Sylvia Solit — Blending Finance and Spirituality with Sylvia Solit

[00:00:00] Sylvia Solit: So that would be the sort of truth telling I would wanna say to advisors is like, right now, no matter where you are in your career, no matter where you are in your trajectory, like double and triple down on your emotional awareness, because that is the differentiated skill that the clients need from us. You have to actually be able to have a deeper conversation and say, what’s keeping you up at night right now? You have to actually problem solve with the anxiety of your clients.

[00:00:28] Intro: Do you think money takes up more life space than it should? On this show, we discuss with and share stories from artists, authors, entrepreneurs, and advisors about how they mindfully minimize the time and energies. Spent thinking about money. Join your host, Jonathan DeYoe, and learn how to put money in its place and get more out of [00:01:00] life.

[00:01:02] Jonathan DeYoe: Welcome back on this episode of The Mindful Money Podcast

[00:01:05] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m chatting with Sylvia Solit. Sylvia is very interesting because she’s this great combination, a CFA charter holder, which is rare by itself, Chief Investment Officer with expertise in early stage investing, litigation funding and some things that are sort of edgy in the investment world, so investment expert kind of fits. And the reason I wanted to have her on the podcast, she’s also an indigenously trained shaman with 30 years of experience. She’s the first person I’ve ever heard of to hold the twin titles, Chief Investment Officer and Shaman. She’s part of a growing force rewriting the rules of wealth, legacy, and leadership by connecting consciousness to capital. Sylvia, welcome to the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:01:46] Sylvia Solit: Jonathan, thank you for having me.

[00:01:48] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m excited for the conversation. Where do you call home? Let the audience know where you’re dialing in from.

[00:01:52] Sylvia Solit: Today I’m in Miami, but I go in between Miami and Boston.

[00:01:56] Jonathan DeYoe: And did you grow up in Miami or Boston?

[00:01:58] Sylvia Solit: No, not at all. I, I grew [00:02:00] up in New Jersey of all places. Westfield, New Jersey. I.

[00:02:04] Jonathan DeYoe: What took you to Miami? Boston, away from New Jersey.

[00:02:08] Sylvia Solit: Well

[00:02:08] Sylvia Solit: I mean, I’ve kind of lived all around the world, so after I graduated from high school, I, um. You know, went to college and then I started a business in South America. So I lived in South America for about six years. , when I came back to the States, I got married a couple of years later and, , my now ex-husband and I, we lived in Europe for a period of time, , because of his work.

[00:02:29] Sylvia Solit: So I actually moved to South Florida, from Paris.

[00:02:34] Jonathan DeYoe: So in the early years for the formative years, childhood years, what did you learn or what did the parents try to teach you about? Money and entrepreneurship.

[00:02:42] Sylvia Solit: Well, my father is an immigrant from Iran and came to the US You know, quintessential story. $200 in his pocket. I think the money was from my grandfather selling some canaries that he had been breeding in Iran and my father was the first [00:03:00] person in his family to leave Iran. And my family’s also, um, Jewish. So my dad was a complete fish out of water in American culture. And I think that he primarily taught me what I would call immigrant values. So they’re the values of just tenacity. Hard work, humility. I didn’t really ever have any conversations with, with my dad around, money or investing or entrepreneurship or anything like that.

[00:03:28] Sylvia Solit: My mom, on the other hand, She sacrificed a lot of her career to raise us and when my parents got divorced, I really saw that that created a lot of financial fragility for her. So I don’t think I was taught necessarily like empowering or constructive messages when I was young, but it definitely registered for me that, , women can be quite vulnerable when they’re not financially prepared for something as disruptive as a divorce.

[00:03:59] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m wondering [00:04:00] if, though the lessons may not have been, that’s a, that’s a huge lesson, but just a basic money lesson. Not necessarily taught, but learned gleaned from the immigrant values, gleaned from just the, the watching your parents operate in the world when you were young. I. Any lessons come out of that,

[00:04:17] Sylvia Solit: That work is important. So it’s like it, that shouldn’t be such a revolutionary message, but I feel like it kind of is in this day and, , age maybe that makes me old, but

[00:04:31] Jonathan DeYoe: which makes me very old.

[00:04:33] Sylvia Solit: like, I would say that like, I, I was really always. Taught not that work was this kind of burden that we had to rise above or escape from, or that you should try to figure out a life where you weren’t working or you’re working as little as possible. Like I was really shown that work is a sort of holy and sacred responsibility, and in some ways that we’re on this planet to work.

[00:04:55] Sylvia Solit: Uh, we’re on this

[00:04:56] Sylvia Solit: planet to contribute. One of the number one questions I get from young women is say, oh, [00:05:00] like, can you tell me like. One of the secrets of creating abundance, and my first question is always like, well, do you like to work? Like, just like you should, you should start there. Like you should maybe heal your relationship to work itself.

[00:05:13] Jonathan DeYoe: love that idea. I. So many people just want this whole, the fire movement. finish independent. Retire early. I don’t get it. Like I, I keep asking people retire. Then what? Like,

[00:05:25] Sylvia Solit: I mean.

[00:05:25] Jonathan DeYoe: you sit on a porch?

[00:05:26] Sylvia Solit: it’s great if that means, finish what you don’t like doing early and then retire into what you really want to do. I mean, I’m, I’m into that, maybe I’m strangely conservative for having that viewpoint, but I, I can’t imagine life without, without work. I, I actually I feel deeply connected

[00:05:47] Sylvia Solit: to, to work my life.

[00:05:48] Jonathan DeYoe: meaningful work. I think that’s the goal is that having meaningful work that sort of has an impact. Tell us about your career path. Like how did you end up with these two completely different areas of expertise? [00:06:00] I.

