970 Kristin Thomas:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP970 – Host Melinda Wittstock Interviews Marble Collective Founder Kristin Thomas

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Kristin Thomas:

When these women leaders are invited and featured within Marble Collective, our AI just tracks it. You’re onboarded onto Marble as a featured woman leader within about 60 seconds. All of your digital assets, from press, podcasts, interviews to books to lectures and videos are all gathered in a public facing design, forward AI searchable public facing portfolio and anybody in the world, including event coordinators that are looking to book women and put them on panels and hire them as speakers organizations looking for top talent journalists looking for stories or just ambitious professionals like myself or the next generation of students looking for role models can come discover the right role model or women leader and get plugged into them and going forward so they never miss another podcast interview or panel discussion and, and they’re tracked and centralized.

Melinda Wittstock:

When I first started this podcast a decade ago, I felt like women were succeeding in silence. Achieving incredible things, often against the odds, usually without the headline-grabbing acclaim reserved for male entrepreneurs, innovators, and executives. I wanted to change that, and all these years later, Kristin Thomas is creating the ultimate directory of trailblazing women with Marble Collective. Today she shares her vision, how she found funding exclusively from women investors, and how she believes Marble can help change the game.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m your host Melinda Wittstock and before we get going with this episode of Wings of Inspired Business, I wanted to share what we can all learn from the Olympic Gold Medal performance of figure skater Alysa Liu. I don’t know  if you watched it, but it was a masterclass in mindset—the elegant act of experiencing, in the moment, the pure joy of what you’re doing. Remembering why you’re doing it. Setting your own course, doing it your own way, and just loving the journey. When all the other competitors were tense in concentration, maybe overthinking their way to perceived perfection, Alysa was just unbounded energy of light and joy. And what a difference it made. So, think about how you can apply 4 minutes of a figure skating routine to your life and business! Ok now to the show, and if you’re new here, this is the place where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb. If you’ve been listening to any of the past 969 episodes, please help us get the word out about the show. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. Tell your friends and colleagues, share the episode and leave a quick 5-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We really appreciate it. Thank you! 

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who, like me, is tired of women succeeding in silence, buried in the scattered world of social media algorithms. Kristin Thomas is the founder of a new searchable, AI-powered platform called Marble Collective. It’s aim? To preserve and amplify the legacies of exceptional women leaders, making their achievements and journeys easily discoverable and accessible. Marble all about connecting powerful women with audiences, event organizers, and journalists, but also fostering real support, collaboration, and inspiration for the next generation.

Melinda Wittstock:

Marble ingests the digital footprints of exceptional women across all fields, compiling in one place all their books, lectures, podcast interviews and media clippings. Kristin’s intent is to make it easy to access the work of all these role models without overwhelming them with spammy DMs. Today she shares how she’s building meaningful engagement with this highly curated and high impact community, plus how Kristin raised her seed round entirely from female investors.

Melinda Wittstock:

So very much to talk about so let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Kristin Thomas.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Kristin, welcome to Wings.

Kristin Thomas:

Thank you so much, Melinda. I am ecstatic to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, likewise. And I am so excited about what you’re doing with Marble Collective. Tell me what sparked the vision to really go out there and preserve women’s legacies? Because I think so, so often we’re succeeding in silence. Nobody knows all the amazing things we’re doing.

Kristin Thomas:

Absolutely. So, I think the seed of Marble started just with my own passion and love for hearing the stories of really inspiring entrepreneurs and leaders, but primarily women. And just I loved going and seeing these women on stages. I love listening to podcasts like yours, and I just found that in life as a professional, when I hear other leaders talk, I can tie it and reflect it to everything that I’m doing. And it’s the seed of most of my own inspiration for what I’m doing in my own life. And I just wanted to make it easier with less noise outside of the wild world of social media.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. Well, the wild world of social media is, oh, my God, a topic for like a kind of 10-hour podcast at the moment.

Kristin Thomas:

Yes, it is.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, tell me about how Marble works. How is the AI working? 

Melinda Wittstock:

How does it all work?

