What I learned in a $20M house above the Pacific

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Hi Sheconomist Insider 👋 It’s Thamina, Founder of The Sheconomist. This is your bi-weekly dose of celebrating the female economy where I help ambitious, purpose-driven women like yourself flip the script on money, career & wellbeing conventions so you can live life on your own terms.

TLDR:

• 💫 Capacity is your competitive edge

• 💍 Don’t marry a loser

• 💰 Five news stories shaping your money right now

• 💜 Meet Lucy Bedewi, Founder of My Write Hand Woman

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🧪 Freedom Formulas

Last week I was in Malibu for my mentor Danielle Canty's Two Percent Mastermind Retreat. The theme was Honoring Her. Thirty-something ambitious women in a $20 million house above the Pacific, all running businesses.

Danielle opened with something profound I will be thinking about for a long time:

Capacity is your competitive advantage. Self-care isn't the soft thing, it is the work.

Danielle pointed out that the top CEOs in the world spend roughly ten hours a week on their routines. Not their calendars. Their bodies, their sleep, their nervous systems. Because the prefrontal cortex is the real CEO of any operation. And you are an asset to be invested in.

Then she handed over the stage to my friend Sandra Chuma, mindset coach, and one of the sharpest thinkers I know on why high-performing women plateau. Sandra has built a business to 8 figures but completely burnt out in the process and is now guiding women on how to be successful more sustainably.

Here’s what Sandra pointed out to us:

You've already done the work. The therapy. The mindset coaches. The masterminds. The breathwork. And there's still a gap between where you are and where you know you're meant to be. We tend to interpret that gap as a strategy failure. Sandra's argument is that it isn't.

The gap lives beneath strategy. It lives in the autonomic nervous system.

Did you know that about 80% of the information your vagus nerve carries goes from your body to your brain, NOT the other way around?

So before you've consciously thought can I charge this, can I be seen here, can I take up this much space, your body has already cast a vote. And if the vote is not safe, your strategy will quietly fail no matter how good it is.

The good news: Your “protection program” aka nervous system can be updated.

The bad news: But you can't think your way through it.

We often try to leap straight to identity - via affirmations, vision boards, "I am her" - while our body is still in protection mode. The body wins every time.

Sandra walked us through the actual neurological reality: when you fully feel an emotion in your body, it moves through and releases in roughly 90 seconds. We don't believe this because we never let it happen. We catch the sensation, decide it's dangerous, and immediately wrap a story around it. The story is what lasts for years. The emotion itself was always going to leave.

The practice is simple. Locate the feeling in your body, not the thought, the sensation. Let it be there. Extended exhale. Hand on chest. Or cross your arms and tap your shoulders. You are telling your nervous system: we are safe here. Once the state shifts, the story rewrites itself. Once the story rewrites, identity follows.

What I left Malibu thinking about is this: every woman in that room had already done the strategic work. The leverage left wasn't in another framework. It was in the body. And it's not a coincidence that the ones charging the most, holding the biggest rooms, and saying the hardest things were also the most regulated.

Capacity is the moat. Regulation is the multiplier.

Full credit and full love to Danielle for building that room and to Sandra for her profound contribution. If you don't follow Sandra yet, fix that this week. Her coaching slots are extremely limited but if you’ve been considering working with a coach and what I shared resonated with you, you might want to consider reaching out to Sandra.

❣️ Thamina’s Top Picks

💍 Don’t marry a loser - one of the best reads of 2026 so far

🎙️ Probably the best interview with Emma Grede I’ve recently come across

💻 A great and very interesting take on the rebranding of tech jobs in 2026 (a must watch if you work in tech)

📰 I met the founder of the Future AI Unfiltered newsletter at Danielle’s retreat and I highly recommend you subscribe to her newsletter

✨ This week’s Moodboard

Post credits go to GIRL🍥, Anni, Anni.atm️

💸 Cooking up Wealth

If you've ever felt like the financial news is in a different language, here's the translation. Five stories shaping your money right now, no Wall Street vocabulary required.

1. The stock market is at an all-time high, but it's a little misleading. The S&P 500, which tracks the 500 biggest US companies, hit a record on Monday. The catch: most of the gains came from a tiny group of giant tech names. The rest of the market is barely moving. Strong on the surface, narrow underneath.
   

2. The AI hype just got tested. A news report on Tuesday said OpenAI (ChatGPT's parent company) is growing slower than expected. The market noticed. This week, the biggest tech companies - Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet - all have their earnings calls to report how their 2026 is going, and that will tell us whether the AI boom keeps booming or finally takes a breath.
   

3. Loans are staying expensive. The Federal Reserve, which sets the tone for interest rates across the economy, is not lowering rates this week, and it likely won't all year. That means mortgages, credit cards, and car loans stay pricey. But your savings account benefits from this too. If yours isn't earning around 4% interest, you're leaving money on the table.
   

4. Gas is (still) up. So is everything connected to it. The war in Iran pushed oil prices to ~$100 a barrel and gas to its highest since 2022. Energy quietly drives the cost of groceries, deliveries, and travel. You might want to be more alert when it comes to your weekly spending.
   

5. The underdogs are showing up. While everyone watched Apple and Nvidia, smaller American companies (as tracked by the Russell 2000 index) just had their best month in two years. Bitcoin also climbed back near $80,000 this week.

The bottom line: the economy is at records on the surface, more fragile underneath, with energy prices climbing and rate cuts off the table. None of it is a reason to panic. All of it is a reason to actually look at your money, not just your portfolio, but your spending, your savings rate, and where your safety net is sitting.

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🌊 Women Making Waves

Lucy Bedewi wants us all to start loving our Mondays.

In one sentence: What's your purpose in life?

“To show women that being bold and dismantling the status quo is the secret to success.”

It's not bragging if it's based on facts. What's an accomplishment you are proud of?

“I'm proud of growing my company to 6-figures by the age of 22 after being fired from my first job after 90 days.”

What financial goal or milestone are you currently working towards?

“I'd love to take home $500K in profit.”

What is the greatest challenge young women are facing today?

“I think we have more opportunities than ever, but we're still punished if we're too much. Too bubbly. Too loud. Too cringe. This makes speaking up and marketing loudly feel terrifying-- when usually it's the scary things that really make a difference.”

How do you define success?

“To me success is loving Mondays. If you're creating good in the world, love what you're doing, and have the funds to casually say 'yes' to the bougie trip-- you're crushing it.”

What's your favorite woman-owned/-founded brand?

“Currently loving OUAI, because my hair always needs help and I love their clean, cool branding.”

Follow Lucy’s work here:

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