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Dope Living Podcast invites you to design a life and space that lights you up every single day.
This isn’t about following the crowd. It’s about embracing a lifestyle that feels incredible—where your home, your routines, and your journey reflect real happiness and fulfillment. Janay Symonette sits down with entrepreneurs, creatives, and everyday trailblazers who share their stories and strategies for cultivating joy, peace, and abundance in work and in life.
With every episode, you’ll get inspired ideas for crafting beautiful, meaningful spaces, actionable advice for thriving as your authentic self, and proof that a ‘dope’ lifestyle is built through intention, not imitation. Break free from the noise—step into your best, happiest, and most peaceful life.
Welcome to the Dope Living Podcast, the show that breaks every
rule about success. I'm your host, Janay, and
we're here for anyone who refuses to choose between
wealth and wellness, career and personal
fulfillment. Whether you're building businesses, climbing the
corporate ladder, or just designing a life that's more intentional,
this is where dreamers become doers. By creating success
that feels as good as it looks. Ready to live,
Dopely? Let's go. Hello,
dreamers and doers, and welcome to this
episode of the Dope Living Podcast, where we
celebrate dreamers and doers. So I'm
your host, Janae, and today I am about to introduce you to someone
who's going to completely shatter everything you know
about building businesses, using AI and
designing a life that works.
But first, let me tell you about a moment that literally broke the
Internet not too long ago. So, last month, a Chinese
AI company, you might have heard of it, DeepSeek, used
$6 million to build what Silicon Valley has been trying
to build with billions for about
years. Stock markets crashed, tech
giants panicked, and everyone stood started asking,
how is this even possible? My
guest today has been predicting this exact
scenario for years. Meet
Melinda Wittstock. And when I tell you her
story, you're going to understand why. She saw a disruption
coming from a mile away. So picture this.
At 24 years old, she's interviewing Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs, guys, for the Times of London. He
stops mid interview and tells her that she asks the
best questions. Guys, that's who we're talking to today
of anyone who's ever interviewed him. That's
crazy, Melinda. But that's just. I'm. I'm
brave. Super brave.
But what's crazy is that's just the beginning. So
she goes on to build not one, not
two, but five companies, including
BBC TV show that reached 20 million viewers,
a crowdsourcing app that hit 3 million users in
eight months, and a political news agency
serving 300 plus TV and TV and
radio stations with a daily audience of 3
million people. That's wild. But
here's where it gets even more wild.
In 2024, Melinda was named AI Pioneer
of the Year by California Investment
Forum. She currently, she's currently building Podo
Polo, an AI powered podcast platform
that's revolutionizing how we discover and monetize
content. And she's a venture partner at Zero
Limits Capital, investing in the next generation of
innovative entrepreneurs. That
is a tall order, Melinda. Oh, I
guess. I guess I've been busy, but I don't know, it's all
flown by. But I can't forget
this. Now I'm getting into the core of dope living.
You've done this all, all while raising two kids,
maintaining a spiritual practice of meditation and
yoga, traveling to places like Richard Branson's
Necker island and wait for it,
you did a 20 minute standup comedy set at
Caroline's on Broadway. The most terrifying thing I've ever
done. It's like my dream. I actually think I'm a comedian
and one day, like you're inspiring me now to, to
maybe try it, Josh. Well, you know, it was so much fun.
I was actually happened because I was part of an entrepreneur group and there
was a comedian that came and just taught us all how to do standup.
And it was really part of helping us get better at, you know,
public speaking and confidence and all these sorts of things.
But once you learned how to do it, I mean this guy, Matt
Kazam, he put us through our paces under, helped us understand
timing and struct. Then we had these 20
minute routines and we ended up,
you know, taking over Caroline's on Broadway. And I thought I was
just performing for other entrepreneurs, but it was open to everybody. Like it was a
packed crowd of just like regular New Yorkers. Right. And so,
but it was a lot of fun. It was kind of scary. Like couple seconds
before I went on, I forgot everything and then it came back
and I was good. But it was a lot of fun.
And it really does doing things that get you out of your
comfort zone really do genuinely grow your
confidence, you know, so that's key to
entrepreneurship. I think if you can go and do standup comedy, you could
be an entrepreneur and probably vice versa. That and
it's interesting. So one of the projects that I've just launched called Bevy
Experiences, it's a experience kind of group company
for. And as I, of course I'm so animated, so I'm going to be like
hitting everything. But it's, it's
a, anyway an experiences company for corporate groups. And I think one of
the, the most compelling experiences that I can think of
is like improv 101 for teams
and you know, putting themselves out there in such a vulnerable manner.
But learning something new I think is
one of the core memories that you have when you're building
your like building a team or trying to, you know, build
more of a integrated team. I think that's so important.
And improv 101 is probably the best way to do that.
Yeah. Yeah, 100%.
So here's what makes
this conversation so special to me? So you've mastered
something that most entrepreneurs never figure out, and
that's turning every limitation, every resource,
every shortage, every disadvantage into
a competitive weapon. So you've been living
proof that you don't need unlimited resources to
build unlimited success. You just need
to think a little bit differently, which some would argue
is the pure definition of innovation.
So. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I mean, you know, you can always use
more resources, but having that constraint around
it does mean that if you're going to
succeed, you have to think differently.
Right. Like you have to find a way over things, under
things, around things, you know, but you also
need a real resilience and determination to push through
those times where you don't really have the resources you need.
And female founders, I just get on a soapbox about this. Female founders
raise less than 2% of the available venture capital money and
that statistic is actually going down, even though we tend
to return $0.60 more on every dollar
invested. So it's like a whole bunch of VC dudes are kind of sitting around
rejecting female founded companies. Women that really
need the money or the ones that do get funded get check sizes
that are much smaller than their male competitors.
And, and yet we do well with that.
But we could be doing more if we had the
resources that, you know, because you are competing
on an unlevel playing field. And so, you
know, my, my worry is that it might, that
circumstance might put people off or make people give
up earlier than they should. Like, it takes a special kind of
crazy. And I'll just say that, like crazy in a good way to
persevere. So through those sorts of like, which I perceive are really
structural challenges that hold back a lot of women
entrepreneurs with game changing, big world changing ideas.
