Syama Bunten
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.

Syama Bunten
I am here today with the brilliant and beautiful Lucy Rogers. Lucy, you are a brilliant entrepreneur, investor, and family office consultant working at the intersection of capital, culture, and impact. You’re the co-founder of Just Us, a global network connecting more than 3,000 family offices, investors, and founders. Holy bananas. That’s a lot of people. And through your curated investor experiences and relationship-driven deal flow, you’re able to change the world and move the needle in a direction that gives us so much more hope, possibility, and really something to believe in. What’s so interesting about your early career, Lucy, is how you’ve really woven all of these amazing experiences across entertainment and creative technology. And I mean, I really don’t know how many people can say that they created content that generated over three and a half billion views. I think I need you to tell me how on earth you did that because I think I need to know how to do that. I’m so excited to have you here today on Getting Rich Together. Thank you for being here.

Lucy Rogers
Thank you so much, Syama. It’s a pleasure meeting with you and recording with you. And same to you. I’m a big fan of what you’re doing. So thank you for all your work.

Syama Bunten
Absolutely. So before we get into all of the incredible things you’re doing now and all the places you’re traveling to and all of these incredible activations, I’d love to start with a little girl, Lucy. I’d like to start with a girl who was somewhere between the ages of seven and twelve years old. Maybe she had fabulous bangs, maybe she didn’t. But tell me what was life like for you as a little girl and what was money like?

Lucy Rogers
Interestingly, I actually don’t remember a lot of my childhood. So you’re picking a time period where I don’t have a lot of memory. But I know my mum told me that when I was a kid I would never play with toys. I’d just want to create businesses. And when I did have toys, I’d stand by the side of the road and flag down cars and sell them to people, and for some reason people would buy them. So I’ve kind of always been quite entrepreneurial and independent, finding my own way and doing things that are perhaps out of the ordinary. I did start working when I was eight years old. I did gymnastics and you could be an assistant gymnastics coach at eight years old and get paid like four pounds fifty an hour. So I started work early and just really liked seeing how I could have my own wealth. Not that it was wealth at that time because I probably earned like fifty pounds, but I could buy my own sweets. So that’s what counted at the time.

Syama Bunten
You know, I remember getting like fifty dollars for one birthday and being like, I can move out now. And I think I was like…

Lucy Rogers
Right. I don’t need you, mum and dad anymore. I can do this.

Syama Bunten
What was grade school like for you? Were you someone who was always precocious? Was it an adventure? How did you navigate being so entrepreneurial so young? I imagine that might have gotten you into a little bit of trouble.

Lucy Rogers
Yes. So grade school, what age is that? Because we have primary and secondary school in the UK.

Syama Bunten
Yeah. So primary takes you to what age? Is that like twelve, thirteen?

Lucy Rogers
Eleven, yeah. So primary is up until eleven, and then eleven till sixteen is secondary, and then you can do A levels or go to college at sixteen.

Syama Bunten
Oh my God, that’s amazing. I went to high school with my international baccalaureate and I was like, what is this? Why am I doing this? Anyway, I digress. So up to about sixteen or so, what were you getting into? What kind of student were you? Was it Lucy the bad girl? Were you still working? What did it look like?

Lucy Rogers
I got kicked out of two schools, so I went to three secondary schools. If you’re familiar with the four personality types, I’ve always been a questioner. I’ve always stood in purpose and my belief system. At the first school I skipped class and went to a protest about the war in Iraq and animal testing. I was vegetarian from about eight years old, just because I realized it meant killing animals and I liked animals. So I’ve kind of always been very much like, this is what I believe in, and I’m standing by it. The first two schools it was very much like, there are a lot of rules and I don’t understand why we’re doing them because they don’t really make a lot of sense. And creating your own rules when you’re young at school doesn’t go so well for you. It can result in being expelled. But when I hit the third school, that’s when I settled down a lot, actually. And I think that’s also what’s made me into such a big connector, because when you start at a school in the middle of when everyone’s already had their friendship groups, you go in from a hard position where you’re trying to make friends with people who have been friends for years. So you work out what they like, what interests them, how do I fit in here? And fundamentally I think connectors continue to ask that question. In a work environment it becomes, okay, what’s your greatest need? I can help with that. And you become useful. That’s kind of how I’ve switched careers so often, but always found myself in the right pockets. I got very quiet in the last school and kind of lost my passion and voice, which I’ve now got back. And that kind of makes me prime to be working in impact. I think I had to grow back from it being suppressed during my school years.

