Syama Bunten: Oh boy. I am here today with the brilliant and beautiful Wendy Wexel. Wendy, you just are a prolific coach and a strategist, and you are using your life’s work to deepen and not damage relationships when it comes to wealth. Something that I think is so valuable and important as the founder of Wexel Partners and creator of the EQ of Wealth.

Syama Bunten: Darling, you are working with ultra high net worth women and families to have real conversations of what’s going on underneath the numbers. Fear, legacy, love, and what it means to have a life well lived and using your money to do well. I am so honored to have you and your spirit here today on getting rich together.

Syama Bunten: Thank you for being here.

Wendy Wecksell: That is the most generous introduction. Thank you so much. I wish I could have you at every single meeting. I feel like I’ve entered the Oprah Winfrey Christmas special where everyone gets a car that is such an incredibly generous introduction. Shaa, thank you so much.

Wendy Wecksell: It is an absolute joy and blessing to be here.

Syama Bunten: Oh, I love that, Wendy. So let’s start back from a young Wendy maybe she was always walking in the trees and connecting with friends. But take me back to a young girl, somewhere between 10 and 12 years old. Wendy, where were you in this beautiful planet of ours?

Syama Bunten: Where was home and what was money like around you?

Wendy Wecksell: So interesting that you say that. So I was born in New York City. I was raised outside the city. very funny, I, not very funny. My parents’ basement recently flooded and I had to help them and I was helping them out and I found all these albums and there was all these old photos and it was all like kid Wendy around from seven to 18.

Wendy Wecksell: Thank goodness there wasn’t social media for some of these pictures during high school. But what I can say is from 10 to 12, when I look at those pictures, I still recognize myself. And so I think the joy I’ve always had with me, but when it came to money, it was much more complicated. So this is the, I was thinking about certain memories and around money as a kid and how it, and how there were mixed messages.

Wendy Wecksell: I re, there’s one memory, and this is actually a little younger. This is seven years young, Wendy, where, and I must say, I love my family so much. I love my parents so much. The EQ of wealth would not be a thing if it wasn’t for them. I literally moved back into their home to build this business because I bootstrapped this for the last six and a half years and.

Wendy Wecksell: Overhead in New York City living does not make sense. And so I could say I really understand family and when I’ll come back to being a kid, but when I had a health scare in the last two years, let me tell you, there’s nowhere else that you wanna be than with your parents. You. They’re the people that love you unconditionally.

Wendy Wecksell: So I say that because seven years young Wendy, money was very complicated in my family. So I remember going into my parents’ bedroom and I told my dad, I said, I really wanna go to summer camp. Like it was just this very innocent question and I just remember the oversized reaction. It was such anger.

Wendy Wecksell: And he said, if you go to summer camp, you’re gonna end up in a cardboard box. You’re gonna be homeless. And seven years young, Wendy was like, what? I’m like, oh my God. I felt like I had done something wrong that by asking for something I wasn’t the quote unquote good girl. In addition, money was always what got, what caused arguments in my family, especially with my dad when I did get to summer camp Sleepaway summer camp when I was 10.

Wendy Wecksell: So coming back to your original question, I went to a very fancy summer camp. I didn’t realize this, but I grew up upper middle class and very blessed. And I remember there were two people that I was introduced to before I even got to summer camp. And so one person was a really lovely girl that had trouble making friends the year before, and so she lived about 20 minutes away from where my parents lived.

Wendy Wecksell: So we drove up there. And I realized that when we got there, it was a gate. It wasn’t an address, it was a gate. And so we had to call in and we literally had to drive for five minutes from the gate to the HE to the house. So it was almost like, if you’d imagine pride and prejudice on screen, but this is long, this is, well, great Gatsby took place in Long Island, so you’re going through this manner these windy roads and then this main house and this pool.

Wendy Wecksell: And I was like, wow this is different world. And I just didn’t really think anything of it. And then the second girl was my pen pal and I went to her house in the city, apartment in the city, and I literally didn’t know how many rooms they had. And so it was this very strange thing where I was around money.

