545 Cricket Lee:

What if you knew … knew with 100% certainty … that the dress or jeans you’re about to buy online… fit you perfectly; as if custom crafted for you. No more quesswork; no more unworn clothes cluttering your closets, no more returns. Sounds like a dream, right?

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring inventor and entrepreneur who has lead the way in what she calls “body data science” poised to potentially revolutionize fashion.

Cricket Lee is founder and CEO of Botasci on a mission to change the fashion world with her unique apparel fitting solution that includes body shape applications and online data profile algorithms to enable women to buy online without try ons and costly returns.

I can’t wait for you to hear Cricket’s story and all about her invention. First…

Cricket Lee, like many “entrepioneers” inventing something out of whole cloth, has spent much of her entrepreneurial journey “ahead of her time”- with an uphill battle to convince an entire industry – fashion designers, manufacturing, retailers, the whole supply chain – to change their ways.

Cricket saw that most clothes are not patterned to fit a diverse array of body types, leading to more than $4bn dollars worth of returns of ill-fitting garments.

Cricket created “universal fit standard software” and a “shop by body shape” methodology based on years of research and development … to help women shop without try-ons, match styles that complement their body type, and avoid costly fashion mistakes.

Her system is called BOTASCI, when applied properly, has proven through research, to reduce returns by 75% and fit 95% of women.

It provides all size and shape base patterns for full body application including tops, bottoms and dresses and an online data profile of customer fit. Today she explains how the fashion industry still uses outdated methods, and why with Coronavirus accelerating the need to shop for clothes online, the timing is right for her solution.  That’s not making it easy for her, of course, to change an industry stuck in a long-standing pattern.

Today we talk about what it takes to stay the course with a disruptive innovation, the challenges for women seeking capital investment for businesses that primarily address women’s concerns, and much more.

Take your phone out, download the Podopolo app, and find my Wings group, where you can comment on this episode, ask questions, and much more. Share your frustrations with fashion, and how you’d like to shop.

Now back to Cricket Lee – the inventor and entrepreneur behind Botta-sci, her unique apparel fitting solution that includes body shape applications and online data profile algorithms to enable women to buy online without try ons and costly returns.

Cricket’s system works so well that the initial system her legacy team created was chosen by Good Housekeeping as making the best fitting jean in America.

So let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Cricket Lee.

Melinda Wittstock:        Cricket, welcome to Wings.

Cricket Lee:                        Well, hi Melinda. I’m so excited to be with you here today. So this is going to be fun.

Melinda Wittstock:        It is.

Cricket Lee:                        You’re my kind of girl.

Melinda Wittstock:        Well, you’re an inventor which is my kind of girl is someone who actually invents something out of whole cloth. That type of entrepreneurship is rare. It’s difficult. And I want to start with the spark that led you to invent this. It’s amazing.

Cricket Lee:                        Well, it’s been about a 23 year journey and how it started was I was working with the executive of Ford models, the executive director of Ford models on special sizes. And she actually created the first ever Big Beauties modeling agency. And so she went in and headed up special sizes and she wrote a book called HOAX about body types and I was fascinated with her. So I went and packaged her and raised the money and put together her whole program and put her on HSN for three years. And we did really well with body type merchandise clothing, and we had a three-year grant run with that. And then I just started thinking, “Wow, wouldn’t it be cool,” because it was just like knits, mix and match knits for your shape. And I thought, “Wouldn’t it be really cool to take body types and put those in into fashion.”

And boy, I didn’t have any clue what that was going to take, but anyway, in 2001, I started studying it and started making pitches. And my first pitch was with Target and as the senior VP at the time let me go into the stores and study women’s shopping habits. And I would look and watch a woman because it was kind of like at the time, I don’t know if you remember when those really low rise pants were in and if you were over 40, I mean, for, if you weren’t the right shape, if you had any kind of a belly at all, it was a nightmare. So I went through and watch women shop and they would look at Mossimo at the time, which was a really hit brand at Target. And then they would go, “Oh, that’s a little too skimpy for me.”

