711 Lee Richter:

Perfect is the enemy of success in business, and if you are busy as a bee right now buzzing towards what you perceive as perfection, you’re likely missing your moment and the opportunity for growth and success as an entrepreneur. Because like my multipreneur guest Lee Richter shares today in this special interview, live video streamed from the stage from Podopolo at Napa’s Feast It Forward during the BottleRock Festival, success comes to those who dare to take imperfect action, seizing the moment with a mix of resilience and gratitude.

Today you’ll get to hear our inspiring conversation about the power of NFTs, the magic of authenticity, and how women must lift each other up in business to realize our dreams.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, 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 a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

This interview may sound a lot different than the last 710 episodes, because normally I record all my interviews on Zoom. So, what a pleasure to be live, face to face with my guest, on a beautiful stage in sunny and I admit, wine-soaked Napa, at the beautiful Feast It Forward, the perfect playground to connect podcasters with influencers, celebrities, rock stars, entrepreneurs, and fans. During Memorial Day weekend, my podcasting platform Podopolo put dozens of inspiring podcasters in our network on stage at Feast, leveraging our interactive live video streaming technology for real time interaction. You can catch all the live streams – including this one – on the Podopolo app.

And it’s worth it because live interactive podcasting brings a whole new dimension to the craft, so what a pleasure to interview the inspiring Lee Richter face-to-face.  If you don’t know Lee, she is a serial entrepreneur, in fact a multipreneur, running 9 successful businesses all at once – that’s right 9. She’s also an expert in all things NFTs, so we dig deep into the power and promise of NFTs, and why the real value in an NFT isn’t the artwork – it’s the smart contract in behind it. Plus, we talk about what it takes for women to succeed as entrepreneurs – hint, it’s about lifting each other.

And by the way, if you’re a podcaster, you can also enter to win the chance to be featured live on stage with a whole VIP experience in Napa built around it. Check it out.

Now to Lee Richter – business visionary, dynamic innovator, investor, and a recognized award winning influencer by the San Francisco Business Times as one of their Top 100 Women Business Leaders in 2017.

For over 25 years, Lee has launched a dozen successful businesses in the financial, education and lifestyle sectors.
She’s also sought-after by entrepreneurs and business owners for expert advice and wisdom, leveraging her business acumen and connections to help her clients shorten their learning curve for early success. Lee’s consulting business @goasklee, helps entrepreneurs reframe challenges into opportunities, and creates specific action plans.

Her formula revolves around three M’s – mentorship, mindfulness and great marketing strategies, including knowing your customers from all angles – their fears, challenges, strengths, behavior.

She’s also the CEO of Richter Communications and Design Group, Lee is passionate about designing and launching marketing campaigns, public relations campaigns, and products that represent her mission and her values. There, she’s worked with
* Bank of America
* Merrill Lynch
* Robertson Stephens
* Autodesk
* Stanford Research Institute
* Edmunds.com
* The Pet Concierge

Now if that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, Lee is also the CEO  of Holistic Veterinary Care in Oakland California, where pets receive acupuncture and chiropractic care also with health and nutrition guidance

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Lee Richter, from the stage in Napa’s Feast It Forward where Podopolo put podcasters live on stage during BottleRock – including yours truly.  Be sure to download Podopolo to check out the interactive video version of this interview, plus all the incredible BottleRock content, all the interactive video and much more, and follow Wings there too so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay. We are changing it up a little bit to talk about business, NFTs, ways for artists to make money from NFTs and so much more. I’m Melinda Wittstock. I’m the CEO of Podopolo and I am also the host of Wings of Inspired Business. Some 700 episodes in where I interview very talented female founders. Lee Richter owns nine businesses at the same time. She’s a multipreneur and an investor and an expert in NFTs. I was just going to get straight into it because we’ve got so many musicians here. You are helping musicians monetize through NFTs.

