So Invested

One of the all time debates over the past couple of years has been, is AI going to take our jobs?

But we are ever the optimists and think that it will only enhance, BUT there are some skills you should be focusing on to stay relevant.

In this episode, we’re unpacking the six skills we’re intentionally investing in to stay valuable in the age of AI.

We talk about:

✨ The six skills we believe will matter most in an AI-driven world ✨ Why AI literacy is quickly becoming as essential as basic digital skills ✨ Why taste, judgement, and critical thinking are becoming competitive advantages ✨ Practical ways to develop creative thinking and original ideas in a world of infinite content ✨ Specific tools, resources, and habits we’re using to sharpen our AI skills right now

If you’ve been feeling equal parts curious and slightly intimidated by AI, this episode will give you tangible ways to start building skills that compound.

Other resources

Ever noticed how quickly “special” becomes normal?

The nice hotel. The upgraded flight. The boujee dinners. The “I deserve it.”

In this episode, we’re talking about lifestyle creep - why it happens, why it feels justified, and how it quietly slows down your path to financial freedom.

We explore:

✨The psychology behind lifestyle creep (hedonic adaptation + reference dependence)

✨How social media and new identity shifts influence spending

✨Financial and behavioural signs you might be creeping

✨How to upgrade intentionally (without upgrading everything)

✨Systems that reinforce your boundaries so you don’t rely on willpower

If you’re interested in levelling up your financial game this year, this is the episode that makes sure your money goals don’t drift.

In episode four of Backbone, we get into something every founder talks about but few assess properly: risk.

Growth requires risk. But not all risks are created equal. Some move your business forward. Others quietly drain your time confidence.

This week, we unpack how we think about risk in our own businesses what we’re actively betting on, what we won’t compromise on, and how we decide what’s worth it.

So this week, we cover:

• The real risks we’re currently taking in business and why
• Our non-negotiables before saying yes to a big decision
• How to assess upside vs downside in a practical way
• How to “price” the cost of failure (financially and emotionally)

If you’ve been sitting on a decision and wondering whether to leap or not, this episode is for you.

How do you grow your income without draining your energy?

In this episode, we’re unpacking what it really looks like to earn more sustainably - whether you’re in a 9-5, building something on the side, or working for yourself.

After reflecting on the past year (and watching friends + founders in our community navigate career decisions), we realised earning more isn’t about doing more. It’s about creating more value, building leverage, and protecting your energy. We talk about:

✨Why working harder doesn’t automatically mean earning more

✨The mindset shift from “effort” to “value”

✨How to think about bottlenecks in your time

✨Boundaries, batching work, and designing your schedule around your energy

✨Why thinking time (and yes, even naps) can be productivity strategies

If you’re in a season of wanting more money, but not more burnout, this one’s for you.

In episode three of Backbone, we get into the numbers that actually keep your business alive: cash.

Profit might look good on paper, but cash is what pays your bills, your team, and you. And yet, cash flow is one of the most misunderstood (and least confidently managed) parts of running a business.

So this week, we cover:

• Why profit ≠ cash, and how profitable businesses still run out of money
• Why cash flow is the most important metric to understand as a founder
• How to think about managing cash flow day-to-day (not just at tax time)
• Practical measures to safeguard your cash flow as your business grows
• A simple walk-through of the key line items in a cash flow statement — and what they actually tell you

In today’s episode, we tackle one of the most common money questions: how much should you actually be saving, and how much should you be investing?

We break down how we’re personally thinking about this in 2026, including the specific saving figures we’re aiming for, how we’re prioritising different buckets of money, and how our approach changes depending on life stage and goals.

We cover:

✨ How we’re approaching saving this year (including real numbers)

✨ The difference between “safe” money and “growth” money

✨ How we think about investing alongside saving, not instead of it

✨ The house dilemma: savings vs investments for a property deposit

✨ How to make decisions without feeling like you’re “doing it wrong”

Today we're sharing the AI tools we actually use to reduce mental load, automate boring life admin, and make better decisions - at work, with money, and in life.

We cover:

✨ Why women are adopting AI at lower rates - and why it matters

✨ Mental load & admin: Perplexity / Comet, Granola, Lindy.ai

✨ Leverage & creativity: Gamma, Nano Banana, Lovable

✨ Ease & personal life: Lifenotes.ai, Doji, NotebookLM

Recommendations:

Welcome to episode two of Backbone! The four part mini series where we discuss the financial side of building a business. Today, we get into the structures that sit underneath your business and the tax impacts of each!

Whether you’re just starting out, running a side hustle, or transitioning into something more complex, the way your business is set up has real implications for tax, cash flow, and risk. And yet, this is one of the least openly discussed parts of being a founder.

So, this week, we have the candid tax conversation that no one seems to be having.

