Speaker 1: Welcome to Getting Rich Together. I’m your host, Syama Bunten. 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 incredible Shelley Kuipers. Shelley, you are a brilliant, powerful woman who I have the immense honor and pleasure of having here on the show. Aside from being a powerful leader, in general, you are a prolific investor, entrepreneur, and co-founder of the 51, a movement and venture platform bringing more women into investing, founding, and building wealth.

You are redefining what capital and leadership looks like, and proving that when women invest, everyone wins. I am so excited to have you here today on Getting Rich Together. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. I’m really excited to be here. Well, it’s so wonderful to get to peel back the onion layers of prolific women who are changing the world.

I feel like we often see what we’re doing in these demonstrative ways, LinkedIn, on the post, on the ways in which we’re activating. But we rarely ever get a chance to know the Shelley who was maybe once in pigtails or ponytails, or the one who was maybe thinking about the younger things that a child might be thinking about. Shelley, I’d love to start with what was life like for you around the ages of 10 to 12 years old? Where were you in this beautiful world of ours? What was family like for you? What was money like? Okay, so flashback.

Speaker 2: I would have been living in Northern Alberta in a, I guess it would have been considered a very small city. And yeah, here was this daughter of a forest ranger and a mother who was a United Church secretary going to elementary school. Very simple upbringing. Prior to that, we lived out in, I would say, like more backcountry places.

Again, because my dad was a forest ranger. So we found ourselves in this big city when I was in elementary school. And it was like, yeah, I mean, it was just a very simple upbringing. I was always in trouble. I was always in the principal’s office or something. So, you know, I was always doing something wrong.

I was chronically a rebel troublemaker, didn’t listen to instructions. Yeah. So yeah. And, you know, I was probably out smoking in the school grounds. I was probably in the principal’s office. I would talk back to my teachers. Yeah. No, that was me.

Speaker 1: I mean, was the sentiment at the time I’d rather be in the forest? Probably.

Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole city thing that trying to fit in and probably not being the cool kid was probably the impetus for a lot of that rebellious behavior. But I have to say, I still have all of that. So I’m still very anti-status quo, rebellious. I don’t like to follow instructions. I don’t like rules.

Speaker 1: I love that. So when you were little, did you guys, when your father was not working, was it, you know, was he like, I don’t want to go back in the forest? Or did you find yourselves doing camping trips? And what was the, what was your relationship?

Speaker 2: We were always in the back country, always learning how to target shoot canoe, canoeing, fossil hunting, hiking, camping, cross country skiing in the cold when we didn’t want to building a fire, cross country skiing in the wintertime.

Speaker 1: Talk to me about fossil hunting. Like, how does one do that? And what were some of the things you found?

Speaker 2: No, it was a good question. And in fact, I think my God just dug up some of the, because he just, they just went through a move so that he dug up and he’s like, I still got these fossils.

So I think I’ve got, I’ve claimed some of them back. We would literally jump into a canoe and go down a river until some spot that he would go, Hey, this is where, you know, this is where we can find some fossils. We would pull our canoe up on that shore. And lo and behold, we would start digging for fossils and we would just find them. And then we would throw them in our canoe and bring them home.

Speaker 1: You know, it’s so interesting, even though we’re not quite up to your professional life yet, it’s like, interesting to think about you finding treasures now professionally, when it comes to founders and digging up sort of opportunities and putting them in your canoe now, which is the 51 bringing them back.

Speaker 2: I didn’t think about that. That is true. Finding those, those diamonds or those treasures, right? Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. So yeah, you will still today find me in the back country. I love nature. I love being in the forest. Love it.

Speaker 1: Okay, so Shelley in high school, rebellious, smoking cigarettes, drinking cheat beer, getting A’s on her top, plotting to conquer the world, give it to me straight.

Speaker 2: Okay, so that’s, that’s okay, still in trouble for sure. I had a random academic past where I would excel on some topics, some classes and like just do terrible and others. So I had a very ambidextrous brain for some reason. So there was some things like chemistry that I loved. And then I was terrible at math, but I was really good at advanced math and I was shitty at regular math. I was just kind of all over the place. I wouldn’t say that I came home with the report card that my parents got really excited about, especially compared to my brother, because he was just always getting good report cards. And I think because of that, I was just like, oh man, like, I’m not going to get the grades to go to university.