Yeah. You know, one of the things that,
that happened to me so I went through a really dark period and, and,
and then, and, and with COVID happening and being
kind of recluse, I think it's so easy to get into
a box where you're kind of getting pushed down,
but you're also not even around the right people. Right. Because I'm sure when you
get into those spaces, you see the same person over and over again
and you start to think maybe I'm crazy and maybe there isn't like
a group for me and that
could really put people in a dark place. And I think at the end of
the day, when you start to find your tribe, when there's people like you
existing in the world and you can actually you know,
meet and speak with people like you. You kind of can get out of
that and see light at the end of the tunnel, I hope. I mean there's
still a lot of. It's vital. I think entrepreneurship
is very isolating unless you really
make time, make it a priority to invest the time to have
great mentors and be willing to switch up your mentors too. Because as you
grow, you need different, you know, different things
you're depending on like what you're learning so you can outgrow mentors.
You need a community of friends that genuinely have your
back and like your business family as opposed to sometimes your regular
family who. Regular families, partners, friends
can sometimes be threatened if they're not entrepreneurs
themselves because an entrepreneur is growing and changing and
frankly kind of obsessed. So we're a little bit different than
most people. And a lot of the people around us, I think
they mostly come from a place that's well meaning. Like they're, they're
protect, they believe they're protecting us from ourselves.
And so they'll say things like, oh, you know, it's okay,
don't worry about that not working out or like, are you
sure you should try for that? That seems a little crazy. Or those, those kinds
of comments, right? They think they're helping us, but they're actually
projecting their own fears onto us. And that's one of the
reasons it's really lonely. So you need to be around other entreprene to be around
people who've already done what you've done. I find that the people who
are the most successful are often the most generous
with their time and their, their advice
and so just being brave enough to ask for the help that you need and,
and, and such. But, but we do need that community.
And, and yet like I find this, it's a trap for myself as well.
It's so easy for me to self isolate because I'm like,
you know, I'm an introvert and, and I get like
what I'm doing and I look up and it's like, wait, where is everybody? So
like I have to really actually like force myself to go out and
like be new people and all of that. But it's game changing and it's, it's
so important because business at the end of the day is about relationships. We're all
humans, humans doing business with each other. It's about the relationship.
Exactly. So for the audience, you know,
whether you're building on a small island like me, a small town,
or a small budget, today I want to speak with you,
Melinda, about how to change what
we think about our limitations. Right.
And because, because the spoiler alert here is that,
you know, they might be your biggest advantage.
So let's jump right into it. So Melinda, I have to
start with the DeepSeek Internet
crasher. So the markets went crazy,
tech giants panicked, and suddenly everyone's asking, how
is this possible? Is this exactly what you expected to happen?
Is it really? Well, there is, here's
what's inevitable and you never know where it's going to come from. So I, I,
what I always expect is disruption and I always expect
disruption from a place that no one's thought
of. It's always usually somebody who has a different experience,
someone in a different context country,
someone that sees something that other people
don't and why they see that. Sometimes it's just, sometimes it's just because
of a unique experience or, or mix of
experiences. Sometimes it's a different context,
sometimes it's a constraint, like lack of
money. In the case of China and DeepSeek, it wasn't lack of money.
I, the Chinese government puts tons of money into,
into startups there, arguably much more than in the United
less pressure to have a return. If the companies fail, they
fail. But like a lot of them are government funded, so there's a lot of
funding of, of innovation probably for
all. Like for DeepSeek, there are probably lots of other AI companies
trying the same thing that failed. All right?
And so, so it wasn't lack of money, but the
forcing function in the case of DeepSeek was lack of
access to GPUs, like to
Nvidia chips and to these sorts of things. And
that forced a different approach. So do you have to have the
entire world's data and violate all
their privacy, like scrape from the
deepest corners of the Internet and have everything and all
books and all things to be able to create a large language
model? It turns out you don't. And, and one of
the things that I did see coming, which is very much aligned with DeepSeek,
is the fact that AI is going to be, I think, most
powerful when it's purpose built.
So it's not necessarily drawing from content from the entire
Internet. It's utilizing
the actual expertise of real people
and sort of productizing that with AI, it's using things like
first party data or very proprietary data, but it,
it's built for a specific purpose
to solve a specific problem for a specific group of people.
And right now the AI innovation is for all these large language
models, right? They're training
all these models, but it's sort of like looking for
a problem to solve. So you
know what I mean? And so like everybody you know is playing around with chat
GPT or playing around with agentic AI or all these different things that
you can do, do. But I think the
entrepreneurs that really will succeed with these tools
are the people that have that use AI to make their
business better, to get, you know, whether it's in a
marketing case just to be better at targeting or like better at crafting
a message or better at using it as a,
as a companion to human creativity.
Because after all, the thing that everybody has to remember about AI,
AI is being trained on the past.
AI does not know the future.
Maybe someday AIs will become like
sentient human beings and be able to think in a quantum way
and have new ideas.
But right now that's not happening. It's all historic data. Okay,
so, so there's a limitation. So it will. And it's basically
pattern recognition. Okay? So sometimes AI
will find patterns, right? And it's basically essentially
predicting, based on this vast volume of data,
it's basically predicting what you likely want.
And through reinforcement learning through all these things, right?
It's, we start think that it's smarter
than it is. Now this is AI in the context of your chat
GPT and such, right? There's a whole other types of AI
though that are diagnosing, you know, can, can do personalized medic
medicine at scale or like solve cancer, things like
that. So there's a lot of tremendous kind of innovation in the space. But for
the average person, and the average person using chat GPT or
whatever, or. One of the things that I worry about
is the lack of transparency on these models and whether they're being
trained ethically, whether they're being trained in a way that's aligned
to the best interests of human beings, whether
they're diverse, like, or
biased. Because if they're being trained on say, historic
data, it's very easy to introduce bias into, say, lending
decisions like who's going to qualify, what interest rate are you going to get,
stuff like that. So sorry, I went on a long thing,
but all I'm saying is that there' plenty of room for innovation in this space.
But I think people have to take a beat though as well.
It can solve a lot of things, but not everything. You know what I mean?
