November 5, 2021 • 32 mins
Women have been hit hard during the Covid-19 pandemic, having to change their lives in order to stay home and take care of the kids. Now, many women are returning to the workforce and the need to empower women has never been greater. Here to discuss the issue is Wendy Diamond, the founder of Women's Entrepreneurship Day. Wendy is also an author, reality television personality, and founder of pet-related businesses, including Animal Fair magazine, Paws For Style, a pet fashion show, and Yappy Hour.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm David Grosso, and you're listening to follow the profit Today,
I'm following the profit. We're going to talk about women
and entrepreneurship. Women, of course, have faced the wrath of
the pandemic, having to stay home to take care of
their children and getting back to work, at least physical
(00:20):
work hasn't been easy for them, and many of them
are taking the plunge and starting their own businesses. Here
to talk about women's entrepreneurship is the founder of Women's
Entrepreneurship Day, Wendy Diamonds. She's also the founder of Animal
Fair Media. How you doing, Wendy, fantastic? Thank you, David,
thank you for having me on. I'm super excited to
talk about this topic. It's a very important topic, so Wendy,
(00:44):
right now, the labor shortage is the biggest thing we see.
You got to a restaurant, you got to a shop
and there's nobody working there, and a lot of people
say that has a lot to do with the landscape
women are facing because of the pandemic. Tell me what's
it been like to be a woman through the pandemic. Well,
first of all, you know, like when you look at
(01:04):
the history, right, I mean, women in the workforce number
one have been like you know, underfunded, upper underrepresented, all
the unders And you know what I believe is really
what's happening here as we've saw during covid as, like
women and minorities have been really mostly affected during this time. So,
(01:25):
you know, when you look at entrepreneurship, it is so
important that we empower women because the fact is, you know,
when women, when they earn money nine, that money goes
to educate their children and provide for their families, which
uplift the entire communities. Right, And that's the basis for
me creating Women's Entrepreneurship Day in two thousand and thirteen,
you know, because at that time only one percent of
(01:48):
venture dollars we're going towards women founders. So I think
what we're seeing right now is just this effect and
we've just seen you know why it's so much it's
so important to actually enable women to have more access
to you know, employment, but also you know in c
suite you know, positions as well as boards, because when
(02:09):
you look at all the data and all the figures,
it shows how profitable companies become when they do that. Yeah,
you know, one of the things that's really interesting right
now is that child care is a major issue. And
of course we want women to have children because you know,
to be here today, yeah, exactly, we all depend on
women or for her to reproduce ourselves. But child care
(02:33):
is really expensive, to the point that many people stay
home because it's just too expensive to work. How can
we change that, Well, first of all, it's hard. You know,
first of all, it's expensive. Right to have children, to
have pets, to have anything is expensive in this world.
And that's where I think one of the things with
COVID is that women now are able to stay home
and we realize we can do and you know, it's
(02:55):
very fruitful for women to actually stay home because then
they can still take care of their children, right. And
so I think that a lot of the bigger companies
are also enabling that UM to have people partially work
from home, etcetera. And then there's a lot of government
subsidies that we have seen, especially in New York, you know,
which our new governor Kathy huckle has put in place
(03:16):
right that enable affordable UM childcare. And it depends on
right because you know, each state, each government, each city
have their own budgets and they can allocate those dollars
towards that. So tell me about you. So how did
you get into the space, because you know, you could
(03:36):
just be a working woman and just fade into obscurity.
What made you speak up on these issues? You know,
I've been an entrepreneur in my whole entire life. You know,
I graduated from college, send a three d resumes and
literally I didn't get one callback, you know, to get
a job. So I had to become an entrepreneur, like
at the start of my career. So I've been an
entrepreneur in my whole life. I've solved difficulties as being
(03:59):
an trepreneur, as starting a new business many times in
my career. And when I ended up you know how
I created Women's Entrepreneurship Day organization was in two thousand thirteen.
I ended up in Honduras on vacation, not realizing it
was the murder capital of the world. And when I
got there, I was at this boutique hotel and I
was getting able to leave the hotel because it was
(04:20):
so dangerous. Right, all the drug dealers that were in
Colombia actually moved to Honduras. So that's why it's the
murder capital of the world. And Columbia is really safe
right now. And so when I got there, when I
was watching birds with all these people that were from
England that we're willing to watch birds for, you know,
literally all day, and we're willing to risk their lives.
And I said to the founder of the hotel, I said,
(04:41):
oh my gosh, if I watch another bird, I'm gonna
go cuckoo myself. And he's like, you know, I know
his organization that gives micro loans to poor women. Why
don't you go check it out. I know the development director.
It's truly safe. Why it's you know, and you'll see
beautiful country side of it, like Honduras. So I was like, sure,
you know, I'll go. And that's where I went on
this journey. And this woman who was the development director
(05:04):
of this organization called Adalante, which was providing micro loans
to poor women in this little community called the Sable,
which was a very dangerous community in Honduras. And when
I got there, I met this one woman. She was
seventy two years old and she had three little kids,
and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like a miracle.
How do you have these three little kids? And she
(05:24):
said that her daughter actually passed away and the husband
ran off and she was responsible for her three grandchildren.
And so Adalante, this organization that I was there with
and I was learning all about the statistics of women
and the whole thing provided her a hundred dollar micro
loan and literally she took that money, opened up a
window in her one room hot with the dirt floor
(05:45):
where she lived with those three grandchildren, and started selling
cokes and toothpaste, and literally she was able to make
enough money to pay a dollar a month for those
children to go to school. And that's when I was
just like, whoa this is in each story in this
little community that I spent, I was the same thing,
and I was just like wow. And the statistics worldwide
(06:06):
show that these women are paying back these micro loans
at a rate, right, And as I mentioned before, goes
to educate their children, provide for their families. Right. And
when women are empowered in business, they have self confidence,
in dignity. They don't allow human rights, but you know, violations, right.
And so that was what triggered me when I came
(06:26):
back to New York. I was like, wow, you know
when I started doing some research, women entrepreneurs and women
in business was not really highly talked about at all
in the media, and very few people were really like
very few um companies were having initiatives to swore women,
et cetera. So that's why I knew I should create
a day in the world, because if I created a day,
(06:47):
I could create the conversation, right And that's when I
went to our governor at the time, Cuomo, and I
went to Mayor to Blasio, and I went to US
Congress and I said, could we proclaim Women's Entrepreneurship Day
on November nine teeth, And that's how we launched Women's
Entrepreneurship Day. And then I went around the world to
everybody I knew and asked in their country, who you know,
(07:08):
who is somebody in the country, what what women can
bring governments, business leaders, civil society together to collaborate to
find solutions to uplift women in business. And that's how
women was created. So this is very interesting, right because
this goes into another very time issue we have right now.