What am I going to do? So then my parents started designing my life about what I was going to do. And then I was like, okay, absolutely not like this can’t happen. But I did follow the instructions of one of my parents about what I was going to take in school. But I really wanted to be a fashion designer. And I really wanted to move to Europe to be a fashion designer.

Speaker 1: What was the vision? What was like, when you were thinking about design, was it, you know, I have a vision of a customer or clientele that I want to dress? Or was it I have this vision for these garments or the way that I want to design and seeing it from this artistic, like creative sense? Like how did you sort of see yourself as a young designer? Well, I was really into

Speaker 2: fashion, like, as long as I can remember. So I was always like, planning my mom to take me shopping. So what could I find that would just be like really unique? And I always wore very unique clothing. I didn’t do trends, but I would do things that were like beside the trend. I would maybe be like ahead of trends.

Speaker 1: Give me some ideas. I want to hear like what you are on to back then.

Speaker 2: Okay, so again, I’m still in Northern Alberta, right? So that’s the context, right? Like, what did we do on Friday nights in high school? Okay, I wasn’t in high school in Northern Alberta anymore. I was down in Calgary at this point. But like if I was still in Northern Alberta, it was like the curling, like we will go curling on Friday night. But I would say I was always like into like dressing better than I needed to.

But it was everything. It was from like, how to wear the clothing to where I got the clothing to imagining what I could make. My both my parents are Dutch. And so I had this strong European pull. I wanted to go back to Europe, like being a fashion designer, going back to the Netherlands. I wanted to go to fashion school in Amsterdam. I just wanted to be European. I just wanted to escape this life I had in in Alberta and in Canada.

Speaker 1: And so when you decided then to go to university and you started to apply yourself, how did you decide what you were going to study? And was it, you know, I’m going to do my own unconventional thing. I’m going to, you know, follow a certain path. What did you think of yourself during these young collegiate years, these university years?

Speaker 2: Okay, well, first off, I didn’t have the grades to get into university. Like I said, I was a shit academic. But I was like, I would say just very feisty, maybe quiet feisty, but I was just again, I was just like a kind of a rebellious spirit. And so I didn’t have the grades to go to university. So I went to a technical college and I took what would have been like the precursor to petroleum engineering. So again, my context is here I am in Canada, in Alberta, in Calgary, it is an oil city, right? So think about, you know, we’re north of Montana, Colorado, right?

So we’re kind of in that, that belt of like a commodity place. And so I was going to get a job in the energy industry. That was what I was destined for.

So I went to a technical college, took petroleum technology, I did my upgrades so I could go to university following that. I did not want to do that. I really resisted the whole become an engineer thing.

It wasn’t me. And then I got a job in the energy sector. And it turned out to be a really cool kind of opportunity for me in the way that I got started. I graduated from school in 87.

I was in an energy company shortly after my graduation. And it was at the time when things were going from the mainframe to the desktop computer. So I had this extraordinary opportunity to find myself in computer labs, literal computer labs, like that’s what they had back then. And I would be doing all of the programming for all the systems that I learned, but they were all kind of going to the desktop. And so I had a fortunate opportunity to be valued because I knew all of the software and I knew all of the technology and I knew the mainframe systems and I knew the lab and I knew the systems that were coming out that were on desktop. So I actually worked out really well that I was recruited by one energy software company.

So I was in tech, it would have been like 88 89, like actual technology companies that were servicing the energy industry. And then I had my first child when I’m at leave. And then I was recruited by another energy software company. So I’ve been in technology ever since then. And so my upbringing as a young person in tech was like learning how to do everything in a tech company.

So tech support, product management, marketing, sales, developing a consulting, this learning how to distribute software. And again, think about it 88 89 90, all the way through the 90s. The one company I worked with in the 90s, I was with them from 1990 to 99. We did a transaction in 99 to slumber J. Like that was my life.

That’s what I knew. I was not a founder at that point in time, but I definitely felt like a founder. I was very invested in my work. I worked my ass off. I acted like it was my company too.

And it wasn’t. And then when we did a transaction, I was like, I learned a very valuable lesson, right? Like you throw something into, you know, you treat it like your life’s work.

It’s like, you work very, very hard. And you’re like, Oh, but it really wasn’t mine. So I largely didn’t benefit from that transaction. And I was like, okay, well, you just gave a decade to that company. Now, what would happen if you gave a decade to yourself doing what you could do? So once that company sold in 99, then I pivoted and became a founder myself. So I’ve since 99, I’ve either either have been a founder or co-founder.