Kristin Thomas:

So right now, we’re just going to market this year after two years in beta, validating this pain point that we’re solving for women leaders as the foundation of Marble. And that is these are women who have lots of podcast episodes, they host podcasts, they have a lot of press, they lecture, they might have authored books, and their media or digital assets are scattered across the Internet, and the world’s access point to those is primarily through social media. We might catch a press release, but there’s a big self-promotion element to social media, right? You put it out on social media or in your newsletter, you might share it with your friends and your networks, but it quickly gets buried in feeds, Right? Like in an inbox feed, in a social media feed. Or the algorithm might not actually choose to show your networks. So, I wanted to make a more reliable and automated way for these super inspiring women who have worked really hard to get to where they are. They’ve broken through glass ceilings, they’ve built big careers, or they’ve just accomplished remarkable things. And that comes with a tremendous amount of value.

Kristin Thomas:

So, what we do, what our AI does, is when these women leaders are invited and featured within Marble Collective, our AI just tracks it. So, when you’re onboarded onto Marble as a featured woman leader within about 60 seconds. All of your digital assets, from press, podcasts, interviews to books to lectures and videos are all gathered in a public facing design, forward AI searchable public facing portfolio and anybody in the world, including event coordinators that are looking to book women and put them on panels and hire them as speakers organizations looking for top talent journalists looking for stories or just ambitious professionals like myself or the next generation of students looking for role models can come discover the right role model or women leader and get plugged into them and going forward so they never miss another podcast interview or panel discussion and, and they’re tracked and centralized.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hearing you describe it; it’s almost like I can’t believe no one’s thought to do this before.  It’s such a good idea because say, say if you’re me and I’m thinking, God, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a female CTO or wouldn’t it be great to connect with other women, you know, just to build, you know, my own company or connect with other great investors or concurrently get speaking opportunities, get earned media getting all these things. 

Kristin Thomas:

To centralize them, make them discoverable and being able to follow the individual versus the podcast show or follow the SXSW event, it lets people in the audience, whether live audience at an event or podcast audiences or just customers of your company, get plugged into the women at the forefront of that company or that industry.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, in a way, in a way it’s both a, a networking tool and a media platform in essence.

Kristin Thomas:

Yeah. So I mean you bring up networking, which, you know, I don’t put in the forefront, but it’s kind of like icing on the, on the cake for the women leaders who are part of Marble because while it’s interesting for their networks to get plugged into them and follow them, and for event coordinators and journalists and organizations and investors, you know that the higher you climb, you’re often the only in the room. And it can get lonely. It can be lonely as a highly successful individual, as a founder and just by the nature of our roles in Life. We don’t have the freedom to go to happy hours, spend the entire weekend on the golf course. Right. And we don’t have that same access to in person networking that our counterparts do. But we’re out building companies and leading organizations.

Kristin Thomas:

All the work we do, it can get very isolating and lonely. And it’s interesting for women leaders to be able to follow what their senior leader networks are doing. So, you’re on a panel with somebody, or you’re interviewed on a podcast or, or you go to a highly curated dinner. Well, what happens the next day? We can follow each other on social media, but then we’re relying on the algorithm to, you know, to keep us plugged in. And we’re also relying on their self-promotion. So Marble is also an incredible way for women leaders to stay better connected, follow what each other are doing, follow what events they’re showing up at, just to help navigate that whole world to improve relationships and bonds and collaborations among the women at the forefront of leadership and innovation.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I can see this growing in lots of ways. So, I have a zillion questions for you. And so, this on a technical basis, is basically pulling in or ingesting things from podcast platforms, from YouTube, like, tell me a little bit about technically, like where you’re getting all this information and how that works and how the AI is being used?

Kristin Thomas:

Yeah. So, what’s interesting, talking about AI and this very much ties into what you’re doing at Podopolo, which I’m super excited to talk about. When this was the seed of an idea, I had a team of people of virtual assistants out gathering all of this media and it was a total mess. It took so much time. I can’t even tell you the amount of hours that we spent gathering this media, tracking it. And it validated that this is really time consuming for every leader to do and they don’t all have this team out there doing it. So, we were able to validate this problem and bring it all into one centralized place. And then ChatGPT launched and I’m sure you were plugged into AI long before I was, but I realized that we were really well positioned to integrate and adopt as we moved into this future that’s very much AI consumed and powered.