But DeepSeek and I think there will be others like it
particularly, I think the next thing to really watch out for are
two things where AI, where you see a
breakoff with people. And this would describe Pedophilo
as well, taking a much more decentralized approach to AI,
a much more collaborative approach, a very
purpose built one to serving the needs of podcasters, advertisers
and how, you know, just regular consumers around content. And I
can get into that more, but doing that in a very decentralized way by leveraging
technologies like blockchain and
decentralized protocols and such that give people a lot
more power and agency over the AI that
they're using, right? And control and ability to
own their own content if their content gets scraped by an AI,
to know that, like have proof that it was actually their content,
so that content is attributed to them that they can potentially earn
money from that content, even if it's essentially stolen and
repurposed by an AI. So these are big problems. The other big
trend is going to be quantum computing and how that interfaces with
AI. So much of this is just going to speed up. And
it's interesting, not everybody's going to win, but I think that the companies that are
going to win with it are the companies that find ways to use it
to solve like any business at any time in history
to solve real problems for real people. Right.
Not just a feature looking for a problem.
Yeah, what's interesting now, what I've been hearing a lot kind of on the
marketing, digital marketing space is that,
you know, we've got to, from, we've got to get our
content, we've got to get AI capturing our content, right? And
so now you've got people that are eager to show up
from a awareness perspective
using, you know, ChatGPT and, and the like.
But you raise a, a very critical point. It's like,
well, what control do you have on that? And I'm interested to hear,
none, right? Is there any control right now?
Well, okay, so here's an interesting example. I'll try and make this really simple because
it gets complex really fast. Right? Okay. So
Cadopolo, you know, my podcast platform,
we have a library of all known podcasts
from the beginning of time. So automatically ingested
into our platform dating back to 2008,
instantly updating something like 5 billion podcast
episodes in audio and video. So it's a great model to train
on. Right? And we're understanding what's going on topically on all those
podcasts, correlating that with what we know about
listeners. There's all kinds of different benefits from that. Like, much
better recommendation engines, much better search, the
ability to get better at
monetizing content through highly
contextual advertising. So the ad is relevant to the listener,
viewer, and the advertiser gets a better conversion rate, et cetera, et cetera. So
it's like all of those things. But from that library, we're also able
to create a pretty powerful
content repurposing engine. And I believe
that podcasts, and you will learn this too, podcasts are one of the
best content engines in the world because from a podcast you can take that
content and slice and dice it in multiplicity of ways to
different platforms, create native versions of things,
all sorts of stuff. So on pad, you know, padoplo podcasters, from their
transcripts, we can create interactive workbooks or emails and the voice of the
guest or the voice of the host or the, you know, social posts or
automate clips or like a million things. Okay, but here's the thing.
I'm finally getting to the point here. Sorry. One of the things we've discovered
that we can do, and this is functionality that like say, a Notebook LLM has
or Notebook LLM you. We can take a
whole genre of podcasts or say all the top podcasts today
that we're talking about the government shutdown, or podcasts are talking
about the stock market or, or the latest
true crime hit or whatever. We can take
actually right now a digest of all of those podcasts, create
a whole new derivative work and go monetize that.
And it's not just us. Increasingly, a lot of people can do that.
So what does that mean for you, the content creator, right, Your
content gets used in this new work
that you have no control of. You're not
necessarily credited unless you know the, the
company is, I think, you know, ethical in doing that,
right? For like attribution or links back to you,
let alone monetization. Now already
we've seen things like say, Scott Galloway on the
Pivot podcast he does with Kara Swisher. Someone took his
likeness, trained it on all his content
and his kind of and his videos and such, and started creating
fake content in his name and posting it all over
Instagram and like Twitter and, or X
and all these different platforms, none of whom would take that content and down.
He had no recourse whatsoever. So apart from the fact
that it was impersonating him away that he didn't like, this person was also
able to monetize that content and all those social platforms
were able to monetize it. And who was the loser in that case? Scott
Galloway. Okay, so. So because
we see this coming, this is one of the reasons why we're using
Blockchain to do what's called the tokenization
of all of that content. Meaning that if we can track
every sing, owns what bit and, and do the
effective blockchain, very
blockchain version of being able to
guarantee the provenance and the ownership of that content,
if it does get mashed up into some new episode or it does get
impersonated, the content creator has proof of ownership so
they can defend their copyright. Okay, but not only that,
I mean, where we're really going with this and, and I think sometime in
2026 we'll be there with this functionality so
is the ability to track the provenance, track the
attribution, and ultimately set up a very decentralized royalty
payment system so the content creator would get
paid for those derivative works. Right. But this
is future stuff and I think a lot of people aren't really aware of this
yet because it's like, oh, wow, look at me. I have all this stuff and
I can create my, my, my, my avatar
and, and my digital twin. And that's something, that's something that Pedopolo
also intends to offer, but we want to offer that's safe in
a way that puts the empowerment and frankly the
enrichment of the content creator first,
not the big platforms. So we have a very different
approach and I think, you know, we started the conversation talking about DeepSeek
and whatnot, and again, a contrary approach.
So in business it's really, I mean, we were also
talking about being isolated and alone. So we zig
while others zag and the people who are brave enough to do that usually win
in the end, but sometimes it's much harder along that path.
Right, much harder. Because
there's so much more that you have to prove and there's so much more like
markets, you need to educate investors even that you need to educate. And you're,
and you're saying next year, right? I mean, that's three months.
Pretty quick, right? Well, yeah, I don't know if it'll be in the first
quarter of next year, but, but I mean, you know, like, like, like we're, we're
getting there because it takes, it takes quite a,
well, actually we're pretty close. I mean, I, I, every time I'm,
I'm, I'm, I always think I can do things faster than I can. I'll just
be candid. And
it always takes longer and there's always some unexpected thing or whatever. But you
know, sometimes just sometime in the third quarter, I Think of next
year. I mean, this will be really robust, but we'll be doing a lot
of rollouts and beta tests with, you know,
select groups of podcasters and, and just regular people and
advertisers along the way and launching it only
when it's really, really good. So, so
kind of shifting gears a little bit, and this is something
I've not heard. And, and you said it, that women entrepreneurs
return 60% more on every invested
dollar specifically because we're forced to be more
resourceful. We have no choice.
