Female Lead NFT Projects You Need to Know About with Kayla Kane
Spotify Podcast Episode: Female Lead NFT Projects You Need to Know About with Kayla Kane
In episode 12 of Freedom with NFT’s, our guest Kayla Kane shares with us about female lead NFT projects you need to know about.
In this episode of Freedom with NFT’s Kayla Kane shares with us:
- Pivoting from being a professional ballerina to NFT
- Time and growth in the NFT space
- Holaplex Project
- Building and empowering Women in NFT Discord server
- Women advocacy
Women lead projects
- Women’s soul cafe
- Bit Baddies
- Gloom Punk Club
- Boss Beauties
About Kayla Kane:
Kayla Kane started her journey in the NFT space in July of this year, where she was brought on to help a project called Holaplex, previous to her interest in crypto, she was a professional ballerina who was constantly surrounded by powerful and passionate women and you can see why she carried that over into the NFT space. And it has inspired her to start a discord server for women and NFTs, which now has over 400 members in just a few weeks. Kayla is passionate about empowering women in NFTS and helping artists who want to get into the Solana blockchain.
[00:00:00] Lauren Turton: I’m really passionate about supporting other women in the NFT space because there aren’t that many of us and today’s guest it’s K_K has a passion for supporting women in the NFT community as well. She started her journey in the NFT space in July of this year, where she was brought on to help a project called a Holaplex previous to her interest in crypto, she was a professional ballerina who was constantly surrounded by powerful, passionate women.
And you can see why she carried that over into the NFT space. And it’s been apparent to her how much the NFT community was dominated by men. And it has inspired her to start a discord server for women and NFTs, which now has over 400 members in just a few weeks. Kaye is passionate about empowering women in NFTS and helping artists who want to get onto the Solana blockchain.
Welcome to freedom with NFTs power. Are you doing on this lovely afternoon?
[00:01:01] Kayla Kane: I’m doing great. This is really fun. I’m super excited to be here and excited to have this conversation.
[00:01:07] Lauren Turton: I’m really excited about this conversation as well. We got connected with each other on Twitter, and I’ve been watching your journey for a couple of weeks now, and I’m excited to dig into everything that you’re working on.
But before we get into that, I’d like to know a little bit about your background.
[00:01:22] Kayla Kane: Totally. Well, I’m very new to NFTs and the crypto space, I really started getting into that over the summer, before that I was working for a venture technology company, which is how I got my current job status. And before that I was actually a professional ballerina.
That’s what I was doing full-time. I was dancing valley. It was completely different from anything I’m doing now. It’s like a major shift over COVID, which was the main reason why I moved on from that. But I was dancing for 20 plus years of my life and I’m 23 now. So basically my entire life, I was dancing. So I’ve been doing that.
And I also currently in the past four or five years, I’ve been doing fashion influencing. So I have my own business where I help brands advertise their products and help create content. So I have a huge content marketing and influencer background there.
[00:02:16] Lauren Turton: Thank you so much for sharing about your background. My biggest takeaway from that was to have your hands in multiple revenue streams, and to also be open to when new things come your way.
So I’m curious, when did you first hear about NFTS?
[00:02:34] Kayla Kane: I heard about NFTs at the beginning of COVID or at the beginning of this year during COVID that when the boom kind of happened around January, February, I started hearing it on the news. And I didn’t really think anything of it since I wasn’t in the space.
The only thing I really knew about was Dogecoin and that, that was the thing. And that was pretty much it. And after that, my company that I was at previously Holaplex, we were beginning to start this project and our CEO, Alex, he had this amazing idea and we all started working on it in our free time, on top of our full-time job.
And it spun out into its own thing. And I just been learning all about the community and just really dove head first in this space, over the summer, so around July.
[00:03:23] Lauren Turton: So just a few months in, and I’d like to know a little bit more about your journey since you’ve been in the space and only a few months. And I asked this question because when new people enter the NFT community, I don’t think they realize how time exists in this world. So dive a little bit into what time has been like for you, since you entered the NFT community.
[00:03:49] Kayla Kane: It’s obviously very short amount of time. That feels like you’ve been there forever. Like, I feel like I’ve known about NFTs way longer than I have just because when you do get involved with the space, like, at least from my perspective, I was in it, like full time.
So it feels like I’ve known about it for a while, but things just move so incredibly fast, especially with the Holaplex, the company I’ve been with. We started the project in July and now we have grown exponentially and like three months, it’s just insane to see all of these projects emerging and then popping off.
