Expand Your Fempire Podcast #71 Transcript

Mindset, Connection, and Relationships with Lee Richter

Welcome to Expand your Fempire with Caterina Rando, the podcast for women in business on a mission. Sharing ideas to support you to grow and thrive. Now here’s your host, Caterina Rando.

[00:00:00] Caterina Rando: Welcome back to another episode of the Expand Your Fempire podcast. I’m your host Caterina Rando and I am blissing because today I have one of my favorite people on the planet. Get your notepad ready, my friends. We are with Lee Richter. Lee Richter is an amazing woman. You can read all about her in the show notes.

[00:00:49] Let me give you the reader’s digest version. She is a trendsetter. She is a change agent. She has several companies. She used to have several companies. Now she’s got even more. And this is someone that you’re absolutely going to want to follow, connect with, she’s all over Clubhouse. You are going to want to get to know her because she is a wealth, like a font, of massive value. Lee, I’m so happy you’re with us today.

[00:01:21] Lee Richter: Oh, my goodness. I’m so happy to be here. You know, it’s on a Sunday and I’m thinking to myself who shows up on Sundays? Entrepreneurs changing the world. So there’s no place I’d rather be than here with you, because you are one of those entrepreneurs changing the world. Thank you, Caterina.

[00:01:36] Caterina Rando: Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be with you Lee. We have known each other for many years now. We met in someone else’s community that we loved and we connected with. And you came on…

[00:01:49] Lee Richter: And she was in the movie The Secret, I mean, what better place to start, right?

[00:01:53] Caterina Rando: Exactly. And you came with us on our Mexican Luxury Retreat. You came with us on our Hawaiian Luxury Retreat. Now we call it the Bliss Retreat. We’re doing another one coming up very soon. You are somebody who is so fun to not only travel with, sit down and have a cup of coffee with because you always have so much massive value.

[00:02:17] You are super smart in so many ways. We discussed before, you’ve been an entrepreneur for many, many years. I want to hear a little bit before we dive into some super tips for the people today. Tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey.

[00:02:34] Lee Richter: Mmm thanks for asking Caterina. And by the way, I enjoyed being in those moments where we had coffee in the morning, but the margaritas in the afternoon were way more fun just so you know. And yeah, in Mexico we had lots of good margaritas at least I still remember them. So, I’ll call that a success story right there. I remember our trip to Mexico and it was phenomenal.

[00:02:55] So, one of the things I knew then that I know even more now is connection matters more than anything. Right? And I think that’s what we got out of every one of those trips together, as we deepened our connection and we deepened our value systems and what connects, what works, what can we go deeper with?

[00:03:14] And what we learned is, is we love to make impact in other people’s lives in a positive way. So that’s where you and I resonate. Right? We volunteered and we were in a mastermind together with other global leaders just like us, just talking about our impact and seeing, “is it big enough? Is it the right amount? Are we asking the right questions? Are we getting the right amount of support?” And what I’ve done is I’ve taken those ideas and just multiplied it in my life over and over and over again in entrepreneurship.

[00:03:40] Caterina Rando: My friend, I love it. I want to hear all about that. I know that you were an entrepreneur from way back and I want to hear a little bit about the different types of businesses or moments. Because I know that you have many companies now, you said you have nine-figure companies. That’s huge.

[00:03:59] And I want to hear a little bit about the journey because sometimes people hear a nine-figure entrepreneur like yourself and they think, “well, I could never do that.” Right? And so what I want them to know is: how do they get from where they are and what was your path to get to where you are now?

[00:04:17] Lee Richter: I will share my path. And I will say the number one thing though, to answer that question is mindset. What I did was I eliminated my upward limit a long time ago, probably when I was 21 years old.

[00:04:29] So, I did not come just equipped to be able to build unicorn brands along the way. And when I say a hundred million dollars in sales, that’s over a period of time in product, but we did go over that number and it’s mind-blowing to see the impact we have in the community and in the world, just because we took our ideas, put action behind it, put the right partnership behind it, collaborated, made great decisions, and multiplied it.