Wendy Wecksell: I know that we had money and that we were comfortable, but yet it was always the source of arguments. It was always, especially with my father, it was also not just arguments, it was a source of secrets. So when I co coming back and what led to the EQ of wealth? It’s not surprising that I’m at one place.

Wendy Wecksell: I’m very comfortable around this wealth. And by the way, wealth from the purpose of how are we using it to make the world better? And I deeply understand and we’ll probably get to that later, how emotional, and it can become and how that affects our actions.

Syama Bunten: Sure. So when you were growing up then, so like you had this early experience at summer camp with certainly starting to see like what knowing life is comfortable, but then starting to see maybe a little bit something more right? Like these are some of the other things that are possible.

Syama Bunten: How did you start to translate, I guess, what it is you thought you knew of yourself in high school? Was it all right, money causes trouble at home, so I’m gonna get a job.

Syama Bunten: Was it, I’m gonna double down on my studies ’cause I need to get outta here and go to a good university. How did you start to think about. Exercising some early high school year independence and starting to shape, shape who you were.

Wendy Wecksell: Syama. I wish I thought about money in that way when I was in high school, so I always, I had a job.

Wendy Wecksell: I loved it. I was in, I was actually, it’s quite interesting. I was thinking back on it. I’ve always worked in service jobs, so what does that mean? I worked at a clothing store. I loved making sure that young girls felt good about themselves. I also saw the dynamics. In this fancy ish clothing store between the mothers and the daughters and how that would play out.

Wendy Wecksell: And seeing, I would just seeing what things that can be unsaid and how they can really hurt each other’s feelings. But however, I was an artist. I was a theater kid coming back to those pictures from 10 to 12 years old, Wendy, she was mostly in costumes. Like she was probably in plays, like a lot of ballet recitals.

Wendy Wecksell: It wasn’t, we didn’t talk about money. I wasn’t exposed to money, and in fact, I knew it was there, but it wasn’t something that was appropriate to talk about.

Syama Bunten: And those service jobs, were those in high school? Like starting to, to, and what did you do with the money? Was it like, I’m gonna put this money towards costumes, I’m gonna put this money into my piggy bank, I’m gonna put this money into my new lip, smackers lip balm.

Syama Bunten: Like how did you think about some of that early money you were making?

Wendy Wecksell: This is so embarrassing, but I’m just gonna be very honest with you. I didn’t look at my bank account so it would be deposited, and so a huge part of my journey was thinking this didn’t exist, and ultimately that came to really bite me in the ass because I, it felt too painful for me to actually look at it.

Wendy Wecksell: That was something that I always got that made my dad angry. And I also didn’t really understand it, so I was, my mom’s a math teacher. I was pretty good at math and my grandfather was very successful as a physician. And I wish my, I will say I don’t have any regrets in my life. We all have regrets. One of my biggest regrets, I mean besides maybe investing in Apple in like 2006, is.

Wendy Wecksell: My grandfather was brilliant at understanding the markets. He was when my grandmother passed, when, I guess that was when I was in middle school, high school. He came to dinner every night and he was brilliant and super sharp until his like nineties, which is when he passed. I wish I talked to him about money.

Wendy Wecksell: I wish my grandfather loved finance, he wanted his chil grandchildren to get into finance. I’m now tangentially in finance, but what I can say is my biggest regret, one of the biggest regrets in my life is that I didn’t get to take advantage of that wisdom from my grandfather because he was my favorite person.

Wendy Wecksell: Truly, I miss him every day, and actually, I know people can’t see, we’re not being filmed, but this is my grandmother’s necklace that I wear. All the time because we are the sum of the people we come from and and I think it’s interesting one of my goals in life is to be fluent in French and Spanish because I do the language of the dinner table.

Wendy Wecksell: So to really connect with people, it’s first language. And I think in French, if I remember correctly, it’s so, heritage is inheritance. And so it’s like your heritage, like where you come from and thinking of money as just for better or worse. And this is where people, our relationships get complicated money as who we come from and the source of our values and whether they’re aligned with our values or not.

