A conversation with Shelly Lombard. Shelly spent 30+ years on Wall Street investing in the debt and equity of companies, an experience that gives her a unique perspective as a member of corporate boards.
Shelly had a 30+ year career on Wall Street valuing and investing in public and private companies. Her finance specialties include evaluating companies' financials in order to assess financial health, balance sheet management, and leveraging the capital markets and investor relations to maximize value for stakeholders. She serves on the boards of public companies including Bed Bath & Beyond, and has a LinkedIn newsletter called Schmooze, which talks about business relationships for women.
Shelly shared that money was tight while growing up. Both her parents were school teachers and so had a pretty comfortable income, but it was tight for their family of six. In Shelly's words, she had everything she needed but not everything she wanted. Shelly remembers appreciating having her first job, at age 15, which gave her the freedom of summer spending money and financial cushion.
Shelly was a gifted student. She started college when she was 16 years old, and attended Columbia Business School on scholarship. She had worked as a journalist before deciding to get an MBA, after coming to the realization that she was never going to get ahead financially on a journalist's salary!
Shelly's first job out of business school was doing leveraged finance first at Citibank, then at Drexel, Burnham Lambert. She loved the drama and relevancy of working on deals that were on the cover of the Wall Street Journal the next morning! Later on in her career, she became a frequent guest on CNBC, talking about the auto industry during the financial crisis. She was downsized when the auto industry righted itself, leading to a long period of exploring how her skillset could be used in new roles.
"I started Schmooze, the LinkedIn newsletter, not because I have great tips on networking, but because I wanted to interview amazing women doing amazing things who had a perspective on business relationships and how you leverage them and how you make them work for you." - Shelly Lombard
Key takeaways:
- Have an emergency fund. Shelly went through a difficult period financially when she lost her job in the aftermath of the financial crisis, while her kids were in college. Thankfully, she had a large emergency fund, knowing as she did the inherent volatility of the financial industry.
- Focus on building your network when you’re exploring what to do next. Women often have difficulty with transactional, business relationships. As a generalization, women tend to build relationships based upon shared interests, while men make friends based on what they can do for each other. Shelly started her LinkedIn newsletter, On the Schmooze, so she could learn from women who have a perspective on how to build robust business relationships.
- Understand how your skill set may extend to new opportunities. Shelly had defined herself narrowly as a “distressed debt investor,” until she realized that her analytical skills could extend to new roles. She is now exploring venture capital investing, and is a limited partner in a venture capital fund that invests in beauty brands that have been launched by people of color.
About the guest:
Shelly spent 30+ years on Wall Street valuing and investing in companies. Since then, she has served on the boards of several public companies, most recently Bed Bath & Beyond. Recently, she also launched a LinkedIn newsletter for women about business relationships called Schmooze.
Linkedin:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/shellylombard/
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Shelly Lombard: I started Schmooze the newsletter. It's a LinkedIn newsletter, not because I have great tips on networking, but because I wanted to interview amazing women doing amazing things who had a perspective on business relationships and how you leverage them and how you make them work for you.
Welcome to Making Change With Your Money, a podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves. Now, here's your host, certified by Financial Planner, Laura Rotter.
Laura Rotter: I am so excited to have as my guest today, Shelly Lombard. Shelly and I spent many years together as institutional investors on Wall Street, and Shelly has taken that unique perspective from her investing experience, and she's now serving on several boards of public companies, including Bed, Bath and Beyond. She's also an investor in a venture capital fund and is raising a VC secondary fund, and she's recently launched a LinkedIn newsletter for women about business relationships called Schmooze.
So welcome Shelly to the Making Change With Your Money Podcast.
Shelly Lombard: Oh, thanks Laura. Thank you. So nice to be here.
Laura Rotter: I start all my interviews with the same question, and that is, Shelly, what was money like in your family growing up?
Shelly Lombard: You know what, it's hard to say because I knew money was tight, so my parents were school teachers, both of them.
We had four kids, and so back then a teacher's salary was a pretty comfortable salary, but probably not if you had four kids. So I just remember in the summertime not having any money because they didn't get paid during the summertime. And so, you know, summer you are off from school, you wanna go to the mall with your friends, you want to go to the amusement parks.
And there was never any money during the summer. So, I would say that we had everything we needed, but I didn't have everything I wanted. Um, in terms of really the cool clothes and the cool shoes and to be able to go places and do whatever I wanted to do, because again, we had everything we needed, but money was relatively tight because, you know, two teachers, four kids, you know, so,
Laura Rotter: So where are you in the birth order of, of the four kids?
Shelly Lombard:
I'm the oldest, so it's me and then two brothers, then a sister.
Laura Rotter: And I'm curious both how being the oldest as well as knowing that money was tight, how did that impact you? Did you have summer jobs? Were you the one everyone looked to?
Shelly Lombard: I was dying for a summer job and it was tough because there were a lot of programs available, uh, public programs available, uh, For people who were below a certain, a certain income threshold.
So if you came from a family that was relatively low income, you could get a job at the public parks, the public playgrounds during the summer as a camp counselor, et cetera. Well, my family made too much money. So we made too much money for me to get one of those jobs, but not enough money to have like a really cushy summer.