And they walk into the other department and they were like, “Oh, this is awful.” You know, it was like frump city. So they would walk out of the store. So I started thinking, “Wow, I think style has to do with age at the time.” And anyway, so I started to studying it and I started trying to put body types into it. And I went from there to the big major store. I mean, I always thought putting body shapes in would have to be a mass, big retailer implementation because of the patterns and all of the different things you’d to do with it. So anyway, long story short, I went through six years of development and testing in major stores. I studied 60,000 women. It took about five years to get the study done and figure out how women’s bodies changed by shape.

And they are, it is a global kind of, I would say kind of an ethnic application because girls from the southern half of the globe, they’re darker skin tend to have a bigger booty and girls that are from the north of the equator, tend to be more kind of hourglass to straight up and down. And so those things that I was … as we did that were very fascinating for us. So we came up with three bottom shapes to test with. We went through the five years of testing in Nordstrom, Macy’s, on QVC. When I was on QVC, I sold $700,000 worth of pants in 14 minutes from Jones Apparel. So it was Jones Apparel with the brand I had. And then after that I studied the inside the industry, I did eight brand studies and then 2008 came around and I was ready to go. And the economy fell apart. And there was a cover story-

Melinda Wittstock:        Don’t you hate that? But that’s just part of that’s part of the entrepreneurial journey, right?

Cricket Lee:                        It is. I’m sitting here and I think I’m ready to go. And so the the economy fell apart. So anyway, I put New York aside and left the brains there. There was a story in Wall Street Journal on the cover that said Cricket Lee takes on the fashion industry because I was trying to change the way fashion is made and they kind of, weren’t going to have it, right. So I decided to go build my own brand. I built a little black pant and we sold … It took me several years to put that together, whole new company and everything. I mean, it’s taken me five companies to get that here, honestly.

Melinda Wittstock:        So just on that, the fact that it’s taken you five companies to get to the innovation, I think that’s more normal than people realize like every previous company, Cricket, was your lab for the ultimate innovation. And I think when we look-

Cricket Lee:                        Thank you for saying that.

Melinda Wittstock:        … at entrepreneurs, it’s true though. I mean, it resonates with me because all of us have a life purpose or something that we’re meant to do. And with entrepreneurship, sometimes the timing isn’t right, or the technology is not yet ready to really realize your idea. There’s all sorts of timing issues. There’s lots of learning. And unfortunately our culture is, it’s such an instant culture that we think we have to get it right the first time, when actually entrepreneurship is a journey. And I know it’s true of all my companies. Five companies so far for me too. And I mean the current one, the podcasting network takes in every single thing that I’ve proven out in little bits along the way. So that really resonates with me. And I think it’s an important lesson for so many entrepreneurs who were feeling discouraged. It’s the journey, not the destination.

Cricket Lee:                        Woo. And interestingly enough, you made a quote. You had a question in there about men. And I want to say that unfortunately, the way the financial situation is today, is that it’s all about the profit and the fashion industry doesn’t care about the consumer and neither do the investors. They want that profit. And if it doesn’t come quick, I mean, they’re all over you.

Melinda Wittstock:        And then you’re done.

Cricket Lee:                        Discovery takes time. So what I’ve had to do is just take care of my investors at every stage to get me here. And I know what you mean. It was alive. It took me this. And actually, I sense, and I’m not saying this as a victim or anything, because it’s a great learning for me and I’m embracing it, learning to love it. But I went through three hostile takeovers with people that gave me money from starting in 2014. And because people were trying to get in and get to the profit and get to the IP and kind of take it away from me because it was taking a long time and it was taking a long time because the industry was not ready to adopt it. Until COVID happened, they’re like, “Our fit is our fit. And you know, don’t talk to us about it.”

Melinda Wittstock:        [crosstalk 00:07:44] You needed a pandemic.

Cricket Lee:                        I did.

