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CMO at Relai, Imrich Bábics - "Web3 Marketing Isn’t So Different from Web2 After All"
30 Plays2 months ago
Imrich Bábics, the CMO at Relai talked us through his career journey so far. Imo shared some amazing advice for anyone looking to launch a successful Web3 project, become a better marketer and how to create a successful career in Web3.
Imo talks us through why marketing in Web3 is the same as marketing in web2 and where projects go wrong with their marketing efforts.
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Transcript
Introduction of Imo Babic
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the behind the blockchain podcast. Today I'm joined by Imo Babic, Chief Marketing Officer at Relay. Imo, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me. No problem at all. Imo, for people who don't know who you are, could you introduce yourself please?
00:00:17
Speaker
Sure. um So my name is Imo Babic. I'm currently the CMO at Relay, which is a Bitcoin-only app out of Switzerland, but we serve the whole of Europe. um And in the past, I have worked um at Bitpanda, which the European listeners might be familiar with. And before that, I would say probably the most notable job I had was at Universal Pictures, um where I was working in the movie industry.
00:00:43
Speaker
um Yeah, that's a brief summary, I would say. I'm based in Vienna. I have two kids, two girls. um I like running. I like football. Loving the Euros right now. yeah mike So you're you're obviously seeing a senior chief marketing officer role at the moment at at Relay. Could you talk us through your career journey so far? So what's kind of led you to this point?
Educational and Career Beginnings
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I mean, very briefly, in a few minutes, let me sum it up. So I actually originally come from from Slovakia. um I went to uni there, but it really didn't work out. I didn't like it. So I decided that I would like to study in the in the UK, in England. So I went to Guildford University of Surrey.
00:01:25
Speaker
At the time, a very good university. Since then, I'm not so sure. I think it's good. But I think at the time, it was like a top 10 uni in the UK. And I honestly didn't really know what I wanted to be when I grow up, essentially. And that's why I chose also, my field was was business management. With a hint of marketing, I chose business management because I assume if you don't know what you want to be, it's better to be as generalist as possible.
00:01:55
Speaker
um But I think that's where really the marketing started sort of coming through because we covered lots of topics. There was obviously, you know, ah all business related things and economics, um accounting, which I hated. And marketing was one of these topics and I i shined, I think, in that topic the most.
00:02:14
Speaker
What I also found strange is that some of my my my classmates really didn't like it and they really struggled with it and to me just seemed total common sense. like It almost felt like why are we even learning this? Why others struggled and vice versa, I really struggled with accounting.
00:02:30
Speaker
ah So for someone else, that might be very natural. But anyways, this is where it started. And then I started to have a clear idea as as to as the graduation year approach that I think marketing might be my way. I briefly dabbled with finance as well. I was considering going down the finance route, but I never really materialized. I never really worked out. And then after I graduated, I moved to London.
00:02:56
Speaker
um And there, essentially, it wasn't the best of times because when I graduated, it was the the great financial crisis of 2008, 2009. So pretty much everybody was losing their jobs. It was a terrible time for a graduate to enter the job market when all you hear is that it's completely impossible. um But I just started applying for all the London agencies and all the London marketing jobs. I must have sent out hundreds of applications to pretty much big or small agency.
00:03:26
Speaker
And it so just happens that after I was getting desperate because nobody was getting back to me, my ronie was running my money was running out. um So I was really, really worried that I will have to just go back home and you know with the but um a tail between my legs. But ah then I got an interview at UM, Universal McCann, one of the biggest agencies in the world um and one of the the best ones in London as well.
00:03:51
Speaker
um And they wanted me, um because I was young, obviously, as a graduate, they were looking for a person for the Xbox account. And they thought, you know, young guy, perfect fit for for for Xbox. i I didn't have an Xbox console. to I didn't know anything about it. I haven't played games in years prior to it, but I sold myself as somebody who really understands um the the gaming world. And I'm a i ah true and true gamer. Of course, you should hire me.
00:04:18
Speaker
And I did really well in the interview and um I got the job. And then, to be honest, I didn't really have ambitions. I didn't really see at that time where this could lead. I was just happy to be in the industry. It was a very exciting job, actually, to be in a media agency as
Transition to Film Industry
00:04:35
Speaker
ah as a young person in London. You know you you go, you meet with sales reps all the time. They take you to the best restaurants in London. um just having a great time, working with clients, working on Xbox was fun, it was a great account. And overall, it was ah really, I think, a good start at that age to to just, I mean, you have to work hard, but also there was a lot of fun. um And I didn't really have plans in terms of like how strategically I want to plan my career ahead and what I will do, and certainly didn't have any ideas about me wanting to be a CMO.
00:05:09
Speaker
um what i What I always wanted before that in my private life, I was a big fan of movies and on the movie industry. And I was a total nerd about cinema. And then what really occurred to me after I got a new boss, the boss that hired me, he left for a different job. And then another a person came who became my boss, a guy named Chris. We became really great friends and Chris worked at a movie business.
00:05:37
Speaker
And that's when the first sort of idea popped in my head, aha, I can actually work in where I want to in this industry, in media and marketing, I can actually get to movies. And that's when really like sort of my my mind was blown and things broadened that I don't have to work in an agency all the time. um And then so be that after after a couple of other jobs in in the in the media agency world, i I got invited for an interview I got headhunted for an interview for Universal Pictures for the international department. And then I didn't get the job the first time. It was very close, but they said that, unfortunately, there was a better candidate. And then I just continued working in the agency world. And then a year later, they got back to me again that we are now growing the team. There's an opening. You were very impressive. Are you interested in a job? And I said, absolutely, yes. I did actually just start a new role a month before.
00:06:35
Speaker
at an agency, um at at at my old agency, the very first agency at Universal McCann. And then a month later, I had to go and tell my boss that, look, I received this offer from Universal Pictures. I didn't apply for it. I applied for it. you know I did the interview a year ago. um And they got back to me now. And I really want to go. But I don't want to upset you either. um And they were very nice about it. And they just said, I understand. It's a shame that we're gonna we're going to lose you just when you got your foot through the door.
00:07:05
Speaker
um But I went to Universal Pictures and I stayed there around two years.
Digital Marketing in Austria
00:07:10
Speaker
It was a very, very good learning experience, very exciting to be in the movie business. um I worked to movies like Fast and Furious 6, Despicable Me and a bunch of other really big well-known movies. Essentially I was planning together with my team. ah We had a with a two-person team and the the sort of vice president of media. And we were planning the the media campaigns for the whole of EMEA. So essentially what we come up with is a strategic recommendation of how you should launch this movie to the market. So that you should use this much TV, this much um at the time. Online media was still a small part of of budgets.
00:07:51
Speaker
And you know, this is press. This is how you should do PR and essentially planned everything. And then we sell this strategy to the local markets. And then you have calls or in-person meetings with every single country that is part of EMEA. And it was also great. ah Really good learning as well.
00:08:06
Speaker
um And then it was time for us to, in the meantime, I met my wife and we decided that we want to leave ah the UK. And then we decided to move to Austria, where I live currently.
00:08:22
Speaker
So um naturally the easiest way to sort of do the transition was to come here and work in the media agency again. So i got I got a job in ah in know and at Havas Media, which is an international agency, but they were looking for a head of digital marketing um at the time, and I got the job.
00:08:41
Speaker
And that was my first time I was ahead of something. I was basically responsible for a team. In the past, I had some you know some junior people that were sort of reporting to me. But it wasn't really that I was the manager. It was more like, I'm going to be looking after this person. And if they have questions, I would be the first point of contact to help them out. But I didn't have a team. Certainly didn't have any of the responsibilities of ah of ah of a team lead at all up until that point. So I had to learn everything in a new country, in a new job,
00:09:10
Speaker
um often also in German um and obviously just learn everything on the go and it was very very stressful and very scary at the time but the biggest struggle was pretty much you go from somebody who's I would say the the doer to a thinker if if I would position it this way. What I had to learn is that now I cannot do the things I was doing before for years, now actually I need to do other things. So, you know, I think the the idea of letting go of what you learned before is the biggest challenge when you go the first time from, let's say, an executioner role into a strategic role.
00:09:50
Speaker
um like and that suggest If I could just interject there for a second. How did you make that mindset shift? Because that's quite a big thing to completely change your outlook and how you even approach your job, right? Is that just something that happens over time?
00:10:06
Speaker
It happens over time. I mean, what I would do now differently, I would definitely would have gone with some sort of a mentor, somebody who has done it before and maybe be asked for ideas. Just the other day, I had a call with with a young marketer who reached out to me ah through Twitter, and he had just some questions about sort of which direction to go. And I found that really impressive. And I wish I was thinking like that when I was younger.
00:10:29
Speaker
ah to really learn from somebody who has who has done this before. um But at the time, I was just quietly suffering, basically. And then, and then you know, it's it's sort of, you start and you have no idea how to do it, ah whether you, and you always have imposter syndrome, whether you're doing the right job, or you're going to get fired for sure. Well, today's the day I'm getting fired. And we all find out that I'm not doing anything at all, or I'm doing it completely wrong.
00:10:55
Speaker
um But then as time progresses, you start thinking about less and less and less and less, and then one day you realize that, huh, I haven't actually had these thoughts in a while now, and I'm now used to this, and I actually am a bit more comfortable in in doing it.