So finally one summer I was able to be a camp counselor. That, uh, camp that didn't have like a, a low income requirement and I just remember thinking, making my own money. I think I was 15. Making my own money was just the best thing ever. That was just the best thing ever. And I'm, I don't think I'm afraid of scarcity, but I like to know I have cushion.
So I knew I always had food in my roof, your roof over my head and clothes. But I like to have a decent amount of cushion, and that's what I didn't have growing up was the cushion. And I, I really want that now. I prioritize that now.
Laura Rotter: Interesting. So Shelly, did your parents have this ethic that you had to use the money you earned towards things for school or were you able to use the money for fun, or, or did you just save it?
Shelly Lombard: You know what, it was four kids. It was a little chaotic. They didn't, you know, I think if, you know, if they had to do it all over again, they would probably say, okay, you save some, spend, some, et cetera. They just, they were like, you got a paycheck good you know, go to the mall. They were just happy I wasn't bugging them, so they didn't, they didn't install they didn't in install with us any necessarily necessary discipline about money. We weren't undisciplined, but it wasn't like, okay, you know, you got your check. It's a hundred bucks, 30 is gonna be saved, 30 is gonna be, they didn't do that at all.
They were just happy that, you know, we were working, we had money, and so that was kind of a burden that they didn't have to bear if I wanted to go to the mall or I wanted extra things.
Laura Rotter: Thanks for sharing that cuz it says to me that your parents, no matter how they might have felt about money, they didn't put the burden on you and your siblings.
It wasn't like you need to chip in. They let you feel that the money you earned was yours to decide what to do with whether or not you feel as you look back. That was a great education, but. It's a freedom that you had.
Shelly Lombard: Yes, absolutely. They didn't require me to contribute anything to the house or anything like that, and I think they were very conscious. Look, teachers were not getting a salary during the summer. The kids wanna do stuff, so this job is great because then they can do things and I don't have to provide it. And I, quite frankly, they didn't have it during the summer.
Laura Rotter: Thanks. You're, you're making me reflect on my upbringing and similar to what you're saying, I never felt, I knew there was scarcity, but I never felt it to be a burden on me. And I think about it a lot given, you know, now what I do for a living. Why my sister and I both turned out to be the primary breadwinners of our family was when I didn't feel a scarcity. So I'm actually sharing that with you because I know the career trajectory you've had. And I know your sister also is an attorney. Right. So have you thought about how you were impacted, how the career choices you made was impacted by your experience?
Shelly Lombard: Um, You know what? Yes and no. So I wanted to be a journalist. I majored in communications undergrad and didn't think about the salary or anything like that. You know, as a kid, I was 16 when I went to college. I turned 17 my freshman year. And so you didn't, I didn't think, oh, I need to go do something and make a lot of money. I didn't think about that at all. I thought about what can I do that I enjoyed? And then after I worked for in the field for a little while, by that time I was married and money was scarce.
You know, I didn't make a lot of money in a, a writing career, and that's when I was like, I wanna make money. You know, I'm not willing to sacrifice happiness for money, so I'm not going to go do something. I know I would hate, like being a, a corporate attorney or something like that, or, you know, I can't stand site of blood, so I'm definitely not gonna law school, I mean, sorry, med.
School. But, um, I, I knew I wanted something that I enjoyed, but something that gave me, again, a lot of cushion. So my family did a few vacations, you know, during the summer we did a trip with the Boy Scouts to Mexico. We went to a dude ranch at one point and rode horses. So we did a few things, but again, there wasn't a lot of money and I really wanted to do more of that kind of stuff.
So I purposely sought out a second career after being a writer, and I was young, so second career came on around my mid-twenties, a second career. That provided more income for me to be able to do those things that my parents kind of gave us a window to, but they couldn't, you know, give us a lot of it, you know, so I didn't learn to, well I grew up in New Orleans, so you know, skiing was something that was way far off.
You would have to drive a long distance to go somewhere to ski. And so I didn't grow up doing that, you know, I didn't grow up belonging to a country club or anything like that. And so I was conscious of being able to expose my kids to things like that and having the money to be able to take 'em to Europe and, and, and do things like that.
So my sister and I talk all the time about how we knew that there was better stuff out there. And so we figured out how to, to get a job where we could be happy to by the same token, you know, get enough money to do these, to fulfill these, you know, desires.
Laura Rotter: It's interesting, Shelly, that you say that you and your sister knew there were better things out there.
I've interviewed, uh, a number of people now for this podcast and even thinking back on my own childhood, I don't think I knew those things were out there. Certainly not in the way that we're aware of it now with social media and reality TV. So it's interesting that you felt that you did. Where were you exposed to it.