Melinda Wittstock:        I mean in a way there’s so much innovation going on right now as a result of it. It’s actually sped up, I think, trends that were already there, but if I think, “Wow, I can’t go try things on,” and actually having something that can map to my body where I know it’s going to be good apart from the fact that you’re saving all these retailers online or whatever, huge amounts of money, because you’ve cut their returns, all that kind of stuff. Consumers are happier. It actually seems to me like an everyone wins model, but it took a pandemic to get people there.

Cricket Lee:                        Well, yeah. I mean, I think that the thing is, it’s a consumer thing, to think of not ever having to look at your size again and to think of a software that can look at your body and give you a pattern that’s going to fit your body every time. And then having the brands adopt that pattern instead of doing their own fit, competitive fit, it’s a huge undertaking.

Melinda Wittstock:        It is. So how is that working with the brands? Because say, for instance, you have this technology… Can you then match it to which brands are offering something that fits your body type? What’s the adoption for all the designers and whatnot to actually manufacture stuff that fits the body types?

Cricket Lee:                        Well, what happened along the way is once I started using it, I invented the fit finder. I was the first one to ever do it when I was on QVC. And everybody said, “Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if we had a technology that would lead people to a brand that might fit.” And so that’s the fit tech movement right now. But the problem is the patterns are still being developed off old standards. So the size came from 1890. The standard came from 1952 that was done on 25 year old [inaudible 00:09:52] women. They did a study and they averaged it out and it was Caucasian. So it was all that kind of shape. And then in 1983, Ronald Reagan lifted the standard because it wasn’t working. And then vanity sizing was born. So this replaces all of that.

And I don’t actually have any brand adoption yet. I have to drive the market myself. So I was well on the way of doing that when I went through, like I said, I settled a glitch with investors who really kind of wanted … They all wanted to take the other investors out. Nobody wants to take care of the past. I mean, I don’t understand it. It’s an integrity thing with me. I want everybody who ever helped me to flourish from my idea. So I’ve had to bring them into my pool because it’s a big, it’s a huge thing. I don’t mind taking care of everybody, they took care of me. So anyway, the brands are still reticent to give up their own personal fit, even though the problem there’s 400, what is there? Four billion tons of waste of unworn garments in landfills, and there’s 546 billion a year in returns. You would think that would matter to them, but it’s so in their system, right? They just take that into account. I can’t imagine how you can run a business with 50% returns, or 40% return.

Melinda Wittstock:        So is there opportunity now with up and coming fashion designers, with non established brands, because it would be their competitive advantage to be able to disrupt the ones that are unwilling to move in this direction.

Cricket Lee:                        There absolutely is, but right now I’m raising money to get to market. I finally found a great manufacturer, made in the USA, fabric and the products all made in USA, to partner with me to get a brand, my daughter and I, to market by hopefully January or February. So we’re raising money right now to get that done. We don’t need a whole lot, but once I can get that done, then I can add, I’m going to have five bottom shapes because we tested three. We learned what was missing. Five bottom shapes, four top shapes. So the top and the bottom will mix and match for dresses. So in essence, you’ll be able to go through our online body calculator. Your body will go into our fit profile forever, and we will keep updating your body, but the brands have to use access sheets through our fit profile.

So that’s how we protect the investors. And that’s how we protect the brand because people try to cut corners. I licensed it out to a company a few years ago and they were trying to cut corners and so it’s not being delivered the way it’s supposed to be delivered. So I not interested in really being associated with it anymore, but it’s really got to be delivered a certain way. And we know how to do it. My original team’s still with me, some of them have been with me for like 15 years. So we’re ready to go. And I do believe you’re right. I think it’s not going to be the old guard because they’re the ones that are going out of business, right? It’s going to be the young, innovative people that are going to be willing to do it, but I’ve got to build that pipeline first. Right?