[00:04:55] It didn’t happen overnight. You’re right. It started all the way back when I was a little kid and I started seeing some of the talents and my parents started seeing some of the talents that I had. And one of those was performing. I guess a little bit, just like you, you love being on the front of the stage and connecting people. And it is a performance you’re sharing your heart and you’re doing something so valuable. And I did the same thing and I learned early on.

[00:05:18] And through some of those performances, I started doing commercials. And so, when I was about six years old, I worked in the twin towers in New York City in Manhattan, and it was only about 30 or 40 minutes from our house, but my mom took me there. I remember going to Chock Full of Nuts in the morning and having a cup of coffee with her. She drank coffee, I had hot chocolate.

[00:05:39] But then we would go up to the studio and I would have two days on the set creating commercials. And I did about a dozen of those commercials and that was my intro into advertising and entrepreneurship. Because really, I was the package. I was what they wanted. The look, the conversation, the talent, the bravado, all of it. They wanted it. I delivered it. I got a paycheck for it. And I learned that it was an exchange.

[00:06:05] But I also learned the insight of marketing and advertising. And I didn’t think about it until maybe about 10 years ago that that is my through-line. Since I was six years old, I’ve been in the marketing world. And why am I so comfortable? Well, I grew up in it behind the scenes, behind the camera, in front of the camera. And then, over time, I chose to be more creative and be behind the camera and spotlight others. That’s where I really found my sweet spot.

[00:06:33] And so, as I was building companies, I was learning about business. I was learning about marketing. I learned marketing is the driver of the business. Right? There’s four categories: marketing, operations, sales, and finance. Marketing is the driver.

[00:06:49] So I started paying attention because it was my genius and my hotspot since I was six years old. And I started putting that behind things. And when my husband and I started working together, I used him, and I was the creative force behind him doing my marketing ideas and acumen, putting them in place. And he was the talent. And through that, I built the brands, right? But it started with the passion.

[00:07:12] Caterina Rando: And let’s tell everybody because they may not know. Your husband is a doctor of veterinary medicine and you have one hospital for pets now. You used to have two hospitals for pets. And so you’re the marketer and you have all kinds of other companies related to pets, but it’s you behind the talent as marketing. Because marketing, you say, it’s the driver. I like to say marketing is letting the world know about you and how awesome you are. But then my friend, we still have to do the sales, which is inviting people to…

[00:07:47] Lee Richter: That’s part two.

[00:07:48] Caterina Rando: Right.

[00:07:49] Lee Richter: Marketing is attracting the client and the money. Sales is closing the client and the money.

[00:07:54] Caterina Rando: Exactly. Okay. Now, Lee, let’s go talk a little bit, you mentioned it, but let’s talk a little bit more about mindset. Because one of the things I appreciate about you is that you do not only think big when you’re doing your planning, you think big, but then you have certain guiding principles of mindset that you follow. Now I could say what I see, but I want to hear what you say are the guiding principles of mindset, or at least two or three of them that you follow in building your Fempire.

[00:08:31] Lee Richter: Number one is coming from gratitude. Number two is you are in control of your mindset. You get to choose. I’m in control of my mindset. I get to choose. And when it’s off-kilter, I now have figured out some of the ideas on how it got off and how to get back. That’s my secret weapon recently, that has changed a lot.

[00:08:51] For me, number two is the only thing I can control is my thoughts. I decide whether I’m happy or unhappy. I decide how I’m going to react. Before reacting is perspective. So I’m in control of that perspective.

[00:09:03] Caterina Rando: And anybody that is on your team, you support them in cultivating that for themselves.

[00:09:10] Lee Richter: A hundred percent. However, I will say sometimes I have to be the gatekeeper and even hold them accountable, and that’s the hard part for me. So it’s not just being a mentor and shining a light on “pay attention.” It’s also being the gatekeeper and saying “hey, let’s change this word.” And them either showing up like “wow, you’re right. I didn’t notice it, let me improve it” or defensive. I now have to deal with that little piece of it.

[00:09:32] So there’s things to manage in the delivery, which also is a piece of this growth part, as much as I want to be the guide and the mentor for others to do it, I’ve learned I have to ask permission to make sure they’re ready.

