She's Senior Managing Director of Investment Accelerators at gener8tor — a platform that's worked with more than 2,000 startups that have gone on to raise billions — and a Principal of the gener8tor Alabama Fund, which she and her partner raised with a cap table that is majority women. Before that she built and ran the Bronze Valley Accelerator for underrepresented founders. Her PhD is in medical sociology, and it shows: she thinks in systems and access.

Brandi and Haley get into the real mechanics and the real interior of this work — launching a fund with no playbook, getting "skin in the game," the Series 65 moment when it got real, and why a first-time investor should almost never start in venture. They also go somewhere most investor conversations don't: rituals, intuition, and trusting the "hell yes or no."

In this episode:

→ Why "overlooked opportunities, in the places not everyone's looking" is exactly where she plays

→ Prosperity as "a bigger menu" — freedom, optionality, and seeing what's even out there

→ The bold plunge: raising the gener8tor Alabama Fund and taking on real fiduciary weight

→ There's no playbook for building a fund — and why a strong team de-risks the leap

→ Women launching funds in a brutal market, and a majority-women cap table

→ First-check advice: what NOT to do, and why a fund beats picking one winner

→ Integrity and the long game — the relationship read that no pitch deck survives

→ Place-based capital: keeping returns in the community instead of exporting them to the coasts

Guest: Dr. Haley Medved Kendrick — SMD, Investment Accelerators, gener8tor; Principal, gener8tor Alabama Fund. Find her on LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/hmkendrick and at gener8tor.com/alabama.

⟶ Not sure if you're ready to launch, build, or scale with investors? Take the Capital Readiness Scorecard at PlungeIntoProsperity.com.

Until the next plunge — make it a prosperous week!

CHAPTERS 00:00 → Episode 50: Why This One's Different 01:35 → Meet Haley Medved Kendrick (gener8tor) 01:51 → Why You Should Keep Listening 02:31 → Prosperity Is a Bigger Menu 05:17 → The Accidental Plunge Into Capital 07:13 → Launching the gener8tor Alabama Fund 10:25 → There's No Playbook for Building a Fund 13:40 → Women, Funds & the Funding Gap 15:07 → Moving Upstream: From Jobs to Companies to Capital 21:09 → Data + Spirit: Rituals, Healing & Signs 33:31 → Networks That Actually Move Capital 37:00 → First-Check Advice for New Women Investors 43:00 → Integrity, the 90-Day Read & "Hell Yes or No" 47:50 → Place-Based Capital & Keeping Money Local 50:26 → Who to Send Her Way + the Close

After fifteen years in marketing — an industry she describes as roughly 90 percent men, where she was frequently the only woman at the conference table — she was let go during COVID. As she puts it, the universe burned her boats.

Six years later, the company she built from two Art Deco studios in Miami Beach is one of the twenty founding local companies of Pavilion, a national vacation rental company that launched in October 2026 managing more than 5,000 homes & welcoming approximately 50,000 guests each month across the United States. Pavilion is built so the founders who created those local businesses become long-term shareholders — the local leaders & Pavilion's management team together own the majority of the company. Host & Keep continues to operate under Caroline's leadership.

This conversation was recorded days before that announcement, when she could only say she was part of something larger.

What she can talk about is how she got there. She launched those first two listings, went to sleep, & woke up to a dead phone battery. She got her real estate license when friends started asking her to find them the same thing. And then, on a trip to Mérida, she fell in love with a lime plaster the Maya applied to the pyramids — made from the resin of a native tree, nearly impossible to source because traditionally you had to boil the bark on the job site. She wanted it for her own house in Miami. So she cold-called the factory owner in Mexico & pitched herself. After a few seconds of silence, he said okay. That became Chukum USA, now shipping to architects & developers across the U.S., the Caribbean, Europe, and the Middle East.

Caroline opens the books on the things most founders won't discuss: how she actually structured a 50/50 international partnership, what she would do differently, and the three rules she now gives anyone before they sign — run a full 360 on your partner, delineate every responsibility in the operating agreement, & know your exit on day one.

We also get into why she calls them projects instead of businesses, the difference between working as an owner and working as an operator, biophilic design, running an AI-forward team, and the line that reframes scaling entirely: the level of growth your business can have is directly tied to the level of loss of control you can deal with.

Host and Keep → hostandkeep.com Email → caroline@hostandkeep.com LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/carolineramos Chukum USA → www.chukumusa.com Pavilion → pavilioncollection.com

READY TO RAISE? Take the free Capital Readiness Scorecard at PlungeIntoProsperity.com

01:40 Meet Caroline Ramos: two companies, one household 03:30 What prosperity means: freedom, and its many definitions 04:50 The boldest plunge 06:54 Projects, not businesses: the reframe that makes two companies possible 08:39 Flow versus friction 09:35 Why growth is tied to how much control you can release 10:32 Yoga, breathwork, and the non-negotiables 14:57 Host and Keep begins: two Art Deco studios in Miami Beach 16:41 Vinny's role — one income, one risk, one runway 19:24 Why a business that never breaks never grows 20:09 Falling in love with Chukum in Mérida 21:03 The cold call that built a company 21:59 How the partnership was actually structured 23:05 What she'd do differently: 360s, operating agreements, exits 30:20 Biophilic design and why Chukum sells itself 32:44 Americanizing an artisanal Maya craft 35:27 Inside Host and Keep today — and joining Pavilion 36:41 The three-part Chukum growth plan 41:12 Owner versus operator 42:12 The right hand behind the operation

By 2030, women in the United States are projected to control $34 trillion in investable assets. When you widen the lens to the Great Wealth Transfer — more than $100 trillion moving across generations in the coming years — women are positioned to inherit the majority. And yet women-led startups still receive roughly 1.1 percent of U.S. venture capital. That number has not moved. In some quarters, it has gone backward.

This week on Plunge Into Prosperity, Brandi Kolosky sits down with Porter Geer — co-founder of Girl Math Capital, an alternative investing community that has brought 650 women into the rooms where angel deals, real estate syndicates, crypto and private markets actually happen. Porter is also inside Uniswap Foundation and co-leads the Texas chapter of SheFi. She is writing checks, building community, and watching the entire landscape of who gets to invest — and who doesn't — from the front row.

We cover the origin of Girl Math (it started as a group chat of 15 friends), what the "waterfall effect" looks like after a woman writes her first check, why the name "Girl Math" is polarizing on purpose, the Concarlo SPV that put a member's grief to work, why crypto is not optional for women who want to understand where money is going, and what she wants the woman on the sidelines to hear right now.

Ready to find out if you are ready to launch, build, or scale your business with investors?

Take the Capital Readiness Scorecard at PlungeIntoProsperity.com.

FOLLOW PORTER LinkedIn

TikTok @girlmathcapital on all platforms girlmath.capital

Chapters: → 00:00 Welcome + guest intro → 00:49 Why keep listening → 01:26 Prosperity + Bold Plunge → 02:22 Build the plane while you're flying it → 03:22 Choice unemployment and the career coach → 05:14 Girl Math Capital origin story → 06:27 The 15-friend group chat → 08:31 The name Girl Math — polarizing on purpose → 10:19 What judgment sounds like in this industry → 11:11 Deal flow across 650 members → 13:01 The waterfall effect after a first check → 15:12 Female-led vs female-founded → 15:55 The Concarlo story → 17:32 The women's wealth transfer data → 19:09 Every layer of the capital stack → 20:47 Uniswap, crypto, and why women can't sit out → 22:51 Tokenization and digital securities → 24:34 Daily practice and the universe has your back → 26:43 The Girl Math × Sacral bridge → 27:39 Where to find Porter → 28:00 What to tell the woman who hasn't written her first check → 28:46 Branded close

In Episode 53, host Brandi Kolosky (Founder & GP of Sacral Capital, Sacral Fund I, & Sacral Sisters) sits down with Breen Sullivan — Founder & CEO of The Fourth Effect, the fastest-growing board marketplace where women make the first move.

Breen is a Yale, Berkeley, and Tulane Law alum who spent a decade as General Counsel to three high-growth tech startups. She watched her male peers angel invest, join advisory boards, & build for-profit board careers while her female peers were locked out — not for lack of qualification, but because no system existed. So she built one.

Today, The Fourth Effect connects a community of more than 20,000 members, 3,500 board-ready startups and experts, & a private investment club of angels, LPs, & GPs — with a brand-new AI-native platform & a proprietary relationship contract management system that finally makes advisory equity, board equity, angel checks, & LP commitments visible in one place.

In this conversation, Breen & Brandi go deep on:

▸ Why 98 percent of investment dollars still flow to 14 percent of the population

▸ The "invisible middle" of the economy where money & power actually concentrate

▸ The two origin moments that became The Fourth Effect

▸ "A business problem masquerading as a legal problem" — & what it cost one founder

▸ How board service & check-writing reinforce each other on a single flywheel

▸ Why qualified, capitalized, interested women still don't write their first check

▸ The Sacral Sisters education-first model for women LPs

▸ The new AI-native Fourth Effect platform and its relationship contract system

▸ How to move from operator → advisor → angel → LP → fund manager

▸ Take the Capital Readiness Scorecard: https://plungeintoprosperity.com

▸ The Fourth Effect (free community): https://www.thefourtheffect.com

Subscribe to Sacral Capital & Plunge Into Prosperity Substack

CHAPTERS 00:00 — 98% to 14%: the ceiling this episode takes a hammer to 01:59 — Welcome Breen Sullivan (The Fourth Effect) 02:04 — Why keep listening: "the invisible middle" of the economy 02:46 — Prosperity = creativity (making the pie bigger) 04:33 — The bold plunge: finding her voice 06:23 — Origin moment #1: filing the paperwork for someone else's fund 08:33 — Origin moment #2: the accidental innovation ecosystem event 12:17 — Meeting Katrin de Haen: the two-sided proof point 15:14 — "A business problem masquerading as a legal problem" 16:04 — Engineering board service + check-writing into one flywheel 19:47 — Talent side: from board seat to angel to LP 21:14 — Brandi's Formula One story: $50M and "I'm allowed to do this" 23:41 — When a board seat changes a fundraise outcome 26:50 — Why qualified women still don't write their first check 28:52 — Sacral Sisters SPV: teaching first, checking second 31:07 — "A prepared mind is a confident mind" 32:36 — Education inside The Fourth Effect (why universities want to teach it) 34:23 — The AI-native platform + relationship contract management system 36:20 — Where to find The Fourth Effect 37:45 — Sacral Sisters intro + how Brandi and Breen met 38:17 — October 27 Summit, Kirkland & Ellis NYC 39:05 — Capital Readiness Scorecard CTA 39:22 — Sign-off

Then she quit and built Lotuspring — an advisory firm working directly with founders and CEOs in women's health and behavioral health.

In this episode she tells Brandi Kolosky exactly what pushed her out. There were three things. She kept getting hired to sell companies she could see how to fix. She closed a transaction where every party at the table got paid and the patients in the middle got nothing — and she lay awake for weeks afterward. And then she noticed something in her residential behavioral health clients that nobody around her could explain: after the shutdowns, the men's units filled back up and the women's units didn't.

She knew why. The women were holding jobs, kids, spouses, parents, and their spouses' parents. Nobody was going to hand all of that over and check into eight weeks of residential care.

That question — where else are we missing women in healthcare — turned out to have one answer. Everywhere. Heart health, gut health, lung health, bone health, brain health. Women weren't even required to be included in NIH-funded clinical trials until 1993.

This is a technical, financially literate conversation about why capital keeps failing women's health, what good governance actually looks like inside a mission-driven company, and why the phrase "no margin, no mission" only works if you also believe the reverse.