Lee Richter:

It’s actually helping all artists, entrepreneurs, and people to see the way to multiply their brand and actually go global just by entering the NFT space. NFTs are not just about investing in art. A lot of people think they see the digital art. It’s more about having access. I see it as a ticket, almost like going to Ticketmaster and getting a ticket. You get an event on a certain day, at a certain time, that’s basically an NFT. What we’re doing is we’re looking at it as a ticket for VIP access or early access and creating really engaged communities. It’s not just for artists and musicians, it’s for entrepreneurs. It’s for anybody who has a brand who wants to expand, but also have a very engaged community. This is really the best way to build a community right now.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, 100%. It’s core to where Podopolo as an app is going as well, because we’re all about the creator’s economy. How can people earn what is rightfully theirs? Whether it’s a podcast, whether it’s music or whatever. What was it that sparked you? You’ve done so many different types of businesses. What was the moment where you said, “Okay, NFTs. That’s going to be my jam.”

Lee Richter:

Well, one of the things that we’ve learned is in a maturity map of a business, there’s 10 different components of whether your brand will be successful in the marketplace. In order to be successful, you have to meet all 10 components. Well, the number 10, the most important one is, is it hot? Is it something people want? Is it something people don’t know how to do? If you have that key to it, then you have a blue ocean. I started noticing in 2017, these NFTs were actually coming in, coming into play, coming into marketplaces. Then, if you look at 2019, we had an artist named Beeple who sold a piece of art, which was called 5,000 days. For 5,000 days, he had a piece of art every single day. He put it in a compilation piece and it sold for more than 69 million dollars in the NFT marketplace.

Now, it didn’t just sell it because of the art. It also sold because there’s a smart contract and in the smart contract gave access. Whoever owned that piece of art now has access to the things in the smart contract. It’s more than what you see on the surface. It’s also what people put in behind. That’s one of the key components to the NFT is understanding how to create a smart contract where you’re giving your audience something special. If you look at Gary Vaynerchuk, last year he sold NFTs. It took him 21 days to sell out and he sold his NFTs and he made 90 million dollars selling just over 10,000 NFTs. For example, one of them called Empathy Elephant went for 411,000 dollars. People were like, “Why would someone spend 411,000 on this little drawing of an elephant?” Well, it wasn’t about the elephant.

It was about the smart contract that gave whoever was the owner of that NFT front row access to the Gary V conferences. I was just at the Gary V conference in Minneapolis. 7,000 people were there and the owners of those NFTs got VIP experiences. They got VIP dinners, they got access to Gary in ways that other people didn’t. Now, somebody who invested 411,000 dollars with that kind of access, they have an opportunity to maybe pitch Gary an idea that can turn into multi-millions of dollars for their own NFT campaign. What they were doing was investing in access. That’s the number one reason why I use NFTs.

Lee Richter:

Even for artists, some of them might sell. Look at the Backstreet Boys. They were the first ones that sold VIP access to backstage. Then they sold it VIP access to join the band on their plane to their next gig. People paid hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars for that type of access. They showed it in real life and now they’re converting it to NFT access as well. They’re doing NFT campaigns because their audience already is trained to know that they want that VIP access. They’re dedicated. They already have people there. Now, what they’re doing is saying, “Oh, you want that access? Go through our NFT campaign.” Now it’s equal footing. Everyone has an opportunity to join it.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know what I love about it? It’s very abundant. You know, it’s multidimensional. There’s so many things, but you got to be across all the legal piece. You’ve got to think like a content repurposer. What value do you have that you can repurpose multiple times? That’s not the way a lot of people necessarily think so it’s a whole new way of thinking.

Lee Richter:

It’s Web Three. Web 3.0 is all about how do you be the creator and own your content? Web 2.0, which is Facebook, basically what happens is we go on their platform. We are the creators of the content, but then they own the content. This is why they’re joining the meta is because they want to be part of Web 3.0, which is where we’re going, where the creators own the content. This is why a lot of creators are jumping in head first is because they want to own their content.

They’re tired of giving 92% away to somebody else when they’re the creators. Now, if you look at Snoop Dogg, he sold his first NFT on Clubhouse, 850,000 dollars. I happened to be in the room when he sold that. Even he was surprised that someone would pay 850,000 dollars for his first NFT. But again, they got access.

Now, they own a little piece of his content they could repurpose. Now, him as a creator, he has jumped in full force in the NFT marketplace. Not only is he creating, he’s collecting as well. He has invested in multi-millions in his creations, but also in his collections.

