Syama Bunten
They’re advisors, and then there are the people who you call when everything is on the line. Today’s guest is a trusted strategist behind complex companies, high stakes decisions, and the moments where things could go very, very wrong. And she sees patterns that most people completely miss.

Women don’t talk about money the way we should. Not honestly, not openly, and not with each other. But that’s changing. I’m Syama Bunten, founder of Wealth Catalyst. And Getting Rich Together is where the conversation lives. Every week, a different woman, a different path, and a conversation that will change how you think about your own financial power. This community is growing and you belong in it.

Please subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave us a five-star review so more women can find their way here. Now, let’s get rich together.

I am here with the formidable Libby Clark. Libby, you are just a brilliant whole system problem solver. mean, talk about someone that people come to with all the things, a trusted strategic counsel behind some of the most incredible and complex companies and boards. Libby, are a person that leaders call to when deals stall, when decisions bottleneck.

when systems feel chaotic and people are trying to figure out what the patterns are, how to solve these big complex issues. Not only as an attorney, a former COO, I mean, you are just so formidable. And yet I get to be here today to shine a light onto your greatness, not just all the things that you’re up to today, but this incredible human that you are. Libby, welcome to Getting Rich Together. Thank you for being here.

Libby Clark
Thank you for inviting me, including me, and for just the opportunity to spend time with you.

Syama Bunten
It’s a gift. It is a gift to be able to hold space for your greatness and for the things in your life that have turned you into this incredible powerhouse woman. And so with that, you stand in front of me with a beautiful printed shirt, with these fabulous glasses, your hair looks gorgeous, no one can see. I’m wondering, Libby Clark, take me back to a young girl, 10, 12 years old,

Were you wearing fabulous print shirts and wearing fabulous glasses? Was it pigtails, ponytails? Take me back to a young girl. Where were you in this beautiful world?

Libby Clark
probably was the epitome of a person who was in love with her hair. And I think this is so important to say because it was sort of my Samson moment in the sense that my teeth were too big, my nose was too straight, an angular, I was very gawky. I had an unbelievable ⁓ amount of ⁓ underdevelopment

for 10 or 12 compared to my peers, but I had this fabulous hair. And I had this grandfather who told me, he used to say to me, Libby, you look like Veronica Lake. And it took me a lot of years to figure out who Veronica Lake was, but she had this beautiful swoop in front of her left eye, like Jessica Rabbit. And I used to stand in the mirror and I would say to myself, at least you have that hair. And I think that it just became,

something that if I didn’t have anything else, like I had this hair, but when I really look back at it, it was I had a grandfather who saw me and who really saw who I was and celebrated an attribute that I could celebrate. And now I’m in midlife and the hair is what it is and it’s less important to me than it used to be. But I was in fact a person in search of a thing I could hang on to.

A thing that when I walked into a room, I felt powerful despite all the things that did not have been working for me. There was something where I connected to my inner Samson.

Syama Bunten
Fabulous. Okay, so this young girl was charged with fabulous hair. Where in this world were you growing up? What was school like for you at this moment? What were your parents like? And what was money like for you as this young girl?

Libby Clark
Well, this is a great intro into the power of a single mother. So my mom had three kids and was one of the hardest working people I knew. She was single. We lived in a house that she paid for. She worked a job. She was a leasing agent for a major commercial leasing line. So she did major office equipment all the way up to airplanes. Just an amazing human being.

And what I learned from her was how she could turn $5 into $500. You know, we really did see someone whose creativity around money wasn’t oriented in a sense of lack. It was oriented in the sense of what’s possible with what we have. And so we still took trips. You know, we did things together, but, you know, maybe we went to an army base. Maybe she took me to

⁓ national parks. Maybe we did things that weren’t necessarily high spend, but they were high impact. They were together and they demonstrated her intentionality with money, even though there wasn’t a lot of it. ⁓ So what that taught me was a tremendous amount of work ethic, right, but also creativity with money. And what’s the story I attached to money? Is more necessarily better? Or is intention ⁓ a better way to

Bend it.

Syama Bunten
I love that. That’s a really, it’s a really powerful young lesson to learn, right? Or to be able to witness and experience. And I have to tell you, I’ve been checking out some of our national parks and holy bananas. mean, like there’s some really, and I live in a national park. I guess there’s like a little bias here for ⁓ the things on our country that you just.

Libby Clark
I mean, guess they’re-

Syama Bunten
You really can’t buy this sort of beauty.