I've been to mud US. You know, I'm a Spanish
speaker and whatnot, but we have a lot of migratory
(07:29):
pressures on our southern border, and really no one really
talks about how empowering female entrepreneurs can help these countries
solve a lot of their problems. I mean, we tend
to think of immigration as just a very isolated issue,
but it's attached to female entrepreneurship because in countries where
females don't have access to employment, right, a lot of
(07:51):
them leave, right in countries like Hondurans. So why don't
we think about things holistically like that, Like, female entrepreneurship
has a lot to do with how well a country
is doing at any moment. Well, you know, it's it's
like this, right, giving a hand up, not a hand out, right,
And you know women want to be empowered. They you know,
(08:12):
when they earn money. As we know, the statistics show
that the whole community becomes a better place. Right. And
when you think about, like how the ripple effect and
if we want to create systematic change in the world,
we need to embrace everyone from the ground up. We
can't just be doing this lean in c suite executives
lean into each other, right, because that's never gonna bring
(08:32):
those that's never gonna you know, change the world what's
going to change the world if we enable everyone to
understand why it's so important to empower women in business,
and that's going to change the game. Because like as
you see, you know, like with Mayor Garcetti in Los
Angeles for instance, where you live. I mean, he's one
of the greatest mayors that you've ever worked within our movement.
(08:53):
I mean he every year dedicates grants in their budget
to support female founders. Every year he creates these whole
initiatives to support and enable them education on how to
start your own missins and resources right, And I think
that's the key to everything, is about education, but it's
also providing opportunity. And I think that when you look
(09:16):
at you know, all these like developing nations, including you know,
what you're seeing right now in Honduras and what you're
seeing in l Sale, but are in all these different places.
And this kind of goes into a whole other thing
is you know, I believe in cryptocurrency, and I believe
in what bitcoin was created for and I'm I believe
personally that and it's kind of similar to what our
(09:36):
foundation was based upon, you know, was you know, after
the two thousand eight housing and financial crisis. You know,
the smartest people or the one smartest person came together,
right and created this name Satoshi to bring out the
most high integrity, deflationary financial instrument to enable the two
(09:56):
and a half billion people unbanked financial empowerment and inclusion. Right,
And you know this is where you know, we talk
about what's going to happen in this world. Is I
believe cryptocurrency is another you know thing that's happening in
Venezuela where our foundation is huge in Venezuela, you know,
and I see what's happening is that the new technologies
(10:19):
are gonna be the way way out of poverty. So
you see cryptocurrency as an alternative to government currency. Why
is that important to female entrepreneurship? Is it? Is it
because banking definitely has a male bend to it? Well,
(10:42):
I mean yeah, you could say that, you know what
I mean, And I'm not a male badchor I love men, right, Um,
But you know, I think when you know, when you
look at it, I think you you see the fact
that we need to enable everyone financial inclusion. You know,
we are a capitalist world. We need to pay our rent,
we need to pay for food, right, and who's more
likely to where they who's more likely to put that money,
(11:05):
right is women? You know, women are paying back like
for instance, micro loans in this world, and in rate
men's a lot lower, right. So I think when you're
looking at cryptocurrency, it's enabling whether you have a mobile
phone or a footphone, you still will have access and
and to have financial inclusion, right, And that's what I
(11:26):
think is very important in this world, and I think
that's what's going to change the world. So tell me
a little bit about your work in Afghanistan, which of course,
sadly has been in the news since the US you
know kind of cut and run and we've seen progress
for women in that country roll backward. What type of
work are you doing in that country? Okay, So you
know our foundation has bid since two thousand fourteen in
(11:48):
you know, Afghanistan, and the person Manitza who is represents
our foundation is actually the founder of the Women Chamber
of Commerce in Afghanistan based in k So we you know,
have been very aware of what's going on. And one
of the initiatives that we've done this year is part
of Women's Entrepreneurship Day this year is we partnered with
the company that I have to admit I'm personally invested
(12:11):
in this company called open Grants, which your viewers should
totally know about. It's disrupting the trillions of dollars of
non deluded funding to enable entrepreneurs and foundations to have
a seamless way to get funding, you know, you know,
whether they're in the medical field, whether in you know,
the technology field, etcetera. Trillions of dollars are available of
(12:31):
non deluded funding. So we've we partnered with open Grants
because they're actually you know, part partners with Stellar, which
is one of the top twenty coins. And what we're
doing is we're funding a hundred thousand women in Afghanistan
with crypto. And what we're doing is and so in
Afghanistan right now, there's forty million people. Right, not everyone
(12:54):
is lucky enough to get on a plane and come
to the United States, right, you know, people need to
still survive there. And so what we did is we
created an initiative through with open Grants, which is pretty
traceability and transparency right on the blockchain. So when one
donates to this problem, you know, to this project, they're
gonna be able to follow the women in Afghanistan. We've
(13:17):
in in Afghanistan right now, forty million people, twenty million
of them have mobile bones. Of the twenty million, we're
guessing basically about five million or women. Right. So what
we've we've put into effect is that we're gonna be
funding a hundred thousand women. It's gonna start testing it
next week and we're gonna be testing it and then
all the end, if they have a flip phone or
(13:37):
a mobile phone, they can download the wallet. It's all
k YC. It takes about three minutes for them to
basically download this and then we're going to give them
starting off when ten dollars each, So like, give up
your Starbucks coffee, your dessert, get out of it and
donate ten dollars and that's going to enable them food
for a week. So KYC know your customer, you you
(13:59):
went and oh you're a customer. We're not giving it.
We're not giving it to the Taliban, We're not giving it,
you know, we're not giving it, you know, to any
nefarious acts which everybody a lot of people think about,
you know when they think about cryptocurrency, right, and so um,
this is what the whole project is And what's really
great about it is you're gonna know who you gave
your money to. You can follow them on Instagram, you
(14:21):
can follow them on social media. And we partnered with
three organizations in Afghanistan, so we have this whole network
of women's groups. You know, It's like I had so
much fun. Like every time I read an article and
I read somebody who's going you know, who's marching to
you know, enable you know, girls to have education, and
I see their name, I like stock them and I
(14:41):
find them on like Instagram and I text them and
I'm like, hey, do you want to be part of this?
Could we give all your you know, your Women Fighters
of Afghanistan that's one of the groups. Um and and
I'm like, hey, come on, let you know, do you
want to be part of this? And you know, we
bring on all these small little groups in Afghanistan, like
they have two eight women part of this group, Women
Fighter of Afghanistan, And so we bring them all on
(15:02):
because what this is is a perfect example of how
do we create an ecosystem that enables peer to peer
transactions so these women do not need to rely on
the banks and stand ten hours to get a little
bit of money, Right, they don't need to deal with
their government, right, they can just do this amongst themselves
and creating this ecosystem because there's a lot of people
(15:25):
that are running retail organizations in in Afghanistan that these
women can then transact with. But also women amongst themselves, right,
A lot of them are farmers that they can also
sell their food, etcetera through these types this type of transaction.