00:11:10
Speaker
um Looking back now, though, I can very clearly see that I was very much still a junior person, um promoted straight away into leading a five-man team at the time. um And now I have the learnings and a lot of things I would have done differently. but At the same time, I think often the best approach is just being just thrown into the deep end and then learn to swim or you s sink. um And in my case, it did work out. But I also knew that I don't really want to work in agencies anymore. um I and don't really want to work at big corporations anymore either. So the only only option was, and something I was really curious about, is to work in a startup.
Startup Ventures and Fintech Shift
00:11:55
Speaker
um And Vienna, um the city of Vienna actually has quite a nice startup scene. um It's, you know, I would compare it to very similar to Berlin. um So it's, you know, obviously not Silicon Valley levels, but a European startup scene, quite healthy. um And at the time, I just basically decided to leave the agency world and start looking for a job in a startup.
00:12:17
Speaker
And so it just so happens that it was Bitbanda who are now a big name, but at the time they really weren't a big name at all. um This was 2017 and you know Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies really weren't yet such a huge topic. It's something that you might have heard of.
00:12:36
Speaker
But really, really, it was a niche of a niche, essentially, like really, really tiny. um So that's when that's when I really looked into it. ah That's when I really became, um I would say, very interested in the topic of finance as well and and how I discovered cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin was an idea that really appealed to me straight away. um But this is how I got um made the shift from agency to client side and from sort of bigger companies to a startup. um At the time, Bitpanda had around 20 something employees. By the time I started the job, I was employee number 30. I was the head of marketing, um the first head of marketing.
00:13:18
Speaker
But also it was my first time actually being a head of marketing because before that I was a head of digital media and most of my career was in media, which is a very small part of what marketing is actually. Marketing you have obviously media, but you have PR, you have advertising, branding, ah sales in some positions. Like there is a lot that sort of can be covered within the area of marketing and I was doing a small part of it. so Yet again, I had to learn a lot of the things I haven't done before and figure figure things out ah of like, oh, yeah, I should like also be doing this, for example, or you know how to do PR and learn about how to do PR and all these sort of things. Looking back now,
00:13:57
Speaker
um i wish i had done lots of things differently but obviously i didn't have ah didn't have the skills um and i had to learn on the job but that was pretty much everybody at a startup at that size at that time it was everybody was learning everybody was doing it on a go essentially which was very comforting and that's why i think That's why you worked. That's why it was just something that everybody around me was kind of in the same ah same ship while they were doing different jobs but they were all also learning about what it is to be at a startup that is growing so fast and you know just how to do your job better.
00:14:34
Speaker
essentially. um And I was there for two years um and I fell in love with the industry but it was two years of really rapid growth. Bitband essentially went from a small startup nobody knew about to ah which is now a unicorn, one of the biggest companies ah in Europe and in the world. I think the the last valuation they had was around 4 billion or something like that. um So really big growth and that obviously comes with a burnout which I really felt And I decided to just leave. I did for one year something completely different. I worked for an edtech startup, um ah an even smaller startup with even fewer resources. um Actually, I shouldn't say that Bitban had plenty of resources because they were profitable startup. But then I went to a proper startup experience where there was no money, there was a very small team, everything you had to do by yourself. And and literally, there was nobody else but for to do it for you. You had to do it.
00:15:33
Speaker
And um it was also my first experience with selling a physical product, also actually being part of sales. um And I would say that was ah while it was brief, it was a very good learning experience because it was um I would have been certainly not ready for this step had I gone from a corporate to such a small startup straight away. It was nice that I had Bitbanda, which was sort of already growing and there was some structure at least and I could afford to have a team and hire your a team and after two years at Bitband I already had a team of 12 people and then at this startup called Roba Wunderkind there was nothing so it was totally like every strip everything away and it was just a ah great learning experience um but I always wanted to go back to
00:16:19
Speaker
the world of cryptocurrencies and more specifically Bitcoin. um And then it so happens that Relay was looking for a CMO at the same time when I started looking at the market. And yeah, we just met together with the CEO and we immediately liked each other and we wanted to work together. And it's been three years now. um and it's going well. the Relay has also grown at the time when I joined. I think there were like 10 employees now. We are almost 30 employees and we are now a very well-known brand within the Bitcoin ecosystem in Europe. We are actually the biggest Bitcoin-only company in Europe as well. um And it's going amazing. And there's lots of sort of lots of learnings I can talk about.
00:17:04
Speaker
um especially for for people of who who might be struggling at their jobs or they might not be happy at their jobs. um Because I have to say that there were very often not good experiences where you often work with people you don't really want to work with or distress you out. And what I learned um before I joined Relay is that I only really want to work with a person that I actually would like working with. It's no more about the salary, it's no more about the role, it's about actually I don't care how much you pay me. If I think you're an asshole, I'm not going to work with you. But obviously, you cannot do this as a
Insights on Career Choices
00:17:40
Speaker
young person. you know As a young person, I believe you should you should just take any job to learn, even even if the person might not be nice or you you might not like them or there's some sort of warning sign, I would still say to go for it. if
00:17:54
Speaker
if there is something, if there's a trade-off. So, for example, um in my case, with Bitpanda, the industry itself was very appealing to me, the idea of working at a fintech startup was very appealing to me, um and that's why I was there for two years.
00:18:10
Speaker
um and But then I was already mature enough, I was 35, 36 when ah it came to Relay and I could already afford um financially but also emotionally just to be really thinking about myself and what is good for me. ah Because at the end of the day you work with these people all the time um and a salary at the end of the day is not going to help with making up with you, just not liking your job.
00:18:37
Speaker
That's I think at one point in your career you should really prioritize just do I actually want to do this? Do I want to spend time every single day with these people? Or am I just doing this for the money?
00:18:49
Speaker
um Because in all honesty, I could get a corporate level salary somewhere else, but I also know what it would be like that I don't want it. um And I think you just need to go through experiences for you to arrive at what is it that you're actually looking for.
00:19:07
Speaker
What is it that you want that will make you this work-life balance that everybody talks about, um which can be anything you want, essentially. You can be 90% work, 10% alive, but it has to work for you, and I think you need to mature for that.
00:19:25
Speaker
But yeah, that that was Relay and now I'm very happy where I am. It's working really well. I'm still learning. um And I can definitely use all the learnings that I had in the past to to be able to do this job. So yeah, that's the intro, I would say.
00:19:44
Speaker
Sounds like a really, really varied and an interesting journey, to be honest, going from agency to startup to agency, sorry, agency to large, ah large business in the industry that you were really talking about film and then agency again, then, then startups.
00:19:59
Speaker
um i think I think that actually helped me and helped me towards in my more so more senior years is that I was able to really um emphasize with lots of people who come from different walks of life and different experiences because I have worked at the, you know, like Universal Pictures, I think has like 20,000 employees all over the world. They deal with huge budgets. Each movie has a ah marketing budget of over 100 million.
00:20:27
Speaker
um So that definitely helped. Working at a startup and doing the shift really helped. Then going from the agency to a client side also was something that when I was at agencies, lots of people dreamt of going client side and not everybody could pull it off because were it would very often be this like almost like a branding that, oh, he's an agency person. I'm not sure we can hire him. So people actually struggled to make this leap from the agency world to a client's ah world.
00:20:53
Speaker
um and often then they discover that it's not that great. There's benefits to both. um Being at the agency side, you always have work because there's many clients. If you lose one client, you know because the client changes agent and agencies or God forbid they go out of business, nothing really happens because there's other clients that you can work with. If you work at a startup,
00:21:17
Speaker
um It's a lot more exciting. It's a lot more dynamic. Definitely more hands-on. But obviously if the startup struggles, they need to, you know, cut down their expenses, their staff, then you might get fired. um So there's like every single role had its plus plus and minuses and its benefits.
00:21:36
Speaker
And then you need to find where do you actually fit in, where do you feel like you can bring the most value. And for me now, after working for 13-14 years, I can tell you that it is definitely startups um early stage and scale-ups where I can really bring value.
00:21:54
Speaker
I have no interest in working for a big corporation. ah Even for a startup that has like two, three hundred employees, that's already is not something I would like want to be part of because a lot happens to a company when it goes from less than 100 to more than 200 people.
00:22:11
Speaker
ah The culture changes. the it's it's you know Internal politics start becoming a normal part, which always is at any big company. And I just realized that I don't want any part of that. I actually i actually suck at politics completely. I'm too honest. It always lands me in trouble. um So it's better to work at a small company where actually being honest is you know it's almost almost a must.
00:22:38
Speaker
because there's no time to play games you need to deliver. And if you don't know something, you need to say it. If you do know something, you need to say it. While at corporations, it's about how can I survive in this corporate climate? At a startup, it's about how can I help the company to grow?
00:22:56
Speaker
So you're putting you know your needs, like it's not about your ego, I would say. I think in a corporation, naturally, ah what happens is that if you want to succeed at a corporation, you have to promote yourself a lot. Yeah, entirely. That's the only way you can you can climb the ladder at a giant company because there's so many other people who compete for the same position. If you want to be a CEO of that company one day, the only way you can do it is to play a game.