Wendy Wecksell: I really think about now, but at the time my sister say I’m in La Wendy Land, or Wendy World, like I was in Wendy World. I was a theater kid. I was memorizing lines. I had a very lucky childhood in that it was a very happy one. However, I do regret. I wish I sat down with my grandfather and was like, tell me about investing.

Wendy Wecksell: What’s a checking account? What’s a savings account? What is, what does credit mean? What is what? What is debt? How should I think about different types of debt? And he would’ve loved to have explained it to me, and he said I could do anything. And I’m not sure why I didn’t take advantage of that, but I probably wasn’t ready for his wisdom.

Syama Bunten: But you did do any, I mean, you, you went to university, you studied fine arts. I mean those were really those were bold young moves. Right. To say like, I’m not going to go into a cookie cutter thing where I spit out and look like everyone else. How did you decide where you wanted to go to school and like when you were in university, what were the big dreams that you had, Wendy?

Syama Bunten: Like, what is it you wanted to be?

Wendy Wecksell: Oh. Oh, this was so, I mean, it was classic and now I look at it and it’s interesting. I’m talking to a cr, a storyteller community tomorrow. I wanted to tell my, I wanted to be in movies. I wanted my, I wanted to be on Broadway. I love to be on stage. It was when, at the time, when I felt flow.

Wendy Wecksell: The interesting thing that I, now, looking back at that moment, there are two things. One is founders. So entrepreneurs and artists actually have the same core capacity, which is creativity. They both are brilliant at creating new things. The second thing that I really learned from studying, of all things acting, which I believe according to the research, has the lowest likelihood of success based on how many people are like, sign up for this to be actors and how many people can actually like, have a living.

Wendy Wecksell: The thing that was very helpful in studying acting was actually two things. One was the high foolish tolerance when it comes to entrepreneurship. So I think about, I was told once that what makes a great entrepreneur, well, they have a high frustration tolerance. They can deal with a lot. I actually think that just sounds painful.

Wendy Wecksell: It’s like, do I wanna sign up for suffering? I know it’s in my life. I know that’s going to happen, but like, I don’t wanna just sign up to be like. Being an entrepreneur is being frustrated. And that’s a, and that’s a badge of honor. I think of it as a high foolish tolerance. And the thing that you, I studied in acting was improv.

Wendy Wecksell: And improv is one of the few situations where you make things up and when you fail, it’s hilarious. And so that muscle of failing joyfully is so important. For resilience. And the second lesson and I probably will write about this one day every, everything I needed to know to be a founder I learned in acting school.

Wendy Wecksell: And the second was that the only way to actually succeed is to be a hundred percent yourself.

Syama Bunten: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s always, it’s doubling down on who you are. So as you were then every young person is graduating college. No matter how much support their parents give are is always freaking out about what’s next.

Syama Bunten: Right? It’s like, how am I gonna show up in the world and what am I gonna do with myself? And as you were approaching these, like, okay, it’s time to now. Finish school and like try to navigate living in this world. And obviously coming outta college, no one gets paid that well. So like no matter how great you are, it’s like New York City’s expensive.

Syama Bunten: Life is hard. How. Did you think about these first jobs that you would have? Was it okay, I’m going to give my dream a shot here and like go and try to land these like roles? Was it all right? I’m going to look for like a different kind of service job while I’m navigating this, or I’m gonna put my time into fighting something in an office?

Syama Bunten: Like how did you start to think about. Dreams and visions of the college years and then starting to marry that with like, oh my gosh, I live in New York City and I now have to like, take care of myself.

Wendy Wecksell: So let’s, I’m gonna be very transparent. So my thirties were when my life fell apart and things were really hard.

Wendy Wecksell: My twenties were a blast. And so why is that? That same grandfather who I loved dearly, who had the same car for 20 years, loved the markets and. I was a really reliable human when he passed. I got money. I got money. And so you know what I did at 21 with my sister and thanks, and some help from my parents.