Kristin Thomas:

We have this collective of media by about featuring women leaders in a very pure and isolated way. It really lays the foundation for really leaning into AI the direction of creating LLMs that are trained on women leaders. Because as you know, the LLMs of today are trained on, most of them are trained on everything. And women have historically been marginalized from the history books, from the news, from getting financed, getting funded, getting hired. So, we have this unique opportunity to really lean into this media aggregation that we’re already doing. And I’m just excited about what we can do with that, the data that we can collect to kind of shift the narrative and just really educate the world on how incredible women leaders are.

Melinda Wittstock:

So how many women now are featured on your platform?

Kristin Thomas:

So, we are going to market with about 3,300 women leaders who are our founding members. About 75 of them are our backers and our investors, which is really exciting and I’m happy to talk more about that. We have a waiting list of applicants of almost 200 and a growing large audience of ambitious professionals and students and even men and investors and organizations who are on our waiting list to access, you know, the audience side of the platform to really get plugged into these women leaders.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, Kristin, tell me about the business model and how it works. How do you get paid?

Kristin Thomas:

I really was intentional, as every founder is, when we were figuring out how we were going to generate revenue from this platform, I wanted to steer away from the ad driven model of social platforms so that we could ensure that our priority is continuing to serve the best interests of the women leaders that we were featuring. That service of gathering and aggregating the media, building the foundation of the profile, and then tracking the women leaders and allowing them to get booked and connected. That is a foundational service that tied to a membership fee. So, members pay a membership fee as our foundation, but that’s just a small component of our revenue. Once we open up access to audiences, that’s what we’re really going to lean into and scale. There’s going to be a free access point so anybody can go to Marble and look at a woman leader’s profile, learn about them. But if you want to get into following them and more premium access, there’s premium upgrades. And what we can do is we can really scale that side to students, professionals, men, organizations, event coordinators, and that’s going to be our core revenue piece.

Kristin Thomas:

And then as we head into this AI future, there’s a lot we can do with these AI models that we have the potential to build. As I think very similar to what you’re thinking about with Podopolo. We’re also thinking about with Marble. And I’m excited to talk to you about that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that’s really interesting. So, say, for instance, somebody wants to access this growing database or whatever. There’s a sort of subscription model, I guess, right?

Kristin Thomas:

It’s a freemium subscription model. We want to make it easy for a young student in India to go to Marble and find role models and explore their life. But there’s a premium upgrade to follow a large number of them and then going to be, you know, building tools where there’s going to be higher levels of interaction and engagement.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, there’s a way that you can actually connect with people ultimately?

Kristin Thomas:

Well, so connection, not directly. And the reason being is that the higher you climb as a woman leader, every room you go into, you’re the centerpiece, you’re the magnet, you’re the one that people are in that room to be close to. And while that’s wonderful, it’s also a lot. And women leaders, as we all do, have very limited amount of time. So, think of Marble as a glass house where the difference between marble and private communities for women leaders is the walls are glass. And we want to give the entire world access to get plugged into, follow, learn from, explore and engage with the content, the media, their podcast to get into conversations. But you can’t contact a woman leader directly.

Kristin Thomas:

You can’t sell them anything. They’re totally protected. However, you can engage with their content, have conversations with them around their content or their book or their podcast. So, it’s like protected engagement versus just giving the world access to contact them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Got it. Okay, so it’s not like a LinkedIn.

Kristin Thomas:

It’s preventing that type of LinkedIn DM, unsolicited sales outreach, but making them accessible and taking kind of like the reason why many of US are on LinkedIn to really get plugged into these inspiring luminaries. We want to take them and put them in this protected place so you can go there and just follow them. And speaking of, there’s a component of Marble that I’m super excited about, and it’s really giving audiences the ability to follow and get plugged into the media. Recommendations by these women leaders. What books are you consuming? What podcasts are you listening to? What articles are you reading? The media inundation is real. There’s so much to choose from. When I wake up in the morning, I’m like, what article am I going to spend my time reading? Or what podcast should I spend this valuable 20 minutes listening to. And what we’re doing is we’re giving our members the ability to create an Oprah’s Book Club of all media that they’re consuming and making it really easy to save that media in a library within marble and allowing their audiences and networks to get plugged into that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. This is really important. I mean, this is one of the reasons, when I think back in 2016, when exited one of my businesses and thinking what I was going to do and I created this podcast because the initial inspiration was let’s create something that really inspires women to promote each other, buy from each other, amplify each other, and invest in each other. And I’ve seen lots of different women do this in a very. It’s sort of very fragmented because there’s a lot of people doing this type of thing with a very similar mission, but everything is just so scattered. Right. Like, there’s sort of an element of infobesity. Like, there’s a lot of it, but it’s hard to find. It’s not organized. And so, creating that method to allow women to really amplify each other is really powerful.

