This Is Our Decade: Women, Wealth, and the Power Shift
Katie Loeb
Katie Loeb Molayem is the Head of Strategy at Loeb.nyc, a venture “collective” that combines smart capital with deep operational resources for a network of startups. Katie guides the direction of the firm, internally and externally, through her branding expertise, dedicated, culture-focused leadership, keen understanding of the evolving business landscape, and passion for leveraging the private sector for public good. Under Katie’s vision, Loeb.nyc has established itself as one of the most unique and nimble venture firms in the space, with an exceptional track record for identifying high-potential nascent startups and providing the funding and support to develop them until they are fully-fledged.
Some of her most recognizable accomplishments include:
Leading a full rebrand of the logo and website in early 2019, capturing its futurist and flexible approach.
The company’s proprietary event series, The Or Not Experience, a conference and salon series that is geared towards brand marketers, focusing on the latest trends and tactics in the marketing and investment space. The flagship event draws a crowd of over 250 and takes place every spring in Southampton, NY.
Prior to joining Loeb.nyc in 2017, Katie spent almost five years with the programmatic buying firm Dstillery, where she was selected to relaunch the company’s newly acquired Self Service Platform. The experience gave her a taste of “intra-preneurship,” and inspired her to find similar opportunities at other organizations.
Katie has her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Union College.
Kirby Rosplock
Welcome to the Tamarind Learning podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kirby Rosplock. Today, we're talking about a subject that is near and dear to my heart about women, wealth, and wellness and why this is our decade. I'm so excited because this topic could not be discussed in the way I want to talk about it without the guests that we have today. Katie Loeb is with us today, and she is quite a special woman. She's a mom. She's a spouse. She is a rising Gen leader in this space. She has lots to share with us as the eldest daughter in a very complex, multi-branch family. She's building wealth and wealthiness programming, so I'm excited to learn more about that. She's an investor. She's a community builder. She's an advocate for women. She is just so many cool things, but We're going to get to hear her story a little bit more about how she's navigating all these complexities, because the topic of women and wealth is, like I said, so near and dear to my heart because it was my dissertation some years I won't date myself. But with women controlling about a third of the global wealth out there and expected to be really at the fulcrum between this wealth transfer event and driving 75 100% of discretionary spending, boy, women play a pretty powerful role in this whole women and wealth conversation.
Kirby Rosplock
Katie, welcome.
Katie Loeb
Thank you so much. That was the best intro I could possibly ask for. For. I need to start every day with you. But thank you. I'm so honored to be here.
Kirby Rosplock
Yeah. So I am thrilled because I think you bring a perspective to this conversation that a lot of people need to hear. And it's super empowering to talk to you. So I'm so excited because this isn't always a topic. I mean, women don't talk about wealth as much as they should. And maybe let's start by setting this big picture. When you look at this moment in time, this great wealth transfer event that people are talking about 80 to 140 some trillion passing from one generation to the next, more and more women are breadwinners. They're entrepreneurs, right? I'm one, you're one. They're inheriting control of family assets. And this feels a lot different than past decades. So why? Tell us more about what you see happening in your own world, your own space, and why you feel like this time is so important.
Katie Loeb
When I think about this moment, I like to contrast it with how I used to think about it, which once upon a time, money was a really intimidating conversation to have. For me, as the eldest daughter and rising next Gen of a family of entrepreneurs with generational wealth. It was really interesting because we never really talked about money. It was never a real conversation around even something as basic as how to budget. It was something that felt shrouded in mystery, and I think it was because of a philosophy that my family had, which I can appreciate and I totally respect to this day, which is that in talking about money money and the money that we have, it could potentially spoil our ambition, which I think is a thing that a lot of G1s feel. They don't want to spoil the ambition of future generations, and I can appreciate that. However, I don't necessarily see the causality between not talking about money and spoiling ambition. I think that there's a whole bridge is being missed there. What ended up happening was that my siblings and I, and I think specifically as a woman, I wasn't involved in a lot of conversations around money.