In this episode, we cover:

• The common business structures available to new and growing business owners
• How and when structures tend to change as your business becomes more complex
• The tax realities founders often avoid (and why that’s risky)
• Our perspective on when to bring in an accountant, bookkeeper, or advisor and what to look for

This episode is brought to you by Notion - and by far one of our favourite tools, Notion Agent. Notion Agent is fundamentally different from typical AI tools. Instead of just suggesting or chatting, it completes tasks end-to-end, turning days of manual work into minutes.

It acts like a Notion super user that understands your workspace, your working style, and how you like things done - helping you stay organised, clear, and accountable as you build.

At the beginning of every year, we are filled with new motivation and an attitude for change. But here’s the thing - motivation is a terrible long term strategy. Instead, we need consistent systems in place to actually achieve our goals, for when motivation (undoubtedly) dips!!

In this episode, we break down why most people don’t fail because they’re lazy or undisciplined - they fail because they never set up the systems to support the outcome they want.

We cover:

• Why relying on motivation will always let you down
• Why choosing one goal is the fastest way to make progress
• And the four systems we’re putting in place this year to ensure we actually hit our North Star goal

This is the practical, no-fluff conversation about designing your environment, habits, and workflows so progress happens by default!

Welcome to Backbone: a four-part mini series all about the financial backbone of building a business, side hustle, or freelance career.

We talk endlessly about the exciting parts of building something - the idea, the creativity, the passion, the momentum. But behind the scenes, it’s often the money side that feels confusing, intimidating, or easy to avoid. And more often than not, businesses fail because the financials were ignored.

There’s a huge gap in how openly we talk about money as founders. The messy bits. The avoidance. The “I’ll deal with it later” moments. This series is about closing that gap and helping you build confidence with your numbers.

Episode one starts with the foundation: accountability. Not outsourcing responsibility, but learning to work alongside experts and developing the mindset that you need to understand what’s happening with the money in your business.

In this episode, we cover:

• What an accountability mindset really means
• The common barriers that stop founders from taking control of their finances
• How to shift from pure creativity into commercial
• Practical, realistic ways to build money check-ins into your routine

We're backkkk! And we have a life update for you!!! It's our first time recording from different places in years, so we discuss why Soph is taking a deliberate pause to rethink her next chapter.

The next eight weeks is all about taking you behind the scenes of how we’re setting ourselves up for the year ahead - money-wise, life-wise, all of it.

And step one is about zooming out.... You can think of this as our vision board episode.

We unpack:

✨ Why you need a starting point before you set goals

✨ How to audit your life across work, money, relationships, health, fun, and rest

✨ The questions that help you land on what’s actually true for you right now

✨ Why money without a “why” feels empty

✨ And how to build a modern vision board, not a Pinterest board

This episode lays the foundation for everything that comes next.

For our final episode of 2025! We’re closing out the year the only way we know how - with a very honest chat about what actually happened in 2025.

From career pivots to money mindset shifts, moments of growth and challenges - we reflect on what we learned, what we’re letting go of, and what we want to bring into 2026.

This episode is part reflection, part therapy session, and part goal-setting ritual.

Are you feeling stuck in your job but also overwhelmed at the thought of finding something new?

We have been having so many of these conversations with friends so it got us thinking - let's create a playbook, using AI (so it takes out a lot of the brunt work) to land your dream job come the new year.

So in this episode, we’re breaking down a six-week playbook to help you prepare, explore, and land your next role - from figuring out what excites you, to networking, to polishing your resume and actually applying. Basically, we’ve taken all the WhatsApp notes, voice memos, and AI tools we’ve been playing with, and put it into one episode for you.

This week, we cover:

• How to define your values, lifestyle goals, and dream work in a way that’s realistic but exciting

• Tools you can use to remove friction from the job hunt process

• A week-by-week structure that incrementally builds so the process doesn't feel overwhelming

By the end of this episode, you’ll have a clear roadmap so that by January you can hit the job market feeling prepared, confident, and energised.

Surprise! This week’s ep is something a little different...

Many of you will know that Maddy's day job is on the investment team at Blackbird. Well this week, on a very special interview episode, Maddy is sitting down with one of the founders that Blackbird invested in - Michelle Battersby - to unpack her company Sunroom's recent acquisition by Fanfix.

They get into:

Hot take: Spotify isn’t just where we listen to music anymore... It’s quietly becoming one of the most powerful tech companies in the world.

This week, we unpack the story behind the streaming giant’s wild rise - from solving piracy in a Stockholm apartment to turning its first-ever profit, tripling its share price, and now leading the AI revolution in audio.

We cover:

From piracy to playlists to personalised AI, this is the story of how Spotify redefined music - and what its next chapter tells us about the future of creativity, tech, and business.

