PR and crisis management for web3 projects

Transcript

what's up friends welcome to web3 academy a place for entrepreneurs creators and marketers to explore and learn how to use web 3 to transform business models and create thriving communities enjoy this next episode gm gm gm what's up web 3 doers it is web3 academy the weekly doer spotlight and today with us we have danielle eagleson and kristen wiggs from proxy to talk about pr and the media and what's going on in web 3 and what are they thinking about web 3 both the good the bad and the ugly and what can you be doing in your business

to make sure that you're prepping for per uh and the media and telling the best story that you can for your business which we know is not always easy uh so really excited to have danielle and kristen on the podcast today but before i jump into their bio as always i'm here with my co-host kyle what's up kai what's up friends happy to be here as usual so before i introduce uh or as i introduce danielle and kristen i just want to give you guys a little bit of a background on them because they have incredible experience both of them so danielle is the senior manager of earn media at proxy where she focuses on social media public relations and community building before joining proxy and jumping into

the web 3 world danielle spent many years in public relations and media relations in the hospital and healthcare industry she also spent some time in the motorsports industry doing marketing pr and social media for an indie car driver that sounds like a lot of fun uh and in her free time she loves to read books uh and dote on her two golden retrievers uh who maybe we'll see at some point in the podcast i don't know be nice to see them though we never complain about dogs here uh and then we've got kristin as well kristen is director of communications at proxy she began her professional career as a newspaper reporter in phoenix after a short stint in the political world she became a publicist for professional

athletes from there she worked in healthcare pr for one of the largest hospital systems in the u.s and then last october she joined proxy as their director of communications and over the last six months proxy has become a web 3 company which uh we were just chatting before jumping on the podcast happened i believe after both danielle and kristen joined the company so yeah their their rabbit hole story will be quite interesting because it sounds like you were both thrown down the rabbit hole maybe not by choice but seems like it's a good thing so danielle kristen welcome to the podcast so happy to have you here thanks for having us you're welcome uh so

we we love to just start with learning our guests rabbit hole story uh danielle will go with you first and then kristen will go over to you uh just tell us about how you sort of fell down the rabbit hole what that was like uh and maybe why uh you maybe why you stuck it out and stayed in west three way i'm sure when it happened that way it would have been easy to to exit out yeah um as you mentioned we joined proxy in october um at the time was not a web 3 company um kind of made that pivot in january of this year so um it was definitely very new to me i had heard of crypto i knew what bitcoin was but didn't really know what web 3 was or anything beyond just the surface

level so we spent a lot of time just digging in and learning as much as we could reading articles and watching youtube videos and just kind of giving ourselves a web 3 education um it was definitely scary in the beginning just coming into this whole new world but it was really interesting to me just to be learning something totally new and something that seemed to be really important um just for the internet and our privacy in general um it was something that i thought was pretty exciting and that i wanted to be a part of um and i just had a really great team at proxy that i wanted to stick with and just stick it out and see what happened yeah

so um obviously i have the same story as danielle um but you guys join at the same time like how close together did you join we started at the exact same time the exact same day we worked together our last job in the hospital system was together um so we're kind of like it's funny we've become like a little package deal in our career like we're like our partners um working for companies we don't work for ourselves but um yeah we definitely our careers have like followed that trajectory for several years now this makes sense why we got you both on the podcast exactly right yeah [Laughter]

you know proxy like we had really just like started to feel comfortable at pro you know like anytime you start a new job especially like coming to a totally different industry like from healthcare to tech um and a startup even so like that's just even on top of being in tech i feel like that's like a whole other thing to get used to um and learn but they you know they they believed in a lot of the like what they were working on before they became a web 3 company was like everything that web 3 cares about so they as far as like um you know owning our data and having control over user tables and just knowing what's basically happening to your to

your data um so so it made sense like it was very it felt logical even though we didn't even really know what it was um and then as we started learning more um and went down the rabbit hole like i have to say i think we were so lucky because it literally became our job for like four months to just learn it to sit in and listen on the twitter spaces and you know dive down discord server like you know like it was just it was like jumping into a frying pan but at the same time like i feel like when most people are learning about web3 they're doing it like at night after they finish their other job like on the side like i

felt so fortunate that it was literally like eight hours a day i'm just supposed to be sitting there learning um so i think we were really fortunate in that way um but i still don't you know i feel like there's still so much more to learn the rabbit hole never ends in web 3. you just continue to go deeper and deeper and deeper and as you unlock things it unlocks a whole nother rabbit hole you got to go down so uh don't expect that to stop anytime soon um i have a question you guys have been down this rabbit hole for now for what are we in is it june it's june right now right so six seven m no eight nine months i guess if it was october nine ten months and like end of december is when it

