Gianina Skarlett

Gigi is the Founder, CEO & Lead Engineer of CTW. She is passionate about education, innovation, the Web3 space & an incredible community builder. She’s spoken at SXSW, NFTLA, GGF with Eva Longoria, Crypto Business Podcast & recently named by Forbes a top NFT Latin American Influencer.
Gigi is the first Latin women-led project to achieve sold-out in less than 24 hours.

Where did the idea for Crypto Tech Women come from?

After researching and learning about the Web3 market, a few things piqued my interest. There were few NFT brands or initiatives where women felt welcome, and even fewer were committed to bringing women on board and providing them with the tools they needed to participate in Web 3. Helping the Web3 curious bridge the gap between web2 and web3 so they can get a job in the Web3 industry can be a life-changing experience, particularly financially. The job growth in the web3 industry is 51 times greater than the national average, with a very high earning potential. I also couldn’t sit back and do nothing while minorities in Web3 were already falling behind.

That’s where the idea of CTW came from, a community-centric brand created with a mission to educate and onboard women and non-binary to participate in web3 by creating ways to onboard them and everyone through education and fun experiences.

What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?

My ability to be productive each day depends on my ability to prepare and balance my personal and professional obligations. I usually meditate as soon as I wake up in the morning to free my mind and approach the day with a fresh perspective. After meditation, I eat a high-protein breakfast, and then I leave to begin my “work” day.

I break up my day into blocks to ensure I complete what I have planned for the week to make my day productive. I enjoy setting up my sprints and using a scrum board to manage my workload. In terms of calls, I try to keep all call blocks together because I think having uninterrupted time to concentrate on what you’re trying to do is one of the most excellent ways to be effective.

How do you bring ideas to life?

As straightforward as it may seem, I prefer to take notes with just a pen and paper in a dim environment to bring ideas to life. When I consider an idea, I first see the overall outcome I want to achieve before beginning to break it down into more manageable components. Reverse engineering ideas are something I enjoy doing because, at my core, I’m a software engineer. Make sure to immerse yourself in your idea if you want to bring it to life. Consider every facet of your idea; as you break it down on paper, everything will suddenly make sense. At that point, you can create an execution plan.

What’s one trend that excites you?

The power of the Web3 movement and NFTs are a very exciting trend for me. Beyond the art, digital collectibles, known as non-fungible tokens, are establishing a framework for companies and creators to engage with their audience in entirely new ways.

As this movement is just starting, creating token-gated experiences for your members to broaden the possibilities of creativity and connection keeps me excited for the future.

What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?

Using my scrum board to keep track of everything I need to do is one habit that increases my productivity. I don’t believe everyone needs a scrum board; perhaps a to-do list will suffice for many.

However, for me, being able to set deadlines, estimate tasks, and monitor how well I am adhering to my estimates helps me determine whether or not I am procrastinating or taking longer than I should be for certain tasks.

What advice would you give your younger self?

I would advise the younger version of myself to keep dreaming and never stop learning. I’ve always had ambitious goals, and while I wasn’t sure how I’d get there, I’ve always known I would.

The little Venezuelan girl who never felt like she fit in had always wanted to learn more and help others along the way. She would be very proud of what we have accomplished, but we are not yet done!

Remember, keep challenging yourself, and believe that anything is possible.

Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.

A college degree does not reflect a person’s intelligence.
As a Latina, I’ve seen many of my friends who couldn’t afford a college education succeed in life because they had a passion for learning and found ways to achieve their goals without a degree.

Anyone passionate and self-motivated enough can design the life they want.

As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?

Listen to those around me. This may entail listening to my team or to my community members/customers. To improve both your leadership style and your product, you must be able to sit down and listen to others’ opinions.

You may better grasp how to build a relationship with your consumers and raise their satisfaction by listening to what they have to say. Maintaining alignment with your team and building closer relationships relies on listening to them.
Listen to those around me. This may entail listening to my team or to my community members/customers. To improve both your leadership style and your product, you must be able to sit down and listen to others’ opinions.

You may better grasp how to build a relationship with your consumers and raise their satisfaction by listening to what they have to say. Maintaining alignment with your team and building closer relationships relies on listening to them.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?

Consistency – Things are quiet in the early stages of starting a business. Because we started with no community, no pre-existing clients, and no followers, being consistent in our communication, branding, and showing up every day was what set us apart from the hundreds of other companies in the same industry that failed. Show up every day for one customer as you would for a thousand.

What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?

Setting very ambitious goals and timelines was one of my mistakes. Even though this was my first venture, I wanted to do everything as quickly as possible when I launched my business. I had set a lofty goal of revealing our 8k collection in less than 24 hours after it had sold out.

These images were created using code and layers. Long story short, due to the size of the images that the artist team delivered to me, my older computer couldn’t handle the process of creating the 8,888 images. As a result, I had to find someone else to run this script, which took around 6 hours to complete and occasionally crashed at the 3-4 hour mark. I found an engineer who could assist with this, and we had many points of failure as the script crashed multiple times, delaying our reveal.

We overcame this by being honest and transparent with the community and buyers about the delay and expanding the timeline we had committed to make space for failure.

What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?

One business idea I have is to start a content agency that uses computer-generated influencers to create social media video content for your clients in any language they require!

I’ve seen some companies create these AI realistic models, and if you can figure out how to make them able to create content for companies that need content creators, I believe this will be a forever booming business.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?

The renewal of my RescueTime yearly membership (which is actually less than $100) was the best money I’ve recently spent.

One of the most valuable things we have in life is time. Identifying what I do with my time and creating structures for when to spend on leisure or work has been beneficial to me.

What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive?

One piece of software that helps me stay productive is RescueTime! I previously mentioned using scrum boards to hold myself accountable for the work that needs to be done and the amount of time I spend on each task.

One of the ways I know how much time I’m spending on what I’m doing is to use RescueTime, which tracks my active time on the computer and categorizes it. It assists me in determining what is interfering with my work so that I can correct it.

What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?

“Principles” by Ray Dalio is one book I recommend to all entrepreneurs, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to be more effective in life or work.

I liked the idea of really analyzing how we make decisions. Are they based on emotional reactions? Or do we have a multi-step process for analyzing the decisions we make? Being radically honest and radically transparent are two keys to success that I learned from this book.

Instead of hiding our successes and failures, radical truthfulness entails being open to discussing them. Radical transparency leads back to radical truthfulness.

What is your favorite quote?

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
– Peter Drucker

Key Learnings:

• Maintain consistency in order to achieve your goals, even if you believe no one is watching.
• Listen to your customers, especially any dissatisfied ones; they will show you what you need to fix in your business to attract more customers.
• Read about new trends and how to apply them to your business; your next big idea could be just around the corner.