And it’s absolutely amazing to witness. And it reminds me of the .com boom. When web two really became its thing, is that was huge and moving so quickly. And now we’re seeing this with web three and it’s just awesome.
[00:04:39] Lauren Turton: It is awesome. I want to know a little bit more about the project you’re working on with Holaplex.
[00:04:45] Kayla Kane: Yeah. So Holaplex is on the Solana blockchain. I’m mostly familiar with Solana. I’m still really learning about ether starting my journey there and going to be setting up a wallet soon and all of that. I’m excited. So on Solana, since it’s such a new blockchain, there wasn’t a lot of resources for people who didn’t know how to code to be able to sell NFTS on that blockchain.
So we work with Mediplex to have their standard and be backed by their system, but we basically give people a way to spin up a customized NFT storefront within a couple of minutes. So no code required. Anybody can make one, just really breaking the boundaries and empowering the community to sell. Yeah. So that’s pretty much kind of the high level, what it looks like.
[00:05:29] Lauren Turton: That’s amazing. I’m so glad we’re on this call right now, because I didn’t even know this existed. So now that I can dig into this and tell me a little bit more about your actual role, how do you support this project?
[00:05:39] Kayla Kane: So my role is the digital marketing manager and it’s pretty much my dream job.
I get to talk, chat with the community all day, help with product, help with connecting people to the engineering process that’s going on behind the scenes and doing a lot of, you know, Twitter interaction, we’re doing a lot of stuff on Tiktok. We’re trying to do some documentation for the Solana blockchain, through YouTube.
So it’s all brand new and also moving very quickly. It gets so much fun to interact with everybody in the community. And I’m always learning something new every day, you know, more than you can ask for.
[00:06:13] Lauren Turton: Everyday?
[00:06:13] Kayla Kane: Yeah.
[00:06:15] Lauren Turton: That’s amazing. And I love how you left a world that you are in for over 20 years. Almost as long as you’ve been alive and you’ve pivoted into a space that you didn’t know about and you’re utilizing skills that you did have before, but they’re developing in such a further way.
And something that I keep saying to everyone in my community is that the NFT space needs everyone right now. And you are truly a Testament to that. You were ballerina.
[00:06:49] Kayla Kane: Yeah, it’s completely different.
[00:06:51] Lauren Turton: Completely different. So thank you for sharing about your background, what it is you’re working on now.
And I’m curious, are there any other projects that you’re super excited?
[00:07:00] Kayla Kane: Right now, I’m really excited diving more into the women and NFT side of everything. So I recently started a discord server for women in NFTs because I felt as though it was really hard to find other women in the space and we didn’t really have any resources to help support this people in the community.
So recently from that, I’ve just been really grasping onto a lot of women run projects and trying to lift those up and support them as much as possible. There’s been a few that I’ve been really, really loving and excited about. There’s so many amazing artists and marketers, entrepreneurs, engineers. So many people who are just absolutely killing the space right now.
[00:07:43] Lauren Turton: Let’s get specific. What are some of your favorite women led projects?
[00:07:47] Kayla Kane: That’s a great question. There’s a couple of different ones. I would say women’s soul cafe is one that I’m really excited about. That should be launching should soon. They have some cute anime, you know, profile picture type NFTs. And that’s a woman led project.
There’s also a bit baddies, which is a project of women and the gays, you know, empowering women, lifting people up. Bit Baddies has been really cool. They actually have an Holaplex store. So I’ve been really involved with their team and that’s been super fun. Another project I’m loving is gloom punk club, and that one’s been super duper popular on Solana.
That’s 10,000 hand drawn gloom punk NFTs. And a lot of people use them for profile pictures and stuff like that. Amazing artist, really cool stuff. And there is one other one boss beauties,
[00:08:41] Lauren Turton: Boss Beauties. I just put a bid in, on one of their NFTs.
[00:08:45] Kayla Kane: No way. That’s awesome. See, I’m still trying to get my Ethereum wallet set up so I can bid on OpenSea, but her collection is beautiful and I love the way that she empowers women through her art.
[00:08:58] Lauren Turton: I agree that project is really special and I’m hoping to get my hands on one of their NFTs so I can get involved even further with their community. Thank you so much for sharing these projects. So women’s soul cafe, Bit Baddies, gloom punk club and boss beauties. So these are four projects women led. And I’m going to dig even deeper into these for those listening to this episode today, I also recommend you dig deeper in these projects as well.