started december okay so you basically started since prices have been going down from the very top because prices started to go down in november in this industry so i'm curious from a from a pr perspective um you guys are both pr experts um what have you noticed in this industry over the first you know your first you know half a year in the space does the media hate web3 this is what i kind of think when i think of pr when i think of media there's a lot of bad stuff in my opinion i don't know what you guys see but give us the kind of high level like how are we doing in terms of pr as an industry um what are you seeing or what have you noticed so far kyle you've invited me to up to my soapbox now and it's going to be really

hard for me not to be like preaching but um yeah i mean i would say i don't think the media hates web 3 i don't think they know what web 3 is but i think they might hate crypto like you know i think that as as they understand that they i just don't think they understand it so it's hard to cover it in a meaningful way outside of scams and rug pulls or like crashes right like that's i think um when they don't have that thorough understanding of it and you have to stay surface level that's what they're able to cover and i think it gets clicks and people like to watch a train wreck right so i think that's how it's covered right

now and i mean even like daniel and i both i'm sure you guys do too it's like when people your friends and family hear that you're working in this area it's like the vitriol you get and especially if someone even utters nft it's like oh my god like can we like put this back in like the box or you know like it's just i think it's really intense um but no i mean what i've observed is like incredibly kind caring people who are willing to share their knowledge and teach you from on twitter like from just a twitter conversation or whatever um and i've observed people building really amazing things and

i don't ever see the stories um i i do think i think i shared the link um uh before the recording but i i did love a story that came out of east denver and i believe it is from like a communications firm like work to place the story i'll have to go back there's a twitter thread where they started interacting with me um but that was coordinated by pr professionals who like embedded a journalist at youth denver with teams and like they actually learned what people are building and doing um and i think that's the kind of thing that of course that's what i would like to see more of um i mean i think there's amazing human

impact like that that this has impacted people's lives for the better i'm sure there's a lot of you know a lot of people have lost money too but there are like really amazing things that are happening to you and they're just not getting covered um and actually maybe this is like a good way to bring this up like i don't know if you guys know michael litig but he is with um hug xyz and oh yeah it's like an incubator for nft projects um i stumbled across his twitter thread of like he's worked with refugees for like decades um completely unrelated to working in web3 and he just went over to kenya

and onboarded a bunch of refugees at one of the camps there and gave them their learning certificate in the form of like of a minted nft for them for the education certificate and if you're a refugee in kenya like that's all you have for education is your certificate and frequently when you have to move in the middle of the night because you're in danger you can only grab like your phone your kids and like that's it so your education certificates like you have to start over again and again and again um and this is like to me a really interesting case study of how an nfc can positively impact someone's life and you know i mean

these people their life isn't like cured and perfect because it because they have this nft now but like it could build and i that's the type of story like nftnyc is coming up soon like i want that to be a big story and danielle and i are actually like we're trying to help michael like spread the word like get journalists to cover this and it's hilarious because no one cares like at this point no one has picked up this pitch and it's like you guys like this is such an impactful story like we can you can talk to the refugee who went through it who like literally saw his parents die in front of his eyes when he was nine years old and now like like this is positively impacting him um

but it's like well we'd rather cover the red poles or the um you know whatever whatever it is why why not i mean you know neither caller are pr experts uh so you know i guess to me it would seem obviously if you sent i don't exactly know what the process is to get a story like that picked up but if you sent that to me i would think for sure i would you would write about it would you yeah i used to be a reporter if someone sent me that pitch i would absolutely write that story um and i i don't think i think they will i don't think we've reached the right reporters yet i mean and danielle and i are new we're like our i mean we have we've had hospital stories like

on nbc nightline news the today show like all these places but it's a whole different set of reporters that would be writing about tech for even from those same outlets so like i do think that's part of it is like building up your producer relationships that like you know that they trust you you trust them sure i think that's part of it so i do think it's a matter of time but um yeah i don't know someone needs to cover that story right like we've got to get it we've got to get it out totally well i'm going to be in nyc for nftnyc and i would love to sit down with michael and do an interview so there we go we got one story yeah perfect he would love to he's like the he's so kind and giving of like his

knowledge um he's amazing so i'm sure he'd love to talk to you danielle what are your thoughts why why there's so many issues with the media and web 3 and the current state of how the industry's doing in the media yeah i mean i think kristin really nailed it with everything she said they're just really only interested right now in the in the scans and the negative aspect of web3 so i think we just we haven't found the right reporters yet so we just need to keep working and i think a big part of our job too is to help educate them that it's not all negative and there are really good heartfelt human interest stories that we know that

