We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nova Phoenix a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nova, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

What is happening in our society? We are losing ground in how we function, interact and go about our daily lives. We are inching towards a state of despair that we haven’t seen in decades. We have all this technology. We have all this innovation. The internet has become the new hotbed in the way we communicate, operate in business (as producers and consumers), and build community. And yet, we still haven’t fully explored what it can do for human beings. What is missing is our humanity. We have all these tools and inventions that can provide a better quality of life for people. With all these new things, the greater populace still feels like the walls are closing in on them.

What do we do differently? It’s about regenerative economics. Lyfeblood is a space for the market to flourish and thrive. But, what we can also do is provide people with a means to improve their quality of life. Let’s provide people with a means to create abundance. In the spirit of capitalism, the system benefits when people have more, right? The more they have, the more they spend. However, it doesn’t happen. We intend to change that. As any business entity, we will push for the rivers of profit and growth to be a focus for lyfeblood. Along with reaching those goals, we will approach our community to have access to programs and initiatives that’ll build their wealth and health. I’m not in the business of money. I’m in the business of self-actualization. What can we truly accomplish when all is available for us to fully explore our potential. Lyfeblood will be that fertile ground for a new way of being.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

 

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. In my late teens, I was in a Hip-Hop group. After a long bout with writer’s block, I felt I needed to do something more. One day during a writing session with my rap partner, I saw a local show on TV with established rappers. I was intrigued by why these artists would want to be on local TV. I asked my partner what we were watching and he responded, “It’s cable access.” I was blown away. Fast forward to the end of my rap artist journey, and based on what I saw at my boy’s house, I decided to get into cable access as a producer/host. It was a great experience. As I matured in the field, I took a chance on another challenge… Filmmaking. It didn’t last long. I was totally burned out from film production. Years later, I found myself again in the media business. This was the genesis point of my lyfeblood journey.

That year, the big brand was Worldstarr. I thought it was a great business model but I felt it dabbled too much in the hood craziness. I decided I could do something like that but highlight more of the quirky, intelligent and different content people would be attracted to. It was called lyfeblood. The name referred to people’s desire to live their lives according to their natural born talents. It’s that one thing they chose that becomes the vital component of what defines them. I launched the site but I soon found out it was too labor-intensive for me to post the latest videos on the platform. Well, being that our society was fully enthralled by the content creator market, I decided to pivot to social media but with a crowdfunding aspect. Why not build user activity through social media but also have the ability for users to share dollars with each other as a form of financial support. It was bad enough content creators were not being properly compensated for all of the viral videos/content they created. So, I went on a search for a web developer, redesigned the site and relaunched it with a new look.

In the midst of operating the business, several people told me I should try out other media outlets. The primary word was podcasting. In every convo, I kept hearing the same words: You have a voice for it. Well, if a number of folks told me I have it, then why not give it a try. Podcasting just became another hat to style. I called it G-COM radio. It would be about lyfeblood topics, art, news, music, technology and all else under the sun. I quickly became smitten with podcasting. Now, it has become a part of my identity. I can’t see myself without it. As I was handling lyfeblood business and the podcast, I recognized that even though there are millions of people surfing the web, the brand needed a marketing strategy to grab people’s attention. Sure, I promoted through social media and other sites, but I needed a bigger budget to really hit the market hard. This would require serious dollars to get in front of new eyes and ears. The obvious answer to that was to seek out venture capital. I put on my big boy pants and began my mission in acquiring a venture capital deal.

Today, you would think I was complete with the idea of lyfeblood. Nope. I made another pivot into the next iteration of the internet… Web3. I was always intrigued by Web3 and knew it was always going to be incorporated into the company’s business model. Eventually, it was hard to avoid the obvious. I made the decision to pivot again into this hot new digital landscape. Lyfeblood has now been transformed into a social media DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). DAO’s are decentralized organizations that do not have a centralized authority and are fully transparent. Smart contracts codify the rules and the organization’s processes. There is voting, proposals and decisions made to improve the DAO. In the lyfeblood design, it will be permissioned. This was decided because the very first DAO was hacked and millions of dollars were stolen. Lyfeblood would be looking towards incorporating a DEX (decentralized exchange) and NFT marketplace within the platform. I then thought how could I be different from the other platforms like Coinbase and Opensea? Well, why try to reinvent the wheel! The spirit of lyfeblood has never changed. I knew just as much as the next U.S. citizen that our society was falling apart in healthcare, housing, and wages. These conversations have been happening for years among many people from a variety of backgrounds. It’s the proverbial boiling frog scenario.

How can lyfeblood do things differently? I knew what we established would have to feed back to its users. This characteristic is an integral part of lyfeblood’s mission statement. Coinbase, NFT marketplaces, and legacy financial institutions all are stating they’re making billions of dollars in months. If you take a traditional bank that’s been in operation way before you and I were born, you’ll discover they’ve been making continuous profits from decade to decade. Where is all that profit going? We have no idea. In terms of lyfeblood, how can we generate that same ocean of revenue but also provide for the very people that allowed the company to become a trillion dollar entity in the first place? Regenerative economics. This is where we feed back a portion of the money generated to go towards programs that improve people’s quality of life. When you improve peoples’ living standards, you create a space for people to actively feed back into a system that provided them with those very opportunities.