TikTok might be about to change forever. The U.S. government has pushed through a forced sale - and one of the biggest questions on everyone’s mind is: who’s buying it, and what happens next?

This week, we’re unpacking how the TikTok sale came to be, what it means for creators, and whether this could actually become the newest “Big Tech” investment story.

We cover:
✨ Why the TikTok sale is happening - and who’s stepping up to buy it
✨ What it means for Oracle to control the algorithm
✨ How Oracle’s public stock makes this a real investment story for everyday people
✨ What it means if you're a creator on the platform

Networking gets a bad rap, and honestly... we get it! Walking into a room alone can feel terrifying. But here’s the truth: every opportunity we’ve had, from jobs to friendships to this podcast, has come through our networks.

This week, we’re redefining what networking actually means, why it doesn’t have to be awkward or transactional, and how to build relationships that genuinely change your life.

We unpack:

✨ Why your network is your net worth

✨ How to start building connections before you need them

✨ The rise of modern girl networking, from TikTok to Club Sup

✨ Real-life hacks for surviving events solo (and actually enjoying them)

✨ What to say instead of “so, what do you do?”

✨ How to sustain relationships day-to-day without feeling forced

This week's episode was jam packed full of recommendations:

Is hustle culture making a comeback or are we just redefining what ambition looks like?

This week, we’re unpacking the messy middle between chasing success and protecting our sanity. As ambitious women, we’ve felt the tension between striving, setting boundaries, and the burnout that inevitably follows when those boundaries slip. So, we’re asking: what does success actually mean now, and how do we build lives that don’t run us into the ground?

We unpack:
✨ Why hustle culture is creeping back into the conversation
✨ The difference between ambition and overextension
✨ Redefining success beyond money and titles
✨ Why we are all feeling so burnout !!

Plus, an all time favourite community dilemma about splitting bills.

If you could sit down with your 20-year-old self and talk money… what would you say?

Hot take: Dating in 2025 feels less like romance and more like economics... 

Inspired by the film Materialists and the conversations it’s sparked, we unpack the financial impact of the dating apps on modern dating: the rise of financial transparency as a new love language, why accidental “ROI thinking” might be killing the vibe, and of course, the "who pays on the first date" etiquette. 

And we weigh in on a community dilemma: should you pay someone back for dates if things don’t work out?

Buying a home has always been part of the “Australian dream” but in 2025, it feels like the dream looks a little different. Some people are diving into property, others are choosing to rent and invest elsewhere, and a growing number are packing up and moving overseas instead. So, how are people making it work?

In this episode, we unpack:

• Generational shifts in property – why our 30s look so different to our parents’ 30s
• Investing vs. lifestyle – should your first property be a home or an investment?
• Long-term planning – the maths of saving for a deposit and what it really takes
• The Bank of Mum & Dad – 30% of first-home buyers are getting help from parents… so why does it feel so taboo?

We also tackle a community dilemma: “Am I the asshole for not wanting my partner’s parents to chip in for our house deposit?” – unpacking the financial, emotional and relational layers of accepting help.

Whether you’re a renter, a soft saver, or already on the property ladder, this conversation is about being honest with where you’re at, and giving yourself permission to start exploring the options.

For our very first Investment Club episode, we’re diving into the book Die With Zero - a money mindset read that challenges the way we think about saving, spending, and what it really means to live well.

We unpack the big ideas, including:

• Why over-saving might just be scarcity in disguise

• The concept of the “memory dividend” and how experiences compound over time

• How to smooth your spending across life stages (aka when to enjoy your money vs. when to save it)

• Why giving earlier - to your kids, your community, or yourself - creates more impact

• And the simple exercise of mapping “time buckets” so you don’t miss your best years

Whether you’ve read the book or not, this episode is your shortcut to the biggest lessons, and how they apply to your own money, career, and choices today.

Plus: a life update from our break, and why we started the Investment Club in the first place.

Ever felt broke even when you know you’re not? That disconnect has a name: money dysmorphia - and it’s more common than you think.

In this episode, we unpack the feeling of financial “not-enoughness” and how it shows up: the distorted self-perception, the highlight-reel comparison trap, and the pressure to be perfect with your money. From cultural money scripts to avoidance spirals, we dive deep into the psychology behind why so many of us feel behind, even when we’re doing okay.

We also share practical steps to rewire your mindset, including how to recognise unhelpful money beliefs, get out of perfectionism loops, and start building real financial confidence.

Plus: Rich Girl Habits returns, and we debrief on last night’s event.

Jeff Bezos’ wedding reportedly cost $50 million and the internet had thoughts. But is that really outrageous when you’re worth $244 billion? 

In this episode, we dive into what the average person can learn about wedding budgets from the Bezos extravaganza, what the average Aussie wedding really costs, and whether spending almost 10% (!!) of your net worth on one day is actually the norm.