[00:06:00] Sylvia Solit: My first passion, from a really young age when I was a teenager was this question of, , awakening. I just had a very early, it’s like being caught with a very like early childhood disease. And so I had like a very strong desire around this particular question, what is awakening? And I would read a lot of, narratives and stories around awakening, which at the time I used to, like in the nineties, .

[00:06:23] Sylvia Solit: Were what you would think of as a awakening narrative, like, , you know, the Jesus narrative or the Buddha narrative where, you have a spiritual question and then you go to the desert and you isolate yourself, and then you come back Enlightened And from that enlightenment experience you become a guru or teacher.

[00:06:41] Sylvia Solit: But that, that guru or teacher is then kind of removed from everyday life.

[00:06:44] Sylvia Solit: I would read a lot of narratives, but all the narratives I read were of that ilk. So to me it sounded like enlightenment might be a fairytale. it didn’t sound like something that could happen to an ordinary girl from New Jersey.

[00:06:58] Jonathan DeYoe: Ooh. Hmm.

[00:06:59] Sylvia Solit: [00:07:00] So that question is, is awakening real? And if it’s real, can I experience It drove everything that I called my work in my twenties. So. , after I graduated, I moved to South America to start a school with two other people. It was a school of healing Arts. It’s called the Oasis Institute.

[00:07:20] Sylvia Solit: It still exists today. It was almost like a kind of sister school to Esson Institute in California. So we were bringing, different modalities that really didn’t exist in Argentina at the time, and teaching them in a school that exposure, , meant that I was. Being trained by all kinds of amazing body workers and healers and therapists, , as an ongoing part of just building the school.

[00:07:46] Sylvia Solit: So in my twenties, , I got a lot of training as a facilitator and I was a, a teacher and my whole life was really kind of dedicated to this question of awakening. And, and I would say in many ways I was, already a. [00:08:00] Fairly decent healer that was my profession, was to be a healer when I, , sold my part of the school in my late twenties, that inflection point, I thought, I moved back to the states and I thought my career would continue down this sort of healing path.

[00:08:13] Sylvia Solit: I thought I would either study clinical psychology or I would become ordained as a minister or something that was gonna continue to be sort of spiritual and healing and. I took a sabbatical at that time and I, and I went to India. went to the ashram of Raman and Maharshi, which is a, a beautiful, ashram, which is kind of one of the seats of non-duality in the universe.

[00:08:36] Sylvia Solit: Kind of beautiful place to ask this question, who am I and what is awakening? And at that ashram, I had a very, very profound awakening. So like that was when I had what was kind of like that storybook fairytale awakening where, you know. Like I dissolved into like pure

[00:08:53] Sylvia Solit: conscious light and it lasted for like two weeks and it was, sort of what I had been looking for all throughout my [00:09:00] twenties, and it gave me a lot of the answers to these spiritual questions.

[00:09:03] Sylvia Solit: Like, what is awakening? Awakening is knowing that you’re not separate from the divine. What is healing? Healing is really just awakening to that. All other healing is kind of secondary, like your body can heal, but at the end your body’s gonna die. Die. Your emotions can heal, but in the end. Your emotions are gonna change.

[00:09:18] Sylvia Solit: The only thing that’s actually healing is knowing who you truly are.

[00:09:23] Jonathan DeYoe: How old were you when you started asking these questions?

[00:09:26] Sylvia Solit: I mean, when I first started asking these questions, I’d say like 12, 13,

[00:09:30] Jonathan DeYoe: that’s really, I, I wanna say too, too early.

[00:09:34] Sylvia Solit: A little bit too early. It’s probably a little too early. Yeah. Like I said, I, I had some, temper tantrums in my late teens because I was really angry that I was a spiritual person.

[00:09:44] Jonathan DeYoe: were you raised spiritual at all? I mean, or was it Jewish faith? in a synagogue kind of a scenario?

[00:09:50] Sylvia Solit: was, I was raised in a, like in a moderately like kind of religious. Household, not in any kind of onerous way, not like hit you on the head with faith,

[00:09:58] Sylvia Solit: but definitely in [00:10:00] an environment where there was a reverence and respect for the, for God. but I was really left to my own devices to decide for myself what that was gonna look like in my life and what that meant for me.

[00:10:10] Sylvia Solit: So I had a lot of, I’d consider it like spiritual freedom, in my home life. so I don’t really know, like I, I could have just been born oriented that way. you know, maybe like my soul on some level was just

[00:10:21] Sylvia Solit: born like that, but it wasn’t something that I really wanted. And that’s the thing is like, it’s not like I had some idealized image in my head of wanting to be a spiritual person or wanting to be a guru or wanting to be a teacher.

[00:10:34] Sylvia Solit: It was really truly the opposite. Like, I was actually kind of mad about it in the beginning.

[00:10:39] Sylvia Solit: Because I wanted a normal life. I was like, I, I felt contaminated for life, which actually is true. I have been contaminated for life. I still haven’t been able to escape, awakening as the purpose of my human lifetime,

[00:10:51] Jonathan DeYoe: I think you’re awake to the purpose. I think most people, and, and I don’t want, I don’t wanna disrespect anybody, but I have the same kind of general experience. Like it’s all, it’s all [00:11:00] interest. This is all interesting, but this is all not the point.

[00:11:02] Sylvia Solit: wow. point is for me to sit and, understand how this works and how this fits in with all the other stuff that’s out there. , it’s not to make money, it’s not to have things. It’s not the, it’s not even so much about relationships though. That, that, that’s very comforting. It feels good, but it’s, it’s, I have a small men’s group. There’s four of us. we meet every month and sometimes we micro and there’s, and we have these conversations about, you know, what’s this about?