Wendy Wecksell: We bought an apartment in New York City, so that’s full on. Luck and fortune. And by the way, I totally, we’ll talk through like it was a reversal fortune in my thirties, which is really funny. Now it’s funny, but we all have our own journey and so I just wanna be very honest. So in New York City, unless you’re working at Goldman or in consulting, if someone has a nice apartment or tech, it’s probably not their money.

Wendy Wecksell: And so I just wanna be very transparent that I got really lucky. And I and so that money that I got, that inherited money I got, and at the same time I didn’t look at it the same habits of I didn’t I don’t even know if it was invested. I did not have, I did not, I was given the best opportunity, literally like the Wheel of Fortune.

Wendy Wecksell: And by the way, I don’t know what the amount was to this day. I actually have to find out. I don’t know what it was. It wasn’t an amount of money where I could not work for the rest of my life. That is not the case at all. But it’s an amount of money where for the, I was able to work in film in New York City, have a decent apartment, and then work in nonprofits.

Wendy Wecksell: And so I just want I just wanna be very transparent about that experience. And so part of the reason I created the EQ of Wealth and I was able to do what I wanted was because I come from a place of having that financial security. At the same time, my. Negligence or just fear, quite frankly, my fear around money and how much it unsettled me and how much it put me into stress response.

Wendy Wecksell: I literally I didn’t handle it well, and by the way, like it all went away. Like I, I went, it wasn’t a huge amount of money that most people we think about like trust fund kid. But if it was managed well compounding is the eighth wonder of the world. Thanks Albert Einstein. So I took that lesson of wow, money’s really emotional and that I made a lot of illogical decisions and I would actually at the time, spend money to feel good.

Wendy Wecksell: So it was my outlet. You think about we all might have addictive tendencies. I, if I felt bad, I’d go shopping. I would buy a new shirt. I wouldn’t deal with my feelings, although I am a very emotionally aware person. But in my twenties at the time, the thing that I do regret spending my money on was I didn’t need all those clothes.

Wendy Wecksell: Like that was, and it wasn’t like I, I mean, I now I’m like, I just don’t want anything. But I really, I, it was an emotional outlet of self-soothing. And then in my thirties it and we’ll probably get there. Like it’ll, I mean, I put everything into this business and I can look into people in the eye that I work with.

Wendy Wecksell: Really blessed to work with not only the kindest humans, but people have huge root forces. And I actually don’t care about their money because for me. There’s a misunderstanding of what True wealth is, and so go on.

Syama Bunten: I’m curious like you’re, you were talking about the you were able to hold these various roles in these different nonprofits and being in the art world. And I was curious, like, as you were navigating these different roles while had some inheritance and it was like supporting you, but did you find yourself ambitious from a career standpoint or negotiating for the salary that you were going to make or were they really jobs that were taken just out of a labor of love, how much self-advocacy did you put into these roles that you were applying for and trying to get promoted or doing that path?

Syama Bunten: How did you sort of navigate that sort of traditional career promotion schedule?

Wendy Wecksell: Oh I led that question because I was huge, ambitious. That was the thing. I was, and I added huge amounts of value. Where I actually added value was raising money. And so the thing that also is interesting, or it’s just true, that our strength becomes our weakness because we overwork it.

Wendy Wecksell: One of my strengths is my generosity. Where I had to get smarter in my life is I’d be too generous. And so I worked at, in my first nonprofit job, I led fundraising because I was comfortable around this wealth, I just shared my camp experience. And I love talking to people.

Wendy Wecksell: The thing about fundraising, especially in philanthropies, you talk to people, not necessarily about their budgets, but you talk to them about their kids and their dreams, and it’s a very human experience. I just really love that. I love getting to know people. And I raised a lot. I helped raise a lot of money and when I look back on it, I was, I remember I advocated for like maybe a $5,000 raise, but I was getting paid $60,000 raising millions of dollars.