And tell me a little bit more about your project, what you’re doing to support women. Tell me where it’s at now and what your goals are with this.
[00:09:35] Kayla Kane: So right now we have 400 plus women in our women in NFTs discord server. We’ve gone through a vetting process to make sure that it’s all women and it’s very safe space for people to interact.
So I really want to continue to build that space and help support anybody who’s involved with that. I’m also looking to be involved with more things like this podcast, Twitter spaces, stuff like that, to connect with more people in the community and really not just empower other women to be an NFTs, but also educate other people about women led projects and how they can, you know, support women, artists in the space.
I’m a huge person for women advocacy and women’s rights. And that’s always been a huge thing that I’ve loved being involved with. And I’ve definitely want to continue to grow what I’ve started and support as many people in the space as possible.
[00:10:27] Lauren Turton: I love that you’re doing this. And again, circling back to where you were previously in your life, a ballerina. I’m sure that what you’re doing now, it ties directly to that. And this circles back to what we said earlier, the NFT community needs all types of experience and expertise. We need everyone to get involved and you can pivot what it is you’re doing now into this community and make strides very, very quickly.
Earlier you shared with us that Holaplex and only a few months has grown exponentially. And when you hear things like that in the regular world, it would have probably taken double, maybe triple the time to do what you have done. So that just shows how quickly things happen in an empty space and how untapped it is.
I’m curious to know any recommendations that you would give for someone who’s just dipping their toes in the water in NFTS.
[00:11:27] Kayla Kane: That’s a really good question. And I think there’s so many different answers that you could have for that question. The first thing that comes to mind for me is just to interact with the space.
I mean, the more you interact with the space, the more you naturally learn from others. And you’re able to kind of pick up on all of the different nuances of each blockchain and what projects are popping off, what future events are happening is just being in it, basically being on Twitter. The more you are on Twitter, the more you’re probably going to learn.
And it’s been really cool to see social media be so educational in that way, especially in this space.
[00:12:04] Lauren Turton: I know for me, when I first entered the space for me, the date was August 17th. That’s when I was like, all right, I’m going to take action and get involved. And it was very simple. It was just being on Twitter.
Posting on Twitter, following people on Twitter, reading the articles that they’re posting, joining their discords, joining their Twitter spaces and listening in. And I was able to learn so much in just one week of doing that, which led to me minting my first project, which led to me being gifted, a happyland gummy bears and becoming a part of their community.
And it led to so many things because I took action. And so I love that you shared that because it’s as simple as that is taking action in the space and just getting on Twitter.
[00:12:57] Kayla Kane: Yeah, definitely 100%. And that’s really the main way that people connect. Right? That’s the main platform people are on and even just scrolling through Twitter every day, I’m always picking up new things.
[00:13:11] Lauren Turton: I agree. Well, before we wrap this episode up, is there anything else you’d like to share with the freedom with NFTs audience?
[00:13:18] Kayla Kane: Just that you can be in the space and succeed in this space, no matter who you are. As long as you’re motivated and dedicated, you’re going to succeed and we’re all gonna make it.
[00:13:28] Lauren Turton: Yes, we are all going to make it. So how can we get a hold of you? How can we keep in contact?
[00:13:35] Kayla Kane: Speaking of Twitter, my Twitter handle is it’s K_K is where I do a lot of my interacting. If you want to follow Holaplex, it’s Hola is in Spanish hi,. Plex and I’ve run their Twitter as well. So I’m over there.
We have a discord server women in NFT server. If you look up my Twitter username, I have a Google form application in my bio, so anybody can join just getting people to make sure there’s no creepy people will turn to get into our women’s space.
[00:14:05] Lauren Turton: I love that. I love the vetting process. Thank you for doing that and providing a safe space.
Well, I am honored to have you on today’s episode of freedom with NFTs. That’s all for this episodes and leading up to NFT NYC. I’m going to be dropping as many episodes as possible, but after that episodes will drop every Wednesday at 5:00 AM eastern standard time. Please subscribe. Rates and share these episodes with your community.
The more people that get involved with NFTs, the faster the space grows and the more opportunities will come from it. And so I would appreciate your support by sharing that’s all for now. I’ll see you on the next one
Connect with Kayla Kane:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaylakane/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayla-kane
Connect with your host, Lauren Turton:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LaurenTurton_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelaurenturton
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurenturton/
Website: https://freedomwithnfts.com
