Stephen: This is your host, Stephen Sargent. We have kind of a Canadian flavor here on the Around The Coin podcast. We talked to Audrey Nesbitt, who's the founder and CEO of Spinovate Tech, and she's also leading something called Bloomly, which is helping companies go through the whole NFT building phase from start to finish, including things like KYC integration for all my fellow compliance professionals.

We go deep into marketing and what's going on with things like hackathons and how to really build out and market some of these L2 protocols and make them differentiate. If you're in payment, text, and crypto, she gives a lot of really great advice on how to better market your product and find product market fit within the industry.

This is a great episode for anyone that's building, wants more customers, more users. She gives us all the tea. Hope you enjoy this one.

Stephen: This is Stephen Sargeant, host of the Around The Coin podcast. We have a little bit of a Canadian flair here. We have Audrey Nesbittt, who's the founder and CEO of Spinnabate Tech, but is also just a marketing genius when it comes to Web3. Audrey, why don't you introduce yourself? Let us know who you are.

Then we're going to go deep into your background and talk about all the amazing things that you're doing at Bloomly and with Spinnabate.

Audrey: Okay, so as he said, Audrey Nesbitt and I have been in the emerging tech Web3 space since 2013. So I'm considered a senior and actually og, I think the proper term is og. I say senior. I've been in marketing. The bulk of my career has been actually for large US law firms. And I got into Bitcoin in 2013 and just fell in love with the space and fell in love with the people in the space.

Just all the innovation, the excitement, and so I started marketing in the Web3 space in 2014.

Stephen: That's amazing. Now you're talking about big law firms. What was like the digital marketing era? You were back there in 2001 to 2011. Like what was the major breakthrough? Like AI seems to be the major breakthrough when it comes to marketing and anything digital now. What was the major breakthrough over 20 years ago that these law firms were like, Hey, this is what we need to do.

Was it like, were they starting their own blog? Like what were they

Audrey: No, so, so when I got into it, it was still marketing in magazines, magazine ads. Broad sponsorships of events billboards yellow pages, So, when I started in US law, the search, Google was just kind, that whole search engine optimization was just starting. So I, in the early days, I was, saw it coming and I got really aggressive in digital SEO and content creation. And I got them away from magazine advertising and got them all into digital got rid of the yellow page, the yellow page ads and the angle I took also with the law firms was in creating partnerships Where it looks like we were, and we were. So that made us part of the community, not just selling law services, right?

Like not just that we're lawyers over here. My goal was let's immerse us in the community and make us part of the community and contribute to the community and to more community driven events. And that is what I did. So aggressive digital and aggressive community. So..

Stephen: That serves you well going into Web 3. That's, you know, almost solely based on community for like when you think about things like NFT and other crypto projects, it's largely driven by community. Do you think the law firms today have done a great job of, you know, you started them off 20 years ago, but we're seeing even the crypto focused law firms.

They're still quite conservative with the content that they put out. Their marketing seems a little bit, you know, do you think that they could do more? Should they be hiring you again today to kind of help them, you know, transition into this web three phase of creating engaging content or marketing services?

Audrey: Potentially, so a lot of it is, like I always say, you know, and I know it's a, it's not a great answer, I'll say it depends. So..

Stephen: You can tell you've worked for a law firm.

Audrey: right? No, but it depends on who your target market is. If your target market is to, you know, at the end of the day, do these small startups, do they have the money to engage with a lawyer on the scale that that lawyer would want to be engaged, right?

So It depends on who their target market is. Like, you know, when the thing about today and in the last few years, when it comes to marketing, a lot of companies or a lot of startups, they want to see lots of likes, lots of Twitter shares or X shares or large, you know, Telegram channels or WhatsApp channels.

And for me, I'm like, What are your KPIs? And at the end of the day, that means money. How are we making money? How are we keeping the lights on? And then let's deconstruct from there. Because as you know, Telegram, like, you know, especially in cryptocurrency or Web3 when there's a token in play. A lot of times, and I'll explain this, I go, when you have a token, you're marketing to token, You know, to, to investors, right?

To, to speculators. That's not necessary, depending on the product, it depends. That's not necessarily who's going to use your product at the end of the day. There's two different audiences there in play. So understand that when you're doing a token or you're doing a token drop, there are demands from the platform doing the drop of followers, engagement and that's one metric and it's a false..

Stephen: If I understand, when you say there's two separate people, is it like the users, the people that are going to use the infrastructure and they're using that token for more, I don't want to use the word utility, but functionality, like to pay for fees or projects or to launch their own apps.

And then there's people like, hey, token go up, I must get in cheap.

Audrey: When, when,

Stephen: I can make money.

Audrey: when moon, when moon.

Stephen: Yeah, exactly.

Audrey: right? So, so the, the when moon crowd, A lot of them just want to buy new tokens and then they drop them or they move them once that token, you know, goes on sale to the public or they'll hodl whatever and then they're going to sell it. They don't care about the product per se.

They care about the product enough That the token is going to hold its value until they can dump the token. And then you have users that are really more interested in your, what can I build on this platform or how can I use this product? And that's the more long term, the longer roadmap, right? They're two completely different, in some cases, different audiences.

Right?