Shelly Lombard: Yeah. Just you know, look, when we did this trip with the Boy Scouts to Mexico, it was like, I wanna do more of this. You know? And then I started to be, when we were newly married, your couples that had more money than my husband and I. Did they went on a cruise. So things like that. I remember even into business school, when I was in business school, I remember spring break rolled around, people were going to like Mexico or you know, the going to Jamaica, whatever. And I thought, Ooh, I wanted to, and that's the first time, like when we had spring break in New Orleans, I didn't go anywhere, you know, we didn't have the money to go anywhere, but I thought I lost. I said people are going places. Even it wasn't just as a kid, but even into my mid twenties, I was noticing that, you know, there was more out there, you know, beach houses and you know, ski trips and that kind of stuff. And so it, it's been a, a process and I'm still discovering things like that where it's like, oh, that's interesting…people do that. I wanna do that too. So,
Laura Rotter: Shelly, I never knew that you went to college when you were 16, so I have to ask you about that. How did that come about?
Shelly Lombard: So I was a pretty gifted student, I guess, and uh, my parents were teachers, so they taught me to read early. I was reading early and I was in first grade reading the newspaper.
And so I remember asking my mother about different things that probably would not have. To know about. And so, but I read the newspaper, I read the advice columns. It was Ann Landers, then not the sister, dear Abby, Dear Ann. And so I read the advice column. I read the thing from cover to cover pretty much every day. And so I think if you are an avid reader, you tend to test well. And I tested really, really well. Back in those days, segregated schools. There were no Gifted and Talented programs at all, but certainly not for black children. And so they just skipped me a grade. So instead of go, I never went to second grade.
I went from first grade to third grade. And so that meant I was, you know, I went to college, a lot of people, I would've been ordinarily 17, making 18 that fall, but I was 16, turning 17 that fall.
Laura Rotter: Thanks. Did that have any impact on you in terms of socially keeping up with people?
Shelly Lombard: Right. You hear stories? No, because it happened so early. You know, the only thing it was was, you know, my friends were driving and I couldn't drive so my friends could drink, but I couldn't drink, you know, cuz I was a year younger. So, but other than that, you know, I think if I had skipped. 10th grade or something like that, it would've been different, but it happened so early in my education that I didn't notice it at all. Other than those things that require an ID.
Laura Rotter: Yes. And for better or for worse, being a woman, I think that's, it makes it a little bit easier. We thought about, you know, my son and. You know, holding him back when he was younger, you know, when he was five and saying, um, you want him to be able to drive when all, when everyone's driving? Sort of, I guess that's a very sexist thing to say, but,
Shelly Lombard: But no, you do. And then also with boys, you know, it's skipping them, you know, maybe they're smaller. Cuz I had that same. Thought about my son, we thought about holding him back and we didn't, cuz he was actually very physically advanced, so, but he probably could have used that extra year of maturity.
Laura Rotter: Yes, exactly. So you started out as a journalist, which I think is interesting because you did end up working for Gimme Credit again at a point. So you did end up using your writing. Your reporting skills. So you did say something about going to business school, so what was the trajectory that you woke up and said, I want more money than this?
Shelly Lombard: Yes, I was working it. I really ended up not working as a journalist, so I had gotten an offer from a newspaper, which I didn't take stupidly. I was engaged to my husband, and so we both moved back to New Orleans and I couldn't find a newspaper job. They only have one newspaper in town, and so I couldn't find a newspaper job, so I took a job. I was in charge of employee communications for a company that manufactured laundry equipment. And so I would do things like put together the employee newsletter and it was things like, oh, so and so John Smith in Welding won the the bowling trophy with his. 16. You know, Michael Brown in assembly line number three, his wife said in her meatloaf recipe, yum, yum.
And after, after like five years, I was like, killed myself. Also too, it wasn't a lot of money. So the years just stretched out ahead of me and I thought, I'm never gonna get ahead at this rate. So I had read, I read a book. Called The Hundred Best Companies to Work For. And Goldman Sachs was in that book and they talked about how everybody at Goldman, even the secretaries, made at least $50,000 a year.
And at that point, that was huge to me cuz I was making maybe 25,000 a year. So I thought I'm going to Wall Street. And that was, that's what started it. And I decided I'm, I was gonna go back, get my mba, and I was going to Wall Street.
Laura Rotter: It's interesting, you and I go back and I often think that your stories echo mine cuz I was in, uh, you know, I was a junior lending officer at a small middle market bank and I remember I was making, like, making like $17,000, but I knew the people who were like the chief lending were making like $30,000 and I said, I'm, I'm not doing this. And I remember like reading about Wall Street and saying, I wanna do that and going for my MBA at night while I was still at the bank.
Shelly Lombard: Yeah. And if I had, if I knew there was nothing in New Orleans, That was gonna pay me decently, cuz if I did, I would've like, if I, like you had lived in New York, I would've probably gone to NYU or something at night rather than quitting my job, which was a big deal, you know, to quit my job and, you know, moved to New York.
But I knew I wasn't gonna find anything in New Orleans. So I, you know, wanted to get out, wanted to get to New York wanted to do it full-time. So, you know, I quit my job and I did. It was a big deal, but it was the best thing, you know? Definitely in retrospect, best thing I could have ever done. Totally different life.
Laura Rotter: Yes. So where did, where did you go to school? I went to Columbia And, and your husband? Moved with you, I'm assuming.
Shelly Lombard: Yeah. Yeah. He moved with me. So that's why it was kind of a, uh, it was a big deal, you know, both of us giving up jobs to, you know, move. And we knew we weren't coming back cuz there was no Wall Street in New Orleans.