So for, you know, so we're on the
Dope Living podcast, and a part of, you know,
talking about this and kind of talking about the future is, is
kind of stepping back and thinking about the mindset that we have to be
in when we are faced with some of these not so nice
facts. Right? Especially you're, what
you're talking about. You know, even the third quarter of
next year seems like we've got a lot of work to
do. So what is, like, what do you think
is gonna make. How are you
psychologically? How are you psychologically? But how
do you think you're going to. It's a good question to
crazy, like. What mindset do you have to in right at this very
moment to make that happen? Or, or think that we can make that
happen or, or, you know. Question.
So here's what I try and balance, okay? So as an entrepreneur, you have your
North Star, you have your vision, like, where I can see it and I
can see what I'm like, I can see it. I can see happy customers. I
can see the impact. I, I, I can see it. And I
meditate on that. I visualize that. I live, I feel it, live it,
breathe it, right? That ultimate and goal. But as
the same time as I'm holding that over here,
I've got this, oh, what am I going to do today? Or like,
I'm gonna, I know that I'm gonna encounter all kinds of different problems or
challenges or things or opposition even, or new competition
or, I don't know, friction, right
at different steps of the way that may delay the progress or,
like, not have enough resources or, you know, these sorts of
frustrations. And when I was a little kid,
I grew up doing a lot of sailing. My dad was like
a competitive sailor, right? A sailboat.
And I learned very, very young that it was
impossible to sail in a straight line. So you knew where you
were going, but you had to zigzag to get there because
the wind was changing, the temperature was changing, the
water currents were changing, the size of the waves were
changing, like a whole bunch of different things that you could not control.
So dialing back to entrepreneurship, you've got your North Star where you're headed,
right? Your vision, and you're, like, maniacal in your focus.
And yet, on the other hand, you're coachable, flexible,
nimble. You don't, you know, if things don't quite work out, you
find another way. I need, I hold both
of those, and I've be. I've gotten good at holding
those two things in tandem. Right?
It's kind of being up in the clouds and down on earth at the same
time. And, and, and, but you
can't, but you can't be. So I, in that case, I'm,
I'm taking off, coming back down, whatever. I
have to, really, at times.
Well, honestly, I think it just comes down to conscious awareness. I mean, being in
the present moment. I mean, just being aware,
even, like, of your feelings sometimes
even down to. And this is why, you know,
I, I'm a conscious entrepreneur. And what I mean
by that is not only that I want to have
a do good social impact with my business. I do this because I want to
like, genuinely make the world
for everyone. Like, not just, you know, our customers, our team,
just the end results, every. Everything. Right? But conscious, because
when you're aware of who you're being
as much as what you're doing, and when you're
really in alignment with what your true purpose is,
you're more likely to be in a creative flow,
and you're more likely to be creating from a place of joy.
And the more likely that you're just enjoying that journey in the
present moment, the more likely it is that you're going to create something that
people really love. Because it's coming from a place of love. Yeah, right.
So that's, that's kind of the glue. And the awareness
is about just being aware. Okay, so this is a moment where I'm up
in the clouds and I'm dreaming, you know, and all of that, okay? And I'm
aware that I'm that. But then I'm aware that, okay, now I'm down in the
block and tackle the tactical, like, oh, my God, I got to
hit meet payroll. You
know, cash flow is tight, right? And so, you know,
it's, it's juggling and balancing all of that. Now. It's not easy.
I've done this for so many years now that you
almost develop a muscle memory. It's kind of like, oh, yeah, like, I remember
how I, I got through it last time, I can get through it again. Right?
And you just start getting that, that confidence or the
resilience and there are always new problems. And then
it's also just coming to, coming to
the. There's a certain point where I came to the conclusion that all failure was,
was actually good. Because all it means is that you're
trying, you know, and all it means beyond that is
you're getting feedback that can make you better. That's all it is. There
shouldn't be any stigma about it. There shouldn't be any like something taking longer than
you think or trying, like a feature on an app and it
doesn't work or you launch a product and there are no sales to
begin with or something like that. That does not mean that you've failed.
It just means you've, you, you have more work to do. You just have more
tweaking to do and keep going. Right.
What's interesting that, that you mentioned, and I heard it before
several years ago when I was
working with a sailing team, but sailing is one of the
few sports where you actually
learn critical thinking. Like. Yes.
Yeah, actually, you know, okay. And, and you, you described it so
beautifully. And they were like, if you want your kids to really
learn how to figure things out, sailing would be one of the
best sports to put them in. Because
I mean, it's like almost.
It's teamwork. It's almost.
It's teamwork. It's everything. Right? Yeah. And also it's just beautiful.
It's fun, you know, it's flowy. Exactly. So it's
interesting that that is your background and it's been in the
back of my mind for so long. Like, do I put my daughter in sailing
because I really want her to learn, you know, how to
fix problems as they're occurring and not really sit in the problem.
And because at that point when you're on, on the seas, you've got
to figure it out in real time. And so it's really interesting
that you've had that experience and that experience
that, that really connected with me.
But at the same time, go ahead.
No, no, go ahead. Well, no, I was just saying the other thing is, it's,
it's critical thinking and then some, because that, that,
that teamwork plus all the different dynamics, it almost
encourages sort of more matrixy thinking. Like it's non linear.
It's not kind of like A to B. It's like all
all learning how to understand all the different things
happening all at once and how those different, I
don't know, stimuli or different events or different things, both
external, both external and internal are all interacting with one another
and then what you should do with those particular combination of
circumstances. Right. So like sailing does that. Like, I just
actually it's really interesting. You helped me really
articulate something that I've known intuitively for a really long time about
that piece of it. So yes, put your daughter into sailing. Yeah, it's a good
idea. Yes, I done and done. When she gets of age, definitely,
definitely gonna do that. And, and funny enough, I just
read about a study where over
70% of entrepreneurs describe their path as
nonlinear. And, and it's interesting
that you also describe it as such because that,
you know, as you kind of talk with people and,
and they're not going through the path that they expected
and they think something's wrong when in fact most successful
entrepreneurs would their path as non.
Linear. As I would say they were crying
in a parking lot at some point in their life and then having to wipe
tears and, and get out the car and, and put on a brave
face. Right. And so I think
that the way you've described all of it is exactly
what we need to hear and be reminded of that.
