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 the beautiful Lindsay Hadley. Lindsay, everyone in this world knows you for being an incredible vision, heart-centered activator, a global activator, someone who is raising capital towards the right visions of the world. You’re known as being an incredible producer, philanthropist, and obviously managing director of Harbor Fund. Most people might also know you from being behind the biggest movements like global citizen and uncharitable.

So many of these other projects that really show that film and community and the arts can be a driving force of change in the world. I am very happy to have you here today on Getting Rich Together. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. You’re so sweet to give me a chance to share some of my story. Thank you.

Speaker 1: You’re so welcome. Obviously, before you were out here changing the world, you were once a little girl, and maybe you were a little girl who was also like, I’m going to go change the world and make it happen, but take me back to a little Lindsay, someone who was somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12 years old. Where were you growing up in this beautiful world? What was life like around you? And what was money like? Oh my gosh, great place to start.

Speaker 2: At age 10, I just returned back from living in Russia. My dad was an international consultant, and we lived for a period of time right after the fall of communism in 1991 in the former Soviet Union, which had just been liberated. And the free market had opened up.

My dad was a consultant and an entrepreneur who has tried to broker deals overseas in that space. And I had this very eye-opening experience to both incredible disparity that exists because the country was going through an economic upheaval. It had basically had an economic collapse after communism was torn down and they created a more of a democratic structure. You had people that were living in abject poverty.

We would see mothers trading the only parables for their children for a loaf of bread for the winter. And you would see just the inflation was insane, like the American dollar was equivalent of 100 rubles. We went over there, has lowered the middle-income Americans, and we’re like millionaires because if you had $30,000 a year that was equivalent of $300,000 or $3 million, really, $3 million. So you were looking at just extreme disparity in wealth, which created a paradigm about money for me that was really powerful.

But we moved back. My family, my dad was an entrepreneur as mentioned, and there was some feast or famine, but mostly famine. When I, as I was a child, there was a lot of money problems, a lot of stress around money. It was a single parent working parent home. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and so my dad was the only breadwinner. And he was constantly drumming up new business and borrowing Peter to pay Paul and just struggling to get by. But I didn’t know any better because I grew up in an ecosystem where everybody was economically middle to lower income. You only know what you don’t know, and I think the wealthiest person in our town was literally the veterinarian. We didn’t have doctors or lawyers or we didn’t have dentists. We didn’t have a medical office in our community.

It was very one-force open. Town is a tiny little place in Utah called Camus. It’s completely changed now.

Like all the billionaires of Park City have pushed all of the, if Park City, Utah have pushed all of the millionaires into Camus, and now it’s this very bougie place with a lot of famous and high-net worth people. But growing up, it was not like that by any stretch. And I never felt I went without anything. I had all my basic needs met and so blessed to be, to grow up in the United States. But I think seeing people living abject poverty off the backs of the former Soviet Union, it was wow, just for the luck of the lottery I was born into.

Western society in America, and I have all these things that I take for granted. So that really shaped my worldview about money. And I also, I’ll just say that as you mentioned, as a young girl having ambitions to change the world, I didn’t whatsoever.

In fact, I grew up in a very conservative Mormon family, very patriarchal structure, and women were stay-at-home mothers. And that was the total ambition of their life. And I think it’s the most honorable position of my life is being a mother of three boys. But I will say that it certainly is not, I don’t believe should be a limit to what women can do outside of the home.

But I certainly never had any ambitions past being a mom because it’s all I saw around me. So my aunt was a therapist and another aunt was a bus driver. But those were the only two working women in like my world. I think my grandmother had retired from teaching. So I think she’d been a teacher. But usually women were choosing jobs that were very conducive for raising a family primarily. And I remember when I went to college, I was asked to tell my dad what I should study. And he said, ah, it doesn’t really matter.

You’re gonna be stay-home mom. And that was like the frame. That was the world I came from. So to be where I am now, where I’m the primary breadwinner in my family and a principal in many major global initiatives, and often being like a female executive or C-suite or a voice, a shareholder, a stakeholder, a board member, in and positions of power is really trippy. It’s not something I ever aspired or dreamt of for sure sometimes.

Speaker 1: Okay, so take me back to high school. So obviously, like having this experience in Russia has, they’re undoubtedly like conscious and subconscious ways in which that impacted you, I’m sure. And so being in high school and starting to find yourself back in the U.S. and starting to, I don’t know, understand like who you are, certainly with these confines or let’s say constraints of the social culture that you are around. How did you like start to think about yourself as a student was it like, was education a priority for you or was it really I’m getting through school so that maybe I’m going to go to college, but were the aspirations at that point, I’m going to do really well in school, education means something to me or was it more, hey, I’m going to do some sports or just what was it like for you to sort of be a teenager and what is it that you knew of yourself at that time?