So that's what this project is. And what's really exciting
about this project is if there's no better place to
(15:45):
do this than Afghanistan right now, right, But once we
create this, this whole ecosystem and creating the whole platform
for this anywhere in Haiti Uh in Lebanon with that
whole blow up, this will be an opportunity for the
world to be able to embrace this and for people,
you know, like look at our government. We read twenty
trillion dollars in Afghanistan or two trillion or whatever was
(16:08):
a lot of money and like where is that? Like
what happened to that money? I mean, there's nothing to
show for it. So this is like an easy way
with a little bit of money, you can change one
woman's life and you know, with that little bit of money,
she's going to educate her children, She's going to provide
for their family, which is going to uplift the entire communities.
Because what is a mom. A mom is an entrepreneur.
(16:30):
She is the entrepreneur in that family that's providing, you know,
and has to take care of that household. Right. And
what we have to see in this world is everybody
needs to change their mental attitude to understand that they're
an entrepreneur, that they're an entrepreneur because we all have
to contribute to society or you're not going to be
part of this future. Wendy, I love your attitude. And
(16:51):
you know I here in the United States, if you
turn on the media, right it's like, oh, our problems
are unsolvable, and here you are in Honduras, Venezuela, Afghanistan
solving problems. And then it's like, never mind the government,
we got some work to do. Why don't we hear
more about this. When I got the idea for this,
(17:11):
I was talking to a woman named Sudha Sultan. You know, she's,
you know, one of the most problem She was one
of the people that brought one of the telecommunications companies
to Afghanistan. She wrote, you know, she was had an
arranged marriage in Afghanistan, you know, and that was you know,
turned out to be a disaster and all that, and
she wrote a book about it. So she's a pretty
problem of it. And when I was talking to her,
I was like, wow, you know, with cryptocurrency and with
(17:33):
blockchain technology, you don't need all these different things. We
can just create this and we can just do this.
Why do we you know, there is no bureaucracy. We're
just gonna make it happen. And that's what entrepreneurs do, right,
We just figure it out, we make it happen. We
do it. We go up and down and all around,
and we make it happen. Right. What's it a successful entrepreneur?
(17:54):
Someone who's passionate, somebody who has purpose, somebody who has persistence,
somebody who has perseverance, and someone who's positive. You know,
if we're going to go through this life, we want
to be positive and live a meaningful life. Some of
the most successful entrepreneurs that I've ever met and interviewed
(18:14):
talk like this, right. They do business in places that
are really hard to do business, like New York and
California right, or ten times worse, you know, Venezuela and
Afghanistan right, And they say, you know what, it just
creates more obstacles. But I'm still going to finish the race,
So never mind. They have this winning mindset, which is
really fascinating to me because again, not to be labor
(18:35):
at the point, but a lot of our problems in
this country, especially here in the United States, are just
like seen as unsolvable. It's just like, oh, we can't
solve this. This is just endemic and sticky, and it's
just like it's impossible to make it now, it's impossible
to to win. It's it's the cards are stacked against us. Well, again,
it's our mindset, right. The way we see, the way
(18:58):
we think, and the way we feel is in our minds.
So when we wake up in the morning, we decide
whether we're happy or sad. No one makes you happy,
No one makes you don't even makes you sad except yourself. Right,
But if you can change your mindset, and you can
do that in a second, you know, you think of
something that's like so hard to do, but at the
(19:18):
minute you say, wait, I can do this, you know,
and and you know, like anything, it's all in your mind.
And so I think, you know, having and being able
to change your mind quickly and to be a positive
and have a positive mindset, you can do anything and
not be scared of, you know, and not think about fame, money,
or power, right, but that you really want to do it.
(19:40):
Of course, keep your day job so you can pay
for your living expenses, in your rent and your food
and all that. But if you have a dream, you know,
it's still't worry about the things that are are not important,
and certainly fame, money and power should not be on
that list. So what's really fascinating though, is that, you know,
(20:08):
government is now seen around the world as more of
a hindrance than help, which is really sad because you know, government,
when when it works properly, can do a lot of good.
Why is this? Why why are we just like and
it seems like it's been twenty or thirty years of this.
I studied government professionally, and it's like most of our
graduates now go into the private sector because it's just like, uh,
(20:32):
I don't want to join that bureaucracy. And it's really
technology that is helping us, you know, break that bureaucratic
cycle of nonsense that as entrepreneurs we've had to endure
since the beginning of time. Well, you know, I think,
you know, there's some really amazing people in the government, right,
Like you know, I know, I work really closely with
Congressman uh, congress Woman Grace bang right, who is one
(20:55):
of the most amazing women in Congress, you know, who's
really fighting for women entrepreneurs and really fighting for the underdog, right,
you know, women, etcetera, and all that. And I think
that you know, we have to kind of embrace everything
because it's like, you know, we all need to be
lived together, we all need to work together, right. But
it's also about, you know, both sides of educating everybody
(21:16):
the importance of certain things. And one of the things
I you know, with our Foundation Women's Entrepreneurship Days about
is educating the world why it's so important to empower
women in business, right because we know if we do that,
we could alleviate poverty, we could change this world. Right.
But the same thing it goes towards like with cryptocurrency.
I have to say, I'm very honored and and and
(21:38):
happy to be in this country. I think America is
one of the greatest democracies, and it is the greatest
democracy in the entire world. If everyone knew what it
was like in all these other countries, everyone would move here.
I mean it's like, you know, I literally but you
know what I'm saying. It's like, are all the people
here that are like against our government? Like I you know,
(22:00):
you have no idea what it's like in other countries.
I've traveled to sixty countries, I know, you know, and
oh my gosh, you're beating me, Wendy. I'm not like
because I know I'm going to everyone. But when my
father died, I made a commitment that I would go
to two new countries a year. And because of that commitment,
I ended up in Honduras on vacation. That created Women's
(22:21):
Entrepreneurship Day. So everybody, I believe, should you know, take
that journey and see the world. So you talk a
lot about fame, So I recognize you from somewhere. Where
have I seen you, Wendy, Well, I mean, you know,
it's like I used to be famous, right, So I
you I created the Animal Rescue. So one of my
you know, my first real entrepreneur thing is when I
(22:42):
was really young, I learned that twelve million animals were
euthanized a year, and nobody was talking about it. Same
thing like as I knew about the women's world, nobody
was talking about adoption or rescue. So I knew that
if I brought celebrities and pop culture to the animal
rescue world, we could bring that number of twelve million
animals you the NICT year down. So I created the
(23:02):
very first media company in history, UM called Animal Fair Media,
and we created the first magazine, We created the first
pet fashion show for animal rescue. Because I knew if
you could teach everyone you could adopt any breed, any size,
any age, we could bring that number down. And I
knew by bringing celebs and pop culture that would change
that dynamic. And if you look in history, that's exactly
(23:23):
what happened. I mean, at the time when I launched
Animal Fair, very few people were There were no dogs
and celebrities and magazines or on TV. There were maybe
a few, maybe one or two advertisers that had a
dog in their ads right. And I so, you know,
ten books, out, five TV shows, the three Guinness World Records,
a wing named after my dog at the Humane Society
(23:44):
of New York. Millions of dollars raised for animal rescue
primetime show on CBS on the Today's Show once a month,
So can you tell me the name of that show.