You know, I'm sure the next year is going to
be really tough for you. It's going to be super rewarding
though. And it's going to be, it's going to, it's going to mean something. I
mean, I hope, enjoyable. Enjoyable. So here's the thing. This is the other
big lesson. Okay. Another soapbox from, from me
is enjoy the journey. It's not about the destination. So like
if you like what you actually do and you like the people you do it
with, that's what matters. Like that's what
matters. So like you're doing with people, team member, you're an entrepreneur,
so you get to create your own circumstance. Right. You get to choose who you
work with. You get to choose the pace. No one's telling you what to do.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, because I think we put all kinds of
external things like this has to
be done by three. Who says, like
why? Right, right, right. Yeah. So,
so, you know, so, so understanding like what
the kind of shoulds like that are not actually shoulds,
they're just some sort of external subconscious driver
makes you think you have to be a certain way or do something or
achieve something by some date or whatever. Those are all
artificial. Like they're, they're all construct. Right.
So again, I'll have fun because I love what I
do. Like even, even the hard things. Like
every now and again you can get pissed off, like if someone does a frivolous
lawsuit against you or something like that. Yeah, that's irritating. But it's like, oh yeah,
okay, another one of these. I, I've got people. We'll deal with it. Right?
It's right. And, and in, in a case like that or
something else where someone's just treated you badly.
I have compassion for those people now because I think, oh God, their life must
really suck. That they're, they feel they have to be like that. Like,
wow, you know, like I'm really, you know, I have compatible. I just move on.
Like, I just don't let it. I take inspiration from my golden
retriever who literally, if another dog doesn't like him, he just shakes it
off, just literally.
And that's, and that's. That there's a smile on his face again. So it's, it's,
it's just being these, these are all. I mean, because
entrepreneurship really is like a metaphor for life. And,
and I think entrepreneurs are living more
vividly in life because we're, we're
pushing up against boundaries all the time. Like,
you know, you mentioned Steve Jobs, who I had the, you know, great fortune to
interview and actually learned quite a lot from. It was before, just before he'd
returned to Apple Computer, he was doing like next or whatever and I was
asking him questions about how he got fired. And like, yeah, I was being really
pushy but,
but really interesting but asking him a lot of in depth questions about the nature
of innovation and such. And I
think that's when I first really kind of understood that you really grow as a
person when you're outside your comfort zone. And if you want
therapy, become an entrepreneur because it's
going to confront you at unexpected
times with things that are buried deep in your
subconscious. Like things that are driving you, that you don't even know are driving you.
And that's going be to, to that's going to manifest in your daily experience.
And so if there's something that's going on there, particularly repeating patterns,
it's the kind of thing that you can focus on and, and heal.
So that's why there's a. Yeah, like entrepreneurship is kind of weirdly
therapeutic. Like, yeah, like at a, at knife point
sometimes. But.
Like it's hard, but like, but hard is good because it like makes
you better. So again, it's Just, we all choose our thoughts around it. Right.
So, you know. Yeah. And forgive me, because it's,
it's hard when you are sometimes like
getting, you feel like you're just getting knocked down. It's like the waves are just
hitting and you're trying to like, you know, walk against the wave. And
it's interesting about the timeline, right? Because if you
let like, social media tell it, and there,
there's actually a, a post that keeps
showing up on my feed that says that, that
poverty loves taking its time and wealth is
like. And I'm, I'm looking at it, you know, as a someone
that's trying to start a movement around
dope living, which is about choosing your life,
choosing your timeline, choosing your path, and make. And
doing that first. So I call it like, lifestyle first, like,
and, and not. Or I can call it as back backwards. One of the
two is, you know, it like, can it
work? And I'm on this journey to figure out can it work,
because I don't know, because in, when you're in it,
you are thinking that this is all that
exists. And it, I can't, I, I feel like
it can't be. It can't be that success is solely about
giving up your entire freedom and selling your soul. I, I
just can't subscribe. I don't think it, I don't think it is. Okay,
here, here's a great. Okay, so think of the, think
of these wildly successful entrepreneurs like Elon Musk or Mark
Zuckerberg, okay? Respectively, the first and
third richest men in the world. Do they look happy to you?
They look at all. They look a little
crazy. They look like they might be going a little crazy.
I mean, Elon Musk in particular is a really interesting one
because. And, and in a lot of other people like him,
who seems so aggrieved, where has the world
gone wrong for him with
$500 billion, like anything
that he ever wanted. Okay.
And yet no one can convince me that he's a happy person.
Right. I mean, at all. And, and aggrieved and complaining
all the time. Yeah. Always someone else's fault. Someone else's.
What is that? So, like, I would just say that's not dope living.
Even though, I mean, that guy, he needs,
you know, quite a bit of stimulant, I guess.
But I, I find that really fascinating that you could have someone like
that or you could go, or like, I did go, go into
this big trip into the Amazon rainforest and meet these people
who'd only met the outside world, like native
people had only met the outside world 20 years earlier and
have nothing and be like some of the happiest people.
Exactly. That I've ever seen. Right. So
like being rich or hitting that milestone
or having the perfect, I don't know,
apartment or the perfect thing. All those things are lovely. And money is great because
money, money's a tool. And money buys freedom. Right. It
gives you the, it's a tool, it gives you the ability to do things.
But if you're just sitting there like accumulating it
just for accumulation's sake, I think that's kind of empty.
I, I see a lot of people like past a certain point where
their money and their power doesn't make them any
happier. In fact, they seem aggrieved all the time. Right. And,
and so I, you know, so, I mean there are lots of
reasons for becoming an entrepreneur. I think there are ways to make
consistently a lot more money than being an entrepreneur for most people.
Like corporate law. I say it all the
time. Being a banker because in the bottom.
That the, the, the best jobs to have are lawyers,
bankers and. Exactly. Yeah, that's it. They make
more money. I mean, because it's, it's consistent and, and whatnot. Where
entrepreneurs, like if you're, if you're like me, I was like this up and down
thing where I've made a lot of money and then, then, then invested in my
next startup which like didn't really take off or didn't have an exit. And then,
and then suddenly, and then, you know, funding got delayed so didn't pay
myself for a long time. So basically like, like had nothing
and then made a lot of money again. Like it's,
I don't know. And, and through this I've always sort
of been the same person. Like it, I don't know, I don't really feel
like I've ever. Even when technically I guess I've
been in poverty, I've never felt in poverty. You know what I
mean? And, and I think it's because
I'm not. Because I am very wealthy in so many other ways.