Libby Clark
That’s incredible. I’ve had the opportunity to visit many. I actually live in the largest state park in the nation. But it is ⁓ something I didn’t appreciate nearly enough until I became a fully developed adult. And I think for me, ⁓ school, went to a, I’ll say this, I went to a very exclusive all girls boarding school. It’s the oldest high school in the country. I was able to…

succeed to that position through a scholarship and through my mom’s creativity, tenacity, recognizing my gifts. ⁓ And it was really through that process where I learned the gift of travel. learned to see the world. was just the international boarding schools. There was people from all over the world. not just the gifts of America’s beauty and gifts and riches, but from around the world. I had friends from Egypt. I had friends from Saudi Arabia. had friends in

that were from Colombia or Japan. It’s amazing.

Syama Bunten
Okay, let’s double click on how you and your fabulous hair ended up at boarding school internationally. Okay, was this like your idea or were like, all right, mom, I got a vision and I’m gonna. Yeah.

Libby Clark
All right,

so true story. was a soccer, one of my gifts was playing soccer. I loved the feel of, I loved the feel of sports. I loved the sense I got of being completely in my body playing sports. I was such an intellectual human. So it was the place before yoga where I was like, oh, there’s this other place I can stretch into and be fully present. For me, that was learning and playing soccer.

So I was in my region where I grew up, kind of a young star, and I went to play at the sporting school and they saw me play there. And they, ⁓ I said, mom, I went to this place and I just got this sensation through my body. it was like, I’ve been there before. Like I knew this place. It beat them pretty badly, but ⁓ sorry to my, my alumni friends who may have heard that. But anyway,

⁓ We want my my my team won but the next thing I know my mom had called and said maybe we should just take a tour and The coach from the soccer team came over and said we’d love to have her and we’d love to offer her a spot I still had to take my entrance exams and grade and have the grades to be a scholar athlete But I was able to achieve that and I did graduate ⁓ From that institution, which is one of the premier girls high school from the country

Syama Bunten
my God, that’s so, and it’s also incredible at such a age that you were able to feel what a full body yes was.

Libby Clark
That

is, think, yeah, and I think it’s instructive to, for me, in the years that have open sense about what it means to really listen to my intuition, even when the logic doesn’t make sense, when leaving every single friend, when wondering how your mom’s gonna make it, how is she gonna help me get there? I mean, this was getting a public bus pass and getting to school on the bus, like a public bus, not the school bus.

all of these things and still saying, but I’ve had a clear signal, I have to listen. And that has become a drum beat of my life. When I hear the clear signal, I go.

Syama Bunten
And as a young person, know, I call those moments, at least it’s like the first couple of times when you exercise that power, it’s almost like the first times you realize your magic, you know, like, there’s like something inside of me that has a deeper knowing that maybe I can’t quite put language to and maybe honestly, we never should try to put language to it. But you know, we try and we try to make it make.

make sense. And so as you were then sort of thinking about exporting yourself into university and thinking about sort of who you wanted to be, certainly I imagine Young Libby was like, I can do whatever it is that I would like to do because I have fabulous hair and I’m smart and I’ve willed all of these things to already happen in my young life. So

What was the experience of university like for you? How did you decide what you were going to study? How did you think about paying for it? Like spill the tea.

Libby Clark
Well, think that something pretty transformative happened to me while I was at school, boarding school. So one of the things that was another one of my big yeses, and I still can’t believe my parents agreed, but my best friends and I decided to take a trip in between our junior and senior years to the UK, to London and to Scotland by ourselves. 17, kind of coming up on 18. One of my friends’ brothers.

much older was in a wedding and so we were going out to meet him so we’d have some supervision. But that was again another huge yes of like I could do this. I can really be on my own. I trust myself and I’m and I’m in Edinburgh and I call into my house to say hello to my mother and I could hear the sound of her voice and she says I have something to tell you when I get home when you get home and I said okay and I had a stinking feeling. I turned to my best friend

Maura, who’s still my best friend. And I said, she has cancer.

And I knew. ⁓ fly home with this dread to my mom having stage four breast cancer in high school. And so all my plans, all the magic I might have that I may have to control the universe at 17 just leaked through my fingers. It just leaked right through. I don’t have that kind of power, right? So my senior year was bone marrow transplant was ⁓ for her.

Not knowing if she’d make it to my high school graduation, she did in a wheelchair and a mask, but she made it. And I’m happy to say, though, I’ll advance my story a little bit. She did live 11 years at stage four after the bone marrow transplant, but it radically altered the vision I had had in my brain about where I was going to go and what I was going to do. had been accepted early decision to Vanderbilt University in Nashville ⁓ with her not being around.

finances were really unclear. And my father ⁓ lived in Kentucky, lived outside of Lexington. And because of in-state tuition, I went to the University of Kentucky, even though that was not where I had intended to go. ⁓ And I had a blast. I went to their beautiful international relations program, particularly in the Middle East, because of the ⁓

the focus on horses and the horse trade and thoroughbreds. And so I got this unbelievable experience I didn’t intend on having. So what I learned from that was no magic in the world can control the universe. And so that was the lesson in being adaptable and having your dream snatched from your fingers and having to play the hand that you’re dealt. And to not turn that inward on myself, to really not turn

a hand where all of a sudden I think I’m playing a full house and somebody’s carrying me in the trunk.

