Wendy O Podcast Transcript
Wendy O joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Wendy O. Wendy O, a Los Angeles based entrepreneur and crypto analyst, is the esteemed Host and Founder of The O Show, the world’s premier female led crypto YouTube program. Her show is renowned for its commitment to simplifying complex technical information for a global audience.
Wendy O boasts an impressive portfolio of publications in top tier media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NBC News, Forbes, Fox Business, CNBC, Time, Bloomberg, and many others. Additionally, she recently served as a judge on the groundbreaking Web 3 television series, Killer Whales, making a pioneering step in the realm of digital entertainment.
Well, good afternoon, Wendy. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:59] Wendy O: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to chat and all that jazz.
[00:01:03] Brian Thomas: Yeah, no, I love to chat and I love jazz. So it’s a good thing that we’re on the podcast today. But seriously we’re going to jump in and talk to you a little about just a couple of questions, really.
It’s five questions that I generally ask, but I want to know a little bit more about you. I know quite a bit about you based on my research, but let’s just jump in so we can get the audience to hear your story and your version of it. Wendy, you’ve got quite the career in healthcare as you started out in your career, marketing, media, and now you’re the founder of Crypto Wendy O Media and host of The O Show. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career success and what inspires you?
[00:01:39] Wendy O: So, I didn’t have a successful career in healthcare. I was a low-level healthcare worker because if you want to have a successful career in healthcare you have to get like all these crazy degrees that don’t even give you real life experience in the field.
And that’s very unfortunate because when you’re dealing with the sector of healthcare, like I worked in HIV AIDS, infectious disease, unfortunately, my clients were probably for the most part, not going to be healthy throughout their life. You actually need to have some sort of connection with your clients, and you need to have an understanding of how severe this illness is. So, a lot of the people from corporate had no idea and they would push over the ideology of profit over people when they said as people over profit. And the reason why is because they’re obtaining government grants and different types of things, which I get. But at the same time, you do have some wiggle room to have that happen, so I did not have a successful career in health care by somebody who would look at my title or my salary, but I did impact people’s life, and I did help people and I did make them feel that they mattered.
And to me, that was a successful career. But again, most people don’t think that that is like even CNAs pharmacy technicians even people that are cleaning out the hospitals or stuff like that. Those are low level jobs and they; those jobs don’t really get a whole lot of EMTs also. They don’t really get a whole lot of respect, but they do play a, and even customer service folks, people you talk to over the phone in relation to your healthcare and whatnot.
Those folks play an avid role, and they play a supporting role so that. The doctors and the nurses and the people really on the front lines can do their job successfully. But I won’t get into that too much. So, what I did is I ended up quitting my job in healthcare. Partially because it was a three to four-hour round-trip commute.
I had just had my daughter. There’s not really, there’s no raises in healthcare unless you continue to get degrees. Like even the pharmacist, I know they’re capped at 120-150. And I know one girl, she left pharmacy school, $300,000 in debt. So, I just thought I got to get out of this job. It’s not paying a whole lot.
They’re not treating me nice. I’m not getting raises. It’s just a little bit crazy here. I just had my daughter. So, I told my husband at the time I got to quit my job. I want to finish school. Cause I had a small eBay business. I was in community college. So, he says, okay, we can do it.
I had saved a bunch of money up. So, what we had a cushion, he quit his job like two months later to become an entrepreneur, cause his friend had talked him into it, but he decided not to listen to my advice on that, which was fine. And so I just bought a little bit of Bitcoin and crypto and a theorem around that time.
Cause I kept hearing about it on libertarian radio. I didn’t have any expectations for it. I just thought this will be cool because I’d walked into TD Ameritrade or something like that. And I wanted to invest in stocks. Cause it’s like, what can I, what else can I do to help supplement my income while I’m going to school and being a stay at home mom to an awesome little girl.
And that’s when GoPro and everything was taking off. So I walked into a TD Ameritrade and they says, you need to give us 25, 000 to open an account. And I said, what? I don’t have 25, 000. Most Americans don’t have 25, 000 laying around. So, it was really upsetting to me. And I was like, okay, well F them.