Speaker 1: It’s incredible, Shelley. You know, those early years of navigating technology and being in this energy space, did you find yourself playing the corporate hierarchy, if you will? Like were you ever, you know, someone who was negotiating for salaries? Or was it more like, you know, I’m excited to have this experience and sort of build my skills?

How did you look at the corporate hierarchy? And obviously coming out of college, I mean, finding yourself in technology is definitely, it feels to me like a stronger foot to land on than let’s say many of the other jobs one might find themselves doing after university, after college. So how did you sort of context your professional development in early stages of what money meant to you at that time?

Speaker 2: That’s a really good question. I was very focused on earning good money. So when I finally had the opportunity to graduating from high school and then going through technical college, I had different jobs along the way through myself into every job, I would have more than one job. One part was the work ethic, but I loved that was earning my own money. That meant a lot with the money that I earned when I was a young person. I took some unconventional moves with that capital and I did very well for myself.

Speaker 1: Like what? What were some of the, what were some of the things you found yourself into within these early days?

Speaker 2: So while I was going to technical college, I got a job working on a pipeline crew in northern Alberta. And I was on the pipeline crew that was kind of like cleaning up the job site, prepping the site for kind of like completion. So it was like painting and priming it. It was like making the pipeline site look good. And so this was a summer job and I worked there and I couldn’t believe the money I was making. It was ridiculous. I was making more money than my father.

I remember that clearly. And we would work 10 days on and four days off, 12 hours a day. Like it was like, we were outside working the whole time, but made really good money. And that money, I just sucked it away. It helped me buy my first house when I had an opportunity to invest in an energy company, an energy startup company in 98. I took a risk on that too. I knew the founder of the company. I had worked with him.

Speaker 1: Was that your first investment? Like your first like private how old were you at that point? And what did that feel like?

Speaker 2: So I guess it would have been 31. Yeah, 31. And I remember it. I remember like, you know, taking this money and deciding to make that investment and going like, this is very high risk.

Like, what are you doing? And there was others in kind of like our friend circle that came into the investment as well. And, you know, initially, it was kind of like an energy talk.

You’re drilling for something. And the first couple of times it didn’t really hit anything. And then it was like the third time we did.

And I was like, okay, and that just turned out to be a massive opportunity for me. So in that regard, it was still very much like a startup. It was energy. And energy is completely different than tech, right? Because there’s always a market for your energy product. It’s commodity, right?

Where in tech, you have to make a product and you have to make your market. So it’s completely different. But that really changed everything for me. Because I took this risk. And like, normal people wouldn’t have done that with their money and risked the little that they had so over indexed.

But I did. And then I hate to admit it is like, I continue to do that still today. I just over index every time. And I can’t really stop myself from doing it. So it’s there for good.

Speaker 1: One might say your experience was like positive trauma, you know, when something incredible happens, but it changes the course of your life, it changes the course of who you know yourself to be at a young age to be writing your first private checks 31. When things changed for you materially, did you sort of start to think about your money differently?

You know, or did you find yourself implementing, let’s say, thoughts or modes of thinking from when you were little moving from, I’m going to have this corporate job to things are significantly changing for me. I’m going to start this founder life. There’s a whole lot of risk. All of a sudden, it’s like you’re moving into the leading edge of being alive on this planet, which is taking control over your destiny. And so I’m curious when things started to materially change for you, how did you start to rethink your assets? Was it I’m going to keep looking for these cool opportunities and keep investing in these cool opportunities and starting to put your current venture hat on? Or was it a different sort of approach? How did you check the boxes?

Speaker 2: It’s a good question. I think I probably had kind of like two kind of buckets of how I looked at money. I think one was very conservative, you know, you kind of documented what you spent. Like I still remember that my mom had the big blue ledger book in the house and she ran all the transactions through there and you would just watch and you would go, okay, so that’s how much money we have.

It wasn’t a lot at all. Just kind of watching that kind of that micro financial management, that day to day constancy of like being super diligent and being very careful. Like my mom and dad did a lot was very little.

And so I think that is kind of like one bucket that I had, though I said, I think once I started to gain kind of like my own financial independence from my family, and then I went out on my own and I started to work on my own, I would kind of sometimes not do that. Like I would, I would go, well, this is a fucking fantastic, like whatever it was, like, and it was always clothing and I’d be like, I have to get that. That’s gorgeous.