He’s telling us. Steve Aoki said he’s made more in NFTs in the last year than he did in 10 years in the music industry. It’s been publicized. He is having more fun in this space because he’s the creator, the owner, and he gets to be anybody he wants. He doesn’t have to adhere to somebody else’s rules anymore. It’s given him freedom. It’s really fun to watch these creators literally blossom right in front of our face.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love it. This is the very ethos of Podopolo and why we created it. It’s like creators economy. It’s podcasters, artists. We make all these other platforms very, very wealthy and yet end up with so little. This is exactly what we’re about.

Lee Richter:

You’re in the most perfect timing. You could not have been a better timing for this. I think people who started their podcast 10 years ago can now come in and repurpose a lot of their work and create ways for people to join their community and be so engaged. It’s all because they have people come in the NFT space. They’re literally raising their hand and saying, “I want to be in your tribe. I want to be in your community.” That’s why we’re seeing the DAOs and the Metaverses absolutely blossoming is because it’s people who really want to be in community together. They’re choosing it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Mm. I love it. Lee, I want to go back in time a little bit with you because being a multi-entrepreneur, owning all these businesses at the same time. I got to ask you, how do you clone yourself? How do you manage that first of all?

Lee Richter:

The number one thing is to have an incredible team. I got to applaud you. Part of the reason that I have seen you blossom so much is you know how to manifest the most amazing people to support you. They blossom. Each one brings the next, each one brings the next. That’s what I see in my companies. As each company is growing, there’s somebody who stands out as the true leader of that brand. I empower them. I empower them to be their genius. When I look at one of my businesses is Holistic Vet Care in Oakland, California. That team member that leads it, her name is Jessica, has been with me more than 15 years. She started out as a nurse RVT, a registered veterinary tech and over time went into management. Now she’s leading multimillion dollar organizations because she’s able to be open, to be mentored, but she’s also open to a clear vision that might never have existed before.

When we launched Holistic Medicine, it was not something everyone talked about. “Holistic medicine for animals. Why would you do that,” is what I got. What happened was she had such a great visionary experience with me. She can multiply it with the team. I don’t have to be there day to day. She represents me. It’s us choosing the right leaders and then pouring into them, mentoring them, inspiring them, empowering them. Just yesterday I gave her a thousand dollars. I said, “Just take team members out to lunch one at a time and have an experience with them. Instead of an exit of an interview when people are leaving, do a stay interview, why people are staying,” and she loved it. She is actually taking each member of the team one by one out to lunch to just have a conversation around why are you here and why are you staying?

Many of our team members have been with us 3, 4, 6, 7 years. She wants to know, what is this that we’re doing right? We do a thing called the NPS score, a net promoter score. We do it internally and externally. During COVID the last three or four months, we have actually gotten a 100% NPS score internally with our team. I am curious too, how is it that they’re so excited and so engaged? Well, a lot of that is because of Jessica, because of the way she shows up. She takes my vision and makes it even bigger, but she personalizes it for every team member. I think you’ve subscribed to the same thing. How do you take that talent and let them be the best they can be in their lane? That’s when we’re lucky is when they show up and want to just blossom more and more with us.

Melinda Wittstock:

100%. I think at the root of that too, is leverage and more than 700 episodes in this podcast. One of the things that all the women founders who’ve built 6, 7, 8, 9 figure businesses and in some cases unicorns, have all at one point or another struggled with this concept of leverage, have had to figure out how not to micromanage everything, how not to be in control every, how to let go, and how not to always have to feel they have to be perfect. Did you ever have a struggle with perfectionism?

Lee Richter:

I absolutely did not. I am a more get it done and then keep improving it. I will say though, my daughter who’s 17 years old, since she was five I see she has a perfectionism gene. I even had to go to her teachers one by one and say, “Please don’t use the word perfect with her,” because it’s something in red. It’s something inside of her that she is so wanting to be perfect. I realized we never can be perfect. We’re always a work in progress. We’re always improving ourselves. We’re improving, improving, improving. Even with her, I’m working on it over and over again around it doesn’t have to be perfect. Done is good. Done is good.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. We joke that there should be an AA for perfectionist. Something about women that I don’t know, whether it at the root is we’re trying so hard to prove our value. We do the equivalent of cleaning the house before the housekeeper comes. It’s so much acculturated behavior. For women in particular, it’s something that so many entrepreneurs have to overcome. And it-

Lee Richter:

It could be a fear of judgment. Some of it is in our culture. I actually have a friend of mine with me today and that’s one of the things that she was saying about when she was growing up. A lot of times in her culture with her parents, I’ve had other people tell me the same thing. I’m watching a show right now about teens in Singapore and they’re talking about their parents are holding them to this perfectionist thing and they can’t live up to it and they feel like they’re failing.

