Ep.04 / Manifesting a Female Future in Web3 & Crypto with Maggie Love, founder of SheFi

0:04Today I'm talking with Maggie Love, the founder of Shefi, an amazing organisation that empowers women and non-binary folks to master Web3. It's a cohort-based educational platform that offers live instruction, hands-on tech demos, and peer support all aimed at accelerating careers in Web3 and AI. SheFy also produces large-scale events called the SheFy Summit. and Maggie has I think she's had thousands of members so far from 90 plus countries. Hello Maggie. Hello Natasha great to be here thanks for having me. Where are you? Where in the world are you? I am in Brooklyn New York which is why you might be able to hear some sirens in the background.

0:56They only come when I'm when I'm recording stuff you now. I know just exactly when you need them to. All right. Well, I'm nearby and just in Soho. So good to see you. I'd love to just get have you kind of give us the elevator pitch for SheFi. Yes, you did a great job. And so we say broadly, SheFi empowers professional women and non-binary folks to succeed in frontier industries. And that encompasses mostly Web3, also getting into AI and looking at that intersection as well. And just like you said, it's eight weeks of live instruction in a cohort-based learning methodology. Then we also encourage people to actually transact on chain.

1:39So download your wallet, mint your first NFT. And then we have a large community of 7 ,000 members from 98 countries to help you if you are feeling a little bit left behind. So we really focus on education, experimentation, and community. And then we're also starting to do these large scale events. So after the cohort ends, you still get access to education and those like in-person community gatherings. Do you think of yourself as an educational platform or a media platform or a creator? Like how do you, how do you think about it? Yeah, I had this tweet a while ago that was like, whether you like it or not, you have to be a niche media company now, right?

2:19It's like, you have to be on all the social medias, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Instagram, on TikTok. And so I started in 2019. So I'd say like at that time, I really thought of myself as an educational platform right before like TikTok and all these social media platforms became like kind of the new hubs of how we gather information. but we've definitely started shifting to like kind of like multimedia with the events and starting to put more educational content on all those platforms too so I think education first and we are looking to grow into that okay our media properties are starting to get decent traction so what does that look like to fold into our business but ultimately with the idea of education.

3:04Yes. Education. My point of view for empowerment, especially in new technology spaces, is it really has to start with education. Now, there are many people with many different skill sets out there who might have a different approach, but my approach is teach women and non-binary folks what this technology is, what's going on under the hood so they can get careers in this space, and then how to use it because it is going to become part of our future tech stack. maybe for some of us it already is but for the masses it's not but eventually it will be and I really want women being builders entrepreneurs innovators storytellers in this space so they have to understand at least right now how the technology works so in my point of view education is the best way to do that amazing and tell me a little bit about the origin of Shifa I know that I've read about some of uh you know the kind of flash of inspiration on a run to me about But yeah, talk to me about how SheFy became what it is today.

4:04Yeah, well, I call it, I call the actual naming of SheFy a divine download because it happened while I was on a run. And that happened in the fall of 2019. But if we back up to early 2019. So from like 2015 to 20, early 2019, you couldn't do much in the Ethereum ecosystem. And that was only the second blockchain. So really Ethereum or Bitcoin, except buy your coins, send them to somebody else, hold them and wait to sell them. There was no usable use cases on these blockchain networks. And then in 2019, what I started seeing was the first set of use cases that you could actually put your tokens to work came about.

4:43And those were all under the category of decentralized finance or DeFi. So we had lending, swapping, multiple types of loans, and just people starting to think about banking on chain, right? Really, what is financial tools and services stable coins look like in this new on chain world? And also at that time, if you were an early user, there was a lot of benefits, a lot of perks. So you get like 20 % interest rate for lending tokens, right? And so I looked around and everyone on stage talking about DeFi or building DeFi or working on DeFi, even within the company I was at, identified as male. And they were like, oh, we're building inclusive finance because it's permissionless, which just means public.

5:29It's not behind KYC. But I was like, you look like all the people who benefited from traditional finance. And so I started just asking around different women I do in this space. Are you using DeFi? No. Are you using DeFi? No. Are you building DeFi? No. So there's a huge opportunity that women were missing by not participating in these new financial tools and services. So I was like, great. So many of us have missed out on Wall Street, right? Like, you know, I moved to New York and I realized that everyone in finance has their own special language and they went through this cohort of banking together.