they're interested in um and so just getting them more familiar with web3 and more comfortable writing about it and writing about different aspects of it that aren't negative i think is really important for us to do so just working on that relationship building and finding their people and helping them to understand a little bit more about what's going on danielle do you want to tell them about amanda because that's actually an example of us like onboarding a journalist it's kind of fun yeah so there's a reporter in san francisco that she actually used to live in indianapolis and work here where we are um so we had a good working relationship with her but um she's now in san francisco and um we started talking to her about web 3 and

crypto and trying to get her to cover some of our stories and she was definitely hesitant at first but she's started to become more interested in it and her station wants her to start covering it and start a series like um educating people from from the very beginning the most basic concepts and helping them understand a little bit more about web3 and crypto so we've been working with her on that to um and it's it's a learning journey for her too so it's kind of like she's starting her web 3 journey and taking her viewers along for the ride so we're really excited to work with her on that so is the idea in the pr world is i guess to

find reporters who will write about the stuff that are educated enough to understand it uh and actually be able to write like good content about it and so the idea from you know pr people let's say from coinbase and violence and all the big companies around the world that are in crypto web 3 is that like something that they're trying to do or is there a dow that does this like who is like actively trying to educate reporters right now um so that they understand what the heck's going on here is there anyone doing this or is this a dow we need to start i you think that some of those larger companies have pr teams right but i mean i think it's worth noting that like they probably are trying to do that but it's really hard to write a web 3 pitch to a

reporter because they don't understand the basic principles so like if you just think about like any thought or story you were going to want to share like you really it's almost like like crafting that pitch so that you can still get your point across of like what the actual news is but like helping like dumbing it down right after where they understand it but um no so yeah i don't think that there's any doubts about it that's actually i think that would be interesting right like it'd be nice to have like yeah or um have all the best stories because danielle and i like we literally just see people post like like michael like the story i shared on twitter like if i see something like that on twitter i just dm people i'm like hey i would

love to volunteer my time to like pitch this story because i it just i care about like it drives me crazy that i only see the bad stories right and proxy is still in stealth mode like still building so like we have capacity to do that right now i know we won't soon um but yeah it's definitely like a little pet project for both of us you you mentioned before and i just want to go back to it web 3 doesn't sting so much in in media crypto you said flat out they hate and then you really cringe nfts yeah i'm curious what your thoughts are of the stories behind these different words and the language that we use obviously

is so important and storytelling how do what where do the what are the safe words to use what are the not so safe words to use what do you think i don't think you can get around using those words unfortunately like you still have to use the word if the if the pitch is about nfts you have to use it i think we're in this uncomfortable period of like you just have to like keep pushing through the uncomfortable period until you get the good stories out there to help change people's opinion um but yeah and i don't think people like what three most people just don't know what it is right so i think that's the reason they don't feel as negative about it but i don't danielle what do you think yeah i agree i think when they see web3 they just think like

that idea of that is and when they see crypto they just immediately think of the scams or losing money or they feel like they got left behind because everyone aren't they're like oh everyone already got rich on it like i didn't get a crypto punk or an eighth well it's over so it's like almost like they wanted to fail just because they didn't get that right like that's why we have to show them all the good things people are building like oh my like we're still so early right like you see all the every once in a while i see like studies released it's like this is how many people in the world have nfts or wallets that have nfts or whatever and it's like so small it's really really small when you think about it

um so yeah i think some people just feel like they miss the bus and that bums them out yeah which as you said is not true but i think fear plus this fomo uh is it makes people uncomfortable and you'd rather hate it than try to understand it because it's easier to just say oh no i don't like that than it is to put in the effort to understand it uh you told a great story about michael i'm curious are there any other stories that you seen or you know you know about that you would like to see picked up for positive stories in web 3.

um we're we're one of those some of the ones we're working on with amanda is just showing education nfts like um my first nft was astro girls society um it's like pretty small but i literally like um joined it because if you have the nft then it unlocks your like you get a one-on-one mentor and like access to like the weekly education series so i was like well sure like i'll buy this nft just so that i can like be in this community of other women who are learning web3 together so like i think those are interesting ones to see um i i'm obsessed with drift drifter shoots but i don't know if you guys know him oh yeah yeah that but that has made it like he's been in the new york times and

stuff right i think that that is an incredible story of like his like i have a pr crush on him like i get pr crushes on like these little things that happened where i'm like oh that's situated like oh my god i wish i represented you so that we could like share this story or something you know um those are those are the biggest ones that i can can we give a little bit of context to our listeners around drifter shoots because i'm sure many people don't know about that story yeah i can't you guys might know more than me but i can't if you want to do that yeah you you go first i'll do my best to fill it in uh i know a little bit about it okay well as i understand that he's a veteran um who came home with like ptsd and