And I. Kept hearing about Bitcoin and Libertarian radio. I initially heard about it in like 2011, whatnot. And so, I bought some and I started posting about it because I was getting excited because the price was so volatile back in 2017. I think our initial purchase was 5,000 or 7,500 or, something like that.
I was just posting on a private social media. My family friend saw, I say, you got to get on crypto Twitter. You can make a lot of money here. I say, whatever. Hated social media. I’m not a very public person. So eventually I joined crypto Twitter. I saw these cartoon avatars trading, making a lot of money.
I was like, Oh, they could do it. I can’t. I got a math. background. This is just like a bunch of lines on the chart. What is this geometry? I added a little bit of calculus in there, some moving averages, some dosage calculations. So, I taught myself how to trade. I started posting content. I was like one of the few females there and my account started growing.
And I was like, Oh, well, I want to meet more people in crypto. I love this stuff. This is cool. So, then I started a YouTube channel to host my free in person meetups That took off and then I started getting sponsorship opportunities for folks to come on my channel and I says, okay, and then it just transformed into me becoming the largest female creator in crypto and NFTs globally.
I think our audience on all social media platforms is close to 850, 000.
[00:05:32] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you. And by the way, we share the same career path. I was, I’m on the tech side, but I’ve been in health care of 20 plus years. So I get it been on the front lines, helping those people that are serving patients and,
[00:05:44] Wendy O: and dealing with those computer systems that don’t work and don’t really, they say it’s going to help the user experience and help The technician experience and it doesn’t, it makes it more complicated.
And you’re spending time shutting your computer on and off for 40 minutes because something in the system is not working because they needed to switch over to anyways.
[00:06:02] Brian Thomas: This is another podcast. I share the same sentiment around this because again, at the end of the day, the government wants more data and that’s what we supported.
We implemented these systems that obviously, and again, this is another day, another podcast, but yes, very frustrating. And I have a lot of physician colleague friends and they are very frustrated at this point, but thank you for sharing that, Wendy. That’s awesome. I appreciate your story. It’s a success story.
We feature a ton of entrepreneurs on the podcast. So, thank you again. We’re going to jump into the next question I have for you is you’ve done quite a bit, obviously, since 2017, you touched on that in the blockchain crypto space that we both enjoy our platform is actually duplicated out in, on the blockchain as well as part of our promotion of blockchain, our publication. So, we’re pretty proud about that, but can you tell us the moment you really had that epiphany to go all in on this. And I know it was about taking care of your daughter at the time, but what’s the one persistent thing that keeps your enthusiasm around what you do?
[00:06:58] Wendy O: Well, the thing that it was, was that I knew that entrepreneurism was for me I knew if I didn’t do this, then I would be missing out.
And I also started learning about the history of money and how predatory the banks were, because they didn’t teach you that in school. And then I was like, Oh my God, this is what I need to do. Because in the crypto industry, there’s so many people that come from this affluent background with silver spoon and mouth.
They come from money. They come from TradFi. So, they’ve got to step above the average people. And I grew up super poor. And I also grew up with the mindset that my mom’s like, if you want anything in life, you have to work hard. It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or girl, whatever it is.
So, I says, you know what I can make a life for myself here. I can make a living here and I can do this better than other people can because I understand what it’s like to deal with a lot of different groups, subgroups and niches of people. All you have to do is really showcase some kindness and show them that they matter.
And we didn’t really have anybody doing that in the industry. So I took that over. So that’s really what empowered me to keep going and to go full time and to really dive into this headfirst is because somebody needed to do it and there was nobody doing it.
[00:07:57] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome.
Love it. And again, I know this. I’ve done close to 750 podcasts now, and I can really tell the people that are passionate about what they do. And you’re certainly one of them. So thanks again. Wendy we’re going to jump into another question here love these things. Again, I’ve told you I’ve interviewed hundreds of CEOs and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley, Wall Street, working in the emerging technology space to include blockchain besides crypto, is there anything you found that could be maybe a good use case for blockchain in what you do?