Speaker 2: That’s another amazing question. How fun is this to go through every road and think of the frame or like foundation of someone’s life that thank you for the questions. So in high school, yeah, I cared a lot about grades, mostly because I had a need for external validation. I think the culture I come from is very performative and really workspaceed its religious ideology and very like a real emphasis on high performance. That was an indicator of self worth and at least self esteem. So I definitely cared about getting straight A’s. I year of school after having skipped a grade and it was something just giving you an indicator of like how much I did care about school, but I didn’t care about school for the reasons to have a career.

Like it was like a means to an end. It was just to get shiny stars and also I guess I had an analytical mind and did enjoy learning, but I would say it was mostly just to cross up a box and feel that I was okay. But I did play college soccer and that I believe if it hadn’t been for soccer, I probably wouldn’t have gone to college actually because again, that wasn’t like encouraged or like a paradigm neither of my parents graduated college. So, you know, this was something that it wasn’t like at all thought fostered or encouraged, but my grandfather weirdly when I was 14 years old and I asked my siblings and my other cousins and nobody else had this experience as which is really unique. But I was with my grandfather in the backyard cleaning his fishing boat with him after it gone fishing and he said, he turned to me, he goes, promise me you’ll get a college degree. And I was like, okay.

And I said, why? He goes, I just have a feeling you need it. And I have a feeling that I think it’s going to be very important for your life. I have this kind of a spiritual impression where you give me your word, you’ll get a college degree. And I said, sure, grandpa.

And I remember like later in, it was 14. So later in my college years, I’m like, is my husband going to die? Because again, husbands were their breadwinners, husbands provide.

And then I’m going to have to go on the workforce. Like I had these fears and anxieties about it because I’m like, why did my grandpa feel it was so important for me? Running off that motif, like that was the frame a lot of women were told to go to college.

So that if their husbands couldn’t provide, they could use their degree. That would Mormonism in the 90s and much the culture. So yeah, it wasn’t really something that I wasn’t looking for at all. But I did learn at that young age that I had very natural leadership skills when it came to galvanizing people around service or a cause that was, I was very passionate about making a difference and a natural leader. I understood human nature and how to incentivize people. And so I started several service clubs and was the president of several like charitable service projects, whether it was Interact, which is a rotary version of high school, or I started when I was in seventh grade, the Trash Bashers Club, where I incentivized kids to clean.

I brought the first recycling bin to the community, but I never imagined it as like a career or some kind of like identity or some kind of a projection of the future. It just naturally came from a selfish desire to feel like my life had purpose and meaning. I wanted to diminish suffering. I’ve been saying some things that were problematic or maybe maladaptive about my culture, but one beautiful, there are many beautiful things, but one incredibly beautiful thing was an immense emphasis on service and giving and diminishing suffering and leaning into making the world better through light and love. And that was, that was absolutely like a typify part of the experience of my upbringing.

Speaker 1: How interesting to see that this life of service, unbeknownst to you, happened at this very young age and then has continued to pick up momentum and snowballed and has really been a driving force in a lot of the projects and activations and areas that you lead in this world. As you were graduating university, was it really clear to you at that point what the next step was? Like what the next job was going to be? How much did you like, was the expectation that you were going to marry your college boyfriend if you had one? Like how did you navigate this pivotal moment of holy crap, I have a degree, I made this happen, I’m discovering all these great things about myself. Now, dot, dot, what directions do I go in and how do you start to launch yourself?

Speaker 2: Yeah, in college, so I got married very young, which is again a very typical situation for someone from the latter-day Saint community is I married my guest college boyfriend, he’s from Australia and we got married very young. I was 21 years old, he was 23 and yeah, so babies and essentially again, I was just graduating to get a degree. I chose behavioral science and sociology because I was interested in people and things. I made an emphasis in my studying picking and selecting pro classes and curriculum that would support like international development efforts and I volunteered and got involved in humanitarian organizations, very boots on the ground, aid type work, traveling to Mexico, time for Kenya doing humanitarian aid and so right out of college, I from interning from these and volunteering from these groups, I got a job offer.

It was my dream job right out of college, my senior year, I became the international service coordinator to a little NGO that was doing work in these remote countries and villages where they never see white people, let alone experienced anything from my worldview. So I had incredible exposure globally, very young. I also before living in Russia, my dad as an international broker took us to Hong Kong. So I’d lived abroad already two different times. Now I was traveling to these villages and working with municipal local leaders and tribal leaders and stakeholders of communities to try to lift them out of poverty through different mechanisms that were mostly aid driven and pretty young, pretty early on and I did get a job, but again, it was pre-children and early married.

That was all kosher in my culture. Then the minute that you started up in kids, you’re supposed to be out of the workforce and you’re supposed to be a full-time child bearer and childcare giver, which again, I think is brilliant and amazing and such a privilege and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t the path that I that laid out before my life. And so I did step out of like my work, the workforce to start raising children and then found myself as my husband was a stockbroker in 2008 collapse, I found myself back in the workforce at the supplemental situation. And then my career like went in the J-curve with success and I found myself actually moving into administration fundraising and event production because I didn’t want to trek malaria ridden jungles anymore with children that I was pregnant.