Syama Bunten
That’s so incredible. Thinking about your level of awareness of your experience, and how necessity almost breeds this extra special quality. I’m sure at the time when you were younger, moving schools was probably daunting and stressful. It’s hard enough to be a teenager, let alone having to navigate so many different experiences. Did you have an idea at that age of what you thought you wanted to be when you grew up? What kind of options or possibilities do you think were in front of you?

Lucy Rogers
When I was younger, I know I wanted to be an artist with a studio I could sell my paintings from. Then the vision became a bit bigger after that. I think it took until I was in college, so sixteen to eighteen, to really decide where my focus was. I actually dropped out of college when I was seventeen and went travelling on my own for three months through Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand. I took a camera with me and didn’t know anything about photography, but it gave me this creativity. I could just document everything and really get in my element. And I got an unconditional offer into university from that portfolio. Although I love being creative, that was the first part of my journey. When I was at university I didn’t finish that either, because I was studying commercial photography and it just felt like I needed work experience more than I needed to be educated on it. I just wanted to go out and do. It felt like a waste of my time at that point.

Syama Bunten
Education hasn’t been great for you, you know? I think it could go both ways.

Lucy Rogers
Right. Had there been more work experience, I probably would have been more interested. But I moved to London that summer. I lived in Bournemouth at university at the time. I went to an advertising agency that typically you’d have to know someone or have family connections to get into, and I got a work experience role for a week and I made myself invaluable. I found tasks that people couldn’t replace me on. I’d essentially make it so that I could say, I can stay next week if you want me to continue this. And that kept happening for two months until a position came up for an assistant, and I said I’d really like to go for that. They gave it to me. Everyone else was coming in with degrees and connections, but that’s kind of where I ended up taking my creativity into more of a work capacity and creative direction. There’s still a through line of creativity in the work that I do now, but it’s more around how we creatively storytell about investments and raising capital.

Syama Bunten
So how old were you when you landed that first advertising job?

Lucy Rogers
Twenty, I think. Yeah, twenty. I was meant to do another year at university and I didn’t.

Syama Bunten
So what did you do with the money? Did you see the money as freedom? Did you not think about it? Was it going towards expenses? Now you’re starting to finally make some real money. How did you perceive that initial amount of capital?

Lucy Rogers
I worked out how I could spend barely any money. I’d go to the supermarket right before closing when everything was discounted and buy my food then. I saved up for a deposit on shared ownership for a flat. At twenty-four I bought eighty-five percent of my first apartment and I was literally a hoarder at saving. I’m really good at saving. That’s actually probably been more of my issue with money because I’m almost like hoarding too much rather than being free with it. I’ve actually had to teach myself the opposite, to spend without feeling guilty about it. But yeah, I got into my first job and I think it took me two years to save maybe forty or fifty thousand pounds. And that was enough for a deposit. I was right at the minimum, and if I hadn’t done overtime I would never have met it. But I was consistently doing overtime and extra jobs. I had also trained as a personal trainer because I was doing fitness content on Instagram when Instagram was just coming out. Someone sent me on a free course so I had that skill. I’d do personal training clients before my advertising job. Doing all the things to save money.

Syama Bunten
Who are you? Nobody I know is twenty-four and saying, I have saved forty or fifty thousand pounds and I’m going to start buying a flat. It seems to me like you’ve always been very self-directed and very much like no one knows better than I do.

Lucy Rogers
Can be a default.

Syama Bunten
But this very authoritative quality, you’re holding a lot of authority in your life to be able to dictate what the priorities are and what comes next. Was there any modeling of that within your family structure? Or did you secure these futures for yourself despite the family structure? How do you reconcile such adult behavior and such a strong sense of self-responsibility at such a young age?

