applied to BU and GW and all these big schools and the University of Georgia. And my father at the time was looking at the budgets and he was my father, the pragmatist who had his homemade grid before spreadsheets and he would sit us down every month and I dreaded it when I was a kid, but now I look back on it and I’m really grateful he did this, but he would have us look at all the budget. Sorry, he would have us look at all the buckets where he was allocating dollars. And so there would be obviously the household expenses and the groceries, but there was always within his military income an opportunity to have some fun.

So we’d have some entertainment, we’d have a clothing budget, we’d have gifts for other people. He always had a charity bucket. It was very important to my father that he always give some percentage of his income back to things that he believed in. And then he had his savings budget. It wasn’t really so much an investing budget, so much as it was a savings budget.

So he always tucked money away. Then there was the college and for me to go to BU or GW would have meant getting into happy death. My father made more the decision than I did. I was actually heartbroken, but he said, you’re going to go to Georgia. In the end, it turned out that I went to the Wright School for me. It was the best college experience ever. Athens is the most beautiful college town. In fact, University of Georgia just recently made Forbes list of the new IVs. Yeah, so it’s a very highly reputed institution.

It’s an SEC school, you know, football. There’s the town, which is very artistic and creative. And at the time I went, which was in the late 80s, early 90s, R.E .M. that was having their heyday, the B-52s lived there. So it was very much an alternative rock, edgy, cool scene, which it was really more, believe it or not, that was my scene in college, which is funny when I looked back on who I was, my 20s versus now, but we were hanging out with the artistic crowd. And so I started as a journalism major and I started taking advertising classes and I thought, it’s all stuff to people that they don’t need.

It just didn’t feel right with me. And I had stumbled upon a mythology course that I absolutely loved. And I started going down this path of looking at socio-economic and sociological aspects of human society. And so I was really fascinated with art history from that perspective because it’s really a study of culture and of how psychology plays a part of it and storytelling and how it’s all captured in the art and architecture throughout the centuries. So I ended up switching and I became an art history major and took a lot of pottery classes at the same time.

It was fun. And that really was like the guide to getting me to my next step. During my last couple of years at college, I launched my first company. It was a non-for-profit organization called Helios Arts and Events. We produced the first and last ever Helios Festival of the Arts, which was a series of smaller events that led up to a weekend of arts events, poetry, slams, photography exhibits, literary contests. We had an art exhibit.

We had musical performances. And so I guess all the event planning I did in high school coming to life there in college. And I had built, I didn’t even know what I’d built at the time, but I definitely, I put together a board of directors that included the mayor of Athens and 20-something.

You don’t even know what you, like, oh, wow, that’s, they look back and like, wow, I actually got the board, the board had some really incredible people on it. So then the Olympics came around and the mayor reached out to me and she said, listen, we just hire Gene Dixon, who was the producer of the Twilight Criterium in Athens, which is the big bicycle race that took place every year. She said to produce all of the Olympics events, the Olympic related events in Athens. And he’s the best person for the job. He’s the person who knows how to do city-wide events. But we, I think it would be great if you could join his team and help him with the artistic side of things. So I did and I helped Gene. We produced a number of events for the Olympics, including booking some major country acts to perform in Athens. And it was very cool. It was a very fun experience. Did he get paid for that?

Yeah. And then out of those two experiences, I got recruited back to Atlanta to run the Rob Matry Gallery. And I ran Rob’s Gallery for about a year and then got recruited away from that to go run Bill Lowe’s Gallery, which I ran for several years. Bill Lowe and Fay Gold were the two most known and recognized art dealers in the Southeast for decades. So working for Bill was quite an experience. It was interesting too, because it was the first opportunity I had to see what investing in art really is from an alternative asset allocation kind of concept.

At the time, I had no idea what that was. But when you look at what the market will bear, how you price artwork, what the market will bear, what people will purchase it for and what you can resell it for, it’s really fascinating. And so I spent several years in the art world as a gallerista. But I did, I was doing marketing for the gallery at the time. And I realized to grow in my career, I either needed to be the dealer, I needed to move on.