So that’s what we’re working on now is getting into market. So by January or February we can, my daughter and I can get out and say, “Hey, you don’t have to look at your size anymore.” I mean, it is a consumer message, right? Don’t think about it. Don’t worry about how it makes you feel when you shop. [inaudible 00:13:33] returns anymore. Just try this and then help us get the brands on board. So it will be a consumer movement. It’s been proven to be an [crosstalk 00:13:45]

Melinda Wittstock:        Yeah. I mean, it’s an amazing thing when I think about all the different kinds of notes that you’re striking here, because on one hand, your innovation helps all these brands, fashion, labels, retailers, everybody, it helps their bottom line. Meantime, there’s also the environmental impact that you’re solving. And then you’re making consumers much happier. And I think that women now are kind of coming into their own in entrepreneurship. There’s a big energy shift going on and that when women entrepreneurs come at it with these big innovations, we tend to think a little bit more matrix-y, right, about how all these different pieces of different innovations can be applied in new ways to address big problems that we experience in our own lives.

And then however, when we go to the investment community, they’re all still thinking in an old way. So there’s a disconnect for now, but I do think think your timing, even though it’s been a long time to get here, your timing right now feels to me to be perfect.

Cricket Lee:                        Yes. I agree with you. And I think that to your point, there is a lot of disruption that has to happen in the egocentric driven industries, but you can see the cars and you can see a lot of consumer centricity going on out there, but that’s not happening in fashion, really, and entertainment yet. Well, it is. It’s starting to happen in entertainment, but in fashion, it’s still kind of a, “We’re going to make it and then you’re going to buy it.” There’s not a, “Oh, this is what our customer wants.” There’s just a lot of disconnect. [crosstalk 00:16:00]

Melinda Wittstock:        Part of the issue though, with the fashion world is that they’ve made their money for years just switching. “Okay, this year, it’s yellow next year, it’s purple. This year, it’s this low rider jeans, this year it’s high-rise jeans.” So everybody has to replenish their wardrobe each season. And if you don’t have the latest, you’re sort of made to feel bad somehow. It really preys upon women’s sense of lack of value. And there’s so many issues around fashion, right? So if a woman could go out and feel like she looks good, because she’s got the right thing for her body, and that’s going to be her thing, like that’s her second skin, if you will. And it suits her and it makes her look good and it makes her feel confident. She may not have to buy as much, or she’s not going to be as torqued around by all the kind of trends. So this year it’s this, this year it’s that, that’s your, and if you don’t fit into it, that’s your fault.

Cricket Lee:                        Well, well, I think yes, that has been the mentality and I think they like to keep us confused so we’ll buy more. But I think the day at the designers can now choose a body and the attributes that go with that body type. For example, let’s take me and Oprah, for example. Okay. So Oprah is a, got a booty, right. A big booty, and she’s going to wear a belted [inaudible 00:17:41] she’s going to wear fitted things on the top and so forth. And that’s her style because that’s what works on her body. Whereas I’m the straighter shape, right. And I grow in the middle. So I’m going to wear tunics and leggings and stuff like that that I think, make me look better.

So if you actually go online and the clothes you look at are going to look good on your body because they’ve got your shape in them and they’ve got your product attributes in it, it really makes a whole new playground for designer, like a whole new playground. [crosstalk 00:18:15] as much, but it’s going to fit you. And it’s going to look good. It’s not going to be like 28 things in your closet that you can’t wear.

Melinda Wittstock:        Well, so a designer, I suppose, could double down on a certain type of body. This is for you, if you are X, Y, Z, right. And then that makes tremendous sense.

So, Cricket, take us through the technology of like how this actually works.

Cricket Lee:                        Well, it’s actually not a technology. It’s actually a science. I studied 300,000 women, studied their bodies, about 60,000 women to understand how the body changes. And then 300,000 transactions to prove that we could eliminate what they call bracket purchases, meaning we pick your size and then you buy it and it works. Right? So that’s that. And so the way it works is that we take you through a series of questions and photos of your body. Questions for the bottom, two or three questions for the top, and then [inaudible 00:19:40] side of your body. And then you go into a fit … and inside that fit profile, you can put in your preferences, whatever you like. And so that fit profile stays with us. So you can see that’s a bit of an issue with brands, but they’ll get over it.