Lucy Rogers
After all the self-development work I’ve done, I can give you a very solid answer for what that is. Essentially, I didn’t feel safe. So I felt like I needed to create my own safety. That was just like, okay, this is what we’re doing. We’re very independent. We’ve got everything. We don’t need to rely on anyone. And now I can unpack what that was and why I wasn’t just a normal twenty-year-old having fun. It was safety. And that inherently is kind of what most human needs are really based upon.

Syama Bunten
Totally. And what’s also interesting is that in the United States I’ve never heard of someone buying shared ownership, making homeownership more accessible for young people. Today in San Francisco you pay one and a half million dollars for eight hundred square feet. It’s wild.

Lucy Rogers
We also have different mortgage terms. My business partner is in some parts of the business replicating the UK mortgage term, which can be like thirty-five years. And then there’s shared ownership, which means you can buy part and rent part. It can get you stuck, quite honestly. It’s good to get on the housing ladder, but then the value goes up quickly because you bought it off plan. So it can be about catching a tail.

Syama Bunten
Fascinating. Okay, so you buy this place, you put down your deposit on this home. You’re young, you’re wicked smart. What happens next?

Lucy Rogers
I moved to a new role. I found the advertising industry way too corporate. Everything was storyboarded out. I needed more freedom and expression. And I also didn’t like some of the things that we were selling. From a moral standpoint, it just felt like, why are we getting people to buy this? This agency had a lot of money and they’d put thousands into an educational film about recycling. And so I started working with these young directors because that was one of my projects, to produce a film on using the right bin. They did a lot of music videos. So I said if there’s anything that comes up, I’d produce it for free. Just let me know. A producer role came up and they hired me at their production company. I was there for probably two and a half years, working with artists like Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, and ASAP Rocky. And I got scouted by Atlantic Records and moved over there. So it’s kind of been this continuation of intuition. My intuition has been my through line. My career is random. It’s always been opportunities and intuition coming up and taking the leap. If I look at mapping what my purpose was from a younger age, at all the highs and lows in my life, you can really start to see, okay, this was training me for this. I really feel now is where all of these trainings have come into play, because how I can see the music industry, the advertising industry, and the investment industry are all a very unique perspective that I wouldn’t have if I had just stayed in one career.

Syama Bunten
So cool. At what point did you start to feel like your work and your savings were starting to land with you? Was there a job or a moment or something that made you go, wow, I totally did that?

Lucy Rogers
It’s interesting you ask that because it becomes a question of, is there ever enough? I have got through a lot of imposter syndrome, but I don’t think I sit still long enough to really realize what I have achieved. It’s kind of an alien concept to me, because do I ever feel I can breathe? Yes, I do. I’m very peaceful in myself. But it’s always about there’s a bigger challenge to now address. I can go on vacation and feel absolutely fine not working, even though I have my own business. But I just love my work, honestly. I work with my friends. I’ll go on vacation and suddenly find a client on vacation. This success has obviously come and I’ve done great things in my career, but I’m always excited for the next thing. Right now I’m really excited for our Aspen Institute collaboration. That feels like my next inflection point.

Syama Bunten
It sounds like a moving goalpost, where you get the thing and then the bar gets higher. That is a very common thing I’ve observed with a lot of women where we don’t acknowledge our successes. More often than not, when we think about money, we think, I wish I did this, I should have done that. Not, oh my God, I was able to start buying an apartment when I was twenty-four. Those are big accomplishments. During your tenure in the music industry, how did you navigate salary negotiations and really build the salary you wanted in that industry?