So, so, so, so the, the, the reason for me
to be an entrepreneur is, is all about mission and purpose. Like I
can't not do it. It's just who I am.
Right. And, and so you've got a lot of people who are really
good, really good individual contributors of different
things and they have people like me. So I'm kind of odd. I'm really good
at a lot of different things, you know, that I,
I've learned and can do in my business. Whether it's creating some sort of really
fancy, fancy schmancy
algorithm or, or Excel spreadsheet for a financial
model or marketing plan, or coming
on a podcast or public speaking, doing stand up comedy. I don't know, there's lots
of things I can do, okay, but, but the thing that I'm
best at is being
like a conductor. So you think of an orchestra and you think of all
the different people and all the different instruments and whatnot,
and they need to be coordinated, right? That every one
of those individual contributors knows their part and they, they're
perfect at it. But together they,
I'm the sort of visionary, connect the dots person
that is able. In fact, in fact, a
Guatemalan shaman told me I was a binder. And what he meant by
a binder, I was thinking like a three ring binder. What are you talking about?
Anyway, he said no, no, no, like, like a, a binder. Like you bind people
together, you bind concepts together. You can see things that other
people don't and then, but you're able to operationalize that, right?
So, that's my thing. And, and I, I go from
more than classical music to me it's more like jazz, right? Because I like
improvisation, I like collaboration, I like unexpected things,
stuff, right. So there's a certain point, I mean, you can tell I, I didn't
have this self awareness in my first business where it was just like,
how hard could this be? I'm just going to fly the plane as I build
it. I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just going to do it. You know
what I mean? I was like kind of clueless in a way,
which, which, which in a way was an advantage until it wasn't.
Now at my age, now with all the experience,
I just feel kind of calmer because I'm taking on a big thing. But I
just feel pretty, I don't know, pretty calm about it. Like
we're just going to go at our own pace. We're going to do some good
things. We're going to always
walk and talk our values, right?
And it's about who we're being as much as we're doing
and just go completely create a
whole new decentralized way to consume and
monetize content. So there you go, tough. So what I'm hearing
is essentially you've got, it's a,
a balance between, so you talked about muscle memory, you've been here before,
so you kind of know that you, yeah,
you, you know what can happen, right. You've done the
ES and flows have been ebbing and flowing, but at the
same time you've, you have values, you have
a purpose, you know exactly what you want, you, you
know what you want to accomplish. Right. And what the world
I know and I know the type of people that
I want to, that I like to work with.
And why specifically and how to
know that? Because, at the end of the day,
entrepreneurship's about the team. It's about the team
executing. It's about right, having, having, having
the right, the right people and the right people are
different in different companies. Right. But I
think, I think that's important and not just from a day to day enjoyment
standpoint, but people that you really can trust. People who are operating
in integrity, people who actually, like, I value this thing. I know that
a lot of people in society don't seem to care about this, but I do.
Like, I really care about truth.
I, I, I really don't like it.
With AI right now and where it's going. I, that is
like, we need you, right? Because we don't
know the trust that people are putting in AI right now
if it's not truthful. And one thing you said stuck
with me is right now it's, it's focusing on the past and past data.
What happens when they start to train it on what to think about the
future. Right. How messed up would it be?
Because right now there's no transparency around any of it.
Right? Exactly. And so you don't really know.
And I mean the other issue really that's going to become
a problem is what's known as model collapse. And this is where
as more and more and more of the entire
World Wide web and every app and whatnot and
social platform is made of AI content,
the AI will be training on AI.
This causes model collapse. It causes like just, it just
doesn't work. And like, and then some other, like there's some other reasoning
models that just break down on complex tasks. Like they just stop
thinking. Like there's a lot of, I mean
it's interesting right now because there's a lot of hype and
there's, there's some really exciting stuff and
there's also a lot of hype that's kind of like, yeah, you know, it's not
really doing what you think it's doing. And one of the things that I really
worry about is given what's happened, what
I perceive as just the toxicity of social media.
Like look, I was one of the biggest cheerleaders and fans of social media. I
was one of the first 100 people using Twitter.
Right. I believed at the time that social media was going to
change the world for the better, better. And I was a really big part of
that doing all these like crowdsourcing apps and social, you know, all that
stuff. But I also saw really early on that the recommendation engines
and the fact that all the behavioral scientists had worked out, employed by
those platforms had worked out that the posts that got the most
engagement and hence were the most profitable
were the ones that engaged people's basest
instincts. Like made people angry, made people
hostile, made people like hate each other
and all that stuff. Those platforms all, all
profit from that. And the AI has all been trained on that.
And the AI adds a whole other level. People are living in
completely. There's Earth 1, Earth 2, Earth 3.
People can't agree on like basic facts.
People. After a while you don't know, if you don't know that it's really difficult
to have a civil society that's even somewhat, somewhat
enlightened because people just don't get along people,
it becomes nihilistic and, and it's very difficult to do
business in a, in a circumstance like that. So this is one of the reasons
why I'm very, actually very concerned for our democracy in the
United States and these sorts of things because without information that
we can all agree on and trust or some sort of social contract or
just some general respect for each other and our humanity
from a place of love, it's very
difficult to see how all of that works. So
that's like actually like my biggest. I know it's all kind of
external to me, but I. Huh. So this is something
that, that, that drives, drives me in the context of Pedopolo
is how can I do that? I mean because going way way back, a
previous company of mine news it way back in 2011,
we had algorithms that were actually, because I saw this problem kind of
of early actually that actually rated the,
the not only the relevance but the reliability of user generated
content like using probabilistic models and such to figure
out well, how likely, you know, is this
content accurate right From a crowdsource. It was
very, very complicated and, but quite
effective. And that company, I could not raise money for that
company to save my life. It was really expensive to do. It was pre AI,
so it was going to need a lot of money essentially training. What
was the early beginnings of AI was natural language processing,
unsupervised machine learning, all these things. And it was really cool.