Right? I mean, the power of the pivot.

Syama Bunten
And also, again, at a young age, there’s a deeper level of understanding that’s not necessarily, it’s non-verbal. When life throws things at you, you either have a backbone of faith and resiliency and sort of navigate, or you don’t navigate and then life sort of further kind of.

tosses you into some other directions while you were.

Libby Clark
So

was a dark couple of years. I didn’t know if she was gonna make it. I’m on campus at UK, which is by the way, a fantastic, really good time, just so anyone who wants to know out there, it’s a great party school. I met a lot of people and had a really good time. But I went to a lot of basketball games in case I was asked. But from there, I’m wandering around campus, so another big yes. I’m wandering around campus in my sophomore year and I’m having,

that really sense of being ungrounded. What am I doing here? How did I get here? What’s the path forward? You know, I haven’t, hey, spirit, I haven’t heard any yeses lately. Like, what am I doing? And I look up and there’s a poster on the wall of this actually called Funkhouser building in the central part of Lexington. And it was a sign that said Eotroa. And Eotroa is

the Maori word for New Zealand. And I said, I don’t know what that is, but that’s where I’m going. I walked into the office. I enrolled in an exchange program in cross-cultural leadership. And four months later, I was gone. And I moved my life to New Zealand to study leadership with the Maori and learning cross-cultural leadership and ways to lead from the collective.

And I’ve grown up, you know, I’ve grown up in the US. So I knew hierarchical, I knew representational, I knew republic government, but I didn’t really know what it was like to in community the way that they do in New Zealand, particularly in the Marae and the village life. And so I went and I enrolled at the University of Waikato and then the next chapter opened.

Syama Bunten
gosh. So you, I mean, it is just, it’s so clear how you’ve been struck on this planet. was almost as if like you, you were born and, and, know, sometimes we hear these stories or these allegories of, know, and then this happens and this person, it’s all very, you know,

meant to be storytelling to inspire you. And here you are sort of living out tales, right? That would seem to others to be like just stories of courage or stories of risk or stories of adventure, but these are actual stories of your life. And you’re putting yourself in these incredible situations.

you know, the being out with the Messiah, being able to experience how other people feel their own humanity, right? I mean, obviously, like leadership is how we one of the ways in which we highlight our humanity in groups, right, and within our society. But to have such an early fundamental experience where your mind is still

not yet fixed, right? It’s like you’re still this like beautiful elastic space. Please share. I’m sure this podcast could probably go like down that rabbit hole for long time, but share with me if you would like, you know, and maybe it’s more reflective or something you can feel and taste more now, but what are some of the

Libby Clark
No.

Syama Bunten
core things that you feel shifted inside of you as a result of putting yourself in this experience that undoubtedly would have no, anyone who went through this would undoubtedly be changed, right? But you’ve gone into it not just as anyone, but as who you are and with your lived experiences up until that point. What shifted in you? What did you learn?

Libby Clark
think of my life as pre-NZ and post-NZ. I really do think I came back a different human being in all respects. And I think the biggest takeaway is I learned how to listen with my whole body, with my whole self. I learned how to be part of a land-based people. ⁓ The power of place, the power of presence, the power of prayer, the power of people, the power…

Keep going. So this idea of being rooted somewhere, rooted in self, rooted in belief, rooted in the sense of being led in the best possible way, what it did was it opened up my understanding of autonomy. What it means to be a free person with responsibility, to have the both ends, to be able to do anything and yet carry the responsibility for

those around me. I had never had anyone demonstrate that to me in a way that I could really ⁓ understand. So when I came back, ⁓ so much of my life was entering the ⁓ strict world of law and investment and finance and a lot of these places that do not naturally ⁓ have the vernacular of that world. So everything was very hierarchical.

and top down and me loving an adventure, why not? Why not put the magic device in my backpack and see how high I can climb to the top of the tower and then reveal it? So that was the journey of entering systems that didn’t understand autonomy, the responsibility of autonomy the way that I did and begin to work with ⁓

I think of it as my training ground. How do we make decisions? How do we show up for ourselves? How do we hold and frame the overwhelm, the chaos, the things that can confront us? And how do we anchor? ⁓ And that’s who I became to my clients. I think that’s who I became. I will not say I was that at 26, but over time, threading that worldview and that experience into systems, communities.

people, because we are, that is what we are. What it really did was enable me to become a rooted presence in decision making for clients and demonstrate what that could look like, what that could be without getting it right, without being perfect, without thinking that there is some higher power that’s going to come along and tap me on the head and say, I did it all right. It’s not coming. No one’s coming to tell us that.

back in her work.