Katie Loeb
I think it was also a strange thing because I could look around and I could see our house and beautiful things and see the way that my parents would spend money, and I would see that there was comfort there. But meanwhile, I just didn't have any insight into what was happening behind the scenes. What that led up to was me being an adult and knowing that some money existed, but not knowing how to engage with that, how to properly take control of that in the future. What was my vision for how I could make this money, make more money? I didn't have a word for that. It was really interesting because as I started to get a little bit older and started to take more of a leadership role in my family and try to organize my siblings so that we could understand legacy, understand the foundation that was laid down by my dad, how can we increase the longevity of that, I started to also feel really intimidated because I didn't have any grasp or understanding of what it was that we were coming into and inheriting and how I could even be a good steward of that because I didn't have the real template of what the intention was for this generational wealth.
Katie Loeb
Then I started connecting with other next gens, and in particular, female next gens, about their understanding of their own inheritance and wealth that they were coming into. Something that became increasingly clear was that this was not only a next-gen problem, but specifically a next-gen daughter problem, that next-gen daughters were just oftentimes being shut out of a lot of these conversations. If they were being included in these conversations, oftentimes they were being relegated to family foundation. This space where you wouldn't be making integral decisions about the future of the wealth, but more of where are we giving this money away? I started to zoom out a little bit, and I started to think a lot about women and money in general. We are taught from the beginning how to spend money, how to save money, and how to give money. We're not really taught how to invest money. It all converged for me at the same moment. I was getting a little bit older. I had been a participant in the family business for a really long time. I started having some important life events happening, like getting married and buying a house and having a kid and realizing that I needed to set my future self up and my future family up for success so that we could be good stewards of this money and do it in a way that felt really empowering and in a way that made me feel like I was honoring the legacy that my family had laid down for me.
Katie Loeb
So I started to think more about how we can do this and started reading a lot of literature about this great wealth transfer and started to think a lot about the opportunity that was being laid at the feet of next gens and because of this inheritance that we were bound to receive. I started to realize that women are coming into an unprecedented amount of money, $30 trillion for American women alone. This is more money than we've ever seen before. This is three quarters of the amount of money that millennials and Gen Zs are going to inherit from boomers and Gen X. You're probably wondering, why do women get three quarters of that? It's because we're inheriting vertically from our parents, but also inheriting horizontally from our male partners. Women tend to outlive men. If you asked me a number of years ago, I was really clueless and a little scared and definitely intimidated by money. And that was because I wasn't really talking about it. But now, today, after some real effort in trying to have these conversations and having these conversations with other women in particular, I'm starting to get really, really excited by this opportunity of all of this money that women are coming into.
Katie Loeb
Because money is powerful and women have an opportunity to partake in this power. Money has the power to change culture, to change behavior, to influence policy. This is our moment where we can actually start to make some change that is going to be in favor of women in the future.
Kirby Rosplock
Okay, so you just brought the call to action already. So Yeah. Talk to me about the conversation side of it, because we know it's suicidal to talk about this, maybe in social media or being too brash and out there because there are tons of haters, right, around women's empowerment or the sense of talking about women and wealth. And so you do have to be careful around how you have these conversations and which kinds of circles. Talk to us more about how you're curating the right kinds of conversations, where it's safe, where it's a welcomed topic, where it's something that is empowering and not disempowering. What are your thoughts on that?
Katie Loeb
Well, I think a lot of it starts with, of course, having the right people in the room. I also think that has to do with the audience, the women who are getting around the table to have the conversation, and then also the experts who are there to teach. I am not an expert on finances. I'm just someone who is super interested in making my money working for me and making sure that it works for my family and that women have the same access to that information so that they can take control and power of their own futures. I think having the authenticity of of the right experts in the room is really key as well. I think really importantly, you need to have female financial experts in the room. Women and men talk about money differently, and that's okay. There are real differences between men and women and how we communicate, and we need to meet women where they are so that they understand how to leverage these dollars. What I have, I remember so many conversations I've had with financial advisors when I was a much younger person. The one time every couple of years that I would be called into a room with a bunch of older white men who weren't allowed to talk about the dollar amount that I was inheriting.