So I knew, you know, we were going to be staying in New York. So it was a big move for multiple reasons. So, but I actually for many years loved what I did and, you know, don't regret leaving a writing career, full-time, writing career at all.
Laura Rotter: What? What was your source of income when you both quit your jobs and picked up and left?
Shelly Lombard: Well, Steven was working, but I ended up there. I had no income, so I was fortunate. As I mentioned, I test very well and I think at that time a lot of the people going to Columbia with the two year analysts from Wall Street, so they worked somewhere for two years and then they go back to business school and I was. An oddball, you know, I was a journalist and so I think they were looking like, okay, we gotta mix this class up some. So I ended up getting a scholarship and Steven worked and he covered the rent and the food. And so that's kind of how we did it. You know, I was one of the handful of people who didn't come from a two year analyst program on Wall Street.
And so present value, like it really took me a long time to understand. What is meant by present value, and so it was really hard. I was used to being an A student and I really struggled to get Bs at Columbia.
Laura Rotter: Interesting.I mean, Shelly, not only are the concepts new, but the language, when you think about the language that you know, at this point, we take for granted.
Um, you know, I have to be aware because I'm, I'm explaining concepts well, you are a wonderful explainer of concepts, I know you've always enjoyed that, but explaining concepts to people that not only have no background but have an overlay of emotional shame that they don't understand the concepts and being able to break it down and explain it is not an easy task. So you decided, I guess, to focus on finance and not on marketing.
Shelly Lombard: Yeah. I took a marketing class, I think a baby, what they call baby marketing was required. So I took it, but surprisingly I didn't gravitate toward it. I didn't love it, you know, and I had taken one accounting course in undergrad and one econ course and kind of liked them.
Now, what I encountered at business school was like three levels up from that. But I kind of like, I'm not good at Geometry math or calculus math, nothing like that. Like equations, anything like that. But if it's, I mean, basically what we do is adding, subtracting, you know, division, multiplication. It's really simple.
There are some concepts like. IRR and returns and present value and future value that are a little different, but once you understand them, it's all, it's all just regular, straightforward math. So I couldn't be any type of scientist or anything that required me to use calculus, but I certainly, if it involves money, I can usually figure it out.
Laura Rotter: So true. I was a math major for my freshman year of college, and then I, I, you know, I said, I didn't realize it becomes philosophy, right? I don't wanna be a philosophy major. I just want, I, I think it sort of serves this purpose, the kind of math that you and I have always done of a certain amount of certainty. It seems like that in a world where there's no such thing as certainty, but math can fill that need, so,
Shelly Lombard: Yeah, and I love it. I always tell the story. So my very first semester I took what's called baby accounting, and I used to spend all day Saturday doing my accounting homework. It was so overwhelming and it was the old fashioned debits and credits kind of stuff.
And so I remember studying for the final and I was like, I. Think I really understand the income statement. I think I understand the balance sheet, but the cashflow statement, I don't really get it. So it was like two, three o'clock in the morning, the exam's at eight. I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna wing it on cashflow.
I get to the exam, it's two questions. Here's an income statement and a balance sheet. Do a cashflow statement. Use those two to do a cashflow. And then the second question is, explain what you did. And so I was like, oh my God, I'm totally thrilled. Cause cashflow was something I didn't understand under. Now I can do one in my sleep.
You know, about two years out of business school after learning to model and do, you know, leverage finance. I could do a cashflow statement in my sleep and it's my favorite statement now and I love it. The reason I mentioned that is because, you know, if it's wrong, it's supposed to tie to the cash balance.
And so I love that certainty of, I know I did this right where a calculus equation I could get a seven and the number might be four, but with a cashflow statement, I know exactly cuz it's supposed to tie to the cash balance. So you're absolutely right. There's a level of certainty about it that I love.
Now, if you don't get the right answer, it can be frustrating to figure it out, but there is a level of certainty about your know, cashflow statements that I absolutely love that is not in math, it's in like accounting and money, but not necessarily in math.
Laura Rotter: I love that story, Shelly, and I'm thinking, um, we met as, um, in the distressed debt market, right?
We're, we're looking at companies and cashflow is a very important part of it. And I remember my first job, I was a junior analyst on a high yield mutual fund. And we would just look at all these ratios and it's almost same thing. And it didn't click in me like, oh, this is the current ratio and this is, and then I, I still remember, similar to what you were describing, being in the office and going, I.Oh, it's like running a household, like this is the cash that's coming in and this is the cash that's going out, and how quickly are you turning your, you know, it was like this aha moment of, and that's what I loved about what we did and what I do now with individuals, which is, I love the, the numbers and then the stories that the numbers support.
So how did, I remember when I met you, but how did you get from your MBA at Goldman to working in the distressed debt market.
Shelly Lombard: So I, my first job out of Columbia was doing leverage finance at Citibank. That was the heyday of LBOs, and I loved that job, loved it, even though I sometimes was in the office till one, two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning.
