NFTs and cryptocurrency are today’s hot topics. Many people want to know all about these new kids on the block, and we’re here to help you get the answers to your questions. Dr. Patty Ann Tublin teams up with award-winning Global Leader, Visionary, and Thought Leader Lee Richter to help you gain the knowledge you want. Step into the metaverse as we discuss what NFTs are, how they work, and why you should consider investing in them. Hungry for more great insights? Then tune in and learn more.
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Delving Into The New Frontier Of NFTs And Cryptocurrency With Lee Richter
I could not be more excited to have our guest on. Before I share any information with you about her, since I know you are going to love this episode, make sure you like, comment, share and subscribe to the show. We have a woman guest who when they say you should never be the smartest person in the room, when you see this woman in the room, you can rest assured that you are not the smartest person in the room because Lee is.
Lee Richter is an award-winning global leader, visionary and thought leader recognized for being in the International Top 100 Women Business Leaders for seven years in a row. That is not luck. That is genius. You can look her up. I want to dive into this. Folks, put on your seatbelt because Lee Richter is going to take us for a ride. Lee, welcome and thank you so much for being a guest on this show.
It is my delight and thank you so much for that beautiful introduction. Dr. Patty Ann, when you are in the room, we are all paying attention because we know how brilliant and genius you are in your zone of relationships. I love that you are bringing this up because we all have a relationship with money. Crypto and NFTs are a version of that. We get to talk about this new relationship.
This is why Lee and I resonate and are in such synergy in the universe. Lee knows that I talk a lot about women and their relationship to money, and people and their money personalities. Lee, as everything that she does, has taken money and investments to a whole new level. Lee, share your wisdom with us. Start where ever you can. I was on one of the first Genius Network calls where you started to talk about cryptos and NFTs.
It was September 2021. It was a Genius Network meeting for September. I was leading the meeting that time, so I got to pick a topic around a fireside chat. I had Jason up there with me, and he and I would ask questions.
Jason Campbell is another brilliant Genius Network member.
I love Jason Campbell. He passed the torch for me. He ran the meeting the month before. I included him in our meeting in September because I loved his style, how he shares and how brilliant he is. I always feel so inspired by him. We had a fireside chat. We booked 45 minutes and all we did was talk about why pay attention to NFTs and what makes us inspired to pay attention to cryptocurrencies.
In that 45-minute chat, all these different entrepreneurs came back to me either that night or the next day or a day after and said how inspired they were. A lot of them opened a wallet for the first time. Our friend, BJ Fogg, who is an incredible action taker, took his first step that day. He opened a wallet and started his crypto journey.
We had a friend who started with an idea for a coin to encourage kids to be more fiscally responsible. He figured out a way to reward kids when they have great behavior around saving, earning, sharing and donating money. He created a pathway and that day, he realized he could reward them with coins. He could have a gamified piece of it for his audience. He is already doing it. It blossomed in that meeting.
We all have a relationship with money. And crypto and NFTs are just a version of that.
Our audience can already tell that Lee is off to the races. For the newbies that are reading, if somebody wants to take action, what is the first piece of information you can share?
What I would recommend to people is to go to my Instagram on Global Leaders Collective and start at the beginning. I have done a whole bunch of education there on what to pay attention to in cryptocurrencies, what a blockchain is, how to purchase an NFT, and what is an NFT. In this episode, we should talk about NFTs.
NTFs are a version of doing business with people on the blockchain. In other words, you can create an NFT out of a piece of art, a poem or music. Not only can they buy the art, or you sell it or purchase it, but also behind it, you can build in bonuses. They have a thing called a smart contract. In the smart contract, you could build in future bonuses or bonuses to be with you.
Let’s take Joe Polish, who has the Genius Network, for example. He has a membership. We join and pay an annual fee for that membership. He can say, “I am going to sell ten NFTs. For those NFTs, not only do you get the membership, but you get a bonus lunch with me. When you come to Arizona, I am going to have an NFT luncheon. You guys who have them will get that bonus with me.” What we get is either VIP, advanced or exclusive access. Anyone who creates an NFT can build things in the contract that give the person who buys it a bonus.
I will give you another example. Gary Vaynerchuck, who happens to be very famous in the NFT space because he is an early adopter, launched over 10,000 NFTs in a campaign that he calls VeeFriends. In his VeeFriends, he sold $90 million worth of NFTs. People are like, “Why did people spend so much money on those NFTs?” For example, one of them is called Empathy Elephant. Empathy Elephant is named after one of his wines. He took a hand-drawn picture of an elephant that looked like his label and sold it. It went on auction for $411,000.
People are like, “Why would anyone spend $411,000 for this piece of digital art?” It is more than the art because what he built in the contract was for three years. Whoever came to his events could have front row access and have access to him. Somebody who wants to be in his sphere maybe wants to talk to him about doing a project together and collaborating, or is a big fan and wants to celebrate and support him. Those people have access to him through their NFT. They could use it for all three years, but they also have the option in year two to sell it to someone else.
You use it over for yourself, share it with the next person, sell it for a profit, or give someone else access. The beauty of it is Gary Vee gets paid every single time. If he builds in the smart contract that if it is resold, he gets another 10%, he now gets paid on the second sale. This is why it is so big for artists and musicians because a lot of times, they get paid the first time when they sell their art or sell something, but they might not be paid subsequent times. In this case, they could build it into the contract to be paid every time there is a transaction with that contract. It gives a different playing field for the people who are artists and creators.
I have to ask you because I am thinking of how many people would love to have access to you. Do you have an NFT that you are selling that gives somebody access to you?
I have a waiting list for it because we sold out of our NFTs. You could go to GoAskLee.com. This is my website. Instagram is my personal one generally. However, I have noticed that my team has been posting a lot around NFTs because people ask so many questions about it. On my website, there is a way to learn more about NFTs. There is an entry-level NFT course to help people get started. My team and I have created videos to walk them through step by step on how to open a wallet, and how to get your name on the internet because you can get your name.eth. Ethereum is one of the ways to trade NFTs. It is useful. I have LeeRichter.eth when you go to OpenSea to look at any of the art. OpenSea is one of the platforms that sell NFTs.