There’s no room for growth and that type of situation. I had been doing marketing for the gallery and I thought, you know what, I want to go into PR. And there was one agency in Atlanta at the time, the headline group, which Claudia founded. And they had a lot of art clients.

They worked with a lot of the art venues, the musical performance venues, Cirque du Soleil was a client, and a lot of restaurant clients as well. And she did not want to hire me because I didn’t have a PR degree. I had an art history degree, right? And I was working in an art gallery and she just didn’t know how those skills were transferable. I called her every Monday morning for months and left her voicemail message every Monday morning.

And I finally got an interview and I took a pay cut and I went to work for Claudia. She said my tenacity wore out. I was so tenacious. I was not going to give up. I wanted to work for Claudia.

And I’m so glad I did Claudia. The headline group ultimately got acquired by Edelman. And she is now the chief talent officer at Edelman. But she, she’s a legend. She has such a legacy in everything she’s built. All these women that she’s mentored over the decades, her recruiting strategy, how she builds teams, like to say that I got to work for Claudia at some point. I was like, I feel so lucky. She’s just incredible.

Wow. Yeah, that was a really good experience. But I wasn’t there very long because I got recruited away again. We’re a publishing startup called the Leader Publishing Group. We had two publications, Business to Business Magazine, that really was a general industry publication. And then we were launching because these were the dot-com days. This was the day where days where all the dot-com dollars were coming into Atlanta.

We were launching an ink for Atlanta and we named it Catalyst. And my job as the head of marketing business development was to build the audience for the publication with no budget. And the founder of that company, by the way, was Gina Wright Bartoszi. This was her company. She is also another powerhouse. She is the founder of KindBody, which is a fertility company that’s now a billion dollar valuation. She’s now the chair. Watching her career over the past two decades has just been fascinating.

She’s a powerhouse. So at Leader Publishing Group, the way that I built the audience was through events. We produced something like 16 plus events a year.

Myself and one other person, we’re a lean team. We did, you name it, breakfast, lunch, networking, or dinner, or lunch and panel discussion. I was booking speakers, building audiences, creating these very curated environments for these tech startups to come together in the room. And the dollars were flowing. It was the dot-com days. It was a really exciting time. And there were so many great companies coming out of Atlanta at the time like WebMD and ISS and SilverPop. And I don’t know, the list is very long. And the founders of those companies have gone on to do some amazing things. So that really was the beginning of my starting to work with startups as well.

Speaker 1: So I have so many questions before you continue. Okay. So your father, here we are. Let me go back. Your father’s mapping out finances in terms of buckets. You start to get a good understanding of what that bucket looks like for college.

Question for you. In that conversation with mapping out the buckets of where things were going, was that like a family conversation with like mom and the kids? Like, what role did your mother play in how you were engaging or understanding the money around you?

Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I never saw my parents talk about money. Not to say they didn’t. They wanted. But I didn’t witness it. That conversation was one-on-one. My dad would pull each of us three kids into his office on a Sunday afternoon on a regular basis to show us how to make the most of your income. So the mentality in my household was savings.

Okay. Was stretching the dollar and savings. And I think my dad’s vehicles for growing his money was his 401k, insurance.

That was a big focus for him. He was definitely putting money into insurance plans that he knew would pay out in the end or that you could borrow against or that would provide income in retirement years. And he knew he had a pension coming from the army and his social security. And so he was a planner. He thought it all through. And he definitely walked us through all of that.

Speaker 1: That’s incredible. What a gift. And so as you were sort of then departing university and you get into this incredible world of working for galleries and understanding this whole new community of money, of wealth, of how people comport themselves, what this world looks like.

Two questions. First is with those first dollars that you were making, how did you start to think about spending, savings? Was it very much did you take after your father in the buckets where you thank God I’m making some money? I could go do some fun things. How did you think about your money in those first early days?

Speaker 2: Honestly, I worked for several startups that didn’t provide 401ks. Something to be thinking about when you’re going into opportunities, definitely be negotiating for those benefits. But yes, when there were opportunities to tuck money away, that was always a priority. Because without that, you have to build on that.