Stephen: To your point, I think a lot of projects focus on the audience that might be passing by versus the audience that's going to sustain them long term, which is probably what we saw in NFT land, right? And that's why those prices go down, because when everyone's pumping your token until they're not making money, and then when they leave that community of 10, 000 people in Discord, well, who's going to take it to that next iteration?

And not a lot of projects, as you said, they weren't marketing to the audience, That wanted to build, they were marketing to the audience that wanted to buy, right? And usually luxury things.

Audrey: And that's normal in the, in the, what we say, the real world. It's normal in the real world too. It's like you could hold Tesla stock and never touch a Tesla car and never have a desire to own a Tesla, but you'll write out the stock as much as you can and then you'll dump the stock when it no longer, when you no longer think it's going to grow. So it's the same.

Stephen: Think this helps a lot of people too, because as you said, it applies to traditional marketing. This is educational, and speaking of education you have been part of Crypto Chicks, I think, since it started. Maybe tell people what Crypto Chicks is. It feels like a Canadian base. I didn't know they had such an international you know, stakehold in, you know, educating people.

Getting women into the space of that, you know, I, I assuming Bitcoin early, now the broader crypto web 3 and AI. But give people like the cold notes of what Crypto Chicks is, and, you know, maybe your involvement there.

Audrey: So Crypto Chicks started kind of with Ethereum. So obviously, you know, Bitcoin and then Ethereum came because one of the founders of Crypto Chicks is Vitalik Buterin's mother. So, and it hatched in Toronto and the name actually, so, the, the two founders are from Russia. And Chix to them, because I know you asked me about the name and, and yes, we've had, you know, the eye rays because of the name, but when you look at the, the branding collateral, it was actually for hatchlings, like it's a cute little cartoon character and they were thinking Chix, like little, little, you know, Chix, cute, little, not.

Girls on YouTube shilling Bitcoin, but and, and the whole intent in the, in the beginning was to teach women and youth how to get into crypto, how to start working with digital wallets. and in getting into the space. And then it became this big educational hub for women and youth, and it's crossed over.

Like there, it's not just women. There's lots of men at our events. And it's become a hatchery and some like Métis, which is a layer two, a very successful layer two came through the hatchery. So yeah, we have chapters all over the world, and it's for educational content, and Hackathons, and Empowerment.

And even during COVID, actually, during COVID, we teamed up with the Federal Government of Canada to create Emerging Tech Education for Women Entrepreneurs. And as of late, the last couple of years, we've been working with the government also on, on GAP education and Emerging Tech. As you know, education moves for, technology moves faster than education. So, Crypto Chicks put together an education program for high school students on, you know, using AI building apps with no coding experience, building websites with no coding experience, learning about digital assets Bitcoin, and that sort of thing. To..

Stephen: I love it, and I think to your point, I don't think it had a negative connotation, because as I said, you made a perfect point. One, you're a great marketer, so you're using the words like, you understand the deep concept, and two, I think if anyone saw or been to an event, There was never like, you know, me high, it was never that kind of, it was like all about education, all about, is there any, you said around the world, is there any emerging markets, like we're seeing Brazil, Nigeria, India, they're topping the list of crypto adoption according to the Chainalysis report that I just saw drop yesterday.

Is there any emerging markets that you see where people are like, Hey, we need a chapter here, or, you know, we need more education. Have you seen anything, I know you're more on the marketing side, but is there anything that you've seen, maybe an uptick in demand or, you know, reach outs or..

Audrey: Latin America, in Latin America, big big emerging market. I've, I've put on events in Panama City, the energy and the innovation happening there is just incredible. And they, they aim to be the gateway for Latin America into the West and other markets. So it's very exciting. I mean, India, India's been in crypto for a long time and that it just fluctuates based off the regulation coming down from the government, right?

Stephen: That's super interesting. You know, shifting to Bloomly, which I feel is like your baby there. It's an NFT platform that allows you pretty much to open up an NFT storefront from scratch. Like, when did you kind of think that like, hey, companies need, I know we're in a little bit of a lull when it comes to the NFT marketplace.

You know, walk me through the gaps that you were trying to fill when you built Bloomly.

Audrey: so, you know, the gap is basically the high cost, the high cost to get into it. You know, when. I think even initially when Bored, when Bored Apes Yacht Club took off and everybody wanted to do an NFT drop, I think even just to get the artwork was commanding a price of 15, 000, you know, and, and then trying to find I a developer or a platform that was consistent where you could launch, you know, these marketplaces and the tech company behind Bloomly was being asked to build these platforms for, for Enterprise.

And so we just thought, you know, we might as well, why don't we just build a platform where it would be really easy for somebody to launch an NFT platform. And a lot of it is timing. So I'm noticing. So we're doing a lot of work right now in not so much in the art or the retail side because I do believe there's a big, big use case and future for NFTs in supply chain, in carbon credits in, in more and, you know, more corporate or, or more company kind of driven use cases.

As the art and the JPEG and that whole side music. I think there's a big use case for the music. And, and so we've been focusing predominantly right now on carbon credits. We are building carbon credit marketplaces for some of the largest companies in the world. And, and that's very exciting. And. That started years ago, like not years ago, but a few years ago and it's just starting to catch its legs.