And so I started the more administrative fundraising and production side of these charitable causes, but still utilizing my network and my degree and my I guess my resume to benefit my family. But again, I thought it was a temporary placeholder for my husband to step back in. But quickly I found that like my career just had kind of jet fuel and kept getting more and more like tailwind and my husband was having headwind. And so I found myself just more and more in that role and my husband has a really beautiful temperament. He’s an Aussie surfer, very nurturing and was an incredible support in the home, especially with the children became in many instances of Mr. Mom.

And in our generation, this is commonplace for women like millennials and down as we share these roles and it’s not as demarcated and it’s not as clear and while we can have primary roles and some people choose that, there’s a whole plethora of how to do it, but we share those roles a lot. And I always tried to, I always took jobs where I worked from home so that I’ve been doing the zooms and this before zoom it was Skype at the time. I’ve been doing conference calls and phone calls and Skype and digital remote nomadic work my whole career.

So when COVID came, I was everybody was just catching up what we’ve been doing for a decade. But essentially I did that because I was choosing to prioritize my children so I could be home and watch them for steps or in between calls be folding laundries or whatever doing changing dirty diapers. Literally, I remember pitching a billionaire for a million dollar donation for one of my first events early on in my career, my 20s while changing a puppy diaper and the toddler started yelling about his his bummaging or whatever while I’m on a phone call. So a lot of juggling, a lot of a lot of wearing many hats, a lot of like blending work and personal life and home life in a way that was magical, difficult, challenging, messy, broken and problematical at once.

Speaker 1: You know, well, it sounds like your husband, it sounds like he knew what he was in for and you guys seem to have like really strong values alignment early on to have you be going to these very remote places, hanging out in indigenous communities and being really fearless at such a young age. I imagine that he was like, oh yeah, like this woman is like she she knows how to like she knows how to do it.

And if she wants something or has a vision, you’re going to make it happen despite everyone else saying, we don’t want you to go, we don’t want you to get sick or something bad to happen. And so it sounds like he he really knew who you were and like the ways in which you were of the world. During that time of the of the crash and sort of this changing role of your dynamics together, what were some of the what were some of the conversations like at home where it was like, hey, like we need to rethink this.

And I think this is such a pivotal moment because a lot of times couples are charging in a direction and there are these roles and how you navigate challenge says so much more than how you navigate. And it’s all great. But life is wonderful.

And it’s totally wonderful if I’m in my box, you’re in your box, and we’re moving. But yeah, so what was it like? How did you guys navigate through and also from a social and cultural standpoint, right? Because it was a commonplace, I’m sure when you were chatting with your your family, and you’re like, oh, hey, like things are changing. It’s not just a conversation with your husband and your kids and figuring that out. But it’s also a larger networked kind of familial impact. So like, double click on all of that. What was it like to navigate it? How did your family respond and feel to all of that?

Speaker 2: It’s yeah, it’s interesting because I’m so thrilled to talk about this because candidly, it was such a painful almost sort of like almost cognitive dissonance going on because we wanted to fit the social norm, because it was more than just being accepted by our tribe and our community that had a certain way of doing things. It was tied to identity and even divinity.

Hey, if your divine calling is to be a mother, if you’re divine as a man, divine calling is to be a provider. So I think that’s not, I think that’s true of Western culture at large and human beings is at large. And I think there’s actually really sound scientific, biological and socioeconomic and anthropological reasons for that.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily the wrong frame. But the idea that women are nurturers and men are providers, those very clear demarcations, they were like corridor spiritual framework, let alone what the community felt and social. So we’ve been on couples counseling couches over the years in tears, both of us, about how much those constructs have actually been super painful to live through as a couple because we didn’t fit those social norms. And we didn’t even know. It was like the frog in the boiling pot idea. We didn’t even know what was happening to us at a subconscious level. I literally believed I was just helping out financially until my husband would pick up the ball. And then he just literally believed he was just helping carry the kids while he was figuring out his way. Like we never really realized it until we are so far into it that it economically made zero sense for him to be not supporting at home and supporting me in these supplemental ways because I could, I was, could out-earned him by probably 10 times, 10 times. I mean, there’s no question the disparity in our capacities as professional, like economic creators. And I was chosen on profit.

So I think back all the time I just giggled because I’m like, if I had taken my business acumenomoxy and I guess relentless audacity and taken it to the private sector really early, where we would be economically, but it’s never been a driving force for me. I will say as much as it’s been painful, it’s like most things that have two sides of a coin. Like our biggest wounds have the best medicine to the dichotomy and I guess the paradox of human nature because I’m so glad that I was held back by these mores and social conditions to prioritize my family, prioritize my values, prioritize community, prioritize my children because I don’t know that it would have been healthy for me long-term and long-term accounting had I just been like all about my career because I think I have the tendency and the wiring to be alcoholic.