um his outlet uh to like feel better express himself deal with his pain was like he climbs really tall buildings um and bridges uh and that's actually illegal uh it's private he's trespassing right but what is it called urban exploring or urban hiking i don't know it has a name what he what he does but anyways he is a great photographer and so he takes his camera with him when he climbs up to these buildings and takes a picture at the top where you can see his feet and he's like off the side of a skyscraper or off the side of a bridge looking down um and they're they're literally

breathtaking like it makes you like you get a little bit of anxiety when you look at it but you're like oh it's so beautiful too and then like when you learn the story behind it it's just like that much more interesting but he got into a lot of trouble and i do think went to jail for a little while yeah for a year i think he went virgin to jail for a considerable period of time yeah um but he was eventually released and now his nfts are selling at sotheby's for like millions right like and it's he's actually really cool because photography nfts there's not those aren't even like that's a little smaller subset right but like i have i'm working in uh sports i have a lot of photographer friends who are so talented and i'm like oh man i

wonder if you guys could like do something i was like i don't know enough to tell you what to do but like i don't think that like maybe it will be something and maybe you should be doing it now but um yeah so and he like got sponsored by vans because he's wearing hands when he takes a picture so this is like i mean this guy is like absolutely kicking butt at everything right um and i just think that's an incredible story of redemption and yeah enough to use like they changed his life what i remember is that when when he got out of jail he released uh uh and did an ft drop of of some of his photos

and it got a lot of attention because of who he was and he had had all these shots of on top of buildings you said prior but the the photos he did on this drop were were very different because i think it was called something like my first day out or something like that and it was about his energy and excitement from being out and at that time in in the nft space everyone was about utility utility utility and so he dropped these nfts and all the news was not about how he got out of jail and how it was he had donated a percentage of royalties i think it was a big percentage of royalties are donated to um some prison reform organization and

but everybody all the nft world was just well where's my utility i spent so much on this this nft and but there's no utility it's just a photograph uh which which was which is funny i mean it's a separate conversation we don't need to go down the should nfts have utility and one is an nftr not conversation that's a separate thing but uh but yeah i do remember that was the reason it came up in my world was there was just this uh blow up of yeah where's the utility yeah but it gives you an emotion like from my side i'm like i love art and like um to me it's just like i have like such an a reaction every time i see one of his photos and i've seen a lot like it doesn't go away so i don't know he's

special i think anyway i think in this space there's a lot of there's a lot of really good things happening a lot of really cool projects being built really cool dows really cool nfts for good causes et cetera um but like you said pr is not picking it like the media sorry is not picking it up at all and i think many of our listeners have really cool stories and things um but not many of others i'm sure and probably not many in web 3 in general like dows and nft projects have pr people so they don't necessarily have the expertise um we have some expertise on the show right now so i'm just curious if you were to i don't know if it's want to break down a framework but if you were to give some advice to others in the web through space that are doing really cool things

like you say things that are like heartwarming and like can be really good stories what do you recommend they do how do they get this kind of stuff picked up like what's your process i think a really good way to start is to just really keep tabs on you know who's writing about this kind of stuff who's interested in crypto and web3 what reporters are writing about it and how are they covering it and just kind of start to keep a list of of those people that you think may be interested in what you're working on or maybe more receptive to your story and just be aware of you know what's what's in the news this week in crypto and how are there is there a rug pull going on that's going to overshadow my story or

should you know should i wait until next week um that kind of thing and um just taking note of how other companies are being represented in the media and um what they're saying how they're handling things and how that is received by the public i think a lot of really good lessons can be learned from that um and then just really uncovering those golden story those golden nuggets of stories that are um really make have a human connection that people can connect with um are going to be the ones that are most likely to get picked up i think okay interesting and you can see yeah i was gonna add you don't need to like it doesn't have to be like a formal

like written pitch like you can just message them on twitter or you can reply to something that they've tweeted um i it doesn't have to be like so formal or formulaic or whatever um i think that that's how it's going to be in the future um but yeah and i do think like you know when you come out with like a fancy new product and like it'll it'll get yeah i think it's important to think about what your goals are like do you want to see it in wired or whatever like tech publication that was always going to cover something like this or is your goal like do you want to bring more people to web