Syama Bunten
Hmm. When you decided to pursue your law degree, was it rooted in a feeling of fairness and justice? Was it righteous? Was it a moment of, where did you sort of root?

your decisions to practice because I think that in choosing law, right, it’s like that’s, I mean, it almost seems like I’m choosing the path of the elder, right? Like I’m choosing the path of the wisdom. I choose to understand the system such that I can disseminate.

not only what those rules are, but my own interpretation and my own values and ethics onto that which I’m learning. how did you sort of, what were some of the rooted issues and reasons why you chose that?

Libby Clark
I the conversations that happened to me in New Zealand, I enrolled in law school four months after leaving New Zealand. So that tells you how close on the heels of that that was. And at that time, I think I understood this intuitively, but the language for it came later, which was law is a dialogue in power. Okay, so it’s, you trade some of your humanity.

an exchange for the ability to speak in power, right? The power of systems, the power of rules, the power of ethics, the power of hierarchy. It really is the architecture of power. Law is the architecture of our system. And so I wanted to be powerful. And so looking back on that, think I can say that with great humility and just transparency.

that I looked around at the places where I had felt weak, effectless, unhelpful, whatever. I didn’t want to feel that way. And I thought I just got this huge gift and all this amazing, where can I be powerful? And I made the bargain. made the bargain. I won’t call it sowsian, but I made the bargain. I said, okay, you can have a little bit of me if you’ll give me the keys to the power of this society, this culture.

You don’t have the ones they have in New Zealand, but you have these, maybe I can have those. And that’s the brain of a 22 year old.

Syama Bunten
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If you’ve been listening to the show, you already know that this is your room. Seats are limited and we are coming up on this event May 14th. So register today at wealthcatalyst.com. Link is in the show notes. Now back to the conversation. It’s something I’ve come to realize about myself recently as I was sharing with someone about, you know, spiritual journey and evolution of self. And I said, well,

In my 20s, I had deep intellectual and philosophical knowledge. It wasn’t paired with an embodied knowledge because I was so young. So like, you know, I carried wisdom and I was making conscious decisions, but by virtue of age, some things are not embodied and they just can’t be because of it.

Libby Clark
I always call, I say metabolize. Knowledge is not behavior. It takes a long time. I think this is my wisdom looking backwards. It takes a long time to metabolize wisdom, to metabolize knowledge into wisdom. Because we can know a lot of things and not behave into it. mean, that’s the story of most of my life advising people. So, which is what, and I’m now more interested in that.

what keeps me from behaving into what I know to be right for me, what I know to be the right decision, not for me, but for my clients. And if they already know what they want to do, what holds them back, you know, more just than that piece than the other. And I think a lot of that is because I lived a life where, you know, I knew I wanted to have impact, right? Don’t make the choices you make as me and not want to have impact. But the path was anything but clear.

Syama Bunten
Hmm. So when you are emerging, post degree, launching yourself into the world, you know, obviously, you know, becoming going down this path that you know, there are some people who have the spark of I want to serve people and they become social workers and they don’t get paid very well. And some of them have the spark of service and say I’m going to

uphold and execute the law and choose to practice in these ways. And they get paid a little bit better, which is nice when you’re a neater. But as you were launching yourself and securing your first job, and you you also held a tenure there that I think, you know, when it comes to people reflecting their resumes, you know, you’ve really, I’d say you come off as a very committed individual, you know, have very much

had loyalty, you seek to sort of change systems and build within the communities that you decide to belong to. What was it like for this first job? Had you interviewed a lot of firms with someone with so much integrity, right? How did you sort of make this decision of where to dedicate the next ⁓ decade of your life?

Libby Clark
This is one of my favorite stories ever because one of my greatest mentors in my life actually had a hand in this one. So if anyone’s been through law school, they know that your 2L interviews decide what your second year internship is going to be. And all of the big firms have a process whereby they look at all of the top 10 students in the class, of which I had found myself number six in my class.

So career planning comes to me and says, where’s your resume? You haven’t submitted anything. I I want to work for the US Attorney’s Office. I want to learn about immigration. I want to understand human rights. And they’re like, ⁓ no, not for a student in the top six. No, no, we put your application in for you.

Yeah. So I’m getting all these phone calls from all these firms in the city. And this is absolutely the honest to God truth. I won’t say the name of the firm, but I had a, an interview for 2L position on September 11th, 2001 in lower Manhattan.

And I said, I know this is not right for me and I can’t.