Do you know what I mean? Like it's just starting to catch.

Stephen: Can you walk us through the carbon credit scenario because I think that's the most fascinating to me in my head like carbon Credits is like hey, you only can produce so much carbon from your manufacturing some companies like hey, we produce less So let's sell the excess that we do to other companies So some don't even like that practice but explain like where the NFT Technology would come in to kind of better assist this Are you a marketplace?

If I'm a manufacturer or, you know, you mentioned before this podcast, you know, other entities are doing great jobs to reduce their carbon credit and may have excess credits. Is that kind of what you're doing? Matching people to have access to people that, you know, need more.

Audrey: so there's carbon offsetting and carbon insetting. So carbon offsetting is where you I, and I, like maybe it's a big oil company and they, they, they need to buy because their carbon footprint's not great and they need to buy carbon credits from a third party company, right? So they buy carbon credits from somebody else that is.

You know, whether they're, they're generating carbon credits from nature, mangroves or, or whatever, or if they're buying it from energy production, like solar panels, you know, wind turbines, whatever, and they buy it to offsets. What they're, they're doing or burning. Carbon insetting is where you set it up within your supply chain.

So you are incentivizing everybody in your supply chain to, to kind of contribute. To this whole initiative. And then they, so that where blockchain and NFTs come in is there's a lot of greenwashing in the current carbon credit marketplaces. Greenwashing means like a lot of fraud. There's just a lot of fraud.

And so what blockchain and NFTs, how they contribute is obviously the blockchain for transparency. And. What we're doing is basically putting units of carbon into packages of NFTs and then once it's, once it's claimed or, you know, whatever the proper terminology, once it's claimed, then it gets burnt and that will all be tracked and that's to prevent greenwashing and fraud.

Stephen: Interesting. What technology are you using? Like what blockchains are you using to constitute this? And is this why companies came to you? Cause there's like so many different service providers. You have to use one to set the technology, two to do the marketplace, three to handle like, you know, financial transaction.

Audrey: Right now we're currently built on Flow. And we're built on Flow because it's efficiency and it's the gas fees are incredibly low, or the fees are incredibly low. Thankfully, Flow is just bridged, or is bridging to the EVM, right, to Ethereum. We have..

Stephen: Just to confirm, Flow is the Dapper Labs that they used to have, like NFT top, you know, NBA Top Shop and other NFT project? Okay

Audrey: So we built on Flow for the, you know, security and the scalability and cost. However, depending on the project, there's options to build on other chains, right? So a lot of it would depend on who's coming to us and where they, where they want to be.

Stephen: Awesome. On your website, your functionality stages, which is interesting, show you the different phases of like the idea of the NFT, launching it, you know, maintaining it, you know, advertising it. Where do some of these big companies that have a lot of capital, where are they struggling within the process?

Or where do you even find, you know, as a, the builder of these kind of phases for companies, where do you, where's the bottleneck or where's the most challenging part of this process?

Audrey: Well, I think they don't know where NFTs would fit in there. Again, depending. So in the, in the, in, in regards to carbon credits, it's fairly straightforward. Right. Right? They have this is what we need. We need transparency. We need to be able to show that the carbon credits have been burnt once they've been purchased, blah, blah, blah.

And, and so that's a clear cut, you know, they have a real world problem and the technology solves that problem. The issue with you know, a lot of people want to do NFTs, but they don't know why. that's a problem. And they come to you and they try and, and we've been approached by companies, well, we want to do an NFT.

And, and then they tell you, and it's like, well, and then they're look to you for the answer as to why. And it's like, well, we can't, like, you need to know your why. It's a product like any other product. And one of the things I ask people is explain to me your goals or your product without using technology.

What problem are you solving without using technology? Like, you what

Stephen: Where do you think the biggest demand comes from? Is it like, hey, we want to be cutting edge and be in this new Web3 conversation? Is it like, hey, somebody just made 10 million dollars for doodling on, you know, for doodling digitally. We want to get, like, where does, where do you see a lot of people coming to you with, you know, We want to add NFTs, but they don't know why.

Audrey: But they don't know why. And, and then there's you know, a lot of people don't understand the marketing arc and the cost of marketing. And they think that, you know, by saying NFT, it's automatically just going to blow up. And it's like anything, it's like, you, you need to go to market plan and you need to have a why, and it needs to make sense.

And you need to have the budget then to push that. You know, narrative forward. As you know, in tokenization or NFTs, people are like, Oh, this is a way to make a lot of money or to do a raise. And it's like, well, it doesn't change anything. You still need a why, a what why do I get, you know, why do I care?

Like..

Stephen: Because they could end up spending just as much as they make if they're not, if they don't know what they're doing, they're just going to spend a lot of money in the technology and not really get the return, except for, you know, 10, 000 unhappy people that are unhappy with now their corporation or their entire, you know, product suite.

Audrey: Yeah, no, it's got to make sense, right? And, and I'll even, you know, on the tokenization front, I'll even ask a couple, like, you know, why do you need a token? Because to me, a token adds a layer, right? So you need to have a reason for that additional layer, right? It's an additional hoop you're putting people through, like, and it could be great.