I must buy it. And then, you know, realizing that in the process of doing that, there was ramifications around like, what kind of food would you be eating for the rest of the month? Because you made that decision. So in one way, like I grew up very conservative financially. And then I think I took a path that wasn’t conservative. And then I think the investments that once I started to have the opportunity to do investing, then I started to do like risky investments, right?

I wasn’t good at kind of like following, you know, the bank’s lead or the financial planner’s lead or whatever it was when I was younger, where they were like, hey, put it all in the mutual funds and you’ll get and I was just like, no. So I don’t know how that came to be. But maybe it was like from moving from one situation that felt very frugal, cautious, conservative. And maybe that’s how I developed my risk.

I don’t know. But again, like I said earlier, like, I was just, I was always in trouble. I just didn’t like to follow the rules. Yeah. And like, my mom was in a was we kind of use the word cult uselessly. So I kind of grew up in that environment. And so I think, you know, she was very strict. And so I think that was another kind of aspect to why I had this strong rebellious spirit, right? It was just like, God, it’s just like conforming to all of these things. Like, you know, this is disciplined how we have to live.

And this is how cautious we need to be with our financials. And we did have to be because there wasn’t a lot, but my parents did so well over time. And I don’t know, like, I just think that’s how I developed my, I wanted to be independent financially. I wanted to make money.

I wanted to learn how to make more money of the money that you had. There was always something over time. I don’t know when I got this piece of advice, but it was a long, long time ago. And it was, you’re not going to become wealthy through your income, you know, getting a job and pursuing that higher kind of page. I don’t think I was good at that at all.

But I think I just took advantage of the situations that I was in. You know, they looked after me financially, like I had a paycheck. And then what could I do outside of that paycheck? I think was probably a bigger interest than the paycheck itself.

Speaker 1: Quick pause. I want to share something I’m hosting this year. It’s called the Freedom 2026 tour. I’m bringing small in-person salons to cities across the country to talk openly about money, power and choice. If you want to be part of one, the details are in the show notes below.

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

I love them. And so as you were preparing them to start, what would then turn out to be the rest of your life, which is living in this co-founder, founder entrepreneurial space, was that something that you had identified inside of you that you were ready to take a leap on? Was it calculated? How did you shore up yourself as you were getting ready to do this? Were you alone in this endeavor? Were you partnered at the time? Was it like, oh my God, as a family, how are we doing this? I mean, talk to me about that critical moment that to me feels like unleashed your future.

Speaker 2: So you’re exactly right. So in 99, there was a bunch of us that got together. We were friends. We were family. We got together and we founded a company in 99, which is kind of funny, right? Because every company that was founded in 99 wasn’t a real company. But there we were following whatever that train was that everyone was on, where everyone thought that they could be a tech entrepreneur and the opportunity was endless and nothing could happen to us.

And this is going to be great. Like we’re truly free and we can build whatever we want to build. So there’s a bunch of us that went out and did that.

And I would say not successfully. It was kind of part of that whole dot com. So we were part of a, there was like, it was a trifecta. It was like one part was capital, the other part was strategy, the other part was digital. And our group is the digital group and we had our own company and we were part of this group. And we had a good run for a couple of years, but did it really produce anything of material value?

I don’t know. But what we ended up doing with that company and that asset was we found some technology that was kind of languishing. I didn’t have the capital or the leadership to fully realize its potential. So we stumbled upon it in 2001 and we took all the cash that we had in our company. We had no IP. We had cash. This company had technology, intellectual property, had no cash. And so we did a reverse takeover of that company.

I think it would have been in 2002. We brought capital, team management, board, all the necessary skill sets to kind of take, help that company go on to its next. And we grew that company ultimately to a company that was sold to Morgan Stanley in 2019. We were the first Canadian Vintec unicorn to go through a transaction. And it wasn’t an overnight success story. Everything moves at such a faster pace today. We didn’t take in venture capital into the business, so it grew at a different pace. But it was almost two decades of work. Initially, a small group that we brought together and then that group grew over time and it became a very successful company and we sold it in 2019.

Speaker 1: Congratulations, Philly. It’s so exciting. And so as the business at such a young age should be getting so creative with acquisitions and how you guys are thinking about expansion and growth is really exciting. Founders in this organization and paralleling your own personal life with that growth of the business, not taking venture capital, I think could have been a big blessing in many ways. It kind of probably allowed you guys to stumble through things and figure things out with maybe a ton of pressure.