And I’m coming out of evidence class on September 11th and I hear about what happened with the World Trade Center. And I thought to myself, how many more times do you need clear messaging? But like I had not intended to go, I was applied really against my will, that’s maybe an overstatement, but it was not aligned with my life path.

this is not for you was the clear indication. This is not for you. This is not your path. I did take, and it was still competitive to get an internship at the US Attorney’s office, even though it was unpaid, still obtained one. And I still went ahead and did that. And I got to be in that office in the aftermath of those events. And I have to say, it taught me more than I ever could inside of a large law firm.

I wish all those people well. work with them often and I respect different cultures of practicing law. But when I know something’s not right for me, I don’t need help. And I’ve told that story many, many times. Some of the people who know who put my application in know who they are. But ⁓ I know that they were doing what they thought was right for me. ⁓ But there is no substitute for that.

That’s what I’ve learned in my life. There is no substitute. If I look to my left or my right, the place I’m not looking is inside me.

Syama Bunten
You have never failed yourself, Libby Clark.

Libby Clark
Well, when I have I’ve paid the price. I have, I have deeply regretted it. And I’ve also learned, you know, too. But ⁓ so I did take a job ⁓ with a with a small firm in New York and I cut my teeth learning real estate development. And it is hard and it was brutal. And it was, I think, a training ground. If I look back,

worthy of someone who really wanted to understand power dynamics. I mean, if I said to you that I wanted to trade in power, I could not have been more clear with my intention. I learned how to trade in power, the good, the bad, the ugly. And I’ve seen things and ⁓ that is not a world that was, when I started out open to women, was, know, and still to this day, I’m not entirely sure that it is, but it’s different. ⁓

So ⁓ I spent a lot of my career learning the dynamics of real estate development, investments, ⁓ how high stakes, how pressure filled, how, ⁓ you know, and sort of behind the scenes. ⁓ Did I think that’s what I would be doing? Not really, but I was drawn to it ⁓ because it was watching power.

Syama Bunten
I mean, it’s also, you know, to think about all the different kinds of law you could have practiced to decide to go into something that’s directly tied to physical space, to land, you know, to ⁓ infrastructure, to things that are lasting, you know, this isn’t, you could have gone into a number of different kinds of practice, but there is something very,

grounded about being able to.

Libby Clark
⁓

And providing housing and looking at environmental decisions and looking at sustainability and looking at and having you know having a bird’s-eye view or sort of a window seat or whatever you want to call it to you know those kinds of decisions and I have been in some of the most difficult rooms that you can imagine you know building homeless shelters.

listening to people scream and argue with each other, building housing, ⁓ building, ⁓ you know, all kinds of different infrastructure projects and manufacturing and, you know, and just listening to the variety of positionality that there really is and sort of being positional and watching people be positional. You know, I find it

I have found, and I’ll be very honest, I have found it to be one of the most humbling experiences of my life, is to see humans up close in their most indignant and righteous, watching their hearts kind of bleed out of their mouths, even while they don’t agree with each other, and really understand what we are made of.

Syama Bunten
I mean, we are more painfully similar than we

Libby Clark
I find. And I wish I could, if I could, if I could package that into a little pill and give it to people, I would, but I do think that’s what my soul was seeking when it chose the path. wasn’t to be righteous. It wasn’t to be, it wasn’t to be a warrior for the underserved. And to all my friends who do that, I just want to give you a shout out. love you. But it was to, ⁓ it was to look at power up.

I think I’m supposed to be learning something about it.

Syama Bunten
So simultaneously as you are charting a powerful career, you’re also living a personal life. So, you know, like these things.

Libby Clark
They have a way of doing that, ⁓

Syama Bunten
is like, you know, the Libby who has to brush her teeth in the morning and maybe buy clothes and maybe like, you know, pay for things. And, you know, how, how was it for you and how did you start to establish and what were some of the ways in which you showed up with your resources, right? Obviously, as you’re increasing in your own ability to have earnership and asking for more receiving more

And then certainly deciding where those resources go. Obviously in the beginning, things that you’re establishing, but can you share some inflection points and sort of some of the ways in which you found yourself allocating your money at different stages of establishing yourself as a young.

Libby Clark
Yeah, mean, ⁓ one of the things I learned very early on was, and this came from my mother, which is the power of a budget, the power of intentional spending. And so even from the time that I was a very young lawyer, ⁓ you know, we all carry financial, not all of us, but many of us carry financial debt from law school and these kinds of things.

⁓ I was a person who believed deeply in using my money for what represented my values. And one of the things that represented my values was ⁓ having impact and making sure that I understood where I could have impact. And in early stage, the greatest place I could have impact was in not letting my

ego, my stature, different kinds of things get away from me. And the reason for that is I had a very early on mentor say to me, be careful not to build a concrete cast.