There has to be some end result of the planning. If you had asked me any of the stuff we’re going to talk about later, 30 years ago, I couldn’t have answered a single question for you. Rose, not my background. I didn’t know what that.

Speaker 1: And then the other question is around this experience of being around in this gallery world. Obviously, that gives you very interesting early insight into things. What were some of your early experiences around that? I feel like that’s such a formative time in your young adult life to have exposure to this different, very niche sort of segment of the population. What were some of the things that you cleaned off of that?

Speaker 2: When you first start in the gallery, you start looking at the pricing coming from the background. I came from, it’s shocking. I was just shocked by what you could charge for artwork. And again, it’s what the market bears, which is a fascinating thing about pricing artwork.

If it’s a blue ship artist or a more recognized artist, or somebody who’s been in a museum or somebody has built a bigger reputation, the pricing is based in Outworld, if there are new artists that the gallery has discovered, it’s based upon what the gallery knows their clients are buying and what they’re looking for. And that was fascinating to me. It’s still an art. How art is priced is fascinating. And it’s different from a small local gallery or a specific dealer versus like an auction house, which is going through vetted resources and tracking pricing from air. And by the way, gallery owners do talk to each other, and they do like the artists will say, at my gallery in New York or my gallery in Dallas or whatever, this is the pricing for this.

If it’s a new artist to the gallery. So there are ways that those things come about. I will tell you one story.

So I think it was my second year there. Elton John was in town. He had bought a place in Atlanta with his, I guess now husband, and they had come in to buy art for their place in Europe. And so within the 20 minute period, he walks through the gallery pointed at, I don’t know, 10 pieces of art that he loved, and said, I’ll take that that that that that that that that that that that that that that without really a thought about anything to not even ask the price of anything I was what. And then the final bill at the end was it was let’s just say with six figures. I was just absolutely floored. But this is just how the art world works.

It’s fascinating. And then we had this very renowned German artist that was a sculptor who we did a show with sometime in that same period. And the price of this was like a 12 or 14 foot sculpture that you could only put out in your garden, or like the interior of a large corporate building. I wonder where this thing went. It was at least half a million dollars. I don’t know. So it was a lot of wrapping my head around all the art world works and how the pricing works and who the client base is and what they can afford.

Speaker 1: Pause for a second. If you’re not already on the wealth catalyst sub stack, you are missing out. Over 20,000 people have subscribed and they are diving into stories, strategies and money expanders you won’t find anywhere else.

Join us today and keep fueling your wealth journey. Check out the link in the show notes. Now back to the show. So fascinating.

It’s like, now you should think about these different asset classes and these early exposure. Okay. So moving on. So after there are gallery experiences, you move on to PR, you start moving into publishing, you start really getting your teeth really cut into this world of, I would say, community experiences. I mean, just really focused on what would sound to me like the alchemy of what creates the right environment.

How do you spark interest, imagination in these jobs that you were taking? And as you started to move into this world of community and events and PR, I spent one year in PR in New York. I made very little money and I subsisted off of going to the parties afterwards so I could eat dinner. I was like, how do people eat food on the salary?

Oh, it’s like the can of pay at the fashion party. But certainly this world of entertainment and community, right? As you’re starting to pull these things together, I feel like, and you’ll have to tell me like from a salary standpoint or where the upside starts to come from. It really feels like it gets concentrated in those visionaries who are creating and sort of ideating as a young person starting to move into the space. How did you navigate your passion for experiential and community and creation with obviously making a salary and like figuring out how to pay for things? Like, how did you figure that out?

Speaker 2: I became an expert at selling sponsorships with salary plus commission. And that’s what we did. And ultimately, when I left Leader Publishing Group, I started my own consulting practice. I was producing, I worked for a lot of community based organizations and companies that were focused on building rooms. They were building like rooms of people that’s where my niche is.

Also strategic partnerships and really looking for specific introductions to grow the business. More of that kind of business development work and less of the PR side of things when I went out on my own. I had so many fun clients and really had a great time with that.