I mean, we had about 500,000 users using it, like creating content.
Like, we had innovated the mobile ui. It was launched
pre Instagram. It was photo sharing and video sharing. I mean,
like, it was really like innovated way ahead of its time.
But a lot of that thinking really will start to inform
what we're doing with Pedopolo. Because I think if, if
content platforms, independent media,
you know, new types of social platforms, podcasting,
all these different things can come at this with a. With an
approach that's much more about really, not only
empowering people, but also really enlightening them and giving them much
more agency and ability to evaluate what
they're consuming. Like, if I can. Can just
contribute to any way, I'll be happy. And I.
I think that's really my mission. Like, my life, just in between all the tech
stuff and the journalism and everything that I've done, has all pointed
me to this place at this time. Right. So I feel pretty aligned, you
know. And so a couple of questions
come to mind. Right. So one, so we're fighting against people's
base. Like you said, they're going after people's like most primal
instincts. Right. What makes them scared. Getting people in
the amygdala, you know. Yeah, Reactive. Reactive.
The crocodile brain amygdala, rather than being in the neocortex. Right.
Of your brain. Right. Which is more about rationality. Exactly.
And at the same time, you know, we do have
promising, decentralized systems
that will help bring this forward. Right. And I'm guessing
the hope that you have is kind of a cross section between
and how do we tackle. Or
the right word to not tackle, but how do we, you know,
help with, you know, some sort of
feeling that will go toe to toe with people's primal
instincts at this, at the end of the day. And then how do we leverage
what's. What's new? Not what's new, but
what is decentralized, where you can have ownership and make
people care about that. And, and so I'm guessing
there's. So much. Yeah, there's
so much education. I mean, it's. It's really
interesting. I was reading the other day that 60% of people in the US
read at only a third grade level.
And I mean, wow, that's scary because
it. Because how do you so education,
you know, is so important, and figuring out a
way for anyone that creates Content, figuring out ways to
be able to explain complex things in
simple ways, but ways that engagement, engage people's
curiosity and something you were talking before, like, engage
them and make them interested. Because once you
are a critical thinker, you enjoy critical thinking. Do you know what I mean? But
if you've never really learn those skills, you don't even know what you
don't know. Right. And so, I mean,
I, I'd like to. And, and there are people who are doing
this, but it's hard on a mass market scale
when you have these, you know, just big tech. Right. Like, it's just,
there's not a lot of, you know, alternatives. So I think
of how, I mean, Garoppolo is so
guerrilla in a way. Do you know what I mean? In the sense that we,
we've architected, you know, a business model that
can serve all these big tech platforms while
at the same time, you know, be
really kind of independent. Like, we're, we're. It's quite interesting. We
have this model where our competitors are also our customers
and vice versa. So, so it's,
it's, it's quite, it's, it's quite interesting because we have
such advanced AI that, you know, other folks that can benefit from our
AI, so as our AI improves and it becomes really kind of very. Yeah,
because it's, it's ethical. It's all this sort of stuff. Podcast
ad network can license that from us just as easily as a podcast network
can, or a podcast hosting company, for instance. Right,
okay. Or our blockchain wallets that
are interoperable and like, once those are available in the
market, happy for, for any company
to adopt those and use those. Like, we're not trying to be a
destination in and of ourselves. And we're really working on highly
decentralized distribution of content because we want all the
podcasters on the, on the Padopolo platform to be discovered not
just on the Padopolo app, but like everywhere. Everywhere.
Yeah, we want them to grow audiences everywhere and we want to empower that.
Right. So it's not like being like, we have to own the. Yeah. I think
women, Women, I don't know. This is my thesis. I think women tend to
think differently about this. We're a lot more collaborative. We're much more about
partnerships and figuring out different ways to be
more collaborative. And the word I like to use is cooperative
because, like, I'm actually a really competitive person. Like, I go and. But I'm
competitive really against myself. I always want to be the best that I can be
right. And, and, and I do want to win and,
you know, seize market, you know, all those things that entrepreneurs want to do.
But, like, there's a way. You don't have douchey about it. Like, there's a way.
There's a way to do that. To do it. That, that lifts other people up
as well as yourself. Yes, yes. And. And I think, I
mean, maybe that's one of the reasons why women return $0.60
more on every dollar invested is because we're more likely to
think like that. Yeah. And then you get in a room and you, you
actually say, how can I help you? Which you'll never get in a room
with, you know, a hundred people. And, and
you could, but women tend to do that more like, how can I
help you? And that, that, that question alone just
creates more opportunity, you know? Completely.
Yeah. So, Melinda, I'm going to move to rapid fire
questions really quickly as we wrap up. Okay,
so let's get started. So
what is the. Okay, this is a controversial
one. Okay. I'm going to go fast, but. So, all right. What
is the biggest lie about AI today?
That it's human or that AGI is super close.
Ooh. One limitation. You choose over unlimited
resources. Oh,
one limitation. I mean, I like, I'm an abundance minded person,
so I like unlimited. Like, I'm literally a
venture partner of a firm called Zero Limits
Capital. There we go. So. So I'm not
sure. I'm just gonna go. Limited resources.
Yes. I like that. Yeah, yeah. Why not? I mean,
just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you protect. I'm always trying
to, yeah. Oh, no, I was just
saying I'm always trying to expand, you know, expand
resources, not contract them. Yeah. Very nice. Nice. How do
you protect your best thinking hours?
Oh, man. Okay. This is really important.
Couple things, really. Be like going to
sleep. It screens off at least an hour before I go
to sleep, really focusing on having quality sleep.
But when I wake up in the morning, not immediately looking at my
phone, all that kind of stuff, but really having
some quiet meditation time, even
if. Even if I only have 30 seconds available to
me, having that just to center myself and the day
and experience gratitude.