Lucy Rogers
Going freelance was actually my biggest thing in terms of wealth creation, because you had more freedom to work across different jobs, you got paid better, and you had less responsibility. That’s when I created my company that essentially bridged talent and blockchain. I was at Atlantic Records, then I went and ran a label under Warner. But when I started taking on more freelance work, that expanded my vision of entrepreneurship and creating my own company. Working with talent when you actually own a stake in your business is where you can make more money in entertainment. I was never an artist or talent, and I think that’s where it’s really difficult in music. If you’re on the exec side, the budgets aren’t too dissimilar from advertising. So yeah, it was taking control, having all of these relationships, and not wanting to work for a corporation anymore. I really struggled working within corporations. Being told what to do and thinking, I don’t think this makes sense. Entrepreneurship has been easier for me in that regard. So I started making more money when I created this talent agency that partnered blockchain and talent together. In that time I got nominated for top ten entrepreneurs in the UK by NatWest, Coutts, and the Telegraph, which is kind of like Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, I guess. They gave me all of this venture training, covering how to fundraise and how to build a business correctly. And they were like, this is how to fundraise, this is how to build a structured business. Having a lawyer that can be a good advisor is important too. As much as yes, you need to pay for contracts and stuff, they give you a lot of free advice before you even get to that point. So I got a lot of principles from asking lawyers from my entertainment days who gave me structure. My business partner now has taught me immensely. And I also listened to the podcast Diary of a CEO and got so much great insight from that on how to run a business. Even now I still integrate a lot of those lessons. There was also a book I read about startups. I’m blanking on the name. It’s got a yellow cover. But there was a lot of reading, listening, researching, and just asking a lot of questions to people who had done it before, and applying for programs like the Barclays Accelerator so I could learn.

Syama Bunten
I love that. With this new venture you’re on, it almost feels like the apex of these components of your life coming together in something that feels like this is what it was all for. The networking, the relationships, creating towards a more equitable future. Being able to notice things you want to change and starting to do that. Putting capital to use is, I believe, one of the most important things we can do if we want to see change in the world. Tell me a little about this personal origin story and how things evolved.

Lucy Rogers
So I started noticing my energy a lot more. For example, if I worked in a genre of music like drill, which is essentially about conflict and rivalry, I would feel a moral questioning of like, what am I doing? And then I would work with artists like Charli XCX on her Boys video, which was all about flipping the male gaze, and I’d feel really charged from that. Or there was another artist I worked with that was focused on anti-suicide and mental health, and all of our creative was centered around that. I just felt like my energy was so much more lifted in that regard. And when I was working on things that weren’t aligned with my values, I could just feel intuitively that I wasn’t happy there. So firstly I learned how to read my energy and what worked for me and what didn’t. Secondly, there was a book I read called The Buddha and the Badass by Vishen Lakhiani, who founded Mindvalley. In that book, every chapter gives you an exercise on how to think bigger. You start the book by mapping your purpose, your highs and lows in life, your skill sets. And then it will get you to think of a vision. By the end of the book you’ve hundred-X’d that vision. That really fundamentally shifted my mindset. It also talks about certain brands that might be quite predatory in this world and whether those are the brands you want to work on. It started making me much more conscious of who I was working with and how I was leveraging my skills. And when I moved to America, I became more intuitive about who I would work with. So I started working with Ashley Bell, who used to run innovation and entrepreneurship for the White House. His career is incredible. He’s a huge change maker. He’s run Peace Corps for West Africa and many other things. And Dr. Bernice King, Martin Luther King’s daughter, is his co-founder.

Lucy Rogers
So I started working with them on Redemption Bank, which they were fundraising for at the time. I just felt so aligned value-wise with everything they were doing, and how my time was being spent was purely around creating change. The feeling I get from working with them and the vision they have, and how expansive it is, and how I really do feel that what we’re doing can change the world, I just couldn’t go back after that. Everything else was kind of mind-numbing to me. I wasn’t passionate about it. And luckily I could then generate clients within that realm that allowed me to keep working for impact.

Syama Bunten
It’s so beautiful and powerful to hear your landing. When you’re in alignment with the kind of work you’re supposed to do, something magical happens. The right people, the opportunities, the work you’re doing. I don’t think it gets easier, but it becomes more satisfying. There’s a quality of accomplishment that feels like putting a brick into a building rather than blowing up a balloon and watching it float away. So then from the formation and how you guys started collaborating and putting together Just Us, what’s so interesting is this world we’re living in where investing and thinking about creating change, and living in San Francisco I can tell you that we’re now in a new AI bubble. Not all of those applications or products being developed are landing towards a better future. They’re landing towards increased monetization for the founder. But the work you’re doing is so centered on connection and relationships and leveraging this born talent you have around seeing and identifying people. Tell me how Just Us has been structured and what’s making it unique.