Vasanta also does something rare on this show — she talks openly about her own experience as an investor. Including the fact that in her first fifteen or sixteen years in finance, not one person ever brought her an opportunity to invest in a fund.

CONNECT WITH VASANTA

→ lotuspring.com

→ Substack: Say That Louder — saythatlouder.substack.com

00:00 — Welcome to the deep end

01:40 — Why you should keep listening: bridging impact and finance

02:03 — What prosperity actually means

05:15 — The boldest plunge: leaving 18 years behind

08:03 — Three sparks that made her leave investment banking

09:07 — Staging a business like staging a house

10:32 — The deal where nobody in the middle benefited

12:23 — The women's units that didn't fill back up

13:40 — Women weren't required in clinical trials until 1993

15:44 — Why healthcare is afraid of capital

16:44 — The impact panel that shut her down

18:06 — No margin, no mission — and the reverse

20:01 — Healthcare data that can't be analyzed

22:03 — Why regulation slows down the good companies too

24:06 — Built for a 150-pound white man

25:02 — When technology got between doctor and patient

26:42 — What good governance looks like in women's health

28:45 — How she chooses who to advise

30:19 — Her investment experience, in her own words

31:14 — "For 15 years, nobody ever offered me a fund"

33:46 — Investing in the infrastructure behind women's sports

35:16 — How she decides on an angel check

35:45 — Brandi's 90-day due diligence process

36:54 — What did you learn from the down month?

38:02 — Where to find Vasanta + "Say That Louder"

What started as a Denver recycling company founded by her father just after the first Earth Day has grown into a matching platform connecting customers and service providers across North America — spanning shredding, medical waste, electronic recycling, and now AI-powered sales tools.

In this episode, Melinda sits down with Brandi Kolosky, Founder and General Partner of Sacral Capital, Sacral Fund I, and Sacral Sisters, to talk about what it actually takes to lead a legacy business through an industry pivot — with data, nerve, and a team that trusts you.

Here's what you'll learn:

→ How Match Engine's internally-built AI tool improved close rates by 21 percent in a single year — and how they're now beta-testing it with a partner as a new line of business

→ What it takes to grow a business from 1.8 million dollars in sales to over 5 million

→ Why Melinda "inherited" the CEO role and what a business coach taught her about actually leading

→ The three reports Melinda looks at every single day — revenue by vertical, marketing attribution, and agent-level conversion rate

→ Why AI is more equitable than a human manager when it comes to reviewing call-center performance

→ What Melinda reads first when she's evaluating a founder — and why energy matters more than intelligence

We also get into the data on women founders and capital — the research showing that women-led companies return 1.78 dollars per dollar invested versus 1.31 for male-led companies — the wealth transfer moving into women's hands, the shortage of women financial advisors serving them, and why every ecosystem gets stronger when women build it together.

Melinda's grounded, operator's view on trust, accountability, and care — what those words actually look like on a plant floor and inside a 27-person team — is one of the most quietly powerful conversations we've had on the show.

🔗 Learn more about Match Engine: MatchEngine.com

🔗 Connect with Melinda on LinkedIn

🔗 Take the Capital Readiness Scorecard: PlungeIntoProsperity.com

CHAPTERS

00:00 Welcome & Guest Introduction 01:25 Meet Melinda Powelson, CEO of Match Engine 01:36 Why You Should Keep Listening 02:12 What Prosperity Means to Melinda 03:08 The Boldest Plunge: Deploying Match Engine's AI Tool 05:00 Growing Up on the Denver Plant Floor 06:37 From $1.8M to $5M: What It Really Takes to Grow 07:02 Belief, Team, and Reinvention 08:16 Inheriting the CEO Role — "A Leader Has to Lead" 09:16 Trust, Accountability, and Care in Practice 11:33 Why Match Engine Runs Like a 27-Person Family 13:24 The Data on Women Founders — $1.78 vs $1.31 15:00 The Value of Female Peers in Business 16:06 On Coaching, Anger, and Self-Belief 19:20 Who the AI Sales Tool Is Actually For 20:36 Virtuous Circles and Ecosystem-First Investing 21:03 Why AI Is More Equitable Than a Human Manager 22:02 The Three Metrics Melinda Checks Every Day 23:55 FundWise, Investor Pipelines, and Platform Overlap 26:39 You Can Change the Month Within the Month 27:25 The OODA Loop and Everyday Attention 27:51 How Melinda Reads Founders — Energy, Commitment, Engagement 29:16 Close & Where to Find Melinda

In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Clara — Founder and CEO of Coliving Cashflow — sits down with Brandi Kolosky to trace the whole arc: moving from Colombia to Boston for her MBA, seeing how boxed-up the housing system was, and starting PlaceMe with two apartments in Cambridge in the middle of a January snowstorm. Two weeks later they were full. Under two years later, she'd grown it to 42 million dollars in assets under management before it was acquired.

Clara gets honest about what the acquisition taught her — including losing a big part of her identity when the company she built was tied to who she was — and why she came back to build again. She breaks down co-living as shared housing built on the 3 C's: cost, community, and convenience. She explains where the extra yield actually comes from (density, not magic), why the deal still pencils when interest rates are frozen everywhere else, and the roughly 8-million-home shortfall in workforce housing driving demand.

The conversation goes deep on raising capital as a woman — Clara's story of producing more and raising less, and both founders' hard rule: stop chasing capital that isn't aligned. Plus the free tools Clara built so investors stop underwriting bad deals on manipulated spreadsheets: the Coliving Calculator and the 90-Day Accelerator.

Chapters below. If you're ready to find out whether you can launch, build, or scale your business with investors, take the Capital Readiness Scorecard at PlungeIntoProsperity.com.

Find Clara: colivingcashflow.com — free Friday YouTube class every week.

Reach her directly at clara@colivingcashflow.com

00:00 The cash-flow strategy investors sleep on 01:16 Meet Clara Arroyave 01:35 Why you should keep listening 02:21 Prosperity = freedom 03:24 The pivotal plunge: a snowstorm and two apartments 04:47 Building PlaceMe to $42M AUM 05:44 The 8-million-home housing gap 06:23 What co-living actually is: the 3 C's 07:43 Where the yield comes from: density 08:50 The ops manual, hospitality & 1,000 residents 09:33 The exit: "You are not a role" 11:24 Why the reviews drove the acquisition 11:43 Women-led returns & the data 13:14 Colombian roots: "friends you haven't met yet" 15:34 Raising capital in a man's world 16:38 Building Sacral Sisters & your own table 17:03 The free Coliving Calculator 19:44 The 90-Day Accelerator 20:40 Where institutional money moves next 22:14 The deal she passed on: never wait for a no 22:48 The 3-meeting rule: stop chasing capital 24:52 Investing in alignment & values 26:50 The 5-year vision & ColivingForSale.com 29:17 Where to find Clara 29:59 Until the next plunge

Russ Lazaruk is a Portfolio Manager and Managing Director at NCP Digital Family Office, a multi-family office out of Victoria, British Columbia built on a genuinely different premise: that world-class, independent, fiduciary wealth management should not be reserved for billionaires. He has spent more than three decades in the markets — boutique dealers, a major bank-owned dealer, a global investment bank — and he is a certified responsible investment specialist, holding both the RIS and RIAC designations.

He did not arrive the traditional way. Before any of it, Russ was a farmer. He worked in forestry. He was a soldier. He left a logging camp for finance in 1992 without fully understanding the industry he was walking into.

In this conversation:

→ Why prosperity, in his words, comes down to what is enough — and why that number is different for every single person

→ How to separate the signal from the noise, using the Strait of Hormuz as the case study: the bombs were the noise, energy independence was the signal

→ Why a specialist can succeed in parts of this industry, but an allocator has to be a generalist

→ Inside NCP's buy-and-build private equity book — a Quebec manufacturer bought from its founders and grown through seven mergers

→ Dry transformers, data centers, and the electrification of everything

→ Why entrepreneurs understand risk inside their own business and consistently misjudge it in the public markets

→ An honest allocator answer on whether a women-led hybrid venture and private equity fund fits a family office mandate

→ Why he believes in diversity at the board level — and how to build a real skills matrix instead of a room full of friends who agree

Russ Lazaruk — NCP Digital Family Office

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/russell-lazaruk-11b59b4/

00:00 Welcome — Today We Sit With an Allocator 01:36 Meet Russ Lazaruk 02:02 Why You Should Keep Listening 02:55 "Prosperity Comes Down to What's Enough" 03:38 A Navy Family — And Two Fathers Who Sailed Together 04:20 Five Children, Nine Grandchildren 05:25 The Plunge: Leaving a Logging Camp for Finance 06:31 Why You Never Stop Learning in This Business 08:41 To Be an Allocator, You Have to Be a Generalist 10:12 Separating the Signal From the Noise 11:17 Intuition, Data, and Staying Calm When Everyone Panics 12:11 Process: Repeatable, Scalable, Iterative 13:15 The Hybrid VC/PE Model 14:27 "If Your VC Is Successful, It Becomes Private Equity" 15:26 Inside NCP's Private Equity Book: Buy and Build 17:00 Dry Transformers and the Electrification of Everything 19:30 The Transformer Bottleneck 20:56 Signal vs. Noise, Applied: Energy Security 21:45 What Forestry Taught Him About Markets 23:22 Softwood Lumber and the Cost of Being a Fickle Supplier 25:20 What "Digital" Family Office Actually Means 26:31 The 30-Year Absolute Return Strategy 27:11 GP, LPs, and How the Ecosystem Fits Together 27:26 Legacy: The Conversations That Actually Matter 28:47 Nobody Goes to Parent School 29:48 Builders, Providers, and What Gets Entrepreneurs Up 32:08 Why Entrepreneurs Understand Risk — Until It's the Market 33:19 Impact Investing Through a Public Markets Lens 34:33 Does a Women-Led Hybrid Fund Fit? An Honest Answer 35:29 Why He Believes in Diversity at the Board Level 36:48 Building a Real Skills Matrix 38:03 Draw In the Person Who Hasn't Spoken 39:00 Governance Boards vs. Operations Boards 40:20 Closing — Until the Next Plunge

She is now the Founder and CEO of Wisdocity — an AI platform that amplifies institutional wisdom by turning an organization's top experts into digital avatars, so that expertise doesn't vanish when the person who holds it moves on. Her latest initiative, My Work Life from Wisdocity, guides individuals through three pillars: knowing yourself, finding your career calling, and getting prepared to become the person you want to be.

She is also the founder of the Mom Relaunch Foundation, which has launched over 250 women back into the workforce with a model she describes as "by the moms, for the moms" — a nonprofit that runs without grants or donations. She is the author of Career Interrupted, a book on navigating career, wellness, and relationships. She has been recognized as one of CRN's Women of the Channel, was a PitcHER finalist at the Grace Hopper Celebration, and leads youth entrepreneurship through TiE Silicon Valley.

On this episode, Reena shares what prosperity actually means to her ("Do I have enough?"), why she sold TargetRecruit when she realized she was a creator not a scaler, how growing up with 21 cousins under one roof in India shaped her business philosophy, and what it taught her when her own digital avatar answered a question better than she could in person. She also opens up about her run for Pleasanton City Council, her angel investing experience, and why learning to ask — for funds, for support, for help — has been the boldest plunge of her career.