And I said, okay, what does that mean? And they said, every time you spend, you put a brick in the wall. Every time that you commit to something and you make a financial commitment, you’re putting a brick, right? And you have to keep laying those bricks and you have to make sure those bricks stay upright and you have to, right? So like there’s a time where you can essentially build yourself into a tower you can’t get out of, right? Where your spend has been so unintentional.

that you need to keep living this life, right? And if you want to pivot, you may find you have, you’re in the tower and you can’t get out. You are in a beautiful tower. Lots of people look up to you, but there you are in a room you can’t escape.

And I will tell you, as I sit here today, that piece of advice alone has enabled me to be pivoting when I need to follow those yeses because I didn’t believe the castle held the sort of the penultimate answer. ⁓ So just because everybody else is living in a castle, that was hard to resist. It was hard to resist and to say,

Okay, and to listen to my advisors who said, what does matter to you? Where is your intention? Who do you want to be? What kind of decisions do you see coming down the pipe for you where, you know, being liquid is going to matter. Where having resources to be able to say no to something is going to really make a difference, right? I was also up close and personal to real estate development decisions. So understanding ⁓ how to read pro forma, how to

Understand what the return on investment was, you know, the cost of money that the different things that you learn You don’t teach it as a law school to say you Transparently you learn those on the streets and you learn them from your clients and you learn from listening but being able to Watch people suffer from their own FOMO Watch people suffer from not doing their due diligence watching people do too much due diligence and I buy too much I mean

paralysis by analysis, of watching behaviors and saying, okay, but it really comes down to my left and from my mother, which was what does my dollar mean to me? And how do I make it advance the kinds of experiences that I want to have? And I never found I could do that if I was looking to what’s going on to my left or my right, right? the, that, so I think part of it was

⁓ essentially eschewing maybe what my colleagues were doing, buying big houses, driving fancy cars, doing different things. It’s not that I couldn’t have done that, but I couldn’t have done that and stayed true to my intentions. Does that make sense? a lot of it was, I’ll tell you one thing I did, because I learned something in real estate that is you buy the ugliest house on the block and then you redo it, right? Because you want the cheapest piece of real estate in the most

So I did that, you know, I did that right before I listened to my intuition and I bought real estate that was in areas that I thought were going to be up and coming. ⁓ And some of my best gambles have been on knowing how to do that and not doubting. And one day I was driving, I on a lunch break and I said to myself, you know, I’m always talking to the powers that be in the car and

I said, you know, I’ve got to find somewhere else to live. was going through a divorce. was like, gosh, I really need you. And I pull up in New York and there’s a man bringing garbage out of the house. And he’s got to put a for rent sign up in front of this small bungalow. And I get out and I said, are you going to put a for rent sign up? goes, yeah. I said, I’ll rent it. He goes, on what conditions? I go rent to buy. And he’s like, okay. Don’t know anything about the house.

And he said, okay. And I did it on the spot. I never second guessed. didn’t, I was like, yep. mean, odds of that happening are so rare that I thought there’s no way this is not a yes. And I listened and that turned out to be the greatest investment I ever made. And I returned on that investment is probably now about, about 10 times.

Syama Bunten
⁓ Libby, I’m like, I just need you in my court all the time. I’m like, no wonder I mean, no wonder your clients are like this woman’s indispensable.

Libby Clark
But

that’s part of it is like, how do you, you know, there’s so many reasons to say no, but I challenge people to tell me what it would, what it takes to say yes. And the answer is, it’s very little. It’s self-trust. It’s the foundation of autonomy. It’s like, if I knew that a decision that I made, ⁓ regardless of what well or poorly, that on that day, when I found out the outcome that I’d be my best friend.

that I would not harm myself in any way, right? Could I make that decision freely? See, I don’t think we’re very, we’re afraid of making mistakes or failing. I think we’re afraid of the voice that comes on the day when we perceive it didn’t go well. That is our deepest fear, is a confirmation of our own inner voice.

You know, and if we suspended that voice, I say this to my clients all the time. You know, what happens if this, what if what does, how are you talking to yourself on that day? How resourceful are you? How creative are we going to need to be? But if you are going to be, if you’re going to condemn yourself, then you’re right. Should not, we should not do this. We should not do this next step or this acquisition or this thing, because I can’t protect you from you.

Syama Bunten
man.

Libby Clark
Everything

else we can do. can get really creative with finance, with pivoting, with plan B, with plan C, but if that’s the voice, ooh, I can’t help you with that.

Syama Bunten
So do you also have like therapists you recommend?

Libby Clark
Well,

actually, know, honestly, it’s true. funny that you say that. My teaching partner is a clinical psychologist. So one of the things I found in my career was the Humanized Lawyer Project. And I did that with Dr. O’Hara, who’s a clinical psychologist. She specializes in treating lawyers, certainly not me, because that would be weird. But my business partner will often say to people on the stage, you know, I get all my best material from the people. Which I think is hilarious.