[00:09:45] Caterina Rando: Yes, that’s true. That’s true. And the third thing I know about you that supports your mindset is that you have a passion for ongoing growth and learning, and that you’re always doing something new and exciting in addition to managing what you’ve already got.

[00:10:05] And that I think keeps you excited, keeps it fresh, and of course, as we’ve discussed, it’s very cutting edge. But from a mindset perspective, I don’t think you would ever say that you’re bored.

[00:10:18] And I think that this is very true for entrepreneurs because true entrepreneurs – they’re always looking for not necessarily the next thing, but how can we do it better? How could we be more efficient? How can we bliss more in our business? All of these things.

[00:10:35] Lee Richter: How can we bliss more in our life?

[00:10:37] Caterina Rando: Absolutely! If we’re blissing in our business, then we’re going to also be blissing more in our life. If we’re blissing more in our life, we’re going to be blissing more in our business.

[00:10:45] Lee Richter: Oh someone gave me a good piece of advice last week. Can I share that with you? And he did say that there’s two worlds… because what he was doing was looking at Gary and I, and he’s known Gary and I for years, he’s a PhD. And we were talking about how we’ve been married 25 years, together 33, we’re designing our next 25 years of marriage right now. We’re like, what do we want it to look like? In the overall picture. I mean, I see him there at the end, so I’m like, well, I might as well design it the way I want it to be. So we’re both upleveling and I’ll say it’s really working. However, it’s still work, right?

[00:11:12] So I spoke with him last week and he said, one of the things I know about you and Gary is this. When he went into his business, he went in as a small town vet. He didn’t want to be a globally known name. Along the way by knowing you, he became a globally known name, probably the best in the world at this moment. But what’s beautiful about it is he didn’t want it before, but now that he has it, he’s actually enjoying it and he’s doing a good job.

[00:11:34] So he has to readjust his thinking around “wait, I am a global, not just a local vet” because he didn’t really want to be it so he didn’t have that dream to go into. But because of knowing me, it happened. For the first 10 years, he resisted it kicking and screaming and I’m like, “Gary, will you just let me do my job? Get on video.” And he wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. And then finally he took the turn and started doing it, started liking it. Year 20, now, he likes it.

[00:12:00] Now I’m like, come to me and say, “thanks Lee, you have the best ideas.” I didn’t get that. And I’m like, “Wait! I need to stand up.” You just had 25 years of me paying attention to you and you becoming a global icon in the thing you love the most. And now he’s showing up differently because he grew into it. It might not have been his dream, but it’s something along the way that was bigger than he could even think about. But I stuck with it and he should have been celebrating, “I picked the right mate. I picked the right mate.” And there was a piece missing of that.

[00:12:30] And I didn’t notice until our 25 year anniversary that it was missing. So I went to a PhD that’s known me for 20 years and asked him what’s happening. And he figured this out. Once he clued us in, we could step in and be like, “that is what happened. Okay. Let’s get over it, move on. Let’s get back to life.” But we can heal the wound in the moment. We stopped. We took six months. We put everything on hold. I didn’t move forward with anything until I figured this out.

[00:12:56] And so I think that’s the importance of paying attention to connections. And then also seeing that lifestyle is the most important piece. That’s the piece that when you’re laying on your death bed, you’re thinking back, remember people don’t say about the time in the office, they say about the time with their family.

[00:13:13] So in this moment I could choose the time as my family to trump everything else and be most important. And I did, I put business on hold for six months and just develop this, and now I’m seeing multiple reasons why the hard work is paying off. However, there were times of tears, there was times of questions, there was risk even with him and I, are we going to be the same at the end of this or even better? Right? There was risk, even me saying like, “I’m unsettled with the fact you didn’t celebrate me. Instead, you were trying to figure out your track not just both of us.”

[00:13:41] So I want to let you know, here’s what I learned from Don Elium. He told me there’s two parts to the relationship. There’s the home and there’s the world. And in the home you have four categories. And the categories include the same things as the world.

[00:13:57] It’s like attention, love. It’s basically the five love languages, like your top four, whatever they are, it’s really yours. It doesn’t have to be mine. In my particular one, the four was my top four love languages. And the only one that’s not in the top four is gifts. I can do that myself. And then they’re really, really intentional because I don’t really have to get anything anymore. Right?