There's lots of great use cases, obviously. For tokenization but I remember one project early, early on in the space and they approached me and they were like, So we want to raise millions, 20 million from a token and it will allow token holders to get, they wanted to build this body scan. Do you know what I mean?

A body scan.

Stephen: Like a DEXA scan?

Audrey: like, um, but it would be brick and mortar, like a brick and mortar And they wanted to set these shops up, you know, and the whole idea was very cheap, like a very cost cutter, but full body scan. And I'm like, well, how does that scale? How do you scale renting two things? How do you scale renting a brick and mortar and you're only charging, even if it's 200, the cost of operating.

That fricking mortar. And then you have to have a doctor there. So in Western markets, you have to have a doctor, right? You can't, you can't just, Hey, like hire somebody at minimum wage

Stephen: C&E that's doing Guess Your Way to the C& E to come in and press the buttons.

Audrey: And then you're adding that additional layer of a token. So

Stephen: infrastructure, no governance.

Audrey: you, how long have you been in this space?

Stephen: Since about 2016, actively.

Audrey: You remember there was a video? I don't remember who did a video and it was a great video and it was about the lemonade stand in the middle of the desert. So there's a lemonade in the middle of the desert and this guy comes and he's, he's dying and he's, he needs, you know, a drink, but the person there is saying, but you need to have our token. Right? So you need to have our token to buy the lemonade and he's like, well, how do I get a token? Well, you have to download a wallet and then you have to move your currency into the wallet and then you have to da da da da da da And then they, they, I don't know if they mentioned Doge or whatever and then he holds up a dog and he's like, well does this work, right?

And it, to me, it was a beautiful video showing exactly what you're doing by adding that layer, unless it makes sense. And so I'm all about let's make sense, let's talk about and strategize around the best technology that suits what it is you're trying to achieve, how you're trying to, you know, create efficiencies or change the world or whatever it is, right?

Stephen: Can you walk us through your most popular use case? You don't have to mention the company name. You can give like, you know, basic vagueness like a fintech or a crypto company. But walk us through the use case that you walk other, like when you're trying to attract business, you use this. As the use case, like, Hey, this is what this company came to us.

This is what we did. This is the results that they saw. Can you walk us through maybe a quick case study of something that's been extremely successful for you?

Audrey: So that's so like, that's so broad, right? So Carbon Credits, like I mentioned we're working with a carbon credit company based out of Canada on creating these marketplaces and the tech behind, you know, their outreach. They've signed contracts with Sierra Leone they have IKEA, Walmart one of the biggest companies in the world is on boarding and a really big festival, which is very exciting.

And that's in the carbon credits market, the carbon credits silo. The tokenization of real estate, I think, is an amazing use case. That is starting to catch legs. Regulation is hopefully coming in soon to Ontario and to Canada in regards to the marketplaces and tokenization.

Stephen: What is an ideal real estate? Like when you think of it, I've heard so many concepts like, Hey, what if you could own the piece of the Eiffel tower or, you know, the big buildings in New York, what is you know, maybe a more common use case when you think of real estate, what's the common use case you think of?

Audrey: So one is big. I don't know if the Eiffel Tower is actually, I don't know if anyone owns or if that's government, you know what I mean? I don't know who owns or operates the Eiffel Tower, so I can't comment on that. But if you're, you know, a contractor or a big commercial real estate development firm and you want to raise funds, And that's a global way to do it, right?

So the Hilton actually raised through tokenization in Ecuador, I believe for a new hotel. And I think that's, that's a great use case and raising funds for those large developments where, you know, currently if you invest in a large, you invest in a real estate development project, there's no liquidity until it's sold, right?

So tokenization brings liquidity to the investors. Because they can just sell their tokens if they want to get out, right? A company Vesta Equity Vesta Equity has launched in the United States, fully compliant with the SEC, and they offer, my simplistic explanation of it, it's like a reverse mortgage product for homeowners.

So, What happens is, is the, the homeowner can take liquidity or can get money out of their house without having to deal with the bank and paying a high interest rate. So the homeowner contracts with the platform, the, they, the platform performs, there's a physical inspection done of the property, an agreement is made between the homeowner and the platform on the value of the house, right?

So they agree to the value of the house. Say it's a million dollars in Phoenix, Arizona, and that homeowner wants 200, 000 USD out of it. Then they come to an agreement with the platform and then that 200, 000 Liquidity is tokenized and put up on the platform, and, and token holders or p members of that platform can go and they can invest by buying those tokens.

So they can invest in the fe, Phoenix real estate market or the Los Angeles real estate market, and they can buy the tokens in that Phoenix, Arizona home. The homeowner gets the $200,000 right, and the token holders can, can sell or hold just like

Stephen: And that's interesting because if you couldn't afford one home in Phoenix, but you're like, hey, this whole subdivision or this particular, you can now take out small, you know, investments in all of these homes and whole neighborhoods, which you can't do in traditional finance which is super interesting.

And I think there's probably going to be that novelty if, like, Michael Jordan's house goes up for sale. You know, how interesting would it be to, like, kind of own part of Michael Jordan's, you know, estate? And I think there's going to be interesting use cases there as And, and they don't actually, they don't, the token holders have no hold on that home, right? The platform does. Right.