Katie Loeb
But just to have a introductory conversation. They would talk at me for about 45 minutes. At the end of the conversation, they would say, Do you have any questions? No, I don't have any questions because you just got me in a different language for the last 45 minutes. I need to understand more about the basics. Let's start at the base level, make this a disarming conversation. I want to know about why people would even participate in the S&P 500 or what type of alternative assets make sense for me to participate in. What do I need to be looking out for when I'm thinking about purchasing a house or signing a prenup or planning my estate? I need someone to break that down for me because women want to know everything.
Kirby Rosplock
That's true.
Katie Loeb
They want to They don't feel like they have the answer until they know everything's soup to nuts. I think men operate with a much more limited sense of information. I think there are pros and cons to each. Men can make decisions with less information. They can make decisions faster. Sometimes with investments, there is an element of timing that's really, really key. With most investments, there's an element of timing that's really key. Women like to take their time with their investments. Sometimes that's deemed as being slow, which I just think that needs to be rebranded and thought about differently. We are intentional, we are thoughtful, we are curious, and we want to be making very, very clear and smart decisions. And we need the time in order to evaluate that.
Kirby Rosplock
You might say that we tend to look at things with a longer perspective. A lot of times There's this ambition to flip, right? Get in, get out, try to time, which we know timing doesn't really work. I think women are like, I want to know the why of why would I want to be invested in this? Because is it something that aligns with my values? Does it strike a chord with me because of its purpose and its intent? Sometimes I think the converse is, how much will it make me to our male counterparts. If it will make me 2, 3, X, then I'm interested. But I don't necessarily know that the return element, and I can back this up from my dissertation research, that when I asked men and women to say what they thought their knowledge level was of every element of wealth management, it didn't give an IQ test. However, across the board, women rated themselves lower on every category of wealth management, and men sometimes rated their perception of their knowledge 2-3 times higher than their female counterparts. So It's validated that it's not only like they might make decisions with less information, they just view themselves as being much more competent, and they're much more confident.
Kirby Rosplock
Yeah. Right? And that's intimidating. So let's just go back to your example of you sitting down with a whole bunch of elderly white professional men. I mean, the playing field is already not level because you're discounting what you think you know, and they're so assured that you're already like, I don't feel like I even should be at the table. I mean, that unequivocal playing field is not something that's easy to overcome. So you're curating these small gatherings. Give us a snippet of what you might talk about or what that might feel like or who might come.
Katie Loeb
Yeah. I am Super excited about this program that I'm developing, which I'm calling Wealthness, which combines collaborative mindfulness activities with wealth education, specifically for women. A few important pieces of this is that we try to identify important and transformative life events so that we can be super specific about the content that we are bringing to the table. And we try to pair that with a mindfulness activity, again, that is collaborative. So it's not just internal breathwork or yoga. You're doing something where you can turn to your neighbor, left or right, and have a conversation. Finding the metaphor between that mindfulness activity and that moment in life. Because the belief is that in doing a mindfulness activity, we are participating in a type of meditation that will break down those walls and prime us to have a deeper conversation about something that feels a little bit scary or intimidating, like money. Men tend to have a lot more confidence in these conversations around wealth management because they get the reps in in ways that women don't.
Kirby Rosplock
Sure.
Katie Loeb
They go to the golf course, they hit a few balls, they drink a few beers, they trade a few deals. Women don't do that in the same way that men do. So this is what I'm trying to create with wealthiness events. I'm trying to design the new version of the golf course for women that feels meditative, that speaks to their inner child, that is an activity that feels useful and takes them back to a potential hobby that they may have so that they can ultimately have the conversation around investing, around 529s, around signing a prenup, around designing an estate plan, around how to manage money or lack of money after a divorce. Those are just some life events that I'm trying to really tap on because I think that I'm just in this life stage of creating families and trying to design something that will be sustainable for my family. But there also is a general conversation around how to invest in the market and with a financial advisor and the types of conversations you should be having. And then my background also is venture investing. I have a goal down the line of women to become more angel investors into startups.