[00:11:23] Jonathan DeYoe: And my, I sat in a friend’s living room, The summer after my freshman year of college came back disappointed with my business studies, disappointed and just started asking these questions. so not quite as young as you, but I’ve never escaped him as well, and the idea of being infected by the question that has repeated in my head, this is a painful path.

[00:11:43] Jonathan DeYoe: It’s a difficult path, but we’ve earned this path. I think

[00:11:46] Jonathan DeYoe: karmically,

[00:11:47] Sylvia Solit: you. You’ve, you’ve caught the same virus,

[00:11:51] Jonathan DeYoe: yeah,

[00:11:53] Jonathan DeYoe: get rid of

[00:11:53] Sylvia Solit: rid of it. I mean, you can, you can, I have met people who have gotten rid of it, but there’s a cost to getting rid of [00:12:00] it.

[00:12:00] Sylvia Solit: Um, and that that cost will, involve some suffering. And so

[00:12:04] Jonathan DeYoe: Well, doesn’t it all, can

[00:12:07] Jonathan DeYoe: you?

[00:12:07] Sylvia Solit: think that’s a different kind of suffering. I think that’s a harder, I think that’s a,

[00:12:10] Sylvia Solit: that’s, I think it’s a worse kind of suffering to deny freedom, to deny truth.

[00:12:15] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m, I’m curious, so you read all these stories of people who awakened and I’m, I’m assuming you read the Buddhist story, you know, , this isn’t great. He goes out of the world, out into the world and sees suffering, and sees illness, sees aging, and sees dying for the first time. Says, oh, I gotta escape this. And, , I’m curious why that didn’t translate into. I think I can do this. Why did you still think it was impossible for you to do it as a girl from New Jersey?

[00:12:40] Sylvia Solit: Well, I mean, there’s not, there’s not exactly like a story of like a family, in those, when I had that really, really deep awakening in India the first two weeks of that awakening, I thought that was gonna be what my life would look like. So I.

[00:12:56] Jonathan DeYoe: For forever.

[00:12:56] Sylvia Solit: forever.

[00:12:57] Sylvia Solit: Yeah, I was, I

[00:12:58] Sylvia Solit: was, writing the letter to my [00:13:00] parents, you know, sorry, but

[00:13:04] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m a child of light now.

[00:13:05] Sylvia Solit: yeah, like, I’m not coming back. Like you could, you know, I, I had some, some money from selling the business and I, you can live on, in, in India for like, no money, especially back then

[00:13:15] Sylvia Solit: it was like, I’m I’m good.

[00:13:18] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:13:18] Sylvia Solit: Like, and I was done. I was like, done.

[00:13:21] Sylvia Solit: But that’s where I think. You know, this inflection point that really is interesting to me is that, that that would’ve probably have been my story if I was, it was 1945 and I was, I had made a pilgrimage to India.

[00:13:35] Jonathan DeYoe: Right.

[00:13:36] Sylvia Solit: would probably, you know, be in India right now living near a temple and living a very simple, you know, life.

[00:13:45] Sylvia Solit: So. But the times are changing, and that became very clear to me because I really started to receive what I can only call sort of divine downloads as that experience integrated itself into my being and, and I became kind of more [00:14:00] normalized again, that’s when it really started to kind of crash back onto me.

[00:14:04] Sylvia Solit: Or sort of like, there’s two things. One was like, you still have karma to complete. And

[00:14:11] Sylvia Solit: you, you don’t get to escape your karma in this lifetime. And part of that karma is, is going to involve marriage and children. And, and you need to, you need to get gritty with life. Like you’ve got some

[00:14:21] Sylvia Solit: karma to complete.

[00:14:23] Sylvia Solit: And the other part of the download in the message was, and you should really learn to, to work with money.

[00:14:30] Sylvia Solit: Which seemed very, uh, to me completely like, totally implausible. But it was very clear that for some reason that was part of my destiny and that I needed to move towards it, and so I.

[00:14:45] Sylvia Solit: I returned from India, unknowingly with my, with an entire head full of lice, the worst lice infection in the entire, in the entire universe, which I, I was so deep into like, you know, ashram land that, [00:15:00] you know, I didn’t even realize it until I was on a Lufthansa plane back home. So my apologies to anyone who was on that flight with me.

[00:15:09] Sylvia Solit: But, you know, I, I, I came back and I, and I dove

[00:15:13] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. So you, you had this sort of, awakening experience. It says, Hey, money should be your path. How do you go from that? To, you know, CFA charter holder, you know, CIO of investment firms and educator in the space.

[00:15:28] Sylvia Solit: Uh, somebody made an introduction to, um, a managing director at Bank of America, and they had a program at the time, which was called Pathways and Pathways. Took people with entrepreneurial entrepreneurial backgrounds and trained them to become financial advisors. And so that was my first training. it was great.

[00:15:45] Sylvia Solit: Like they put me in North Carolina for, you know, a few months and trained me and I got all of my, you know, series seven and all those

[00:15:52] Sylvia Solit: licenses. but that’s how I started. and I really, really loved that first job because, you know, I was just like sitting in a, bank [00:16:00] branch, Having the bankers come to me and saying, oh, look, so and so, you know, sitting on a lot of cash right now. Would you like to have a conversation? And it was it was a wonderful time in my life. Like at the time, I didn’t realize how, how beautiful it was to be able to help people in such a simple way.

[00:16:13] Sylvia Solit: you know, I, I was like, literally like cold calling and just like closing investment clients and, it was a great start, but it did have, a lot of sales involved with it. and I just had an intuition that if I really wanted to do this work kind of at the deepest level, that it would be good if I could remove all, incentivizations connected to sales, which would mean that I needed to.