And then I ended up going back in house after a few years because it’s hard. I ended up working at Cox Enterprises helping them launch an internal startup. So I fell in love with publishing when I was at Leader Publishing Group and storytelling and around that whole idea of the magic that happens in the room. And then when I got to Cox Enterprises and we were launching this internal startup, that was another content driven company. I got to do that all over again and really help them build their client base for that startup as well, which was a lot of fun. And then from there went to work for Nelia Design Group, which began my love of digital content. It was a web development company and we had some amazing clients, the Smithsonian Institute, Carter Center. We were building these incredible sites and I was the bridge between the tech team and the art team and also as client facing. And so I was managing all aspects of that. But I got to help build these websites. And it was just so fun to watch all of these ideas come to life right in front of you on the screen. And what I love about websites and digital content is the editability of it.

There’s always an opportunity for an upgrade or an update or a refresh or whatever. It’s a lot of fun. And my husband and I had met during that time and decided we were going to move to Los Angeles. And when I got here, I launched my own platform, my own content driven platform that I ran for a decade called Mom Angelus. I was one of the first quote unquote mommy bloggers in LA. Really developing content about where to go and what to do with your kids. But ultimately I was doing brand consulting through my platform and helping big brands reach the parenting community. And I got known for, because I’m an event person, I got known for, for hosting and got hired to host a lot of the VIP and mom’s influencer and parenting influencer events in Los Angeles during that time.

So I would host all the VIP rooms. And there were a lot of celebrity moms that were launching companies at the time. And it was a lot. And I was getting to meet a lot of women, a lot of moms who were launching companies to solve problems that we women identify. And as I was working with these founders and these startups and helping them connect with each other, helping them find resources, bringing them into these events, helping them build their businesses, the resonating common factor between all of them was the lack of capital.

Well, and more and more became apparent that the problem was, and we all know this, that the majority of capital allocators out there are men. The numbers is moving forward. It’s changing. There are more women in capital allocation seats and investment decision-making seats, which is great.

We want to see that forward momentum continue 15 years ago. There really, there weren’t a lot of women capital allocators. So going into a room and whether it’s angel investors or whether it’s venture fund or whether you’re even just looking at borrowing money and talking to a lender, a lot of the times you were pitching an idea about why European formula is not available in the United States and we really need a good quality product that’s competitive to European formulas so that our babies are getting the best quality food to a room full of men.

Or you’re talking about perinatal nutrition or household safety or ride share programs for moms and kids or like all of these problems that we recognize that need to be solved, but maybe just aren’t weren’t and are now so more on the radar, I hope, of male counterpart investors.

Speaker 1: And how wonderful that you were able to provide a place and a community and this like early stage, if you will, incubation assist to help these founders do that all while you were. So were you doing this as well as running your platform, as well as working for someone else or had you jumped the ship entirely and was it like full on Laura in the business?

Speaker 2: Once we got to LA, I had become a mom and I launched mom Angelou. So I was fully working for myself and doing client work. But yes, advising and working with these founders was that whole initiative and it led to these dinners that we started doing myself and one of my partners to really bring these women in the room. And then from all of that led me to where I am today with Aventura. And why we’re doing venture.

Speaker 1: So these conversations and sort of like even at home, like taking this risk and starting to build your own business and starting to take work on in that capacity, did you and your husband sit down and say like, all right, Laura, this is what you’re working on.

And here’s how we’re going to think about this. Was it like the idea sort of naturally come to you? Like this is my big passion right now was just launch this platform and play with it. Was it fully planned out PNL and business plan? Or was it like, I think this is interesting. Let’s see how it unfolds over time.

Speaker 2: First of all, I am married to an entrepreneur. So two entrepreneurs in the house is never easy. Fortunately, he is always built very successful businesses. And mom Angelou was great because I was doing client work. So I had a lot of clients and there was consulting fees coming in through that.

And that was great. So it was more like ancillary income. Let’s put it. Yeah.

Yeah. When my sister, my producing partner and I started Nick’s course in media seven years ago, there is a plan for that. And we have sat down and talked about the kind of projects and the kind of work we want to do. And we have some things in the work.