6:04Now they work in private equity and it just felt like I was always on the outside of those conversations in my peer groups. And so I was like, I don't want that to happen to women again where they're left outside of this new financial paradigm. And because it's so early as well, it's only 2019 and there's only a couple of use cases. I think you could actually learn about traditional finance through this new decentralized finance. And so I just was like really wondering, like, how do I get women involved in this space? So I just started like thinking about that in my free time. And then I was on a run later that fall, just meditating, like, how do I get women comfortable with a little bit of risk?

6:42You know, you only need to lend like five tokens. You didn't need to spend a ton of money back in that day to just see how these things worked before you decided like, oh, this is a right service for me. So I was on this run and I was just like, all these words were coming to me. And then I was like, DeFi, DeFi, SheFi, SheFi, that's a good name. So I like was at home at my parents' house and I told them and my dad's ex-marketer, business person, and he was like, that's a great name. I don't know what it does, but like you need to do it. So that was like the genesis. And it was just like looking around the space at the time, noticing there was a huge gap in participants and people building marketing, you know, being even a part of the teams.

7:26And so how could I close that gap? Yeah, it's interesting thinking. I mean, I create brands for a living and help do naming and stuff. It's interesting thinking the name came first. And then you, you know, it's almost the other way around. You kind of knew roughly the space. You had the name and that really crystallized and inspired everything. And then how did you literally start building out what this was going to be? Yeah, so I started with a deck. I'm an ex-consultant, so all my thoughts go into decks. And I was like, OK, so I know I want women to use this technology, but I also know that, you know, in conversations they wanted to know, like, what am I lending my money into?

8:07Like, what am I swapping against? Like I can press buttons, but that still doesn't make me confident that something bad is happening to my money because it's this whole new crypto space. And of course, in a permissionless ecosystem where there's not a ton of regulation, scams can happen. So I was like, and then for me to teach, like I don't have a finance background. I was like, I need to know how everything works. And I kind of put those two things together being like, well, I like knowing how things work. Other women have mentioned they want to know how it works. So part of this has to be, how does it work?

8:41What's going on? What is this technology? And also the why. Why did it come about? Why is it better than what we have? And so I said, okay, people need to be educated. Then the idea was that after you were educated about the platform, I would show you how to use it. But then we would get together. And this is when it was very small. You know, I was like thinking like 10 women. And we'd all be like, okay, I lent my tokens into this platform. Or I made my first swap. And we would evaluate, like, was that a good thing to do? How is the interest calculating over time? So really, it came from knowing that, like, I needed to learn.

9:17I'm also obsessed with understanding how things work. So it's a little bit of my brain. But I was like, I think other people will also be on that wavelength. And then I want us to get together to actually see how it works and then talk about it. And the third component of that was we're all very busy people. like without a forcing function many times. I'm just not going to get to that to do. So I thought, well, the live class component guarantees that you're going to block off an hour, an hour and a half, and you will learn about stable coins or exchanges or your wallet or non-fungible tokens.

9:53And so it was about thinking also again, like, what do I need? I need structure. So making it very structured was an important part too and having that accountability of it being alive program as well. But like all the things I kind of like designed it for myself and my friends and it actually was sticky and people were like, yeah, that also resonates with me. Yeah. I've heard you talk about how you, how you kind of teach some of the subjects. And I love that actually it's not traditional. It's more storytelling and using analogy and thinking about. And I think that's part of the reason you're so compelling versus, you know, I know I've signed up for courses before a so easy to miss the the ones that are just recorded um but yeah I know you know was that intentional or that's just how your brain works using the storytelling breaking things down in that way I mean I think it's a bit of both for me it was always a game like how can I make this more accessible how can I bring this to a concept people already know and I think just like any profession that has its own speak which is most of them but if you think about like legal or medical or finance, a lot of that is for this like in-group mentality.

11:12And, you know, like bips, you know, like this word where it's like, oh, there's actually like a word that we all understand that that means. So I tried to apply that to crypto where a lot of it was the early builders were engineers. So things like wallet, yes, place that holds your tokens make sense. The tricky thing about a wallet is it's also your access point to all Web3 applications. It's like your single login. So then the word wallet starts to like fall apart a bit. Right. And so I was just thinking like, how can I make like there are concepts we all know in our head that these things relate to.

11:49So how can I do that? Like when I'm talking about decentralized exchanges, before we even get to the on-chain part, I'm like, you've been to a farmer's market. Let's pretend at this farmer's market, you can only swap whatever you bring, your vegetables, your poultry, whatever, for someone else's vegetables. Or you've been to a clothing swap, right? Where things are not necessarily priced in dollars or whatever your currency is, but you're actually making a swap. So I try to bring people into these new areas then, like, well, what are financial exchanges and stock exchanges and what are crypto exchanges by just really making sure that I'm trying to give them a concept that they've experienced before or at least know of a bit that's a bit friendlier before I like dive straight into like this is how it works because it is just a new language for many of these activities that we do see in our daily lives yeah no amazing and then it grew so your cohorts grew from people you knew to friends of friends to how many people is on the last cohort?