Wendy Wecksell: Like that’s insane. And I think part of that was. Guilt. I think there was guilt that maybe, oh, I don’t need this money. I did actually need the money. I did actually I didn’t have this huge I didn’t have the nest egg I thought I had. And also the ability to receive, generosity, receive in all ways, including wealth, including money, was really tough for me.

Wendy Wecksell: And so I was so good at raising money for other things, for other causes, bringing other people money. And yet when it came, how do I advocate for myself? That was a huge growth area and I had to do a lot of work around that. And yeah,

Syama Bunten: it’s really powerful to think about. how we can hold so many things at once.

Syama Bunten: Like we can both be powerful and strong, yet timid and shy at the same time. We can be ambitious and have vision, and yet not always have self-advocacy, right? Or know how to ask for what we want. Sometimes these parts of ourselves are being stifled, right? It’s like there’s hidden narratives and stories and things that almost.

Syama Bunten: Create a chasm that keeps us further away from ourselves, right? the longer we hold it at bay and not take the invitation of the world, which we get o we get often invited many times in our life to take the invitation, to get to know oneself. And typically that’s through, I believe for myself, has been through a lens of pain.

Syama Bunten: Pain has been an incredible. Teacher, and it sounds like it has for you as well, Wendy, what, how did things progress in your thirties. You’ve mentioned it a few times in your thirties, it sounds like shit hits the fansome crazy stuff going on.

Syama Bunten: What happened and what went down, what were and before you say what happened maybe tee it up with what were the dominoes that had to fall that sort of allowed for this to happen.

Wendy Wecksell: That’s a great question. The thing about I talked about compounding and the thing about compounding is that everything in life compounds.

Wendy Wecksell: Money. If it’s on the up in the black, great. If you’re in the red, that compounds too. Our habits compound, our behaviors compound. We really get to see. The repercussions and the outcomes of our actions. And that’s something that I’ve seen actually, not just in my life, but in general. It’s just something that happens in life, whether it’s your thirties, now, we’re really in the forties, like that’s a, I guess people could call, quote unquote a midlife crisis, but it’s just that things compound.

Wendy Wecksell: We really get to see the outcomes. Of what we’ve done. And so for me, coming back to not looking at money and not wanting to deal with it and not advocating for myself and then realizing, wait, the money’s gone, or wait, like, because I became an entrepreneur when I was about 29 and, or 28, 29, I left I left that my first fundraising job.

Wendy Wecksell: And honestly, like I knew how to raise money, but I didn’t know how to advocate for myself. I became an entrepreneur. I had to put savings in bet on myself, and I did that a couple times and I’m a big believer in dreams, but we, I also need to balance that in reality. And things take much longer than I expected.

Wendy Wecksell: The thing I think about a lot is that. There is no getting around the time it takes to create something original.

Wendy Wecksell: It’s also compounding, and I started this business when I was 34 years young, and now I am so proudly 40, and it’s just starting to make sense. People are just starting to get it and the dominoes, et cetera. And actually, I was looking at today’s a big day because I don’t aim to reach, I just aim to be better.

Wendy Wecksell: And I looked at my revenue for next year and it’s actually what I’ve confirmed for next year is more than what I’ve brought in all of this year already. And so I’ve come a long way, but. I had to essentially break down and literally the, my past life of not being conscious of where money is and also how I treat people.

Wendy Wecksell: So I’m gonna say a very, I care a lot about relationships, but when I look back, I could have been a better friend to certain people. And also when I had a health scare two years ago, actually for about a year. I, my parents were so there for me, and so I really, I had this, I’ve really been thinking a lot about what I’ve misunderstood about love and what I’ve what I got wrong about relationships.

Wendy Wecksell: After studying them and my work, my entire, I’m ob, I wanna say obsessed. ’cause obsessed can be unhealthy, but I am forever curious about the intersection of wealth and relationships. And I was thinking about what did I get wrong? What am I rethinking? And it’s this sense and it’s this idea of independence.