Reach out to Reena:

→ wisdocity.ai

→ momrelaunch.org

→ reenaforpleasanton.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/risewithreena/

00:00 Welcome to Plunge Into Prosperity 00:10 Meet Reena Gupta — Serial Founder, Author, Civic Leader 02:14 Why You Should Keep Listening 03:25 "Do I Have Enough?" — Reena's Definition of Prosperity 05:43 The Origin of Wisdocity: Wisdom Meets City 08:21 When Her Own Digital Avatar Answered Better Than She Could 10:45 Bootstrapping Avankia Right After Her First Child Was Born 15:12 Building Inside the Salesforce Ecosystem: "It's About Who Makes the Platform Work" 18:05 Anthropic Partnership and Building with Moms on Replit 20:50 The Exit Decision: "I'm More of a Creator Than a Scaler" 22:41 Every Step Is a Plunge — Trusting the Gut 26:07 My Work Life: Three Pillars for Knowing Yourself 28:30 From a Conservative Family to Silicon Valley 31:50 Mom Relaunch Foundation: 250+ Women Launched 33:35 Running for City Council: The Seat at the Table 37:38 Angel Investing and Sitting on Both Sides of the Capital Table 39:05 The Hardest Skill: Learning to Ask 43:38 Where to Find Reena 44:32 Branded Close — Until the Next Plunge

Lana Hailemariam is the CEO and sole owner of StandUP, a leadership development company serving community-serving organizations from the American Red Cross down to the local nonprofits nobody outside the neighborhood has heard of. She has owned a Gold's Gym franchise, an indoor football team, and a personal training company with four locations. She has worked in sales, event management, ministry, education, insurance, and the cheerleading industry. She speaks three languages. She holds a degree in International Business from the University of Maryland.

And she did not found StandUP. She was its first employee. Years later, the woman who founded it sold it to her.

In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Lana walks through the seven levels of energy — an assessment-based framework that measures how your energy actually shows up in the world. Level one is living in the problem. Level two is blame. Most of us have presence in every level, and most of us have no language for any of it.

Brandi Kolosky and Lana go far past the framework. They talk about the friend who said the sentence that changed everything: "because you're never gonna leave." They talk about the four hours Lana spent pulled over on the side of the road with her shoes off, grounding in the grass. They talk about epigenetics, inherited trauma, and the great-grandmother Brandi discovered in a concentration camp photograph — smiling.

And then they talk about money.

Only 1.1 percent of all capital raised and allocated in the world goes to women and multicultural led businesses. It used to be 2.3 percent. It went down. Lana says something in this episode about victim energy and financial access that most people would not say out loud — while being clear that the structural barriers are real. It is the most nuanced conversation on this show to date about who gets access to capital and what we do about it anyway.

Lana has made her Energy Profile Quiz free for every listener. Twenty-five questions, a pie chart across all seven levels, and a detailed report on your primary. Link in the pinned comment.

CONNECT WITH LANA

Website: lanahailemariam.com

StandUP: teamstandup.com

Podcast: Have a Seat with Lana Hailemariam — relaunching soon

CHAPTERS
0:00 Welcome + Meet Lana Hailemariam
1:23 Why You Should Keep Listening
1:47 Energy Is More Layered Than We Think
2:26 What Prosperity Actually Means
4:0 The Job Offer That Disappeared
4:57 Married and More Isolated Than Ever
5:55 "Because You're Never Gonna Leave"
7:29 The Plunge: 19 Years, 12 Boxes
10:6 Five Careers, One Thread
12:32 Meditation School at 15
15:10 Rethinking Family
16:45 Living in the Hard
17:54 Four Hours on the Side of the Road
20:27 Why EQ Finally Got Legitimized
24:23 Never Problems, Always Solutions
25:0 The Seven Levels of Energy
27:34 Epigenetics and Inherited Trauma
31:36 "I Don't Want to Win the Trauma Olympics"
35:14 Who StandUP Serves
35:53 Puerto Rico and Giving Back
38:36 Money Is Energy
40:11 "I Am Purpose"
41:9 The Gym, the Football Team, the Marriage
44:45 CliftonStrengths and Finding the Language
46:49 Does Financial Literacy Come Up?
47:59 Victim Energy and Real Barriers
49:18 From 2.3 Percent to 1.1 Percent
50:16 Why Sacral Sisters Exists
51:32 "I Won't Ask Another Man for a Dollar"
55:39 Where to Find Lana
57:6 The Free Energy Profile Quiz
57:45 Until the Next Plunge

That moment of clarity became the catalyst for Sinar Treatments, a luxury physical wellness practice in Midtown Manhattan where chiropractic, pain management, aesthetics, and acupuncture all exist under one roof.

In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Dr. Ashley sits down with host Brandi Kolosky to talk about what it actually takes to build a concierge healthcare brand in one of the most competitive markets in the world, how her parallel career in real estate gave her the sales instincts that make her a better clinician, and why spending a full hour with every patient is the business model most providers are too afraid to try.

She also names the New York Knicks as her dream client roster, shares what it was like investing in a Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet, and responds to the reality that only 1.1 percent of venture capital is allocated to women-led businesses.

Whether you are a healthcare professional thinking about launching your own practice, a woman entrepreneur navigating capital and growth, or someone who believes the standard of care should be higher than what exists today, this episode will challenge how you think about building wealth, building a brand, and building something that lasts.

ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Ashley Narain, D.C. is the Founder and CEO of Sinar Treatments, a luxury physical wellness practice located at 389 Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. She is a board certified sports orthopedic chiropractic physician specializing in performance medicine. She earned her Doctor of Chiropractic degree from the University of Bridgeport College of Chiropractic and is board certified through the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners. She is a certified Active Release Technique provider, FAKTR certified, and trained in Kinesio Taping and Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization. Her practice brings together chiropractic, pain management, acupuncture, and physical therapy under one multidisciplinary team.

Website: sinartreatments.com

Instagram: @sinartreatments | @dr.ashleyy

Location: 389 Fifth Avenue, Midtown Manhattan (Bryant Park, 36th and Fifth)

CHAPTERS 00:00 — Meet Dr. Ashley Narain: Luxury Meets Wellness 01:24 — Why You Should Keep Listening 01:57 — What Prosperity Means When You Stop Chasing Numbers 03:28 — The Bold Plunge: 70-Hour Weeks to Building Her Own Practice 05:49 — The Real Estate Connection: Running Two Businesses 08:15 — How Sales Skills Make Better Doctors 09:41 — Building Wealth Across Two Different Worlds 10:26 — Capitalizing the Sinar Build-Out: Timing, Logistics, and Budget 12:39 — The Custom Doors That Cost Two Weeks 14:10 — Vision: The Next-Level Wellness Facility 16:45 — Why Patient Education Is Half the Treatment 17:50 — Dream Clients: The New York Knicks 18:55 — Investing in Broadway: Romeo and Juliet 20:03 — The Bollywood Connection 21:06 — Women, Capital, and the 1.1 Percent Funding Gap 24:52 — Where to Find Dr. Ashley and Sinar Treatments

You get Stacy Kehren Idema.

In Episode 30 of Plunge Into Prosperity, host Brandi Kolosky sits down with Stacy — CEO and Founder of Equati and founder of Stacy Idema Advisory — for a conversation that goes far past the standard capital interview. What starts as a discussion about the estimated one hundred trillion dollar generational wealth transfer becomes a dismantling of how legacy actually gets built, broken, and stewarded across generations.

Stacy explains why she believes women are already investing more than the statistics show — and why they're doing it quietly. She unpacks Equati, her AI-powered platform that tracks decision behavior over time inside family offices: who influenced, who had authority, what values were considered, what assumptions were present. Less about what a family owns. More about the intergenerational trust that makes wealth continuous.

Along the way, Brandi and Stacy plunge into:

→ Why "legacy" is the wrong word — and "continuity" is what family offices are actually searching for

→ The seven-generation pattern of women being locked out of land and capital, and what completing that cycle looks like

→ How Stacy's bold plunge — asking for her second divorce and moving to London solo during COVID — reshaped her entire relationship with money

→ The Barbie house origin story: a little girl in the early nineteen eighties writing million-dollar checks as the CFO of an imaginary business

→ Why the current investment system is steeped in the masculine and barren in the feminine — and what changes when feminine intelligence actually shows up at the table

→ The radical honesty required to stop being the over-responsible one and start asking: what am I creating here?

→ What it looks like to rebuild your community intentionally — choosing people who are right for where you're going instead of people who feel safe

Stacy is currently writing a book — working title Feminine Economics and Capital Systems — and publishing essays from it on Substack. She's relocating to Austin. And she's just delivered her first demos of Equati to family offices.

This is a slow, deep, generational conversation about money as energy, capital as stewardship, and the quiet revolution happening at investment tables around the world.

Find Stacy: Website — equati.ai LinkedIn — Stacy Kehren Idema Substack — S Kehren Idema Instagram — @stacykehrenidema

You get Ellen Mahloy — CEO of Ethereal Networks, named TV Streaming CEO of the Year 2024 by CEO Monthly, and one of the most unconventional founders in media today.

In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Brandi Kolosky and Ellen Mahloy cover ground you won't find in any business school curriculum: the moment Ellen thought she wouldn't live to see forty, the Korean medicine woman at a holiday party who diagnosed what seven years of doctors couldn't, the Reiki attunement that blew open her psychic abilities overnight, and the technical explosion at Ethereal that sent every other partner running — and left Ellen to rebuild in twenty-four hours with a completely new team.

They also go deep on the business itself: how Ellen caught a major general ledger error at Capital One that a room full of executives missed, why she's building and owning every component of Ethereal's tech stack instead of licensing it, how the workflow informs the technology, and why she believes the future of television is a complete merge of social media and streaming platforms.

Ellen reads Brandi's aura live on-air. The result is real, and the validation Brandi gives is worth hearing.

On authenticity and AI: Ellen makes a case that stands up — people are increasingly thirsty for authentic content precisely because AI is accelerating a wave of manufactured, manipulative media. Ethereal Networks was built as a deliberate answer to that.

Topics covered in this episode:

→ Why Ellen describes herself as having "technological prowess, business acumen, and psychic ability" — all three

→ What seven years of chronic illness taught her about healing, trust, and intuition

→ The Capital One era: building inside a company that operated like the Wild West

→ What it actually costs to build and own a streaming TV platform's full technology stack

→ The content creator challenge: leveling up independent creators to broadcast-quality production

→ Why YouTube going on TV and outpacing Netflix tells you everything about where media is going

→ Coexist TV — Ethereal's upcoming humanitarian channel focused on what brings people together

→ How reading energy became Ellen's greatest negotiation tool

Find Ellen Mahloy + Ethereal Networks: → etherealtv.net

EP29 0:01 Introducing Ellen Mahloy, CEO, Ethereal Networks 2:01 Why You Should Keep Listening 2:21 What Does Prosperity Look Like? 5:00 Career Origin: From Bank Intern to IT Executive 6:22 Money Is Just Energy 11:07 Women in Business: Sisters or Competitors? 16:21 College, VCU, and the Art Degree Nobody Expected 19:15 Polymaths, Neurodiversity, and Reverse Engineering 21:10 The Capital One General Ledger Story 23:31 Seven Years of Mystery Illness 25:21 The Korean Medicine Woman at the Holiday Party 28:34 Healing Through Integrative Medicine & Reiki 31:29 The Psychic Awakening 32:11 Seeing Dead People for the First Time 37:15 Reading Energy in Negotiation 38:11 Ellen Reads Brandi's Aura LIVE On-Air 41:06 Enter Ethereal Networks 43:08 The Technical Explosion and the Divine Setup 45:02 New Business Partners in 24 Hours 45:32 Building and Owning the Full Tech Stack 47:20 The Content Challenge: Leveling Up Creators Globally 50:12 The Future of TV Is a Full Merge of Social and Streaming 52:08 AI Is Making Inauthenticity Worse 53:06 The Fake Animal Videos That Made Her Cry (On Pain Meds) 54:34 Ethereal's Programming: Mind, Body, Spirit 55:21 Coexist TV — The Channel Coming Next 56:05 Where to Find Ellen + Branded Close

That's how Andrea De La Cerda describes the years-long arc that took her from 25-plus years on the agency side of advertising and marketing — building campaigns for brands like Honda, Nestlé, Pacific Life, and Wolfgang Puck — to packing up her life and her two dogs on February 5, 2026, and driving from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City to start over.