Kristin Thomas:

Yeah, exactly. Everything’s really scattered. And what we’ve chosen to focus on are those women who have built an incredible amount of wisdom and insight from the work they’ve done in their life. 

Kristin Thomas:

I wish that we could follow the journeys of founders before that headline, headline show stopping, big exit, because that’s where, you know, that’s where the real juicy story is, where we’ll gain the most benefit from listening to and following and learning from. But unfortunately, the world is not really paying much attention to those founders until, you know, they’ve exited or they had this big success or big milestone, and then people want to listen.

[PROMO CREDIT]

Wings of Inspired Business is brought to you by the podcast, Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets where Steve Little – serial entrepreneur, investor and mergers & acquisitions maestro – shares the little-known 24 value drivers that spell the difference between a $5m business, and a $50mm even $500 mm business. That’s Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets, produced by Podopolo Brand Studio at zerolimitsradio.com – that’s zerolimitsradio.com and available wherever you get your podcasts.

Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Kristin Thomas, founder of Marble Collective.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Kristin Thomas:

So, what we’re trying to do is capture more of the journey and put those women that have had those headlines, successes into one centralized place so that we can all go there and then explore their journeys in retrospect and just gain those insights and wisdoms and get inspired by. By, you know, By. By their journey.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. So, tell me a little bit about where you see this scaling. Because I remember when I launched this podcast and I was saying, okay, I wanted to interview women consistently. Like, originally, this started as a daily, believe it or not.

Kristin Thomas:

Wow.

Melinda Wittstock:

So that’s why I have, you know, almost a thousand episodes.

Kristin Thomas:

It’s unbelievable. Incredible.

Melinda Wittstock [00:20:07]:

I sustained that for a while until I started my next business, which made that kind of publishing schedule a little bit strenuous. But I was originally thinking, how many women are there? Like will I have enough interviews of women with seven and eight figure businesses or even six figure businesses? Are there enough? I’ve never had a problem finding really great women to interview. Like I don’t even have to search for them. Like there are so many doing amazing things and yet. Yeah, like you go on social media, and you don’t get a sense of that at all. I know they’re all out there.

Melinda Wittstock:

You could take any of the women who’ve been interviewed on this show now and they would all be instant candidates, you know, for Marble, like there’s just so much. So how do you see this scaling? How many women do you think you’ll have like featured on the platform? Like how quickly do you think this ramps and, and, and how many and does it start to scale beyond the U.S. is it global? Tell me about the vision.

Kristin Thomas:

Yes, and I talked to a lot of male venture capitalists, and their first question is why just women? This is, you know, this could serve men too. And why would, why would you cut out half? You know, it’s, it’s for all the reasons that we’re talking about. And there are so many amazing women leaders who have accomplished just mind-boggling things of today and in history. So that’s a part of the answer is that our technology works in the same way with women living today as they do in history. And there are some, so many remarkable women leaders of today and in history. We really want to focus on quality versus quantity because when we start scaling the women leader side beyond our focus on these high-level remarkable women, it becomes less interesting for the audiences and then we go in the direction of being another LinkedIn.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Kristin Thomas:

And we really want to maintain that quality. I mean over the next three years, my target is 3,000 women and I think that’s really low. You know, there’s just, there’s so many women leaders out there, but I’m slowly building that side from a really mindful way. If you are featured, a featured leader on Marble, we have a nomination button and every, we see every featured leader as a seed in their own little ecosystem of other remarkable women leaders that should be elevated and amplified. So, we’re really working as a collective to pull in the most inspiring women of our time and then scaling the audience access side which from the 49% on LinkedIn, the top 49% who are building careers, building incredible careers, highly successful. This is a tool for them to get plugged into this kind of, you know, vetted high level leadership community of women for inspiration and ideas and insights.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, give me an idea of who these first women are who are featured, that sort of accomplishments, like what corporate qualifies you to be featured or in that ramp to 3,000.