Syama Bunten: Yeah. So wait, so you didn’t tell me what happened in your thirties when you Oh, so my thirties, so started two businesses. Yeah. So it started two businesses. One of them we decided to end ’cause it wasn’t the business we wanted to be in. I wasn’t really making money for, ’cause I was starting these businesses.

Wendy Wecksell: They weren’t bringing in enough. I

Syama Bunten: did. You set up like, this is how much I’m gonna allocate into this business and give it a go. How did you sort of decide how much to. Pull out or like, like what was the thought process around your entrepreneurial journey?

Wendy Wecksell: I mean, I wish I had a more cognizant, thoughtful thought process.

Wendy Wecksell: It was the thing that is I’ll say that it’s guided. This one, the first one was like, what am I what do I think would be really interesting? One of my curious about, and that was a travel company with one of my dearest friends and then the second with Wexel partners. I didn’t wanna do this. I was exhausted.

Wendy Wecksell: The only reason I got into coaching was because. Somebody said that I would be great at it. I thought that was a horrible idea, but I felt so lost because I was closing down or transitioning outta that first company that I gave it a go. And the second person that I coached was a former professional football player.

Wendy Wecksell: I had no experience, zero training, and he said that I like changed his life and I just remember crossing the street. Around, uh, Washington Square Park when I, and it was June, so it was still light out. It was about seven o’clock and getting that text message and the first thing that popped into my head was f because I knew that as a founder where you put where there’s little effort and huge outcomes you follow.

Wendy Wecksell: And I knew this was it. And I also knew it’d be really hard because nobody knew me for this thing. And so I thought this wouldn’t take as long, but that was like, I was like, all I know is that I have to follow this. And I think for me it hasn’t been, I’ve had to learn to be far, to be much smarter about the allocation.

Wendy Wecksell: How am I thinking about this? What’s the process for me that I’ve just known this was my calling and why I was put on this planet. And for me there, I, the only person I couldn’t portray was myself.

Syama Bunten: Of course. I mean, it’s so powerful. So at that time when you’re having this like career life path discovery, which is also a I mean what you’re working on and developing it’s really working with people, with some of the more deeper side of their money.

Syama Bunten: It also has you work with your deeper sides of your money and where are the areas that. You are putting time and energy and your values and what’s important to you. Can you double click a little bit on sort of the evolution of like life before your awakening and how you treated.

Syama Bunten: Your money and like how you looked at your energetic output and then after this awareness and the aha and maybe some of the ways in which, like you started to reallocate your time and money, or like how did it start to shove differently for you?

Wendy Wecksell: Well, it became, how do I eliminate expenses?

Wendy Wecksell: So this idea of wanting to spend money on clothes to feel better, I was like, oh no, we’re just gonna feel the hard feelings. Because I am no longer allocating money towards things that aren’t essential. And so I actually adopted a bit of, I wouldn’t say Buddhist or like a monk mentality, but it was like I just need to eliminate how much spending can I eliminate, but how do I also keep joy?

Wendy Wecksell: So I didn’t need items, but I really valued experiences. So I was much more thoughtful about that. In addition, I would start to. Every Wednesday and Sunday, I do my accounting. But how it started was I created this process called Wealthy Time. And because I didn’t look at my money for so long, I actually just had to go through my accounts and be like, what am I spending?

Wendy Wecksell: And literally right in what, how much is it? What category is it in? And how did I feel about purchasing that? And so I guess you could say that’s classic budgeting, but for me, I called it wealthy time because creating a budget sounds like going on a diet, which is I hope to never go on a diet.

Wendy Wecksell: It just sounds really terrible, but wealthy time, I was like, this is the skills that I’m going to develop to create the behaviors of wealth. And so that really started around this time as well as. Quite frankly, getting much better at charging people. I used to give a lot away for free and I and because I have a big heart, and so I worked a lot when I started with Wecksell partners, with community organizers and female founders and artists and people that, and I was also just getting my I was just trying to learn.