00:23:23
Speaker
and you need to play a long-term game. And I just can't do it. I cannot pretend that I like someone that I clearly don't like them. you know like It just doesn't doesn't work. It can work for a year, but you were talking of like several years and it's like, I'm sorry, but I'm incapable of doing that. I consider it a giant waste of time. That's fair enough. When when you moved from um agency to to big company and then into the startup world,
00:23:51
Speaker
Was that you, and did you know at the time, was that you trying to figure out what you wanted to do? Or did you just think these are called opportunities, I'm just going to go for it? And then just naturally you've worked out where you prefer? Or was it was it more kind of planned out than that? Or did it just happen?
00:24:06
Speaker
It was more curiosity, curiosity curiosity sorry um because obviously you hear about startups and how cool it is to work at startups, but you have no reference point whatsoever if you haven't worked at a startup yet. um And i was just I really wanted to know what it feels like to be at a startup. I didn't know that it's going to be something that will continue doing for years. I honestly just were still in a phase.
00:24:28
Speaker
where I felt I don't have kids yet. I don't really have any financial commitments whatsoever. I can take a risk of going for startup and obviously not taking the big salary. um And that was fine. I really consider that that actually put me in a much stronger position now.
00:24:45
Speaker
than if I wouldn't have taken that risk. Because I often feel that in the current climate, and this is just my opinion, I might be completely wrong about it, but I think actually you should explore as much as possible. I think being you know a one company man, is not it's it's not the world we live in anymore. Because you can't really learn at a one company. I think you need to experience lots of things, different environments, different products, different industries for you to actually learn.
00:25:14
Speaker
And the moment I stop learning at Relay is the moment I will start being bored and then I will probably look for something else. um But I think that's important. do Am I actually still learning here? or am Am I just now going through the motions? And when this step happened, I already knew the agency world. I already knew. I've done at that time already almost almost eight years of working in agencies. And I worked um during that time at four different agencies. So I i know the agency world.
00:25:46
Speaker
And I also worked with creative agencies and PR agencies during that time. So I know what agencies are like, and they're all the same, essentially, while they deliver different services. But the environment and how you grow there and how you progress in your career is all the same. So I felt like I know that world, and I can always get a job there. So if something doesn't work out, I'm fairly confident that by now, if I apply at any agency, I will get a job. um I was very confident about it.
00:26:15
Speaker
And I also knew that, look, the corporate world, I'm not interested at all. I only really worked at such a big company because it was a movie business. That's the only thing. And then I also knew that now that I left the big city, there is no job like that here. At the time, working remotely still wasn't really a thing that happened after COVID and during COVID. But it was really unheard of that you would move away from London or New York or LA and you would work remotely for a big studio.
00:26:45
Speaker
Possibly now it maybe works, but I doubt it. you know it It's very much an in-person industry. Yeah, I agree. I think back to the amount of roles that I used to recruit pre-COVID that were remote, and I would say it would be less than
00:27:02
Speaker
less than 5% probably, like yeah maybe even less than that, really.
Remote Work and Company Culture
00:27:07
Speaker
And now after COVID, it's completely switched the other way. And now everything is remote and nothing is in the office. I might get, I think I recruited for maybe one one or two companies in the last ah like two or three years that have asked for someone to actually go into an office, which is like a crazy, a crazy switch. And in some ways it's great because you get the Obviously, you get the work-life balance, you get um there's a lot of benefits to working remotely. I mean, and I'm im obviously a big advocate for because I don't have a fixed location, right? I'm doing a whole digital nomad thing and working yeah all over the place. um But I think back to when I was going in the office and the amount that I was able to learn in a very quick space, a short space of time from the other senior people around me that I would just listen to just from being sat next to them every day.
00:27:54
Speaker
So I do feel like you miss out on quite a big learning experience now from from working from home that perhaps when you were going into those big corporates or going into the agency office and this kind of stuff, you probably were able to to pick up on quite a lot of things that way.
00:28:08
Speaker
I would say that certainly is true, but I wouldn't say that that's the fault of working remotely. I think it's just the whole remote idea isn't so established at corporations and businesses as the in-office, the whole culture, I think. And that's something we also really pay attention to. We are a remote first company. And at this point, we are still fine. we only around 30 employees rounding up. But we're already thinking about what's what is it going to be like and how are we going to do this when we are, let's say, 100 people. You do need to work on the culture. um So I think...
00:28:46
Speaker
there is There is a way, I believe, that remote work could still give you all these learnings you mentioned. But I think right now, lots so like most of the companies there just aren't really there of understanding of how to actually do it. And that's why you know it's it's almost self-evident in the office. You go there and it just happens naturally.
00:29:05
Speaker
It's you need to arrange these occasions in the remote world. So for example, at Relay, what we do, um I thought it would be great because we are remote only that we would have these water cooler moments, which happen all the time in an office. So what we now have, I found a tool and I introduced it to the company. And now every Monday, it automatically matches two people at the company for a 15 minute chat, essentially. So each week, ah you always meet somebody else and you just you know, you're just too fat, you just talk about anything other than work. If you want to talk about work, of course, you can work, talk about work, but it's about just, you know, a water cooler moment. of Like, hey, how was your weekend? ah What are you going to do tonight? How about that game and all these sort of things. And
00:29:50
Speaker
that had a really good response from from everybody that yes, i I really feel like I'm getting to know the people that I work with. It brings everybody close. And I think there's lots of ways like this that you can create these moments, the learnings as well. But the company has to understand that it's different to the office. It's not It's a virtual space now. So you need to create virtual experiences rather than hoping that, oh, well, we're not in the office. So now we can't do anything about this. I think it's still a new way of working. It's only been a few years and some companies reject it completely. And the first moment they can go back, they went back.
00:30:32
Speaker
um But I also see that more and more companies are actually embracing it because there's lots of benefits for the company itself as well. um Cost-benefit being one of the most obvious ones or a global talent pool being another one. um And it's a great perk. So I think it's only going to get better, but i I think it's important that the leaders of these companies actually understand that this is something that needs to be created. um And these opportunities need to be created because they don't happen by themselves.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, you're right. I like that. That's a good way of looking at it, to be honest, like creating those learning opportunities rather than, yeah, letting them happen naturally. Yeah, exactly. That's a good way of looking about it. It'd be interesting to see if there's many companies out there that do like really push those online learning opportunities and things. I'm not sure whether, I'm not sure whether, yeah.
00:31:28
Speaker
I think it's it also depends. to come In my experience, um i mean there were companies that cared about people more than others. Not every company has the same people people approach. you know at I think that's something as well, as I was saying before, that like choose who you work with. That's something that you need to get enough experiences for you to actually recognize this and to know what environment you want to step into and what environment you don't want to step into. um And to me,
00:31:58
Speaker
Now I felt like I am in a good place, mainly because of all these experiences that I had, that I was able to watch out for it. Obviously, there's it's it's never perfect, it's always conflict and it's always something that you're not 100% happy about, but I think It's ah important that you learn enough that you go into every new experience with your eyes open. And I think that doesn't happen when you don't have the experience, obviously. um And speaking of remote, I can't i imagine now work working anywhere else other than a remote for a startup. I just can't. ah The idea of going to an office, I just like, oh, my god. It's such a waste of time to commute and commute back. And being there, and it's actually
00:32:41
Speaker
you know I think it gives so much flexibility. And one of for Relay, one of the selling points is this flexibility that we care about the results. We don't care about you pretending to work, which happens very often in the office, ah especially in the agency world. I remember when i was when it was Friday, you pretty much any day actually, you would just see who's the brave soul who's going to get up first and leave the office.
00:33:06
Speaker
And he was like, ooh, if somebody left before six, I was like, ah, look at John leaving before six. This is not going to be good. We used to have that in recruitment as well. You'd shout across the office, someone would shout, oh, early night, or take a half day, something like that, all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody was just, and and nobody was doing real work. Everybody was just sort of, you know, maybe writing an email that you could write at home or you can write it tomorrow, but everybody was just waiting. When is it going to start happening? That people start knowing, I don't want to be the first, but after like the sixth person, I will get up as well and go, because now plenty of people have done this.
00:33:41
Speaker
and just bad it always the of bad bad culture but that great um Do you, um, do you, do you think there's any, uh, or can you talk us through while we're on the subject of skills and learning and things?
Key Skills for a CMO
00:33:54
Speaker
Are there any particular skills that you've picked up along the way that have really helped you in, in your CMO role? I know that might sound quite a basic question, but I think it'd be really useful for people to understand, uh, anyone who is aspiring to be a CMO, actually like what skills are involved in, in doing that particular job.
00:34:13
Speaker
I mean, I think this is this goes back to the part about when you're making the switch from from being a team member to being a team leader is that you will have to really um understand that it's not your job to actually do the work.
00:34:30
Speaker
um You do do work, obviously, but you know the outcome of the team is very much done by the team members. but What people can see is not the CMO doing it himself. ah It's you know it's the the graphic designer, it's the head of ah social media, it's the content creator. like These other people actually create what people see.
00:34:50
Speaker
um and you really need to just understand that that is not your job. Your job is to essentially put the people in your team into a best possible position so they perform to the maximum of the abilities and that is first of all to obviously ah come up with a plan, you need to set the direction, you need to give them the tools or the instructions of how to do this work. um And then you just need to be there to make sure that there's no distractions, that if they're struggling, why they're struggling and how can I help them not to struggle. And I think this is this is so the main part, it's really to to learn to be a leader.