It was called Greatest American Dog. It had one season, right,
and it was a it was literally on CBS primetime show.
And then I got a stalker. Um. I got a crazy,
(24:04):
mentally insane woman that created fifty anonymous email addresses to
do aim and slammed for me. That ruined my whole
entire life. And that's how I had the time, uh,
you know, to take care of my father at the
end of his life, and that's how I ended up
going to Honduras and creating this whole new life. So
what's funny is my media career was also changed by
(24:27):
animal rescue. My first big bombshell was working in local
news and Texas in a town named Amarillo where the
local shelter was putting down more dogs and cats than
the entire state of Colorado at the time. So we
share that in common, Wendy, and I think people don't
realize that the youth and Asian numbers around the country
(24:48):
have come down dramatically. So thank you for your work
in that space, it really has initiated a cultural change.
And really the past five years we've seen this really
really change where no kill shelters are now the norm
rather than the exception. No, I agree, I agree in
cities are basically saying no more selling of animals, which
(25:09):
I mean it is true because I mean if we
could literally and I think you know, it goes back
to what is charity? You know, charity is it should
not be a lifelong career, right, it should be solving
the issue. So if we could just enable all these
organizations to work together, because there's so much money donating
to animal rescue, but if they could all come together,
(25:31):
no animal would ever be uganized. So isn't it funny
how efforts through media can actually catalyze cultural change. So
what are you gonna do for women through media, specifically
through Women's Entrepreneurship Day? What type of awareness do you
think the audience should have about women around the world
who want to be entrepreneurs? Well, you know you see
(25:52):
it right, because I knew like to create the day,
you would create the conversation. So you see, now every
you know, every organization, every every you know company now
has women's enough initiatives, right, And that's what we're seeing
every day is through all the different work that people
are doing. You know, you you see now more than
ever the importance of women, right, Like you see like
(26:14):
even on Shark Take. You know, there's days where they
have more women than men, right, and you see that,
you know, different shows now that you know Reese Witherspoon's
are doing with our new company, you know, just showing
how important women are in our society. So I think
that every you know, every little bit that everybody takes
to understand why it's so important is the key to success.
(26:37):
So once next for you, So now that you have this,
how are you going to push a women's entrepreneurship in?
What are you gonna do to bring awareness to it?
So what are we doing? I mean we're doing a
lot of stuff. It's really like a lot of fun stuff.
So I'm you know again, I you know, invest in impact.
I'm part of four I'm an LP and four crypto
funds um my goal, you know. So I'm part of
block Tower, a part of coin Fund, I'm a part
(27:00):
of Perceptive Capital. I'm you know, and I'm part of
Opie Crypto and so I worked really strongly about investing
in women founders I am also part of. I've also
invested in about twenty startups that are all about you know,
another company I'm in is called Viversity that's disrupting the
trillions of dollars of government procurement to enable women to
(27:20):
have more get government contracts. So, like you know, I'm
also um invested in Producers Market that is working on
the largest regetative farming project in the entire world. That's
a pilot program in India with six million farmers that
had a high suicide rate and literally what they realized
was the pesticides and fertilizers was literally causing this, like
(27:42):
the damage to the land, the damage to the harvest.
So the government in a in a partnership with the
United Nations Environmental Program, they created an initiative called zb
and F and they're now they've changed all these farmers
to go to the old ancient Indian ways of fertilizing
the land using manure, sugarcane, and urine. Right, So now
(28:06):
that suicide rate went way down and those women now
are getting more for their harvest. And that's what you know.
And the company that I have invested called producers market
is enabling this marketplace to connect farmers directly to retailers
so that they can earn more money. And of the farmers,
those are women, right, they have one hector of land. Right.
(28:30):
So I believe in investing in what you believe in, right,
And that's you know, So that's my goal in life,
and that's what's making it. Wendy, you're you're You're the
first crypto entrepreneur that I've met in a long time
who's a female. It's not very cut, it's not very common,
but I'm gonna well every day, Like I just had
(28:51):
lunch with somebody and this is like a huge, amazing woman.
She's like this black woman hedge fund, she's you know,
super successful New York City, and you spent the whole
conversation about crypto and how this is literally in five
years from now, like goodbye JP more again, goodbye you
know all this stuff, because it's true, Like if we
don't embrace this, and I don't you know, listen, I'm
(29:12):
not technical and I'm not even you know, I've never
even balanced a checkbook, but I get it. I believe
in this technology. I believe how this is going to
change the world and bring gender equality and enable women
to get farther advanced in this in this economic world.
That's really fascinating. So tell me a little bit about
your personal life. What do you do when you're not
(29:33):
you know, changing the world, saving animals, promoting women and
investing in cryptocurrency? Yeah, what do I do? I do yoga,
I do I try. I go to two new countries
a year. I love life. I love learning. I you know,
every day I try to, you know, do something new.
(29:54):
I love going to new restaurants. I love hanging with
my dog and my friends. And so how can we best?
So how do we follow you? How do we follow you? With? Well?
I you know, I literally am the worst at you know,
if you look me up, I had millions of followers
(30:14):
and all that kind of stuff on Facebook. I didn't,
you know, my stalker came in right when the Instagram
thing happened. And um, but you can follow me on
social media, you'll see, you know, I can't remember what
was the last thing I posted? Oh, I just posted
something at you know, you know, so you know, I
think it's you know, you can follow me and you
can learn about all the stuff I'm doing and you
can see the companies I support and I'm always happy
(30:36):
to meet anyone and help anyone with, you know, whatever
they're doing, especially women founders. Well, Wendy Diamond, thank you
for chasing me down on LinkedIn really think and I'm like, oh,
you're so cute and you're so good at this, and
I'm like, don't forget me. Well I was. I'm really
happy we made this happen, and you know, please stay
in touch and good luck in all your pursuits. Thank you,
(30:58):
thank you, thank you, and celebrate Women's Entrepreneurship Day and
December one choose women Who. Thanks to all of you
for joining me for this episode of Follow the Profit.
Wendy was a lot of fun and as someone who
has really translated her reality TV career into initiating social
(31:20):
change through cold hard cash and investing in what she
believes in and as a reminder, she mentioned it several
times during the interview. Women's Entrepreneurship Day is November nineteen,
so we hope you'll celebrate and I'd like to thank
my team of producers Scott, Rob Cheyenne and everyone else
who helps me make this show a reality. Every single
(31:41):
week including our executive producers Debbie Meers and new ging Ridge.