And I’m always like patient number one. I’m always like revealing myself like this is the stuff that goes through my brain, you know. So no, I don’t have therapists I recommend, but I have been on stage under the observation of one calling out my stuff for a while.

Syama Bunten
Talk to me about this inner knowing that you have had that has been so powerful and self-directed and so connected to Source, Universe, however anyone chooses to name that and talk to me about being a mom and the…

the wisdom of self and how and in what ways and what does that look like as a mom who’s raising a young one and that connection to self is something that you, seems like you were born with it, right? And I feel like all of us are, right? But there’s their layer. So what has that been like as a mom? How do you sort of look?

Libby Clark
Yeah,

I have two. have a boy and a girl. have a daughter and a son. Both inform me differently, but maybe not because of their genders, but just because of their own autonomy and like who they are as humans. But one of the things my mom said to me before she passed away, she passed when I was 27, but she said, I won’t live to see your kids, but I want to tell you this. I said, okay. She said, you don’t own your children. They’re gifted to you for a time.

They’re like, I’m So their arc, their journey is nothing more than your stewardship. Right. So be a good steward. Do not control them. Right. Because basically what would happen if I inserted my knowing for theirs is I would rob them or I would sever, which is the word I use, sever their connection to source. And I refuse to do that. My job is to stick the container

in which they make decisions inside their connection to source. So like, if I think I know the way, if I think I know the right thing, if I think I know who they’re supposed to become, I’m severing that connection to the authentic self. So I’m more of a shaper of decisions. What’s the skill I can give you to look at this? What’s the power I can do to help you frame how you look at this? What’s my life experience that I can bring to you to help you

help you navigate the use of your own power. One of the things my kids know about me very deeply is I never take a first pass at anything. Anything they need, they need to go ask for it themselves, whether that’s a school, soccer coach with wanting the role in the school play. I’m here as second, I’m second string. know, that’s the first thing you have to do in my world is use the voice that you were given.

Syama Bunten
Hmm.

Libby Clark
⁓ because there is no one who will speak your truth better than you. There is no person, there is no stand in for the power of your own truth. Right? Find it, say it. I always teach them to say it in 10 words or less. If you can’t speak your truth in 10 words or less, it isn’t your truth yet. It’s an explanation. It’s a defense. It’s a justification. Truth is simple. Truth is short.

Syama Bunten
Just so much like mic drop mic drop mic drop. Okay, so I’m like imagining you like have this vision of you with like a giant staff, you know Like you know a sword it’s not like, you know, it’s not but it’s like like a like the staff of Truth and wisdom that can be wielded like a sword if needed

Libby Clark
He is a mom, for real.

⁓ Like my… yeah.

Syama Bunten
but is ultimately there to like hold this beam of connection and truth. And it’s really this beautiful visual of you. I want to know about…

How you like people and in what context do you want people to engage with you as you present your work today? know, as I have grown to know you now, as everyone else has in this very like beautiful, intimate way and your skill set and accolades and ability to execute is so…

diverse and complex and can be you I mean you can be a force in in multitudes of situations right and so when it comes to that right sort of pairing of the clients you want to work with and the ways in which you like to express your work because you get this beautiful privilege of being like and this is who I am and this is how I want to do it.

Right? What does that marriage look like? And how do people best, how do you want people to best sort of come to you when they want a piece of this Libby Clark life experience?

Libby Clark
Our are seeking a form of coherence. We live in a very chaotic world. I work with lot of founders, lot of owners, a lot of CEOs, a lot of people who manage a tremendous amount of chaos. Part of what they’re looking for, and I don’t think they get a lot of, is integration.

There’s a lot of advice. There’s a lot of like, take my advice. I’m not using it. But no matter what we’ve developed here in our world, at least here in the West, a sense of siloed voices of advice, right? You have your accountant, you have your lawyer, you have your financial people, you may have a banker, you have all these voices. And at the end of the day, you have to integrate.

you have to do the job of stitching this together because we’ve lost wholism. You we’ve lost wholism in our culture, just generally speaking. To be a specialist is to be king, right? But to be integrative is to be whole. So who are the people that hold the space for integrative work, right? And so part of the part of what my clients are seeking is not me to tell them what to do. A lot of my clients know exactly what to do.

What they don’t know how to do is to clear the path from here to there, which is how do I execute? How do I actualize? How do I take knowledge to behavior? Knowledge is not behavior. A lot of people can give you knowledge. A lot of people can tell you to read this book or look at this thing. But when you need somebody in the trenches, the person who’s going to sit next to you and say, gonna jump out of this boxhole.