That stays with us. So then now the brand adopts the system and we provide them with the patterns and the sizing rules and the standardization requirements. It has to be co-branded and so forth. So that way the woman always knows. You know when you get a computer and it’s got Intel inside on it, or you buy Lycra or you buy [inaudible 00:20:22] it’s always got that little logo on it. Well, that’s co-branding and we’re an inside brand.

Melinda Wittstock:        You’re the Intel inside.

Cricket Lee:                        We’re a consumer driven inside brand. We’re the Intel inside the clothing. They have to use our patterns, they have to use our rules.

Melinda Wittstock:        Yeah. Got it. And so what’s your model then? Do they just license this? Or how does this work for you, for your business model?

Cricket Lee:                        Yes. It’s a SaaS model. It’s a royalty licensing model. So they pay us a royalty for everything that sells. They have to pay us a percentage, but we’ve already saved them. We’ll look at if they’re running 30 to 40% returns, right. And our license fee is say, 5%. They’ve already saved all of that. We save half the product development costs and we actually recover 10% loss sales. So it’s whatever they’re going to pay us is nothing compared to what they’re going to make on it. But that’s how it works. And so they can make and ship the clothing directly to the customer. They own the customer. Once they have enough product that can put our widget up in [inaudible 00:21:26] so if it’s a big retailer, they can put it up in their site and they just, for you to use it, but they need to go through that training with us and that adaptation because they have to change those wheels inside their company to be able to deliver it properly.

But it really works. And we’ve tested it on eight brands. We’ve certified over 13 factories worldwide. We’re starting our own little, we’re going to offer a jean and a top or two in the beginning for you to try it. And then once you’re in the system, then we’ll start making, providing those algorithms to the brands. Because if you stop and think about it, if we know we have 300,000 women that are this body type, and we take that to a brand that might want to approach 40 year old Caucasian women, and they’ll be able to just go crazy with it. Right. And it’ll be available in our shop by shape platform.

Melinda Wittstock:        So, I could see a time where just even with scanning technology and whatnot, you could literally scan your body and your size and see exactly what a store has that you could be like, literally matched to what’s in their inventory that works for you almost instantaneously.

Cricket Lee:                        Well, Melinda, they do have a lot of filters out there. And the reason those mirrors in the stores, those digital shopping mirrors that they’re putting in front of you, they will show you in a garment on the mirror. Doesn’t mean that the measurements inside the garment are going to fit your body. So it’s a real disconnect for customers because it doesn’t really work.

Melinda Wittstock:        So how can you take your system and innovate that kind of shopper reality?

Cricket Lee:                        Because our algorithms, every brand can adapt their own AI and use our core data and add to it for competitive advantage. So some of the brands can go, “Oh man, I’m dressing that little girl with the big booty, the small bust, the little sun dresses that are flouncy and spaghetti strap.” And another manufacturer might say, “Hey, I’m going to go after the girls that are kind of straight up and down center.” So it’s that simple in application for the preferences. And I know there’s a company out there that’s got a whole bunch of merchandisers, but they’re just going through product that already exists and trying to find something that fits you and works for your body, but it’s still being made on that old hourglass premise.

Melinda Wittstock:        Got it. So I want to pick up on something you said a little bit earlier about all the earlier investors and how the newer money in always tries to push the older money out. This is an ongoing thing. And just really appreciate you for saying you’re looking after everybody. In practice what’s that like. Because it’s really difficult. Everybody early in gets diluted down or pushed out or whatever. And so how are you actually doing that?

Cricket Lee:                        I will have to say it’s a God thing because all I do is get up every morning with my dream. It has been rather, it’s been very difficult because I mean, they’ve made some real attempts to wipe everybody out. But somehow, for example, this last time I didn’t write down any of my trade secrets. So I still have everything in my head of what I’ve been doing. And everybody kept saying, “Write them down, write them down.” We never did. So now me and my team, we can go forward with we want to do, because we never wrote them down. And the early patents that were done, like in 2004, don’t really matter anymore because they’re not really relevant [inaudible 00:25:44] and they don’t even mention shapes. So it’s amazing how the universe looks after you when you’re in the space of integrity, intention of integrity.