[00:14:21] So do you get all four at home and do you get all four in the world? Well, I was getting maybe three at home, but I was only getting maybe two in the world. Where Gary was getting all four in both. And at the end of 25 years, I’m like, wait a second.

[00:14:36] So if I’m looking at those top four love languages, it’s words of affirmation, being seen, being heard. Right? But that was the one that was lacking. I wanted it and I got it in the world. I wanted it and did not get it at home.

[00:14:51] Caterina Rando: Interesting.

[00:14:52] Lee Richter: I was giving it 24/7 to everyone and I didn’t notice I wasn’t getting it at home until a 25 year anniversary brought it to my attention. So I want everyone to know that we’re always growing, always learning.

[00:15:04] People look at me and they’re like, “you and Gary have the best relationship.” Yeah, because we’re always growing and learning and doing the hard work. We just went through six months of really hard work to get to a point now where I can say “here’s where I’m going.” But my home stuff had to be right first. That make sense?

[00:15:20] So even though my business stuff was going like crazy and really amazing, but my home stuff was in any kind of red flag territory. And part of the reason it was, is cause I wanted to make expansion for my future. So I went to Gary and I said “oh, I don’t want the next 25 years to be the same as the last 25. And I noticed this little gap here where words of affirmation turned into an important thing to me and I noticed you’re not doing enough of it. So, can you work on that? Please? Like actively show me progress.” And so he has, and it’s been good and I’m glad I stood up for myself.

[00:15:51] Caterina Rando: And asked for what you want.

[00:15:52] Lee Richter: I asked for what I want, even to someone I’ve been with for 33 years, it’s still was hard work. I want people to understand, like, it doesn’t get easier. It’s me pushing me to be a better me. But having my home place, all whatever my four love favorite things that I want: be seen, be heard, be one of them, be able to create at the highest level. Right? I could go back and see evidence where I can create at the highest level. And I could see evidence where my wings were clipped for somebody else’s comfort. And I realized “Hey, that’s me dimming my light to make them comfortable. That’s not going to happen again.” You will not see that happen again.

[00:16:28] Caterina Rando: Good.

[00:16:29] Lee Richter: Yep. So this is part of the learning. I want everyone to know entrepreneurship is daily learning every day. And it comes from nowhere. It’s like lightning in a bottle. It comes in and it’s like “how do I process this? How do I imprint it in my life and improve my life based on that knowledge or that support or that communication.” So I know we went off in a little bit of a tangent, but a lot of this leads to mindset and a lot of this is the learning I’m in right now. And we teach what we’re learning for a reason.

[00:16:56] Caterina Rando: I like to say my friend that we teach what we seek to master.

[00:17:01] Lee Richter: Right. So, so not only will I be doing it, the people around me that resonate with this, I want them to reach out and say “Hey, we’re on this journey together. I’m learning this. I learned this. Can I share it? I have this book. Can I share it?” Whatever it is, how do we lift each other up together? And that’s what you do in this community so beautifully. I love that.

[00:17:18] Caterina Rando: Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so now I want to talk about, my friend: you are always cutting edge. You’re trend-setting, you’re up to whatever’s new and exciting. You’re blowing up on Clubhouse, whatever the thing is.

[00:17:35] First of all, I want to ask what trends are you having your attention on now? But before that, I want to say: is there a guiding principle behind this? Because you’ve always been this way, as long as I’ve known you. So let’s start there and then give us some trends to look out for. Go ahead.

[00:17:52] Lee Richter: Yeah, I love being a trendsetter and I think that’s one of the things I learned early on, there’s a thing called the blue ocean. Right? Which is what part of the ocean is available right now that you could see forever that you can have a piece of that you’re leading the way. There is no competition because you’re the first, you’re the pioneer. How you set the tone, you set the standard. I love that feeling.

[00:18:11] So I do that in the pet industry. So anyone who wants to connect me in the pet industry, the innovators, I definitely want them to reach out and connect to me because I’m bringing innovation and funding together to create differences in the pet world.

[00:18:25] Pretty much following my passion is the key, right? So where my passion is, is where I want to put my attention because it’s just lights on fire and people resonate with me and join me.