In Episode 28 of Plunge Into Prosperity, host Brandi Kolosky sits down with Andrea De La Cerda, Founder and CEO of Kandula Communications and The Clover Agency. Andrea holds a BA in Advertising and Business Administration and an MA in Education, both from Pepperdine, and she's accredited in public relations through PRSA. Her career has spanned Fortune 500 brand work, high school teaching, workforce development for people leaving incarceration and rural farm jobs, and now a creative agency built to tell the stories of mission-driven companies actually trying to change something.

Inside this episode:

→ How she ignored the taps and the slaps until misalignment became a sledgehammer

→ Why 9/11 rerouted her career into a high school history classroom

→ The moment she realized not getting paid on time was a form of self-disrespect

→ Why she split Kandula off from Clover and what each does now → The story of Kandula the elephant — who built himself a step stool to reach fruit no one thought he could get to

→ Andrea's thesis on economic independence: when women make their own money, they feel safer in the world

→ What 20 years of workforce-development work with people leaving prison taught her about trust as infrastructure

→ Where she's putting her time, money, and energy now — and it's not what she would have said in 2022

If you're a founder, a marketer, or a woman who's ever ignored the tap on the shoulder because you didn't want to hear it — this episode is for you.

Kandula Communications: kandulacommunications.com Personal: AndreaDelaCerda.com Podcast: The Inspired Podcast

#PlungeIntoProsperity #SacralCapital #AndreaDeLaCerda #KandulaCommunications #TheCloverAgency #WomenFounders #WomenInBusiness #EconomicIndependence #Alignment #Prosperity #AgencyLife #Workforce #Reinvention

00:00 — Welcome to Episode 28 01:14 — Meet Andrea De La Cerda 01:32 — Anchor: Prosperity, plunge, and the sledgehammer moment 02:43 — The tap, the slap, and the sledgehammer 04:25 — 25 years on the agency side 05:46 — When quantum physics entered the conversation 07:09 — Shadow work and the misalignment inventory 07:51 — February 5, 2026: two dogs, one car, a new city 08:41 — The Salt Lake connection 12:01 — You stop attracting what you no longer are 14:26 — When a Formula One agency host meets an NFL-brands one 15:03 — How 9/11 rerouted her career into teaching 16:31 — The second pivot: not getting paid on time 19:43 — Clover, Kandula, and why she split them 21:44 — The elephant who built his own step stool 23:01 — Malaysia, elephants, and the animals that change you 25:03 — Kandula today: mission-driven brand storytelling 27:11 — Economic independence for women 28:29 — A seat at the table is its own prosperity 29:15 — Hire your spiritual committee, too 31:30 — A beach bungalow, offered as a gift 33:04 — Three podcast recordings in a day 34:16 — Fifteen-minute buffers between meetings 34:43 — Working with people at the hardest transitions 37:29 — Anti-recidivism, dignity, and trust as infrastructure 39:08 — Where her money and time actually go now 41:34 — Steward people back to their alignment 42:11 — Where to find Andrea 42:36 — Branded close

That's the framing Tessa Santarpia, Founder and CEO of Santaia, brings into this conversation — and once you hear it, you can't unhear it.

In Episode 27 of Plunge Into Prosperity, host Brandi Kolosky sits down with Tessa Santarpia, a Columbia MHA-trained healthcare operator turned founder, to talk about how our earliest money wounds get hardwired into the body itself — often as young as seven years old — and what it actually takes to rewire them.

Santaia is a neuroscience-based wellness platform that uses EEG-based brain mapping, heart-rate variability, sleep data, and lifestyle inputs to help people see and retrain the patterns behind stress, burnout, and performance blocks. HIPAA-compliant. Built to work alongside clinicians, not replace them.

But the more remarkable story is who's building it: Tessa built the company with her own mother, Dr. Susan Santarpia (a board-certified neuropsychologist with more than twenty-five years of practice), and her sister Nina, an engineer specializing in ethical and sustainable systems design. A mother, two daughters, one company.

Inside this episode:

→ The moment Tessa realized the healthcare system was geared toward sick care rather than partnership with the body

→ How money beliefs form as early as age seven — and why they live in the nervous system, not the mind

→ The rat study on inherited fear: how trauma passes down two to three generations

→ Why fear of money never fully disappears at any level of wealth — and what changes instead

→ How Santaia's eight-to-twelve-week program pairs nervous system literacy with bottom-up regulation practices

→ What Nina's engineering-and-sustainability lens catches that a purely clinical team would miss

→ The three-year vision: reaching hundreds of thousands of people with holistic, preventative care

→ The Sanskrit and Latin roots of the name Santaia: peace plus earth equals grounded harmony

If you're a founder, a woman building at the intersection of science and spirit, or someone who has ever wondered why money still feels like fear no matter how much of it you have — this episode is for you.

Find Tessa and Santaia:

Website: santaia.health

Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn: @santaia.health

Subscribe. Share. Tag someone who needs to hear this.

Until the next plunge.

00:00 — Welcome to Episode 27 01:29 — Meet Tessa Santarpia 01:45 — Anchor 1: Why keep listening 02:02 — Money at the root of the nervous system 03:44 — Old patterns and the protective voice 05:07 — Money beliefs formed by age seven 06:39 — Inherited fear: the rat study 07:40 — Fear of money is universal at every wealth level 08:48 — From healthcare operations to founder 09:47 — When the body says something has to give 12:06 — The fifteen-minute physician visit problem 14:00 — Live shout-out to Crystal at Intuitive Human 15:13 — Inside the Santaia methodology 16:44 — Nervous system literacy 17:35 — Emotional and energetic hygiene 18:39 — A mother, her two daughters, one company 19:00 — Susan Santarpia: the rare neuropsychologist 21:00 — When Mom finally leaned into her authentic path 22:55 — Nina Santarpia: ethical and sustainable design 23:34 — AI, renewables, and the future of health tech 24:39 — The three-year vision: reaching hundreds of thousands 25:30 — Presence as prosperity 27:19 — Tessa's daily regulation practice 28:24 — Brandi's morning routine 28:57 — Where to find Santaia 29:16 — The name: Santi plus Gaia equals grounded harmony 30:09 — Branded close

In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Brandi Kolosky sits down with Jodi Koch — Founder and CEO of Elizabeth Erin Designs, creator of the Designing in 5D process, and host of her own podcast by the same name — for one of the most deeply personal conversations in the show's history.

Jodi has spent more than two decades transforming homes, vacation properties, and commercial spaces into what she calls "livable luxury" — over 300 high-end projects across Des Moines, Iowa; Destin, Florida; and Rochester, New York. Her clients include real estate investors, developers, and boutique hospitality brands building wealth through property.

But this episode goes way beyond the portfolio.

Jodi shares the full story of a season that stripped everything to the studs: a divorce that forced her to confront decades of unspoken pain, a company restructure from 14 employees to zero and back (now running with 1099 contractors), and an ayahuasca ceremony where a stranger said the words no one had ever offered her without wanting something in return.

She also tells the origin story that built the 5D process — a personal home build in Iowa where the contractor walked off the project, the budget ballooned more than sixty thousand dollars over, and the situation ended in court. That experience became the catalyst for every system she now uses to protect her clients.

Topics in this episode: → What prosperity means when it is fueled by intuition and travel → Going from 14 employees to zero — and why she calls it a win → Launching North Star on Summer Solstice and melting a wedding ring into a pendant → Epigenetics and generational trauma — "baby feels everything" → Ayahuasca, plant medicine, and the words that changed her trajectory → The home build that created the Designing in 5D process → Naming a company after your twin daughters → Becoming a grandmother — twice

CONNECT WITH JODI KOCH:

→ Elizabeth Erin Designs: https://elizabetherindesigns.com

→ Designing in 5D Podcast: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon → LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodipeterman/

0:00 Intro — Brandi in NYC, Welcome Jodi Koch 0:43 What Prosperity Looks Like — Intuition, Travel, and Legacy 1:48 "Intentionable" — Making Up Words and Making Them Stick 2:31 Costa Rica, Bali, and Why the Earth Is Its Own Design 4:22 The Unraveling — Divorce, 14 Employees to Zero, and Rebuilding 5:36 North Star — A New Product Born on Summer Solstice 6:07 Melting Down a Wedding Ring Into a North Star Pendant 8:08 Letting Go of Every Identity to Find the Real One 9:18 What "Trust the Process" Actually Looks Like in Real Life 10:16 Epigenetics — Three to Six Generations of Trauma in Your DNA 11:46 Ayahuasca — "I'm Doing This So My Kids Don't Have To" 13:49 "You Are Divine" — The Words No Man Had Ever Said for Free 17:27 The Build That Broke Everything — Sixty Thousand Over Budget 19:14 Elizabeth and Erin — Naming a Company After Your Daughters 19:46 Grandma Jodi — A Grandson and a Granddaughter Three Weeks New 21:26 Branded Close — Keep Plunging

In this episode, Seth opens up the playbook on 20 years of venture capital — why Foundry was designed to close, what it means that 60%+ of VC dollars are concentrated in a handful of firms, and why the accredited investor rules are holding back an entire generation of potential capitalists.

Brandi brings Seth inside the Sacral Fund I hybrid VC/PE structure for a real-time pressure-test, and they dig into Capital Evolution's thesis on "dynamic capitalism" — a practical case for profit, purpose, and access existing in the same sentence.

This is one of the most tactical and philosophical episodes of Plunge into Prosperity to date.

🔗 LINKS: Seth Levine: https://sethlevine.com

Capital Evolution: https://thecapitalevolution.com

Pledge 1%: https://pledge1percent.org

00:00 — Introduction: Seth Levine's career across Foundry, Pledge 1%, GoodBread & Capital Evolution 01:31 — why new voices in capital allocation matter 03:20 — Why Foundry: the non-legacy structure explained 04:02 — Capital concentration: 60%+ of VC dollars in the top 5 firms 04:55 — SpaceX, OpenAI & Anthropic: IPO concentration 06:42 — Accredited investor reform: the All In Pod 09:15 — Wealth does not equal investment savvy 09:44 — How Sacral Sisters educates women and expands access to private markets 10:12 — arbitrary guardrails block upward mobility 11:19 — why access itself is education 11:36 — call your member of Congress 12:58 —Seth on the give-first philosophy and Brad Feld 14:21 — The founding of Foundry 16:19 — empowering others over personal credit 17:37 — Foundry's rule-of-thirds: 19:28 — New York wasn't even a venture market in 2006 20:14 — Puerto Rico as a future venture market 21:08 — Foundry's fund-of-funds: backing emerging managers in overlooked geographies 22:07 — The vicious circle of capital concentration and geography 24:05 — How Sacral Sisters grew from North Florida word-of-mouth 25:02 — Brandi's 90-day data room test for portfolio companies 25:53 — The research is clear: women GPs get asked different questions 27:10 — We are all products of our inputs: bias in the pitch room 28:33 — Inside Sacral Fund I: the hybrid VC/PE architecture explained 30:08 — Seth's honest take: LPs struggle with any model that feels new 31:06 — institutional capital wants you to pick one 32:25 — Returns trump everything: 33:07 — Fund size is fund strategy: the 50–75% deployment threshold 34:02 — The data on fund size: $75M–$150M is the statistical sweet spot 35:36 — Bill Maris (Google Ventures) on the math of smaller funds 37:47 — Capital Evolution: 38:44 — Wealth inequality, declining dynamism, and why the status quo isn't working 39:11 — Sovereign wealth, baby bonds, and creating more capitalists 40:02 — The Business Roundtable's 2019 pivot 40:31 — GE under Jack Welch: the house of cards that rapacious neoliberalism built 41:27 — Google's AI overcorrection 42:13 — Conscious stewardship and regenerative capital: where Brandi and Seth converge 43:08 — 80% of managed money in four firms: the opacity problem 44:48 — The fix: create new sources of capital, not just redistribute 46:28 — The power of small business: 50% of employment, 40% of GDP 47:17 — Pledge 1%: the founding story with Benioff, Farquhar & DiBianca 49:04 — $3B activated — but is the new generation of founders less philanthropic?