[00:08:27] Wendy O: For what I do, I would love to have a decentralized media platform that actually works that would implement features that I suggest. I’ve consulted with a lot of these guys and people just don’t listen and that’s fine.
They don’t have to, but a social media platform would be awesome that integrates blockchain technology. So, it content can’t be removed to offer a good type of monetization to offer tipping to offer auto uploading on every single platform, all those types of things. But a lot of people just make things, and they don’t listen to other people cause they’re too super tech smart.
But that’s how I think my business could be run better. But you know, I don’t have the capital to create something like that. And I personally don’t want to take on the risk because the regulatory landscape in the United States of America is not great. I would have to move out of the country.
I’m not ready for that yet. I
[00:09:10] Brian Thomas: Totally understand. And by the way, offline. Connect you with some folks that do this stuff literally for free. It’s like their mission in life. And that’s how the story behind our publication, why it’s built on blockchain. And it has so many other things that it can do.
So we’ll talk about that later, but that’s awesome. Thank you. Wendy, another question here for you. Do you have any new books, apps, or NFT projects that you might be launching in the near future?
[00:09:34] Wendy O: Nope, I don’t launch any type. I have no interest in launching any type of project. If I am going to do an NFT project, it would probably be with a company.
I did 1 with data labs and 100 percent of my profits. That I earned went to support the self-care lab, which is a boxing gym that utilizes boxing as a form of mental health therapy for inner city kids. And it, to me, it’s martial arts is just such a great tool for people of all different walks of life.
So I’m not going to probably launch anything myself. I am on FriendTech and eventually I would like, there’s two books that I would three books I would like to write, but I haven’t started working. Well, I kind of started working on it, but that’s not going to be for a long, long, long, long time.
Thank you.
[00:10:11] Brian Thomas: Awesome. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that. It gives our audience some insights. And last question of the day, Wendy Promise. We are a tech platform. I’m a technologist, technology executive, love tech, emerging tech. We want to ask you if you’re leveraging any of those new and emerging technologies in your business.
And if not, that’s fine. Is there a particular cool tool or app that you found useful? You might share with us today.
[00:10:33] Wendy O: Oh, yes. So, the thing that I find useful that I love is we’re starting to use more AI to help with SEO with title generation. And it’s called, let me pull up what this little guy is.
Cause I’ve been using him to help with my videos and stuff. I use vid IQ. We’ve been using that to help with SEO. I’m also so blessed that when I travel or go on work trips, I can do everything from my phone. Now I don’t have to carry around a laptop or even a mic really. People will still watch my content.
I have no idea why, but. I really love the face app. It is an AI filter. So, it does, does smooth out the face and stuff. But again, people like to look at things that are more aesthetically pleasing. So, we do use that in our thumbnails. I love VideoCam Plus. It’s a great tool for an iPhone that allows you to turn your phone horizontal to upload to YouTube.
And I love CapCut because it has captions, and you can do some really cool tools with it. And the reason why I like to use is not captions. Excuse me. Well, you captions are great too. But it has a prompter, a teleprompter. So, I’m actually looking at the camera when I talk. And sometimes I do script out some of my content because I do have ADD and I’m like all over the place and sometimes I get off topic so that sometimes I’ll put bullet points or, do that type of stuff when I’m not feeling super well, so I can stay on topic.
But other than that, those are just really, really great tools that I’ve used to become a content creator. That’s just really changed the game. I’m trying to see what else I got on here. Splice is cool, but not as good as CapCut. And yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m using these days.
[00:11:55] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome.
And you probably noticed over just the last 6 months, 12 months with conversational, generative AI, right? You can do so much more in the apps that have just come out. It’s just incredible what they’re doing. And now they’re actually leapfrogging really, really cool. But again, love technology. We talk about it a lot here on this podcast and Wendy, I just want to say it was such a pleasure to meet you and have you on the show, and I really look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:12:20] Wendy O: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Brian, and shout out to your community and thank you.
[00:12:25] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Wendy O Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