That’s the worst thing we could do for the next generation is say, “You have to be perfect.” Honestly, no one can live up to that. If in our thirties and our forties and our fifties, it comes back and haunts us, that’s not doing anyone any good. I think you’re right. Being a creator, being free, being free to put it out there and not be perfect and just be yourself is really more ideal.

I think we’re going to see that a lot in the Web Three creator economy is that people are just being themselves. That’s one of the keys to a successful NFT launch is being authentic. Being authentic is one of the ways that I see the NFTs be more successful. The people that are not perfect, even when Gary V put out his, they were not perfect. They were absolutely hand drawn. Actually, at a point I was even like, do I want to invest in this because it’s not even that great?

Since then, he’s had artists come in and make it improve, which was great. When I was at his conference in Minneapolis, he was showing NFTs now in their state that are way better than they were when he raised 90 million dollars selling them.

He got to go in and improve it. He had a set of artists come in, a friend of mine, Gareb Shamus had a set of artists that he said, “Why don’t I have my artists help you?” Then, when those artists came in they made it even better. Now that people owning it feel even more happy to be part of the community because it’s something they’re proud of.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. This action is it doesn’t have to be perfect, taking action even if it’s imperfect and building the plane as you fly it. Do you think when we think of what holds women back in business and through your own experience, is it that it’s our own mental limitation of how big we think we can go? Do we think we can play as big as we can because I know I’m building a billion dollar business, right? I just am.

Lee Richter:

You are a unicorn. I’m watching it every single day. I feel that energy with you. I see how dedicated you are because you can envision you doing it, you’re going to do it. I think what it is, a lot of us have limitations in our own brain and they could go back multi-generations. It could be our grandparents or great grandparents. We might not have ever met, but it’s still in our genes. I think one of the things we need to do is be conscious of what those limitations are and then create ways in your brain to change that. I work with a person named Brandy Gillmore who’s a phenomenal PhD.

Melinda Wittstock:

I know Brandy.

Lee Richter:

She’s one of my best friends. I actually spoke with her yesterday for 90 minutes. One of the things we talk about are what are the things we want to change? What are the things that we want to improve? None of us come perfect but if we’re always improving, then we can have a better future self.

Sometimes, I’ll tell her a story and it might not be my best way of telling her a story. It might be something that I’m complaining about or something that was a childhood thing I don’t like. She’ll say to me, “Do you want to fight for that story?” I’m like, “No, I don’t want to fight for… I don’t even want to keep that story.” She goes, “Then let’s rewrite that story.” I think it’s the power of the brain. We have these stories from when we were six years old or eight years old or 12 years old, and we replay them and we’re like, “Oh, my brother was mean to me.” We don’t need to replay those anymore.

I’ll give you an example. When I was about six years old, we were in New York City and at Palisades Park. For four days we had a family event. All these amazing things happen, the roller coasters, all these incredible events. Then on the way home my brother and I had a big fight in the car. Now, she’s like, “Well, why don’t you just tell the story where you ended on the highest evidence of love and let go of everything else? Why remember the fight with your brother? Does that help you have a better future self? No. Just go in and think of where’s the highest evidence of love, the highest power for my family, that I felt the best and end the story there.” I’m like, “That’s brilliant. Why didn’t I think of it myself?”

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. It’s so simple and yet so hard for people.

Lee Richter:

She had me one month at a time go into a childhood story and start thinking about it and thinking about the highest evidence of love and then ending the story there and letting my brain have a new record playing around how there’s so much love in my life. That is a much better perspective for my better future self. Why carry around the disappointment? It’s not helping me. Yeah, it’s been a process. Honestly, it’s been about three years that I’ve gone through those stories and one by one, dismantled them, look for the highest evidence of love and kept it there.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my God. I know that journey so well, because it’s been my own. Did you always know you were an entrepreneur?