[00:18:36] Like literally out of the blue people will write to me and say “I have to work with you. I don’t know what you’re working on. Can I help you?” And I’m like, wow, ironically I need your talent right now. And it just goes together. And I look at my team. I’m like, did you just see that magic happen? Like, I needed this, this person showed up. I’m like, “oh, let me put the talent to work. And then let’s collaborate.”

[00:18:53] Well I have two of those happening this week. I have JJ Virgin coming to my house on Wednesday. She’s like, “I just want to see what we can do together.” Cause we’ve been friends for so long. She’s like “I feel like we’d have to do something together.” And I’m like “yeah, come to the house. Let’s see what happens.” And then I have a friend of mine who wants to launch some projects with me who’s stopping by tomorrow: Tamra Thompson. I don’t know if you know Tamra, but you should. You should come over and have some tea with us tomorrow, cause you would love her.

[00:19:19] It’s just like great collaborators are showing up and I’m like “how do I put that talent to use?” Collaboration rather than hiring employees. If I can bring in collaborators, now I can multiply their genius plus my genius. And it’s not a burden. It’s an impact for good for the world.

[00:19:36] Caterina Rando: That’s beautiful. And Lee, I know that you are definitely a magnet for collaboration. And part of it, I’m going to say: not just what you’ve done, your uplifting nature. And I want to shine the spotlight on that because you know, one of the things I say is that a smile looks good on all of us, right?

[00:19:55] The other thing that looks good on all of us is an attitude of uplift, a positive disposition. That’s alluring. So you’re saying everyone wants to collaborate with you. That’s alluring. Nobody wants to collaborate with, you know, it doesn’t matter how smart you are if…

[00:20:12] Lee Richter: We call it “Eeyore energy.”

[00:20:14] Caterina Rando: Eeyore energy! Okay. Right.

[00:20:15] Lee Richter:  Or victim energy. I mean, that was one of the challenges I have with the Event Planners Association. I love empowering and lifting event planners. Out of one hundred, ten of them love to be lifted and will think different and go online and do something different.

[00:20:29] The other 90% though, I found trends in there where their mindset was so stuck in what they couldn’t do instead of what they could do. And that’s a real victim mindset. And I’ll say I played there 1, 2, 3 months to lift them up, lift them up, lift them up. By the third month, the 10% who were lifted, they were flying. The other 90%, I’m like “I’m sorry, but you guys got to go work on your mindset.”

[00:20:51] So I gave them some really great tips. One of them was to go look up David Nagel. David Nagel does the most amazing mindset, forward-thinking, gratitude -thinking, presentations. You can find them on YouTube. And I gave them David Nagel and David Nagel does help people change their mindset.

[00:21:09] And I’ll tell you what: when my team was going through COVID last March, when it first started, we knew about it March 10th. By March 25th, David Nagel had four days where he taught about mindset around COVID. Now it was still unknown for all of us, right? It had only really been in the news for five or 10 days at that point.

[00:21:26] And what happened in that time is David Nagel went out and said “here’s what you can control on your mindset.” I shared it with my team as they came out over a four-day period. At the end of the four days, I could see the difference of them before and after those videos. So I recommend that to you and your team. And to everyone, to at least go look and see what he wrote, because it was really a lot of great work online, especially second and third videos. There were a lot of details in there that are very useful.

[00:21:51] But fast forward, six months now, a year later, my team is 10 out of 10 on the NPS score. NPS is how they measure success in companies. It’s a net promoter score, NPS score. And an NPS score measures one question specifically, which is “would you refer me to your friends?” That is the indicator if people love you or not.

[00:22:11] And if they love you, they will multiply your brand. And if not, you need to figure out why and plug up and shore up real quick. And so what happens with an NPS score, we do it internal and external. And there’s certain numbers to want to hit as your indicator of success in the company, and people who rate reviews that are either a one or a 10 are very passionate about a brand. So those are your indications of whether your health needs to be adjusted or not.