3. so then maybe it needs to go to like these mainstream outlets where you're going to have eyeballs on it that aren't the people that already know like what's what it is like um anyways like i think that's what like what we've been focusing on recently is to just like try to get it like the wider views um but it all depends on what you're like if you just need to have a splash and then maybe your board your fundraising need it like whatever like then that's good and maybe those like that's all you need to do but um there's a world outside of like our little insular world too and how how do you craft a story for pr so

so many of these projects web 3 projects out there uh they you know they would love pr i'm sure uh but i think that the the natural would be just to you know talk about your product and talk about what you're doing and does that like is that really i feel like pr might not be looking for that because they're like well now i'm just doing an ad for your company right which i'm guessing they're not they're not they're not interested in that so what are the steps or how would you guide somebody to craft a story for journalists and for media um i would find a person who was positively impacted by using your product like that's what it has to be because then you tell it through them

like when daniel and i worked at the hospital if there was like some new fancy imaging equipment whatever like there's you don't go to the reporter and say like this machine is the best machine ever and it costs much money and it's going to make the hospital this much money right you go and find the person who the machine caught the cancer in and then they got treatment and now they're living their life with their family and friends and like doing everything that they always wanted to do because the machine caught their medical issue and saved their life so that's my approach i don't know if that's everyone's approach but like i think

humanizing things is like a great hack to get your products covered for sure danielle i know i'm going to just jump over a sec here because i know you're building community for proxy right now and i think there's a little bit of tie-in around celebrating your community members and what christmas talking about any any thoughts in as you build your community how do you engage your communities to share these stories how do you get these from your community members ha you know is have you have you been able to do that or do they just kind of naturally happen yeah so we we've started building a community around our um px dev hub which

is a co-working space in san francisco open to anyone working on web3 projects um and so when in the process of onboarding people and getting them access to the space and into our twitter community and discord we ask them to tell us a little bit about what they're working on what their projects is and what their projects are and connect them with you know others who are already in the group who may be working on something similar but something that we are starting actually this week is a new twitter space series that's going to be called px unplugged and each week we'll have a new community member on to talk about what project they're working on and just give them a

chance to share everything they're working on and you know what their pain points are if they're looking for people with specific skills to join them or anything like that and i think that'll be a really good way for people to just connect with each other within our community and learn a little bit more about um what people are working on and stuff like that so we're really excited about that that's great there's a little bit of context that's interesting to the dev hub um it it happened because when we became a new a web three company the engineers like how they've made a big shift right they're working on something totally different now and they needed time to do that um

so then there's like our our team danielle and i there's a couple other people um and we're like okay well we're spending all this time learning about web3 and that's great but like also like our because drink hovid our community our company became completely distributed so and they have this beautiful loft office in san francisco like and it's like by the stadium um the baseball stadium oracle oracle park right is that what it is um and uh so we're like well we we're gonna have our product eventually and we need we're gonna need to be able to ask people like have a networked product like here it is you know here's do you like it what don't

you like like what should we do with it so we're like okay well no one's using the office let's just open it up to let anyone in san francisco who is working is building in web3 to come in and then they'll all have to be able to network with each other and you know it's it's grown so fast like we quickly connected with the um it's like web3 crypto startups in san francisco it's like a little meet-up group but they're like they they're huge like they're so um it's like they get together i think they do like three or four um like seminars or meetups a month and they do one in person um meet up at the

dev hub every month and you know where the speaker comes in and it's just people who are building and they talk about what they're building and it's like there's like 80 people there and it's really really fun and um it's just interesting because like i don't think anyone it was literally just an empty space and like not doing anything and now all of a sudden it's like this living breathing thing and people are in there working every every single day um and it's just like it's it's been really fun to watch that happen in like two and a half months it's crazy that's amazing we will be sure to share in the show notes for our listeners if you're in san fran and you want to find out more about px dev hub i wish i was in san fran i would definitely i would definitely go work

there there's nothing like that where i live so that sounds fantastic yeah and if they're interested they can just send us a dm on twitter awesome awesome so going back to what web3 companies can be doing to uh to get pr for themselves um i know one thing you mentioned before the podcast was preparing for crisis crisis communication is a um a difficult thing with npr how should should should web 3 companies have a crisis communication plan is that something that should be on their mind is it should can it be simple like i i just

curious to get your thoughts on that because honestly it's not even something that would ever cross my mind uh i'd probably wait until i got hit by the bus to deal with it you can have a crisis you should probably have a plan to handle it right and danielle is really good at this i feel like she should jump in um yeah definitely everyone should have a crisis plan because it's not if we have a crisis that's when we have a crisis there's always going to be something whether big or small that comes up and so it's best to just be prepared i mean obviously you never know what exactly is going to happen but if you can kind of think through your your most likely scenarios of what might happen or um