Wendy Wecksell: I wasn’t known for this. I basically learned through doing. The EQ of wealth was not created because I had this desire to work with wealthy people. Not at all. It was because my life fell apart. The fall of 20, there are multiple times you fall apart. I called it a Phoenix anniversary, September. It was actually September 12th, 2022.

Wendy Wecksell: I was supposed to move to Paris. And I had all this money aligned, lined up. I had an apartment, this and that, and then everything within 24 hours fell apart. And I had like all the business, everyone backed out. I remember the real estate agent, it was so French. She, I love French people. But I will say French real.

Wendy Wecksell: Just imagine a French real estate agent. And I told her I had to back out and then she basically said that she would blacklist me from all of Parisian real estate. I mean. In French culture, they love to debate and they wanna, they love the drama. I’ve dated 30 per 30% of the men in my life in my dating.

Wendy Wecksell: 30% of the men I’ve dated in my life have been French. I’ll say from personal experience, they do love a debate. And I just remember I was like so heartbroken. And this real estate agent who I didn’t know was like. Threatening to blacklist me and like black. I was like, what is going on here?

Wendy Wecksell: And then I like sold all my furniture by this. I had to move back when my parents. I was like, what am I doing with my life? And I just created what is now leg, I call it the legacy magic framework, which is, I gotta figure this out because I never even wanted to get into coaching. I just knew this was why I was put on this planet.

Wendy Wecksell: And that is something I will never fully understand, but I know to be true. And so I created the framework, which I just is based off of the, I think it’s the hedgehog concept. From Good to Great, and it was three different circles, and I just looked at it. I said, okay what do I, so personal, professional, potential, personal, what have I overcome?

Wendy Wecksell: Professional? What is the, what is my expertise, potential? What should exist but doesn’t? And so whatever’s in that middle is gonna be the answer to why me? And so. The why me was, oh, I understand money. I understand the complications of it. I understand how it affects relationships professionally, I have, I did a lot of fundraising.

Wendy Wecksell: I moved a lot of capital for impact among this very niche demographic of wealthy individuals and families. And the potential, oh my goodness, did I wish I had this training, but it didn’t exist. And so it was from, actually, not from desire, but from necessity. That the EQ of Wealth was created.

Syama Bunten: I love that. So as you’re sort of looking at what the EQ of Wealth has done so far in the world and thinking about legacy and like what you’re building towards and like, what is the it sounds like you took some time to really incubate. This and like to really get this exactly where you want it to be.

Syama Bunten: And then obviously with all children, right? You birth something, you grow it, it becomes a toddler, then it becomes a high schooler, then it graduates and and then you have this like legacy. Business, right? This thing that’s really creating a lot of legs and impact in the world. If you were to think about the legacy of the EQ of wealth and what you’re looking to leave as an imprint on society, what would that look like?

Syama Bunten: Wendy,

Wendy Wecksell: thank you for the question. I’m thinking about that actively and the thing that I’m really focused on right now is how do you measure this? And so I. Come from a fundraising background. I believe that wealth and capital can do amazing things in this world because I’ve seen it. And so for me though, it was actually created because I wanted people to take action around moving capital.

Wendy Wecksell: And what I would see from the fundraising side and was that people were afraid. To deploy capital to make a decision because they didn’t know how to talk to their spouse. They weren’t able to come to an agreement on a family meeting. They were afraid of making a mistake. And so it was actually like, I just want people to feel like they have the tools to take action.

Wendy Wecksell: And so for me, and I don’t know if this is the right goal, I actually I’m working with someone right now who has much more of the IQ brain. We need people that are better than us around us to keep us better. And I would love to have this work be the reason that 1% more capital gets moved to impact globally.

Wendy Wecksell: And I think that’s, I, that’s definitely, I think it’s, I, it’s, I think it’s at least a hundred billion dollars. It might be more. But my, I have to look at the numbers, but I, my feeling was, okay, well if Bill Gates. Is that foundation in itself with Gates Foundation is getting fully deployed.