Kristin Thomas:

We are industry diverse. We have award winning scientists who are curing cancer, working for the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, to the first female NFL coach in history, Jen Walter, to the first ultra luxury female automobile maker of decora in history, to C suite executives, to founders that have established considerable traction, to thought leaders and authors and speakers who, who have reached a certain level of clout to where they really have a lot of wisdom and insight and expertise to offer everybody that’s following in their footsteps in the same industry.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s funny with my hat that I put on as a venture investor in a new fund that’s supporting female founded businesses, I see women entrepreneurs doing some pretty amazing things with very little capital, right? And but then the stats are extraordinary. Returning anywhere from 60 to 72 cents on every dollar invested more than exclusively male-founded teams doing incredible things around AI such as you, with like an ethical and aligned layer on it, succeeding in many cases sort of with less and against the odds and really wanting to support those women.

Kristin Thomas:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And when you look at all the stories, I guess of these women, like I don’t know how much your platform features their bios, but like what they’ve had to do to get where they are is extraordinary.

Kristin Thomas:

Extraordinary. And when I learned those stats about the percentage of women led ventures that get funded alongside the 60 to 70 cents on a dollar in returns, the capital, efficiency, the culture. I mean women leaders have worked so much harder to get where they are and just by that nature of having to work so much harder, it makes them that much stronger and that much more unique and nimble and gritty. I mean I can relate. I came from a really big career in real estate, and I set out to build this new venture that there’s similarities but it’s very different. It’s tech. When I was going from real estate and you go out into the world with this big idea with stars in your eyes and then I learned the data about how hard it is for women entrepreneurs to get capital. And so, what I did, and I think a lot of women entrepreneurs do this, is I postponed raising capital and going out to investors because it’s like, why would I waste this precious time I have in building this company if it’s going to be 99 no’s.

Kristin Thomas:

So, I think coming from a big career, I had some capital and it was kind of like a crutch. And I kept on wanting to hit the next milestone and do the next thing and get to the next. And finally, I said, I have 300 incredible women leaders who are successful, who are behind us, who are part of our foundation. And I said, I’m just going to raise from them. And it was an invite only raise. It was very intentional. And I thought to myself, it’s going to be so much more valuable having investors who already believe in us, who were building marble to serve, than going out to a venture capitalist who’s so far removed from what we’re doing. Fortunately, it was, it was a real success.

Kristin Thomas [00:28:45]:

75 stepped forward really quickly. We were 50% oversubscribed. And it was an incredible, it was very exciting. And I think it’s also a great story for everybody to hear because we hear all the negative data. But when women come together from writing a small check to a slightly larger check, when we all do it and we all start contributing and angel investing and backing the founders who we believe in, that’s where I think we can really make impact in this space.

Melinda Wittstock [00:29:23]:

Well, what’s been missing. I think one of the frustrations I’ve had over the years trying to raise money from women is that, well, I can’t, I can’t count the number of women, really high net worth women who had amazing careers like, whether in like private equity or the law or whatever, had a lot of their own money or even generational wealth, but would say, well, and would easily write a check to charity for a million dollars. But when asked for $50,000 to support a company that was serving the same mission that their charity focused on, with a potential return and, and, and, and a potentially much more effective way of solving the issue that the charity was trying to solve, she would say, hands down, almost 100% of the time, no, my husband makes the investment decisions. And it was heartbreaking to me. Like I’ve seen that over 20 years plus. So, you succeeded in getting women to invest in you. I mean that’s, that’s an accomplishment because a lot of women don’t invest or they don’t know enough about venture or they’re not comfortable with it or what. What is going on there? Like, you succeeded at this.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, what stops women from investing? What has to happen to make more women, with all this amazing wealth transfer to women that’s going on currently, you know, billion trillions of dollars, actually, that will be controlled by women, what’s stopping them from investing?