you know what we would do in this type of situation that's going to help you move a little bit quicker and more efficient when it does happen um in front of it with the messaging like if you can have a message ready then it doesn't have it doesn't just have to be what crypto twitter is saying about what happened like they can come to and see like you know your messaging so it helps you like um shape the narrative a little bit more and i never control it but you can right in in web 3 everything is basically financialized so i feel like every web 3 company should have a crisis communication plan because if you're holding any user not holding user money but you just think

you're if there's a token involved there's definitely a chance that crisis can happen i think we're all going through a crisis right now with this bear market um and you want to be able to have something in plan for your your community for your audience for your users whatever um just curious you said try to get ahead of this story what are your sort of tactics that you would use if a crisis happens like the one i think of is like optimism which is a layer two for ethereum has been amazing i feel like their pr has been incredible their sort of like story that they've been telling on social has been incredible and all of a sudden they sent a transaction of like 20 of their tokens that they just airdropped to the wrong place and it got hacked and i was like no they've been doing everything right

this whole time and here's a crisis um what like when things like that happen these accidents or maybe it's an accident a rug pull or someone hacks you like what is the plan is it just get ahead of it or is it like what do you guys think about or what are you trying to do whenever something like that happens i i think you have to acknowledge what happened number one and and then from there you have to very quickly show that what your plan is moving forward like okay this happened here's what we can what what steps we've taken and this would be different in every single okay so it's hard to give examples like but but it's like here's the steps that we're doing to help the people that got hurt like that are our people right or

our community members or whatever um here's what they can do to minimize their the damage that has happened or or losses or whatever um and then here's two or three things that are going to be done immediately to help this never happen again like i think that's like the a vague way of handling it i don't know danielle did i did i i i completely agree you definitely want to acknowledge what happened um you don't want to be vague or brushing things under the rug or anything like that i think it's important to acknowledge what is going on and to be very clear about what what you're going to do to fix it or to address it and to show real compassion i think is really important

in a statement too you don't want to come off as cold or corporate or um you know just self-serving you want to let your your stakeholders or your clients or whoever maybe know that you care about them and you're going to do whatever you can to act in their best interest to make it better so it's it's all about transparency which i mean is one of the ethos of web3 anyway right like we have these public open permissionless blockchains and this is what this can like the the web3 community loves right is this sort of transparency of everything instead of centralized organizations which are holding and and sort of like keeping everything private um so celsius who's the one currently going uh insolvent at

the moment if you someone from celsius is listening we need you guys need to improve your pr because right now they are just they are in crisis and they are not saying anything so i guess that's a tip that they can take right away you can't hide under a rock forever like it's you just it's not going to get better just because you're still under the rock unfortunately i mean the end there is like it's it's not fun to go through like when the things you know when twitter and discord are like on fire about what has happened like i mean it's not it's not fun for anyone but like it's only worse if you ignore it it doesn't get better

the the other uh advice that i would give and uh the reason i can give advice on this is i previously uh have gone through a crisis at an old company that i worked at where somebody somebody died um like a customer of ours died on one of we were a travel company and they died on one of our trips now it was not our fault but we we were placed in blame because of the way the media picked up the story and we did everything that you said uh we were transparent and came out and were open about it from the beginning but it didn't matter the media had

picked their angle and they stuck with it so the next thing that we really focused on was our own people and that became looking back i wish we spent more time on this was getting our team together and keeping them tight and sharing as much as we can with them because that the outcome of the situation was not only did it affect our business financially it affected our team in probably the biggest way in our culture because when the media catches a story and you know your your aunt or uncle is like oh don't you

work at that company like they're bad the media just told me they're bad and you're not confident in your answer and you're not able to uh to address that from the perspective because basically every single person in crisis every single person at your company becomes a spokesperson for your company even though they're probably not trained for it and they're not capable of it right uh and that was probably the biggest thing that i saw going through that situation was like it's so important to to keep the keep the family and keep the team together and keep do whatever you can do to make people understand the situation so that they can make their own decision as opposed to just going the direction the

media because usually it's the easy way to go people always forget about internal communication like it's so important and it's its own animal and a lot of times it gets lumped together like with pr um or you know people pr people are expected it's like people assume they know exactly what they're doing but like they we really don't it's so it's completely different um and i think danielle and i both have a little bit of experience with internal comms too um and you know like for example if your ceo goes out and like does something crazy um you you should acknowledge it and be like hey here's you know either we're sorry like

apologize to them right and um like you could you can even give them like here's what you say if your neighbor says this if your mom's not like you have to say this but like here because people want like our engineers are they they'll always ask us like can you just tell me what to say like they just want to know like it's it's our brains like if we see like just simple little like bullet point information like so much easier easier for us to recall that than to just like sputter on the spot and like wiggle uncomfortably and just not know what to say really important i feel like that's escalated even