I'm your host David Grosso. If you're enjoying the show,
give us five stars and leave us a review so
that we can learn what the show is doing well
and not doing so well. Following The profit is a
production of Gingridge three sixty and I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts for my heart radio, is it the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
(32:10):
Part of the Ginglich three network,
I'm David Grosso, and you're listening to follow the profit Today,
I'm following the profit. We're going to talk about women
and entrepreneurship. Women, of course, have faced the wrath of
the pandemic, having to stay home to take care of
their children and getting back to work, at least physical
(00:20):
work hasn't been easy for them, and many of them
are taking the plunge and starting their own businesses. Here
to talk about women's entrepreneurship is the founder of Women's
Entrepreneurship Day, Wendy Diamonds. She's also the founder of Animal
Fair Media. How you doing, Wendy, fantastic? Thank you, David,
thank you for having me on. I'm super excited to
talk about this topic. It's a very important topic, so Wendy,
(00:44):
right now, the labor shortage is the biggest thing we see.
You got to a restaurant, you got to a shop
and there's nobody working there, and a lot of people
say that has a lot to do with the landscape
women are facing because of the pandemic. Tell me what's
it been like to be a woman through the pandemic. Well,
first of all, you know, like when you look at
(01:04):
the history, right, I mean, women in the workforce number
one have been like you know, underfunded, upper underrepresented, all
the unders And you know what I believe is really
what's happening here as we've saw during covid as, like
women and minorities have been really mostly affected during this time. So,
(01:25):
you know, when you look at entrepreneurship, it is so
important that we empower women because the fact is, you know,
when women, when they earn money nine, that money goes
to educate their children and provide for their families, which
uplift the entire communities. Right, And that's the basis for
me creating Women's Entrepreneurship Day in two thousand and thirteen,
you know, because at that time only one percent of
(01:48):
venture dollars we're going towards women founders. So I think
what we're seeing right now is just this effect and
we've just seen you know why it's so much it's
so important to actually enable women to have more access
to you know, employment, but also you know in c
suite you know, positions as well as boards, because when
(02:09):
you look at all the data and all the figures,
it shows how profitable companies become when they do that. Yeah,
you know, one of the things that's really interesting right
now is that child care is a major issue. And
of course we want women to have children because you know,
to be here today, yeah, exactly, we all depend on
women or for her to reproduce ourselves. But child care
(02:33):
is really expensive, to the point that many people stay
home because it's just too expensive to work. How can
we change that, Well, first of all, it's hard. You know,
first of all, it's expensive. Right to have children, to
have pets, to have anything is expensive in this world.
And that's where I think one of the things with
COVID is that women now are able to stay home
and we realize we can do and you know, it's
(02:55):
very fruitful for women to actually stay home because then
they can still take care of their children, right. And
so I think that a lot of the bigger companies
are also enabling that UM to have people partially work
from home, etcetera. And then there's a lot of government
subsidies that we have seen, especially in New York, you know,
which our new governor Kathy huckle has put in place
(03:16):
right that enable affordable UM childcare. And it depends on
right because you know, each state, each government, each city
have their own budgets and they can allocate those dollars
towards that. So tell me about you. So how did
you get into the space, because you know, you could
(03:36):
just be a working woman and just fade into obscurity.
What made you speak up on these issues? You know,
I've been an entrepreneur in my whole entire life. You know,
I graduated from college, send a three d resumes and
literally I didn't get one callback, you know, to get
a job. So I had to become an entrepreneur, like
at the start of my career. So I've been an
entrepreneur in my whole life. I've solved difficulties as being
(03:59):
an trepreneur, as starting a new business many times in
my career. And when I ended up you know how
I created Women's Entrepreneurship Day organization was in two thousand thirteen.
I ended up in Honduras on vacation, not realizing it
was the murder capital of the world. And when I
got there, I was at this boutique hotel and I
was getting able to leave the hotel because it was
(04:20):
so dangerous. Right, all the drug dealers that were in
Colombia actually moved to Honduras. So that's why it's the
murder capital of the world. And Columbia is really safe
right now. And so when I got there, when I
was watching birds with all these people that were from
England that we're willing to watch birds for, you know,
literally all day, and we're willing to risk their lives.
And I said to the founder of the hotel, I said,
(04:41):
oh my gosh, if I watch another bird, I'm gonna
go cuckoo myself. And he's like, you know, I know
his organization that gives micro loans to poor women. Why
don't you go check it out. I know the development director.
It's truly safe. Why it's you know, and you'll see
beautiful country side of it, like Honduras. So I was like, sure,
you know, I'll go. And that's where I went on
this journey. And this woman who was the development director
(05:04):
of this organization called Adalante, which was providing micro loans
to poor women in this little community called the Sable,
which was a very dangerous community in Honduras. And when
I got there, I met this one woman. She was
seventy two years old and she had three little kids,
and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like a miracle.
How do you have these three little kids? And she
(05:24):
said that her daughter actually passed away and the husband
ran off and she was responsible for her three grandchildren.
And so Adalante, this organization that I was there with
and I was learning all about the statistics of women
and the whole thing provided her a hundred dollar micro
loan and literally she took that money, opened up a
window in her one room hot with the dirt floor
(05:45):
where she lived with those three grandchildren, and started selling
cokes and toothpaste, and literally she was able to make
enough money to pay a dollar a month for those
children to go to school. And that's when I was
just like, whoa this is in each story in this
little community that I spent, I was the same thing,
and I was just like wow. And the statistics worldwide
(06:06):
show that these women are paying back these micro loans
at a rate, right, And as I mentioned before, goes
to educate their children, provide for their families. Right. And
when women are empowered in business, they have self confidence,
in dignity. They don't allow human rights, but you know, violations, right.
And so that was what triggered me when I came
(06:26):
back to New York. I was like, wow, you know
when I started doing some research, women entrepreneurs and women
in business was not really highly talked about at all
in the media, and very few people were really like
very few um companies were having initiatives to swore women,
et cetera. So that's why I knew I should create
a day in the world, because if I created a day,
(06:47):
I could create the conversation, right And that's when I
went to our governor at the time, Cuomo, and I
went to Mayor to Blasio, and I went to US
Congress and I said, could we proclaim Women's Entrepreneurship Day
on November nine teeth, And that's how we launched Women's
Entrepreneurship Day. And then I went around the world to
everybody I knew and asked in their country, who you know,
(07:08):
who is somebody in the country, what what women can
bring governments, business leaders, civil society together to collaborate to
find solutions to uplift women in business. And that's how
women was created. So this is very interesting, right because
this goes into another very time issue we have right now.