[00:22:37] So an NPS score, you can do external and internal. And internal, our NPS score with our team is a 10 out of 10. And my manager came to me recently –this is a side note but I’ll come back– and said “Am I too nice to them? If I’m a 10 out of 10 should I be mean?” I’m like “no, it means you are impactful and you’re seasoned and you’ve got this down and you’re not just learning on the job. You’re guiding, you’re mentoring.” I’m like “it means you’ve arrived.”

[00:23:01] But she’s been there 14 years and it’s taken 14 years. She didn’t start out that way. It was micro-movements towards success, getting even better every year, doing the hard work, just like I’m talking about with my husband. She and I have done that kind of work. She and I have done that work. She is the manager of my team and I’ll include her in things that he and I are going through so she understands the work we’re doing so she can support us. I keep her on the inside knowledge of our challenges so she can help be the rock to get me to the other side.

[00:23:31] So anyway, it’s all a process of communication, collaboration, and community building. It comes back to those same pieces with you. And I wrote here too: connection, collaboration, and communication. This was our pre-show notes because honestly, that’s how we live.

[00:23:46] You and I live with “connection matters more than anything,” we have lived with “collaboration raises all of us together.” We get to lift together. And communication is key and essential. Because when we have direct communication, then we can lift each other because we understand.

[00:24:01] Caterina Rando: Well, the other thing that’s clear from what you shared about your manager and what you shared about with your husband, Gary, is that you’re also very willing, not only willing, but you want to, invest time and resources in your personal and your professional relationships, to lift them up and make them better.

[00:24:22] And because I know you, and I know a little bit of your marriage, you had a great marriage before all this. But the thing is, how can it be even better? And the same thing with your manager. Manager’s doing great before, but now how can we make it even better? So…

[00:24:38] Lee Richter: But they’re already an A student. We’re just fine tuning it. And the word that I learned early on is –is it okay if I share this Caterina? The word I learned early on is we’re getting even better. We were already great. We were already A students, we were already 91 or better clearly.

[00:24:53] And that’s the thing, even with my husband, I’m like “we have 33 years together. We grew together.” He’s pure goodness. Like even if I wanted to break free of our marriage for any way, shape, or form, why would I? Like, I’d be looking for someone like him and I already have him and all I wanted was for us to get even better. And I said to him “you have to audition for the next 25 years. You don’t get it automatically.”

[00:25:12] But I’ll tell you why he’s better than ever. And did I take a risk? I did because for a little while I went in my shell and I went to my place and I said “what’s right for me? What’s right for me? I’m not going to ask you, I’m going to do what’s right for me.” And he had to change with that power shift. He had to change with that power shift.

[00:25:28] And I’ll be honest with you. One of the things Don Elium taught me that was really valuable is that I did set up the relationship to be the traditional “Man. Woman. You’re in charge. I’m here to make you happy.” But I was happy making him happy so it didn’t bother me. And people think I’m so strong. I had to be in charge. Truth is he was great in charge. I didn’t mind. But a year ago when I took my power back, it shifted the power. Now I was in charge of me.

[00:25:52] But there was something new that came into my, into my brain that was not there before in our relationship. And it was the reptilian brain. The reptilian brain came in cause I was pissed off at him. I felt like I was not seen, not heard, not celebrated to the degree I should have been. And I asked for it and still didn’t get it. And I’m like “really, even at a 91, you’re dumb enough that you’re not going to do what I specifically asked you to do.” And this is a human thing. And by the way, when I met Michelle Obama and Oprah, Michelle talked about Barack like this, and I’m like, “we’re real people. Why does it have to be censored and be perfect?” No, I want the learning lesson in the end and I want people to know it doesn’t just happen. It’s work. Every door of opportunity, when someone’s knocking on it, when you open the door, on the other side is work. You’re either learning or you’re dying. That’s it.

[00:26:41] Caterina Rando: I hear you.

[00:26:42] Lee Richter: So I’m doing the work. And what I learned is from Don, when the reptilian brain came in there was a key piece. And he said, “if ever you’re standing in the light of, ‘I deserve this.’ You’re not in awareness in your frontal lobe. You’re in reptilian.” “I deserve this” is the first key to know you’re out of awareness. You need to make decisions from awareness, never from reptilian brain.