Kristin Thomas:

Well, I think it’s programming. It’s the way that our minds have been programmed as to what our role in the family unit is. I think the unique part of the story of our capital raise is that these were women who have built really big careers. So, they’ve had their hands in generating income, right? They’ve generated wealth, they’ve led businesses, they’ve accomplished the unthinkable, and they’ve worked really hard to do so, I think. And they’re also probably more plugged into this data that the rest of the world may not be. So, we’re all having these conversations about the lack of funding going to women. I think we’re very much in a bubble within an echo chamber talking to ourselves about this. So when there was an opportunity to invest in not only amplification of their own legacy and life’s work, but also women at large, and to give the next generation of women leaders an access point, a centralized access point to find role models so that the next generation of women can see it and believe that they can, you know, they can have the same type of big career.

Kristin Thomas:

I love the saying to be it, you have to see it. And that’s kind of the underlying driver for what. For what we’re doing. It was an easy opportunity. In a time when women are craving collaboration and coming together, private communities for women leaders are exploding across the United States right now.

Kristin Thomas:

I think there’s a big need and craving among ambitious professionals who are women to collaborate more, to have a community to network and to prevent the decades of progress that women have achieved from being erased. And I think this is very much on women’s minds right now, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

100% it is. Oh, my goodness. I mean, there’s so much to talk about with you, Kristin, and all that you’ve done. I mean, you just, out of college, you launched the real estate investment business that you talked about, and you had an exit. You know, you were recruited by Compass, the largest firm in the country. You’ve done all these amazing things in your entrepreneurial journey. What were some of the biggest lessons along the way for you? What are some of the biggest challenges you faced that you had to overcome?

Kristin Thomas:

Thank you for asking those questions. I mean, it all ties back to those pivotal moments in our lives that often are tied to pain and loss and struggle that can sometimes shift your life in a way that helps you pivot into your next chapter. I was in school for psychology. My mom went through a divorce. Fraudulent stockbroker showed up on her doorstep, tying back to what we were just talking about. She had never been involved in her own money. You know, I think her mindset was, yes, she was involved in giving philanthropically, but not on the, you know, investing side or money management side. And unfortunately, within a year of the divorce, she lost 80% of her money, and she was an heir to Avon Cosmetics. So, it was a significant loss. And while I was in school for psychology, just because that’s what lit me up. I love people. I love building relationships and just understanding how humans tick. It’s probably why I love storytelling so much. I experienced that loss as well and lost. And lost a significant amount of capital.

Kristin Thomas:

And it lit this fire in me that didn’t exist before, and that was my big pivot into real estate. And I dove in to build a big real estate career when I was very young. And if that hadn’t happened, I might be a psychologist. So that was a big pivot, and I’ve been doing that for two decades.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wow, that’s amazing. And we all have these, like, twists and turns in our, in our lives. You think of all the different things and, and where, where the, the growth happens is always with the challenge, you know, with the, with something that happens that we don’t expect. I suppose this is sort of the life lesson of entrepreneurship, hence…

Kristin Thomas:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

…the continual joke on this podcast at risk of becoming a real bore is if you want therapy, be an entrepreneur.

Kristin Thomas:

I love that so much. It is like you are really. It’s a project that dives into yourself, your psychology, your relationships. It challenges you in every way possible. But I think 99% of the population should not be entrepreneurs because you have to be a little bit crazy to choose this career. But I think that those that are drawn to entrepreneurship, they should really go for it because there’s a reason they’re called to it. And I think you’re built a little bit differently to be able to…

Melinda Wittstock:

I can’t be any…

Kristin Thomas:

…Endure.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, I think, like, maybe the first clue is like, you know, kind of the things you were doing as a kid. Right. So, like, I don’t know what, what possessed me to go door to door demanding prepayment for like a show age. I was almost six, you know, and going around my black lab was sort of my enforcer. Like, pay up.

Kristin Thomas:

You know, I love that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, what even possessed me to do something like it, you know, like, like it. It is. There is an element of a little bit of crazy, but also just the way your brain is wired a little bit as well. Like, either you’re just really visionary or you’re just. You have the sorts of skills that connect the dots in a way or. Yeah, I don’t know. You know, there’s lots of different reasons to become an entrepreneur, but. But it’s, it’s an interesting thing where you find yourself as somebody who can’t not be like, it’s as simple as that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, I don’t even know if I’m employable. Like, I, you know, I could be for a time. I didn’t have an idea and I’d want to like, improve within. I mean, this is my trajectory as a journalist. I’d be in these large organizations. There was Times of London, the BBC. And I’d see something that could be done better. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, we should organize it this way. I could not do that.