Lee Richter:

Always, since I was six years old. Part of the reason I was in New York at Palisades Park was I was part of Little Miss America. From that, started doing commercials. At six years old, I was already in the advertising world. From six to 12, I did, I don’t know, dozens of commercials for Oscar Mayer hotdogs, and Wonder Bread, and Clairol shampoo, and Sears catalogs, and all these things. All the way back then I was in the advertising world and I started turning into an entrepreneur and an earner.

Lee Richter:

One of the things Brandy even said to me is what a gift it was that I learned the power of money at such a young age. That allowed me to have some of these unlimited ideas. Earlier you were saying, sometimes we put limitations on ourselves on how big our dream can be.

What I said to you is, “Oh, you’re already visualizing yourself as a billion dollar plus company.” Because you can already see that, you can manifest and make it happen. Our brain needs to be able to have the capacity to do that. Sometimes it’s weeding out the old limiters and the old limiting stories and the old limiting beliefs that allow room for that prosperity.

My coach Dan Sullivan had mentioned to me that a lot of times he sees in the culture, especially in the women’s culture, is that we will only be as ambitious and as successful as the most successful person in our family lineage. A lot of times we create our own glass ceiling of how far we can go to make other people comfortable. It could even be a subconscious thing, but once we know we’re conscious about it, we could break through that. We don’t need a glass ceiling. This blue sky has no ceiling. It is endless. It’s infinity. That’s what we all have the capability of doing.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that. I love that he had that exposure as a young girl. Most young girls don’t have that kind of exposure sitting in classrooms, doing the work, making it look pretty, memorizing things, fitting in. That root of that fear where we’re afraid of shining brighter than the people we’re around or the man.

Lee Richter:

The Tall Poppy Syndrome.

Melinda Wittstock:

Tall Poppy Syndrome, we’re afraid of other girls. There’s a moment in school where other girls kind of say, “Hey, what makes you think you can do that?”

Lee Richter:

“Who do you think you are?”

Melinda Wittstock:

That, oh god, I had that loads of times.

Lee Richter:

This is why I love supporting you. I love our community of unicorns. We lift each other up. We say, “Thank you for being that successful. How can I help you be even more seen? How can I support you even more?” I think more communities, especially of women, should come together rather than, “Who do you think you are?” It’s, “I want to applaud you for who you are.” That’s one of the reasons I brought my friend Lacey with me today is because we lift each other up.

Melinda Wittstock:

Lift each other up as the hashtag for Wings of Inspired Business. It’s called wings because we all soar higher when we fly together, 100%.

Lee Richter:

It’s so much more fun. You guys sleep at night relishing in all the joy that you bring in the world. When you squash somebody, you go to sleep at night and you think, “Why did I do that? I really should have done the opposite.” Or, “Why did someone do that to me?” When somebody squashes us, how does that feel? Well, take that and multiply it and turn it into good and turn it into weight. I want the opposite. I see that with my daughter, her and her friends, her group of friends, there was 18 of them who just got ready for prom last week. They all came to the house and I just saw them lift each other up. I brought a friend of mine that she won, Miss Latin American Global. She was Miss Columbia.

I brought her in just to empower the girls to feel beautiful, to look beautiful, to know what it’s like to take pictures and be on camera. I saw them all lifting each other up. I was like, this is what I want for the next generation. Every one of them was like, “You look beautiful,” or, “Oh, let me put each flowers in your hair.” They wanted to help each other. I think the more we can empower our girls to do that for their community, the more it will multiply and multiply more and that will be their norm.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. It’s who we’re being and what we’re doing, not just what we’re saying.

Lee Richter:

It’s also the support we bring in. I wasn’t the mom in there doing it. What I did was I brought a credentialed person in so I could step away and let them do it and have an experience and not be like the, what do they call it, helicopter mom. No, it was the opposite. I was having champagne with my friends in the backyard while they were getting dressed when they were doing things. I brought a friend in who’s a photographer. Her name is Lori and she’s the photographer for the Noble Peace Prize family.

She took photos of this, and it wasn’t intrusive. It was supportive. At the end I could see how the girls were really helping each other, even though the photographs. It told the story of them empowering and caring for each other. I think the more as moms that we can instill that behavior for our girls, the more we’ll see the next generation fly even higher than we can.