Wendy Wecksell: Well, I would why not? So that’s, I don’t know what the number is. I don’t know what the right percentages, but for the thing that came to my mind, just as a gut instinct with 1% more capital to impact. So I wanna see real capital deployed to make the world better and. Through this process, I wanna see people come together more because the thing that the EQ of Wealth really focuses on is how do we collaborate?

Wendy Wecksell: How ‘ cause impact is truly a team sport That requires a team effort. Business is competitive, that’s how people become wealth creators. You beat the market. Relationships and Impact is collaborative. Totally different games and. Totally different games and so do not bring your competitiveness home.

Wendy Wecksell: It is literally cancer for relationships. I hope that through this work I love, you’ll be shared a lot more. People we feel much more connected to each other. They’ll own their voice, they’ll have that confidence. But ultimately, I’m a numbers gal now I’m a numbers gal wasn’t born that way.

Wendy Wecksell: And so now I’m like, lemme show me the money. Like where, how is, what is the impact? What are the metrics? What are the KPIs? And I wanna see hundreds of billions of dollars moved because this material got families and individuals taking action.

Syama Bunten: I love that. I think it’s so beautiful, Wendy. You know, we’ve spoken so much about.

Syama Bunten: What it’s like to inherit money, spend it wisely. Investing in yourself or unwisely trying to make yourself feel better. What it can look like when we have deep conversations with others to really. Help move the needle in substantive ways. It feels like it’s been a really robust sort of peaks and valleys of what it looks like with money.

Wendy Wecksell: And I will say now, wealth creator. Right? So now it’s like how do most people become in the position of wealth? Well, they. Based on socioeconomics and you know the gap. It is. So you either inherited it or you’ve started a business, you’ve created it. I admire people that got it through having jobs like I am.

Wendy Wecksell: Like, I wish I had that in me. I wish I functioned d well in bureaucracy. But typically it’s you’re a founder and you have ownership in something or you’ve inherited it or both, right? And so I now. Understand. Oh, I actually get both profiles. And so for me it’s like, how do I talk to every single generation and individual so that they really feel understood so that they’re inspired to act?

Wendy Wecksell: Because at the end of the day, say I love you and move your capital to your values, that helps others because you, if you are in this position, you are blessed, so share it.

Syama Bunten: Yeah. Oh, it’s so beautiful. Wendy. I wish we had so much more time to connect, but this brings me to my favorite final two. The first of which is what has been your most favorite, fabulous, recent way in which you have spent your money?

Wendy Wecksell: I will say. I’ve always loved spending it to make other people happy and by make other people happy. I mean, like, as a way of saying I love you, like this is me appreciating you. Uh, it was my nephew’s birthday yesterday and so I gave my sister money for his sports lessons and for his college fund.

Wendy Wecksell: And so I think and I guess the reason why I love that is because that’s what my grandfather used to do for me. And so that is. Thinking about heritage and really bringing the best of what’s, what we’re built with and passing that along. I feel really grateful to be able to do that.

Syama Bunten: Uh, and then my final question is, Wendy, you obviously have a big mission in this world, and you really wanna help people align their values, their money, change the world.

Syama Bunten: You and I are so in, in sync when it comes to what we see in this world, and yet we also still need things. So what is it that we can do to rally around you? What are you calling in? What’s important to you? How can we support you?

Wendy Wecksell: Well, let me tell you. My Paris move in three and a half years in the making is like happening, and it’s gonna be happening in the next couple months.

Wendy Wecksell: I will say I would love to have friends, so if you have no good humans in the city of light, I would love to know those good humans. And for me, at the same it’s also the same thing. That I said at the end of our first call, which is, if you know of a, in like an institution, an organization, or a group where this work is incredibly valuable, I would love to educate.

Wendy Wecksell: I would love to make sure that people actually know this work exists. So that would also be the my request.

Syama Bunten: Beautiful. Wendy, thank you for your generosity of time, your spirit for the work that you do day in and day out to create a better planet. I am grateful for it, and thank you for being here today on getting rich together.

Wendy Wecksell: I’m so grateful. Thank you for having me.