[00:16:33] Sylvia Solit: Become skilled beyond that point, which is then what propelled me to complete my CFA charter and eventually move to working in family offices.

[00:16:43] Jonathan DeYoe: So do you bring your, the spiritual side, the this awakening experience into your client work? Or how do, I’m, I’m imagining the, the Venn diagrams. People are completely separate, but I imagine there’s overlap and I’m wondering how you manage that overlap.

[00:16:56] Sylvia Solit: There’s overlap. It’s taken me like. a really long, long [00:17:00] time and lots of mistakes, lots of humility, lots of wrong turns to begin to identify where that sweet spot is. But I, believe that, you know, today we’re in such an interesting moment in history. and especially in financial management, because of things like AI becoming so competent right underneath our feet.

[00:17:22] Sylvia Solit: So for me what that means is two things. One, it means that the role of the advisor is gonna change significantly because there’s going to be tremendous efficiency in automation, in terms of investing. and then the, the second is, is that we as a human race can begin to outsource more of our mental activity as AI becomes more competent, which means that it increases our bandwidth for what I would call consciousness.

[00:17:47] Sylvia Solit: I think that people who have means and have capital and know that that capital requires stewardship are going to become more sophisticated. Um, they’re going to understand that the role of the [00:18:00] advisor of the past has changed. They’re not going to really fall for the story anymore, of like, well, I can outperform this person.

[00:18:06] Sylvia Solit: I mean, it’s sort of like, I mean,

[00:18:08] Jonathan DeYoe: I hope you’re right. I hope you’re right. I.

[00:18:10] Sylvia Solit: I mean, people will figure it out. People are not stupid, so, if you don’t need the advisor to outperform the other advisor, and so much of this can now become automated and sit on platforms like Schwab for a fraction of the cost of what it used to cost. Well, what, what lies ahead for people in our position is this Venn diagram where the two intersect.

[00:18:32] Sylvia Solit: And so for me it’s like, well, what does it look like to bring consciousness to capital? That sweet spot is real. I think that you’re gonna find people who want to begin to have partnerships that are about conscious stewardship when it comes to their money and what conscious stewardship looks like.

[00:18:52] Sylvia Solit: We can talk about more about that, but I think it’s where the industry is headed. I just might be a little bit on the early side with it.

[00:18:59] Jonathan DeYoe: [00:19:00] I’m assuming, and I, and I’m, I’m hoping it’s not just the idea of investing responsibly.

[00:19:04] Jonathan DeYoe: Right. It’s, it’s not just ESG.

[00:19:06] Sylvia Solit: I, it’s, okay, good. Perfect. Perfect. I, I, I, I actually came out, I, so I’ve done, I did this, uh, this arc of 10 podcasts about why I love, like, owning shares and businesses. And the last podcast was about how, how I don’t like ESG,

[00:19:21] Jonathan DeYoe: and I got so much feedback from that one. Anyway, so,

[00:19:26] Sylvia Solit: and I, I, I should, I shouldn’t. That is a little bit tongue in cheek. I hate that stuff. I’m not gonna say I hate that. I, I think it leaves something on the table,

[00:19:35] Sylvia Solit: um, which is better if we ourselves become responsible for it, as opposed to outsourcing it to

[00:19:42] Sylvia Solit: metrics that somebody else decided. So, like,

[00:19:45] Sylvia Solit: I’m interested in, in people’s personal,

[00:19:47] Sylvia Solit: ethical. Compass

[00:19:50] Jonathan DeYoe: and if we change our own personal, ethical compasses and everyone else works on their own, it actually affects the other much better. Right. That’s the way that, that’s the

[00:19:57] Jonathan DeYoe: path. So, so how do you bring consciousness to [00:20:00] capital? What is that? What is it you’re talking about? I.

[00:20:02] Sylvia Solit: I think the most kind of interesting part of it is what would a world look like where more wealth holders are waking up. And how do you help initiate and stimulate and expand, uh, those conversations of, awakening and life purpose in the greatest, most powerful stewards in the world? Because there’s like so much leverage in that.

[00:20:28] Sylvia Solit: So an example is like if I’m working with a family that, you know, the next gen, sometimes you know the, a lot of the, the best work you do with the next gen, so you have like the first gen might be like the wealth creators. They’re, they’re the industrialists. They’re the ones who really, build something.

[00:20:43] Sylvia Solit: And then the next generation usually is where a lot of these kind of deeper spiritual questions will start to pop up

[00:20:50] Jonathan DeYoe: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:50] Sylvia Solit: and they can go in a couple of different directions. One can be something like along the lines of imposter syndrome. So could be a lot of guilt and shame connected to the capital. Like [00:21:00] I didn’t, I didn’t do anything to deserve this, or this is oil and gas money and that makes me feel uncomfortable, or like whatever, whatever that is.

[00:21:08] Sylvia Solit: Um, there can be that discomfort with the capital. And then the, the other side of that is when you see a next gen who becomes overly identified with the money and has made the link of, I am important because my, my family has money. And I matter. So like when I walk into a party and everyone’s like, oh my gosh, like, it’s like so and so, and they feel like a, a lift from that.

[00:21:32] Sylvia Solit: That’s a, that’s a, that’s a real problem.

[00:21:36] Sylvia Solit: That’s a real problem. And so there’s different, there’s different approaches in that conversation, but you wanna be able to identify. Where is the relationship with the capital? not aligned and, and begin to open up those conversations, like, where I really like people to get to is, is to answer the question why you, why you, it’s like a variation of the spiritual question, who am I?[00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Sylvia Solit: Why you, like, it’s a really profound thing, like why karmically is this in your hands to steward? I mean, I could work with that question with somebody for like years and it’s gonna keep revealing more and more depth and more and more intentionality, and I find that incredibly exciting. So like I think that if a steward of wealth begins to ask that kind of a question, that wealth in and of itself becomes charged with a different energetic signature.