We’re gonna go three, two, one. You want to have that kind of, I would want someone next to me who is grounded and secure and isn’t pretending that there aren’t risks ahead, but it’s next you.

Syama Bunten
Wow. I feel like I could keep you with me for hours. ⁓ I’d love to turn our attention to the future as we start to wind our conversation to a beautiful bow here. know, your life has already created so much impact and legacy undoubtedly has been occurring and building in ways seen and unseen.

throughout your life and the people who you touch and impact. Looking back on this body of work that will be your human life from a young age of, I don’t know, 102. Libby, what is this body of work that you hope to reflect upon at that age?

Libby Clark
Thank you.

think that what I hope to ⁓ reflect on is in the age of this ever-increasing machine and mechanization, which is intended to help us be more efficient and more connected, my work is really about remembering what it is to be human and what it is to be connected and what it is to see the power in all the ways that we are designed.

⁓ and to remember them, right? And to remain and to sort of remember the power of autonomy, the power of relational dynamics, the power of the self and the inner knowing before we give away to sources and to voices that are not ours. That’s a lost art. ⁓

And I often reflect on there’s a TED talk by a brilliant cross-cultural anthropologist who’s one of my heroes in life, Angelus Arrian. And she says in the talk that there is a concept of Central American tribes called original medicine. And it’s one of the oldest concepts in Central America, but it has this idea that not only are our fingerprints unique, but our voice tonation is unique.

The coloration in our eyes has never been seen before. So what I want to leave everyone with is our deepest humanity is that we feel the world like no one else has. We see the world like no one else has, and we will seek it back into the world the way no one else has, which is why no one has your medicine. No one knows what you should do. And every time you try to offload that, you are giving away the single power you came to use.

So my job is to steward people into the use of their original power, medicine. It isn’t to tell them what to do, it’s to actualize what they already know.

Syama Bunten
⁓ God, yes. Yeah. Right. Yes. Yes. Okay, two final questions. Last second question, our first of the second. You are a deeply wise, powerful, profound woman who has great taste and loves beautiful things and is integrative and in all the ways I would like for us to unpack.

Libby Clark
And

Syama Bunten
if you could quickly, your most recent fabulous way in which you’ve spent your money.

Libby Clark
Okay. So one of the things that I have spent money on is I have recently invested in a redevelopment of, this is going to sound funny, so I’ll try to keep it really, really brief, but I have done a reinvestment in former religious spaces into housing. So

areas that have gone from what you see rectories, nunneries, ⁓ houses of worship that are now fallen either into disrepair or non-use for reasons we won’t get into. ⁓ One of the things that I have spent my time and money behind is making those accessible housing ⁓ for communities that would otherwise be suffering from the non-use of those buildings. So for me, that’s the win.

Win, win.

Syama Bunten
that’s incredible. Okay. And then the last question is, clearly you stand in service to others. You stand in service to our human divinity. You stand in service to the preservation of that, which is so special and unique of all of us. What is it that you are calling in that we can support you in that we as an audience can stand in solidarity with you?

What are you calling in that we can rise to the call?

Libby Clark
Remain loyal to yourself.

That’s what it is, to remain loyal to you. ⁓ Every decision that faces us from investment to starting the new business, to making the next acquisition, to dreaming and actualizing that which is big is terrifying. And yet nothing ever wonderful happens unless we act within the terror and find a way to connect to, no matter where this goes,

the place I made this decision from was in loyalty to self. And that’s the thing that if I could teach people to hang on to that, there will be bad days, there will be bad investments, there will be things that we think God should never have done that. And yet I’ll remind you, why not? Why shouldn’t you have done it? Because on that day, you were connected, you were making the decision and who is still to say?

right, that this wasn’t the lesson that you’re here to learn, you know. So I think loyalty to self on the good and bad days are the things that move us forward to progress, to becoming who we want to be. ⁓ Because without risk, there are no heroes.

Syama Bunten
Libby, I wish I could just like talk to you every day. ⁓ I don’t have any big projects, but I wish I could also just hire you to like me to like just, you know, like, I’m like, how could I just be closer to this woman? ⁓ It’s been an absolute treasure and gift in ways seen and unseen to have you here today on Getting Rich Together. am

Libby Clark
Thank you!

Syama Bunten
tremendously grateful to you. Thank you.

Libby Clark
Well, thank you for inviting me. It has been an honor and I’m grateful to you.

Syama Bunten
Thank you for listening. This is the conversation we come back to every single week. Real women, real wealth, and what becomes possible when we stop being silent about money. If today’s episode moved you, don’t let it stop here. Wealth Catalyst is where women go to take it further. Our Freedom Tour salons are gathering women in 32 cities this year. Intimate evenings in homes and private spaces where women talk honestly about money, risk, and what they’re building.

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