Melinda Wittstock:

Mm, 100%. Do you share this vision that I have that women are actually changing the game of business when we’re in our authentic feminine power? Which takes in kind of archetypal masculine as well as feminine energies and balances that. When we’re really owning it and we’re just like what you’re talking about at the freedom of the artist, just be authentic, be who we really are. Do you think that energy and much more of an abundance mindset will completely change the business landscape?

Lee Richter:

100%. I’ll tell you about 11 years ago, I was in charge of a chapter called BNI, Business Networking International. In that chapter, I actually started the chapter. For the first five presidents, we had all women. Then, all of a sudden a man became a president. What I learned is there was a difference in how the women lead and a difference in how the men lead. Well, the following year I was in Austin, Texas at the Wizards Academy with the founder of BNI who has 4,000 chapters. His name is Ivan Meisner. I was with Ivan at lunch. I was mentioning to him. I was like, “I notice whenever the women are leaders, the chapter thrives, it’s all about relationships. It’s all about how do we lift each other up. How do we blossom together? And as soon as we put men leadership in there, it was about the rules.”

Lee Richter:

Did you come on time? Did you do this? Did you do that? It wasn’t about building a relationship and we started losing members. We started losing our founding members and I realized it was so constrictive. I asked Ivan, did he notice it? He said he actually did. They had already noticed that in women leadership, a lot of times it was building community. It was how do we thrive together? How do we create mentorship? How do we welcome people in? How do we choose the right people so we all flourish. With the men, it was completely different. We saw it time and time again. It was not my imagination. When I confirmed it with Ivan, I realized they knew this, but they’re not going to say we only want women leadership. What they did was they wanted leadership teams that were comprised of men and women.

Now, did you know in the state of California, they’ve created a rule that a certain percentage of women have to be on the board of directors now. It’s for the same reason because when they let it happen organically, women weren’t included. Now, they’re starting to enforce it because they want to see the relationships and the thriving and the women be included.

Now, my first job was at Merrill Lynch in Washington, DC, and there were 103 brokers in the office and only three were women. My name is actually Linda Lee Richter but I go by Lee Richter because of that job.

Lee Richter:

What would happen is people would get letters from me and they would assume I was a man and they would say yes. If they got it from a woman, they would throw it away. They would come in. I actually had really great track records in investing. I would get clients in. They would be surprised, but they’d try me out and over time I would perform better than their other brokers.

Melinda Wittstock:

You’re reminding me of my aunt Bea, who was Canada’s first female stock broker.

Lee Richter:

Wow.

Melinda Wittstock:

She made her own market with women because she could… She became their top performer. She continued working until she was 85. She crushed it.

Lee Richter:

We learned in that industry, part of the reason is building relationships, but the other one is a lot of times women pay attention to details at a different level. We see those little things behind the lines. We see those little things between the lines. We see those little things as a background that nobody else notices. It’s just something about our Spidey sense as a mom, maybe, that we develop something. I’m not saying men don’t have it. I’m just saying women have it at a degree that when we’re looking at performance, a lot of times the women are paying attention to details and reporting at a different level than the men.

Lee Richter:

In my own experience, I see it even in my own companies. If I ask people to give me what I call a state of state, what’s going on in your universe right now, the women will give me five paragraphs and all these bullet points and pictures, and the guys’ will be three sentences.

I’m like, “Well, can I get a little more detail?” It’s taken time for them to learn I really want those details. It’s those details that allow me to go out in the world and tell our story at an even bigger level. The women will play along right away. Part of it is maybe we’re really great storytellers. I know men that are too, but for some reason, maybe we’ve read to our kids more or whatever it is. Our imagination allows us to really fill in the details at a high level.

Melinda Wittstock:

As we begin to wrap up, I wanted to ask you just to put your investor hat on in a moment, because we’re talking about women completely changing the game of business. Yet, you’re in the Bay Area. Women still aren’t really getting invested in. It’s just, there’s a disconnect. What’s going to change that?

Lee Richter:

Us sticking together. We’re more than 50% of the population if you really look at it. I think about it even in voting for our next president. If we really band together, we can really change the world. Actually, the Dalai Llama said it’s up to the Western woman to change the world for our reason. I see it in so many groups I’m in. I’m in internet marketing groups where it’s 90% men.