[00:22:29] Jonathan DeYoe: do you think there’s a, I don’t wanna say a block to YU, but do you think the, the challenge is the public isn’t ready for it, or do you think the advisor world isn’t ready to ask that question or both, or neither?

[00:22:46] Sylvia Solit: Well on the advisor world, think one of the barriers is just the way Incentivizations are structured and what we are incentivized to do. Uh, as advisors is, is not this,

[00:22:57] Jonathan DeYoe: so I, I, I do think there’s this legacy where [00:23:00] we, we get paid directly to manage money. That’s how we’re paid. and I still think great advisors do this.

[00:23:08] Jonathan DeYoe: Right. This is not why they’re paid

[00:23:10] Jonathan DeYoe: or what they’re paid for, but they are attracting clients because that’s how they operate in the world. That’s how, that’s how I’ve attracted clients. You know, that’s, that’s, and they pay me the way, the traditional way that, you know, if I just get paid, but you still operate in a certain way. And I, and I agree, that should be, that should be different, but it’s not right now.

[00:23:28] Sylvia Solit: Yeah, you may have more bandwidth and capacity to do that because you have a really mature book of business, for example. Um,

[00:23:34] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep. Yep.

[00:23:35] Sylvia Solit: like there’s different, you know, I, I’m, I’m sympathetic to that. Like if you’re a younger advisor and you just getting started, uh, you have to use so much of your energy and time just to gather assets and keep assets.

[00:23:46] Sylvia Solit: So I think part of it is just the way the industry is incentivized, which I think will change because again, if there’s gonna be like tremendous fee compression, like if, if everyone’s getting squeezed down to eight basis points. ’cause that’s what Schwab, Schwab can do. Schwab [00:24:00] total market for right now.

[00:24:02] Sylvia Solit: If everyone’s gonna get squeezed down, well then our natural human creativity is gonna begin to think of, okay, well then we’re, how can I, how else can I add value

[00:24:11] Sylvia Solit: to these clients? And how would I potentially charge for that?

[00:24:15] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:24:16] Sylvia Solit: I, I think that’s a structural thing in the industry. Um, in terms of clients themselves.

[00:24:21] Sylvia Solit: Um, I think that a lot of clients would still rather have money and spirituality be separate.

[00:24:27] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:24:28] Sylvia Solit: Like they don’t want their advisor to be woo uh, it doesn’t make them feel secure and safe. so it takes a really special cat to wanna have an advisor like that, you know?

[00:24:40] Jonathan DeYoe: you know, this, I operate outta Berkeley. So I, I operate in a pool of those special cats, , , which is sort of helpful , for the business , that I’ve built over the years. But I have found that I. You know, being deep talking about, you know, , spiritual journey, talking about, you know, just meditation, talking about these very simple things that can, that can bring people into that fold a [00:25:00] little bit.

[00:25:00] Jonathan DeYoe: The awakening possibility. Um, Actually increases referrals, actually increases connection to people, actually boosts your, the tightness with people, , the closeness with the client and I, and clients are friends and it’s hugs and it’s, it’s a very loving relationship. a caring relationship. And so I, I do think it’s really positive, but I, I also was worried, like I wasn’t always this way. It I published my book in 2017, and that was mindful money. And like two years later, I rebranded my firm to mindful money. , and so it was 25 years into my career, I was like, okay. And I was so nervous that they were gonna go, oh, Jonathan’s soft.

[00:25:38] Jonathan DeYoe: He’s, he, you know, he’s doesn’t know what he is doing. He’s, he’s gone off the deep end, right? But I’d merged these two ideas and I was afraid I would lose a bunch of clients. I didn’t, I didn’t lose anybody. Like, I think people stuck,

[00:25:49] Jonathan DeYoe: which I think is lucky. But also the people I was with,

[00:25:53] Jonathan DeYoe: you know.

[00:25:54] Sylvia Solit: Amazing. I mean, I think that that’s that’s a story of hope for me. It’s great.

[00:25:59] Jonathan DeYoe: [00:26:00] Yeah. you talk about, truth telling to advisors. What is the truth you want to tell? What is that about?

[00:26:06] Sylvia Solit: I would say like the, the, the first to not be afraid of the changes that are.

[00:26:11] Jonathan DeYoe: Hmm.

[00:26:12] Sylvia Solit: we do have a valuable skillset. we do have knowledge and sophistication, that is valuable, but most of that knowledge and sophistication is valuable because it keeps us from being emotionally reactive.

[00:26:25] Sylvia Solit: So that would be the sort of truth telling I would wanna say to advisors is like. Right now, no matter where you are in your career, no matter where you are in your trajectory, like double and triple down on your emotional, awareness

[00:26:40] Sylvia Solit: and yeah, your EQ and your mindfulness because, that is the differentiated skill that the clients need from us,

[00:26:49] Jonathan DeYoe: They

[00:26:49] Sylvia Solit: they need

[00:26:49] Sylvia Solit: that steadiness

[00:26:51] Jonathan DeYoe: Steady hand on the

[00:26:52] Jonathan DeYoe: wheel, not more than

[00:26:52] Jonathan DeYoe: anything else. Steady hand.

[00:26:54] Sylvia Solit: And it’s, it’s not enough to just say. We gotta stay the course. everyone’s heard these lines [00:27:00] before. You have to actually be able to have a deeper conversation and say, what’s keeping you up at night right now?

[00:27:06] Sylvia Solit: Let’s talk about that.

[00:27:08] Jonathan DeYoe: yep.