That moment became the seed for a career that has now spanned more than two decades, twenty ventures, and six countries. In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Elena sits down with Brandi Kolosky to talk about what transformation actually requires — not the inspirational poster version, but the discipline, the hidden cost, and the reason seventy percent of transformational initiatives fail.

Elena is the Founder and CEO of Vivit Worldwide, a transformation and sustainability advisory practice. She holds a B.S. and M.A. from Cornell University, is a PhD candidate studying social change at RMIT, and is the author of the Changemaker's Handbook. She has helped establish four Green Building Councils, served on the COVID-19 Taskforce of the International WELL Building Institute, and currently advises Power Ledger, a blockchain platform accelerating the clean-energy transition.

In this conversation, Elena shares her definition of prosperity as "the freedom to exercise agency," introduces the concept of metabolizing change rather than processing it, and explains why she chose impact over visibility — building from behind the scenes as a "professional first follower" rather than chasing the spotlight.

This episode covers: → Why transformation deserves at least as much planning as a root canal → The three dynamics of transformation: catalyzing, nurturing, recalibrating → What Elena looks for before she backs an entrepreneur → Why a good idea is just not enough → The Nagoski Sisters' research on completing the stress cycle → Where capital should flow for a more regenerative future

Guest Links:

→ Changemaker's Handbook (Substack)

→ Vivit Worldwide: vivitworldwide.com

If this episode moved something in you, share it, leave a review, and tag the woman in your life who needs to hear this conversation.

#PlungeIntoProsperity #SystemsChange #Transformation #ImpactInvesting #WomenInBusiness #Sustainability #Changemaker #Prosperity #CleanEnergy #WomenFounders

00:00 → Meet Elena Bondareva — 20 Ventures, 5 Continents, One Mission 01:21 → Why You Should Keep Listening: Transformation as a Discipline 04:28 → What True Prosperity Means: A 13-Year-Old in a Collapsing Soviet Union 07:14 → Fear Gets a Vote, But Not a Veto 10:17 → Metabolizing vs Processing: Why the Word Matters 12:45 → The Palate Cleanser Principle for Change Makers 14:17 → The Hidden Cost of Change Nobody Talks About 19:06 → Raised in the Soviet Union: "I Am a Machine" 20:28 → Why Joy Is Not Optional: Replenishing What the Work Takes 25:54 → The Changemaker's Handbook: What Most People Get Wrong About Impact 28:14 → Righteousness Is the Enemy of Movements 31:06 → Impact Investor: "I Chose Impact Over Visibility" 34:13 → Making Yourself Obsolete Is the Point 36:38 → Where Capital Should Flow for a Regenerative Future 39:37 → Where to Find Elena and the Changemaker's Handbook

In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Brandi Kolosky sits down with Maryann to unpack how her AI platform is automating data collection and management for the energy sector, why vehicle-to-grid technology could reshape how we power everything, and what happens when a woman with a finance background decides to build infrastructure the entire clean energy transition depends on.

They go deep on why VCs consistently fail to understand operational AI businesses, why women founders generate higher returns yet receive a fraction of the funding, and what it means to raise capital from strategics instead of traditional funds. Maryann shares how she won a £1.4 million Innovate UK grant, partnered with private equity businesses and universities, and delivered 40 percent efficiency gains in operating expenses.

Brandi also shares her own journey — from accidentally raising $50 million for Formula E to inventing a flare-gas-to-power system deployed in Alberta and North Dakota. This is a conversation between two women who build things the world needs and refuse to wait for permission.

🔗 CONNECT WITH MARYANN:

→ Email: maryann.chen@kaasai.ai

→ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryann-chen-47236b45

CHAPTERS: 00:00 → Welcome & Guest Introduction 00:55 → Maryann's "Just Do It" Philosophy — Why You Don't Need Expertise to Start 02:00 → Pattern Spotting & the Power of Curiosity 02:50 → Prosperity Is the World You Leave Your Children 03:43 → The Bold Plunge: Starting Kaasai While 3 Months Pregnant 05:56 → What Kaasai Actually Does — "Data Sets You Free" 07:05 → Vehicle-to-Grid (V2X) Explained: EVs as Bidirectional Batteries 09:00 → Maritime Energy: Red Funnel Ferries & Artemis Technologies 09:37 → Living in the Bahamas — Building a Global Company from Anywhere 10:33 → The £143 Million Contract & Raising Strategic Capital 11:17 → The Data on Women Founders: A Dollar In, a Dollar Seventy-Eight Back 14:12 → "We're Too Good" — Maryann's Theory on Why Women Get Over-Benchmarked 14:54 → Land and Expand: From Fleet to Maritime to Data Centers 16:01 → Brandi's Energy Story: Flare Gas, Bitcoin Mining & the Invention Nobody Knows About 23:00 → Trusting the Universe: Data, Spirit, and Desperate Energy 23:50 → Why Maryann Ditched VCs for Strategic Capital 25:39 → ASAs Explained: The UK Version of a SAFE Note 27:44 → Where to Find Maryann 28:00 → From Treasury to Founder: How Managing Other People's Money Changed Everything 29:17 → Fiduciary Responsibility and Why Rejecting Women-Led Deals May Be Illegal 30:39 → AI Policies, Cybersecurity, and Why Brandi Won't Connect Claude to OneDrive 32:09 → Have You Ever Invested in Someone Else's Company? 33:28 → What Investors Don't Understand About AI in Energy 34:57 → The Mining Company Story: Predictive Maintenance Done Right 35:25 → Close — "Just Always Take the Damn Plunge"

#AIEnergy #WomenFounders #VehicleToGrid #V2X #CleanEnergy #Kaasai #PlungeIntoProsperity #SacralCapital #WomenInTech #EnergyTransition #StrategicCapital #DataDriven #WomenInvestors

In January 2025, Kristin co-founded Strudel AI — a Madison-based AI startup that is closing one of the most expensive gaps in B2B SaaS: the gap between customer support and engineering. Strudel's platform delivers root cause analysis with 95 percent accuracy on the first pass, resolves technical issues 65 percent faster, and reduces engineering time by 20 percent — all at a fraction of what traditional LLM-based approaches cost. They've closed an $800K pre-seed raise and need $200K to close the round.

In this episode, Kristin and Brandi go deep on:

→ The origin story behind the grit — a single mom, three girls, and a $60 softball fee that felt like a mountain at age eight → How a personality test at 19 told her she was a CEO — and how long it took to act on it → The real fundraising experience for women in tech — including an all-male cap table and the pattern-matching problem → The research behind why boards need at least one-third women before the performance benefits show up → The unconscious bias self-check technique she still uses today: "Would I think this if they were a white man?" → Strudel's current raise status, design partner targets, and what the seed round milestones look like → Why she wants to launch her own fund for female-led businesses after Strudel exits → What it means to build a relationship with money — from a frugal millionaire grandfather who wouldn't take his wife to dinner, to landing in Paris with no job and no place to live.

This is a conversation about what it looks like when 20 years of corporate-scale experience becomes rocket fuel for your own vision.

Chapters: 0:00 Introduction & Why You Should Keep Listening 2:15 Defining Prosperity: Same Core Values, Evolving Layers 4:10 The $60 Softball Fee: Grit Born From a Single Mom's Household 11:27 The Plunge Signal: From BBC Startup to Betting on Herself 13:31 A Personality Test at 19 Said "You're a CEO" 18:30 Strudel AI: The Investigation Layer Closing the Gap 22:03 The Capital Gap: What Women Founders Actually Face in the Room 26:36 Research, Pattern Matching & Why One-Third Changes Everything 28:27 The Unconscious Bias Self-Check Every Leader Needs 30:00 Inside the Raise: $800K Committed, $200K to Close 31:52 The Future Strudel Fund: Investing in Women Post-Exit 36:51 Money Lessons From a Great Depression-Era Millionaire Grandfather 41:12 Paris, No Job, No Apartment — and Pure Grit 42:20

How to Find Kristin + Invest in Strudel

Connect with Kristin: → Email: kristin@strudel.io → LinkedIn: Kristin Nichols Isaac → Weekly newsletter on LinkedIn (founding a company, go-to-market, and growth) → Learn more: strudel.io

Shannan Spann is a real estate expert & owner of Blue Elite Realty, wealth-building strategist, and founder of the Women's Wealth Building Network (WWBN) — a community platform dedicated to helping women build generational wealth through real estate, financial literacy, and the kind of community that actually moves the needle. With over 28 years in the mortgage and real estate industry, she built an expertise in creative financing that she now brings to every room, every deal, and every negotiation.

She is also one of the first seventeen women to invest in the Sacral Sisters SPV — a founding investor who said yes before most of the world was watching.

In this episode, Shannan and Brandi cover: → What 28 years in mortgage and real estate actually teaches you — about creative financing, negotiation, and building a win-win in any room → The fear Shannan saw in women — including herself — that made building WWBN inevitable → Why real estate investing has nothing to do with being a landlord → What made her say yes to Sacral Sisters before the world caught up → Her vision for WWBN's international expansion — from Jacksonville to Dubai and beyond → Power. Purpose. Profit. Peace. — the four-part framework she lives by.

If you are a woman who has ever felt like the room wasn't built for you — and built one anyway — this episode is yours.

🔗 Connect with Shannan Spann:

Instagram + Facebook: Women's Wealth Building Network

LinkedIn: Shannan Spann

Email: info@shannanspann.com

CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction — Shannan Spann, WWBN and Sacral Sisters 01:35 Why You Should Keep Listening: Power, Purpose, Profit and Peace 02:24 28 Years in Mortgage and Real Estate — What the Early Years Built 03:37 From Career to Conviction: Financial Freedom and Impacting Women 04:48 The Gap That Created WWBN — "I Saw Women in Fear" 06:19 Writing the Check: Becoming a Founding Sacral Sisters Investor 07:40 What It Means to Diversify Into Impact-Driven Investment Vehicles 09:04 International Expansion: Dubai, Indonesia and WWBN Goes Global 10:28 Miami Dubai Chamber, Sacral Sisters x WWBN Events 11:17 NYC Event in July, Portugal and Collaborative Plans 12:12 Building the Next Generation — Shannan's Daughter 12:49 Connecting With Girls Inc. NYC and Dr. Pamela 15:20 Goals, Focus and Striving Without an Agenda 16:47 Where to Find Shannan and Connect With WWBN 17:54 Brandi's Close — Share and Let's Plunge

What if the secret to building wealth had nothing to do with finance — and everything to do with energy?