A lot of times the men really bond together. They go to the bar, they can collaborate and the women go back to their room and they’re talking to the kids and not doing the same thing. Those men that go to the bar and collaborate, they’re building these multimillion dollar brands overnight because they stick together like a boys club. I don’t know if we’ve really learned how to do it at the same level yet. I think our unicorn group is the beginning of it.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s the beginning of it. Yeah.

Lee Richter:

We can model that for others. There’s about 40 of us in there. I look at Lisa Sasevich, and JJ Virgin, and Lisa Nichols, and they know how to build community. They know how to build people getting involved. I think us taking that lead and you… Actually watching you build this from nothing. but why is that? Because you’re dedicated, you follow through, you create team, you do all the things you need to make that momentum important and impactful. I think the more we do it together, the better will rise together.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. 100%. The entire Podopolo business model is an abundance minded, where everybody wins. That’s the whole point.

Lee Richter:

Nobody has to lose.

Melinda Wittstock:

Nobody has to lose. This is the key difference. I think it’s not even masculine-feminine. It’s abundance or scarcity. Just even in the podcast space where you think of what’s going on in there. There’s a tendency of some of that competitors shall not be mentioned to try and reincarnate the streaming wars, and then there’s another, and hold on to everything. That’s a scarcity model, as opposed to, how can we all win? How can we all be lifted up?

Lee Richter:

I love this about the NFT space, too, coming back to that. If you look at Tom Bilyeu, he’s done a thing called Impact Theory. He created an Impact Theory universe and he’s created a 25 to 30 year commitment being in the space.

Now, think about it. He’s already a billionaire. He doesn’t need to do this, but he sees why he can make a positive impact and bring others along. This is exactly his model. In there when he shows the utility map, which means when you buy an NFT, which is a non-fungible token, which looks like a piece of digital art. When you buy one of his NFTs in the smart contract, you also get all these other benefits. Some of them are unlockable, which means you see them today, but some of them are locked and you won’t see them until the future.

What he’s doing is building in a future journey with him. He doesn’t have to tell you everything you’re getting right now, but what he’s doing is he’s making a commitment to being part of a community to all rise together, to all learn together, to all grow together. As an NFT holder with him, I also get to the opportunity to pitch an idea and even collaborate with him. He wants to rise from the community. I think that is a really good model. This is a man bringing the model for it. I will say he has got a very powerful wife.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, Lisa’s amazing.

Lee Richter:

Lisa’s amazing and she’s doing extraordinary work. The two of them together are such a power couple to watch. The way he lifts her is extraordinary, too. As she just did her book launch, he was her biggest cheerleader. He was out there going, “Look at my amazing wife. Look how far she’s come.” I think that’s the model that all of us could use, whether we’re part of a partnership, a couple, whatever it is, we could lift together. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It could be both of us together. I think Tom is a really good example of that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. Well, Lee, you’re inspiring just by being here, by being who you are. Everything you’re doing in business and in life is truly wonderful. Thank you for taking the time to put your wings on and fly with us here at live streaming Podopolo with Feast It Forward. It’s so exciting during BottleRock here in Napa. I want to make sure people know how to find you and connect with you if they want your expertise on NFTs or anything else.

Lee Richter:

Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. I will say I got a picture with my butterfly wings over there. I already posted it on Instagram because I feel like I’m flying here at BottleRock in Napa Valley. I am honored to be here with you in your community. For people to reach me, you can go to my regular Instagram or my website. It’s under go ask Lee, that’s G-O-A-S-K-L-E-E. Goasklee.com. Then for NFTs, I have a course to get people started. It’s just super simple. I know a lot of people are afraid of all the steps to open a wallet and what to do. What I did was I created a course so it’s easy for people to get started. They’re in a safe place and that’s called NFTswithlee.com

Melinda Wittstock:

NFTswithlee.com. Easy to remember. Go ask Lee.

Lee Richter:

I try to make it as easy as possible because when I’m in New York, and I’m speaking and stuff I want to share that, but I want to empower other entrepreneurs. I want to empower women of every age group. I’m seeing teenagers that are multimillionaires right now. I’m seeing 20 year old’s that are billionaires right now just from being in this space. There’s only 1% of the population that knows NFTs and only 16% of the population is in crypto right now. This is still early. This is still the time for us to learn, to jump in, and to lift together.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. Well, Lee Richter, thank you so much for being on Wings.

Lee Richter:

Thank you.