Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - The Case for NFTs: From Community to Career Advancement

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Nicole is joined by Lisa Mayer, founder of the initiative Boss Beauties, to talk about the value of NFTs beyond the financial ROI. Plus, they discuss how you can (and DEFINITELY should) protect your NFTs. You can learn more about Boss Beauties here: https://bossbeauties.com/ 

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Nicole Lappin. I'll admit it, I have been pretty, pretty hard on NFTs lately. On my most recent episode with my work hubs, Jason Pfeiffer, we really got into all of the horror stories around NFTs. But there aren't only horror stories. There are some success stories and there are certain use cases for NFTs that are worthwhile and valuable. To make that case, I'm bringing on Lisa Mayer, founder of Boss Beauties, an initiative that works to empower women and focuses on opportunities presented by Web3. Well, Lisa, it is such a pleasure to say welcome to Money Rehab. I know. I'm so excited to chat with you. So let's talk about you. You went from Silicon Valley to ed tech, right? To mentorship and then to the metaverse. Can you take us through the origin story of Boss Beauties and what your work

with the initiative is doing right now? Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, Nicole, I have to say your story has inspired me in so many ways. I mean, just I think at 21, right, you were on CNN. I mean, just everything and starting from almost nothing and just, you know, building your career. It's so inspiring. So first, first quick shout out to you. But yeah, I'll share a little bit of our story. So I started Boss Beauties at the end of 2021. It builds on about a decade of work that I've been doing in the space of mentoring women in college and high school, which I know you and I had chatted a few years ago during the pandemic about our work. All the work I had been doing leading up to Boss Beauties brought us to this

moment. And really, it's more than an NFT. I've seen some of the things. I know that you get a lot of people reaching out about NFTs. There's so many people starting NFT companies. I love to share with people that it's more than NFTs. It's really about community and being able to impact women and do great work and make a difference through it. All that work, mentoring women before Boss Beauties, I had that passion. And then with the metaverse and Web3, I saw all the growth that was happening in the Web3 space, right? I saw an article that said Beeple launches an NFT for $69 million. And I'm thinking, I mean, probably what you're thinking.

You're like, WTF? Like, you know, what is happening in this industry, in this space? But really, I thought, you know, what if I could get in early into this new industry in this new space and build something that's about more than an NFT, right? Build something that can impact women, build community and create utility, you know, with access to different mentorship events, conferences and a lot of things. So we've partnered so far with Barbie, which we're really proud to do. We actually have the first NFT to be on display at the New York Stock Exchange. Wow. You know, outside the boardroom honoring the very first woman to have a seat on the Stock Exchange. So really, it's about more than NFTs. We want to remind women

through Boss Beauties that they can be everything that they want to be. Including an NFT connoisseur like you. So what you're doing is not exactly like people. You're creating a community. And you've seen the value, I'm sure, of NFTs change over time, even in that short time since you launched it during the pandemic. How might someone gauge whether an NFT is going to become more valuable over time or not? Yeah, you know, you know what I look at? I look at the NFT founder, the creator of that NFT. That's one thing I do. I'm looking to see what has that person done before NFTs,

right? Are they credible? Are they reputable? Do they work really hard, right? Before founding Boss Beauties, I had a lot of challenging moments, but I just kept going. And I think if you see that it's not just about... I mean, there's amazing artists out there that are super talented, but I look at NFT creators and founders that are very entrepreneurial and resilient. You know, before starting Boss Beauties, we had, I had partnered with companies like Apple, you know, we hosted our mentorship events with Apple and Verizon and had, you know, speakers like Rebecca Minkoff come to speak to the women we mentor. So we'd already done a lot in business before starting Boss Beauties. And it allowed us to quickly bring some of that experience into the Web3 space.

And I really look at other founders as well to see how credible are they, right? Before you go and buy an NFT from them and support their work as well. So talk to me about the difference between the art-based NFTs and the functional NFTs. Am I thinking about that in the right way? There's kind of these two buckets. Yeah. And I know for TVs that might have utility

or you use that NFT or that token to get access maybe to an event or attend an event in person or maybe get something from that NFT, right? So let's talk a little bit about that. It's super interesting to me. I nerd out on it. I'm sure you do because there's loyalty programs, right? Or tokens for in-person experiences. We've talked about on the show, Gary Vee has the Dinner Deer tokens, right, that users can redeem for dinner with him. Or then, of course, the Bored Ape NFTs give you access to some in-person events with the Bored Ape token. So what are you most interested in around these functional use cases of NFTs as opposed to

the art-based NFTs? Absolutely. And first of all, I love amazing art. So definitely there's amazing art-based NFTs. But for today, let's dive in a little bit to kind of the utility and what you can use NFTs for. So really interesting, NFTs are becoming a way, almost like a ticket to a club or a community or an event. Think about how people have become members of Soho House or attending an event or

a conference. You mentioned Gary Vee. That's a great example. I just was on Rebecca Minkoff's podcast yesterday, and Rebecca has launched some NFTs. And I love what she's going to do, where if you get one of the NFTs, you'll get access to go to Fashion Week and different events that she's hosting. So from this perspective, people are buying NFTs as that ticket and that way to get into a community. Boss Beauties recently hosted an event with Kesha and Kesha performed, it was an acoustic performance. It was actually the first time she'd ever performed her song TikTok acoustic. And it was a small performance, a few hundred people,