00:35:30
Speaker
to work with the people um and to understand that they are your strength. If they shine because of the work they do, then you look good. And that's ultimately what you want. You want you know to to look good in front of your own boss and your peers as well. um And you can't do it if the people who work with you aren't able to do it.
00:35:51
Speaker
and ge this And this is something that you can only learn, essentially for me it always was. Even when I was ah when when i was a student and I worked at McDonald's, um it was about what kind of a boss would I like to be once I am a boss. And I had examples of bosses that I don't want to be.
00:36:11
Speaker
And I always looked at those people and thinking, like I don't want to do things like that. I want to do them differently. um And that's why also I don't want to work at a big corporation or ah or a fast growing startup. like you know ah As an example, there were lots of reports about Revolut a few years ago of what a toxic environment it was. And this happens at FinTech very often that actually go through rapid growth like that.
00:36:37
Speaker
um And you just learn of like, I don't want to be a type of person like that. And if I cannot be the type of manager that I know that I want to be and I know that works, then I don't want to work at that company. I don't want to use people as just, you know, like a short lived resource that I squeeze and throw away and then bring new ones. I actually like working with but people on and throughout my career as a as a team lead,
00:37:04
Speaker
I had a very low churn of employees currently at relay we have been together since i was part of the team and i and i recruited them they're all the same basically there was only one person that i had to let go ah because it was just the the wrong fit um but i believe that it's important that you.
00:37:24
Speaker
You really understand it's not about you and the best way to perform is if they perform really well. I'd say that's still neat that's the big story. You still need to deep dive into some of the marketing stuff. Of course. he yeah You have to learn all the time. um So about the team I think it's important to understand that they are not you're not necessarily or you don't have to necessarily be the expert in every single thing.
00:37:47
Speaker
So when it comes to social media, for example, I have a member in my team who absolutely gets it to the point that I just don't. I'm also 40 years old this year. So naturally, you're not doing dances on TikTok and stuff like that. Yes, exactly. Exactly. um So it just only makes sense that, you know, somebody who's younger would be a lot better at this. You still need to find the right person, but you cannot be the expert in this. um When it comes to writing or content creation, you know, I have excellent writers in my team.
00:38:16
Speaker
I can write, but I know that somebody can do it better. I think over years what I learned that my skill is the big picture. My skill is the strategic thinking. um My skill is to manage the team and bring the best out of them um and to let them perform really well. But I do need to learn always. I do need to see where the market is going, what is, you know,
00:38:39
Speaker
Basically, the main thing you need to learn, I believe, and this is true whichever industry you're at, is really learn who your target audience is. I think that is the most important thing for a CMO, is to know, who am I speaking who am i actually selling this product to? I need to be the the gatekeeper of this information more than anybody else, because it's my job to always check that the work we're doing actually aligns with this. If you as a CMO, you're you have you're the one who approves all the work that goes out.
00:39:07
Speaker
um and if you don't know who is it going out to, you don't know who the target audience is, then you will be doing a bad job and you're setting up your team for failure as well because they will just do what they think is right, which very often is right, but in cases where it's not, it still goes out and just, you know, there's no there's no understanding of are we doing a good job or not and that has to come from the CMO. It has to come from the head of marketing because That's your job. Your job as a CMO. I mean, it depends on every company. But for example, to sum it up in one sentence, my role at Relay is to grow the business. That's really what it is. Bring as many customers as possible, as many private clients as possible. Make the brand as big as possible. And the only way to do it is you need to know who you're speaking to, who is going to actually respond to this message, and what can I learn about them. um And if you don't spend time doing that, then you will not do a very good job.
00:40:01
Speaker
um The other thing I learned always is that you do have to understand um the product itself. Like you do have to spend time with the product. I am very much passionate about the Relay app and its development. And I always am talking to the devs about what can be done better, um what I would like to see, where I believe we should be going. um I mean, everybody at Relay is, we're really involved with the product, but I i also know there's lots of people who aren't.
00:40:31
Speaker
Lots of people think that my job is just to you know put out the perfect press release or really create a beautiful ad and spend lots of money. But actually, the most important thing is understanding that it's the product that really sells. And you need to know the product as well for you to know how people might respond to it. What is it that they might like, might not like. And this like the this is something that you actively need to work on.
00:40:57
Speaker
um And I don't know whether it can be learned or you have to have it, but this emotional intelligence and really trying to understand the motivations of people, I would say is very important for marketing. I also know that I think not everybody that I met throughout my career actually was very good at that. Lots of people struggle to understand how the target audience thinks or what they would feel, what is it what message they really respond to, what they don't respond to. And I think all these sort of things, I was in a in a lucky position to understand because in my agency days I worked with lots of markets. So ah had to this was a ah big part of the job is to understand the differences between France and Russia and you know how how different markets think.
00:41:45
Speaker
what messages work in different markets because you cannot come out with just one to everybody because what's funny in Portuguese and for but people in Portugal is not going to be funny for people in Austria. The sense of humor is also different and you have really learned all these these these big differences. There is a very good book about it called Culture Map as well um that explains it more on an organizational level of how to actually work with people who are from different backgrounds and cultures And that at the time, I didn't read the book, but working in an agency, especially in London, where it's such an international crew, you really learn to to understand um people a lot better.
00:42:25
Speaker
So it definitely helped. And I don't know whether it was something that I always had, or I learned it through the years. But I would say that that's quite important. A big part of my job is to really try to understand the target audience as well. And overall just who are we speaking to? I think that's...
00:42:44
Speaker
That's really good advice. Understanding your target target audience. Is there any ah any extra tips you could share on like how someone can learn that? If they don't have the agency experience, for example, ah you mentioned yeah um ah the the book you mentioned. Was it Culture Map? Yes. You said the name of the book. um yeah Any other tips on how someone can really understand their audience? Is it just getting out and speaking to to tons of people to who you believe are your audience and work out how they want to be spoken to and approached?
00:43:12
Speaker
is it places you can go, their particular websites where you can look at research and this kind of stuff. Do you have any any tips on that? I would say definitely trying to always do surveys, whether it's actually real surveys with your clients or just in-person surveys where you just talk to people. like I often ask my wife about things like, what do you think about this? um And she would tell me her point of view. And now she might not be the target audience for that particular thing that I'm thinking about, but it does help me to understand people outside of the target audience. And then I know that, okay, so this is what they think about it. And you just talk to more people.
00:43:49
Speaker
What, for example, works for for if you would work in Web 3, as the industry is called. I really don't like that term, but let's let's stick with it. um days Community is a big part of it. And there's lots of meetups, there's lots of conferences, and I would say you should definitely go and talk to people.
00:44:10
Speaker
That's the best way to learn, um is to really just go out there and ask questions and just get to know them what they care about. If you can't do that, then be involved in the online communities. um Let's say for us, it's it's Twitter or X is very important. Reddit used to be a lot important, not so much now, but still relevant. um And just really spend time actually there, be part of the culture.
00:44:37
Speaker
If you're not part of the culture, you will have a really hard time selling the product as well because I think everybody can sell to everybody. Agencies prove this all the time. They have lots of clients from all different industries and they help them sell the product. But I think That's because what they really go after is the mass market mostly. You know, like agencies work with a car brand. You cannot really have ah more of a mass market than ah than a car industry. Everybody needs a car at one point. When it comes to startups, you're always more niche.
00:45:12
Speaker
So it's a little bit more more difficult. And that's why I think it's important that you try to understand the culture. At an agency, you also have provided lots of research. All these companies have ah resources that allow you to basically have the latest research all the time. At a startup, you will not have that. You will not have, you know, Contar TV research and stuff like that, none of that.
00:45:35
Speaker
um So it's that's why it's important you do your own one. Whether it's a um ah sample of one or a sample of hundred or a sample of thousands, you should just try to do it. um If you can't do it that way, you can speak to the your team members.
00:45:51
Speaker
You can learn from them as well, because it's very likely that if all the people work at the same company, that there must be some sort of shared interest as well, something that's driven them to this company as well. And you can understand why people work at this company. Some of them might actually be part of the culture itself, and then you can learn from them. For me, certainly that was very helpful at Bitpanda.
00:46:12
Speaker
I went from you know from the movie business and from the agency world into a very niche, I would say, like subculture at the time, which was the crypto. you know And it was it was really small. It's not like what it was now. It's not like ah you know it's now millions and millions of people. At the time, it was really small. um And it wasn't so, I would say, part of the generic online experience as it is now. Now, if you go on Twitter, you go on whatever social channel, you will come across um crypto people for sure.
Industry Insights and Newcomer Advice
00:46:49
Speaker
yeah But in 2017, it wasn't. You had to actually go to like Bitcoin talk forum. You had to go on Reddit. On Twitter, it wasn't so common to still talk about it. ah There were obviously conversations, but it wasn't like
00:47:01
Speaker
things trending and and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people talking about one coin, none of this was really happening. um So for me, what helped is at the time were my two CEOs, because they were part of this. They were part of this culture for years before I joined. And just to really understand their thinking, they already knew who they're talking to. um Keep in mind that a founder who launches a business, he mainly launches it because he understands the product need. So he probably knows already the industry and he knows the culture and he's the best person at your company to speak to of like, why did you actually launch this? Can you tell me why are you thinking about this feature? Because I don't understand it.