Dr. Pamela Maraldo has led three major organizations through complete financial turnarounds. She ran Planned Parenthood Federation of America at the height of clinic violence, serving five million Americans a year on a fifty-million-dollar budget. She took the National League for Nursing from 5.2 million dollars to 20 million dollars in revenue in just six years. And today she leads Girls Inc. of New York City — building the next generation of financially free women through her groundbreaking "Her Future" financial literacy app and the Mind Body Matters curriculum.

In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Dr. Maraldo joins host Brandi Kolosky — Founder and General Partner of Sacral Capital, Sacral Fund I, and Sacral Sisters — for a conversation that goes straight to the root of why women hold back from wealth, what breaks organizations at the top, and why making money your friend changes everything.

Dr. Maraldo shares the JP Morgan story — how she caught herself crossing the street to avoid her own bank and what that fear cost her. She breaks down the Denmark educational model that Girls Inc. NYC uses to build fearless women. And she delivers one of the most honest distinctions in the prosperity conversation: "Fear is greater than motivation for most people. Whatever your parents did — they overcame it."

This is not a finance episode. This is a consciousness episode. And it is exactly what the show was built for.

Topics covered in this episode: → Why the leader of three financial turnarounds never put money first → The JP Morgan story: when fear makes you cross the street → How meditation dissolves the fear synapse (Brandi's grandmother's lesson) → What breaks organizations: complacency, isolation, and lost vision → The "Her Future" app: teaching girls in underserved communities to make money their friend → The Denmark model — teachers who major in students, not subjects → Why women are smart with money but fear holds them back → The two voices inside every leader — and which one to follow → "Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world." — Margaret Mead

Connect with Dr. Pamela Maraldo:

→ Girls Inc. of New York City: girlsincnyc.org

→ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pamela-maraldo-84a489a/ → Instagram: @girlsincnyc → Book: Medicine in Search of a Soul

00:00 Welcome & Guest Introduction 01:48 Anchor Q: "For Those New Here" — Making Money Your Friend 05:01 The JP Morgan Story: Walking Away From Your Own Bank 06:29 Meditation, Money as Energy & Brandi's Grandmother 07:43 The Wall Street Hedge Fund Friend: "You Want Me to Look Within?" 08:52 We Are Creators — Conscious vs. Unconscious Wealth 09:33 3 Turnarounds: What 99 percent of Organizational Problems Come Down To 10:52 Authenticity, Vision, and Building Consensus at the Top 11:27 Girls Inc. NYC: The "Her Future" App and Financial Literacy for Girls 12:54 The Denmark Model — Teachers Who Major in Students, Not Subjects 14:32 Fear Is What Separates Women From Wealth 14:52 Brandi's Origin Story: Born in a Trailer 15:38 "Fear Is Greater Than Motivation" 16:39 "You Have to Feel That You Deserve It" 17:37 The Two Voices Inside Every Leader 19:30 The Plunge, Margaret Mead & How to Find Dr. Pamela Maraldo

This is the math against women in leadership. And it's not accidental.

In Episode 19 of Plunge Into Prosperity, Brandi Kolosky sits down with Linda Fisk — Chairwoman, CEO & Founder of LeadHERship Global, President of CurvUp, and a U.S. Senator for the World Business Angels Investment Forum — to talk about what these numbers mean, why they persist, and what actually changes them.

Linda brings three credentials to this conversation: a Ph.D. in clinical psychology (she's studied why high-achieving women still feel behind), a CEO career that fast-tracked her to the C-suite, and a hard-won awareness that her success story is the exception, not the rule. She and Brandi dig into the confidence gap, the science behind why women rate themselves lower than their actual ability, and why closing the funding gap for women-led businesses is a mission, not a talking point.

You'll hear about building a "power tribe" of women you truly trust, turning pain into passion, why "the world doesn't need more busy women — it needs values-driven leaders who are recognized and remembered," and how platforms like CurvUp (with $150 million earmarked for women entrepreneurs) and communities like Sacral Sisters are working to level access to capital. Plus: "skillfishing" — the gap between the skills people claim and the skills they actually have — and why preparation + confidence is the formula that sticks.

The through-line: abundance is a daily practice, not an overnight event. And the only thing standing between you and the next level is you.

CONNECT WITH LINDA FISK

LeadHERship Global: https://leadhershipglobal.com

CurvUp: https://curvup.io

CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome & Introducing Linda Fisk 01:45 Why You Should Keep Listening 02:33 Linda's Definition of True Prosperity 05:53 The Bold Plunge: Abundance Is a Daily Practice 07:20 Happiness Is a Decision 08:00 Inside LeadHERship Global 10:35 Your Power Tribe: Why You Should Never Lead Alone 13:44 When It Got Personal: Women, Bias & the C-Suite 16:55 The Numbers: Board Seats, Stages & Under 2 Percent of VC 17:29 Capital & Access: WBAF and CurvUp 19:05 The Sacral Parallel: Women Investing in Women 20:13 The Confidence Gap: What the Science Says 23:30 Growth Mindset & the Tennis Court 25:06 A Confident Person Is a Prepared Person 26:03 Skillfishing: Inventing vs. Reporting 31:49 "Be Ready When They Pass You the Ball" 34:55 Confidence & Handling the Setbacks 35:31 Close & Where to Find Linda

She is the founder of Latterell Law, a dual-state estate planning practice serving families in Washington and Florida. She is also a PMP, a Certified Scrum Master, a published poet, an Instructor of Project Management at the University of Washington, and a Certified Guide and Healer in the Lineage of King Solomon through the Modern Mystery School International.

In this Sacral Sisters on the Record episode, Angel and host Brandi Kolosky go deep on what happens when ancient healing meets modern legal strategy. Angel explains why she sees law and lineage as two sides of the same coin, reveals the transformation that happens inside a well-crafted estate plan, breaks down what a Life Activation actually is, and shares why every woman who comes into wealth needs a container — not just a bank account.

This conversation is a full-circle moment for the show. If you believe the revolution starts with one individual waking up to their highest potential, this episode is for you.

Angel M. Latterell, JD, PMP, CSM, LAP, is the founder of Latterell Law, a dual-state estate planning practice serving families and small businesses in Washington and Florida. With over 22 years of legal experience, Angel focuses on wills, trusts, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, business formation, contracts, IP consulting, and succession planning. She is an Instructor of Project Management at the University of Washington, a published poet ("Poetry from the Heart"), the host of the upcoming podcast "Distillation of Joy," and a Certified Guide and Healer in the Lineage of King Solomon through the Modern Mystery School International. Angel holds a BA in Philosophy and Classics from Macalester College and a JD from Hamline University School of Law. She is a practicing Buddhist of over 30 years, an Ordained Leadership Minister through the Institute of Awakened Mastery, and runs the Hermetic Book Club in St. Augustine, Florida. She is a Sacral Sisters SPV investor and community leader.

CHAPTERS 00:00 → Welcome and Introduction 02:10 → Anchor Q1: Why Should You Keep Listening 02:36 → Anchor Q2: What Does True Prosperity Mean to You 04:03 → The Flow State: Wind, Purpose and Gratitude 05:26 → Crystal's Gold Nuggets and Messages from the Universe 06:26 → All of Us or None of Us 08:22 → The Hermetic Book Club 13:50 → Two Worlds, One Coin: Law Meets Lineage 15:23 → Magic: Creating Something from Nothing 17:25 → Transformation Inside an Estate Plan 23:09 → What Is a Life Activation 27:55 → Women, Wealth and the Foundation Question 32:38 → Where to Find Angel 33:52 → Closing

CONNECT WITH ANGEL → latterelllaw.com → angellatterell.com → paprikaangel.com → Instagram: @latterelllaw → Podcast: Distillation of Joy (launching) / Laws of Abundance (previous)

In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Brandi Kolosky sits down with Charlene DiPaola, Founder and CEO of Hip Shake Fitness, to unpack how she went from managing million-dollar paid media budgets at Spin Media (acquired by Penske) and Perfect Market (acquired by Taboola) to building one of the most engaged women's dance fitness communities online — entirely on her own terms.

Charlene opens up about the polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) diagnosis and six years of fertility treatments that led her back to movement, the postnatal anxiety she experienced after her second child, and how reclaiming her body became the foundation of her business.

She also breaks down Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) — the practice of getting your content surfaced inside AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity — and why the fundamentals of good SEO haven't actually changed, even as the channels have.

This conversation covers founder humility, ruthless content iteration, building a regenerative (not extractive) community of women, and why Charlene is now stepping into advisory work with consumer health brands.

Connect with Charlene DiPaola: 

YouTube: youtube.com/@HipShakeFitness

Instagram: @charlene.dipaola

Website: hipshakefitness.com

00:00 – Cold Open & Charlene's Introduction 02:32 – Welcome Charlene DiPaola 03:10 – Anchor Question: Why Keep Listening 04:24 – Defining Prosperity: Reclaiming Her Body 08:36 – The Bold Plunge: Leaving Spin Media 11:39 – Building Hip Shake Fitness to 300K Subscribers 13:18 – Pivoting From Paid Ads to Organic YouTube 15:12 – Treating YouTube Like a Business 16:03 – Building a Regenerative Community of Women 18:04 – Diet Culture vs. Community Care 19:00 – The Motherhood Journey & Postnatal Anxiety 22:31 – Why Sharing Your Story Is Your Power 23:20 – From Acquisitions to Personal Capital 25:08 – How the Hip Shake Business Model Works 25:39 – Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Explained 27:39 – What Hasn't Changed About SEO 28:08 – What HAS Changed: How People Ask AI 30:31 – Stepping Into Advisory Work for Health Brands 32:41 – Where to Find Charlene 33:54 – The Gender Capital Gap in Investing 34:39 – Branded Close & Sign-Off

Dr. Julie Pham came to the United States as a boat person fleeing communist Vietnam. She earned her PhD in history at Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, graduated magna cum laude from UC Berkeley, and experienced what she calls her "real life MBA" by running her family's Vietnamese language newspaper through the Great Recession.

In the middle of a pandemic, she left a stable career to found CuriosityBased — and she has not looked back.

In this episode, Julie shares why freedom is her definition of prosperity, the moment her father told her "now you will have freedom," and how her understanding of curiosity evolved from knowledge accumulation to a daily practice rooted in self-awareness, relationship building, and clear communication.

She walks us through the 7 Forms of Respect framework — her #1 Amazon bestselling book that she compares to the 5 Love Languages but for the workplace — and demonstrates it live with Brandi in real time.

They go deep on building across differences, the through line connecting Julie's two books (the South Vietnamese military experience and workplace respect), and the capital gap facing women founders: $34 trillion in assets by 2030, yet less than 2% of venture capital reaching women-led startups. Julie's answer reframes the conversation entirely: stop giving advice, start sharing numbers, and deploy your social capital.

• Founder, 7 Forms of Respect
• CEO, CuriosityBased
• Connect with Dr. Julie Pham:
• curiositybased.com
• formsofrespect.com
• LinkedIn: Julie Pham, PhD
• TEDx Talk: "Curiosity as a Practice"
• Book: 7 Forms of Respect (Amazon)

That's where this conversation starts — and it only gets better from there.

Courtney Wasserburger is the CEO of Right Left Agency, a digital marketing powerhouse helping B2B and SaaS brands scale through the belief that great marketing requires both sides of the brain: analytical rigor and creative conviction. She's also the host of How They Scaled It, a podcast featuring growth-stage eCommerce and SaaS founders on the pivotal decisions that shaped their success.

In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Courtney flips her own script — from interviewer to guest — and gets real about what building a decade-long agency actually looks like from the inside.