Putting together models of deals. I just loved it. And I loved coming home in a black car at, you know, two o'clock in the morning, you know, New York City, you know, skyline is twinkling, and then the next morning, the deal that you work on is on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. It was just, You just feel like this is so relevant. I'm so relevant, what I'm doing, it's newsworthy, it matters. And then I left Citibank after like two years to go to Drexel Burnham, Lamber, and at that point, Drexel, which a lot of people were too young to remember, Drexel now was like a big deal. You know, Mike Milken, Drexel was providing junk bonds for hostile takeovers.
But you know, because of various reasons, Drexel folded and that kind of ushered in the era of distress because Drexel, along with Citibank and other banks, had helped finance all these leverage deals that were now too leveraged. And they were what we called in distress, good companies with bad balance sheets.
They just had too much debt. And so once Drexel disappeared, there was no one “making a market” in these deals. So the, the company might be fine, but the bonds instead of trading at a hundred cents on the dollar, They would trade at 50 cents on a dollar because nobody really understood them, understood what was going on.
Drexel used to make a market and trade 'em. They were gone. And so that ushered in what you and I know is kind of the beginning of the distress market.
Laura Rotter: That was early nineties.
Shelly Lombard: Yeah, kind of like 91, something like that. Um, and so it was wonderful because you had to understand the business and understand the story and figure out whether this was a business that was a real business, had a reason to exist, and if so, what was it worth? And that had a direct correlation to what the bonds were worth. So you were trying to buy bonds at 20 cents or 30 cents or 40 cents, hoping they would be worth. You know, 40 cents or 80 cents, something like that, you know, to double your money. So it was, it was a wonderful, I just thought it was the best career in the world.
Laura Rotter: It was so much fun when you, and in those days it was really like the wild West. There weren't that many analysts and investors looking at the market. And I often describe what we invested in Shelly as, um, equity in drag. I mean we were buying the bonds that Right. Were ultimately going to become the stock of the company.
Shelly Lombard: Yes. Cost when Yes. A company. Oh, that's a great way to put it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so it's cause it was a qualitative aspect to it cuz you had to understand the company, you know what I mean? I lost money on things that I didn't really understand. Like I, you know, at the end of the day, you're making a financial bet.
But it's a bet on that company and the viability and what that company is worth. And sometimes you make the wrong bet, you know? So I've made the wrong bet. So I like the qualitative aspect of it, which is the same for, you know, any stock. I thought it was the best, best career in the world. I just, I was totally hooked. Loved it, loved it, loved it.
Laura Rotter: I agree you, you were the one who reminded me for a long time after I left, like, but you loved what you did, but I think our industry changed and the people in the industry changed. But you stayed in it longer than I did. Well, you had some iterations because as I said, you worked for gimme credit.
Shelly Lombard: So, yeah, so Gimme Credit was a, I guess what you'd call a boutique research firm. And I took that job because they allowed me to work from home. And work from home wasn't a thing. So one of the things I finally understood about myself is I hated commuting from the time I had my first job at that awful factory.
And that place was one where they rang a bell in the morning for you to be in, and they rang a bell. Everybody had to go to lunch from 12 to one, so people would line up in the hallway with their handbags, and then the bell rang and run to the parking lot because you had to be back before the bell rang at one.
I always hated commuting, so this job appealed to me because I could work from home and I had a kid in middle school, a kid in elementary school, and I wanted to be more present for them. And so that was an iteration where I wasn't doing, you know, what you were doing, which is I'm going into an office, I'm looking at things.
I basically wrote up reports and I said, look, I think General Motors is a lousy company or a great company, and you should buy the bonds at 50 cents, or you shouldn't buy 'em at 80 cents or whatever. And so I was doing that and I didn't love that job. At all. It was easier for me because I was a writer, so I was able to do the writing, but it was very high pressure because you had to write up something every day. Very, very high pressure. Only thing that made me stay was the fact that I could work from home and I didn't have to get up and get a train until in Manhattan every day. That made it bearable. I could sit there in my pajamas, I could run out at lunchtime and deal with my kids. That made that job bearable. Other than that, I did not, it was not a job that I loved.
Laura Rotter: So you did get to be on CNBC quite often as the talking head?
Shelly Lombard: Yes, I did. So that aspect of the job I loved. So because we, we were not a broker dealer, we didn't trade any bonds, so we didn't make any commissions on trading. We made our money by selling subscriptions.
And so we had really high profile companies as sub. Subscribers. Fidelity was a subscriber. Uh, Goldman Sachs was our biggest client. You know, Lehman was a client. Bear Stearns was a client. The publicity of us getting on CNBC or me being quoted in the Wall Street Journal, et cetera, was what got us subscribers. And so I actually loved it. You know, I guess it was the reporter in me or the news person in me, but when they called me to go on CNBC, I'd be like, yay. It was, I loved it. And, uh, people cared because I was covering the auto industry, and that's when GM went bankrupt and a lot of the suppliers were in trouble.
So CNBC really cared about GM and they really cared about Ford. Not that they cared about me, but they cared about those companies. And so I was able, To go and I loved doing it. The other analysts didn't love it, but I absolutely loved that was one aspect of the job. I really, cuz I loved explaining what I thought about GM and why I thought that, you know, whether I thought you should buy Ford bonds and if so, like why? So I loved that aspect of what I did and I loved doing it verbally as opposed to in writing.