Lucy Rogers
Yeah, there’s a lot in that. On the AI side of things, as you say, it’s very complicated. I fundamentally think most people operate in this world from their heads. It’s much more transactional. Okay, well what do I get from this? It’s not leading from a place of heart and wanting to connect. I was being very drained by surface-level small talk. I went to LA Tech Week and everyone was like, hey, what’s your name, what do you do, are you an investor? I was exhausted. It felt like you were being seen as a checkbook as opposed to a human who has values too. So Just Us really came from that mindset of how do we get people to connect on a heart level? How do we get people to care? Most people in this world do not care about others because they don’t have emotional or physical safety in themselves. So how do we create a safer place for people to feel they have community, to share their thoughts, and also have access to resources, to capital, to meet investors or founders on a level that is human and not transactional? Finding out what each other cares about, what their value systems are, what’s important to them. Especially because a lot of founders getting investment don’t realize that not all capital is good capital. You may make the mistake of taking the wrong investor and it might be fundamentally flooring for your business, or it becomes more about profit centers as opposed to impact if that’s the goal for you. Similarly with family offices, people just try and pitch them all the time. Our dinners are where they really feel that people care about what they have to say and can get to know people on a human level. So just creating environments that lead from the heart was really key to me.

Lucy Rogers
I get drained by small talk, so I would watch a lot of documentaries and find interesting topics and that’s what I’d talk about with investors. I’d always get asked to grab coffee or whatever, and it made me realize there’s a unique place for real conversation. When I started doing these dinners, initially it was just from a place of creating community, understanding who should connect with one another and who would be really interesting energetically together, and then facilitating the environments around them. So that’s the core principle of Just Us. And now I really look at even if people are not impact-led but they’re deploying millions or billions, how do I get them to look at investments that are more impact-led and doing more things for the world, but seeing it through their lens? I may introduce them to something like climate tech, for example, that will have a really good exit but is also creating impact, as opposed to a real estate or oil and gas deal that may not be doing as much for the world. That’s kind of where I’m at now. I’m trying to convert people over to what impact investing really means, that it can be more profitable and just as aligned as venture portfolios.

Syama Bunten
You did a great job. One of the things that really landed with me was when you said creating rooms that are heart-centered. In this space of money, you and I are very much aligned around that. There’s something powerful that happens when you can relax, when you’re in a room where you are both honored and given a space to be curious, where you can dream together, where it’s not transactional and you can build trust. The rooms you’re curating have that at the center. And I think that is the new way in which capital gets to be really deployed, in ways that are impactful not just for the recipient of that capital but for the person who is investing. A two-way energetic exchange, and together everyone is creating a better future.

Lucy Rogers
Yeah.

Syama Bunten
So it’s beautiful how you are curating this and putting heart at the center. The other thing that landed with me is that these days we now have enough data points to show that investing with your values and doing things impact-driven do not have to mean that it’s a charity.

Lucy Rogers
Right. But people still think that.

Syama Bunten
I know, it is really wild. So for our listeners who may be going, Syama, I never heard you say that before, how do we reconcile that? When you’re talking to investors and helping them see how their capital can both create positive returns in the world and also positive returns for themselves and their bottom lines, how do you frame that up for them?

Lucy Rogers
I meet them where they’re at. I’m always trying to find out what’s their greatest need, what’s their interest, what do they care about, what do they want their legacy to be? And then I’m able to position an investment. I speak to so many founders and a lot of our family offices introduce us to founders they’re invested in as well. I have a kind of luxury of knowing this whole rolodex of everyone’s greatest needs, and all of these companies doing various different things across sectors. If someone says, for example, they care about the environment, there’s a really interesting deal we’re investing in right now. Her last company, this company is at the same stage and is over twelve times doing what that company did. She’s had four successful businesses. She’s a powerhouse. But she always starts with impact first. Her mission on everything is how do we get consumption down, how do we improve recycling, how do we keep the planet sustainable? And then she builds the business on top of that and she builds a business model on top of that. She has incredible returns. So when someone’s saying, for example, in fact this is a good example, I have an investor in this, we’ve done a syndication for this one and it’s been brilliant. But one of the investors, he’s not an impact investor. He specifically told me he doesn’t want anything to do with climate. Then he told me he’s looking for high-level returns. So I invited him to a dinner we did for her. Afterwards I said, I know you’re not interested in climate, but this is a really good deal for everything else that you’re saying. So if we took the climate element off and looked at it as a deep tech deal, would this then interest you? He’s investing. So you’re kind of looking at…