further in web 3 because this internal comms because in web 3 it's all about community we talk about this like all the time is that your community is so important and so you have your internal team typically when you have a project in web 3 but then you also have this like bigger community that might own your nft or your tokens or whatever and i feel like the same thing probably applies to them you want to educate them too you want to be transparent to them and maybe even give them the words that they should be saying it's like all internal like i feel like community building public relations internal cons like they're all the same thing and like to some extent like even marketing is getting and now like um and it is it's like it's all this it's like all in the same family super related

all right let's let's shift gears to chat a little bit about proxy uh so tell us i mean and maybe maybe you're not sure because you weren't in old proxy very long but why did why did proxy make the transition to web3 how's it going uh what's the focus i know you guys have got some stuff in the works that's a bit you know behind closed doors and maybe you can't talk about right now but whatever you can give us uh what's going on over at proxy yeah start with what proxy is because i think a lot of people don't necessarily know the details of it danielle you want this one sure um so we are building a kind of like a a

backpack for the crypto world so it's a tool that's going to have lots of different aspects to it that will just kind of be everything that you need to get through the web3 and crypto journey that people are on so um when when we first started with proxy we were building um or we were working on um digital identity um so your driver's license your vaccine proof of vaccine card was all digital on your phone um and then with that you could um we had door access readers so you could use your digital identity to unlock doors that you had access to at your office or things like that

but really the the basis behind all of this is owning your own data and having all of your data secure and being in control of what what information you're putting out there and can you when you can recall it back and so to make that as secure as possible it really became clear that this needed to be a web 3 project and um that's when we kind of made the shift over um to what three so i don't know if i explained that very well and and there's like i i can't wait until um gosh i feel like we're getting close like in the next month or so like we'll have a lot more of information um

less stealth mode um to share but uh yeah it's been really exciting to watch them build um and while we've been waiting on them to build uh our little team has done a little bit of our non-tech we have a couple of technical people actually on our team too so we um realized that our team happens to all be women like for whatever reason um i it's just it is and we realized that um like right off the bat we were like ugh i wish there was like a yelp for web 3. like i wish there was just because like we were researching all these wallets

and just for ourselves like so that we could purchase digital currency for the first time or buy an nft for the first time and like going continuing searching and searching and searching and i was like everything i'm finding is just like the wallets website like it's just the marketing material of the project i was like i don't trust this like i i want to hear from someone not affiliated with this company like if this is a good product or not um so yeah our little um passion project is like building um a yelp of web 3 through like um just like women's experiences like you come and just share like what your experience was and it's left there and

then they start accumulating and everyone can come and see um because i think women there's like statistics that women make their purchasing decisions based off of reviews more than like um like hearing directly from a source or like seeing someone else like they they need to see that it's like their language it's what it's what works for us so um that's something fun that we're working on well while we um wait to come out of stealth mode and is that is that live can can we access that sounds fantastic by the way i love it um i know you've had anna cat on your um yeah forecast before um anna it's close like where anna's our uh

fearless leader um and we're um i i think like at the end of june there will be like a website that you can go to and and start poking around so we're getting really close okay we'll uh we'll update the show notes we're mid-june right now we're recording this we'll update the show notes when that comes out for those who listen after doing sorry we should have postponed a couple of weeks ago that's okay yeah no that's okay in pr world you gotta keep moving forward everybody's built and it never ends and with proxy you mentioned it's like a backpack for web3 which is uh that's very interesting is this like i mean we have wallets for web3 is this like a better version of a wallet is

that like it's more encompassing or uh when you can can you dive into that at all we can give one hint um think wearables so yeah i don't think we can share much more than that but that's a pretty big component of what we're working on it's not an actual backpack but it is something like that would be really funny um yeah i think thank you think wearables and you know um that's kind of the direction they're heading in cool well we will share links to to proxy where people can uh keep an eye on what's going on whether their twitter or their their website and that as well what is the what is the timeline for for the proxy project

um i think like they're looking at september as like actually i mean what stuff will come out before then but like where people are actually like using the product i think will be september yeah it's it's funny when you say wearable now i used to instantly think hardware hard hard good but now i actually think is it a wearable in the metaverse or is it a world that's what i was thinking too really good question could be either could be on it could be both could be both i did go to my first like metaverse party uh a couple weeks ago and i was like i have so much to learn like it's so interesting i do love that like that's probably one of my favorite

things about this whole space is that i literally learn something every day right where which tell us a little bit about the party where was it which metaverse were you in what'd you do i have um actually this is a fun story for non-technical people in web 3. i'm a pr person but like i was a writer first so i was like how am i going to contribute like i want to be in these a community that i'm actually like doing something for so that i feel like more invested so it was actually for astro girls that i mentioned is the first nft i purchased um i wrote i interviewed all the founders of that project and wrote a vlog um about them like just basically