12:52The last cohort was around 2 ,000 people signed up, which has been really, yeah, like mind blowing to see, honestly, because we did very little marketing. So we've never done paid marketing. We might have promoted like an Instagram post once or twice in 2021. I was like figuring out what to do. Not that we shouldn't do paid marketing. I'm like all for learning how to expand. But a lot of the ways we grow are LinkedIn and referral and then the rest of the social media channels. And so for us, it was always about making sure we are hitting all these platforms as a niche media company, and then seeing like what sticks and making sure we're investing in that one.

13:32And so, but there's nothing special. If you're like, oh, did you target this region? Did you do this here? I'm going to say no. It's just sometimes these things, I guess, just spread really quickly through sharing. Yeah. And obviously, you know, there seems to be a need in terms of, you know, people desperately trying to understand what's going on in this space. What do women tend to do after? Do they do it for career progression, self-discovery? What is the, is there a common kind of next step? I wouldn't I would say that most people enter wanting to work in the space. And what's great about Web3 is that it's basically one of the most fully remote ecosystems in the world.

14:27So doesn't matter if you're in India or France or Latin America, like you have pretty much access to same opportunities. And then crypto loves growing in emerging markets. It's where the use cases are really meaningful. So I think for one of the first times, it's like one of the most remote friendly global industries where people feel like if I can get the education, like my chances are as good as somebody in somewhere else. So I think that's one of the things people really try to do is work in this space. And we do see it quite often. We have people working at Coinbase, ConsenSys, OKEx is another major exchange.

15:07All the DeFi companies, is like SheFi members are working there, which is really cool. And then we try to, we have monthly career workshops. It's like once you're inside of the community, there's also just like community perks. And then if we have a connection to a company, we'll always do referrals and we're building out a talent portal as well. So really, I think the goal is working in Web3 and contributing. Other things members do is if you're technical, a lot of them go to their first hackathons, virtual or in person. And I would say people that are more using it for like personal are people I would define like the creator economy bucket.

15:42So there is a whole new ecosystem being built where creators can determine the way they go to market versus like YouTube or TikTok or Instagram dictating what they can set prices for. and so a lot of musicians or artists or creatives especially when we had the whole nft or non-fungible token boo have come in to figure out like okay how can i use these tools to enhance my offerings yeah amazing um did you set out to become an entrepreneur founder to create a business or was did you think this was cool you're gonna you know what i mean yeah yeah i definitely didn't set out to be running a business.

16:24I have a lot to learn still in that area. So anyone listening who wants to be a munker, hit me up. But yeah, I really was just like, I don't want women to miss out on this opportunity. And I don't want myself to miss out on this opportunity. And I was just so passionate about seeing the light bulb go off in women's heads. I didn't necessarily think like, oh, this is going to be my roadmap. And this is my five year plan. I actually was like fully employed somewhere else. And they were like, well, as long as this is a nights and weekends thing, like we're not, we're just going to ignore the fact that you're doing your own thing.

16:56And so it really just started off with like, oh my God, women need to know about this. And then as it grew, it became very obvious that, okay, like, well, now we need funding. And now we need to think about what does monetization look like? And now we need to think about how do we hire a team? And so each of those things, and now I am doing the like, it's good. My Christmas plans or making sure I have current offerings and new offerings and thinking about new business lines. But I'd say from 2020 to like early 2022, it was just kind of like I was just doing it. And like, then I was just seeing like, you know, I put a tweet out in 2020 at the end of 2020.

17:32And I had like 40 women, random women from the internet sign up for this course in 2021. And I was like, that's great, you know, and then it was like 80. And then it was 200. And then we really grow every time there is this big news cycle. So NFTs being a huge way that a lot of people just bought this thing and had no idea what to do with it. Well, at that time, Sheafa was battle tested. So I was like, I can just let you all in. And now I'm hoping or thinking with the positivity in the US, finally, that it'll be seen as more legitimate. And so more people will be like, OK, well, if it's legitimate now, it's going to be a thing.