Lucy Rogers
And that makes me happy because now I’ve got someone who was not an impact investor in an impact investment, and in a few years he’ll probably see that impact investment outperform most things in his portfolio. And then he’ll be thinking, okay, that was an impact investment and it wasn’t a nonprofit. So I’m just trying to reframe people’s viewpoint in the way that they understand and where their interests are.

Syama Bunten
I love it. That’s so powerful. It’s a great example. So now, as you’re thinking about the future and what you’re building towards, when you’re impact-focused you’re almost sort of building legacy as you live your life, because it’s like everywhere you look you’re putting deposits into a future that will yield something beautiful. But as you kind of think about where you want Just Us to go, or where you want your impact and legacy to go, what are some of the things you are thinking about with this body of work that maybe has yet to unfold but now seems far more clear? You definitely speak with a sense of intuition and a lot of clarity.

Lucy Rogers
I think it’s about infrastructure now. How do I create beyond just the capacity of myself? Yes, we can do these investments and everything on a one-by-one basis, but what’s the infrastructure we need to build to create an even bigger legacy and an even bigger impact? Working on Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy is not a small place to be. My business partner Ashley and what he and Dr. King have come up with are just phenomenal examples of doing this, and that’s been really inspiring. For example, the stuff we’re building, we’re doing a collaboration with the Aspen Institute. For your listeners that might not know what that is, it’s been around for seventy-five years. It’s some of the most influential and intelligent people in the world, just building for impact. People like Kamala Harris have gone through the program, and various others. This is a program where we will take people that have been significantly impactful in their career and influential, who are at inflection points where they can’t seem to break that next ceiling, or who may have had a really successful exit and feel more impact-aligned. Ashley came out of the White House, went into Aspen, and created a bank that supported economic empowerment for women and minorities. So it’s that level of person. Every year we will have twenty entrepreneurs of that caliber come into our program, essentially building businesses that address issues of nonviolence globally. And ideally for profit, using capitalism and consumerism to drive profit as opposed to just nonprofit ventures, because we believe that’s the evergreen cycle that is needed to drive great change. Every year we’ll also have twenty new entrepreneurs. We’re also partnering with the Aspen Resonate Action Forum, bringing in thirty family offices and key investors that really care about supporting these entrepreneurs, launching them with an incubator of support before they’ve even begun their ventures. That’s kind of how we’re looking at legacy. How do we get ten to twenty ventures coming out of that every year, from significantly influential people who can really think and build new systems and create change?

Lucy Rogers
And then we can build the investments surrounding them and get our community all together. That’s really where we’re heading right now. That’s the next rendition. And there’s something really exciting coming up with Redemption Bank, which is Ashley and Dr. King’s bank. I’m an investor in that, though not a co-founder. There’s a credit card product to look out for around Juneteenth that is just phenomenal and really addresses global nonviolence and also addresses poverty through real systems that can end poverty. I just work with very inspirational people.

Syama Bunten
I’d love to ask you, as you think about your portfolio today, once you understand and think about venture and all these other asset classes, it’s enticing, it’s intimidating, you’re always building a muscle. As you think about where your assets are today, how do you think about your own portfolio or investing? Are you bullish in certain areas? Is it still pretty risk-averse in terms of how you think about it? I need my safety net and I gotta feel secure. How are you thinking about money and what does money mean to you now?