their whole like origin story and what their plan was for the project um and they paid me by giving me a my bff um bracelet so which was crazy like to me like that was you know before that project minted like i could have sold that for six grand and you know like and that was something from nothing like from someone who's never had an nft before like i've never gotten paid six thousand dollars for a newspaper article that's what we should tell journalists that and then maybe yeah yeah yeah yeah there you go you know we should make note of that like that's maybe the direction we need to go yeah um we'll get their attention

at least um incentives yeah but um from there so like you basically they did like their um unveil for um what their like perks were for what whatever nft you ended up minting was in the verse so that was my first experience okay awesome and you got a wearable you got a t-shirt so in the metaverse so that ties in with what you're talking about there you go there you go so jay has some speed round questions uh as we wrap up here for you guys uh are you both ready to do some just a couple speed round questions sure sure perfect okay uh i mean i asked this first question but

uh i'm kristin you can't you can't say an nft you've already said or maybe you can but um what's an nft you'll never sell well i only have like three so my astro girls it's like sentimental for sure yeah i only have a couple as well but i'll probably never sell my first astro girl because it was my first nft that i ever got so right cool cool favorite person to follow on twitter um drifter shoots obsessed i already mentioned him love him and and our friend regan i have she is

like our um regan not reagan is her handle but she uh like started onboarding at the exact same time we did and she uh like made a twitter handle and overnight got like a thousand followers just because she was like i'm gonna do one three onboarding and everyone followed her and she like literally on boarded our entire team at proxy to web three and she's like she's a graduating senior at usc like it's a that's like the i think that's just crazy about web 3 that like all of my mentors are like 10 years younger than me yeah i definitely agree with regan is a great person to follow but also kristin

is one of my favorite people to follow on twitter because she finds a really good um twitter threads and crypto twitter threads that are just breaking down like either news or some big concept into something that's more digestible and she'll always retweet them or add her own comments on them so um i really enjoy following you kristin thanks danielle i do love adding my own little commentary any upcoming web 3 projects that you're excited about nft dao protocol tool could be anything um i would say this isn't super specific but i am actually

um because i'm like i don't know punish myself i'm also doing real estate school right now just as like something else that i wanted to learn about um i'm really interested and i i've only seen snippets of it but like how nfts can play in with real estates and deeds and i just think there's a lot to think about on that because it's such an i'm learning real estate it's like a very antiquated system right like it has a lot of room to improve and get more tested ever and just ownership in general like i think that web 3 when you think about that in the real estate world like oh my god opportunities are endless of like how we could actually make the world a better

place potentially so i'm definitely following that whole uh area pretty closely danielle um i think i'm most excited the thing i'm most excited about is our side project because we're going to be launching that really soon so i'm just excited to see how that goes and how it's received and you know how it can help women be more comfortable in the space so i'm really excited about that is there a name yeah it's called glyph does um g-l-y-p-t-a um and you'll have to have ai you guys should definitely have anna back on because the branding and mark that like went into it like that word it means something specific and it's like a

thread i think what is danielle it's like it's a stone like that's a precious stone that's like carved um and it like if you think about that like if it's like a rating system like you can kind of imagine like where we might go um with like threading that through branding and and themes and all that yeah it was very well thought out i think you would really enjoy talking with anna about it because she's she's definitely the brains behind the branding amazing yeah we had anna on the podcast like two months ago i think uh on uh on the panel podcast when we talked about marketing and web 3 and marketing in the in the metaverse and uh yeah she's a fantastic guest definitely

definitely look to have her back on uh well that's that's all the speed round questions i've got for today um this has just been an absolute joy thank you so much for coming on and sharing your knowledge uh i learned a lot uh and i'm sure our listeners did too well thanks for having us it was such fun we just i can't believe like that that hour went by really really fast i could have ran out of hours so thank you for having us yeah we'll have to get you back on after uh in september whenever the proxy launch happens be great to get you back on and chat about that we'd love to all right danielle thanks kristin that was great thank you bye guys bye everyone have a great day you too thank you for listening to web3

academy we hope this helps you along your web 3 journey if it does please share this episode and subscribe so you don't miss the next one by the way if you have yet to join the discord community you are missing out this is where all the magic happens this is where we learn where we ask questions where we network uh you want to be in there the link to join is in the description below and finally a quick disclaimer nothing in this podcast was financial advice crypto and web3 can be risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets and price and focus on utility and implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as financial

advice thank you friends and see you in the next one