18:08Like, this is a good time to start learning. Yeah. Interesting times with the... Interesting times. I'm not saying. that you know I was like this is the one of the only positive consequences so um but certainly interesting yeah interesting okay um and you talked about so now this is full-time okay for one year it's been full-time yeah so describe your team and have you did have you got investment how have you kind of started building out to to to business as it were Yeah, that's a great question. So right now I'm still doing, we have like two, we have three main, two main buckets. One is sponsoring and one is individuals can pay.

18:54So the course is$7.99 for this eight weeks, lifetime membership. But like I said, we're growing a lot in emerging markets. So we need to figure out how to bootstrap that other side, which is like for many reasons all over the world, that's like too high of a fee. So how we think about it is protocols, or those are like blockchain applications, are always looking for more users. Mass adoption is the goal, user adoption. So sponsors can pay to have a course and download of their application or usage on their application. So I sell that. And there's a variety of tiers based on how many products exist in your ecosystem, how much do you want to kind of own the cohort experience and have all the branding and a commercial and in-depth education and so that is one way we try to go in smart yeah thank you and talk to partners and make the case that's a media platform right and so then we have our events too which are fully sponsored and now that we have a newsletter that has about 12 600 subscribers and we are growing a lot on socials we're starting to think about like what does that media angle look like too and how do we make sure that's like a part of the whole package like if you sign up For the cohort, you will also get promotional tweets and explainers and all of that stuff publicly too.

20:09So we just try to get you as much exposure as you can. And why sponsors like it is it's mostly new people. So like you have the opportunity to own them the minute they come into the Web3 ecosystem, to be the only wallet they're going to use, to be the main platform where they're going to use all these apps, to be the main social platform or the NFT minting platform or the exchange or DeFi platform. So it's like, if you want people to be locked in, you can do that through She5. Yeah, no, that's amazing. What have been your kind of biggest surprises? Or, yeah. I just like it growing so much. That's the ultimate, just the core that it factors.

20:53I mean, it's funny because I was introduced to you by a couple of people who've been on the cohort. So, yeah, it's just amazing how much traction just keeps growing. I would say another surprising thing, sorry to cut you off, is like, I would say for people, like, I didn't really have, I didn't really think like, okay, I need the perfect cohort and I need the perfect marketing plan. I need the perfect roadmap. I need the perfect skill sets to do any of these things. And of course, I've made mistakes by learning by fire. Right. And like, that's okay. But I think I had like a really strong vision and passion and I knew how I wanted to communicate to people.

21:35And so I was like, I have those three things down. And the course, you know, we ran a few smaller ones so we could like work out the kinks and get feedback. And, you know, we've had like TAs sometimes and like, okay, people didn't really like that because they didn't really know everything. So it's like, I really thought about like starting small and not worrying about my criteria to do any of this because I would say, wasn't a teacher, wasn't an entrepreneur, wasn't I have marketing experience and I have a journalism degree, but you know, not like, I wouldn't say I like new, but it's like part of that is like getting on all these platforms and trying stuff and then being like, okay, this voice really hits on Twitter or this type of content really hits on LinkedIn.

22:15But I think that that's been a surprise too. It's like, I think for as an elder millennial, you're taught like you must have all these things and you do this one thing and you're just supposed to career progress through it. And I was, I've been pleasantly surprised how much I've learned just by like doing and listening to feedback and, you know, just trying to like not be so set in. Well, I learned, you know, I can't do this thing. So I think that's been a big surprise too. It's all the growth that's come with trying it. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot that people can learn from that, from, you know, There's obviously an amount of confidence in yourself, which is important, but then just trying and doing and making.

23:05What would you say your superpower is? What do you think has helped you kind of be able to do this? Because I do think it takes, you know, it's not everyone that could have done this. yeah it definitely takes being okay with existing on the internet um which is like a big big piece of it i would say my superpower is like like i think the the biggest one is being able to take those complex concepts and just like make them uh palatable for people even like prior to this life i got that feedback from managers all the time like you can really go to the meeting and like synthesize it in, you know, a couple, a couple sentences, like you, you, you cut through a lot of stuff.

23:48So I think that is it. And I think another, and I don't, and I don't think this is a superpower. It like now is, well, sorry, I want to take a step back. I grew up singing musical theater. I started doing journalism and then was like, no, no one seems happy doing that. So I'm not going to do that. So I think it also was like this, and I just like went into tech instead. But I think it's like, if I really reflect back, like all these skills were somewhat hiding inside of me, or I'd had experience doing it before. And it was just about like, how are they going to come to be packaged to like, work together, right?