I think I have the tendency and wiring to because of that insecure parts of me that needed external validation really make money and success a focus that would have been, I think, harmful to me spiritually and holistically. So I’m really glad actually that I had these anchors although there were times it was very painful. So I’m super grateful, but both him and I would have to have these discussions we crept up on us.

And it was actually seven years in our marriage, two little kids. We moved to Australia because my husband was having a hard time finding work commiserate with the income that he had been doing before as a stockbroker and we thought he’d become a tradesman of because he didn’t have a college degree so he had more vocational education and we were going to move back to Australia where you can economically really survive as a family both with their highly socialized tax structures and they have a lot of very egalitarian free medical care free college deeply subsidized for young families like us. And so going back to we moved to Australia with the intent to have him take that breadwinner role and lean into his career and I just kept having a supplement but again, mine just kept going further and further into greater economic value to us as a couple. And so it just was interesting because then I started, I got involved in the global citizen, you mentioned that I was the linchpin in creating the global citizen organization. I was their founding executive director of their chief development officer and executive producer of their events and the only female C-suite executive in the starting years and I brought the first $17 million to the organization over the first four years and brought the first artists and put us the first events and that became like a juggernaut. Like the fourth year I was there we received $30 million from Bill Gates to this little startup nonprofit and I started getting head hunted by A-list celebrities and multinational corporations and NGOs and ultra high-nitro family offices to come run their philanthropic endeavors. And that’s when I started a boutique consultancy called Hadley Impact Consulting and took all of them on as clients because I just have a huge appetite I guess and I was like, yeah, let’s do this all because I actually wanted to work with all these people. I thought it was all inspiring so I built a boutique agency and took them on as clients and my husband started supporting me in that role. He was like our rental of our finances and books and he did graphic design inside of that ecosystem and those dynamics again like we so that we’re partnering together or juggling our families but over time over a decade of running that it actually put a lot of pain points on our marriage because I do believe at least at our core I’m more feminine my husband is more masculine and the polarity of our marriage with me being the boss and being in charge and wasn’t super healthy for both of us from a psychic frame like over time that actually created a lot of pain points and so we had to go work on that through therapy because yeah anybody’s worked with their spouse.

No, it could be tricky but especially when the woman is the one in charge that’s a really unique situation and some people I’ve met a couple people like no it isn’t a problem but funny enough those couples usually one of the spouses like that’s what they think I’m struggling over here you know so I don’t know it’s interesting I think it’s I think it’s tricky it’s a tricky tumultuous journey but also beautiful beautiful and brutal at the same time and I just know that my husband is my soulmate the greatest thing that ever happened to me we keep choosing each other so intentionally he’s still so much grace for me he has cherished me and loved me if anything like the thing that I feel most regretful in my life is that I’ve been harsher critical on him because I was at a high bar I guess I just would be very tenacious right I demand excellence of myself and then as a result that pulls him and I’ve been too critical or too hard but then at the same time he’ll tell you you’ve elevated me you’ve pushed me into expanding my horizons made me better expanded me you know what I mean and so his laid back easy going agreeable personality comes with the other side of the coin that lacks a lot of ambition and tenacity and my being a force of nature has brought so much beauty in our life and has also made me a pain in the ass to live with work we all are high maintenance in our own ways and every marriage has its illness and every marriage has its own medicine but are you mentioned like navigating these conversations I think that’s the key like we’ve had to get in and mud wrestle over it and the more that we remember is a couple for anyone listening that’s struggling with anything like this the more they remember that we’re side by side shoulder to shoulder dealing with a problem in front of us that we share this problem that is the polarity or the balance of roles or the misunderstandings or the responsibilities or the expectations or the I would say expectancy that we have with each other more than we saw that as we’re in partnership dealing with the thing outside of us it was miracles happen in our marriage but when we saw ourselves adversarial as a cross from each other contending in conflict that’s when we were hurting the person we love most and it’s funny because I still have a huge mask I’m a fan, I always joke of this rabbi from 2000 years ago named Jesus. And I still choose to put my life on him and his stories and his way of being. And he talks about loving your neighbor. And I just constantly have to remind myself, who is my closer neighbor than my spouse? There’s literally no.

Speaker 1: Pause for a second. If you’re not already on the Wealth Catalysts 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.

That is so true. Okay, wow. So many beautiful things here, Lindsay. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about some of these incredible inflection points, right? You mentioned now the steam and things are really rolling and moving and the conversations are happening at home. You guys are making decisions to really focus into what I would call your purpose, your zone of genius, the things that you are here on this planet to create. And with that, right, commeserate with that comes what you receive and the abundance and the world that you create.

And so there’s something so magical when you’re in alignment because things really start to open up when you have faith and trust. And I’d love to have you share some of these financial inflection points where all of a sudden it was like, holy bananas, this is happening. Our life is now materially different. Your things are different and you’re starting to think about maybe, was it the 529 accounts for the kids college or the savings or the stock market or real estate or whatever it is. But how did you and what were some of these inflection points and what were some of the decisions that you made as abundance continued to flow into your ecosystem?