Laura Rotter: I was gonna say, Shelly, you've always been a very skilled teacher. As, as sort of talked about earlier, these are concepts that aren't that easy to describe to people, especially if they, if they haven't invested for a living and you've.
Always been someone who's actually enjoyed and been passionate about breaking down these concepts for the average Joe and Jane to understand. So can you share with our listeners how you continue to use that skill in, in other areas as Gimme Credit dissolved?
Shelly Lombard: Gimme Credit still around. Um, I got downsized because the auto industry kind of righted itself and so I kind of became expendable even though at that time I had a pretty high profile.
Like I went to the auto show and people were like, oh, you're The Shelley Lombard. I was like, I guess I'm so being on CNBC and I was. Always quoted in the New York Times of Wall Street Journal and so, you know, I, my name was kinda out there. You know what? I looked, that was a really tough time for me financially, so we lost a lot of big clients.
Bear Stearns went under, Lehman, went under. Merrill Lynch got acquired, you know, they downsized and I was one of the casualties of their at that, and it took me about 10 years to figure out what was next in my life. I did some training, so I'm a Columbia grad. I was on the Columbia alumni site looking for jobs.
And somebody posted like a seasonal job during the summer training new bankers. So I did that for a lot of summers in a row, uh, in a row. And I'm pretty good. Like they would send to me the kid who went to Yale and majored in medieval literature and now they're at Goldman, you know, the private bank. And so, because I had been that person I was very good at explaining to them what working capital is and what a price earnings multiple is. I guess it's the teacher in me, which I inherited from my parents. Um, so I did that for a while. It took me a long time to figure out. You know what I wanted to do. I knew I didn't. That job had been so stressful. I knew I didn't want to do that anymore on Wall Street. I wanted to do something else, but it took me a long time to figure out how to use whatever skills I had to do something else and make a decent amount of money at it.
Laura Rotter: It's in my head, so I'm gonna bring it up. You were on the PTA for a while also, like you are constantly doing and you were thinking about starting a company and so…
Shelly Lombard: I've always wanted to own my own company and I've done a lot of like, oh, and you know this cause we've been friends for so long. You know, I've had come up with all these ideas and then I figure out. Some of it's the fun of just figuring out whether your idea can work and whether you wanted to do it or not. But I've always, you know, thought of different companies. I wanted to start, there's something I was reading, Phil Knight, the guy who started Nike, his bio, and he talked about how he always wanted to point to something and say, I, I created that, you know, and so for me, I wanted to do that.
And so I was head of the PTA, so it was on the board of Ed in my town, and we tried to kind of remake the school system to make it better. So, But I've always wanted to run a company and I've had multiple attempts, but it was hard because I was also the prime breadwinner. So it's not like you can just quit your job and I'm gonna go off and start this company.
So I'd be up till two o'clock in the morning, you know, I'd work and then I'd be up trying to start a company. But you know, your bandwidth is limited as a parent and with a demanding job, like the kind that you and I had. You just, I didn't have the bandwidth to do it. And you know, my kids were, you know, like even as they get older, I'm finally getting a second wind now, now that they're 30 and 25 and they're out of the house.
But, you know, it was hard trying to do this with them. So I'm still, you know, I'm still the primary breadwinner. I'm still trying to figure out, I'm still like, make a living. But kind of do what I wanna do as well. And so I'm still wrestling with that. But it took me, after getting laid off from Gimme Credit, it took me about 10 years to kind of get back on my feet, both financially and career wise. It was really a long journey.
Laura Rotter: And I'm wondering, I, I can ask you. This is my friend. What role did Faith play or has Faith played during this transition?
Shelly Lombard: Yeah, it kept me sane. You know, if you believe that, you know, there's a God out there who looks out for you, which I do, that helps me feel like no matter how bad this gets, I'm gonna make it, you know?
And it was really, really hard for a while, because remember my background, like yours was in distressed investing. So after the General Motors and the auto industry, You know, became healthy. There was a period where the economy was on a tear, kind of from like 2010 up until the pandemic. And so the default rate and the number of companies that were going under was very, very small.
And so the stock market was roaring. The debt markets were roaring, companies were doing well, Tesla was taking off. You know, it was just, you know, Netflix and, yeah, exactly. So my skillset, which was. You know, looking at troubled companies wasn't in demand. Nobody needed that. And so not only did I want to reinvent myself, I kind of was forced to because what I was doing wasn't in demand, but it took me a while to figure out, you know, something to do that I liked and I could make a decent amount of money at.
And so the teaching during the summer and training new bankers was nice, but it was only during the summer. So I had to figure out other things and I'm just, it took me probably to 2020, you know, to start to, you know, be able to replace my income and feel secure financially. It was about 10 years where, and also to figure out how my skillset could be used in other places.
Cuz it was about 10 years bef before I, that year, it was a 10 year journey.
Laura Rotter: Shelly, how have you found the experience that you are on a PTA and the head of a school board? How has that helped you now as you're on corporate boards?