When you go there, if you put in LeeRichter.eth, my collection will come up. Some of them I own that I bought. Some of them I have been awarded or won. Some of them I have created and sold. I sold a couple of them. We made one for Anna David, who is a good friend of ours. When you go in there, you will see Anna’s in the Global Leaders Collective.
What is the next thing? Where is this taking us? Why does the world need this?
We call this Web 3.0. If you look back at Web 1.0, the beginning, it was when corporations and people made websites. It was one-way transactions and conversations. They put out content, we consumed it, and that was it. Web 2.0 came out, and that was a big deal because things like Facebook and different platforms came out where we, as the participants, are the creators. However, they own the platform and also the IP.
Along the way, we have realized how much information we have given away for free. We have given our identity, background, pictures and videos. A lot of people are saying, “I want to own my own content.” Now with Web 3.0, the creators own the content and it is decentralized. You get to choose which Metaverse and areas you want to participate in. However, everything that’s out there on the blockchain as a transaction lives there forever. It is a whole different way of doing transactions because it is not only transparent. It cannot be undone. Once it is there, it is a defined transaction.
That helps a lot of things like consumers being able to trade even the title of a car. If I had it in my wallet, you could see that I own that car. The same thing about colleges, they are going to be giving their degrees. UC San Diego said, “All of the degrees for their students here forward are going to be in NFT.” If you are hiring someone, you could go in their wallet, see their degree, and know it is real because it is issued by UC San Diego. It is not just a made-up thing anymore. It is verified, valid and you can see it.
We did a blockchain course, a smart contract course, and an NFT course through the Blockchain Council. They sent us the graduate certificates. Our team is turning them into NFTs, so now it is in the wallet and proves we finished those courses and got certified in those courses. It is something that is going to help education be more transparent. Trading cars and real estate, all of those things are happening already. We are catching up.
How does it work in real estate? If I own my house and sell it, you can only have one person own the house at a time.
Generally, you can own the NFT. In that, you could say, “I will break it up into twelve months. I use it in eleven months, and someone else who gets the NFT can use it in the month of November.” You can do fractional ownership with anything, including your own house. It’s almost like a timeshare, but you can say, “You buy this NFT. You get my house in Connecticut for the month of February or July.” I have a place in Maui. I could sell NFTs by the night if I want to. Use it for July 11th, 2022, and if someone buys it, they get to use it. It is up to us to decide and it is up to somebody to want to buy it and see the value.
Talk us through a wallet. We think of a regular wallet. You open it up and you have your credit cards, money and driver’s license. What is the NFT wallet? What does that look like?
With Web 3.0, the creators own the content. It’s decentralized, and you get to choose which metaverse you want to participate in.
There is one that is going to be your cryptocurrency where you go and purchase either Bitcoin, Solana, or Ethereum. Most of the NFT transactions that I have done have been with Ethereum. However, there are other currencies as well. There is Solana, WAX and different ones. We have used those as well, but generally, we use Ethereum. The first thing you are going to do is go to Coinbase or wherever you have your cryptocurrency. That is where you would purchase Ethereum.
I go into the NFT marketplace through a company called OpenSea. OpenSea did $5 billion worth of transactions just in January 2022. They became a marketplace in 2017. That could annualize over $60 billion in 2022. A lot of those are trading NFTs that are valuable. Some of them are called Bored Apes, and some of them are called Crypto Punks. A lot of those are trading in OpenSea, and they are multimillion-dollar transactions. There are many transactions happening that were over $5 billion worth of revenue to OpenSea in January. That is how many transactions are going on.
It is going up. The whole thing is more and more people are coming into the marketplace. I have a wallet inside of OpenSea that is called MetaMask. I went in and started a MetaMask wallet. It gives a very lengthy 23-character number to identify your wallet. Remember, I said that you could get your name.eth. I went and bought LeeRitcher.eth, and then renamed my MetaMask wallet to LeeRichter.eth. When you go to OpenSea, you can put in my name and see my stuff.
Also, if I purchase or get them, I can use that. There are 32 characters in the wallet address. It’s hard having to remember the 32 characters over and over or typing it wrong or copy and pasting it wrong, which happened to me one time. The letter Y got added to the end of my number. All of a sudden, it was not usable, and I could not figure out why. My team members are like, “Somehow, Y got added on there.” Once we deleted it, it worked. LeeRichter.eth is so much easier.
If you do not remember that number or code, you are locked out until you find it.
You can be locked out. They do give you a key phrase to get back in, and you never want to share that phrase. You want to put it in lock and key in a safe so that you only can access it. We have a thing called Trezor, which is a little thing that holds a lot of our digital assets. That can go in the safe because then you have a backup of what you own. You do have to make sure that any key phrases you keep, you do not let anyone else have it. Maybe one person who backs you up might have it or your attorney or spouse.
You do not want to put it on LastPass or anything digital. Isn’t that so interesting? This is so ahead of the curve, yet you want the old-school password.
You protect it so that no one can come in and hack it on you because your wallet is on your computer. I have lost Bitcoin myself because we could not identify a wallet. I feel it in my heart every time I think about it. It is floating out there and I can’t access it. I know it is mine. It is a fact of doing business. You generally only do that one time, and you learn a hard lesson, so you do not do it again, which is why even paying attention to security is important for your website.
One of the things we are doing is upleveling all of our passwords and our website. Look at what is going on in the world and how much cyber warfare there is. It’s part of the reason why people are decentralizing and going into the marketplace. This is not a financial recommendation to anyone. This is you and I talking about what we are doing. We are not recommending it to other people. We are just showing a pathway of what we have learned. What I am learning is the more and more I learn, the more there is to know. I have been paying attention to it since 2015 and 2016. It is so hard for me to keep up with the pace of it. I have a team on it.