Speaker 2: My first thought was that when I turned 40, I’m 42. And when I turned 40, my husband and I had moved to Hawaii. We were living on beachfront, beautiful place in Hawaii and COVID had hit and my husband backing up a little bit. Those dynamics of me being the boss and how it was impacting our marriage started to, it was working till it didn’t work. And that’s true with a lot of things. And then we were like, oh, the system feel good for either of us.

Let’s change this. And so he decided to become a builder. Now he’s a general contractor and he’s doing his own thing and he’s crushing it.

And he’s, I’m so proud of him and so grateful. But he built us like a dream home right before COVID. And we were moving in it.

And during COVID, we got to knock on our door. Because of the mind is a real estate agent and he brought this person. We didn’t have our home on the market, but he’s, this person was like, hey, we want to buy your home. And we said, let’s not for sale. And the application was that everybody has their price and we found out that is true. Yeah, it’s totally true. So we sold our home for double what we built for the year before COVID, which is just like lottery winning moment, right?

Just so insane. And it was just this place and time where the world was converging in Park City and in Utah, more conservative states, people were leaving the big cities out of California and New York and Austin. They were like coming to Utah to find refuge in this state that was open and working and active during 2020 and had much more laissez faire approaches to the pandemic that were more economically supportive or allowing their kids to be in sports still or whatever the thing was.

Like this family that literally bought our home moved their kids because they’re like, they were on track to be professional golfers and they wanted to keep golfing in Utah was allowing all those kinds of sports to continue. So anyway, they buy our home and the only thing they countered was we want all your furniture. So we like, we handed our keys over with this influx of cash and we were like, what, what now? And we basically were going to just build again, but in nearby in a different neighbor, nicer neighborhood. And we were just going to literally build the same home, the same plans and just own our new home, almost free and clear kind of thing.

It wouldn’t have been quite the equivalent, but we would have been like ahead in equity in this new home and we’re like, awesome. And that’s what we’re going to do. And then, but you can’t break ground in Utah during the winter. So we moved to Hawaii and we were just going there for a few months to wait out the winter to then come back and build our home. We had a lot picked out and everything and on hold. And we ended up loving Hawaii and stayed there for almost four years. And during that time, I’m still running my consultancy. My husband’s trying to do real estate in Hawaii. He found a condo and remodeled it and started running it out like Airbnb and we’re surfing and living our best life, so to speak.

But while that was happening, I had with all of the high performing dysfunction, whatever, human life, I feel like it’s almost a right of passage for most middle-aged moms, but I started struggling with anxiety and depression. And Hawaii really healed me. It was a place of true healing, calmed by amygdala right down, because there’s something about that space.

It’s like thin space in Hawaii. Besides that, it’s like earth porn and you go outside. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. That beckons you to betterment and presence. How do you see a Hawaiian sunset and not be like in the moment? But ultimately, more than anything, like parasyntetic nervous systems calm down when you’re near water, when it’s warm, you’re not going to freeze to death.

When there’s plenty, you could reach up and eat a mango. The culture of Hawaii is very chill and hang loose and everything’s just calming down. It was so good for me. And also spiritually, I had like a reconciling with my faith of origin, because I deconstructed and really was floundering in that. And I was able to place it in the right place in my life, which is more of a modality and a part of the vineyard or my culture might come from. And I could hold it in its totality while also rejecting things I think were unhelpful and not useful. And so I made peace and reconciliation that and my origin story and any of my stuff, I worked through all that stuff and got to mental. And I also thank you for anti-depressants, which I used in anti-anxiety medication. I love telling people about it because more we can de-stigmatize and stuff. It helped me to help free set my like, care of chemistry. Thank you, God.

Speaker 1: If you’re suffering and you can solve your suffering.

Speaker 2: It helped me. It helped me so much and I want everyone to know that. But yes, I tried everything from breath work to exercise to move in Hawaii to chilling the hell out at work, all the things. But like ultimately, yeah, I got free mental health, ill health. I was healed and I no longer have depression or anxiety. I was able to get off medication and move forward.

Thank you, God. But one of the things that happened during that time is I sat back and I was like, okay, I just earned 40. I am very much in an eat would you kill situation as a consultant. And although I was making more money than anyone I knew in the nonprofit sector, truly I was making more money for a salary than because I had this agency and a bunch of clients on retainers and they had a team that I’d make the Vic on and all that stuff. The way it had structured my business, I was making more than anybody had seen in that sector.

In fact, like Governor Beasley, who won a Nobel Prize, who was the executive director of the World Food Program, which is a $10 billion a year budget was making like 375 grand a year. And I was making half a million dollars. And I was like already crushing it in the sector of nonprofit.

Nobody was making that kind of money around me. And I was like, I’m doing really well here. And ultimately, and yet I was like exhausted.

You kill there is no residual. There’s no I had no 401k. I had no like, there was just a giant cap and it was all based on just being on a treadmill.

And I thought I’m in going into my peak early years. Maybe I need to join the dirty capitalist and I’m totally teasing with that phrase. But I had this like virtuosity around like being someone who’s in charity.