Right. For just being alive for the sunshine, for the
rain, like, whatever. Right. My. My kids, my dog,
my partner, my company, just all the things. Right. Just
really, really. That. And then getting
out and, and, and moving and
one of the first things, just because I have this English cream
golden retriever that's got to go out in the morning, our morning walks are Sancho
Sacrosanct. And I find myself having my
best thinking when I'm just out walking with a dog. Dogs are always in
the present moment. And Augie kind of reminds me and keeps me there in that
present moment. And then my ideal time for working, for
deep thought is in the morning. And. And
I try not to have any calls in the morning. I try to make my
first call, like, not until like 11. That can't always
be possible, but especially seeing as I'm Pacific time, so it's hard
for the east coast and stuff. But I find I operate best when I can
stick to that, that kind of schedule and just
ring fencing. My. That's the other thing. I'm a calendar ninja. Like,
really ring fence my calendar. Yeah, right. And I'll say,
okay, this is where I' at right now. So here's what my calendar is going
to be like. I'm going to defend it, but I do it
quarterly because things change. And what's working
in one quarter might be completely different in the next, especially as you grow a
business. And as a CEO, the things that you're doing in the early stages of
a business are very different in the growth. In the growth stage, where it's a
lot more about systems and hiring and making sure you're onboarding, making sure your employees
know what they're doing. Like, your, Your role keeps changing as you
grow a business. Like, there's a very big difference between like no
revenue, some revenue, five figures, six figure
revenue. Between a million and 3 million is a totally different ballgame.
Between 3 million and 10 million is a completely. You're in a totally different. Per.
Not totally different person, but you know, like, you're doing different things.
You have to rely on totally different muscles. Right. So just
being very thoughtful about
all of that. And you know, at the end of the day, just making sure
that you respect your own time, your own health,
that you ring fence time for exercise, exercise for meditation, for
being with friends, that kind of stuff. Like, you've got to find
balance somewhere. And, and what I mean by
balance though is it's not like every day has to be the same
balance. There are some days that I have that are just
work, work, work, work, work, work, work. And there are other days that are like,
I'm not doing any work today, like at all. Nothing. Like
today is a no. Right. Okay. But it
balances out, you know, over time, again, comes back to conscious
awareness, just being aware of what works for you and
understanding what works for you, understanding what makes you Feel happy and
observing yourself. Journal. Right. Like take note because you
can forget. So sometimes it's good to just journal your feelings and how are you
feeling about. Right. Because stuff will come up. I still want
to get into that one day. That's like been on my
bucket list. I don't know why. Just journal, journaling. But I. I think it'd be
so important because I do forget a lot of things all the time. And you
know, life is. Sometimes it's like you have to remember what happened so that you
can enrich, you know. Well, there's a really good process called the
artist's way that I did years ago. And it really like you
write basically freeform writing. You don't even think about what you're
writing. You wake up in the morning and you write three large kind of full
scap pages and then that's it. You don't even read it. Like you
don't have to. And you just do that every day for like six months or
whatever. And it's amazing, like because you start to discover things about yourself
because you're writing from a sort of
unconscious, almost set like semi conscious kind of. And you've just
woken up so you're not even thinking. You're just. And it's amazing. It's
really interesting actually. Yeah, that was good. So try that the
artist's way. Artist's way. Okay, I'm definitely gonna try that.
So. Okay. So to end now,
one of the things that I want to do do. I do want to do
it and I have to find it. Okay, so
before we end,
please tell us how we can connect with you.
Oh, after this. Okay, great. Well,
okay, so I am probably. I probably check. Of all the
social platforms, I probably check LinkedIn the most. So it's just my name
and you can find me there very easily and connect with me and
send me a message or whatever. Check out the Pedopolo
website too, if you want to know more about Pedopolo and where we're going. So
it's just Pedopolo P O D O P O L o dot com.
I'm on Instagram, but I don't really like in threads, but I don't really post
that much there. But you can DM me. You know,
I just, I haven't. I will be a
lot more active on those platforms next year when pedophile's whole
machinery, we close our funding round, our whole machinery gets going on all that kind
of thing. But I don't do a lot of social. But yeah,
that's the LinkedIn is probably the best way
to find me, like, and connect, like, genuinely connect
with me. That's awesome. So
for the, for our audience, whether you're building in
the Bahamas like me or anywhere in the world with
big dreams and limited resources, just remember that the next
disruption might come from someone who
had to figure it out with less. And, Melinda, I want
to end every episode with an affirmation because I
think it's important. Okay. The words that you speak become your
truth. And so one of the things that I would
love to do, and I don't do it enough. So this is really, like, practice
about speaking things into
existence. So this is the affirmation of the episode. So
taking a deep breath in, I transfer every limitation into
a competitive advantage. I integrate all parts of
myself into my success strategy. I
use available tools to amplify my unique perspective
and to do good. I am unstoppable because I
am authentic and I am resourceful. That's
our affirmation of the episode. Just,
you know, neck on the back of my. Yeah, no, the hairs on the back
of my neck are just. That's beautiful. What a beautiful affirmation. I love that. And
I love that you end your app, your, your episodes with an affirmation. I
asked is so fantastic. Yes. It's super important.
I think we forget we're we, you know, I know that we can
get caught up in, like, the negative and talking, and we don't realize that we're
talking to ourselves in a certain way. So I think it's definitely important when
we talk about dope list living. Dope living is about, you
know, what, what we say and, and a part of what we say
is, like, our lifestyle. And so we have to make it a part of our
lifestyle to speak energy into ourselves,
goodness and happiness, you know? So
thank you so much. This is delightful. Thank you, Janay. I, I,
I really enjoyed our conversation. I, I, there's so much,
much to talk about, so much to unpack. This, this was,
this has been so insightful, and
it has, like, it gives us so much to think about
and especially for our audience who, who may not be so integrated in
AI and tech. This is really, I think you have broken it down
in ways that will help help all of us. So thank you so
much. Yeah, just everybody out there, if you're intimidated by AI,
just, just go play around with some different tools. Just kind of, you know, the
only way you can learn these things too, from a tool perspective is just by
doing it. And don't be intimidated by it. It's just a bunch of tech bros.
All right, well, this has been the Dope Living podcast episode
with Melinda Wittstock, and thank you, thank you, thank you.
Have a good day. I
haven't mastered the ending yet, but thank you so much,
Melinda. That's another episode of Dope Living in the
Books. If this conversation sparks something in you, don't keep
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a life that's more intense, intentional, keep dreaming, keep
doing, and keep creating success that makes people go,
damn, that's dope. Until next time, dreamers
and doers.