We cover:

→ Why she walked away from a toxic job in 2013 — and what she and her business partner built from that exit

→ The philosophy behind the name Right Left Agency (data-driven creativity and why you can't have one without the other)

→ What she learned from 28+ episodes interviewing founders: they all think their problems are unique — they're not

→ The forced time off that changed everything: she came back and the agency was fine. Nothing was on fire. That's when she knew she'd built something real.

→ The 10-minute rule she teaches her team for client fires and late-night spirals

→ Buying her first home as a millennial who once thought it was impossible — and what making it her sanctuary looks like

→ Incubating the agency's own SaaS and product ideas from within

→ Why women's community spaces hit differently — and what Sacral Sisters represents for women building wealth

This is a conversation for founders who've confused output with prosperity, leaders who want their teams to last, and anyone building something they actually want to live inside.

Connect with Courtney & Agency:

🔗 https://rightleftagency.com/

📍 LinkedIn

In Episode 14 of Plunge Into Prosperity, host Brandi Kolosky sits down with Heather McElrath — Founder and CEO of Sandbox Communications, Fractional CMO, 30-year communications veteran, and adjunct PR professor — to unpack what it really takes for small businesses to stop being invisible and start getting found. 

Heather's path was anything but straight. From journalism to global banking, fintech to national nonprofits, and finally to building Sandbox Communications after COVID upended a career she loved — she has turned a lifetime of reinvention into a framework that helps small business owners show up on Google, AI platforms, and in the hearts of the customers they were built to serve. 

In this episode: 

• Why prosperity is freedom — not just money 

• How COVID forced Heather to start Sandbox (and why survival mode became her greatest teacher) 

• The non-linear career that made her a better communicator than any straight line could have 

• What small businesses get completely wrong about AI 

• Why your Google Business Profile is your most underused visibility tool right now 

• How AI is making us MORE human — and why that's a good thing 

• The shocking statistic: only 1.1% of all investment capital flows to women-led businesses 

• Women-led teams return 78¢ per dollar invested vs. 31¢ for all-male teams 

• "Only Love in the Sandbox" — the t-shirt that says everything about Heather's philosophy 

Connect with Heather McElrath: 

📧 heather@sandboxco.com 

🌐 sandboxcomm.com 

That is Dr. Leslie Hemedes. 

In this episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, Dr. Hemedes — Licensed Clinical Psychologist, certified EMDR therapist, Filipina-American, mother of three, and now Founder & CEO of KeepSaiQ — sits down with host Brandi Kolosky to talk about the intersection of psychology, AI, and one of the most underserved spaces in family life: intergenerational story. 

KeepSaiQ is the world's first Family Intelligence Platform — a privacy-first, voice-first AI system that transforms the everyday moments families live through into living legacy artifacts. Not just photos and videos sitting disconnected in a camera roll. But context. Meaning. The stories behind the stories. Designed for the people you love, not for advertisers. 

We go deep on: 

• The clinical insight that sparked KeepSaiQ — and the gap no one was filling 
• What EMDR therapy is, and why it matters for how we understand memory and identity 
• The "box of puzzle pieces" — what Leslie learned about human disconnection in the therapy room 
• Why women remain at 1.1% of global capital raised — and what the psychology of that actually looks like 
• What it means to build something with purpose when you have a 10-year-old, an 8-year-old, and a 2.5-month-old at home 
• And what prosperity really means — not the Instagram version, the lived one 

🔗 Learn more about KeepSaiQ: keepsaiq.com

🔗 Connect with Dr. Leslie Hemedes: linkedin.com/in/leslie-hemedes-psy-d-b02b4022

Barbara's path reads like a masterclass in positive pivoting — aviation, healthcare leadership, President's Circle recognition at Abbott Laboratories, six years inside the title and escrow industry, and now real estate. The through-line across all four careers: relationships and long-term gain thinking.

In this episode you'll hear:

• The hard numbers — roughly 10% appreciation across Park City, a $4M median sales price in Jordanelle, 50% more sales in Q1 2026 versus Q1 2025 in the new East Village of Deer Valley, and a $1.1M average in Heber Valley
• Where women are leaving the most money on the table (and why the 1031 exchange is the move)
• The Blue Sky development with Auberge — equestrian, farm-to-table, and the strategic value of community-driven luxury
• Why Park City keeps its exclusivity through limited construction — and why that's the strategy, not the bug
• The private jet uptick into Heber, the international airport effect, and how the East Village changes drive times
• Barbara's framework for second homes, ski properties, and investment buyers across Park City and Deer Valley
• A power-couple operating model with her husband, the broker for Berkshire Hathaway in Park City

🔗 Connect with Barbara:

Website: larsenrealestategroup.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/larsenrealestategroup

Instagram / X / Facebook: @BarbaraLarsenRE

Manish spent three decades inside eBay, Netflix, Snapchat, and PayPal. He holds a payment processing patent from his PayPal years. He helped build the technology that gave eBay the leverage to force PayPal into its acquisition — an untold story he shares publicly for the first time here!

He also built the first TikTok-style scrollable video app — six months before Vine. Then headed to Snapchat. And then, he thought he was done. Until he wasn't.

Today, Manish is the founder of Soldi Now, a fintech company solving the 2–3% credit card tax that merchants across the US absorb on every single transaction. With 68% repeat users and an average of 13 uses per user in early experiments, Soldi is building the pay-by-bank infrastructure that the rest of the world already has.

In this episode:

• The five axioms from the Divine Life series — and the one that changes everything
• Non-attachment: what it actually means, and what it doesn't
• The Default Mode Network, entropy, and why "without energy, everything dissolves"
• The Soldi Now origin story: FedNow, a patent, and a nephew who wouldn't stop asking
• Why PayPal signed over — and who's left standing
• The cap table flip: what it means to back and be backed by the same person
• The real number: capital allocated to women founders just dropped to 1%

This is Sacral Fireside Sessions #2 — the series where Brandi sits down with the investors, advisors, and strategic partners inside the Sacral ecosystem.

📩 Interested in Soldi Now: manish@soldinow.com

📚 Manish's Book Series on Amazon: amazon.com/author/manishmaheshwari

0:00 Intro — The Cap Table Flip

1:54 Why Keep Listening: Passing Knowledge to Posterity

3:40 What Is Prosperity? Full Action + Peaceful Mind

6:11 Non-Attachment: Pursuing Without the Lie

7:10 The Default Mode Network + Releasing Energy

9:23 30 Years, Many Failures, Six Core Learnings

11:52 Soldi Now: Cutting the Credit Card Tax on the Economy

15:14 The Five Axioms of Divine Life Walkthrough

19:28 Joy in Nature, Love in People, Peace in Yourself

23:34 Nothing Is Lost — Failures Transform You

25:15 The Origin Story: FedNow + A Nephew Who Kept Asking

26:08 The PayPal Patent — How It Started

26:36 The Experiment: 68 Percent Repeat Users, 13 Uses Each

33:02 The Untold Story: He Built the Tech That Made PayPal Sell to eBay

34:39 Before Vine: The First TikTok-Style Scrollable Video App

35:42 Both Sides of the Cap Table — The Sacred Trust

38:25 Shakti, Self-Image + How Sacral Supports Portfolio Companies

40:28 All Six Books + How They Work Together

41:15 The Stat That Dropped: Women Founders Now Receive 1 Percent

43:29 Final Axiom: Without Energy, Everything Dissolves

44:44 Outro + How to Reach Manish

Mindy Eng is the CEO of MD Alliance Solutions, the management services organization running Advanced Dermatology PC — a 40-location, multi-state dermatology platform across New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, scaling with private equity behind it. 

She started her career as a registered nurse in emergency medicine — clinician and administrator simultaneously — before moving into the C-suite as COO of a multinational fertility center, then VP of New Business Growth, then COO, and now CEO of the MSO that runs the entire network.

She is a Master Prepared Board Certified Nurse Executive and former adjunct professor at Rutgers School of Nursing. 

In this episode, Mindy and Brandi go deep on: 

• The systemic gaps in women's healthcare — PCOS as a metabolic condition, perimenopause, and why most studies are still based on men 
• What it actually looks like to scale a PE-backed healthcare platform from the operator's seat 
• The tools, AI solutions, and investment opportunities Mindy sees changing healthcare access 
• Their shared philosophy: healing the body first, then healing the system 
• What prosperity looks like after evolving from survival mode to abundance 
• Morning routines, Orange Theory at 5AM, cortisol and women's wellness 
• Sleep apnea innovation, wearable health data, and what's next in consumer health 

If healthcare, women's leadership, private markets, or the future of patient access is in your world — this conversation is for you. 

Connect with Mindy Eng:

LinkedIn: Mindy Eng

Advanced Dermatology PC: [AdvancedDermatologyPC.com] 

01:21 Why You Should Keep Listening 

01:36 The Healthcare System Is Broken — Here's What's Changing 

02:04 Brandi's Fund Thesis: Investing in Healing Broken Systems 

03:27 What Prosperity Really Means: Scarcity to Abundance 

06:43 Shatavari, Ayurveda & Women's Hormonal Health 

07:26 Mindy's Origin Story: Loss, Caregiving & the Nursing Calling 

08:47 PCOS, Perimenopause & the Metabolic Reclassification 

10:17 The Women's Health Research Gap

12:45 Daily Habits: Grounding, Morning Sun & Food Quality 

13:37 Orange Theory at 5AM & Cortisol Management for Women 

14:39 Advising Startups: Fourth Effect & Chief Membership 

15:21 The Mentor Who Changed Everything 

16:40 How Professional Awakening Leads to Abundance 

19:18 $110M Fund, Women-Led Businesses & the Full Ecosystem 

21:12 Investing in Healthcare Access: What Mindy Looks For 

23:02 AI, Provider Burnout & the Administrative Burden 

24:26 Sleep Apnea Innovation: Apnodent & Wearable Health Data 

25:46 Advanced Dermatology PC: 40 Locations, Full-Service Care 

27:05 What's Next: NYC Events & Connecting With Mindy 

In Episode 9 of Plunge Into Prosperity, Brandi Kolosky sits down with Crystal Clenney — founder of Intuitive Human©, enterprise payroll architect (Starbucks, Delta, 100K+ employee systems), published poet, and one of our Sacral Sisters invested in, and backing, the SPV into Sacral Fund and advising the Fund itself. Recorded live from Waikiki, this conversation distills 20+ years of research into one bold thesis: intuition has a frequency — and we can find it in the brain, the heart, and the gut. 

Crystal shares the three-hour awakening at 25 that rewired her life, the voice she heard in her non-hearing ear that named her life's work, the 18 intuitive pathways she's defining (six clairs, six empaths, and the niche tracks), and why now — with neuroscience and biotech finally catching up — is the moment to bring direct knowing back to everyone. 

We're also in active due diligence on Intuitive Human, so consider this a front-row seat to a venture two decades in the making. 

🧬 Crystal is calling in 140 humans for Intuitive Human's first case studies — details at the end of the episode. 