You are in infancy for the most part.
I was talking to my friend and he started in around 2009 and 2010. That was infancy. That was a whole other language for them. For me, 2015 and 2016 were Peter Diamandis’ Abundance360. He was bringing it out to us because he saw how much was happening. He brought the CEO and Founder of Ethereum to us when it was $2.16 for Ethereum. It was way back in the beginning. However, some people took action and became multimillionaires in such a short amount of time. Some people like me who did not take as much action as I should have are still sitting here going, “Do not wait. Run and get in.”
It is still a new field and there is still plenty of money to be made.
There’s a lot to learn. If I was looking at my portfolio, it is maybe somewhere around less than 5% that I have in crypto. I have other things with wealth advisors. I am still enjoying it, and I want to keep adding to it. I have a tax refund coming for something and I am like, “How much of that can I put in this endeavor right here and make a difference in my team’s life?” One of my team members wants to have a certain amount of nodes earning money. It is an advanced way of mining and paying attention to the inside structure of Bitcoin and blockchain.
As soon as I got them, I said, “I can’t wait. We can go ahead and finish that contract and get the rest of them.” However, I do not want to go into debt doing it. What I want to do is have regular income come in, and then it does have a small percentage that goes to this. At the same time, I already looked back and wished I did more.
There is still so much money to be made.
There is so much opportunity out there. We can’t guarantee there is money to be made. Even right now, many things are down. I am like, “It is on sale. We should be doubling down.” What matters is people’s mindset, risk behavior and risk-reward mentality. Now, I see it on sale and I can’t get that refund fast enough to get in the market even more.
I will speak for myself, not that I find it daunting, but what a lot of people I talked to need to embrace is it is a new language.
It is a new frontier, and there are different words like the word fiat. Fiat money means our US currency. It is our current money. What is a wash and how do you pay gas fees? There are different things. Ironically, it is almost the same as something else. They just create terminology for a particular network. Gas fees would be when you go to buy an NFT, depending on when you buy it, there is a fee for the people to go on the blockchain and register that transaction.
NFTs are already evolving. People already see it. The people who get it are already going to market and making a difference.
Someone is going on your behalf to create the transaction, and somebody is verifying it as true. You pay that as gas fees. It’s depending on how much volume is coming in. They have peak hours just like electric companies and anything else. If they are having this many people come through, they are going to have higher fees, just like Uber does in peak hours. That happens in gas fees in NFTs as well. We sold some NFTs for people to join us at a special dinner in the French Laundry in Napa Valley. I had ten of them for sale. It was a private dining room. Some of them paid a lot more gas fees depending on when they got it. It was over $100 for some of them.
Some of them did it at different times, and it was only $30. It depended on when they did it and what the fees were. You can register. If you are competing, like when Gary Vee, Tom Bilyeu or somebody famous has an auction, you do not care about gas fees. You want to get in there because everyone is going in. If it is something like my French Laundry where you could buy it later, and there is only one of one, and you are the only one looking at it, then you can wait until later to do it when the gas fees are low.
I heard somebody say, and you being one of them, that when you have smart people that are ahead of the curve and other things, it is almost like the expression, “Follow the money.” I have heard people at Genius Network say, “I heard people talk in a couple of years about this almost as a leap of faith.” What do you say about the old school Wall Street? Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said, “It is all nonsense.” Is that about them protecting their turf? Is it ignorance? What do you say to people who said it is gambling or it is an MLM?
Many people have different theories. I agree that it started from nothing, and then somehow, it created value. I am like everyone. I am like, “Why would I care about a screenshot of an ape?” In the beginning, I was that way. What I have learned is we attach value to it for different reasons like emotional, novelty, or there are only 10,000 in the whole world, and they are the first ones. People put different values. What is in the smart contract and what you get is a bonus. When I look at Tom Bilyeu, he has many bonuses built in. Over the next number of years, we are going to be getting bonuses.
I bought two of his legacies because I want to be included not only in what he is doing but also in learning as he is doing it. Everyone is going to have different reasons and different timing of when to get in. It is going to affect all of us over time. We are going to see contracts go in this way. We are going to see no need for middlemen. If I am selling my watch, I can go to a pawn shop now. Later, I could sell an NFT. Whoever gets it will turn it in, and I mail them the watch.
That is the part that makes me feel like, “This is here to stay. It is the future.” It’s cutting out the middleman and streamlining the used car salesperson. Here is my car, the buyer and the seller, and you manage that.
Can I share with you something about how we are already using NFTs? Do you know how you ever buy a ticket from Ticketmaster, and they send you an electronic version? It has a QR code, and it says, “Sunday, 8:00 PM. Row one. Seat one. Here is your ticket.” That is an NFT. It is one-of-one good for that seat at a specific time. It is access. That is an NFT. We just did not call it an NFT. It is a ticket, one of a kind, that you get access to whatever it says in the contract. In that case, it is to see this band or this musical group at this time, this seat, and this row specifically.
That is where we are going, but we are already there. We are adding more pieces and making it so that in some cases, we eliminate fraud, increase transparency, and make it a global audience where before it might have been our neighborhood. Even my holistic veterinary hospital is more of a global audience when I create NFT campaigns because anyone around the world can participate at the same level. They can convert and get Ethereum and jump in the same as anyone in the US or anyone anywhere. We have a global audience paying attention to our brands because we are in this space. You said that it is still early enough. It really is. It is less than 1% of people who are in this already. It is still the very beginning.
You are so excited about it, which gets me excited about it. I am trying to absorb what you are saying as fast as I can. Here is a question I have. Will there be crypto attorneys that specialize in crypto contracts?
There already are. We did a five-day challenge on Facebook and invited a lot of attorneys in there. Even some of the attorneys who were so speculative and are like, “I do not know how I am going to be able to do this,” by the end, a couple of them are starting new companies together and flying to see each other to establish new ideas in this space. Some of it is people who are going through a divorce, and now they can put all their assets in NFTs. It is easy to split. No emotion is a transaction. It is honest and transparent. Now, I can put my entire inventory in my house as NFTs even for insurance. Later, if I had to split assets or define assets, or if I died and put it in my will, now it’s NFT 4, 5 and 6 go to this person. When they turn it in, they get whatever it is that matters.