And my investors trust me. Most of [inaudible 00:26:00] those that really get it because of me. They still trust me. And I even have, it’s just an amazing story. And I don’t really want to get into it at this moment. I’m just saying that I have learned that in my life, if I don’t want to be negative, I must embrace every learning. And I must love and shower love on every person that’s contributed to me because these are great lessons for me. I mean, Oh my God, do you think I’m going to study the fine line of contract in the future? Yes. I’m creative, I thought people were doing that, right. So, I mean, you just can’t … You have to be responsible for yourself and have to stay on point and make sure you’ve got the right people. Now I know the right people to put around me, but I didn’t always.

I did my best because I was bootstrapping. We’d raise money and then it’d fall apart. We raised money and then it’d fall apart. I never was able to interest what I would call institutional investors. Because first of all, didn’t like the idea of other investors, so many investors that I had. And secondly, they didn’t believe the fashion industry was ever going to adopt it. Well, the fashion industry will tell you they’re never going to adopt it, but I’m telling you, Melinda, they won’t have any choice when women are saying, “Hey, if you don’t use this, I’m not going to-”

Melinda Wittstock:        It’s consumer driven. I’m sitting here listening to you and saying, “Oh God, that’s how I would want to shop.” I mean, once enough people know about this and it’s available and whatnot, it is truly disruptive. But something you said a moment ago, though, of really being in integrity with yourself and really embracing these lessons, often the failures are the lesson. I like to say that when the lesson is learned, the experience is no longer necessary. It requires a lot of trust in yourself.

Cricket Lee:                        That’s good. It’s a good one.

Melinda Wittstock:        Yeah. Trust in yourself, trust in the universe, even when you can’t quite see the path ahead that you know that you’re being guided. Now, this is if you’re conscious, if you actually embrace kind of consciousness in business, which I think more and more people are learning to do, there’s a providence there, right, when you’re in alignment and when you’re in integrity. When you’re really in gratitude for all those lessons, things come together at the right time, kind of the universe has a plan for you with or without your cooperation, right? And it feels like that on your journey, that despite all the stuff that we all have as entrepreneurs, there’s so many swings and roundabouts, that you’re in the right place at the right time.

Cricket Lee:                        I think also there’s this whole shift into, from the Piscean age, which is patriarchal and male dominated into the Aquarian age, which is female and matriarchal dominated. I think the matriarchal paradigm of embracing and loving and nurturing, and that’s the paradigm that’s coming in now and the patriarchal, which is contractual, I have to own everything and I have to have all of it myself. I don’t know. I don’t think they intend it to be that way. It’s just the way it is. And I think this new [inaudible 00:29:38] we’re headed into is more female and I’m finding every day more and more, I have like three investor meetings with women in the next two or three weeks that are very sustainable oriented, very consumer oriented, trying to help other women.

I’m amazed at the women helping women that’s happening right now. It’s just wonderful to me. And I think you’re right. It’s part of it, it’s just time. And I think we’re all, I think the pandemic has been a good thing in that we’ve been able to be home with our families and nurture ourselves a little bit better. And now, as we got back out, we can look to see how do we really want to play? We get to choose now, you know?

Melinda Wittstock:        Very true. There’s always a lesson from these things. I think the message from the virus was, “Okay, stop. Look within.” Right. But it was also shining a light on all the things that were wrong or incorrect or out of alignment or broken, like whether within ourselves or being on the wrong path, that kind of thing, or society as a whole, and in pandemics historically, there’s always massive change that happens as a result of them because it’s a pattern interrupt that allows people to think differently because their circumstances suddenly change. And so it sort of opens the mind in an interesting way. Great businesses are the overnight successes, right? I’m putting air quotes around that, really tend to find their way in times like these.