👤 Crystal: intuitivehuman.com · LinkedIn (Crystal Clenney) · cclenney@intuitivehuman.com 

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS 

00:00  Cold open & intro: who is Crystal Clenney 
01:43  Why Episode 9 — doing intuition differently (neuroscience × biotech) 
02:22  Intuition as a measurable frequency 
04:26  The 18 pathways: 6 clairs, 6 empaths & the niche tracks 
06:56  Field research from Waikiki: Tahiti, Hawaii & a global vision 
09:50  Origin story: the 3-hour awakening at 25 
12:04  The voice in the ear she can't hear from 
14:30  Slowing down & the whispers that matter 
16:19  The core problem: direct knowing & agency 
18:27  Catching the injury before it happens 
19:50  Self-healing & energetic hygiene 
22:04  Why now — science, tech & connection converge 
23:30  The landscape: HeartMath, IONS, Neurofield, Star Magic & Japan 
30:10  Many hats: poetry, payroll & an engineer's mind 
32:15  Money as energy & a career in other people's payroll 
35:07  How we met & sitting on both sides of the table 
37:21  The boldest version: intuition, accessible worldwide 
43:07  Why "Sacral" & stewarding regenerative capital 
44:17  Find Crystal + the call for 140 case-study humans 
46:01  Close 

Host Brandi Kolosky (Founder & GP, Sacral Capital) sits down with Markell K. Blount — Founder of Quant Capital Group and The Deal Exchange — for the inaugural fireside and the podcast's first conversation with a male guest. Markell is a current Sacral Capital advisor, a Sacral Sisters SPV investor, and Brandi's partner on an active energy deal at time of recording.

Markell shares the moment that reshaped his career: a post-COVID depression that broke him out of survival-mode work in insurance and financial advisory, and the 18-month rebuild that turned him into one of Atlanta's most active capital connectors. He walks through his four pillars of prosperity — Body, Being, Balance, Business — and the daily palms-up / palms-down morning practice that grounds it.

Brandi gets candid about the $50M she accidentally raised for Formula E from a single investor in her late twenties — the deal she couldn't negotiate because she didn't know what an NCNDA was — and what business schools still fail to teach. The two unpack The Deal Exchange's rebrand from happy-hour networking to a 99-investor boardroom model for oil, gas, real estate, and alternatives, and why "act as if" beats "fake it till you make it" every time.

Plus: Andy Frisella's Power Five, Tom Coughlin's "humble enough to prepare, confident enough to perform," and why your network is your net worth — but only if you cut the takers.

🎙️ Find Markell: markellkblount.com | The Deal Exchange (thedealexchange.net) | Quant Capital Group

🌐 Find Brandi: SacralCapital.com | PlungeIntoProsperity.com

In Episode 6 of Plunge Into Prosperity, Brandi sits down with Linda L. Keefe — CEO of Shared Results International, longtime publisher of Tech-Talk.com, author of 7 Habits of Egalitarian Managers, and co-author of The Man Behind the Roman Collar. With an MBA from RIT and 10+ years inside Xerox before launching her own firm in 1995, Linda has spent three decades teaching organizations — from the US Department of Labor to Kodak to the New York Philharmonic — that every voice on a team matters, from the janitor to the CEO.

But Linda's leadership philosophy didn't come from a textbook. It came from a life of bold, sometimes risky plunges: going back for her MBA later in life, learning to ski in Tehran while the Shah still ruled, surviving a decade-long battle with chronic fatigue syndrome, marrying a beloved Roman Catholic priest who left a 50-year ministry to be with her, and now — in Colorado Springs — leading a live Tai Chi and Qigong community for women rediscovering their vibrancy after 60.

Brandi and Linda dig into the rare skill of spotting the weakest link in any system (a diagnostic instinct Linda calls "egalitarian's edge"), the difference between listening and actually hearing your team, how breakdowns become breakthroughs, the underfunded reality facing women-led capital (just 1.9% of allocated dollars), and what it looks like to steward both a career and a healing journey in parallel.

Whether you're a founder, an investor, a team lead, or simply someone in the middle of your own quiet plunge, this conversation is a reminder: prosperity isn't a destination. It's a practice you return to.

In this episode:

• Why egalitarian leadership creates the highest-performing teams (and how to actually do it)
• The chronic fatigue syndrome years Linda lost — and what she gained
• Marrying a Roman Catholic priest after he served 50 years in ministry
• Skiing in pre-revolution Iran on black diamonds (no bunny slopes)
• The diagnostic skill of finding the weakest link in any business in minutes
• Why Brandi invests in women-led companies and Puerto Rican farming and energy infrastructure
• Tai Chi, Qigong, meridians, and aging in reverse
• Family, breakdowns-as-breakthroughs, and the chosen mothers who shape us

Connect with Linda Keefe:

• Shared Results International: https://www.sharedresults.com
• Get Younger Every Day: https://www.getyoungereveryday.com
• Tech-Talk: https://www.tech-talk.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindakeefe/

Sacral Sisters on the Record interviews the Women Investors of Sacral Sisters SPV who have already taken the plunge.

It will be an ongoing series inside Plunge Into Prosperity, featuring the voices of the women who are stewarding the Sacral Sisters SPV — as LP investors, founding members, and community builders.

We invite you to listen to the vision of prosperity, legacy, and conscious capital through the journeys of those who have vetted and invested in Sacral Sisters to launch Sacral Fund.

These are not outside perspectives. These are their stories, their bold decisions, their definitions of what it means to truly prosper — on the record, unfiltered, and in full. 

We open Series 01 with the woman who helped birth Sacral Sisters SPV into existence — Deanna Reich. 

Deanna is the CEO and Founder of Coquina Capital, a real estate financing firm connecting investors directly to capital in Northeast Florida and beyond — at no additional cost to the investor. In 2025 she connected and closed $14.5M in capital. Today she is at $42.5M with an additional $50M in the pipeline. 

She was the original founding Managing Partner of Sacral Sisters SPV before stepping into her role as lead LP investor — and this episode is the full, unfiltered story of how she got here. 

GUEST: Deanna Reich — CEO & Founder, Coquina Capital 

HOST: Brandi Kolosky — Founder & GP, Sacral Capital 

Launching $110M Sacral Fund with the seed from Sacral Sisters SPV 

SACRAL SISTER COMMUNITY SHOUTOUTS 

------------------------------------------------------------ 

Dr. Lisa Lee — SPARK at JaxREIA, Jacksonville FL 

Shannon Spann — Women's Wealth Building Network 

Angel Latterell — Lateral Law (Trust & Estate Planning) 

Crystal Clenny — Intuitive Human & TLM Payroll Consulting 

Alla Koretsky — HeyAlla AI Integration 

Uduak Peter - RE Acquisition Specialist

CONNECT WITH DEANNA REICH 

------------------------------------------------------------ 

Website: coquina-capital.com 

Instagram: @deannareich_29 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/deanna-reich 

Email: deanna@coquina-capital.com 

In Episode 5 of Plunge Into Prosperity, host Brandi Kolosky sits down with Katie Hutchinson, Founder & CEO of KHIT Consulting — a WBENC-certified, women-owned IT consulting firm based in Charlestown, Indiana, serving clients across the country from Arizona to New York. 

Katie shares the slow "aha" that pushed her out of corporate, the philosophy that makes her firm different (hint: she'll call them "cookie crumbs" if that's what you call them), and why prosperity, for her, is no longer a number — it's the freedom to meet people where they are and help them grow. 

In this conversation, you'll hear: 

✦ How Katie's first career as a classroom teacher rewired her definition of prosperity

✦ The exact phrase from a boss that became the turning point of her career

✦ Why KHIT learns the client's vocabulary before pushing any vendor language

✦ How she built a remote-first consulting firm before "remote-first" was a buzzword

✦ The industries KHIT serves beyond healthcare IT (manufacturing, construction, spa salons, home services & more)

✦ The truth about WBENC certification and what it actually unlocks

✦ Why she runs for school board, leads the League of Women Voters of Southern Indiana, and considers civic stewardship part of prosperity

✦ The two questions every business owner should ask themselves before calling KHIT

✦ Books that shaped her leadership — and what her corgi Daisy taught her about patience 

Whether you're a woman entrepreneur, a healthcare leader buried under documentation, a small business owner sizing up your tech stack, or someone quietly wondering if it's time to bet on yourself — this episode is your permission slip. 

🔗 Connect with Katie: Website: khitconsulting.com LinkedIn: Katie Hutchinson | KHIT Consulting 

🔗 Connect with Brandi & Sacral Capital: Sacral Capital | Sacral Sisters SPV — where women invest together & checkout the pods site @ Plunge into Prosperity

🎧 New episodes of Plunge Into Prosperity drop daily at 10 AM EST.

💞 Subscribe, share with a woman who needs to hear this, and plunge well. 

Jessica Yarmey is the newly appointed President of Squeeze Massage — the tech-enabled massage franchise from the team behind Drybar, recently acquired by GoSaga and scaling nationally across the United States. She is also the Founder of SizzleSociety and Host of The Society Pod, making her one of the most multi-faceted female founders in the franchise and wellness space today.

Before stepping into the Squeeze Massage role, Jessica built Kick House from zero to 30 locations in three years and exited the business to Mayweather Boxing & Fitness in 2023.

In this episode, Brandi and Jessica break down:

🌀 Why layoffs are launchpads (not setbacks) 🎯 The "specificity premium" — the narrow ask that wins every pivot 💸 The $2M+ partnership lesson lawyers can't save you from 🤝 Why mentors are more valuable than legal counsel in critical moments ⚠️ The hard truth about doing business with friends and family 📋 The 90-day contract rule both founders swear by before any full-time hire 💆🏻‍♀️ Why recovery is the underpriced wealth strategy 🚀 How Squeeze is becoming "the coach of the massage industry" ✨ How authenticity attracts the right people, partnerships, and opportunities

If you've been laid off, are considering a pivot, or are quietly wondering if you're really in alignment with the work in front of you — this episode is your roadmap.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 — Meet Jessica Yarmey 02:00 — Redefining Prosperity 03:00 — The Truth About Being Laid Off 3 Times 09:30 — The Specificity Premium 12:30 — Building Kick House: 0 → 30 in 3 Years 15:00 — The Mayweather Exit 16:00 — The $2M+ Partnership Lesson 19:30 — Why You Shouldn't Do Business With Friends & Family 22:00 — The 90-Day Hiring Rule 26:00 — The Recovery Premium & Squeeze Massage 31:00 — Like Attracts Like: Building the Right Network

🤝 GUEST: Jessica Yarmey — President of Squeeze Massage, Founder of SizzleSociety, Host of The Society Pod @JessicaYarmey | squeezemassage.com

🌀 HOST: Brandi Kolosky — Founder of Sacral Capital SacralCapital.com & PlungeintoProsperity.com

🎙 Follow Plunge into Prosperity wherever you listen and never miss an episode. Leave a review if this one moved you.

In this inaugural deep-dive episode of Plunge Into Prosperity, co-host Arundhati Patelolla turns the mic on founder and host Brandi Kolosky for the story behind it all — Sacral Capital, Sacral Sisters, Sacral Advisory, and the movement reshaping how women lead, gather, & build wealth.

From a trailer-born childhood in Florida to oil-and-gas flare bypasses for Bitcoin mining, from running marketing for Trump properties to founding a venture fund at the intersection of spirit and strategy — Brandi unpacks the four investment pillars driving Sacral Capital, the 1.9% statistic that lit her fire, and her framework of "Positive Pivoting" for moving through change instead of resisting it.

This is the Woman. The Fund. The Plunge.

We're diving into:

→ Why only 1.9% of global capital flows to women — and what Brandi is building in response

→ The four investment pillars driving Sacral Capital

→ "Positive Pivoting" — the framework Brandi coined for moving through change

→ How money, spirit, and numbers are the same energy

→ The wealth transfer coming to women, and why we need to be ready

→ From born in a trailer to building a fund — the unfiltered story

This is the conversation that anchors the entire show.

What does your version of prosperity look like? Tell me below. 👇 #PlungeIntoProsperity #SacralCapital #SacralSisters #WomenInVenture #FeminineWealth #PositivePivoting #FromTheDanceFloor #VentureCapital #PrivateEquity #WomeninVenture #CeremonialCEO

Subscribe now and join the plunge.

Full show notes & more episodes → https://plungeintoprosperity.com/episodes