And I just started rethinking like, how can I have the same amount of impact for from a new paradigm and make more. And so I actually made a phone call to my friend, Mike Little Dyke, who’s the founder of Capital Financial Network, which is the largest RIA, I believe in Utah, like managing over $2 billion assets under management. And I called him and yet we’d grown up together in that small town. So a couple, we were, I guess we thought we’re big fish in a small pond.

But I guess we we’ve stayed friends and I called him and said, do you ever see someone like me working in your industry and finance? And he was so incredibly right. Your job description, he basically said. And so I did it with the blessing and support of his CEO, Cassie Myers, who’s their female executive is incredible. And I’m the director of client relations at Capita, where I brought now just shy of $70 million of assets under management, which I get paid in perpetuity around. And like now I’ve created this like essentially like an ongoing income that’s residual, which is which allowed me to like when you talked about being in your moment of excellence, or I think you said you’re a genius, allowed me to be freed up because I was no longer like trying to figure out how to keep the lights on and my basic bills covered, because I spent a couple years at this financial advisory firm, which by the way, they let me do nothing but support charities. I did events that supported Congress. I took people to Africa and Cambodia to do charity work. Like they were amazing at supporting me and still making the world better. And because it was a great way to connect with women didn’t want to be like on golf, golf cards and sitting basketball court. They wanted to be courted by doing good and being a part of something that had purpose. So it worked out really well.

But in the end, because I was able to shore up my financial situation through capitals, incredible generosity and allow me to bring my skillset there, I was able to start the Harper Fund, which is again a nonprofit where I am. But this time I built it. But it’s different. This is different. Exactly. Which that’s exactly what I’m excited to share more about. But yes, that is exactly right. So now here we are.

Speaker 1: Oh my God, that’s so incredible Lindsay. I feel like there’s something about the curiosity of your spirit. That allows you to get into the best kind of trouble. And I imagine that your children are also just receiving this incredible understanding of the world through osmosis from you. Talk about like just the difference in the way you were raised and now the way they’re raised and these opportunities to see like possibility. And really what I would like to say what applied faith really looks like. I think that we can say we believe in something, but until you’re really out there and you’re putting it out there and you’re applying it, I always tell everybody, if you want to meet God, go become an entrepreneur. Like if you really want to get put up against all your stuff, that’s like, there is like a lot of work there.

Okay, yes. So I love everything. It’s so inspiring.

And then now you make this transition into Harper. And so I’d love to hear from you how this came to be. And if you could explain a little bit, because what I love so much about what you’re building now is this regenerative space where capitalism meets philanthropic and social impact, where it’s like an opportunity to really see your money compound and grow, but also put towards initiatives and ideas and people that typically do not have the opportunity to get core messages out that have the opportunity to change people’s minds, change people’s hearts and move the world into a better space. So spill the tea Lindsay. How did you come up with this and what is going on these days with it?

Speaker 2: Oh, I’m so delighted to talk about this because I’m so passionate about it. I had an event just barely at Met in Montana and I had a bunch of A.L .I. celebrities attend and Kevin Costner, who’s one of my favorite legacy artists and actors, was there and we had him up on stage and he shared that when he was young, he was a very good in school and he was trying to figure out what his quote yellow brick road was, he said. And he prayed to find his yellow brick road, which he found in acting and in filmmaking and storytelling. And I loved that.

And I know now I found my yellow brick road. So I look back on my career where I was like pollination, many flowers, a jack of all trade, master of non perhaps, but we were like a special forces team at Hadley Impact. We did everything from fundraising event production, PR, influence, or acquisition, creative.

We did strategy, truly anything you would need like a one-stop shop for social good. And so to take all of that in those like a decade long of relationships, that’s that keeping your word, being good to people. And of course, there’s some casualties along the way with relationships. Never something I’ve ever intended about your relationships so deeply.

Being an entrepreneur and you talk about meeting God, oh my gosh, you also, you also get to see your flaws in application and other humans flaws, might goodness, because it doesn’t always end up with everyone staying married, right? And everyone being besties. Breaks my heart.

I wish that weren’t true. But ultimately, a couple of those along the way where you learn, gosh, make better structures, look out for, believe people when they show you who they are up front, all these kinds of things. Do do diligence, call around and check their resume. And if the claims they’re making are true, references, all those things that I learned along the way, all that learning, all that experience and all that network, I’m now applying to what I’m doing at Harvard Fund. And essentially, all it is a first of its kind venture capital shaped 501c3. We mimicked the model of Acumen Fund, which was started by Jacqueline Novogratz. So I would love to meet one day because I want to be like, thank you.

Thank you for pointing the way. But she did this in social impact investing, where she created a nonprofit, received philanthropic dollars from donors, and then used that money to invest in for-profit vehicles that were social enterprises, solving social revolutions. And then any returns and principle and carry stay in the fund.