It is already evolving. People already see it. The people who get it are already going to market and making a difference. How you and I meant an NFT and creating something here will probably be different in six months because so many people are coming in. Rather than six steps to get from beginning to end, it will turn into 3 or 4. There is a company I am investing in called Mobie. It is just launching. They are making it like PayPal, where behind the scenes, it is trading cryptocurrency. It allows you to buy NFTs, but you do not have to do it. They are doing it for you.
It is coming to market. I can see other companies like that will change the way we do it. I love the fact that I know the original way of doing it because forever, I am going to understand this chain of action and give me an edge. Even when I was in the financial markets, I worked as a Series 7 licensed stockbroker in the ’80s and ’90s. I was at Merrill Lynch in Washington, DC. I was transferred and got a promotion to the Palm Beach office and launched an office there.
I learned a lot about securities that way. I got my CFP license with them. They put me through training in the New York Twin Towers. I worked in the Twin Towers for two years and trained. What was so beautiful is that in that education, we learned money is a mindset and a relationship. As we started at the beginning of this show, we have a relationship. We get to choose how we want to show up. What I have learned is with money, I show up in gratitude like, “Thank you for serving me. Go out in the world and come back to me multiplied.”
For the audience, that encapsulates Lee Richter’s personality in a nutshell.
I do my best to stay in that. Real-life can get in the way. The more I do that, the more it multiplies. I had a transaction from years ago that I thought was finished. They wrote to me and they are like, “We have another bonus for you. What is your banking account number?” I am like, “I wonder how much bonus I get. What did I do that I spent? I now know I spent for my trip to Antarctica.” I said, “Thank you for serving me. Go out in the world and come back to me multiplied.”
When I find out that amount, I will know how much it came back and multiplied. It is interesting how it will be fluid like that when I pay attention and I am intentional. If I go with life and do not pay attention, and do not start in gratitude, it does not show up the same. I have checks and balance with someone on my team where I am like, “Start the day with gratitude.” As Lee Brower says in the movie, “Start BIG, Be In Gratitude.” If we want to do it, I start in gratitude and notice how different my day is. I also start in gratitude around prosperity declarations around money. In it, I am making room for crypto to come in as well.
I am working with a team member even on our gateway around this and expanding it. I worked with someone many years ago. She and I opened the gateway for something to make more than $25 million. We put it in place and then it happened. I did not raise that gateway and kept hitting that. For some reason, it was hard to go past it for different projects. I realized as soon as we raised the gateway, it made a difference. She raised it to $500 million for me for something I am working on. I have done multibillion-dollar things, but they were not by myself. This one is just Gary and me.
She made an intention and raised the gateway and frequency to be able to generate that interest in a new company that we are launching. I am like, “It is being that intentional to the universe about holding the frequency to do business at that level to create impact for good.” She had to raise the gateway for me to even be congruent with it. Part of the reason why it could be that big is because of this NFT play and the NFT piece that I get to put in our pet brands.
You can add to the value of your community instead of needing to take things.
It is going to do the same thing that we were talking about with OpenSea. It is going to exponentially take off, and we are one of the first ones doing it that it has the opportunity to take-off faster than anything we have ever done before. I had to create the intention, the container, and they want to build at that level. Not only could I do it for myself and our team, but we could do for the impact for the good of what we are going to create on the planet.
Let me give a shout-out to Lee Brower. I met Lee in person. Everyone in the entrepreneurial world knows Lee Richter. For years, Nick Sonnenberg was at the conference with Lee Brower. He said, “You have to meet Lee Richter.” That was when I first met Lee. We then took a selfie and sent it to Cameron Herold. He was like, “Here are two of my favorite women.” We realized we knew so many people. It was incredible.
It was the meshing of all these master brains because each one is so brilliant. When I look at Cameron, he inspires me so much. I need to hire two number two’s now, one for the new company. The first thing I did was go to Cameron and his team and say, “Who do you have that is ready and can jump in?” One is a cryptocurrency expert who is overseas that we are interviewing because of that team.
What you did when we did that selfie is deepened our relationship with those people we care about to let them know that there was another way we were connected. You, as a relationship expert, see that and take action. Our friend, Joe Polish, is brilliant at that. This is a big learning lesson for your audience too. That is how they can deepen their connections. That is how they can also honor some of the people that mentor them or inspire them as we did.
I am sitting here listening to Lee talk about crypto and NFTs. There are many other businesses like Top 100 Business Women Leaders in the World. Lee makes the absolute connection to relationships and my work via her work. You are blowing my mind, which is one of the many reasons why I adore you.
It is so natural because it is a fluid circle. It is the thing of inclusion. I see your genius and I want to share it. You do that with so many. The thing about the relationship thing is people miss the fact that we have a relationship with money. In my first job at Merrill Lynch, when I was 21 and 22, my coach was Lou Holtz. He was teaching me to eliminate money stories from the patterns of my family. It could go eight generations back. He was teaching all 50 of us in a class how to eliminate those patterns and make them better patterns for our future selves. What we did over a two-year period was not only recognize those patterns like, “Money does not grow on trees. Get your head out of the clouds. Money is the root of all evil.”
Everyone had different stories. We put them all in and then we dispelled, reversed, and put them into ways that were more empowering like, “With making more money, I could help more people. By making more money, I have freedom of choice, so now I can add to the value of my community. Instead of needing to take things to meet my demands, I can be in overflow and share.” All of those things happened when I was 21.
Fast forward when I was in my 40s, I started seeing the difference between myself and the rest of my family around our thoughts around money compounded over those years. I could see that rewiring those stories gave me freedom from those stories. I did not have to carry them into my future. Whereas I could see with my brothers and sisters, when I would fly home, they had the same stories, “Life is hard. Getting money is hard. I can’t take time off because I can’t afford it.” I am like, “I took two weeks off and I am running multimillion-dollar companies.” Somehow I did it.
