Plunge into Prosperity

What happens when the person building AI for family office decision- making has also lived through three generations of family business, a second divorce, a solo move to London on her own visa, and twenty-six years inside Fortune 4 corporate innovation?

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

What happens when a large-scale IT project management executive becomes psychic, heals herself from seven years of mystery illness, and then builds a streaming television network from scratch with an all-female development team?

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

It started as a tap on the shoulder. It ended as a sledgehammer.

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

You Never Really Escape the Fear — You Change Your Relationship to It.

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

What happens when you lose your marriage, your entire team, and every identity you ever built around other people — all in the same season?

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

Brandi Kolosky sits down with Seth Levine — co-founder of Foundry ($4B AUM), partner at Quantum Advantage Capital, co-founder of Pledge 1%, and co-author of the national bestseller Capital Evolution.

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?

Elena Bondareva stood at a Moscow intersection at thirteen years old and watched a country collapse. Her college-professor parents were bartering on street corners. Everything she knew about value, security, and prosperity had just been stripped away.

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

She started a company three months pregnant. Everyone thought she was insane. Now Maryann Chen, Founder and CEO of Kaasai, is about to close a contract worth £143 million over five years — and she did it without traditional venture capital.

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: [email protected]

→ 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

She scaled LinkedIn's EMEA customer success operation from 35 million to 75 million in ARR. She built ESPN Digital's EMEA business from zero to 15 million in revenue. She worked inside LinkedIn, ESPN, Disney, Udemy, and the BBC. And then, after 20 years of building other people's visions, Kristin Nichols Isaac chose to plunge.

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: [email protected] → LinkedIn: Kristin Nichols Isaac → Weekly newsletter on LinkedIn (founding a company, go-to-market, and growth) → Learn more: strudel.io

This is Sacral Sisters on the Record, Episode 4 — conversations with the women who are already inside the mission.

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: [email protected]

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