Cricket Lee:                        Yeah. I’m ever thankful for my journey even though some days I get up and I think, “Oh my God, how can I do another day?” Like the stuff that’s coming at me, and I just have to embrace it and know it’s all great. And it’s just my time. It’s just my time now I think for this to really come together, because like you said, women love it. And I’m thankful for women like you [crosstalk 00:32:18]

Melinda Wittstock:        Right, It’s the whole reason for this podcast is encapsulated in our hashtag, which is lift as we climb. So when women buy from each other and invest in each other and mentor each other and promote each other and do all of that, right, we’re unstoppable. But it requires us to get out of scarcity and into abundance with each other. When one woman succeeds, we all do. And so there’s a shift going on in that respect as well with women really needing to be much more supportive of each other, rather than competitive with each other. Everybody can win. We had a retreat last year associated with this podcast Wings of the Empowered Woman. And that was the whole ethos of that retreat. And honestly, after the retreat, women did $500,000 of business with each other, which is amazing.

Cricket Lee:                        Love that. I love it.

Melinda Wittstock:        Right. Everybody grew. Grew spiritually. Everybody grew consciously. Everybody got much better at their self care and everybody made money. Right. And so the more we cooperate and collaborate. So that’s why I’m happy, you’ve gotten meetings with women investors, because I think that’s what’s going to change to really that whole investment community honestly needs to be disrupted. The fact that women only get 2% of the available venture capital money, 20 years on is crazy. And it’s because there’s this big disconnect, the type of models, the type of businesses we come up with, they don’t even understand and aren’t necessarily aligned with, but they may as well just put a whole bunch of money on the table and light a match because they’re missing out.

So Cricket, if you had to encapsulate kind of the biggest lesson that you’ve learned along the way in the form of advice to other women who maybe have an invention in their mind, or they see a way that they can really put their dream into practice, what would that be like? What would be the one thing you would say, would advise them?

Cricket Lee:                        The very simplest and highest advice I can give is to embrace your vision and everything that comes to you and have it be your vision being delivered to you. That you can look and see what is in that, that you have to embrace or acknowledge, or transcend or whatever, but everything that comes to you is your vision. So no matter if it’s a five year or two year or it’s tomorrow or whatever, you just have to stay focused on your dream and never give up. I mean, that’s what everybody says, but I think. And then I think the second sub part of that, is stay connected. Like I meditate at least two hours a day and listen to a lot of … I try not to watch violence and stuff like that because it disrupts my body and that’s what’s out there right now is violence everywhere. So I just, those two things are the key to really having the dream show up.

Melinda Wittstock:        It’s true. Meditation has been transformational for me.

There are so many layers to this. It’s hard to kind of sum up in sound bites. But the more that I’ve gone on that conscious path, the more in flow I’ve been, the more serendipities or synchronicities, the right people showing up at the right time, the better I’ve been at acting on inspiration when I get it. And it’s absolutely transformational in your business.

Cricket Lee:                        Yes. That’s great. Well, that’s how you evolve and that’s how you attract other people of like mind and that’s to me, as we grow in numbers, the easier it’s going to be.

Melinda Wittstock:        I absolutely agree. Well, I want to make sure that anybody who wants to support you in any way Cricket, how can people best get in touch with you and work with you?

Cricket Lee:                        Well, I do want to say that I do like to help people, other people. I think you need to be willing to give, to get and I am willing to help people package their ideas in any way that I can free just to help people. So I am available for that. To get in touch with me really the best way is to look for me on LinkedIn or to go to my website. My website address is www.botasci..com. That’s B-O-T-A-S-C-I. So [inaudible 00:39:19] Our Instagram page is Bota, B-O-T-A.S-C-I. So those are the ways to get in touch with me.

Melinda Wittstock:        And we’ll have all of that in the show notes and everything for everybody as well. Cricket, I want to thank you for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Cricket Lee:                        Thank you so much, Melinda. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for doing what you do. It’s great.