Audrey: It's much like if you buy stocks on Charles Schwab, you actually do not have a hold on GM or Tesla. You just hold a piece, you know what I mean? And you sell it to make a profit or you sell it and you take a loss.

And as a homeowner to not have to go through the grueling, you know, banking, you know, the whole, the whole process.

Stephen: Yeah.

Audrey: And then you know, if the value of real estate drops, then the token holder can buy those tokens back, right, if they have the money to do so. And And I think it's great. And then what happens once the house is on chain, right?

So once the house is on chain, there's an AI program that constantly evaluates the value of that home. So once you have the tokens, the market now is dictated by AI, right? So much like the stock market. It's not like you're calling a realtor to do an appraisal and then you're going to sell your 10 tokens.

It's, it's all going to be automated on the platform.

Stephen: With that in place, do you think that's where we're going to instead of using real estate agents? We just, you know, people just sell their house to these platforms. Right. And..

Audrey: They don't sell the house.

Stephen: not sell. But like, no, I mean, like, could we get into that land where like, Hey, you want to sell a house, but you don't want to deal with the real estate agents or pay the real estate fees, the marketplace kind of absorbs that house and whatever the market, whatever the token holders would give to that house, you ended up paying because it's giving like a market kind of almost like a market price for your house.

Audrey: Uh, That's different because now, then you're becoming a management platform. So, and then, who does the physical inspection? Who actually owns the house? Who? So, I think that's a completely different.

Audrey: Completely product, but yeah, these are just, I mean, you still, even if you, you were to get a bunch of people and tokenize to buy a house, somebody still has to give identification.

Stephen: the deed. Yeah. Yeah.

Audrey: signed papers. And yeah, there's still a real world. The real world still happens there. Right. But what a great, oh no, just in to, to leave off on the real estate, what you know, with rising interest rates and people that aren't going to be able to afford to renew their mortgages, what, what an option, what an amazing option, right.

For a homeowner to, You know, now you can, if you can't renew your mortgage or your payment's going to be too high when you renegotiate with the bank, tokenize, take that money, pay off your mortgage and, and don't deal with the bank.

Stephen: Awesome. You have KYCC integration. I'm a compliance, you know, crypto compliance person. So can you walk us through, like, what is this KYC integration? Because when people think NFTs, they usually think, you know, more decentralized. I'm assuming the integration is something the platform can turn on and off at any time, but maybe that's something that you can educate us about.

Like, what's the KYC process, especially when you're dealing with some of the biggest companies around the world launching their own NFT projects.

Audrey: Well, so, so KYC, especially in the carbon, that's going to be really important. Right. Obviously, you know, in the carbon credits, like in, in, with the companies we're, we're dealing with, they're not, they're not worried about decentralization. They in fact want centralization. So again, it's one of those, why do you need, you know, decentralization?

Are you just saying you're decentralized and you're really not? That happens a lot, right? And, or, or do you need KYC and AML, anti money laundering documentation, right? So, so, it, it, it all depends again. It's KYC is at some point there's onboarding and offboarding, right? Right? So at some point, when you move your money online, whether you're moving it through your bank, right?

Think about it. There's some gateway somewhere that knows who you are, right? That's KYC. So for us, it's, it's regulatory. And, and again, it's project by project on whether they need. To do KYC or not. I would assume even on some level most projects would want to know who they're dealing with. But, you know, then you can move it into decentralized, completely decentralized, like.

Stephen: Awesome now with the time we have left you're an experienced marketer We have a lot of payments, tech, crypto, you know entrepreneurs listening to this So maybe let's get into some strategies advice from like an expert marketer in the space we've seen organic content, I think, make a comeback.

There's always cycles in marketing. We're seeing organic content and AI kind of making a comeback. What are your thoughts on that? What are some marketing trends that you see that maybe companies should think about instilling in their plans?

Audrey: So definitely content, right? Now short form content. And again, I will say it's pens. So, you know, a lot of people will say Facebook. Do I need Facebook anymore? It's like, it's pens. Facebook's really big in Asia. It's really big in Vietnam. It, if your, is your target market is your target market.

People, you know, say over the age of 50, then they're still on Facebook. They're not on TikTok, right? Are you going after traditional investors? Well, I'm gonna find more traditional and traditional investors on Facebook than I am on TikTok, but on LinkedIn more. You know what I mean? So it depends. So if you're talking about, you know, the community and gamers younger digital natives, crypto natives, then, you know, are you talking about Discord, Reddit?

You know, Tik uh, I said TikTok, right? Reddit, X. So again, I will ask you when you come to me at the end of the day, how do you make money? How do you make money? Then let's deconstruct from there and figure out where those people are. Are you selling to banks? Are you selling to institutions? Are you going after traditional investors that now might be branching into digital assets, ETFs?

ETPs, whatever that is, because, you know, is, you know, somebody that's buying meme coins on Solana really interested in buying a digital asset product from JPMorgan Chase? They're completely different. So, you still, content, content, content, especially You know, if it's younger people, shorter form content, TikTok type videos, right?

Really short, really punchy and straight to the point for SEO purposes. And I find a lot of startups, they try, they kind of, there's long term, which is where SEO comes in, if you plan to be around for a long period of time. Right? Or you, you need to educate people on process. Then long form content is really, really important on your own channel.