24:23So I'd had a tech background, I had a performing background, I had a data collection and storytelling background. And so I think all those things, even though I might have not become a professional musical theater person or a journalist really are just like all manifesting in the type of role that I have as an educator. And then I would just say like, there is no superpower. I mean, some people are very good at the internet, but the only superpower you need to have for the internet is learning how to mute and block trolls and, and also not let everyone have influence on you. right so like in a very male-dominated ecosystem in 2019 a lot of people were like oh brunch club sounds really cute you know it wasn't like I launched SheFi and everybody was like this is a great idea they were actually like no there's so much information on Twitter no one needs help you know and so like a big part of a that type of superpower is just like staying focused and like my goal always was like my customers are the only people who matter the women who take SheFi their opinion matters the people on twitter can unfollow me too and you block me if they don't like what i'm doing but i think that's like more of a learned thing than a superpower and it's not always easy those are kind of like the three things yeah no that's amazing i love the idea i mean i think a lot of people spend a lot of the time searching for what they're meant to do and it's so funny you thinking about the musical theater the journalism the tech all these things now in hindsight kind of have got you here they might not have seen obvious as a path when you were going through it but now actually everything was helpful um and totally learning learning to focus I think is another you know just being sure of yourself I think that's part of part of what I'm hearing is you also really feel like this is your mission right this is And so I'm like, and galvenated by something a purpose.

26:28Do you think about it that way? Yeah, I totally think it's my mission. And I think that I also have so much fun doing it, like opening up a zoom after working in tech for so many years. And then now opening my zoom to like hundreds of women smiling back, like ready to learn. It's like the vibe is so incredible, like the energy that is shared. And that zoom on our discord platform in the community is like why I keep showing up because it's like, it's also a profession that's like the reciprocation is like really immediate. Like the feedback is really immediate and the energy exchange is really immediate.

27:04So it's like, this is awesome. So I think that's part of it. But yeah, I definitely think it's my mission to bring as many women into this ecosystem as possible. And even if they don't want to be in it, like you said, like, what do, what do people actually get jobs? Do they just like take it. I think it's about just reminding women. Like if I really step back when I thought like, how am I communicating this? It wasn't like a defy education program. It's this idea that this is a new tech space and you can reinvent yourself because everybody who's doing this right now is reinventing themselves. So it's, it's kind of like also reminding people that you aren't stuck in this box or this mold.

27:44There's this like whole new opportunity waiting for you. And you don't need a PhD unless you're doing like complex math, right? You don't need a PhD. You don't need to go get your MBA. Like there's, there's just like diving in and learning the language and figuring out what part of the ecosystem works for you and then like going for it. So I think that reinvention has been really important for me to keep communicating to women and like things I do to facilitate that outside of like, if you come to my class, we start with music, disco, because it's my favorite. Like while I'm like finishing, you know, like my mascara in the morning, there's disco playing and then there's always affirmations or meditation or the power of optimism.

28:24So we always start with like a little exercise to get you into the headspace. Like you can do this, like your goal to work in this space is possible or to figure out really how to allocate funds if you so feel and so I think there's like it's a lot I try to like remember that it's like a lot more than just content it's like a constant reminder that you can do this it's possible you can reinvent yourself everyone's new here so you're allowed to be here too yeah I love that as the promise of this whole new world actually not just the making money but the reinvention and the personal grace like you have a choice right and um it sounds like you know I love the idea that you start with affirmations you help people manifest literally whether it's explicit or not like what what do you what tools or practices do you do to help yourself all right I want to hear them I want to as someone that keeps reading I'm I'm I like write these things down and then don't necessarily do them.

29:28So come on, tell me, what should, what, what should I learn? Yeah, the practice is important. I think it was during lockdown, honestly. I mean, that's when I started building She-Fi a lot too, but it's when I started diving into more of these like self-reflection practices and then thinking about, yeah, like, you know, we had all this time to think almost like what was on the other side was sort of not guaranteed. So when it was opening back up, it was important to me that I was ready to take advantage of it. And so my ideal morning routine, which doesn't always work, is I really try to start with journaling.

30:02So I'm a big fan of The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron. Morning pages are a big part of that. And that's just about getting all this stuff out of your brain. So it doesn't have to make sense. And she says three pages, but as a professional, there's about one page that gets done. So really try to not be interrupted by that and sort of out of that also it can really be about anything but it's like a good way to just get rid of like whatever the junk is and then I do have a practice that I've developed by pulling a few tools together I have like a specific way that I manifest and I do it I write I do it as often as I can which is not as much these days but I start with gratitude right that's like a big unlock that if you read any manifestation book whether it's on the woo-woo side or the neurosurge, neuroscience side, gratitude is the most important thing.