[00:27:06] But at 25 years, I didn’t want the same for the next 25 I want even better. I want even better. But by asking for even better, both of us had to go inside. And what I’m letting you know, it was hard work. We’re getting to the other side. I always saw him at the end, but I had to figure it out. And by figuring it out, I learned I do have a reptilian brain, which I didn’t know I had. I did have to learn how to manage it. I did have to learn how to think of what I really want and why.

[00:27:34] And I hope that that’s what inspires other people, is the entrepreneurial journey is not the entrepreneurial journey. It’s your life journey. And in it, you can be an entrepreneur for any period of time you want to, in addition to a job, in addition to nothing.

[00:27:47] But the beauty about being an entrepreneur is it challenges your brain, it allows you to create, it allows you to collaborate, it allows you to connect. So I think, you know, one of the things I love about entrepreneurship is we create the communities by default, we have no choice because either people are with us and they’re our friends, they’re our peeps, or they’re not. And that’s okay too.

[00:28:07] And so what I love about this community is that I love being your peep. I love that you’re part of the intersection of so many success moments in my life. I love that you appreciate my learning and transparency. There’s nowhere else I would say this. I almost want to say, like, I don’t want everyone to hear this because it’s so much transparency. But I also learned from Brené brown: having the courage, being real, that’s what life is all about. And that’s how we do rise together.

[00:28:33] Caterina Rando: And my friend authenticity is alluring, also. If you’re perfect, you’re not alluring. Like perfect is boring. Perfect is not interesting. People want to know that you’ve been through it that you’re still working on getting even better.

[00:28:48] Lee Richter: Even our relationship gets to get even better. Even though we’ve had the mastermind with brilliant people, I’m always looking for ways like “how can Caterina take it to the next level with me?”

[00:28:57] Caterina Rando: Sounds exciting. Lee, I want to hear from you because you always know: what are a couple trends or places that are coming or just getting started that entrepreneurs are going to want to be aware of, and maybe get on board and have their attention on.

[00:29:15] Lee Richter: That’s a great question. And even me, I’m updating my policies as we speak. The first one I’m going to talk about, I learned in 2015, I’ve been applying. I now even put new tactics in place this week that are brilliant, saved me a lot of money and it’s a cryptocurrency policy, both in work and at home. So I’m getting to the point where I’m just going to have a crypto manager, manage a wallet for me and give them a percentage of how we do so they’re tied into the results. So that’s how much I believe into that.

[00:29:45] And then the other thing is the NFT community. NFT’s are non-fungible tokens, it’s a way of doing digital art, but it’s also a way of collaborating, giving access, licensing things, authenticating things. There’s a lot of reasons to have it. I think in three years, every company will know about it and have it, just right now it’s the first 1%. I’m still one of the OGs in the space, which is super cool.

[00:30:11] I actually want to launch a podcast just around this one topic. That will be helpful in this community as all of you go and sign up for goasklee.com/freePR. It’s one of my places where I share how to get PR for your business, but also I can get your name and email. So when we get ready to launch this, we can include you in the launch on, on taking it to the next level. However, launching an NFT policy inside your company and inside your personal wealth is probably a very good idea.

[00:30:43] Caterina Rando: Lee let’s tell everybody for those that don’t know what is an NFT policy.

[00:30:49] Lee Richter: Okay. So I’m going to use an example. One of my clients is Gareb Shamus. Gareb Shamus is the CEO and founder of Comic-Con. Comic-Con had 5 million attendees at 181 events. 5 million. Every single event had a waiting list of people to get in. Everyone had a ticket to get in. Some people had VIP tickets to get in and meet a celebrity. Some people had VIP VIP tickets to come two days and meet a celebrity and get an autograph on something. So there’s all these levels of tickets.

[00:31:20] So now during COVID, Gareb and I sat down and we talked about how can we change an experience for someone at Comic-Con in the future? Well, one of the ways is to create access through a digital piece of art. And the digital piece of art can be an original or something new. It could be something based on 30 years ago that he did, it could be based on all different kinds of pieces of art he already has.

[00:31:42] Now, when somebody has an NFT it can give them access, the same as before, the same as a ticket used to be, it could be access to the event, access to a VIP day access to anything.