Lucy Rogers
It’s funny, I’m actually very un-risk-averse. I have my safety net, but in how I act in daily entrepreneurship decision-making, it’s not particularly risk-averse. It’s intuition I go off, honestly. When I feel really called to people and to something specific, that’s my initial thing. I have a great CIO in our company that then vets the investments for me, because yeah, I’ve made mistakes. You’re right, just building up this world. But now our CIO is great and she vets everything. And so when we’re looking at deals, my intuition has actually been really spot on. The deal I was mentioning earlier that we’re investing in has been way oversubscribed really fast. I had the strongest intuition on that and it didn’t look the best on paper initially. And that one has been the best one for us to get behind. So it’s intuition. Do I feel really aligned with what the founder is doing? Do I think that the founder can achieve this? I can generally work out when people are transactional, whether in impact or philanthropy or whatever, and when it’s very self-serving. I try and avoid those people and work with the people that are really leading from heart and have a vision that almost feels like it came from a higher source and is just being brought into this world through them. That’s a very airy, fairy, floaty, spiritual way of looking at investment. But if you are like that, put the right team around you to do the correct due diligence. I don’t really do anything with public markets. It’s more like private investments that we’re working with and founders in our network that we co-invest alongside our syndicates.

Syama Bunten
That’s really exciting. I feel like the more women I talk to who are in venture, quite a few of them have been like, yes, I’m fully in venture and I haven’t diversified because I’m all in. There’s so much conviction around building towards this future. And I think there’s something really powerful about feeling so aligned with the work that you’re doing every day. So, Lucy, tell me. We are living so much longer now than ever. I imagine I will still be knowing you and having a coffee with you when we’re one hundred and ten years old. But the landscape will look different. Hopefully we’re still here on planet Earth if all of your investments go as planned. It will be a beautiful planet Earth. As you think about this world you’re creating and your own personal thesis about life, what are some of the philosophical underpinnings that you believe are really driving your life and your trajectory?

Lucy Rogers
A big one is treat everybody how you wish to be treated. I really believe in karma and I just try and act in good intention with every single person that I interact with. I really think that we are all one as a human race and most people don’t see that. They won’t treat life as if they are interacting with themselves. But I think we win when we do that. So my mission is to try and get people to come together and act in love and act in heart and not allow fear to take over their lives in various different forms. I just see pain being passed from person to person to person, and no one is sitting with it. How do we create a safer world for people to feel safe so that they can then care about others? When we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, people need safety. So that’s a big part of where I would like to be helping, bringing together more people to realize that and to come together, and stop fighting. All of these wars are insane to me. But that’s where I would like to be. Let’s see if it happens.

Syama Bunten
I love that. That’s so beautiful. All right, my last two questions. We’ve talked a lot about money in terms of saving it, investing it, private markets, homeownership. But when you are thinking about money today in a way that is fun and exciting, because we both know money can be fabulous and can afford us lovely experiences and things, what is one of your most favorite recent purchases or financial commitments that has brought you the most joy? What’s been the most fabulous thing?

Lucy Rogers
Interesting question. I just went to Costa Rica and I went on a retreat that was very focused on presence and meditation and feeling at one with things. Realizing actually that human consciousness is not the predominant consciousness and just understanding that. It wasn’t an expensive purchase, put it that way, but I felt like I really got a lot from seeing life in a different way and being able to be more present and ultimately conserve more energy for better things.

Syama Bunten
I love that. That’s beautiful. And then my last question is, what are you calling in right now? What can we, the audience, do for you? What do you need? What do you want?

Lucy Rogers
I am calling in the right aligned partnerships for our Aspen programme. So founders, investors, donors that can really take the mission to another level and just have a like-minded mindset.

Syama Bunten
That’s wonderful. Lucy, thank you so much for being here today on Getting Rich Together. Thank you for sharing your vision of the world and your spirited heart. You know, I feel like if I have this podcast a year from now, you’re going to be like, and then there was this incredible thing, and I met this amazing person, and it’s led me down these other tracks. And so you are definitely one to look out for. I’m so thrilled and honored that you shared a little bit of your incredible story with us. Thank you.

Lucy Rogers
Thank you so much, Syama. I really appreciate you and all that you’re doing.

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 thirty-two cities this year. Intimate evenings in homes and private spaces where women talk honestly about money, risk, and what they’re building. And if you’re ready to go even bigger, join us at the Wealth Catalyst Summit, a full-day event in San Francisco this October. Find your city and claim your seat at wealthcatalyst.com. We’ll see you there.