[00:27:08] Sylvia Solit: You have to actually problem solve with the anxiety of your clients.

[00:27:12] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I, I think I started doing this too late, but I literally, like a month ago, started my, meditation group for my clients. So, so we’re now edu We’re now Okay. Come into the fold. This is what I do. Join me in this process. And so it’s, it’s huge. I don’t know how compliance would take this question, but I, I do want to go down this path ’cause I’ve, I’ve been exploring it myself a little bit when I think of shaman. Like, I think of Castaneda, I think of mind expansion. I think of indigenous spirituality. I think of medicines, ayahuasca, psilocybin, and we haven’t talked about it. but I’m assuming you’ve done some guided journey work. I’ve done some guided journey work in the last three years, and it’s had a profound impact on

[00:27:55] Jonathan DeYoe: me. so do you do it, do you guide it? Do you bring it into the [00:28:00] family office space? How do you talk about it? How do you integrate it? I’m very curious.

[00:28:05] Sylvia Solit: so for both mine and your compliance department, , this work can be done legally in certain jurisdictions. so everything that I talk

[00:28:14] Sylvia Solit: about, I’m not just saying this for compliance, actually, it’s my. Deepest recommendation to people is to do this work in places where it’s legal,

[00:28:21] Sylvia Solit: the frequency of the plants themselves prefer that, you know, like, like it’s just, especially Ayahuasca.

[00:28:27] Sylvia Solit: Ayahuasca. I really think you should be working, with the indigenous tribes in their homelands. That’s the best way to do it.

[00:28:34] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:28:35] Sylvia Solit: uh, yes, I, I have, worked, extensively with plant medicines and part of what I am. Understanding about the connection between capital and consciousness is definitely from those experiences.

[00:28:50] Sylvia Solit: I had one sort of life-changing experience in particular drinking, ayahuasca with a tribe from Columbia. I went through a, a kind of death [00:29:00] experience, so I was, maybe like six, seven hours. I couldn’t have told you like. Anything like I was as deep as possibly could be. And, and in that depth experience, what goes beyond death, you know, just really like a profound communion with, spirit.

[00:29:18] Sylvia Solit: And in that communion, I was like taken into this cathedral where all of these, like shamans and priests were praying over money. I. And it was this beautiful cathedral and they were praying over money and I was like, wow. And they were showing me that like. Money itself is going through its own spiritual transformation alongside of humanity right now.

[00:29:41] Sylvia Solit: And that even though it sounds like a really weird conversation, this isn’t always going to be a weird conversation,

[00:29:48] Sylvia Solit: like the idea of being a conscious steward of capital. Capital is just energy to be a conscious steward of energy is where we’re headed. And [00:30:00] then the really. , adorable. Part of the vision was then, at some point I heard this voice and the voice said, God blesses the coders.

[00:30:07] Sylvia Solit: And it was this like infinite universe blessing to all of the engineers, , who are coding, , what will become the future of currency, which will some form of cryptocurrency and the blockchain. It’s just, again, it’s early days and there’s lots of volatility ’cause we’re humans and we’re. And I saw that in a vision. So to see something like that in a vision, you was like, okay, like that’s where we’re headed. So how can I do my small part in bringing us there? And so the last part of your question was like, what would it look like or have I done this work with a family office?

[00:30:39] Sylvia Solit: And so there are families that are doing retreats, you know, family office type retreats. You know, primarily I’d say like in Jamaica, Costa Rica, Columbia, but there are families that are using this kind of vision work to answer questions as a family. Like not just what is my life purpose with this [00:31:00] capital, but what is our purpose as a family with, with this capital?

[00:31:03] Sylvia Solit: What is our mission statement with this capital?

[00:31:06] Sylvia Solit: Right? What is our ethos? And, and to answer that as a family. assisted with vision work is, is an incredibly, profound process.

[00:31:16] Jonathan DeYoe: That, I mean, the structure of that, answering it as a family in like a family meeting situation, that’s like straight outta Stanford. Like that, that’s the, the book was written on how to do it. But when you add the journey, work with it, that has to be so powerful and has to be so, uh, coalescing. The family’s gotta come together around this stuff. I spiritually like this is you become a steward rather than an owner, which is absolutely, incredible. I think for those families, I, I’m surprised that there are families that do that. And, and I’m I’m wondering, is it the first generation producers, you know, the people that are driving it? Or is it the next generation of the third generation driving it?

[00:31:53] Sylvia Solit: Uh, it’s both.

[00:31:55] Jonathan DeYoe: Really?

[00:31:56] Sylvia Solit: I mean, there’s like a, there’s, people are so interested in this kind of work right now, so [00:32:00] like,

[00:32:00] Sylvia Solit: you know, Right now.

[00:32:01] Sylvia Solit: it’s like really, like everybody’s interested in it. I wanna just add like. So everyone remembers that like, you know, shamanic vision work is only one form,

[00:32:12] Sylvia Solit: what we’re saying is like, can you add a spiritual dimension to any family retreat So that spiritual dimension could be added through meditation, breath work, facilitated conversations. But the, the idea is like, can we have a. Group transcendent conversation around the purpose of this capital and add that as a layer onto what I would call sort of traditional family governance.

[00:32:39] Sylvia Solit: So family governance might be like, okay, how do we resolve conflict when conflict arises? How do we make decisions, you know, when there’s disagreements between us? Things like that. Like those are really important conversations around governance. And I don’t need to tell you this, but in case listeners don’t know.

[00:32:53] Sylvia Solit: Governance and communication and passing on of values is what seems to be most protective of [00:33:00] wealth passing from generation to generation. So that classic adage that most wealth is lost in three generations.