Katie Loeb
I'm a huge believer in this, but venture investing is a totally different animal. I would never recommend to a woman who doesn't feel comfortable with investing in anything to go straight into venture or startup It's almost like gambling. You have to be really, really comfortable with investing in that particular asset class. But it's something that I just grew up around, so I just feel a little bit more comfortable with it. I know what to look for in a founder and the gut check of a product that's being developed. But this is how generational wealth is created beyond entrepreneurship, which I believe is is a DNA thing. Not everybody is meant to be an entrepreneur, and that's okay. But we've seen the story so many times with entrepreneurship and how it can be so unbelievably successful. And that's how we see family offices get formed, honestly. It's like somebody in that lineage was an entrepreneur at one point. But if you're not an entrepreneur, partner, and you want to get involved in the venture space, and you want to create generational wealth, angel investing is one of the pathways to get there. It's just one of those things, again, that women are on the outskirts of because we have a lot of catch-up that we have to do.
Katie Loeb
And that's what wealthiness is designed to do, is to get women more comfortable with these conversations around money, around budgeting, around how to merge assets with your partner, how to separate those assets, what accounts you need to open for your kid. The idea is just to start having these conversations so that we don't feel uncomfortable talking about money in the future. We already know that women need to have the entire scope of information before feeling confident enough to talk about it. Men feel confident in having conversations when they have a fraction of that amount of information. So we just need to start to bridge that gap, find that way to balance that out, because women actually know a lot more than they think they do. They just need to get the reps in like men do on the course.
Kirby Rosplock
So there's something that brought you to this moment in your life during this incredible time That must have been pretty transformative. That must have said, oh my gosh, Katie, you have to step up, use your position in life, your opportunity. What was it for you? What was your call to say, I'm going to point in this direction? Because you could have gone, right? You work with your dad, you work with your family, your family's enterprises. You could have gone in a million directions. But can you recall a situation or some turning point in your own life that you feel like put you on this path?
Katie Loeb
Well, I think there was a convergence of a few different things, but certainly getting married and signing a prenup was one of those It was one of those watershed moments for me, I guess. Again, money was not a real conversation in my household. We weren't talking about it around the dinner table. It felt taboo in a lot ways. My husband, who is just one of the most incredible men I could ever have possibly imagined to be my husband, really was very good at investing. He's an entrepreneur himself and self-made in so many ways and taught himself everything that he knows about money and made a lot of mistakes. He was so forthcoming and upfront about all of those decisions, good or bad, that he has made. He really gave me this safe space to talk about the things that I felt really embarrassed or intimidated about. I always knew that when I get married, I would need to sign a prenup. It was just an absolute requirement in my family. Quick sidebar, I think that everybody should talk about having a prenup. It's very telling for you and your partner. It's a difficult conversation, but it's an important one, and hard is good.
Katie Loeb
We need to have the hard conversations. I always knew that I was going to get a prenup with whoever my partner was. That's when I started to... When we started the conversations around our prenup with our lawyers. That was the first time that I really what I was coming into. And that is by law. I need to be able to share that slowly, transparency with my partner. I had some ideas about my inheritance and the trust that my parents have set up for me. But this is the first time that I was really seeing it. That was a moment for me where I was like, Oh, my God. I have a tremendous responsibility This is something that is... This is a wonderful gift that gives me freedom and opportunity, and it is my job to protect it and grow it so that future generations can also have this freedom and opportunity. That, I think, was the moment that I really knew that I needed to be a more active participant in this by choice. There were some hurdles that I also needed to get over because it was so intimidating for me. It was also this thing that clicked in my brain that I'm getting married, and only when I have the supervision of another man do I get access into everything.
Katie Loeb
While that was absolutely not the intention that my parents had when they were giving me access into all this information, it was one of those things that I just had in my head because as a woman, to get married into the family of another man, that's the only moment that I get access. It was just a weird thing that I could not get out of my head. And I just decided that women need to know more so that we can do better for ourselves and for our future families.