00:47:44
Speaker
um Now I'm in a position of being here for years and I have been in the industry often more years than some of the people at my company. But at the time when I joined, it's important that I speak to people with more experience.
00:47:57
Speaker
That's the only way you can understand it. It's the easiest thing as well is to literally just talk to a team member who knows more than you do and just ask them, do you think people will like this? Do you think people will not like it? What should I say? Should I say this word or not a word? um And then it's just to learn as much as possible.
00:48:16
Speaker
I like that. Yeah. Get out and speak to people. I mean, there's plenty, plenty of events. Uh, if we're talking about web three and crypto, right? There's tons. Now it's not just some of the big ones. Yeah. Like not just some of the big ones, but it's even some of the more local events. Yeah, exactly. Tops and things obviously, um, tons of different telegram groups, telegram communities, discord communities, all this kind of stuff.
00:48:38
Speaker
um So yeah, I suppose there's plenty of opportunity to to do that. It's just finding the people that are willing to have that conversation with you, right? And and and I think this applies for any industry. If if there is a really, you know, up and coming industry that's super new, that's very niche and you join it, I think you should still you you will be still able to learn a lot just from the people who started the company because they will know it for sure. You would rarely find that there is a founder who knows nothing about the target audience or the product that he basically is selling to the audience um and that they are still in business because that would not happen. At the start it's very much the entrepreneur. the The first year I would say is just them, maybe one or two more people, but they know it and then
00:49:25
Speaker
then obviously they're able to help you once they bring in in an expert of like, all right, now it's time for me to grow my team and ah grow the business. i mean I need a marketing person. Then the marketing person comes in and then this marketing person either knows it or not. And if he doesn't, then he should definitely speak to the founders. Just understand why is this product even around? Like what is the purpose? And then that's that's point one. So how has marketing changed then because obviously that that's a great approach to really understand your audience and once you've then understood your audience in Web3 and crypto and the people that you're going at. How has marketing changed from how you market to those people compared to how you might market to someone in Web2?
00:50:11
Speaker
I really like this question um and I always give the same answer and it's maybe not the answer that people expect because I often have heard people talk about like, oh, very specific things about it. This is how it's different. I actually believe that marketing isn't different at all, whether it's B2C, B2B, whether it's a crypto business or a car dealership, because what you do is you speak to people.
00:50:33
Speaker
And that's what you need to understand is that you're talking to people. How do you actually engage people? What is it? How can you grab their attention? Now, the way to do it can be different, but it's about essentially offering value. It's more important than ever since since Internet and sort of digital marketing has become the main means of marketing.
00:50:53
Speaker
it really is now. I mean, even TVs are digital, so like it's all just digital now. 10 years ago, it was maybe 20% of the budget. Now, for most companies, 100% of the budget. And more than ever, it is important that you actually stand out of the crowd.
00:51:08
Speaker
And the only way to do it is actually to to tell a story with everything you do and have a personality. I think that's the main thing is is understand that you're speaking to people. And it's about how if your company is a person, how would they How would they be as a person? you know What is their personality? And I use this personally to actually talk to people on a one-on-one basis, is not like a brand who would talk to a mass market, because that never works. That immediately is is um perceived as an ad and blocked. like people I believe that people now have a human ad blocker.
00:51:46
Speaker
that they just filter through the ads. When they see it, they just don't even notice that there was an ad. They just go pass through it and they don't care. I mean, how many times do you get asked, say when you're ah just having a bit of a scroll on social media or something, you get asked, did you see this ad or how many times have you seen this ad pop up?
00:52:04
Speaker
And I always think, actually I can't remember actually seeing that ad in the first place, to be honest. So you're just not paying attention to it, right? And if if you do see it and you do notice it and there was something about it that stood out because it maybe spoke to you or it actually didn't speak as ah as a generic brand, I think that's very important. And overall just, you know,
00:52:24
Speaker
understanding that marketing has moved on and really embrace what aren't even new channels anymore, but just really embrace things like influencer marketing, ah
Storytelling in Marketing
00:52:34
Speaker
community building. like These are now legit marketing channels that are as important as TV used to be.
00:52:40
Speaker
If you don't do these things well, and if you don't know how to do them, and there's plenty of examples of big brands not knowing how to do social media, um you know, hilarious examples. And I think that they learn, McDonald's was one of those, they were really not good at social media. And now for the last few years, they're really, really great.
00:52:58
Speaker
um that Ryanair is brilliant. I don't like their product, but they're brilliant on social media. They really understand that it's it's not you know we cannot be serious all the time. It's like, this is not a serious ad. We shouldn't talk about like this and stuff like that. The thing is that you absolutely should, because that people want to be entertained. they want to be ah They want value from everything that they read.
00:53:23
Speaker
And if you can't provide value, whether it's entertainment or education or you know just a nice image, something that is actually unique and well thought out, then it shouldn't go out. Whatever you do, you should really think about whether, is this something that is worth putting out? I often um ask myself when we put out work, would, let's say, Apple or Nike put this out?
00:53:49
Speaker
And if the answer is no, they wouldn't, then I don't want to put it out there. um I consider Nike and Apple really more Nike than Apple, really like the the gold standard for marketing and how they <unk> communicate and how they understand who their target audience is and how they really cater to their audience and they create fans. I think that's that's currently the biggest job is to recreate fans and i read this very interesting article a couple of weeks ago and i can't find it again um but i quote it every time um there was this trend in silicon valley a few years ago and kind of an obsession and it became an obsession which is growth hacking
00:54:32
Speaker
It was it was the the main buzzword for every startup. We need a growth hacker. What growth hack can we do to grow? There is no more growth hack. It isn't. It's dead completely. It's now called just marketing. And I think what has been forgotten because of this obsession obsession about data and click-through rates and how can we increase something by 5%, what has been forgotten is storytelling and branding.
00:54:59
Speaker
people I think most companies have forgotten that the best way to sell something is to actually be a storyteller and just be interesting and have a personality. It's not about how you can improve you know ah one banner, the click-through rate, or its by 20%. It's not about that. It's about, am I saying something interesting here, or will they actually respond to it?
00:55:24
Speaker
and I think it has become a forgotten art um and hopefully it's on its way back. So if you were so you were were joining a um another web3 project, you'll say employee number two or three, they haven't started yet, they're just about to kick off their marketing. Any advice would you say, ah so find out um find out the the right story to tell?
00:55:51
Speaker
look at make sure you've got the right branding, focus on social media and community building. Would they be your your main four key pillars for someone to focus on straight away? Would you look at things ah like paid ads and all this kind of stuff, email marketing, like all that kind of stuff as well? Or would you kind of focus on on more of the social side these days?
00:56:09
Speaker
It really depends on the on the on the stage of the company and where they are, how much of it have they figured out. um Definitely not paid because a startup wouldn't have money for paid um and I wouldn't recommend doing paid before you do lots of the fundamentals.
00:56:25
Speaker
um And some of those fundamentals is email marketing, which is really great. like It definitely isn't dead. um Email marketing is is always strong. And and actually, I think it's it's stronger than ever. But I would say, I recently had ah as a talk with a friend who was interviewing for actually Web3 company, um for a crypto broker.
00:56:50
Speaker
and he wanted my advice so I just looked at the website of the company and what I told him is that I believe like What should be your main task and the first job you should really do is to to work on the brand itself and figure out the story. Because they had such a run-of-the-mill generic website and they had the same buzzwords that most fintechs said, like, we're on a mission, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like it just looked like a clone of another company. And I showed my friend this website.
00:57:24
Speaker
I told them they're just copying this company. That's essentially what they do. It looks the same. they' They're not even trying to say they' not trying to tell a story. They're just putting words on a website because they know that they have to.
00:57:36
Speaker
Because here we should put a mission. Let's write a mission. ah And it's about thinking about the mission. you know It's just like, that's not how to do it. So for example, for us at Relay, um for a while, we were identifying ourselves as the easiest Bitcoin app in Europe, or the easiest European Bitcoin app, or whatever it was. And that was also a tagline.
00:57:58
Speaker
um But I know, to first of all, being easy and easiest is a very subjective thing to say. um What is easy for one person is not going to be easy for another one. And it's also something you can always compete on. ah Like a product can come out, it's going to be extremely easy. And then you cannot say that you're the easiest when there's this competitor who is kicking your butt.
00:58:19
Speaker
But then also they can also also use it. And they actually have been using it. There have been several companies that were claiming in their marketing either in the main tagline or in the app store or wherever else in a strategic position that they are the easiest. So I changed that completely. And I also came up with a new story um and I tried to tie it to Bitcoin, which is what we do. We offer people ah the chance and the the the means to buy Bitcoin and to get into Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is ah essentially a way to financial freedom, to really control your financial future and take control of it. So I came up with a tagline, take on take take control of your future. um You can go on the website, relay.app, that's what we say. Relay allows you to take control of your future. That is, you know, the other people are the number one Bitcoin app, but we actually allow you to give you, we actually give you power. um And I think it's important that you
00:59:16
Speaker
you talk about you know why we are existing. There's this very famous talk by Simon Sinek about, you know find your find your why, don't talk about what or how, but actually why. And I do believe that is actually very important. As cliche as the talk might seem by marketers right now, it is super important to actually honestly figuring out why should anybody care? Why should why should they come to us?