Shelly Lombard: Yeah, so it's a governance issue. So when I was on the school board, it, you were told the only person in the school district who reports to you is a superintendent. All the teachers, the principals report to him or her, and he or she reports to you. So there was a, a line. Like, you're not here to run the schools, you're just here to oversee them. And that's the same with the corporate board. I'm not there to put sheets on the shelves or anything else, whatever that company is doing, or tell the CEO how to do their job, I'm just there to advise.
So even with, you know, advising on the balance sheet, the company has advisors ask the right questions to brainstorm. Is that really what we wanna do, et cetera, not. At the end of the day to actually run the company or do the CFO's job. And so being on the Board of Ed prepared me for that because I understood my place, so to speak, was not to run the company, but to advise, to ask the right questions, to be a sounding board, et cetera.
Laura Rotter: So, Thank you for explaining that so well, and I, so I have one other question that's been coming to mind as we speak, which is, I guess you described Shelly, how you've always wanted to have your own business and you know, you have, you are raising a VC secondary fund. What, what is your interest? What are you hoping?
Shelly Lombard: So I think the world is a lot more open now than it was 10 years ago. So I'm no longer just a distressed investor. I've realized. That I can do a lot of things. So I became a limited partner in a venture capital fund that invests in, uh, brands that have consumer brands that have been launched by people of color.
I'm kind of playing around in the venture capital space and so, you know, I always thought of myself in very narrow terms. I am a you know, my specialty is distressed investing and I've started to, you know, I tried to get, you know, something called a SPAC done that was going to invest in brand women-owned brands. And so beauty brands. So I've started to kind of stretch and I find the world that our kids are living in is a lot more forgiving and a lot more flexible. You know, nobody says to me, you do distress. Why are you trying to do venture capital? You know what I mean? They're like, oh yeah, you do that, you do this too.
Um, one of the things, and I'll just mention my newsletter here, is that, um, when I emerged from that job at Gimme credit, because I had been working from home and being a mommy, My contacts were gone, and you remember this, there were only a handful of women doing what we were doing and we would get together, you know, once a month and, you know, and, and dinner.
The vul, Tourettes, I think exactly the vul, Tourettes, or the dam was in distress. We called ourselves and so, but I also would network with the guys in the business. You know, David. Board and you know, Jeffrey Gold and people like that. So in addition to not having contacts in my industry, I think it's really important just to have contacts across industries because I was looking to do something else.
I wasn't looking to stay in distress, so I started Schmooze the newsletter. It's a LinkedIn newsletter, not because I have great tips on networking, but because. I wanted to interview amazing women doing amazing things who had a perspective on business relationships and how you leverage them and how you make them work for you.
You know, how you get followers on LinkedIn, how you, if you don't get LinkedIn followers, how you just make. Business relationships work for you, and men have been very good at that. Women are better at relationships, but we hesitate to be transactional. Like I don't, you know, a woman said to me, and uh, this was in one of the interviews, she said, guys call each other.
And they're like, Hey, I'm giving you an opportunity and invest in my business. Whereas women, like, we don't wanna bother anybody. Like, oh, you know, I don't wanna ask anybody to invest. We're much more, you know, men are comfortable being, this is relationship, a genuine relationship, but it's also transactional.
Whereas women, one woman said, men make friends based on what they can do for each other. And women make connections based on shared interests. Uh, and I think we're in an environment, you know, and then we have this great tool, LinkedIn. We're in an environment where those business relationships are very meaningful cuz people are crossing industries and they're starting businesses and in investing in startups and they're doing all of that stuff.
And relationships are so important. And so that kind of came out of my awful 10 years, you know, in the wilderness. You know, not knowing what I wanted to do, and I didn't even have anybody to bounce ideas off of because my network was gone.
Laura Rotter: Thank you so much for sharing that. And Shelly, it's one of the things I feel like, or the byproduct of me having my own business, which is I'm constantly meeting new people. I make a point of meeting other professional women who are building businesses, whereas I used to force myself to like walk into big networking events and try to, now it's my business. I can do what I want and um, I can meet with people that I enjoy and that also understand the give and take of the transactional nature. You're right. Um, I, obviously, I'm a woman, so I don't love the term, but it's both building personal relationships and understanding that we can both benefit from being transactional.
Shelly Lombard: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's something that women need to get more comfortable with. Um, so I interview people you know about it might ask people things like, like I, I'm an introvert, so how do I, you know, network as an introvert?
Like how do I get past this being, you know, I'm an introvert, I'm also shy, so how do I get past that and, you know, develop a, a network? You know, I hate walking into rooms where I don't know anybody and you know, that kind of. Thing. So I ask a lot of those kinds of questions in the interview. And again, uh, when I interview people, and again, that was what, that was a really tough 10 years for me that really changed my life when I got laid off from Gimme Credit and my kids were in college and money was really tight.