Kirby Rosplock
You said that so beautifully. And thank you for opening up and sharing that personal story, because I have a similar story, but my parents said, You don't need a prenup. We have it all in trust. You're fine. Right? And I was like, Oh, okay. That's great. Like, whatever. And it wasn't until I moved and married, and then fast forward several years, I moved to a different state, and they're like, Oh, your estate plan won't hold up. So you You have to do a post-nup. And I was like, Oh, what? And I'm in the industry, right? And I'm now in this very uncomfortable situation of monetizing. Monetizing my marriage. We have a child. You're going to get this when I die. And I was just like, Oh, my goodness. So I'll just advocate and say as awful and uncomfortable sometimes prenup conversations can be, they're so much better than a post-nup conversation, which sometimes you can't avoid. In my case, we moved and we didn't have the same laws in the state we moved to. But I just appreciate your vulnerability. And I also appreciate why this was transformative for to say transparency is key to empowerment.
Kirby Rosplock
If you want to empower your child, be it male or female, or are they them, you have to start to open up and start to say what they're going to be dealing with. How can you make them a good steward if they don't know what they're on the hook for? Yeah, really.
Katie Loeb
I got really lucky with my prenup. I know that not every prenup scenario is going to be straightforward and simple and easy. That being said, I've had conversations with previous boyfriends, and prenup came up, and they had strong reactions to it. That's really telling. I think that one of the reasons why my husband has been such a good choice as far as partner was, is that he was neither indulgent nor was he resentful, which I have seen with some other boyfriends. He made this really easy process, and actually, it brought us closer together in a lot of ways. Pre-up doesn't need to be a bad conversation. It can actually be a really positive thing if you end up having the right discussions around it. So I got lucky. Not every time is it going to be super easy, but At least you have more information and you have clarity and transparency over what could ever happen in life.
Kirby Rosplock
Well, I'm going to make a Shameless Plug because we are actually about... We have a course on Purposeful Pre-ups with Emily Bouchard, and it's all about setting the stage for the right conversations at the right time. So you can build a strong foundation, a really good relationship around your money values and understand what you share in common, what you're very different around. So that informs the planning. All of this happens so far in advance of lawyering up and the legal conversation at the boardroom table. It's about building that trust. It's funny. I'm going back to some of the research that I did all those years back. But when you ask about the most important criteria, to men and women and what they see in a wealth advisor, the number one characteristic that they both agreed upon was trust. It was the highest ranked for women by far, and it was always in the top five for both men and women. I just look at how important building those trusting conversations are, be it with your women's group, with your advisor, with your significant other. It sounds like that's your mission is to create that safe space and to get people to start to practice having conversations where maybe they don't have a lot of opportunity.
Katie Loeb
Exactly That's right. I think that women have this incredible opportunity in front of them with the money that they're inheriting. We need to start getting them really ready and prepared to come into that money so that they know that there are more options than just to spend it, to save it, and to give it. Those are all great options if you know that there are more options out there, like investing. We hear about the billionaires out there who are leaving their children a million dollars each, and the rest of the money is being donated. That is an incredible example of generosity and of donation. I think that if the world did that, that would be a beautiful thing. But not all of us are Bill Gates. We don't get to do that. What our responsibility is to our children is to make sure that they are prepared to receive the money that they are inheriting so that they can make the best choices for themselves and their future families. It's becoming a more expensive world, a more difficult world to live in. We need to start making the right choices, and especially women need to start making the right because women are coming into...
Katie Loeb
Women are gaining more power, and this is one of the vehicles of power that they're coming into is money. We need to train them so that they feel really comfortable in having these conversations so that they can make educated decisions for themselves.
Kirby Rosplock
I love it. I'm going to fire off some questions to you in a speed round as we close out because this has been the best conversation. I've had so much fun, so I'm so grateful. Tell me about one money belief you had growing up that you've since rewritten.