00:59:43
Speaker
and give them a good reason. But it also needs to be a reason that the whole company believes in that actually it's not just a gimmick, which can happen very often. But in our case, it really works. And I'm very happy with that tagline. And everybody is very happy with it. And it actually helps us to stand out in the market compared to everybody else. um And I think that would be definitely one of the main jobs you should do when you join a company is just to figure out its story and why they should actually be in the market and and how to stand out, how to have a personality, and then work on that personality. I also went, in this example, I mentioned with a friend, I went on the social media account of this company.
01:00:22
Speaker
and they were just posting on social media but there was no conversation, there was no engagement on their tweets, there was like one like here and there and I compared it to our social media where we have you know lots of replies, lots of engagement, people actually like to engage with the posts we do because we always post something that we know that people will react to and we always try to do a conversation rather than just here's the new blog post.
01:00:46
Speaker
you know it's You might as well not do it. What's the purpose of it? You're just creating noise for the whole internet. um You're not bringing value. And I think that's also another thing you should really do, which really just is boiled down to work out the personality of this brand or create one if there isn't one yet. um You might be lucky that there already is something, some some real basics, and it just needs to be all tied together.
01:01:13
Speaker
But in most cases at startups, this is not really something that is solved yet, and people really underestimate it. And you know for us at Relay, the biggest success was our branding. That's why we are so known, because we are the number one Bitcoin brand in Europe.
01:01:28
Speaker
this is This is you know something that we hear from our investors, from competitors from America. ah like They all say, in Europe, there's only relay. And that is down to us figuring out our brand and really really working on it. We don't have budgets for paid ads. And that's not how we grow. So that's a very important job.
Relay's Branding and Mission
01:01:52
Speaker
And then once you have figured out that, then do the marketing fundamentals, which is obviously Content marketing works really well and is the cheapest thing you can do. ah SEO is the cheapest thing you can do. And all these things, while they might not have immediate impacts, but they are the to the foundation of any marketing. If you don't have these, there's no point for you going for paid ads. Because first of all, you're going to burn through the budget. All the startups don't have any money at all. And you need to really work on an identity before you start putting money behind it.
01:02:25
Speaker
and creating content, working on social media, working with influencers, all this helps you create an identity. And once you have it, then I always consider money is just like a booster. It's like your organic work does really well and now let's boost it. But if your organic work is at zero,
01:02:44
Speaker
doesn't It's like you're trying to lift something that is super heavy. At the end, it's just going to fall down and stay to the ground. But it's like when you're trying to like a blow a feather. A feather is just start flowing. If you give it just a little bit of a push, that's what paid marketing should be. You just give it give push something that already works, but you can't reach enough people because it's organic.
01:03:07
Speaker
There is a limit to it and it's not as scalable as when you should spend 10,000 euros on promoting one tweet or something like that. Then it can go global and you can reach millions and millions of people. But first it needs to work for whatever audience you can reach. And I think that's very important. Everything else is secondary.
01:03:29
Speaker
You've got me thinking about my own ah my own marketing, my own story now. I'm making a mental to-do list and notes about everything I need to go and check after this, after after our podcast. That's ah that's my weekend, ah my weekend sorted, I think. um So yeah, thank you thank you very much for that. No worries. If you have questions, you can always reach me. 100%, I'll probably take you up on that at some point.
01:03:54
Speaker
and That Simon Sinek video is is really interesting. I saw that quite a few years ago, to be honest, and it's something I've kind of kept with me. um Another phrase I quite like is sell the sizzle, not the steak, which is quite another interesting thing. I didn't hear that. Where did that come from?
01:04:12
Speaker
I can't remember where I head it. Somewhere on social media, someone was talking about selling the sizzle rather than actually what it is that you're selling. It's the the thought of the the smell and the sizzle and and stuff of of the steak, which I thought was quite an interesting tagline. Exactly. I mean, I always use Nike as as the the great example. And I am a Nike head for sure. Like most of, I run and I know that I better running shoes, but I always buy Nikes.
01:04:38
Speaker
um And to be honest, it's also because I just really like their marketing because they really create stories. Like some of the ads, some of the best ads, I think the best ad they have ever created, I'm sure you have seen it, is this overweight boy just running towards the camera. It's in like, it's in someone in Oregon or somewhere, like in ah in a middle of America, in the middle of nowhere, and it's just a road. And you see an overweight boy running towards the camera.
01:05:08
Speaker
And that was the Nike ad. You should look it up after the podcast. It's really it's really brilliant. And it really just says, because their mission is, you know um or it's not a mission, but like one of the taglines is that everybody's an athlete. They basically create products for athletes, and everybody's an athlete. If you have a body, you are an athlete. And I think they really sell this, that if you wear Nike gear, you almost feel like whatever the sport you're doing, you're doing it seriously.
01:05:35
Speaker
so yeah it's If you go running and you you put on a Nike gear, you feel like, yeah, um this this is not just a hobby for me, this is serious. And I think that's that's how everybody feels who runs. They're all hobby runners, but everybody feels like I'm a runner. um If I play football in my Nike boots, I am getting ready for every Thursday mentally for the game that I'm going to bring my best um because it it just creates this mindset. You're not aware of it, but you feel like, yeah, I mean,
01:06:06
Speaker
I am an athlete. Yes, I don't get paid, but I i am an athlete. And I think this really works. on here Exactly. And I think they do this better than anyone else. Apple does the same same thing. you know Not lately, I think really since Steve Jobs has passed away, I think they have sort of lost their way a little bit when it comes to marketing and branding. But certainly during his years, this idea that, you know,
01:06:32
Speaker
the it's It's a product for the innovators and for the rebels. And I have created almost a cult-like following because of that. It's not the products. This is what Apple people don't understand. is It's not the products you really believed the brand. And it was brilliantly done. And that's why people love Apple, because it made them feel that they're different than everybody else. That's what people want to feel. They want to be, first of all, part of a group.
01:07:00
Speaker
And they want to understand that they're not alone. And they want to know that you know our group is better than everybody else. I am different to everybody else. All these people that are with me, we are different. We are better. We are stronger. Whatever it is, I think people like tribes. They always did. um And it's important. That's why community marketing is so important nowadays.
01:07:24
Speaker
because you need to create your own tribe. And if you don't know how to do it, then you will really struggle in in the 21st century in growing a brand. Yeah, that's some really good advice. I can have to listen back to this episode quite a few times, I think, and make a lot of notes on and all the things you've said. um So could you could you introduce us to Relay in a little bit more detail? I know you've kind of touched on it at different points, but yeah could you talk us through through the product, through yeah what it is that you guys do?
01:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, of course. um So Relay is ah is a company based in Switzerland. We've been four years on the market now. And our product is a Bitcoin-only app and a self-custodial app as well. So um just to very quickly explain it, if you buy Bitcoin with an exchange, then actually they are the ones who own that Bitcoin if you keep your bit Bitcoin on an exchange. And this has happened many times in the past, um very recently with FTX.
01:08:22
Speaker
They went under and they actually used ah user funds for a lot of their schemes that they were doing. um And very much also with a bank. ah When your money is in a bank, it's not your money, it's the bank's money. They're actually giving it back to you, but they don't really have to. And there has been precedents for this as well. In, for example, 2008 in Cyprus, when the deposits were frozen and they couldn't get their money out.
01:08:47
Speaker
So these sort of institutions, the the custodians, and not it's never really your money. And the idea of Bitcoin, the original idea of Bitcoin is actually financial freedom. It's a decentralized, the only decentralized cryptocurrency, ah the only truly decentralized cryptocurrency. And part of it is also self custody, that you actually own it. Nobody can take your Bitcoins away if you're self custody.
01:09:11
Speaker
So what we offer is a very easy um ah Bitcoin wallet, which is South custodian. We have no control over the use of funds whatsoever. We essentially are just the exchange from fiat currencies to Bitcoin. You send money to us and we send you Bitcoin to your relay wallets. And then whether you keep the Bitcoins on this wallet, ah which you control fully, or you send it to another wallet or to a hardware wallet, that's really your choice.
01:09:37
Speaker
um And um we are the only ones in Europe, at least the only big ones in Europe that really do it this way. Most ah most of the market is custodians, so they all keep user funds as well. And this obviously comes with risks um that we don't that we don't have. um And we now serve the retail, so basically regular people, but we also serve through our relay private high-network individuals and through our relay business, small and medium-sized businesses as well.
01:10:07
Speaker
And we see now more and more that ah especially businesses and high-network individuals are giving up their stocks, their gold and real estate, and they're buying Bitcoin with us.
01:10:18
Speaker
um because we are actually in an environment now that is screaming for Bitcoin, you know, high inflation, um banks failing left and right, and overall living standards are going down. And I think people are starting to realize that maybe the financial system is broken and it's maybe not to my benefit. And the politicians and the institutions that I am really trusting, they might not have my best interest at their heart.