My mindset was, “I can do it because I have freedom of choice.” Whereas their mindset was, “It is hard.” I wanted to enlighten them and I still do, but people have to arrive when they are ready. I am hoping now, Patty Ann, that you teaching people about relationships and us showing this will inspire people to investigate how they can have more empowering money relationships. How to develop that is so important.
I did not know about your securities background about Lou Holtz and the money personality. I did a talk for Michael, Ross and Jason, a bunch of the financial planners in Genius. I’ve created the “What’s your money personality?” talk. That is the first half, and I have caricatures like Ebenezer Scrooge, Laissez-Faire Sally and William the Warrior.
Not only do you have characters, but you can show them a pathway of turning their character into something that they want to evolve to. You could show them the pathway on a scorecard of, “Here you are, Ebenezer Scrooge, what things can you use to your favor? What things can you add to your character to have a better future self, be open to learning more and giving more?” You can put them on a pathway. Through your NFTs, people can honor as they graduate each of those pathways. They could own Ebenezer Scrooge and say, “That is me. I own it.”
In the second half, I have them write their money story. I say, “Look at it. Now that you know and you have awareness, what do you want to change?”
You get to choose. I have worked with a good friend of mine. Her name is Brandy Gillmore. She is phenomenal. She is in that TLC, Transformational Leadership Council with Lee Brower and Lisa Nichols. They are all these transformational coaches that help people. Whenever I tell a story that is like, “Feel sorry for me,” she is like, “How hard are you going to fight for that story?” I am like, “Why would I fight for that story? It is not making me happier. It is not making me better. You are right. I never need to repeat that story again. What story do I want to fight for? What story do I want to lead with?” She has helped me release a lot of those stories. When they come up, which they still do, you can see their patterns. You formerly have to work on releasing patterns that do not serve you anymore.
Our past influences our future, but we write our future. It always starts with awareness.
I noticed a family pattern. Now looking back, I can clearly see it. I did not see it until she pointed it out. When she pointed it out, every time, I was like, “This happened.” She is like, “Do not fight for that story. Do not keep telling me that and reinforcing what you do not want.” I am now seeing the evidence and I want to be like, “You are right. Why did not I see it?” She is like, “Do not fight for it. Those stories do not even matter. Let them go and create your new story.”
If you think about it, if you are fighting or owning that story, that is where your energy is going. It is not serving you. Why give it the fuel to drive you?
You are in that frequency, and that stuff shows up over and over and reinforces the story. She uses the battered wife thing like, “Why do they keep partnering with the next person that hits them again?” It is because they keep telling the same story. They are in that frequency. While it is horrible, they need to graduate from that story and be the, “I am free to make better decisions.” It all starts in our head first. Whatever we are saying, it is going to repeat around us.
What is interesting is about the relationship with money. You and I are not the kinds of women that are like, “Women, woe with us.” That is one of our connections. Men do too, but women tend to not want to get paid what they are worth. They are afraid to charge. They do not want to know investments. Ignorance is bliss, and they make themselves so vulnerable to men and the world.
You are free to make better decisions. It all starts in your head first.
It is not just men and women. It is people in general. Some have a personality where they would rather defer it to someone else, either they are afraid or a history pattern.
We have been told by society that money is dirty.
It can be. It depends. Luckily, I do not have that. Here is one of the things that Dan Sullivan says when he looks at our culture specifically, “There tends to be a subconscious, if not a conscious, way where women sometimes will only go to the highest level of the most successful person.” It could be a man, but sometimes the person in their family. Some of us have a built-in ceiling that says, “Whoever is the most successful in my family, that is my ceiling.” It is a subconscious thing that can be there. They hit up against it and do not go past it. That is part of the reason why I did that ceremony raising my ceiling was to not have limiters in there, but have intentions to be able to raise it on my own for myself. However, it still was the ceremony. It was a 90-minute intention that I worked with someone.
Tell our readers more about that. You have spoken to me about it, but they do not know about it.
We have a relationship with money. Sometimes when we are in the jar, we cannot read the label. If I am inside this cup, I cannot see what it says clearly. Sometimes you need a guide, someone like you or somebody that we trust that can be like, “Here is what I see on the outside of the label.” What do you want your label to say? We get to choose. That is the piece. Some of us think, “The label says that we have to live with it.” No, we get to make the label.
I do some prosperity declarations every day. It starts with, “I deserve to be healthy, wealthy and happy. Wealth comes to me easily. My money bucket is expanding daily. Part of all I earn is mine to keep. My income increases every day, whether I am working, sleeping, or playing. All my investments are profitable. Money comes to me in unexpected ways for the good of all concerned. I am always in the right place at the right time. I love my life.” I do those every day.
I had some friends in Maui, a whole bunch of high-level doctors. I brought them to the forest and we recited it together. By the second and third time, people were like, “My cells feel different.” It is integrating what we want and being the author of what we want. The more I tell myself these things, the more it proves to be true. People like you are like, “You are the epitome of abundance in relationships because that is important to me. Abundance in money and time.” People ask me, “How do you have 25 hours in a day?” I am like, “I can make a lot happen in a day.” Some of it is my team, which I can leverage. Some of it is being clear with my plan of what I want to accomplish.
Be very intentional too.
This is why when someone cancels on me, I am like, “You have no idea how hard it was to get that in my calendar.” Once it is in, I honor it. Once it is canceled, it might be six months before I can see that person again. Somebody has been trying to get in front of me for 3 or 4 weeks. We have not been able to find a moment in time and I am like, “Saturday before I go to Antarctica, we are doing it.” It is because I am so respectful and I have to protect the boundaries of time for myself and others.
I texted Lee before the call because I knew Lee was going to Antarctica, and I am like, “I want to make sure she is still available. If she was not, I would understand.” Sure enough, Lee got back to me, “I am good to go. I got the link.” Here she is.