And then it’s reinvested. So it’s the virtuous cycle and professionals you mentioned. So we’re doing that for film intelligent. And we’re in our first year, we have some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry on our advisory board from Katie Kirk to Jared Butler to Mark Burnett, there’s creative survivor of the voice, Prenta Shark Tank, people like Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman, the senior vice president of Paramount, Tony Bowne, and many other incredible in this space. I’m so grateful to have these Titans behind me because they’re lending their credibility, their insight, their relationships, their money to us to get this going.

And so we’ve now raised $12 million in the first year of a nonprofit, which is pretty herculean and exciting. And then we’ve got, we’ve got about six different projects that’ll be out in the wild films and TV shows. And these films and TV shows are projects I’ll give a lot of people, Comprehables of Blood Diamond, Schindler’s List, Hotel Rwanda, the movie Taken, Aira Brockovich, these are the types of films and movies, Love on the Spectrum that we’re making, and they’re documentaries and scripted and narrative and television. And we’re taking equity positions, per pursue with the terms of the cap table of these films, and then the money stays in the fund perpetually. So we don’t have limited partners or investors, we have donors who gift us these money. This $12 million is all a gift.

So no one’s expecting returns, but we expect a return from the fund as we’re trying to make this perpetual well and this war chance for good storytelling. And so I think it’s just an idea as time has come, we’re trying to be worthy stewards of it. And I’m so grateful. And now when I have a project that Bradley Cooper is producing about the body keeps a score in trauma and mental health, I can make one phone call to the families that I’ve worked with for mental health initiatives over the last decade, and we get these things funded. And it’s just been incredible to match make philanthropists with the kings and queens of culture and storytelling.

And in a nutshell, if I were to give somebody the most simplest way to think about it is, historically, we had the midichies of yesteryear who gave us the Michelangeloes and commissioned them to give us all the Sistine Chapel that the world enjoys. Now, life at the brisk can give filmmakers the tools or resources through Harbor Fund to give us movies that will change the zeitgeist of culture. And I believe the most powerful engine in the world is Hollywood. And I’m trying to hijack that with our incredible stakeholders and friends for good as much as we can.

Speaker 1: Hell yeah, you’re a badass, let’s be. This is so wonderful. Okay, so in the final few moments I have you, I’d love to, I’d love to think about how you’re approaching and starting to think about legacy in your life. Obviously, you’ve had this incredible pathway of service, of building. You are a force, you are a force multiplier, right? So like you are taking others with you on this journey. You’re taking kids with you, you’ve got a husband, you’re taking with you, you’ve got everybody, you’re taking with you. And as you sit back, let’s say from a nice young age of, I don’t know, 102, when you’re looking back on this body of work that you’ve now stood for and experienced and lived, what is the legacy and what does this body of work look like for you?

Speaker 2: I want to raise $100 million in this fund as fast as possible so that we’re in the top 1% of independent film financing. That’s a really clear vision. I know we’re going to do it. Fun, when you like decide as an entrepreneur, it’s not, I’m going to try, you like are convicted and you tell with your words, with conviction and belief.

I do or do not, there is no try. I’m making this happen and you give your word to people and then you’re on the hook for your word. It’s very powerful. It’s actually the most powerful thing. I think our words are so powerful and I’m constantly trying to reign them in. But it’s funny you say that I’m a force and I’ve been called out a lot in my life and I can understand that. My friend introduced me the other day.

I sat down at a lunch and he loves me when he was like, and I came late because I was on a phone with a friend whose dad had just passed away and so I stayed in the parking lot instead of walking in to be present. And anyway, juggling all these balls, dropping many, trying not to drop the glass balls, as most of us are. But I come into the event and he or the dinner, the lunch and he goes, yeah, Lindsay is like a force of nature. She’s like a rainmaker. She’s got a heart of gold. He’s saying all these lovely things. She has immense integrity.

And she’s a train wreck. That’s what he said. That’s how I ended it. I was like, oh, okay.

Like just sweating because he’s not that. But the truth is, I just want to be transparent about that. Sometimes people come up to me and they’re like, how do you do all this? I’m like, dude, I don’t. I have so many people helping me. I drop balls. People have been criticized by that.

People love to sit and tell the person in the arena how they’re messing up. And I’m just like, yes, agreed. I could have been done better. I could not co-sign that message more. But I’m in here and I’m trying and I’m so happy to hear it from people who are in there trying with me.

Those are on the nosebleeds that have no idea what it takes to and what kind, what it means to be them marred and bled and sweat as you’re giving your all. Yeah, your opinion is really not of great. It doesn’t count with me that high. But those who are like in it and want to make me better, I’m like, let’s go. So I would say that the legacy truly, yes, there’s some little whatever demarcation, so the impact we can have, metrics that are really sexy, the projects that we do.

Oh my gosh, we’d love all that. That truly matters less to me more, especially when I’m in a moment in my career where I’m actually having a lot of what I would call tailwind, where it’s like the boulders are going down the hill. Things are getting easier.