I've been to mud US. You know, I'm a Spanish
speaker and whatnot, but we have a lot of migratory
(07:29):
pressures on our southern border, and really no one really
talks about how empowering female entrepreneurs can help these countries
solve a lot of their problems. I mean, we tend
to think of immigration as just a very isolated issue,
but it's attached to female entrepreneurship because in countries where
females don't have access to employment, right, a lot of
(07:51):
them leave, right in countries like Hondurans. So why don't
we think about things holistically like that, Like, female entrepreneurship
has a lot to do with how well a country
is doing at any moment. Well, you know, it's it's
like this, right, giving a hand up, not a hand out, right,
And you know women want to be empowered. They you know,
(08:12):
when they earn money. As we know, the statistics show
that the whole community becomes a better place. Right. And
when you think about, like how the ripple effect and
if we want to create systematic change in the world,
we need to embrace everyone from the ground up. We
can't just be doing this lean in c suite executives
lean into each other, right, because that's never gonna bring
(08:32):
those that's never gonna you know, change the world what's
going to change the world if we enable everyone to
understand why it's so important to empower women in business,
and that's going to change the game. Because like as
you see, you know, like with Mayor Garcetti in Los
Angeles for instance, where you live. I mean, he's one
of the greatest mayors that you've ever worked within our movement.
(08:53):
I mean he every year dedicates grants in their budget
to support female founders. Every year he creates these whole
initiatives to support and enable them education on how to
start your own missins and resources right, And I think
that's the key to everything, is about education, but it's
also providing opportunity. And I think that when you look
(09:16):
at you know, all these like developing nations, including you know,
what you're seeing right now in Honduras and what you're
seeing in l Sale, but are in all these different places.
And this kind of goes into a whole other thing
is you know, I believe in cryptocurrency, and I believe
in what bitcoin was created for and I'm I believe
personally that and it's kind of similar to what our
(09:36):
foundation was based upon, you know, was you know, after
the two thousand eight housing and financial crisis. You know,
the smartest people or the one smartest person came together,
right and created this name Satoshi to bring out the
most high integrity, deflationary financial instrument to enable the two
(09:56):
and a half billion people unbanked financial empowerment and inclusion. Right,
And you know this is where you know, we talk
about what's going to happen in this world. Is I
believe cryptocurrency is another you know thing that's happening in
Venezuela where our foundation is huge in Venezuela, you know,
and I see what's happening is that the new technologies
(10:19):
are gonna be the way way out of poverty. So
you see cryptocurrency as an alternative to government currency. Why
is that important to female entrepreneurship? Is it? Is it
because banking definitely has a male bend to it? Well,
(10:42):
I mean yeah, you could say that, you know what
I mean, And I'm not a male badchor I love men, right, Um,
But you know, I think when you know, when you
look at it, I think you you see the fact
that we need to enable everyone financial inclusion. You know,
we are a capitalist world. We need to pay our rent,
we need to pay for food, right, and who's more
likely to where they who's more likely to put that money,
(11:05):
right is women? You know, women are paying back like
for instance, micro loans in this world, and in rate
men's a lot lower, right. So I think when you're
looking at cryptocurrency, it's enabling whether you have a mobile
phone or a footphone, you still will have access and
and to have financial inclusion, right, And that's what I
(11:26):
think is very important in this world, and I think
that's what's going to change the world. So tell me
a little bit about your work in Afghanistan, which of course,
sadly has been in the news since the US you
know kind of cut and run and we've seen progress
for women in that country roll backward. What type of
work are you doing in that country? Okay, So you
know our foundation has bid since two thousand fourteen in
(11:48):
you know, Afghanistan, and the person Manitza who is represents
our foundation is actually the founder of the Women Chamber
of Commerce in Afghanistan based in k So we you know,
have been very aware of what's going on. And one
of the initiatives that we've done this year is part
of Women's Entrepreneurship Day this year is we partnered with
the company that I have to admit I'm personally invested
(12:11):
in this company called open Grants, which your viewers should
totally know about. It's disrupting the trillions of dollars of
non deluded funding to enable entrepreneurs and foundations to have
a seamless way to get funding, you know, you know,
whether they're in the medical field, whether in you know,
the technology field, etcetera. Trillions of dollars are available of
(12:31):
non deluded funding. So we've we partnered with open Grants
because they're actually you know, part partners with Stellar, which
is one of the top twenty coins. And what we're
doing is we're funding a hundred thousand women in Afghanistan
with crypto. And what we're doing is and so in
Afghanistan right now, there's forty million people. Right, not everyone
(12:54):
is lucky enough to get on a plane and come
to the United States, right, you know, people need to
still survive there. And so what we did is we
created an initiative through with open Grants, which is pretty
traceability and transparency right on the blockchain. So when one
donates to this problem, you know, to this project, they're
gonna be able to follow the women in Afghanistan. We've
(13:17):
in in Afghanistan right now, forty million people, twenty million
of them have mobile bones. Of the twenty million, we're
guessing basically about five million or women. Right. So what
we've we've put into effect is that we're gonna be
funding a hundred thousand women. It's gonna start testing it
next week and we're gonna be testing it and then
all the end, if they have a flip phone or
(13:37):
a mobile phone, they can download the wallet. It's all
k YC. It takes about three minutes for them to
basically download this and then we're going to give them
starting off when ten dollars each, So like, give up
your Starbucks coffee, your dessert, get out of it and
donate ten dollars and that's going to enable them food
for a week. So KYC know your customer, you you
(13:59):
went and oh you're a customer. We're not giving it.
We're not giving it to the Taliban, We're not giving it,
you know, we're not giving it, you know, to any
nefarious acts which everybody a lot of people think about,
you know when they think about cryptocurrency, right, and so um,
this is what the whole project is And what's really
great about it is you're gonna know who you gave
your money to. You can follow them on Instagram, you
(14:21):
can follow them on social media. And we partnered with
three organizations in Afghanistan, so we have this whole network
of women's groups. You know, It's like I had so
much fun. Like every time I read an article and
I read somebody who's going you know, who's marching to
you know, enable you know, girls to have education, and
I see their name, I like stock them and I
(14:41):
find them on like Instagram and I text them and
I'm like, hey, do you want to be part of this?
Could we give all your you know, your Women Fighters
of Afghanistan that's one of the groups. Um and and
I'm like, hey, come on, let you know, do you
want to be part of this? And you know, we
bring on all these small little groups in Afghanistan, like
they have two eight women part of this group, Women
Fighter of Afghanistan, And so we bring them all on
(15:02):
because what this is is a perfect example of how
do we create an ecosystem that enables peer to peer
transactions so these women do not need to rely on
the banks and stand ten hours to get a little
bit of money, Right, they don't need to deal with
their government, right, they can just do this amongst themselves
and creating this ecosystem because there's a lot of people
(15:25):
that are running retail organizations in in Afghanistan that these
women can then transact with. But also women amongst themselves, right,
A lot of them are farmers that they can also
sell their food, etcetera through these types this type of transaction.