What I’m most proud of is my resilience in this business. I’m still here. It hasn’t been an easy journey. With the understanding that black founders only get 1% of funding, I still push to fulfill my purpose for lyfeblood to be a globally recognized brand. I want every soul to know that there is always a chance to win and achieve what you love as long as you keep going. Even when things don’t entirely go your way, your best cheerleader, your best mentor, and your best partner is yourself. If you stick to your belief and stay focused, opportunities will present themselves to you. Just trust in the process.

As we establish lyfeblood’s footing, another project I’ve been working on will be introduced when the time is right. It will set a new stage on how we, as humans, will interact in the 21st century. It was a born out of “The New Shape Prize” contest created by the Global Challenges Foundation. It is an organization founded by Swedish billionaire Laszlo Szombatfalvy seeking to raise awareness on global catastrophes and crafting a framework to mitigate these man-made threats to humanity. Even though the document didn’t win the contest, I knew it would be an integral part in lyfeblood’s journey within the web3 space. It’s called Pangeon. A different look at a modern global governance structure connecting all countries and nations around the world. I look forward to sharing more as lyfeblood matures as a brand.

The main thing I want people to know is that we all have a chance to change things. Anything you desire can be created right here in this lyfeblood space. The only limitation is yourself. What do you want to improve? What works best for you and your community? It can all happen right here… on lyfeblood.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson I had to unlearn was that having a business means I automatically have people’s time. It doesn’t. People are flooded with responsibility, trauma, happiness (where they can find it) and heartache. They don’t need to turn to you to see what you have to sell or promote. I had to unlearn that it’s not personal with people. It’s the way of the world and there is so much that takes a chunk of people’s attention. All is fair in not just love and war but also business. You have to have tons of humility and understand that you are not important.

I remember 2 instances in my past that relate to what I had to unlearn today. I had my first event when I was 20/21 years old in Brooklyn. I partnered with a friend from Sony who did street marketing. She provided posters, CD samplers and an assortment of other materials to distribute. I went to mostly every store in the local area. I knew it was going to come off. We were both excited for the big night. The event arrived and we waited. We waited. No one showed. It crushed me. I felt like a failure. I stayed away from event organizing for years. In another story, while being a part of a weekly live event in Manhattan, I decided one night to display my skills as an MC. The people in the crowd were in full-on conversation with each other while previous artists had their chance. To me, I felt that wasn’t a good sign. If people are talking while you’re performing then it’s a lost opportunity. Well, when it was my time to get on, I nervously grabbed the mic from the stand. I didn’t even remember where I was but I rapped my bars. The steady low-rumble of words from the crowd slowly became silent. I was young and nervous. I thought I was failing. All I could think of was to get through my bars… and I did. My time ended. I returned the mic and was unsure what had happened. After years of going back to that night, I finally understood I had the crowd. When the talking decibels drop and people are listening, then you have them. I had the crowd and I didn’t even know it because of my nervousness. I missed my moment.

The point of bringing up these two situations is to show that things don’t happen when you want them. You don’t decide when it happens and then it snaps into existence. Life and business are a journey of many losses and wins. It’s a series of life lessons that show you what you need to do and what not to do. You are not important. You are not GOD. Success is something that is a chain of events of misses and wins. You take those two experiences and strategize how wins can be utilized to your benefit when they arrive. When you decide to go somewhere by public transportation, you have an idea of your arrival time. When it doesn’t happen, you become angry you’re late. In anger, you wonder why being late happened to you. Well, it was supposed to happen. It happened to you and many others on the train. Accept your loss. Accept that you are not owed people’s time and move forward. I had to unlearn my own self-importance and life will happen when it’s ready. Just know to be ready when “the ready” arrives though. LOL

Have you ever had to pivot?

 

At the time when I was developing my next documentary, I started to have reservations about the direction I was going professionally. My treatment was done. My whiteboard was full of notes, ideas, wording, etc… All I needed was funding to produce the film. I was working diligently on various entries to organizations that would fund my film. And one day, I stopped. Even though I adored filming, I knew that it wasn’t where my energies should be. I don’t know why I felt like that. I just knew I had a bigger purpose to fulfill. I thought, “What does a person do once they absorbed enough knowledge in a particular subject matter?” Ok, so a person knows… and now what? People will still deal with crushing rents, car notes, wicked student loan debt or trying to have enough in the budget to eat for the week. Besides, the fact that the industry was crowded with doc filmmakers all trying to go through the same door helped me move in another direction. I knew that I wanted to have a bigger impact on the world. I chose the money business. As time went on, the idea slowly crept into my head on how it would work. To think, I once envisioned myself doing film well into my gray-haired years. How things change…

Regardless of how much you know or how immense your idea, someone will always need money to execute that idea properly.  It was a 180-degree turn away from filmmaking and I knew my peers would wonder why the sudden shift. I just put down the camera and picked up the pen to draw out my plan. I’ve learned to listen to my gut. I don’t always get it right but you have to develop the ability to listen to your inner voice. Never be afraid to restart. You alone will have to figure out how to move. No one else can do that for you including your loved ones. Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. Dig your heels deep and try out anything. It’s better to find solace in what gets you going. Focus and fully commit. You only have one life. You might as well make it the greatest experience you can while you’re here.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lyfeblood.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lyfeblood/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LyfebloodRunsThick
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nova-phoenix-86319440/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lyfeblood
• Youtube: Lyfeblood.com/GCOM radio/DS Ent.

Image Credits
Photography by Chiney Lee

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