So YouTube educational content. Some people like to read, so piggyback that with Medium or, you know, your own, You know, on your website or whatever, or in a white paper or I'm currently researching a new project that's going to launch soon and I can't find very good educational content on what it is and what it does.

And I can find YouTube shillers talking about it, but I can't find anything that I think is a legitimate source. So, so, so to me again, it's like, what's your end game? How are you making money? What's your goal? Is your goal to exit? Is your goal to sell to? Right? Are you, are you going to sell to JP Morgan Chase or you, you know, what's your, what's the goal?

And then you build strategies aiming for those goals.

Stephen: Right. You mentioned KPIs and metrics. Obviously very important, especially if you're marketing for any product or services. But we also see a lot of fluff with some of these numbers and the impressions are inflated. What are some KPIs and metrics that have served you well? I know it depends on a number of different factors, but what are some of the interesting KPIs that's like a staple every time you go to the go to market strategy?

You're like, we have to measure these two or three things to make sure at least we're going in the right direction.

Audrey: So it depends. You're tired of that answer? So again, it, it, so it depends. Again, for me, most businesses need to make money, but when you're talking about emerging tech, sometimes they don't know how, they don't know what that looks like yet. Because it's so new. So for example, if you're very like there are some environment or energy projects that they don't know how they're going to scale yet.

So if I'm consulting with them, I'm like, okay, so you're going for research and development loans. You're going for, because you don't have a, you don't have a roadmap to a million dollars yet, right? Like how are you going to scale? You know, some cases are clear cut. We're going to onboard 10 customers equals X amount of dollars.

Do you get what I'm saying? Whereas some, you know, like, commercial real estate, commercial real estate and carbon credits is a good example of that is what are the numbers and how many buildings in a five mile radius have to be on that grid in order to create X amount of carbon credits to make it worthwhile at what point Does scale happen?

Does that make sense? So KPIs again, it's how do you make, to me, the most important KPI is how do you make money? That's the most important KPI. How do you make money? So is that you know, is that 10 family offices launching a financial, a digital asset financial product? Is that, then how do we get to that 10?

Or is it 5, 000 people onboarding onto your SaaS platform? Then how do we get that 5, 000 and where are we finding them? Then if it's LinkedIn, I'll use LinkedIn as an example. If we find LinkedIn is the sales channel, then how much are we spending to get 50, 000 leads or 5, 000 leads? And then what does that equate into signed contracts or subscriptions signed up?

Does that make sense?

Stephen: It does make sense. Do you find, you probably know this more, I, you know, we just came from a conference, Futurist Blockchain Conference, the best Web3 conference, and the biggest in Canada, and now moving, you know, around the world..

Audrey: Miami.

Stephen: ..Starting in the United States, which is, I think we're all excited for Miami next year.

I ask that question a lot because I think that tells me a lot about what the person's focus is, what their intent is in the conversation. Do you find a lot, not a lot of companies can answer that question when you ask them, like, how do you make money? Does that throw them off? Similar to ask them, why do you need an NFT platform?

They're kind of like, Oh, I don't know. You tell me, do you think you get the same response when you're asking companies, like, how do they make their money?

Audrey: It depends on the size of the company. So an established company and say the startup's been around for five years or three years, then they're going to be able to tell you, you know, at the end of the day, it's subscriptions or it's a platform onboarding fee and then fees they're going to be able to tell you that it's usually early startups that are still trying to figure out.

You know, their roadmap and how, you know, are they going after a SaaS or is it retail? Is it, is it B2B? So I just, I find where more education is needed is in those, is in the KPIs. Because they'll be like, well, we don't, again, like I'll use X as an example, because in Web3, X, used to be really important.

It's dwindling, but it used to be really important. And they'll be like, well, we need 10, 000 followers. And this is where I'll say, I'll be like, what's your budget? Because do you want 10, 000 followers? We can do meme contests, giveaways, that sort of thing. Because I believe, again, it depends on your product.

If I would rather you have 2000 followers that are users. Instead of 10, 000 followers,

Stephen: you have to do or want to say. Yeah.

Audrey: right? 10, 000 followers that aren't engaged and, and they're just following you because you gave away, you did a meme coin contest or you did a meme. You know what I mean? Like if we have to prop up numbers really fast for marketing purposes or for a token drop, then you can do those balloon following type exercises.

But if you want actual users, then it's more of an organic and it's a slower process, but then at least you're onboarding real engaged users.

Stephen: In 2018, you talked about, you wrote an article actually about how important hackathons are to like a marketing overall strategy. I know you're going to say it depends. So I'm going to say, what was your concept around that? Like explain to us why you thought marketing hackathons were important for marketing.

And, you know, six years later, do you feel that still holds true today?

Audrey: So yes, I do think it's a, it holds true to today, especially cause I am in technology predominantly. So how do you show you're part of the community? How do you show you care about, you know, the future and who's coming up in the future? And if you're a platform, You know, or you have a set of tools for developers, and that's where they are, right?

So, if you, you know, Ethereum has a great developer community and a lot of that growth has been through hackathons, right? It's offering an incentive to work with these You know, these developers and entrepreneurs and getting them onto your platform to feel that they're supported, that they are part of a community, right?