But it’s a stop. It’s that company’s been stopped and started because with anything in the entertainment industry, you develop a project, you go out and pitch it, you try to sell it, you may not sell it. You may have put your own money into development or I don’t know. So it depends on the project. We have a couple of things in development right now. And that’s a very different type of business. Venture F, though, is one of our productions.

Speaker 1: That’s incredible. And so when you went out to launch Venture F and really created, I think, one of the first destinations for women who want to invest in other women and to expand their knowledge and their horizons, you know, when you launch Venture F was that we have a clear thesis here. Obviously, so many holes in the market. Your perspective and voice is unique. Where did you start to anchor yourself, right? And thinking about what this all put intended, where this venture is going to get out? How did you start to anchor yourself and what this would become today?

Speaker 2: So going back to my comment earlier about all these these incredible women who were launching these companies to solve these problems and the challenge they had with raising capital. And I thought, and I’m not the only one. Like we are you and I are in a lot of rooms with women who are saying the same thing. Ultimately, it comes down to us women investing in other women. That’s where the flow of capital needs to go.

Because if we don’t, things aren’t going to change. And here’s the exciting part, which you and I both know is the great transfer of wealth is happening and 66 percent of wealth will be in the hands of women in this next decade. There are more and more women who are thinking about as they’re coming up in their careers and growing their income, how to build their wealth. They’re more interested in this topic.

They’re talking about it. And it’s because there’s so many women out there right now who are chipping away at this issue from different perspectives. So venture F to me was, OK, we know all these fabulous women. We know these great platforms. We know these great communities. We know these great events. We are reading all of this information. But it’s an overwhelming amount of things to have to evaluate. So how do we aggregate it all into one place and organize it in a manner so that if I am myself, a 50 plus woman who is now on this journey, growing wealth and learning about every aspect of finances and investing, whether it be in the public market or private market, if you’re looking at real estate or luxury goods or the venture community, like, where do you start?

Right? Where do you start? And things like conversations like this podcast. So that’s why we launched for the podcast last January.

We have 44 episodes out. These are conversations with leading experts just trying to break down the nitty gritty and simplify some of these more complex opportunities. And then we the next step was to launch the newsletter. So we have a weekly newsletter where we scan financial and investing news. And then we highlight our research and our resource center that we’ve built on the website. So our website has guides in it that we publish new guides every other week that will really help you find things. Say you want to start angel investing and you just don’t even know what that means. Then want to learn about it. Where are the communities you can go to learn about angel investing? And then how do you get deal flow?

Right? And how do you have the opportunity to look at those deals? So those are the things that we’ve put into like our guide to angel investing.

So you can go and look through it and figure out what might make the most sense for you. There’s so many great angel investing communities like portfolio and golden seeds and there’s platforms that you can join that aren’t necessarily communities. They’re more kind of deal flow like play money or chair. But the question is like, what’s the best thing for you personally? And how are you going to utilize it? So it’s just it’s a lot of it’s a lot of information.

And we just wanted to organize it and disseminate it in a way that’s digestible. We’ve built a glossary on the website so that as we’re listening to my podcast or your podcast or anybody else’s podcast and a term comes up and you’re like, what does that mean? You can you can chat GPT it and go read the definition. But we’ve we’ve given you a very simple succinct definition on the glossary page that taking two seconds. So that was our thought process behind all of that. And it’s been exciting. We have sponsors, we partners and really our focus right now is just on the content.

Speaker 1: Such an incredible feat, what you’ve accomplished so far and being a real anchor voice in this community and a leader in terms of how we think about our impact, how we think about our optionality, how we think about what we can do with our energy, our time, our money, all of these things. It’s so incredible.

And you and I have spoken many times about this, but man, we all we need so many torches to be lit in order to really seize a movement and the change that we have that we want to see. So obviously, you’re a mom and life is coming full circle. You are once the age of your children.

And it’s exciting to see how life is continuing to unfold for you. How do you think about as you’re building business now and your kids? Obviously, they know mom is building business, right? So how do you have these conversations at home? Why, what does money conversation look like? And how do you sort of touch these subjects?