[00:33:06] Sylvia Solit: the number one way to buffer that in a family is through governance work. So all we’re saying is like, can you add a transcendent spiritual dimension to the work you do in your family around governance?

[00:33:19] Jonathan DeYoe: this just sort of a detail, a nitty gritty detail question. how, talking about managing capital with consciousness, sort of with intuition. You know, how, how, how do you separate intuitive piece from very normal greed and like fear biases that bubble up?

[00:33:36] Jonathan DeYoe: How, how do you separate those two internal processes to identify, which is a good solid core quality intuition versus a cultural responsive, you know, fear, greed response.

[00:33:47] Sylvia Solit: So to start answering that question, you, I think you have to separate, obviously you separate equity from debt. I mean, this is, debt is a different. It’s a different animal.

[00:33:56] Sylvia Solit: So let’s just talk about equity investing. and then if you separate equity [00:34:00] investing to public and, private, I think that public investing is not something that, I don’t work with it intuitively.

[00:34:08] Sylvia Solit: I don’t think there’s any reason to. because public markets, what they represent is just, beta, just pure beta. It’s almost like you’re just participating in preserving the value of the dollar or something. It’s not so for me, public investing is primarily, passive low cost and, simple.

[00:34:25] Sylvia Solit: but that frees up our mental energy in our bandwidth to really think about where we can, do our best work on the private side. And I think that’s where intuition definitely comes into play. I think intuition comes into play more than anywhere else in early stage investing. I think that certainly any venture capitalists would tell you they’re primarily operating from intuition and I’m not saying that I’ve been great as a venture investor.

[00:34:51] Sylvia Solit: I would actually say I’ve made tons of mistakes. I’ve made mistakes as a CIO, I’ve made mistakes for myself as an individual, but when [00:35:00] I went and did the attribution, I really looked at what were the factors that I was considering, what I was looking at. When I made those decisions, could’ve done better and I would’ve done better if I had actually listened to my intuition more like let’s say you’re, you, you have capital that you wanna move into early stage companies.

[00:35:19] Sylvia Solit: private markets. So the first is, I do think that it’s important that you stick to, verticals where you have enough understanding of the business itself. there’s essentials. You have to understand you. There’s product market fit and like, you know, competitive analysis, things like that.

[00:35:36] Sylvia Solit: Like you should understand those things. Because they do play, they do play a part, then you wanna be able to get to a very, very quiet place inside of yourself. And this is where the mindfulness comes in, and I’m sure this is what you’re teaching your clients, is that you have to have enough self-awareness to say, okay, what is in my energy field right now?

[00:35:54] Sylvia Solit: Am I motivated by fomo? Am I motivated by anxiety? Am I motivated by fear? Is my state of [00:36:00] consciousness too busy right now? Am I overwhelmed? Am I making this decision quickly? And what would it look like if you made every single investment decision from a completely mindful, peaceful place where your breath was regulated, your nervous system was regulated, and you pulled the trigger on that from your most conscious place?

[00:36:19] Sylvia Solit: Even if you didn’t have better performance results, you’re probably gonna feel better about yourself when something fails.

[00:36:26] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep. Path matters. It’s not just the outcomes. Yep. I ask every guest this question, I wanna ask you to simplify this process for us. So if you’re, talking with like a, just a run of the mill as if this exists entrepreneur, who has all the stresses of an entrepreneur, but who hasn’t really put their business into the context of their lives. business, business, work, work, work. And then separate from spirit is separate from everything. What is one thing that they can focus on to sort of, integrate their lives better?

[00:36:53] Sylvia Solit: Yeah, I think it, it depends on the, on the inclination of the person, but I, I really like to use prayer [00:37:00] as a tool to bridge universes together. it’s kind of like the forgotten step chapter, spirituality or something. Like who prays, like, actually prayer is kind of a beautiful thing because. You know, our, our language, really lets the universe know what our intentions are and what we want from life. Language is such an important, tool and so prayer is when we’re starting to put things into language that maybe have been unconscious inside of us.

[00:37:26] Sylvia Solit: And so if you don’t know how to bring together these worlds, I think it’s really beautiful to start with a prayer that asks to be shown how to do that. Like the prayer, like, show me the way, or it’s my intention to live a more integrated life and I don’t know how to do that, but I’d really like to be shown, or it’s my intent, my, you know, the business I’m building right now is, got some disruptive, toxic elements to it that hurt the earth.

[00:37:51] Sylvia Solit: And I don’t know how to fix that. Can I need help? can I please bring me the guidance because again, so individual on a, like, mechanistic [00:38:00] level is gonna. Help people to do that is so different. But I definitely lean on prayer in my own life when I’m feeling, adrift, with my own business ventures.

[00:38:10] Jonathan DeYoe: So I’m assuming the, the vast word of people that hear that will say like, I don’t know how to pray. So do you have a basic prayer structure that you would recommend?

[00:38:19] Sylvia Solit: Yeah. there’s some super important, um, I think. Guidelines around prayer. So the first is, prayer doesn’t really work super well. If you’re pleading or if you’re in a kind of victim state of consciousness, that’s just complaining.

[00:38:36] Jonathan DeYoe: Loud

[00:38:37] Sylvia Solit: It’s, you can complain out loud, but complaining out loud, um, you know, usually just brings more things to complain about.

[00:38:45] Sylvia Solit: I think that humility and sincerity, to the extent that you can cultivate that inside yourself to actually, it’s so hard for people to actually be sincere. which is interesting to me because sincerity, I think is the number one ingredient of why people transform, But a lot of times people are [00:39:00] kinda like mouthing things, but they don’t really, really, really truly, they’re not really behind what they’re mouthing. So you wanna be super sincere. In your prayer. So that means don’t say anything that you don’t actually mean. I feel like then beyond that, once you know that you’re in a sincere, sort of frame of mind.