Plus: wedding culture, hot takes, and the surprising side hustle of being a celebrant.

We’ve been a little off-track with our financial goals this year… so with the new financial year kicking off, it felt like the perfect moment for a reset.

In this episode, we’re walking you through our Rich Girl Formula - designed to help you build a stronger money mindset and better financial habits.

Plus, we’ve set ourselves a 30-day challenge, and we want you to join us!

Side note...

From a soft toy keychain to a billion-dollar empire... Labubu is the internet’s latest obsession, and the toy behind a 560% share price spike at China’s Pop Mart. But how did it go from niche artist collab to global status symbol (and sell for up to $150,000 along the way)?

In this episode, we dive into the rise of Labubus and the business behind it. From blind box psychology to K-pop influencer hype, we unpack how Pop Mart built a cultural juggernaut on scarcity, storytelling, and a social media fanbase that queues for hours just for a shot at a mystery toy.

We also zoom out to explore what this frenzy says about emotional spending, China’s growing cultural export power, and whether toys are the new lipstick index.

Have you caught yourself wondering if you are in the right job - and if it’s too late to start over? We have too. Lately, both of us have made some pretty big career moves: Mads has moved into the VC world and (big news!) Soph has quit her corporate job. And we know we’re not the only ones - the question keeps popping up amongst our friends and in our DMs: I’m nearly 30… is it too late to change direction?

In this episode, we’re chatting openly about how we end up in careers that don’t quite fit, how to know when it’s time to quit, and how to figure out what you actually want to do next. Basically, we’re taking the voice notes from our WhatsApp chat and hitting record!

From glazed donut skin to a billion dollar exit - Hailey Bieber’s Rhode just sold to E.l.f. in one of the biggest beauty acquisitions of the decade. But how did a minimalist skincare brand with fewer than 10 products pull off a $1B valuation in just three years?

In this episode, we dive into the strategy behind Rhode’s rise: the power of personal brand, community-first marketing, and the genius of scarcity. We also zoom out to look at what this deal says about the beauty industry today - from the crumbling lipstick index to the resurgence of consumer brand acquisitions, and why Gen Z is still buying lip gloss in a cost of living crisis.

Emma Grede is the business woman behind some of the world's most successful retail companies including Good American and Skims, and a powerhouse that has carved out a career that’s bold, intentional, and unconventional.

From packed stadiums to record-breaking broadcast deals, women's sport is finally having its moment - but is it just a moment, or the beginning of a permanent power shift?

In this episode, we dive into the booming business of women’s sport: why audiences are showing up in droves, how brands are catching on, and what it all means for the future of media, money, and representation. We unpack the ripple effects of the Matildas’ World Cup run, the WNBA's glow-up, and the growing investment case for women’s leagues around the world.

If you loved this episode, share it with a friend or slide into our DMs with your take on the women’s sport boom.

Splitting a bill is an inevitable occurrence when out socialising, so why can it feel so awkward and transactional? 

Every year, the Met Gala dominates headlines with extravagant looks and celebrity selfies. But behind the velvet ropes and tailored suits is one of the most powerful - and profitable - marketing machines in the world, masterminded by none other than Anna Wintour.

In this episode, we explore how the Met Gala became fashion’s Super Bowl, why designers spend millions to show up, and how the exclusivity of the guest list translates to massive media value. We also dig into how Wintour has cleverly brought in tech sponsors like Amazon and TikTok, and what that says about the future of retail and the shifting landscape of influence. This isn’t just about fashion — it’s about power, prestige, and the campaigns money can’t buy.

If you loved this episode, share it with a friend or slide into our DMs with your take on the Met machine.

The Nagi v. Brooki scandal exploded across social media last week - what looked like a drama confined to the cookbook world actually reveals a much bigger business story. This week, we unpack behind the scenes of the publishing industry and why publishers are making their bets on the creator economy. 

The scandal also left us wondering: is this just another example of the ever-expanding copycat economy? From beauty to fashion, dupes are everywhere - why does it feel like originality is dying and that there are no ramifications for copying? 

Plus, this week, we unpack our first community money dilemma: should you split the cost of attending a wedding when it’s your partner’s friends getting married - not yours?

We’d love to hear your take - slide into our DMs and share your money perspectives!

On today's show, Maddy and Soph are back - and bringing you up to speed on everything that's changed over the past six months.

From leaving their media network to fully owning So Invested, t'is the season of big moves, fresh starts, and major personal growth.

They share life updates - including Soph’s new single chapter and Maddy’s jump into venture capital - and introduce the brand-new So Invested format:

✨ Weekly episodes

✨ Deep dives into the headlines shaping your wallet

✨ Rotating segments on personal finance, investing, and real-world money dilemmas from the community.

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