[00:31:54] It could also be a piece that authenticates something. Say I sell you an original comic book. The NFT might say, this is authentic, this comic book. It might authenticate a speech. Gary Vaynerchuk is using it now thinking when he does speeches, he’ll put an NFT at the end so that it authenticates that that speech is really him and not made up. That make sense? So that’s one way of using it. And another one is licensing.

[00:32:18] If you go to my Instagram, which is @GoAskLee, there’s a whole bunch of education there around what to know in cryptocurrency, what is an NFT, what are the NFT terms, what are things to know, how to open a wallet. There is a whole process, so people can learn on my Instagram as well.

[00:32:38] Caterina Rando: Love it. Okay, Lee. NFT. Cryptocurrency. I want to ask you to share a little bit, what are you doing on Clubhouse? Do you have a club on clubhouse that we want to let everybody know about?

[00:32:49] Lee Richter: We do. I have several. One of them is a Global Leaders Collective and that’s where we’re doing a lot of the talk about NFTs and beyond. And also I do have a profile called @GoAskLee. So that’s my NFT profile and cryptocurrency profile too.

[00:33:03] If you want you can follow me on Clubhouse and then when I go in those rooms, you can see those rooms at the same time and follow the conversation. Part of where I learned NFTs is in Clubhouse. I knew about it and being connected to some people in there including my friend, Eric. I’ve known Eric for years. But he ended up doing the Floyd Mayweather launch, which was a cryptocurrency now a metaverse they’re launching and they’re at 50%.

[00:33:28] A metaverse is almost like a little universe online and they’re doing one of their own community right now with Floyd Mayweather, who’s a boxer. And so they already sold over 5,000 of them. They’re selling 11,000 total and they pre-sold 5,000 already, which meant people bought it to be able to enter that.

[00:33:46] I know it sounds like a whole ‘nother world and it kind of is a little bit, and I’ve had a long education so I am creating classes to teach people how to launch their NFT policy. We’re still designing our policy, checking it with insurance companies. And once that’s done, I’d love to bring it to you in the community to try it on with me.

[00:34:04] Caterina Rando: We can definitely talk about it more. All right, Lee, let’s take a deep breath. For our listeners: any final words for getting even better as an entrepreneur you want to share with them before we wrap up our time together?

[00:34:21] Lee Richter: Number one, connection matters more than anything. Number two, check your mindset, make sure it’s where you want to be to create your best future self. And number three, ask for help and support. Just be real.

[00:34:33] Caterina Rando: Yay. We’d love that. And I know you’re very good at that. Ask for help and support. By the way, that’s another area where we can always get even better, where we can always move more towards mastery. Because my friend, as I look at you, I do see that you have developed a level of mastery with having support, running teams, everything to do with the growth of your companies that involves other people.

[00:34:59] Lee Richter: I will say a couple of secrets to that is number one, always acknowledging the origin. So the people who gave me that first idea or that first connection or that first thought, I go back and thank that person. So I’ll say that’s one, because then it also plants how serious that was in an intersection of me making a decision in my life for better. Right?

[00:35:16] And then the other is like really taking action, not just talking about it. Taking action, doing what’s the first next step? Being gentle with yourself. Sometimes it might be just looking up a phone number or putting it in the calendar. It doesn’t mean conquering it and finishing it. It means what’s the first step? So I think the action piece is important.

[00:35:34] When you look at my Colby, I’m a high visionary, but I’m also a high follow-through, and it’s an anomaly because most people at a high visionary are not great at follow-through. And that’s one of my super powers. So that’s why I say put action to it. Cause you can dream all day long. You can have a great mindset, great perspective. However, when you have those epiphanies and you have those moments, make sure you take your action.

[00:35:55] Okay. Love you.

[00:35:56] Caterina Rando: Love you.

[00:35:58] Okay my friends. This is the Expand Your Fempire Podcast. I want to remind you to join our Thriving Women in Biz club on Clubhouse. Follow Lee on Clubhouse. Follow her on Instagram. And remember connection matters more than anything. Love it.

[00:36:16] Okay my friends. Be with you next time. Have a great day.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Expand Your Fempire with Caterina Rando.