[00:39:17] Sylvia Solit: there’s two elements of every prayer that I think are important. One is, some gratitude. Gratitude is a very, very high frequency. It’s potentially even a higher frequency than love itself. So. Putting some gratitude into it is like adding some fuel or some octane to the prayer. It’s an accelerant.

[00:39:37] Sylvia Solit: And then the second piece is, is in that humility is to, to give, you know, a prompt to the universe that sounds something like this help show me the way, I’m available to be taught. I don’t understand what this lesson is right now. I don’t understand how to do this, but I’m available to be shown. I’m available to be taught.

[00:39:59] Sylvia Solit: I would [00:40:00] like to learn. I would like to grow. I would like to be in deeper service to you, so please show me the way.

[00:40:05] Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. Thank you. I think that’s, uh, just a very beautiful, succinct. Structure. I think that’s useful. So that’s, that’s the thing to do. if you want to create some more integration, you pray, what’s something that they might be doing that’s creating the disintegration that they should stop doing?

[00:40:26] Sylvia Solit: Well, I think that goes to kind of a fundamental fissure in, in, uh, human psychology right now, which is again, this, this separation of God from money.

[00:40:34] Jonathan DeYoe: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:35] Sylvia Solit: Uh, so we use, we use money as a proxy for God. Uh, that’s why we, we want more of it to feel safe and secure as opposed to feeling safe and secure in our divine nature.

[00:40:43] Sylvia Solit: We think that there’s a number in a bank account that’ll make us feel safe and secure. So, be honest about where that divide is in yourself and be willing to put it on the, on the altar. It’s a hard thing to put on the altar. Like, I mean, most of like, yeah, like God is like all the spiritual is great.

[00:40:59] Sylvia Solit: It’s like great, [00:41:00] oh, all the way over. Like I, I’ll be spiritual all the way over here and all these other else, but money. I mean, let’s be real money. I’m gonna keep over here and this completely like different framework. And so, just track like how are you doing that in yourself? That’s a really brave, brave question to ask yourself.

[00:41:19] Jonathan DeYoe: I love it. One of the thing, one of the phrases that comes out of the men’s group constantly is it’s all practice, everything. Every single thing is part of practice. Everything is, it’s all spirit, , it’s all practice. And that’s a really good idea to remember. , you can’t exclude this piece or that piece, uh, from it. we’re getting close to the end of the hour and I want to, um, wrap up, but I wanna ask a couple more personal questions, , as we get there. The first is, what was the last thing you changed your mind about?

[00:41:46] Sylvia Solit: Last thing I changed my mind about. Trump believe it, or,

[00:41:51] Jonathan DeYoe: I am waiting to where this

[00:41:53] Sylvia Solit: I mean, I was like, that’s the biggest thing I changed my mind about like. I was like, I just, I thought, you know, I was [00:42:00] really like, pretty opinionated about, about everything that I was watching and seeing. lately I, I just realized that maybe some of my opinions were not completely informed, and that was a big mind shift for me.

[00:42:11] Sylvia Solit: And I, I’m, I’m doing a lot more listening right now and a lot less opining, more listening, and less opining.

[00:42:18] Jonathan DeYoe: That’s probably healthy for all of us all the

[00:42:20] Sylvia Solit: I was,

[00:42:20] Jonathan DeYoe: More listening.

[00:42:21] Sylvia Solit: yeah.

[00:42:22] Sylvia Solit: I’m not saying I love the guy. I just said, I decided I was gonna do a little bit more listening and less opining.

[00:42:27] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. I’m not, I’m not, not, I’m not gonna go any deeper into that. So, is, is there, is there anything people don’t know about you that you really want them to know?

[00:42:35] Sylvia Solit: I am, I’m gonna. Be brave and publish a book in about a year. you’ve already done that journey, so congratulations on, on doing it. I think it’s, it’s kind of a, a vulnerable folly to write a book in this day and age ’cause nobody even reads books anymore. And our attention is divided in a thousand pieces.

[00:42:53] Sylvia Solit: So, um, if you wanna learn more about, that book and it’s, when it comes out, you can just go to the sylvia.com.

[00:42:59] Jonathan DeYoe: [00:43:00] So I want to have you back on after that book. I wanna have a conversation, another, another conversation for sure. I have a fifth book. I have two books out. I’m working on the next one. I’ve got a, I’ve got a, a group, but the big one is Mindful Wealth. I. And wealth and culture, wealth and society, wealth and psychology, wealth, and how does it fit? And our conversation is very informative, for what I hope that book will be. It’s, it’s like, it’s my, what do you call it, Magnum opus. It’s the last thing that I’m gonna write, and it’s, it’s the hardest and scariest. Um,

[00:43:28] Sylvia Solit: Wow. Congratulations. Beautiful.

[00:43:30] Jonathan DeYoe: Well, I haven’t written anything yet. So, yeah, the seed is there for sure. So I want to have you back on, How do people find you? Where do they connect with you?

[00:43:41] Sylvia Solit: You can just go to thesylvia.com. That’s it. Sylvia with a Y.

[00:43:44] Jonathan DeYoe: Sylvia thank you so much for coming on. I’ve loved the conversation and I look forward to more.

[00:43:48] Sylvia Solit: Thank you. Your clients are lucky to have you.

[00:43:51] Outro: Thanks for listening. Full show notes for each episode, which includes a summary, [00:44:00] key takeaways, quotes, and any resources mentioned are available at Mindful Money. Be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. And if you’re enjoying the content and getting value from these episodes, please leave us a rating and review ratethispodcast.com/mindfulmoney. We’ll be sure to read those out on future episodes.