01:10:46
Speaker
So there is an alternative. And the alternative is the cryptocurrency market within that Bitcoin as the oldest cryptocurrency um and essentially digital gold. um I'm not going to go into the details of that, but it is ah for many reasons the most solid investment you can make. But then you have also other cryptocurrencies. And just very briefly, my theory of like why actually cryptocurrencies are so super popular like all the meme coins and all these sort of things it is very much because people are desperate because you realize
01:11:19
Speaker
If you're hitting your 30s and let's say you're getting married or you have children, you always compare to what you grew up with. um And you probably grew up with your parents owning their flat or owning a house, having a car, being able to travel ah regularly on holidays. And I think people who are in their late 30s, they're realizing that I will never own a house or a flat. It's impossible.
01:11:44
Speaker
and things are getting more expensive and I'm not making enough money and whatever I'm saving is actually not giving me anything. um And I think that's why cryptocurrencies are super popular because it is so exciting the idea that I can cheat the system. um And they're very risky obviously, like all these meme coins and and and and other questionable projects that are out there. They all have a use case because people just want to gamble because they realize that i I have nothing to lose. I either lose these thousand euros, which I can live without, or I can potentially make hundred thousand euros, which would be super helpful. That's, that's the main reason why, why cryptocurrencies exist is because the the traditional financial markets are broken and people are realizing that now. But yeah, that's my, that's my theory. So why, why did you get into crypto blockchain web three in the first place?
01:12:42
Speaker
um Well, in the first place, like I mentioned before, it was mainly because I wanted to work at a startup. So that was my prime ah primary motivation, was to work at a startup. It just so happens that it was Bitpanda and that it was the topic of cryptocurrencies. um And then the more I more read about Bitcoin, um I actually i understood it quite fairly fast and I immediately moved some of our money into it.
01:13:08
Speaker
um is because you understand that yes, it's it's the best way to move forward. And actually, if I want to have a better future or save for the future, I cannot be doing what everybody else is doing. There has to be a better way. And I mean, to be honest, this is true for most things. I really believe that if you want to be successful in life, you shouldn't do what everybody else does.
01:13:33
Speaker
You shouldn't accept you know um what the market is doing or your friends are doing. Be different. Go down the less traveled path. It's always more difficult, but take risks. I took a risk by going to startup. I took a risk by getting into Bitcoin and they're all working out. um I have actually never thought, I can't remember a time where I took to a less risky way and I felt like this was worth it. And this is true for exercising. It's really difficult to go for a run, but you should do it. Do you know why? Because the others aren't. Often like ah during my holidays, um we always go to Greece and I wake up before everybody else and I go for a run because that's the only time you can go for runs. And the thing that really keeps me doing it all the time is because the thought of all the people that are asleep
01:14:24
Speaker
that I am out here, not them. And that's, to be honest, that's how growth happens is do always what others aren't doing or they're too afraid to do. It is, in most cases, it's going to be repaid in your future by either learning something, learning about something about yourself. ah When it comes to Bitcoin, ah it is undoubtedly the best choice you can make if you want to actually move forward. It's not you know it's not ETFs. It's not a regular savings account. This is not a financial advice, by the way. um it's Just add that disclaimer in.
01:15:00
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Obviously, always when it comes to investing in anything, be mindful of how much you're putting in because you don't want to lose everything. And it depends on your risk factor. But I think, and I truly believe this, if you spend um several hours reading about Bitcoin, I have never met anybody who actually spent time researching it, who has anything bad to say about it. It's only people who don't understand it who criticizes for, oh, it's a scam, it's a Ponzi scheme. it's you know It's a bubble and all these sort of things. None of these are true if you actually spend time understanding it.
01:15:36
Speaker
um And that's why for me, it's now only Bitcoin. That's why I only really want to work in a Bitcoin company. um And the other part is that it's very similar or I believe it's very similar to what the early days of the Internet must have felt like and being one of the companies that are building this infrastructure. And I think right now, if you work for a crypto ah company, you are doing that.
01:16:02
Speaker
Obviously, be mindful what company you work for because if you work for some scam coin and you don't know, that might be a problem. That can also happen. I get i get very often offers from recruiters for for projects that I know for a fact that they're not going to be around a year from now. um And recruiters obviously don't know this.
01:16:21
Speaker
But I have worked in industry for a while and I can just see that, yeah, this project is dead already. They managed to raise some money somehow and they're growing right now, but there is no future. um So obviously, always research. But I think working at solid companies that um really are doing good work, I think is like building the second layer of Internet.
Cryptocurrency's Evolution
01:16:45
Speaker
I mean, it is called Web 3, obviously, because Web 2 and Web 1 was the Internet.
01:16:51
Speaker
And I think that's what you do and it's it's super exciting. And again, it's something that most people don't do. you know um I cannot think of anything worse than working at a company that has been around for 100 years.
01:17:06
Speaker
and has employees everywhere, you know and you work at a big team, but there is no risk taking. The the industry doesn't go anywhere because it's a mature industry. There is nowhere to grow if you work in a banking system, if you work for a car company,
01:17:25
Speaker
um or and yeah like, I don't know, if you sell shampoos. You can't scale anywhere. There's nothing else. the The industry is matured. This is one of the few ones that I knew and have still so much to grow. And I have seen this personally from 2017 to now, 2024, that we're still early. This is still just scratching the surface.
01:17:48
Speaker
um And I can proudly say that ah whenever I decide to to move on, that I was one of the people who are building this this infrastructure, at least in Europe for sure. um And I think that's very exciting.
01:18:03
Speaker
is just you know There's always something that happens. It's just an and exciting industry. that is ah As it grows, it goes through its scandals and it goes through its growing pains. I mean, I remember at the time um when I was working at Bitpanda, I still, well, I believed in Bitcoin, but I really wasn't sure whether, you know, like the like the meme is, are we the baddies? Like I wasn't sure whether ah what we're working on is legit. There was a funny episode that happened once we opened the front door, I was going for lunch, and the police was waiting there. And they were asking for the company, I'm like, whoops, this is the moment now, they they're on to us. ah But it turns out that we just had a threat which very often happens from scammers, they would thread threaten you with something.
01:18:55
Speaker
in this case, it was a bomb threat. oh And you would have to send them Bitcoin in return, obviously. um So they had to investigate it. But it was, you know, the way people looked at people working cryptocurrency businesses, and even the financial markets, the way they looked at Bitcoin was it was a joke, it was nothing serious. um And now you have BlackRock,
01:19:18
Speaker
and a bunch of other giant, giant corporations that pretty much control the financial markets are launching Bitcoin ETFs. It's remarkable the growth we have done and it's still only the beginning.
01:19:31
Speaker
So I can really recommend it, but you obviously need to do your research and understand the type of company you're joining, whether it is actually a solid business or not. Because as with any new industry, um that is is getting more regulated. There is already a lot of regulation, but obviously um it's not as mature as some other industries. You do need to be careful as well.
01:19:56
Speaker
especially when it comes to the remote environment. You get offers from companies from all over the world. Not all of them have to work, ah be registered in jurisdictions that actually are doing a good job. um So there is some risk involved um in that, but I think you just need to do your research and then you'll be fine. And I can only recommend working for a company like this. I agree. I mean, there's even scams from a from a recruitment standpoint.
01:20:26
Speaker
I mean, say if you're a new founder getting into the space for the first time, that it could be quite easy to fall for some of the scams where, um you know, there's people that come on and and do a first call with a recruiter and then they might get someone else to come in and do the technical interview, never turn on their camera and then someone else turns up to work and it's quite apparent within a couple of months that they they can't do the job and this kind of stuff.
01:20:46
Speaker
So as evening exactly there is scams to be aware of kind of all over the space at the moment. um I think that's important that i minor someone someone like yourself, I think that's super important that actually they are recruiters who only focus on this industry because you have to understand it. If you're like a generalist recruitment agency and you take on clients like this, they might show you the money, but the money alone is not a proof of anything.
01:21:10
Speaker
You know, that can there is a long history of VCs giving money to projects that turned out to be terrible and they scammed their clients. that This is a fact. Also, they can raise money through you know ICOs and all these sort of things. ah Or they can just get lucky with the crypto market years ago and they are super rich.
01:21:30
Speaker
The money itself is not a guarantee of trust and that's something that people need to understand who are recruiters and want to work with these companies, but also people who want to work at companies like this. Just because there's a budget and they're recruiting doesn't mean that this company will survive for months or that you know the founders won't be jailed or something like that. like Do your research.
01:21:51
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I'm pretty, I'm pretty picky these days about the companies I represent and types of projects and this kind of stuff. Yeah. just Because you have to, you have to be right. Cause it's your reputation is because it's such a small industry, everyone knows each other by like one degree of separation. Yes.
01:22:06
Speaker
so And to be honest now it's a lot harder. and Like now I think spotting a dangerous company is a lot harder. In 2017 and 18 you would often have projects and they would go to their website and you would look at the team and would have like a photo Ryan Gosling as one of the team members.
01:22:23
Speaker
Yeah, so there's lots of funny stories like that where you just see a photo. I mean, I recently seen like this documentary ah Bitcoin, I think it was on it's on Netflix. It's about one of these crypto projects that essentially it was just there was nothing behind it. It was a total scam, but they um I think it was Seltra or something like that.