Speaker 2: I will say we talk about it a lot, actually. These conversations very rarely happen in my household, except for the Sunday afternoons and the conversations we have in our house are very different. My husband and I are very much a team when it comes to our finances. And we’ve always worked as partners. I paid the bills, we do the taxes and the insurance together. But the investment piece he always managed up until a few years ago when I said to him, now that I my head was out of the sand and I was learning all these things, I said, you know what, I need to we need to do this together, which is great because when now we sit down and look at things together and we make decisions together. And sometimes he wants to do things a certain way or I’m telling him about something else.

Like it’s good. Like I truly believe that you need to talk with your life partner about your finances and make decisions together. It’s very important. And it’s a hard thing to do. Like not everybody is comfortable sitting down with each other and talking about and working on money.

Right. And again, listen to podcasts like this or reading newsletters or just getting yourself in the groove of things can help you feel more confident, even sitting down with your own spouse. So that’s a good thing. And as a result, the three of my daughter and my husband and I, we do have money conversations, but at dinner, we talk about budget allocations and what we’re looking at from an investment perspective or my husband will ask my daughter about things that he’s thinking about in the stock market and does she have an opinion on this that or the other. So it’s exciting to see and she’s got her own checking account.

She’s able to make purchases on Apple Pay. And so we can see everything that’s going, but we talk about those decisions. We talk about purchases that are made. So there’s no money changing around here without a conversation around it, which I think is super important. And it just, she’s asked us about mortgage payments and how that works and what kind of credit cards are better.

And she understands the difference between a charge card, which is what Amix is and a credit card, which is what a Visa and a Mastercard is. I don’t know. It’s just talking about it. It’s just literally, we just have to talk about these things.

Speaker 1: I love it. And Telso settings are a great example. And I think also there’s so much information that is out there, which is great. But then there’s also so much information that is not great.

That’s also out there. And so to have these sorts of intimate spaces where your daughter feels like she can ask you those questions is so important because you can’t just get your news from YouTube.

Speaker 2: We’re seeing the rise of Fintalk, right? And so then the question is how legit are these people that they’re watching? Great job. Right. And so you have to be a critical thinker and be able to disseminate who you should be taking advice from. Yeah. For these kids, like I think that’s so hard. Inundated with information.

Speaker 1: When we were younger, it’s like the major voices in personal finance, I feel 20 years ago, 30 years ago, I was like Susie Orman, rich dad, poor dad. It was like, you know, there are only so many voices. And now to really understand, I know only where am I getting information from that critical lens and also that reflective nature of does this land with me or do I feel crampy after I listen to this person and tell me to cut my lattes to save a million dollars.

There are so many different ways to sort of approach that. Okay. So bring me up to today and I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that are on your heart today, what you’re focusing a lot of attention, vision, and ultimately how this is stacking up to the incredible Laura Nix-Gerson legacy that you are building towards. So what is on your heart?

What is coming forward? And my gosh, my love, you and I are going to be hanging out in the next 50 years. So we’re going to be like, I wonder how the last 50 played out. So what will that conversation look like 50 years from now?

Speaker 2: What’s weighing on my heart, honestly, is I keep thinking about all of these women who are accredited investors, who don’t realize they’re accredited investors and how do we help them understand the opportunity before them, right? And really get them excited about the idea to not just grow wealth, but to invest with, I would say, values aligned investing, like any kind of investing you do, whether you’re putting money with your wealth advisor into a stock portfolio or without your wealth advisor into a stock portfolio, when you’re looking at what’s in that portfolio, are those companies that you want to be investing in, do they align with your personal vision? And when you’re at that point, when you’re ready to start thinking about alternative assets, whether it’s starting with real estate or investing in art, or really you’re excited about a female founded company or a fund and you’d really like to get in on that from the ground level, think about what that means with your values and how your dollars can really impart change. Truly, like we are going to be in control of the majority of the capital.