So that's what this project is. And what's really exciting
about this project is if there's no better place to
(15:45):
do this than Afghanistan right now, right, But once we
create this, this whole ecosystem and creating the whole platform
for this anywhere in Haiti Uh in Lebanon with that
whole blow up, this will be an opportunity for the
world to be able to embrace this and for people,
you know, like look at our government. We read twenty
trillion dollars in Afghanistan or two trillion or whatever was
(16:08):
a lot of money and like where is that? Like
what happened to that money? I mean, there's nothing to
show for it. So this is like an easy way
with a little bit of money, you can change one
woman's life and you know, with that little bit of money,
she's going to educate her children, She's going to provide
for their family, which is going to uplift the entire communities.
Because what is a mom. A mom is an entrepreneur.
(16:30):
She is the entrepreneur in that family that's providing, you know,
and has to take care of that household. Right. And
what we have to see in this world is everybody
needs to change their mental attitude to understand that they're
an entrepreneur, that they're an entrepreneur because we all have
to contribute to society or you're not going to be
part of this future. Wendy, I love your attitude. And
(16:51):
you know I here in the United States, if you
turn on the media, right it's like, oh, our problems
are unsolvable, and here you are in Honduras, Venezuela, Afghanistan
solving problems. And then it's like, never mind the government,
we got some work to do. Why don't we hear
more about this. When I got the idea for this,
(17:11):
I was talking to a woman named Sudha Sultan. You know, she's,
you know, one of the most problem She was one
of the people that brought one of the telecommunications companies
to Afghanistan. She wrote, you know, she was had an
arranged marriage in Afghanistan, you know, and that was you know,
turned out to be a disaster and all that, and
she wrote a book about it. So she's a pretty
problem of it. And when I was talking to her,
I was like, wow, you know, with cryptocurrency and with
(17:33):
blockchain technology, you don't need all these different things. We
can just create this and we can just do this.
Why do we you know, there is no bureaucracy. We're
just gonna make it happen. And that's what entrepreneurs do, right,
We just figure it out, we make it happen. We
do it. We go up and down and all around,
and we make it happen. Right. What's it a successful entrepreneur?
(17:54):
Someone who's passionate, somebody who has purpose, somebody who has persistence,
somebody who has perseverance, and someone who's positive. You know,
if we're going to go through this life, we want
to be positive and live a meaningful life. Some of
the most successful entrepreneurs that I've ever met and interviewed
(18:14):
talk like this, right. They do business in places that
are really hard to do business, like New York and
California right, or ten times worse, you know, Venezuela and
Afghanistan right, And they say, you know what, it just
creates more obstacles. But I'm still going to finish the race,
So never mind. They have this winning mindset, which is
really fascinating to me because again, not to be labor
(18:35):
at the point, but a lot of our problems in
this country, especially here in the United States, are just
like seen as unsolvable. It's just like, oh, we can't
solve this. This is just endemic and sticky, and it's
just like it's impossible to make it now, it's impossible
to to win. It's it's the cards are stacked against us. Well, again,
it's our mindset, right. The way we see, the way
(18:58):
we think, and the way we feel is in our minds.
So when we wake up in the morning, we decide
whether we're happy or sad. No one makes you happy,
No one makes you don't even makes you sad except yourself. Right,
But if you can change your mindset, and you can
do that in a second, you know, you think of
something that's like so hard to do, but at the
(19:18):
minute you say, wait, I can do this, you know,
and and you know, like anything, it's all in your mind.
And so I think, you know, having and being able
to change your mind quickly and to be a positive
and have a positive mindset, you can do anything and
not be scared of, you know, and not think about fame, money,
or power, right, but that you really want to do it.
(19:40):
Of course, keep your day job so you can pay
for your living expenses, in your rent and your food
and all that. But if you have a dream, you know,
it's still't worry about the things that are are not important,
and certainly fame, money and power should not be on
that list. So what's really fascinating though, is that, you know,
(20:08):
government is now seen around the world as more of
a hindrance than help, which is really sad because you know, government,
when when it works properly, can do a lot of good.
Why is this? Why why are we just like and
it seems like it's been twenty or thirty years of this.
I studied government professionally, and it's like most of our
graduates now go into the private sector because it's just like, uh,
(20:32):
I don't want to join that bureaucracy. And it's really
technology that is helping us, you know, break that bureaucratic
cycle of nonsense that as entrepreneurs we've had to endure
since the beginning of time. Well, you know, I think,
you know, there's some really amazing people in the government, right,
Like you know, I know, I work really closely with
Congressman uh, congress Woman Grace bang right, who is one
(20:55):
of the most amazing women in Congress, you know, who's
really fighting for women entrepreneurs and really fighting for the underdog, right,
you know, women, etcetera, and all that. And I think
that you know, we have to kind of embrace everything
because it's like, you know, we all need to be
lived together, we all need to work together, right. But
it's also about, you know, both sides of educating everybody
(21:16):
the importance of certain things. And one of the things
I you know, with our Foundation Women's Entrepreneurship Days about
is educating the world why it's so important to empower
women in business, right because we know if we do that,
we could alleviate poverty, we could change this world. Right.
But the same thing it goes towards like with cryptocurrency.
I have to say, I'm very honored and and and
(21:38):
happy to be in this country. I think America is
one of the greatest democracies, and it is the greatest
democracy in the entire world. If everyone knew what it
was like in all these other countries, everyone would move here.
I mean it's like, you know, I literally but you
know what I'm saying. It's like, are all the people
here that are like against our government? Like I you know,
(22:00):
you have no idea what it's like in other countries.
I've traveled to sixty countries, I know, you know, and
oh my gosh, you're beating me, Wendy. I'm not like
because I know I'm going to everyone. But when my
father died, I made a commitment that I would go
to two new countries a year. And because of that commitment,
I ended up in Honduras on vacation. That created Women's
(22:21):
Entrepreneurship Day. So everybody, I believe, should you know, take
that journey and see the world. So you talk a
lot about fame, So I recognize you from somewhere. Where
have I seen you, Wendy, Well, I mean, you know,
it's like I used to be famous, right, So I
you I created the Animal Rescue. So one of my
you know, my first real entrepreneur thing is when I
(22:42):
was really young, I learned that twelve million animals were
euthanized a year, and nobody was talking about it. Same
thing like as I knew about the women's world, nobody
was talking about adoption or rescue. So I knew that
if I brought celebrities and pop culture to the animal
rescue world, we could bring that number of twelve million
animals you the NICT year down. So I created the
(23:02):
very first media company in history, UM called Animal Fair Media,
and we created the first magazine, We created the first
pet fashion show for animal rescue. Because I knew if
you could teach everyone you could adopt any breed, any size,
any age, we could bring that number down. And I
knew by bringing celebs and pop culture that would change
that dynamic. And if you look in history, that's exactly
(23:23):
what happened. I mean, at the time when I launched
Animal Fair, very few people were There were no dogs
and celebrities and magazines or on TV. There were maybe
a few, maybe one or two advertisers that had a
dog in their ads right. And I so, you know,
ten books, out, five TV shows, the three Guinness World Records,
a wing named after my dog at the Humane Society
(23:44):
of New York. Millions of dollars raised for animal rescue
primetime show on CBS on the Today's Show once a month,
So can you tell me the name of that show.
