1003 Chantell Preston: Why Women Must Invest in Women

Open the Door, Pull Them Through: 75 Women Now Co-Own a Pro Volleyball Team

Women make 70 to 80 percent of the purchasing decisions in their households, are on the receiving end of the largest wealth transfer in history, and still get around 2 percent of venture capital. 

Chantell Preston has a blunt diagnosis. We grew up being told somebody would take care of us, so we learned to write the philanthropy check and hand the investing to a husband or a broker. She’s done being polite about it.

Chantell is a serial healthcare entrepreneur with multiple exits, including the private equity acquisition of Mentis Neuro Health. She is founder and CEO of the family office Preston Partners, co-owner of the San Francisco Signal in League One Volleyball, lead partner of Portfolia’s Active Aging and Longevity Funds, a recent inductee into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, and author of the new book The Success Lie: Reframing Your Reality to Thrive Personally and Professionally. 

Today she shares why Gen X women were never taught about money and how to fix that now, what she looks for before she writes a check, how she and her partner brought 75 women into sports ownership with them, and why the success she chased for 25 years turned out to be someone else’s definition.

Chantell is an investor who walks her talk. When she and her business partner Jess Wolf secured the San Francisco Signal as lead investors, they didn’t stop at opening the door. They pulled 75 women through it, at check sizes from $25,000 up, so the ownership group is about 80 percent women. Her point is simple: women owning women’s sports should be the norm, not the exception, and her three daughters should be able to see it to be it. Chantell shares how she went from riches to rags as a kid, built a niche in healthcare so strong she never had to look for a job after 26, and why she now spends her time teaching other women what an asset class is.

We talk about the mindset that keeps accomplished women donating instead of investing, why a fund beats a single startup for a first-time investor, and what a family office really evaluates: the jockey, not the horse; coachability; an exit strategy; and whether the founder knows who is going to pay. We get into the grief of selling your company, the day Chantell realized she didn’t know what her five-year-old ate for lunch, and why balance is a lie and integration is the answer. And Chantell unpacks the premise of The Success Lie: the rules we live by were written by somebody else, and we’re allowed to rewrite them.

More about Chantell Preston at www.chantellpreston.com

Questions this episode answers 

How can women start investing in female-founded startups with no prior experience? What does a family office look for before writing a cheque? Why is a fund a safer first investment than a single startup? What is The Success Lie? How did Chantell Preston bring 75 women into ownership of the San Francisco Signal? Why does balance not exist, and what replaces it?

Create and share clips of your favorite moments of this or any other podcast episode on across social media via Podopolo, and join the conversation with Chantell and me in the Wings episode comments section.

More about Chantell at Preston Partners

With her Texas-sized vision and no-nonsense approach, Chantell Preston has spent more than 25 years building, scaling, and transforming businesses in healthcare while challenging the myth that women have to be perfect to be powerful. A recent inductee into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, Chantell is a serial entrepreneur, investor, executive strategist, keynote speaker, and host of the Get Real Get Results podcast. As founder and CEO of Preston Partners, she advises organizations on growth, strategy, and leadership, drawing on her experience leading multimillion-dollar healthcare operations across Texas and Nevada through complex industry change. Her expertise spans founding, scaling, and successfully exiting multiple companies, including Mentis Neuro Health, which culminated in a private equity acquisition. Her work extends beyond healthcare as Co-founder/Owner of the San Francisco Signal, a League One Volleyball team, and owner of The Dance Barre HTX, the largest privately owned dance studio in Houston, Texas. She also serves as Managing Partner of The Collectiv, a community-powered venture fund focused on expanding access and opportunity in sports and health technology investing. Honored with the Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce Breakthrough Women Award, named one of America’s Top 100 Women to KNOW and to the Entreprenista 100, she has appeared in Forbes, USA TODAY and US Weekly, delivered a TEDx and a keynote for the Dallas Federal Reserve, and is the author of The Success Lie: Reframing Your Reality to Thrive Personally and Professionally. A proud Texas A&M alumna and mother of three daughters, Chantell lives in Houston, Texas.

Get The Success Lie

Listen to Chantell’s podcast Get Real Get Results

Get the Transcript HERE