But certainly being on that trajectory is pressure full nonetheless. How was your personal life evolving during this time period as this business was growing? And were you finding yourself fully engrossed in this business or starting to take on other initiatives? How did your time and your energy and your family life start to evolve in parallel? Yeah, great question.

Speaker 2: When we took over this company, it was already a public entity in Canada. It was essentially insolvent at that point in time. And so my husband and I went into the business. We brought some people over from the other company to come in. We brought investors to the table, everything.

And so I was there for maybe I want to say a year following that. My husband ended up being the CEO of the business and I really didn’t want to be the wife of a CEO in a public company. And so I took a deliberate step away from the business. That being said, I was an investor in the business, so I had the benefit of that upside over the years and continued to support the business financially.

But then I just started to go and do my own thing. So again, co-founder, my kids were born in 1990 and 96. So my kids were on these journeys with me.

I have to say, like I said earlier, I worked really, really hard, probably too hard in the context of raising kids and being a mom and working and acting like it was my own company and taking financial risks. So I don’t know how I did all of that back then. I kind of think about that.

I was like, what was I thinking? But my kids experienced that upbringing. And I think I don’t know if either one of them would do the same given that six experience that they grew up in. They just said, like my husband and I working extremely hard for a long time. And like our kids today have a hard time reconciling that. They have the benefit of that hard work financially.

We’ve been able to support them, but I don’t think that they can reconcile what actually was required to do that. But now it’s really cool. Like our kids are 29 and 35 and they’re part of the family business now. And they have been for some time.

And one more silently than the other for different reasons. But it’s really cool now to be kind of like planning this next generation opportunity with our kids. And my eldest son is married and we have grandkids now. So it’s kind of like you start looking at everything a little bit differently. You know, as a young person, you would take immense risk because it was just you or you had nothing to lose. And now it’s kind of like, OK, what will our kids do? And what will our kids do for the benefit of their kids? So that longer term viewpoint of money and financial planning and wealth strategies is a privilege to be in that situation and do that with our kids today.

Speaker 1: Mindset shift from this is and maybe it’s more of an and than an or. But from here, I am a rogue investor, right? He was out there taking high risk to a shift of stewardship and impact of capital, which I think is different. I mean, there are still ways to do that when you’re investing into leading technologies that is a long term stewardship of capital because you’re investing in the future economies and jobs and what’s to come.

Then there’s also, I think, this other component of stewardship, which is what you were just talking about in terms of legacy and the impact you want to have in the world. When did you start to incorporate or wasn’t always there inside of you around? I’m always going to be investing in finding these great opportunities and building ecosystem.

And I’m looking at this more familial, larger brand with sort of purview of what it means to have capital and to be able to use that in ways that create this sort of impact. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Well, it’s interesting. I mean, the 51 was really born from if I think about like my impact in legacy, maybe those two things together, like the 51 was born from. I would say frustration on my part as being a founder, trying to grow and raise money and going through that process and just going, this is terrible.

Terrible for so many different reasons. We can put the two percent statistic aside, whatever. And then the same point as a woman investor, you know, finding yourselves looking at investment opportunities in the context of the same people are always there with their checkbooks, looking at not the same opportunities, but they could be similar in style of investment opportunities. So while I was a young person and I was like working really hard and heads down and wanting to kind of like make my mark on what I wanted to build and what was a financial opportunity when I finally had an opportunity to kind of put my head up, I was like, OK, wait a minute, we’ve never invested in a woman entrepreneur as a family, except for me. And I had to kind of like go, come on, like pick me other than my co-founder at the 51, Alice Reimer and our other co-founder, Judy Fairburn.

So three of us co-founded the 51. Alice and I were always like, where are the women? Like women are writing checks.

They’re not in the room. So we’re not investing in women and women aren’t in the room were writing checks into the investment opportunity. So the 51 was really founded on this desire to create an explicit network for women to look at this asset class and to look at the asset class, both with their financial capital, but with the financial capital having a lens of like, what do I want to see in the world?

You know, what is the world I want to live in? And therefore, what do I want to invest in? So and it was impact forward for sure. But I think every investor that’s come to the 51 so far is looking for a return and impact. So if I go back to your question, I don’t know if I really thought about any of that. While I was kind of like heads down, being a mom, being an entrepreneur, being an investor and just working really hard, I just never really took stock of that until I had an opportunity to kind of pass and go, wow, OK, so I’m in this ecosystem and this is what this ecosystem is like.