Kristin Thomas:

I can totally relate. I’m chuckling over here because I can totally relate. I had one job as like an office manager and I got fired from it because I was like, building a real estate business on the side. And it’s like, I say I might have been a psychologist, but I think that was just part of my journey. And I just don’t think I can stay away from entrepreneurship.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, no, exactly. It is something that, you know, you. You can be a business owner, you know, franchise owner or like a CEO, but there’s something about that founder grit, especially when you’re building something that never existed before. That’s a special sort of tier of entrepreneurship that takes, yeah, Immense, immense grit and I don’t know, just the mental fortitude, emotional. Just all the different things that come into doing that. And it’s so difficult to describe to a person who is not an entrepreneur operating at that level. So hence it’s lonely. And so, I love what you’re doing.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think it’s so important. So, we could talk for all kinds of things for probably hours more. Kristen. I wanted to just go back really briefly to the AI, so I understand it. So, all this content is being like pulled from different sources or ingested automatically into the platform and then analyzed by the AI. Is it working kind of like a recommendation engine or is it like sifting through all this or tell me a little bit more about how that works.

Kristin Thomas:

That’s where we’re going. So right now, we are pulling all media by about and featuring our featured leaders into one centralized portfolio that anybody can access. The next step is funneling it all into a feed. And when we add the library feature that I was talking about, that makes it really easy for the future leaders to just drop in. Media, podcast, lecture, event, recommendations. Then we have this really rich feed of media recommendations. So, like if you wake up in the morning and you are in, I’m just going to say you’re in AI. You can type in AI, and you can curate the feed based on what you want.

Kristin Thomas:

It’s fast targeted information versus the ad driven algorithm. So, you can go there and click podcasts or articles and tie to a topic, and it will show you everything that the leaders within these industries or topics have either recommended or about them or they’ve talked about. So, we have this really rich, high quality media feed that anybody in the world can navigate, and curate based on what they need. In that moment, I’m very much thinking about how to leverage and recycle the content that these women leaders create. So, when they’re on stages, their words are really valuable. Our memories are horrible. So, I think we’re going in the direction of capturing these lectures and digesting them and consuming them by AI. Of course, everything that you say on a podcast, I think bringing that into a collective knowledge base.

Kristin Thomas:

There’s a lot you can do with that to generate revenue for the woman leader. It’s like we’re the centralization engine and there’s a lot that you can do to recycle and leverage that knowledge and content that you’ve created.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ah, amazing. So where can people best find and work with you, Kristin? Like for women who want to be on your wait list to be featured, exceptional women, what’s the process for that? And then also how can people subscribe? You mentioned you were just out of beta, so what’s the best way?

Kristin Thomas:

Thank you. So marblecollective.com is the access point to Marble. You can learn more about Marble Collective if you are a remarkable woman leader who is proud and thinking a lot of the legacy that you’ve built or that you’re building. There’s an application and apply button on the website and for everybody else in the world who’s out there building careers, you know, investing in founders, organizing events, hosting podcasts, you can come and get on our audience wait list and newsletter just to stay plugged into what we’re doing.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for just the inspiring thing that you’re building, Kristin. And thanks for taking the time to put on your wings and fly with us today.

Kristin Thomas:

I love it. Thank you so much for having me, Melinda. This has been so much fun.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Kristin Thomas is the Founder of Marble Collective, an AI-powered platform transforming how women’s leadership is preserved, amplified, and discovered so remarkable women are easier to find, follow, and book, ensuring their legacies endure.

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

That’s it for today’s episode. Head on over to WingsPodcast.com – and subscribe to the show. When you subscribe, you’ll instantly get my special gift, the WINGS Success Formula. Women … Innovating … Networking … Growing …Scaling … IS the WINGS of Inspired Business Formula …for daily success in your business and life. Miss a Wings episode? We’ve got hundreds in the vault, all with actionable advice and epiphanies. Check them out at MelindaWittstock.com or wingspodcast.com. You can also catch me on LinkedIn or Instagram @MelindaAnneWittstock. We also love it when you share your feedback with a 5-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever else you listen, including Podopolo where you can interact with me and share your favorite clips.