So it's part of that community building and showing you're in it, right? You're a part of the community.

Stephen: I'm curious, you know, we have a lot of L2 platforms that come on this show, and I'm getting well versed in it, so it's a great educational process, but they also have a very similar plan, right? They want developers to come build, they want users to come use those apps that are being built. But, like, I look around, like, how many people could possibly be, you know, developing on this platform, developing on that platform.

What are your thoughts? How can these platforms stand out, when they all look very similar? Or, is their target audience, you know, not me? So, you know, the target audience knows a lot more about the differences between the platforms. But it seems like, you know, they just give a bunch of money, grants. To say, hey, come build.

Is that a sustainable marketing plan? Like, does that work in L2 world from what you can see in the world of Web 3?

Audrey: Well, so here's the thing is this is where quality matters, right? So the community is small enough to, to know that if you're on a You know, like Solana has taken off, right? The last little while Solana has taken off, especially with meme coins, right? But they've had a lot of outages. So the community's small enough that if you, you, do you know what I mean?

We all know what the challenges are with Ethereum and why there are layer twos. So, and that's why layer twos have taken off, right? Because the speed and the cost of. Ethereum, building directly on Ethereum. So, word spreads. So if you're not quality, so the ones that have stuck around that you're talking about, Avalanche, Polygon Avalanche, no, like Mateys, that's. Quality speaks, you know, volumes.

Stephen: In the industry, you're 100 percent right. And because it's such a small industry, if you have bad quality, that information gets around pretty quickly, unfortunately. And the community is very quick at understanding, hey, this is not going to be profitable. Because a lot of them are spending their time, even if they're not spending the money, they're spending their time building on it.

They're not going to spend their time there. As we close out the conversation, what are you excited about? We're going into Q4 2025. You know, we're in this kind of uncharted territories recovering from crypto winter. It's not exactly hot yet in the crypto scene, but it's not cold. You know, we're not freezing either.

So we're kind of in this limbo space. What are you looking forward to? Whether it's Bloomly, Spinovate, your own personal projects, you're like, Oh, this is interesting. I'd love to spend more time learning about this. What's going on in your world in the

Audrey: I'm excited about RockX, Rock Carbon Labs and Bloomly, and that's in the carbon credit marketplace. I think next year is going to be explosive in that space. Spinovate, like I I'm excited about the Futurist. The Futurist heading to Miami. I'm very excited for that. And

Stephen: And Consensus coming to Toronto. It feels like next year is going to be a playground. Places are coming here, we're going there, like, it's gonna be a complete Canadian takeover it

Audrey: and I'm, through Spinnabate, I am working on a couple of events that will piggyback the Futurist Conference, both conferences and Consensus, and they will be hackathons. They will be developer, like, Entrepreneur hackathon building events. Yeah, so I mean, it's just, you just keep going. I've been through crypto winters before, or, you know.

I wouldn't, would you say we're in a winter right now? I don't think we're in a..

Stephen: No, I said it's not cold, but it's not exactly hot.

Audrey: Yeah.

Stephen: not flying, but we're not, we're, you know, we, I think we've evolved from ramen noodles and baked beans for, for the, for the most part as well. What are your thoughts? I had this, you know, something interesting came to my head, and now I can't even remember what I was gonna say for the first time in this conversation.

But I wanted to kind of go through. Where do you see us fitting in? And like, when you're saying you're excited about a project, where do you see us fitting in? For like Canada, like, you know, consensus is coming here next year. You know, we finally have our first blockchain or, you know, crypto newsletter, Blockchain North is really showing that we can have our own media company here in Canada.

We're seeing Futurist expand to other countries, including the U.S. You know, what are your thoughts about where Canada is in the global, you know, blockchain ecosystem? You, as a marketing perspective, you probably see, you know, A lot of interested projects from other countries. Where do you think Canada sits right now?

Audrey: Unfortunately, I don't think Canada's very ahead. I think Canada is very slow. For regulating the space. Unfortunately in the current climate, I see more attractive destinations elsewhere,

Stephen: Is there any destinations in mind? Like when you say that, what's the first one that popped in your mind?

Audrey: Panama, Asia, Dubai Abu Dhabi, like there's just, even Europe, it's just, there's just more room for innovation and it's like, There's innovation. There is innovation here. There's a great community here, but a lot of our conversation, unfortunately, is around, where do we go to get out of this stifling atmosphere in Canada?

Stephen: It's interesting, it's like almost like a race, right? Like a car race, like as long as you put the guardrails up, you know exactly the course, you know, to go around and you can go fast. When there are no guardrails and there is no track, that's what Canda feels like, like, are we, you know, are we, are we on the path?

Are we like in a ditch somewhere? You don't always know exactly where those guardrails are. The question I wanted to ask you before, and you, saying that we're not ahead, What about the projects that you're working? Like when you say carbon credits, is it important to be first? I think a lot of people are like, Hey, AI and blockchain, I have to be the first in the sector, you know, real estate and blockchain have to be the first.

Is it important to be first? Or is there still just like, you know, in any industry, there's still room for best.