On top of it, you are like, “Can you come earlier?” I am like, “I am timed out.” I love it because you gave me the opportunity to be flexible and use my time wisely. You are respectful because it might have been easier for me to hop on it or an earlier time to be freer. It worked out great. I am glad I had it in my schedule. I am glad you and I get to have a girl talk.
What do you see with people that come to you with all things? Not just money. What is the biggest limiting belief people have?
If you think you can, and if you think you can’t, you are right. Everything starts with a mindset. Anytime we do a course or a challenge, we start with a mindset. We start in gratitude because then it turns the mindset into a positive, forward-thinking way. It is the basis to be forward-thinking. I had a near-fatal car accident many years ago, and that was the defining moment for me that every moment matters. I only had a 7% chance of living. Once I lived and was walking again, every day was so special. I am very mindful of being in gratitude, being around the people I love, choosing what I want to do, and sticking with it.
I very rarely do what I do not want to do. When I do it, I get a little cranky, so I try not to do it. Asking people to help me in putting genius and trust in them is one of my biggest ways of having more freedom in my life. It is asking for help from other people where it is their joy and it does not feel like a hardship. It feels like they are adding value as well.
Is that how you decide who to share your genius with? Everybody wants a piece of you when they know you.
Everyone gets a mentor moment, no matter what. I could share something in 2 or 3 sentences that can change your life. I have had a lot of people come back and say, “That one thing you said to me changed my life. Here is why.” I have had people say six months later or a year later that I did not even know they heard me. Some of them have put it up on my LinkedIn because one of my coaches said, “When someone tells you, you changed their life, tell them to put it on LinkedIn so it can remind you later.” Every once in a while, I will read my LinkedIn messages and remember like, “That moment had an impact on that person.” It is a few moments. Sometimes it is two hours from 12:00 AM to 2:00 AM because somebody is coming for help at a conference and we get into it.
I know it is making an impact and they are going to multiply it. All they needed were those two hours to get them in the right direction. My friend, Brian Kurtz, said that the reason he loves me is I go into a room not needing anything. I go in as a giver. I as a giver is my favorite part. I do need support, love, and friendship. I love being open to that. People like you in my life spark sunshine and make me happy. I have room for that all the time. That is why if you text me, I am going to respond.
The same with Nick Sonnenberg. There is not a time he has not texted me that I have not responded within five minutes because he is so important to me. I always want to be connected. I make room for those people who love me. Jim, Randy Garn, and Howard Getson are three people I love. I want to reach out and say, “Thinking of you.”
If you think you can, and if you think you can’t, you’re right. Everything starts with the mindset.
You mentioned Nick Sonnenberg. I want the readers to hear a story about Lee. Although if you know me, you know I only speak the truth. Nick was in a difficult business partnership that was dissolving. I was working with Nick at the time over the uncoupling. It was unnecessarily nasty, and most other people would have thrown in the towel, but Nick did not. That tells you Nick’s character. What Nick told me was, “You have to meet Lee.”
Lee was one of the people that not only verbally supported him but wrote the check. She financially paid Nick in advance. Nick did not ask. Nick was in tears when he shared that with me. The man was working 25 hours a day at that moment to keep his business afloat, which is still afloat, called Leverage. Let’s give Nick a shout-out.
It is so successful. I see him in that huge challenge, and he happened to be in a place where the circumstances put him at a disadvantage. That check, all it did was give an even playing field that he could move on. It immediately gave him the freedom to move on and make a genius move, which was to launch a new company where he could use his genius and be free. I was happy to be part of that.
He took that money to pay his people. It was not for himself. You gave it out of gratitude. He was so grateful. He paid it forward. These are the people that Lee attracts into her life because who would not?
To me, Jim, Randy Garn and Howard Getson are so brilliant. I want to support them as brilliant geniuses in the world. I see them. They see me too, which I love. That is how I see Nick Sonnenberg. I saw from the beginning. He went to UC Berkeley. He got his Master’s in Engineering. He is so smart. He is very much a minority going through that group, but he shares it at such a high level. He has inspired my team to even be higher in excellence. I took one of my team members to dinner for our fourteenth anniversary. One of the things she thanked me for was her relationship with Nick Sonnenberg because he teaches her systems, which she loves.
She, in turn, is more successful and can rely on the system. It is a symbiotic relationship. Nick has come here on-site to help my team because of that initial investment in him. He will always remember that I was there, but I will always remember his genius and want to put it to work. Since I have access to it, it is a symbiotic and beautiful relationship.
Can I tell you one last thing about him that I actively want to acknowledge? It is a little love fest and he did bring us together originally. My daughter was preparing to get into college. She is a senior now but in her sophomore year, she was starting. Nick called his college professor who was also the admissions officer for the Master’s program at UC Berkeley, and asked her if she would be an advisor to my daughter.
My daughter had her for the last three years. Not only did she help her with every application. She edited and helped her with everything. I did not even have to read it because I heard so many moms fighting with their daughters over their college applications. I would rather her have an expert and stay out of it and support her.
By doing that, my daughter and I had a much better relationship. We did not fight over any of her essays. That person not only helped her on a regular basis, even on weekends. She got in her first choice in college and has been 6% admissions rate for advanced admissions, and because she got her first choice and early admission, she is free now. She is not stressing over where she is going to school.
I am watching her friends stressing because they have not figured it out yet. I’m like, “Thank you, Nick Sonnenberg, for giving me a mentor for Abby, that not only was exceptional and not only is open to us celebrating her, but because of Nick, she paid attention to Abby at the highest level.” I could not be more grateful because there is nothing else more special to me than her. Who knew Nick Sonnenberg was going to be that ally for me?
Do you know what Nick would say if I said something to him? He would be like, “I just made a phone call.”