And that just perpetuates the same thing over and over again. Like, what is your opportunity to create an ecosystem side by side it? So I think like going back to your question, I think that there’s been different phases, like as a young person, I can very much recommend that at a certain stage of your life, you work really hard and you find those opportunities to learn and grow as an individual as much as possible. So you can then take that improved human capital that you have and then apply it to what you’re most passionate about. So maybe I’m a bit of a criteria in there where I don’t go, you know, follow your passion. I didn’t follow my passion. I finally launched a fashion brand at age 50 with my friend. Right.

Speaker 1: Like, how did that go, Shelley? Tell us about your fashion brand.

Speaker 2: So at 18, I want to be a fashion designer and at 50, it actually happened. So it’s like I didn’t follow my passion. I worked my ass off. I learned how to develop all of my skills, the skills that I thought where I was best suited for. And then I applied that to the things I was most passionate to. So that’s just kind of how I subconsciously designed what I was doing.

I didn’t realize it was during at that point. But yes, I did do a fashion line with my friend, Laura Harris, who’s an artist. And we launched the fashion brand in December 2019. And then COVID happened in March 2020, who was kind of messed up in a way in the way that, you know, we had really, you know, we had huge aspirations for what we could do, but COVID really kicked us to the curb.

So we did one capsule and, you know, we kind of talk about, you know, would we ever do another one? But like it just took a lot out of us during that time. But yeah, we did watch it. And we still wear our clothes today.

Speaker 1: Oh, I love that so much. I think that’s so fun. You know, fashion is such a fantastic creative outlet. And what a wonderful way to like come full circle to the little girl who loved fashion and who loved to be ahead of the curve. I’d love to double click a little bit on your work with the 51. You know, you’ve developed a tremendous ecosystem. You have conferences.

You are investing. There is a very, you know, when I think of the 51, I think of like a million women marching down the streets, you know, like there is definitely this powerful.

Speaker 2: It’s not meant to be the 51st state, even though we do get mixed up with that now. Is that the fact that, you know, women make up 51% of the population, which was this statistic that we stumbled upon when we did the research around what we were going to do. So, but yes.

Speaker 1: Share more about what seems to me and you’ll have to make some additions to the statement, but seems to me like legacy and life’s work towards something that maybe will never get done. You know, this idea of this is something that is so big. And this was an area that I think we have so much alignment around, which is everyone needs to raise their torch who wants to see change happen and do what they do best to move towards that change. Speak a little bit about the change in this ecosystem, in this venture world, in this founder world, and the world of women who are starting to see capital agency and possibility for themselves. Tell us a little bit about how the 51 is catalyzing this movement. We’re Canadian.

Speaker 2: We focus on Canada. We feel like we have many allies in America doing very similar things. And likewise in Canada, to be honest, we collaborate with everyone. The 51 exists to unlock the economic potential of women full stop.

So through women’s ingenuity and innovation, women’s consumer spending, women’s influence at the corporate around procurement, the wealth transfer and the private wealth that will be in the hands of women in this decade, you know, women are an economic engine. And, you know, for too long, we have not been taken seriously. And I think, you know, we are just at the cusp now of what is possible. You know, the conversation that we had before we went live, like this isn’t about carving up an existing pie. This is about unlocking so much more, so much net new innovation, commercialization, wealth and opportunity that, you know, it just, it is an opportunity waiting to happen.

And so that’s what we are pursuing. Our model at the 51 and how we’re designed is we have a not-for-profit that does capacity building and education. The 51 proper is a venture firm and a financial platform.

While we have started with venture capital as the initial financial product that’s gone to market, we have plans to bring many other financial products to our community. Our community got started with 75 women in my kitchen in 2019. And, you know, across Canada today.

Speaker 1: That’s not a small number of women. I started this with 75 people in my kitchen. I know.

Speaker 2: But then we were jammed in there. It was a tight room, but it was just an immediate network. Alice Judy and I said, OK, let’s let’s get our immediate network together in a room. Let’s see what we can do. And, you know, by the end of the year, we’ll be 48,000 across Canada.

So we’re seeing this, you know, this demand and desire to be part of the 51. Like I said, we started with venture capital. We have two funds.

We’re raising a third. We have another partner fund. We’re deploying capital raising capital. We’ve invested in women led, co-led companies across Canada and the US.