Audrey: Well, so look, Google wasn't the first search engine, right? just, you know, is be the best. So here's, here's, here's what I say is, is if you're aiming to be the best, just be the best. If, because obviously the first to market a lot of times they have growing pains and then a company can come up behind them and see exactly where the gaps are.

And then just. Just take them out, right? So there's that. So I think from marketing, there's a lot of benefits of being first. And this is where I would be aggressive with a company that hired me. I would be like, we're flooding SEO because you're first. So we have to make sure you're dominant. In that search, right?

Like we want to make sure you're dominant. So we're going to throw up content. Like we're just going to blitz it and hit it from every SEO. But that also includes social media, YouTube, and that short form content, long form content. We're, we're blitzing. And then obviously if you're second, then what you're going to promote is quality.

And now I always say, okay. You know, a lot of projects think they're the top quality, but they're not. And I'll say there's nothing wrong with being Walmart. Walmart is incredibly successful. It's one of the most successful companies in existence. And it's like, they never claim that they're quality, right?

Walmart is not quality

Stephen: And people, what you realize

Audrey: and cost.

Stephen: convenience over quality. A lot of the

Audrey: So it's knowing who your product is and who your target market is, and there's nothing wrong with being Walmart. But know you're Walmart. Don't claim you're Apple when you're Walmart. Right? So, yeah, so, and there's nothing wrong again. I'll, like, you want to give me Walmart, I'll take it.

Do they, are they adopting anybody, you know?

Stephen: Ha ha ha!

Audrey: Hey, there's nothing wrong with Walmart.

Stephen: Do you find, and you're a marketer, do you find organizations, companies, when they're getting into the space, they try to coin a certain term that can be used as like, you know, so that if they coin the term and people start using it, then they're automatically kind of like the thought leader, cause like, A lot of their content is around this term.

Do you notice that? I feel in Web3, people always try to coin a certain term or phrase to try and get the eyeballs towards them, or is that just me thinking too

Audrey: No, I see that a lot. And it's so funny because I'll look at somebody, they'll come to me with their marketing collateral, right? And it's like, well, who, what do you do? Do you get, like, I'll get this in outreach emails. And they'll send an email, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I don't even know what you do.

Like, I'm reading three paragraphs and I still have no clue.

Stephen: They just have all the buzzwords, right?

Audrey: Blockchain infrastructure

What are you?

I don't know what you are. And if I don't know what you are, nobody knows what you are. So get to the point and, and what is it that you do? Then add, then add you in your flowery language. Right. But do it selectively. And I only think. You have to balance that, hey, we're going to try and coin some term with nobody knows what you do.

Like you're being too, you're being too creative because

Stephen: Too cutesy.

Audrey: I have, like, you know, a big term I see all the time is, is efficiencies. We streamline efficiencies. How?

Stephen: which Which one?

Audrey: What do you, like, what? Like, I don't know what you do. And I, you, you, if, if, again, if you, if you can't explain it to me without..

Stephen: In the industry, right? That's what I always say to people. We work with companies that like are misrepresented in the market. I'm like, if I don't know who you are or what you're doing that's a big red flag, because I'm pretty deep. I might not be the deepest, but I'm pretty deep. You're not getting nearly the market you think you are.

If I don't even have a good idea of what you're doing.

Audrey: and, and to me, it's some pretty simple things. And like, I'll give you a fun example is how, because I've been in marketing a long time. How frustrating is it when you go to a restaurant's website and you can't find their phone number.

Stephen: Right.

Audrey: Or Do you know what I mean? It's like, you're at takeout place. I can't find your phone number.

Stephen: I can't click on it and call it right away. You know, like those ones where they have the phone number, but you can't click on it directly from your phone and call it. It's like, I'm not going to dial your number.

Audrey: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's just like, you know, what is your call to action? And, and again, that's the back to your KPI discussion is, is what are the KPIs? How, how is it like, you know, B2C, it should be fairly quick, click here and buy it. Right? B2C, it's got to be fairly, like, fast and furious, and your KPIs, obviously, are going to be a higher number.

Whereas if you're institutional or traditional finance, the sales cycle's longer, and you need more educational content. Your content has to be more strategic and thought out. Right? Well, it all has to be strategic and thought out, but you know, if you're selling, as you know, corporations take a lot, have a longer sales cycle and you have to touch, you know, various different people at different levels and how are you communicating that?

So, especially when, you know, in small companies. The marketing person and the CEO could be the same person. Bigger companies, that's not the case, right? So how do you start that conversation and seep your product into their space? So

Stephen: I think that is the best advice. That's worked well with me. It's like, hey, I'm not just talking I'm not just trying to reach after the person that's gonna be the decision maker. I want everyone I'm giving ideas to everyone within that company so people can start putting the puzzle pieces together Internally and then they're like, oh, yeah, that's the person that can do this that and you know speaking of streamlining efficiencies That's the person that touches all these things that we're talking about Audrey, this is the perfect place to end.

You've been an absolute amazing guest and I can't wait to see you in Miami next year and in Toronto next year so we can, you know, get through some of the events that you're working on. Thank you so much for joining Around The Coin podcast..

Audrey: Road trip, road trip to Miami.

Stephen: Awesome. Thank you so much.