Thank God I had a huge emergency fund because I had seen how Wall Street was, I knew when I graduated, there was Manufacturers Hanover over chemical Chase, JP Morgan. Now they were all one bank, so that meant probably 75% of the seats in banking were gone. So I knew that could happen, and I was older, I was 50, and so it was it was real. Thank God I had a huge emergency fund. I never had to tap into my 401k or anything like that to live, but I blew through my emergency fund, you know, with, with college and all the associated expenses. That was a really tough period. I know, I know. Wanna go through that again? So now I have, you know, I'm doing multiple things and I'm really focused also on building my network and making sure I'm always in a position where I know people and I have things going on that people will take my phone call.
Laura Rotter: People will always take your phone call, Shelly, you’re such a warm person, and I've been reading your LinkedIn newsletter on the Schmooze and I highly recommend it to any of you listening to this podcast who wanna. Up your networking game.
So, Shelly, as we come to the end of this conversation, how has your definition of financial success or success in general shifted over the last decade or so?
Shelly Lombard: For me, it's. I'm more concerned with security, I guess, as I get older. And that traumatic experience of being laid off from giving credit, and it wasn't traumatic at first. I didn't realize it was gonna take me 10 years to get on my feet. You know, financially, I'm much more concerned about security, probably related to age, but I'm also more concerned about freedom and being able to make choices.
So the last couple of summers, it started during the pandemic. I just decided, like I used to go to Martha's Vineyard in the summer. It had gotten so expensive cuz a lot of people wanted to drive to vacations. They didn't want to get on planes cause of the coronavirus, et cetera, cause of Covid. And so I started going to the Caribbean.
So I spent about five weeks in the Caribbean and I worked from there. Worked from home is also gotten, you know, obviously much more, you know, ubiquitous. And so I am much more, I'm concerned with security, so I have all these multiple jobs and multiple consulting assignments, but I also am concerned about the ability to control my time.
Like I don't want, I wanna be able to work from the Caribbean. I don't want to have to commute. So the, the job I was doing during the summer, Training new bankers. That was virtual for a while during Covid, and it's not anymore. And they asked me to come back and do it this summer and I was like, I'm not commuting into Manhattan.
I'm just not doing that. And I've always hated the commute. So when everybody went back in real life this, it was virtual for two years, I'm like, great, that's fine. Can't do it. So I'm very concerned about security, especially given my age, but I'm also very much. I'm X years old, I don't want to do that. And at this point, I get to choose.
I'm gonna choose what, what I do. I like security, but I often say, you know what? This, I'm not, I'm choosing not to do that, even though that would mean more money. So those are two things that really have changed about me in the last couple of years, the last 10 years.
Laura Rotter: Really. I love that. So before, um, before we wrap up, Shelly, if people want to reach out to you, learn more about what you're doing, subscribe to your newsletter, how would they contact you?
Shelly Lombard: Feel free to to connect with me on LinkedIn. If you connect with me on LinkedIn, you automatically, I publish a newsletter once a week. You automatically get a notice every time the newsletter comes out.
And then if people have any other questions, you're interested in being on a board. You know, I still, like this morning I did a lecture, uh, for students in Japan about distressed investing. So people reach out to me all the time about distressed investing. There's something, I'm online, somebody recorded a course, and I'm online.
And so I get. At least once a month, somebody who reaches out to me and said, I saw your, the video about you breaking down how to invest in distressed, you know, distressed securities and will you talk to me? And so I probably have like, I don't know, 50 people like that who've become, you know, LinkedIn friends, some of them I've gotten closer to and become mentors. But feel free to, to reach out to me. Look, it's called Shelley Lombard, Intro to Distress Investing. You can look at that, get to know me, but you know, I'll put it in the show notes. Yes. But yeah, I definitely, or if you're interested in being on boards, I'm doing that. And then, like I said, if you connect with me on LinkedIn, you automatically get the updates on the newsletter whenever it comes out.
Laura Rotter: So thank you so much. This has been such a fun conversation for me, Shelly. Thank you for being my guest.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Shelly Lombard, an experienced corporate board director and publisher of the Schmooze. A LinkedIn newsletter about networking for women. Some of my takeaways from the conversation have an emergency fund.
Shelly shared that she went through a difficult period financially when she lost her job in the aftermath of the financial crisis while her kids were in college. Thankfully she had a large emergency fund knowing as she did the inherent volatility of the financial industry.
Second takeaway, focus on building your network when you're exploring what to do next. Women often have difficulty with transactional business relationships. As a generalization women tend to build relationships based upon shared interests.
While men make friends based on what they can do for each other. Shelly started her LinkedIn newsletter on the Schmooze so she could learn from women who have a perspective on how to build robust business relationships.
And finally understand how your skillset may extend to new opportunities. Shelly had defined herself narrowly as a distressed debt investor until she realized that her analytical skills could extend to new roles.
She's now exploring venture capital investing and is a limited partner. An adventure capital fund that invests in beauty brands that have been launched by people of color.
Are you enjoying this podcast? Please don't forget to subscribe, so you won't miss next week's episode. And if you love the show, a rating and a review would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for listening to Making Change with your Money certified financial planner, Laura Rotter specializes in helping people just like you organized, clarify, invest their money. In order to support a life of purpose and meaning, go to www.trueabundanceadvisors.com/workbook for a free resource to help you on your journey.
Disclaimer, please remember that the information shared by this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. It's for information purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.