He did not make one. He made three phone calls to me to make sure I followed up on it. He babysat the whole thing to make sure Abby got in there and did it. It took Abby six months to say yes because she was scared. In the beginning, she was not 100%, but in the end, she is like, “Thank God I had Linda.” Linda made it all possible for her to be confident in what she did.
She got an acceptance to another school while we were sitting at dinner. She is like, “Another one.” Because she is in the one she wants, now it is not a big deal. It is something to celebrate. I am grateful for Nick because he not only made the recommendation, he followed through and made sure I took action, which is great.
Your daughter is going on to college. I remember when my youngest went away to college. What is next for you?
What is so fun about the NFT stuff is that it is something she and I can do together because it is a global economy. In her age group, the early adopters are the smart ones. The more I am involved in it, the more she and I can have communications. She can be involved in it, and no matter where she is in the world, we will be connected through our digital assets and our digital life together. I am excited about sharing it with her. I am surprised I am teaching her about it now. I have a feeling that she will be teaching me a thing or two.
Two questions for you. What is the one most important thing you have learned in life that you want people to know?
It all starts between your ears. Whatever you think is going to dictate your day. If you wake up thinking, “It is a great day. I am so excited to have the day ahead of me.” It is going to be different than, “I am so tired and I do not feel like doing anything.” You get to set your mindset. Every day that I was in the hospital, it was almost a year that I could not walk. I am such an active person.
Every day, I had to trick my brain into being happy with what I was doing. I learned that it does start inside. If I was mad that the nurse was late, then it started our day one way. If I was happy that she was there at all, it started our day another way. The more gratitude, the more they were nicer to me, and I got what I wanted. I had a better life.
It all starts between your ears; whatever you think you know is going to dictate your day.
Recovery is not easy at all, but my mindset could have either killed me or kept me alive. That is how I came down to that. They did assign a trauma therapist to me who said, “Thank God for your mindset or you would have died.” He attributed that. He used to come to see me every single day. By the third week, we were talking about animals and not my healthcare because I was on the right path. He did not have to fix it. It starts in our heads.
My last question, what is the last book you re-read and why?
I re-read Traction because Gino Wickman is in one of my masterminds. He released two more books since then, so it encouraged me to go back and read the basics. I am always reading things. I took out Becoming by Michelle Obama because I was in another show, and we were talking about what we are becoming. I picked that up and re-read some of the chapters there to be reminded of where she was because her writing is brilliant. I pick up a lot of books and read what I need to at the moment. I do not have to read cover to cover. Sometimes I go through the contents and say, “This chapter. Let me do that one.” I love to read. I have thousands of books.
I have been finding that there is so much information. It is almost overwhelming. There are so many books I want to read. There are so many podcasts I want to listen to. There is a Netflix series to binge on. There is so much to consume. How do you choose?
Sometimes I might be in a meeting, and somebody brings it up, and I will put it on my Amazon. When it comes, I will go through it. I do not have to read the whole thing. I will read the table of contents. I have learned in journalism that if you read the first paragraph and the last paragraph, you get a lot of summaries. I love the ones that have the summary at the back of each chapter. I will read all of those. I like hardcover books. I physically take them out and look at them. A lot of the books that I have, my friends are the personal authors of it. I want to read it to be inspired by their words, hear what they are thinking, or even let them know how I am re-reading it or seeing it again.
Cameron Herold, who is one of our friends, we got in a MentorBox with one of his books called Vivid Vision. I have read that so many times. I recommended Bold by Peter Diamandis because this is one of the books that changed a lot of lives. My friends that are in technology and SaaS models get a lot of information from this. I recommended that to someone. Sometimes it is just to be refreshed and inspired in the way I am thinking today. It comes to us because we need it now.
If you read something today versus something a year ago or weeks ago, depending upon where you are in your mind, you get something different out of it, which is amazing. How can people find out more about you?
The website GoAskLee.com is the best place to go. That is my central hub. In there, you will find NFTs. You will find my social media and different things there. I love being an entrepreneur. I have a PR and marketing focus. That is why I see NFTs as something interesting because as a PR and marketing expert, I see how NFTs help enhance my client experience, my team experience, and even my experience. Part of why I am inspired in including NFTs is I am going in every one of the brands and thought leaders I work with and seeing, “What would an NFT do in the business and the client experience now?” That is what we were getting started with. Thank you for letting me share this. It has been so fun. I love it.
Lee, this has been amazing. I want to get off of this and go back onto your website and your Instagram because I have been following it, but I need to process it. I want to learn everything, and then I am sending you a check.
I am going to share one thing before we go. The main reasons why people get into NFTs are 1) For you personally, 2) For your business, and 3) For your community. In your business is you and your customers and how it affects each. It’s like JJ Virgin. She has herself, but she also has all the doctors that follow her, who are clients and customers. There are three arenas, personal, business and your community. What I recommend is you start personally. There are two sides, personally. Number one is as a collector, you find somebody’s NFT, and you purchase it and put it in your wallet. That is the first factor.
The second one would be as a creator, how you make one, mint it, and put it out there either for sale or for collection, even as a bonus. I have an NFT course. It is GoAskLee.com/NFT. In that course, you will learn all the things you need to learn from opening a wallet and all those different pieces. What I would do for you, Patty Ann, is what I have done for a few other global leaders that I love. You text me your favorite picture, and I will turn it into an NFT. I will put it out on OpenSea.
It should be maybe your wedding picture or a family picture, something that means a lot to you. I had a few of my friends send me their wedding picture because when I minted it and put it on OpenSea for them to purchase, they learned how to open a wallet and purchase it. The very first NFT they ever had was their wedding picture.
They went to their wife or their husband and said, “Look, our first NFT is us.” I did it for a friend of mine. Chad did his whole family picture. Anna David, I did one of her with her book. What I recommend is you do that first, send me a picture, I will mint it, and you can purchase it. That will be your first NFT forever. Once you have purchased it, then you will know the experience of what it is like to open your wallet. 1) You are going to OpenSea and buy Ethereum. 2) You are going to move it to a MetaMask wallet so that it is in there. 3) You are going to go to OpenSea. I will give you a link where you can purchase your NFT once we mint it. Once you do that, you will have your first purchase.