Katie Loeb
Oh, my goodness. Scarcity versus abundance. That You need to... I think that in general, weirdly, I think because you're not talking about money, it feels like it's this scarce resource, that maybe there's not enough to go around, but you have to change your mindset around it, and it can become unbelievably abundant. This is the investing mentality. If you make these choices of investing in a startup, let's say, or several startups, and even a small check, like $10,000 into this startup and this startup and this startup. Maybe that amounts to $50,000, but there is a chance that could turn into $500,000 when you see it back. You're not just giving Getting money away. This is the difference between, I think, donating and investing, and changing that mindset. It goes from being a scarce resource to an abundant one.
Kirby Rosplock
I love it. I love it. That's great. So fill in the blank here. Wealth feels most healthy to me when...
Katie Loeb
When I talk about it, When I check up on it, once upon a time, I used to be scared to look at my bank account. It's funny because I talked with some other young women about that, and they're scared to go into their app and check their funds in their bank account. It's one of those things now where I check every day. I look at what transactions were made. I look at my credit card bill. I know how much I owe to which credit card. These are things that I'm constantly aware of because I am checking up on it. I know that some months, my credit card bill is going to be higher. There's going to be less money in my bank account. That's okay. It ebbs and flows, but I have an awareness and consciousness of that. So that's when it feels most healthy to me.
Kirby Rosplock
Okay. So what's a wellness practice you protect even when life gets crazy?
Katie Loeb
Oh, my gosh. I wish I could say meditation. I really wish I could. It's really hard when you have a 10-month-old who wait the crack of dawn. Oh, my God. Yeah. But the other morning, my son slept late, and I woke up with like 45 minutes to spare, and I meditated for 20 minutes. And it was my first time in a really long time. And I just kept thinking to myself, how could I fit this in every single day? So that would be a wellness practice that I wish I could hold on to every single day, even when life gets crazy.
Kirby Rosplock
And for women with wealth, what's one thing they should stop apologizing for?
Katie Loeb
They should stop apologizing for everything. Women with wealth, regardless of how you came into it, you could have fallen into a hole and discovered it, you could have inherited it, you could have worked your butt off and earned it. That money is now yours, and you are responsible for it, and you get to make choices with it. So get to know it, get comfortable with it, and don't be sorry about having it. Don't feel guilty about it. There's no shame here. The only thing that would be a shame is if you didn't engage with it in a way that felt correct to you. And that is through education. Just educate yourself on what the different options are and get really comfortable with the one that feels most correct for you.
Kirby Rosplock
Okay, here it is. It's my last one. Okay. What does wealth healthy and well mean to you in a single phrase?
Katie Loeb
It means being at peace with what you have. It means being able to feel comfortable with it, not feeling as though you are lacking, feeling as though you know how to handle it, management Manage it, engage with it, conduct it, make choices with it that feel good to you, whether you're spending it or you're giving it or you're saving it or you're investing it. That, I think, is you want to feel holistic in your relationship with your wealth. It You want to feel at peace with that relationship. And that, I think, is what it means to have wealthiness.
Kirby Rosplock
Yeah, that is so beautifully said. So I just feel like, Oh, my gosh. Oh, oh, raise the roof. You just did such a good job articulating that. Katie, I can't thank you enough for bringing your candor, your honesty, your stories, your personal experience, just your heart to this whole conversation. It was so real and genuine, and I'm so appreciative of your time, getting to know you, getting to learn all about your events, the things that you're doing, your passion. It's contagious. I really hope I can support you and all the things that you're moving forward to because it's impressive and it's fun and it's so needed. So thank you so much for being here on the Tamarind Learning podcast today. Getting your story out there, getting your out there. I want listeners and viewers to know that we'll have more about lobe. Nyc. That's Katie's family, more about her wealthiness events, if that's something you might be interested to learn more about. And again, I know you're just a rising star in our space, so it's great to get to showcase you here. But until next time, I'm your host, Dr. Kirby Rosplock on the Tamarind Learning podcast.
Kirby Rosplock
Like us, subscribe, Find us. We're now on Pean Bod and a whole bunch of other places. So thanks again, Katie. It's so great to have you here.
Katie Loeb
Thank you so much, Kirby. Great to see you as always. This was a delight, and I can't wait for the next one.