but anyone that had a Boss Beauties NFT that was at NFT NYC, the conference, could then use their Boss Beauties NFT to come into the event as a ticket to attend the event as well. So there's lots of great examples of how businesses and brands are leveraging this new technology, leveraging Web3, NFTs, and the blockchain to build even more engagement with their fans, create super fans, communities as well. And I would love to talk about how to harness super fans through NFTs, but can I ask maybe a silly question because I'm kind of old school? Why do you need an NFT as a ticket if you could just have a ticket? Totally. No, I love it. Here, let's chat about it. So, you know, with NFTs, this is the very first time in history that we can have digital

ownership of something. And, you know, you can track who's owned it on the blockchain, right? It's a digital certificate you can see. One of the things about that is that with the digital ownership, you can prove who owns it. It's a way for people to be able to buy membership into a community, but then they can later resell it, which I think is really interesting, especially if they want to buy into that community. Maybe they want to buy a Bored Ape right now, and then later they can resell their membership or their NFT and make money on it potentially. And of course, I'm sure you've been following, the market goes up and down. I'm very aware, been following, you know, the market goes up and down. I'm very aware we're in very much a bear market right now. But there are a lot of people that had bought NFTs, you know, to be a

part of that community and attend an event or be part of that, and then later sold those NFTs and made a profit. And of course, I'm not a, you know, financial, I can't give financial advice. I mean, I know the market has been more of a bear market recently, but just sharing a little bit why someone might buy an NFT instead of a ticket. That makes sense. Is it fair to think of it as like the infrastructure for reselling these loyalty tokens or programs in the same way as you would use, say, StubHub to resell tickets to concerts or sporting events? I mean, that's one way to think of it.

The other thing is that if you buy a ticket on StubHub to go to an event, you might not be a part of a community per se. So in the Boss Beauty's community, we're all connecting and engaging. And people reach out wanting to support the community. It feels a lot more than buying a ticket to an event. Talk to me about the other ways that companies used or are using NFTs that you found particularly interesting? I think it's really important to note that some brands have entered the NFT space and they haven't done well. And there are established brands with millions and millions of followers that might try to enter or even celebrities that might enter, but sometimes they won't do it in an authentic way.

enter, but sometimes they won't do it in an authentic way. So I think the brands that are doing it really well are doing it in a way that's very authentic and maybe connects back to their mission and what they've already been doing. It's not just something as a quick cash grab to make money, but it's really to weave it into the work they've already been doing. So here's an example. I thought this was really cool. DC Comics launched 200,000 actually NFTs. And I believe it was inspired by the superhero Batman. Well, when you bought that NFT, what it would do is it would give you access into the DC universe and your NFT might be featured in content that they create. So maybe that's, and I don't know all their plans, of course, but that could be a comic book. You might see the NFT you bought, that character, that artwork featured in a DC comic or stories that they're writing. And I believe they also asked the holders of those NFTs to be

a part of that, like maybe write a story about their character that they got from the collection. And we're doing that as well with our Boss Beauty. So we invited our community, who's your Boss Beauty? People have Olympic athletes or astronauts or CEOs. And we said, share a story about your boss beauty. And some of them will be going into a book, right? So, you know, I think it's really cool when brands engage their NFT holders in those ways. And most people, they might not get that ability to be a part of putting content into a DC comic, you know, comic. And then they get behind the scenes content, things that, you know, other fans might not get access to. So I thought that was really interesting what they were doing.

And all of the Boss Beauty NFTs are different prices? It's just based on what the market will pay? Yeah. So some of them, yeah, there's some buying right now. I think it was around 0.6 E. E being Ethereum. Yeah, of Ethereum. So depending on the price of crypto, that could be, I believe it was around $700 for the lowest priced NFT as of last week.

But then we're also launching a new collection in the next month or two. So for that, the price point will be a little bit lower and you can pick up one of those as well. We've had episodes on securing your crypto and horror stories of people who haven't. Should you be thinking of NFTs in the same way? Absolutely. You definitely should. I mean, as with any new industry, right, there's always going to be, you know, people that want to take advantage of that, right? So there are scammers out there. I mean, we have to acknowledge that. And so this is something I'm actually super passionate about is cybersecurity with crypto,

right? Getting a hard wallet, like a ledger or something where it's stored and not sharing your passwords or your seed phrases, one of the terms for a password with anybody. And also just cybersecurity in general, don't use public Wi-Fi, things like that. It seems really simple. We might be at the airport, jump on the airport's Wi-Fi. We think it's not a big deal. But actually, it's really important not to do something like that because you want to keep everything secure, whether you're crypto or just anything on your laptop, right? Girl, you're preaching to the choir. I'm going through an intense digital hygiene. My team knows I'm changing all of the passwords and making them

like airtight. You know, the NSA couldn't get in or are they probably good? And here's Lisa with today's tip you can take straight to the bank. A Ledger hard wallet, that's a really good investment. It's just, I think, $150 around that price point. And then that keeps your NFTs secure so that they're on the hard wallet. And if something did happen where someone, God forbid, hacked onto your computer or something, you just never know, right? You click a strange link, there's a phishing link or something you just never know, right? You click a strange link. There's a phishing link or something that keeps your NFTs and your crypto secure. And then, like I said, just being careful with public Wi-Fi

and not having your Bluetooth on. I mean, I actually recently heard people can hack your phone through Bluetooth, which is crazy. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host nicole lappin our producers are morgan lavoie and mike costarelli executive producers are nikki etor and will pearson our mascots are penny and mimsy huge thanks to og money rehab team michelle lands for her development work katherine law for her production and writing magic and Brandon Dickert for his

editing, engineering and sound design. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.