This is exciting. I can’t wait.
You can send me anything. You can send me whatever one of your favorite pictures is.
When my kids were born, we had custom football jerseys made up with the year that they were born put on them. My oldest are twins. I had my first child in 1987, my third son was in ’89, and my daughter was in ’93. Every year at Thanksgiving, we have taken a family picture. First, they were babies. It would look like a gown, and as they have grown into it, it is a football jersey. It is very special to us.
How many children do you have?
Four.
You don’t have to learn everything. You just have to learn what the first step is.
We could make five of them with different colors and backgrounds. You give one to each of the kids, so it is their first one too. We will start with one for you. Once we do one in your collector, we will teach you how to do four where you are a creator.
I also want to do the money personality. I also have five emotional intelligence personalities that I have created.
All of those can be turned into NFT experiences, and you will own the rights to it. You will be able to share it with other people where they can adopt your methodology as well. When I talk about NFTs, the reason to mint NFTs is authenticity. Proving something is yours like your car, house, or whatever. Even your graduate certificate from college could be the authentication. One is access.
Another one is licensing. If you have a program and then you licensed to other people, once they go through the program, you can issue an NFT saying they are licensed to use that. It is proof for them that they are licensed, but also it is a badge of honor for them that they have gone through the course. Another one is the fractional ownership that we talked about, which could be real estate, a course, or front row access for Gary Vee. If you are thinking about it that way, me in Maui, if I have four months, but I can only go three, I could split up the other one into NFTs, and whoever buys it has access to my place. You can think of it that way as well.
Lee, I could go on and on, but I want to be respectful of your time. Thank you so much. Did this woman take us for a ride or what? That concludes this episode with our guest, Lee Richter. I will see you next time. Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
Important Links
- Lee Richter
- Genius Network
- Jason Campbell
- BJ Fogg
- Global Leaders Collective – Instagram
- Joe Polish
- VeeFriends
- Ethereum
- LeeRichter.eth
- Anna David
- Bitcoin
- Solana
- WAX
- Coinbase
- MetaMask
- Trezor
- LastPass
- Abundance360
- Tom Bilyeu
- Mobie
- Lou Holtz
- Brandy Gillmore
- Transformational Leadership Council
- Lisa Nichols
- Brian Kurtz
- Randy Garn
- Howard Getson
- Leverage
- Traction
- Becoming
- Vivid Vision
- Bold
- JJ Virgin
- OpenSea
- Blockchain Council
- GoAskLee.com/NFT
- https://www.Twitter.com/GoAskLee
- https://www.Facebook.com/GoAskLee/
- https://www.Instagram.com/goasklee/
- https://NFT101.TheGlobalLeadersCollective.com/course-a-0202mlb-a-orig
About Lee Richter
Influence and success go hand in hand….
As a dedicated family woman, Lee Richter has greatly influenced her family to go beyond the norm and do greater things helping them achieve success alongside her. Lee is no stranger to success. She is an award-winning business innovator and visionary.
She has garnered multiple awards throughout her entire career. She was recognized as one of the Top 100 Women Business Leaders in 2019 by the San Francisco Business Times. She’s a multifaceted woman of success. Not only is she a number one best-selling author, but she’s also a producer at Abundance Studios™ and a member of the Forbes Business Council.
Lee Richter has kept herself busy over the past 25 years. She has run a dozen successful businesses generating over $100 million in revenue. She is the CEO of multiple seven-figure companies, including Richter Communications and Design Group and The Pet Concierge. With her knowledge and skills in business, she loves to mentor other aspiring entrepreneurs to model her success.
Lee Richter is currently launching her team and brand into the Crypto and NFT world and is quickly becoming one of the biggest pioneers in this new world. NFTs are quickly making their way into the mainstream and before we know it, they will be a part of our everyday life. Lee has an uncanny ability to spot trends and whether they are worth investing time and money into. And the Crypto world has her attention, so she has decided to jump in and ride the wave by launching a new company The Global Leaders Collective, a subsidiary of Richter Design Group. The Global Leaders Collective is set to be one of the leading NFT project design and development groups in the NFT world. Happiness, Superheroes, and Legendary Basketball stars are just a few of the NFT projects in the works for Lee and her team.
However, Lee Richter isn’t just a model to her consultees. She has also been a great influence on her family. With Lee’s help, her loving daughter Abbey became a best-selling author just like her mother, but she did the impressive feat at the age of nine. Lee’s husband has also been recognized as a global thought leader in the veterinary industry for his expertise in holistic health for pets and wildlife. As a family, they love to travel and explore the world together.
Lee Richter finds her expertise in Networking. She firmly believes that it is an integral aspect of the development of any business, and she’s definitely not wrong. Along with her team, Lee strives to create long-lasting and genuine relationships with her clients. She is a keen entrepreneur who always strives to improve a company by looking into its areas of growth and building those areas into a company’s greatest asset.
Lee greatly enjoys working with leaders who are making a meaningful and positive impact in the world. Much like her, she wants to work closely with people who are looking to succeed in any endeavor that they partake in. She also feels great fulfillment in working with companies and teams who are motivated to accomplish a mission with innovative ideas and forward-thinking principles.
Anyone who requires a seasoned expert by their side will greatly benefit from working with Lee Richter. Once she starts working with her clients, she makes sure to give it her all, so she expects nothing less in return. She wants to push her clients to unlock their absolute potential. Lee has mountains of resources available, and her goal is to collaborate with professionals who are focused on making a positive impact in whatever they do.
Lee Richter has always been known for her commitment to learning and excellence. These aspects have brought about incredible collaborative opportunities for her and have allowed her to access global leaders to brainstorm and share ideas with. She greatly enjoys sharing insights with leaders, as she brings a fresh and innovative perspective towards implementing both traditional “brick and mortar” businesses and online businesses as well.