We have limited partners in our funds from coast to coast. Any gender can participate in our financial products. We have plans to activate 2.5 billion of women led capital by 2030. We are doing the math on that every day. How are we an activator, a catalyzer of this capital and innovation opportunity?

That’s what we’re working on. It’s really exciting. People want to be a part of it.

And again, we’re not taking away anything from the existing economy. We’re finding new opportunities. And yeah, so that’s our mission. That’s what we’re on. And yeah, I don’t know what else to say, but it’s hard. It’s, you know, for our team, it’s life work for sure.

Speaker 1: I mean, no small thing, right? So, you know, you say so casually. Like, all the time.

Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There’s nothing casual about it. No, I can’t.

Speaker 1: Not easy, not small, not overnight. So, you know, we are all living so much longer these days. And certainly with the companies you’re investing in, I’m sure we’re going to see some fantastic, hopefully some great longevity things. And so I’m curious, you know, from this vantage point of, let’s say, I don’t know, early 100s in your life, looking back at this body of work that you are focused on creating and legacy and what this life looks like for you. What might you say and reflect on from this young age of, let’s say, 102?

Speaker 2: Oh, God, right? My doc did say, like, don’t worry, you’re going to live to 110. And I was like, OK, that’s a different, that’s a different planning horizon, right? She’s a big longevity being like she’s always pursuing all of these new solutions and ideas and innovation around longevity. So, yeah, no, it’s a good question, 102. I don’t know. I do think that what we’re doing at the 51, and you touched on this earlier, is this is multi-decade.

So I don’t know. We keep looking at the statistics around the pay gap, or we keep looking at the statistics around investing in women. Like they’re not really moving. I think this next generation is changing everything. And from what I understand, as Gen Z is closing that pay gap, maybe even, you know, is going the other direction, which is really fantastic. But I just think about, OK, so how many decades have I been doing this work? How many more decades do I have? Like what change are we actually going to see in that period of time? Are we really going to see an acceleration? What is AI going to offer up in this context? So I don’t know. I feel like, you know, when I’m 102, you know, maybe the 51 doesn’t need to exist anymore, because, you know, you know, we don’t have to focus on this opportunity or this problem anymore because it’s it’s solved itself. So that could be an outcome or it could be that, you know, it lives on and the work continues because we still have a close in the gap. I don’t know. But I would say I would hope for the firm.

Speaker 1: Wouldn’t that be amazing? I love that. Last two final questions, Shelley. The first is, you know, we’ve talked a lot about investing money, different ways of thinking about saving money.

What does our financial life look like? But I want to find out from you what has been your most exciting way in which you have spent your money recently. Was it a trip? Was it something fabulous that you’re wearing? I know you love fashion. What has been the most recent fabulous way in which you’ve spent your money?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think for me consistently, it’s like travel with my family. That’s what I love. And so, you know, we try to book at least one big trip with our family every year. And so that I would say that to me, that’s the most important because it’s like time with your family. As a family, we don’t probably need more stuff. We just need more really good time together. I love that.

Speaker 1: And then my final question is, you know, everyone who listens to the show loves to rally around the women who are on the show. So what are you calling in right now? It could be a personal ask, a professional ask, whatever it is that you are needing right now, Shelley, how can we rally around you? What is it you’re calling in?

Speaker 2: I would say, I don’t know. We see this consistently. It’s where it’s like from an investment opportunity perspective, there’s the investment opportunity and then there’s the woman’s regard of whether or not she’s or has agency to do it.

I think that women look at these two things very differently. So how do they assess an investment opportunity, risk on, risk off? How are they evaluating?

And then how they evaluate themselves to be qualified to make that investment? I’d like to see less of that. I’d like to see more of I’m evaluating this investment opportunity because I’m a qualified steward of my capital and my wealth and my opportunity. So that would be like one ask I would have is just, just, can we stop doing that? Like, can we please just stop doing that? And then maybe I’ll just take in one more and just say, we are fundraising. So if you’re interested in learning more.

Speaker 1: Shelley, it’s been an absolute gift to have you here today on the show. Thank you for sharing all the stories from camping as a little girl to, you know, investing for your first time and what that felt like to now.

Building and leading a coalition of women who are activating their capital, who are becoming prolific founders of businesses, you know, it’s really, it’s a pleasure to be in such good company.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much. It was fantastic. Thank you.

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.