Demand signals are coming to me. It’s yeah, such a gift. Thank you so much, God, for this moment. But I will say like more than more, the thing I care most about is that the people closest to me knew that they were loved. And I can’t always, some people are committed to misunderstanding you. Some people don’t can’t see because their wounds or their weaknesses or their come from or the malimation of their experiences. But generally, I hope that the majority of people who sat in my cockpit or in my life or across my table felt loved, felt considered that I never made problems to solve more important than the people in front of me. And I just pray that those who I have heard along the way or disappointed or not looked up to their expectations or whatever has happened, hope they can forgive me deep down now that I love them. And especially when I think about the legacy, I just hope that, yeah, people feel like they can be, they can be brave. And I think love is really dangerous. And I think I hope people are dangerously brave and they’re loving each other in any degree in which I could foster environments, situations, projects, transactions, and relationships that encourage that dangerous love.

I’m like all for it because there’s something about the willingness to be fully known and chosen and to risk for an embrace that is just, I don’t know, this might sound soft or just esoteric, but I really believe changing one person’s world is as bit, if not more important than changing the world proverbially.

Speaker 1: We talked a lot about money and highs and lows and like all these different pads ways to it. But my question is, what is the most recent, fabulous thing, experience or way of spending your money recently that has brought you joy? Where have you spent your money on recently that has made you very happy?

Speaker 2: I was at Tilly Ride Film Festival, premiering our first film in the wild out of our fund called Cycle of Love, which is today for an I hope all of you can see it.

It is so edifying and so beautiful. Gurelando is our director, won an Oscar for white helmets. And anyway, it was critically acclaimed standing ovation. Joni Foster is sitting behind me and she said it’s one of her favorite movies she’s ever seen in her life.

And here this I slowed around, Tilly Ride, we’re like so proud of our film that was the darling and getting all this buzz of the festival. And I was walking down the street and this woman was carrying two puppies. They were Fomskies, which were perp, Fomaranium, part husky. And as they were walking with these two puppies, I stopped to fawn over them and gosh and be Twitter painted. And one of the puppies was like licking me and I was like, oh my gosh, the cutest puppy I’ve ever seen because it’s like a tiny wolf. A long story short, the person was like, would you like to adopt this puppy? Because he’s five months old, we can’t take care of it. We had a family member diagnosed with cancer, we’re struggling to take care of this dog. We’re trying to get rid of it. We have papers here for someone to adopt it.

We knew that there was people here probably could give him a good life because the caliber of attendees at this event is less. And they’re like, would you take this puppy? My whole body was like, no. And my head was like, yes. I ended up like face timing my husband saying, can I get a puppy?

We already have a dog, a golden retriever, who’s just a handful and he’s amazing. But I was like, I was like, what do you think? He’s that’s ridiculous. And I showed him the puppy and he goes, oh, yes. So I bring this puppy home, which we named Ryder after Telly ride.

And who thinks about a Psyche a bike rider who rides all the way across India to Sweden for love. It’s a beautiful story. So we named him Ryder. I brought him home for my eight year old’s ninth birthday and surprised my kids. And that was the best thing I spent money on.

But it was amazing. I think it’s like a $5,000 designer dog that I got for 700 bucks because I was just adopting Ad Hoth in the wild, but he got on the streets right Colorado.

Speaker 1: So fabulous. And then my final question is gosh, everyone who listens to the show, we really rally behind and support the women who are on this show. And so this last question is, what are you calling in right now? How can we support you? And what do you need? Thank you.

Speaker 2: I would love anybody who knows philanthropist high north families or high north individuals or companies that would want to be a part of shaping culture for good through film and television. And working with, as I mentioned with the kings and queens of culture, for them to meet us, we are getting inundated with pitches for potential film projects, as you can imagine, when you start deploying capital, everyone comes and that film industry, it’s hard right now to get funding, even with A-list celebrities attached, it’s hard to get funding.

So we get inundated with pitches. So we’re no shortage of things to fund. We’re looking for partners who want to help fund these projects and put them together, attend our events, sponsor events. We do these incredible events. Our first event we did in February with Rachel Branson and Negr Island, this last one in Montana with a dozen A-list celebrities. We have some of the most powerful people in philanthropy and business and in the entertainment industry attend our events. And who are somebody that like to be a part of that? Like, I would love to meet you in helping fund it from a sponsorship side or philanthropic side. Those are the people we’re really like trying to attract and find because yeah, like there are a ton of people out there. Major philanthropists were like to attend our events like $100,000.

So it’s significant. These are usually centimillionaires and billionaires. He’s family offices.

So the most part, it’s if you’re in philanthropy at that scale, you need to have a media strategy and we can be like an incredible one-stop shop for you and be a safe harbor for all of that ambition. Amazing.

Speaker 1: Lindsay, you are a gift on this planet. Thank you for speaking so generously and open about your life, about money, about family and thank you for sharing who you are with us today. It’s been a gift to have you.

Speaker 2: Thank you. You’re so sweet. Thanks so much.

Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning into 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.