And how are we going to use that capital? That’s what I think about all the time. And when I’m sitting down with Jade and Annie over at Abundance Collective, who are doing this amazing thing on a very hyper local level in Los Angeles and North Carolina, Austin to educate accredited investors about everything we’re talking about and help them build confidence. When I talk to people like you, Shalma, who are really having these meaningful conversations every day on your podcast, when you are reading books by Bobby Rebell or Nicole Lap, and there’s so many women, Jeanine Furpo, who’s got to invest for better and the nonprofit that’s literally there to build these small groups where you can get together and learn how to build wealth with other women.

These are some amazing women doing some amazing things. And I think all of us are having this conversation. Like how do we ensure that this great wealth transfer, that the growth of wealth that is going to be in the hands of women, it currently is, and it’s moving in a larger pace into the hands of women. How are we investing it? Not better, but that’s so important.

Speaker 1: That’s so beautiful, Lauren. We spent a lot of time on today’s call talking about the different nature of money, right? Like how we think about saving it or investing it and conversations at home around the nuances. But certainly money can also be really fun.

And we can do really fun things with that. And so I would love to find out what are some of your most favorite things that you guys have done with your money most recently?

Speaker 2: We took our daughter on a trip to Europe in the spring to look at colleges. But we managed to have a lot of fun on the way, which was great. Honestly, it’s college year.

So a lot of focus on that because it’s her last year of high school and we’re thinking about her future. We’re foodies. We like to eat. So we like to enjoy time together.

And I think that money well spent is a quality meal, whether you cook it at home or whether you’re out or whether you have friends and family over. I wait, I don’t know if you can see it on the wall behind me. That’s my first art purchase. This is a local artist in the Palisades. And I saw an Instagram post that his studio burned down in the L.A. Fire. And I owned a smaller version of this in my house. And so one of the many things that I’m heartbroken about is that my art collection is gone.

And this was just an emotional, lovely opportunity to buy a print from this artist who I love. If you go on my Instagram feed, there’s information about it there. But so I don’t know. I guess those are the ways that we the more frivolous ways that we spend our money.

Speaker 1: Fun ways because it is an energy. There is a flow and my gosh, the flying resources and ways that feel good are good. It’s good. It’s good for us. As we close out today’s conversation, I know you’re working on lots of incredible things. And our audience loves to support brilliant women who are raising their torches and creating change in the world. And Laura, you are certainly one of those incredible women. How can we support you today? What is it you need? What can we do for you? Spill the tea.

Speaker 2: OK, there’s two things. One is we are launching an invitation only group of women called the Foundry. And I say invitation only in that I you’re going to fill out an application on the website. I get access to so many incredible events. And I want to extend invitations to women who are seriously interested in being in those rooms and learning and investing in other women, events like your wealth catalyst summit. We also host small private dinners now in LA, but we’re going to be doing this in other cities. And it’s it’s under the helm of what we call the Foundry, really, because we want this to be a catalyst for change. And really, it’s about networking and growth and really just building relationships. We want more women sitting in family office, institutional capital, investment, banking, venture capital to all be in the room together.

Let’s get these women in a room. So that’s one thing. So if you’re interested in that, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re interested in that, please go check out our link for the Foundry on the Venturef website and learn all about what we’re doing and why. The second thing is the podcast and the newsletter and the hub on our website are only the beginning of Venturef. Really, the big picture of this is we’re developing a docu series. And in the next couple of months, I’ll be sharing more information and we will be raising funds for this docu series and doing it through our nonprofit arm of our organization.

We will be sharing that info. I hope you will pass it along to all of your listeners when it’s ready and really continuing the work of what we’re doing at Venturef to reach more people.

Speaker 1: Laura, I’m grateful to call you a friend. You are inspiring. I’m so proud of everything that you’re doing and can’t wait for us to continue to just build and see all of our dreams come true, which, my gosh, our dreams just seem so altruistic. We may need some other dreams that are less altruistic, but I’m so happy to have you here today, sharing your story. Thank you very much for being here.

Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, the pleasure is all mine. This was so much fun. It was so fun to be on the other side of the conversation today. So thank you for having me, Shalva. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Getting Rich Together. My hope is that you leave every episode feeling more inspired, more powerful and more connected. Until next time, remember you have everything it takes to create wealth on your terms.