It was called Greatest American Dog. It had one season, right,
and it was a it was literally on CBS primetime show.
And then I got a stalker. Um. I got a crazy,
(24:04):
mentally insane woman that created fifty anonymous email addresses to
do aim and slammed for me. That ruined my whole
entire life. And that's how I had the time, uh,
you know, to take care of my father at the
end of his life, and that's how I ended up
going to Honduras and creating this whole new life. So
what's funny is my media career was also changed by
(24:27):
animal rescue. My first big bombshell was working in local
news and Texas in a town named Amarillo where the
local shelter was putting down more dogs and cats than
the entire state of Colorado at the time. So we
share that in common, Wendy, and I think people don't
realize that the youth and Asian numbers around the country
(24:48):
have come down dramatically. So thank you for your work
in that space, it really has initiated a cultural change.
And really the past five years we've seen this really
really change where no kill shelters are now the norm
rather than the exception. No, I agree, I agree in
cities are basically saying no more selling of animals, which
(25:09):
I mean it is true because I mean if we
could literally and I think you know, it goes back
to what is charity? You know, charity is it should
not be a lifelong career, right, it should be solving
the issue. So if we could just enable all these
organizations to work together, because there's so much money donating
to animal rescue, but if they could all come together,
(25:31):
no animal would ever be uganized. So isn't it funny
how efforts through media can actually catalyze cultural change. So
what are you gonna do for women through media, specifically
through Women's Entrepreneurship Day? What type of awareness do you
think the audience should have about women around the world
who want to be entrepreneurs? Well, you know you see
(25:52):
it right, because I knew like to create the day,
you would create the conversation. So you see, now every
you know, every organization, every every you know company now
has women's enough initiatives, right, And that's what we're seeing
every day is through all the different work that people
are doing. You know, you you see now more than
ever the importance of women, right, Like you see like
(26:14):
even on Shark Take. You know, there's days where they
have more women than men, right, and you see that,
you know, different shows now that you know Reese Witherspoon's
are doing with our new company, you know, just showing
how important women are in our society. So I think
that every you know, every little bit that everybody takes
to understand why it's so important is the key to success.
(26:37):
So once next for you, So now that you have this,
how are you going to push a women's entrepreneurship in?
What are you gonna do to bring awareness to it?
So what are we doing? I mean we're doing a
lot of stuff. It's really like a lot of fun stuff.
So I'm you know again, I you know, invest in impact.
I'm part of four I'm an LP and four crypto
funds um my goal, you know. So I'm part of
block Tower, a part of coin Fund, I'm a part
(27:00):
of Perceptive Capital. I'm you know, and I'm part of
Opie Crypto and so I worked really strongly about investing
in women founders I am also part of. I've also
invested in about twenty startups that are all about you know,
another company I'm in is called Viversity that's disrupting the
trillions of dollars of government procurement to enable women to
(27:20):
have more get government contracts. So, like you know, I'm
also um invested in Producers Market that is working on
the largest regetative farming project in the entire world. That's
a pilot program in India with six million farmers that
had a high suicide rate and literally what they realized
was the pesticides and fertilizers was literally causing this, like
(27:42):
the damage to the land, the damage to the harvest.
So the government in a in a partnership with the
United Nations Environmental Program, they created an initiative called zb
and F and they're now they've changed all these farmers
to go to the old ancient Indian ways of fertilizing
the land using manure, sugarcane, and urine. Right, So now
(28:06):
that suicide rate went way down and those women now
are getting more for their harvest. And that's what you know.
And the company that I have invested called producers market
is enabling this marketplace to connect farmers directly to retailers
so that they can earn more money. And of the farmers,
those are women, right, they have one hector of land. Right.
(28:30):
So I believe in investing in what you believe in, right,
And that's you know, So that's my goal in life,
and that's what's making it. Wendy, you're you're You're the
first crypto entrepreneur that I've met in a long time
who's a female. It's not very cut, it's not very common,
but I'm gonna well every day, Like I just had
(28:51):
lunch with somebody and this is like a huge, amazing woman.
She's like this black woman hedge fund, she's you know,
super successful New York City, and you spent the whole
conversation about crypto and how this is literally in five
years from now, like goodbye JP more again, goodbye you
know all this stuff, because it's true, Like if we
don't embrace this, and I don't you know, listen, I'm
(29:12):
not technical and I'm not even you know, I've never
even balanced a checkbook, but I get it. I believe
in this technology. I believe how this is going to
change the world and bring gender equality and enable women
to get farther advanced in this in this economic world.
That's really fascinating. So tell me a little bit about
your personal life. What do you do when you're not
(29:33):
you know, changing the world, saving animals, promoting women and
investing in cryptocurrency? Yeah, what do I do? I do yoga,
I do I try. I go to two new countries
a year. I love life. I love learning. I you know,
every day I try to, you know, do something new.
(29:54):
I love going to new restaurants. I love hanging with
my dog and my friends. And so how can we best?
So how do we follow you? How do we follow you? With? Well?
I you know, I literally am the worst at you know,
if you look me up, I had millions of followers
(30:14):
and all that kind of stuff on Facebook. I didn't,
you know, my stalker came in right when the Instagram
thing happened. And um, but you can follow me on
social media, you'll see, you know, I can't remember what
was the last thing I posted? Oh, I just posted
something at you know, you know, so you know, I
think it's you know, you can follow me and you
can learn about all the stuff I'm doing and you
can see the companies I support and I'm always happy
(30:36):
to meet anyone and help anyone with, you know, whatever
they're doing, especially women founders. Well, Wendy Diamond, thank you
for chasing me down on LinkedIn really think and I'm like, oh,
you're so cute and you're so good at this, and
I'm like, don't forget me. Well I was. I'm really
happy we made this happen, and you know, please stay
in touch and good luck in all your pursuits. Thank you,
(30:58):
thank you, thank you, and celebrate Women's Entrepreneurship Day and
December one choose women Who. Thanks to all of you
for joining me for this episode of Follow the Profit.
Wendy was a lot of fun and as someone who
has really translated her reality TV career into initiating social
(31:20):
change through cold hard cash and investing in what she
believes in and as a reminder, she mentioned it several
times during the interview. Women's Entrepreneurship Day is November nineteen,
so we hope you'll celebrate and I'd like to thank
my team of producers Scott, Rob Cheyenne and everyone else
who helps me make this show a reality. Every single
(31:41):
week including our executive producers Debbie Meers and new ging Ridge.
I'm your host David Grosso. If you're enjoying the show,
give us five stars and leave us a review so
that we can learn what the show is doing well
and not doing so well. Following The profit is a
production of Gingridge three sixty and I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts for my heart radio, is it the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
(32:10):
Part of the Ginglich three network,
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