01:22:47
Speaker
um They just used photos of people that were not even aware that they're on that website. And that's the that's the cleverer case. In my case, like I said, I remember celebrities being on websites as, you know, John Q, the CEO or something like that. And it's Ryan Gosling or it's Angela Jolie or something like that. Crazy things.
01:23:11
Speaker
But now it's a lot more difficult to actually find you know find out, but it doesn't take a long time. We're really just looking to the founders. That's the easiest way. Who are these people? um And then also where the company is registered. um Are they licensed, for example? Because actually in most of the Western world, I think in all of the Western world, actually, if you want to have a business like this, you need to have ah some sort of a relationship with a regulator.
01:23:37
Speaker
And this relationship should be on the website. If it isn't, if there's no mention of regulators whatsoever, I would really worry. I would really question that as well. um But I think that's becoming rarer and rarer. I think now you have a very good chance that if a recruiter reaches out to you, it is a ah regular company and a regular startup.
01:24:03
Speaker
how um How do you feel about fully anonymous teams?
01:24:10
Speaker
um Would you work with those types of projects? What's your thoughts on that? I mean, I would not work also because it really depends on the size.
01:24:22
Speaker
and depends on their goals. But it is very difficult to build trust if you don't know the people behind, especially at the at the the beginning, when it's a smaller startup. That's what works for us really well. like ah Our users and our community knows those the two co-founders. They know my face. They know me. um We are very active on social media. We reply to them. They can reply to us. um like It's all there in the public. They know who we are.
01:24:52
Speaker
And I believe that it's extremely difficult. At the end of the day, we're talking about a financial company, you know, like every cryptocurrency company is a financial company. So you're asking people to trust you with their money. And I think that trust is very difficult to build if you never show your face.
01:25:10
Speaker
You know, like, yes, you can get some people, you can get some people who will trust you, but the mass market will definitely not trust you. And then it's very difficult to build a successful trustworthy brand. um That's my, that's my experience and opinion, to be honest. And I think it's, it's always better to have faces rather than brands.
01:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair enough. Because yeah, because I've spoken to quite a few projects where I come on an initial introductory call with founders and everyone's cameras off and ah you don't really need to know their name. Is it their online name? You're on the call and you're like, do I call you Nightingale123 when I'm on a call with you? Do you know what I mean? Like this kind of stuff.
01:25:57
Speaker
and So yeah, it's just interesting to understand different people's points of view and different take on it, really. Because for me, I ah kind of struggled to then sell that business and yeah sell that team.
01:26:08
Speaker
to so people and to potential candidates and people who are interested in and the roles and business and stuff, right? And I don't feel like it really starts off the relationship on, as you said, the right level of trust between. ah I think it's different now. I i could understand at the beginning and the early years, and certainly even in 2017 when I joined,
01:26:30
Speaker
um We really only put the founders at Bitpanda to be sort of public faces. um And even then it was a discussion whether we should be doing it or not, because it also comes with a certain risk. um yeah And in these early years, there was a risk that if you would be identified as know somebody who works at a Bitcoin company or a crypto company,
01:26:52
Speaker
that you might be in some trouble that people who attack you because, oh, you must have Bitcoin. you work at ah it's It's like assuming that somebody who works at a bank has access to the vault. you know it's It's not how it works, but certainly I have heard of attacks ah and uncomfortable situations in the in my in my early years at the industry. We, for example, at one time at Bitpanda, discouraged the members to wear branded t-shirts outside.
01:27:18
Speaker
to like show that you work at Bitpanda, for example, um because there was a period of time where you could know you could meet undesirable people who who might be idiots and they think that you carry around you know millions on you just because you work at a company.
01:27:37
Speaker
um But I think now it changed a lot. It's also just now so much part of everyday life. I think everybody knows somebody that has invested in cryptocurrencies or works at a company or is somehow aware of this topic. It's not like unheard of now. you know ah Five and 10 years ago, it very much was very niche. Now it's more there. So there's less risk.
01:28:02
Speaker
um being associated with a company like that. So I think from a brand's point of view, you should not be afraid. You should actually put your face there. You're just one of the many people who work in this industry.
01:28:14
Speaker
um I think i think that's that's quite important when it comes to building a brand. Yeah, that's fair enough. I'm sure, um I mean, I'm confident that there still are ah Yeah, bad things and and people become targets and that kind of stuff. and That stuff definitely still goes on. Of course. So I can see from that perspective why people wouldn't. but um yeah makes the sense yeah the same way you know The same way people who have Ferraris get targeted.
01:28:44
Speaker
um I think most often what happens and most of the cases that I heard that somebody like got into trouble wasn't because of where they work or whether they show their faces. It was actually people who let's say bragged about how much Bitcoin they have. There was a very famous case in Austria here, like six, seven years ago, where there was a guy who was bragging in a bar of how much Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies he has. um And then I think later that that night or the following night,
01:29:15
Speaker
There was a breaking and they basically tied up his whole family and they were threatening him for the wallet. And he had to give it up. And it was purely because you made yourself a target. Don't go out and like, no, you wouldn't go out and say that I have 2 million in my bank account, by the way. Nobody would say that. So why would you go out and say, oh, I have this much Bitcoin, I have this much Ether and stuff like that. You're just making yourself... it's It's a totally unnecessary information. You're obviously doing it because of your ego, but actually you're making yourself an unnecessary target because you never know who's listening. And you wouldn't do this with gold. You wouldn't do this with euros. So why do it with cryptocurrencies? Just stay quiet about it. If you have a lot, good for you. Don't talk about it. Yeah, it's fair enough. It's a good way of looking at it.
01:30:08
Speaker
is Is there any other ah tips that you could give for someone who's maybe stepping into Web3 for the first time? So obviously, do your own research, be discreet if you do have tons and tons of crypto. But any any other tips you could share, or maybe if someone's looking to build a successful career for themselves, for example, like any tips you could share yeah about the industry itself?
01:30:30
Speaker
I would say it's not really about sort of stepping into... So in my experience and opinion, I think it's the the bigger culture shock is never the crypto part or the web3 part, it's the startup part. Because most of these companies will be startups. And working at a startup can be very different to whatever other experience you might have with working.
01:30:50
Speaker
And I think um I can really recommend working at startups. I think you, especially if you're young or um if you don't have sort of big commitments, financial mainly, you should definitely do it. um I think anybody in their 30s, you're still young, you don't have big financial commitments, you should definitely try working at a startup. You have only to gain um You will definitely learn and it will be good for your long-term future as well. It's a good thing for your career that you have showed risk and you have learned and and you learn so much more at a startup than a corporate. It goes so much faster. The two years at Bitpandarin I did, I have learned a lot more, a lot more than I would have ever learned at five years at a corporate.
01:31:37
Speaker
because just every day is a new challenge. Everything goes super fast. You have to do it yourself because nobody else will do it. You have to be creative because there's no budget that can solve you, your problems. You have to become creative in your thinking and problem solving.
01:31:52
Speaker
At corporations, this doesn't really happen that much because there's always a solution. Usually you pay for it. um So my biggest advice would be whether it's about crypto or whether it's about startups, you just do it. Take the leap and take the risk.
Career Advice and Personal Growth
01:32:10
Speaker
um You have only to gain. Even if you find out that it's not for you, then at least you learned that, that it's not for you. Yeah.
01:32:17
Speaker
And then you know, you know where to to go next, right? Or the types of an opportunity to look at next. Um, exactly. So yeah. So, um, to, uh, to finish off, um, you've shared some brilliant advice, uh, today, some, yeah, some really in-depth tips on, on marketing web three and great to hear about your, your journey and relay. Thank you. Knowing what you know now about marketing leadership, web three, crypto business, whatever it might be.
01:32:46
Speaker
Yes. If you could go back to the start of your career when you left uni and you were thinking, right, um I need to get this job. I need to go to a marketing agency, whatever it might be. Have you got any advice that you could share or that you would share to your younger self?
01:33:00
Speaker
um Yeah, maybe just don't stress and just like just really enjoy it. um I think it's it's an advice in general, I think, for younger people. just like you know everything Everything will come to you when when the time is right. I know it sounds like a super cliche and probably is a big cliche, but it's just like... you don't need to have everything at the same time. It's okay to have part of what you want and mainly just really enjoy the process because it is ah these initial phases of your career are actually super important and exciting and it's also just fun and you should actually have fun. It's very much like you know as you as a person you're growing older
01:33:48
Speaker
The time for fun is mainly when you're younger. Once you have a lot more commitment, it's a lot harder to have a lot of fun and a lot of freedom. But when you're starting out somewhere, yet you you don't really have that many like giant responsibilities. It's your boss who has the big responsibility. For you, you should have fun. You should explore and um just really enjoy it, I would say. It's it's a very generic advice, but that's what I would give myself is
01:34:19
Speaker
is to just really enjoy those years. And the other thing is maybe maybe I would have made the move to the startups earlier, but that's only because I know that it works for me. ah And obviously I will never know whether it would have always been the case or i I had to go through all those experiences before for me to appreciate startups more might be both true. um But overall, I don't really have any regrets about my career whatsoever. I really believe that everything made sense. um Even what at the time I might have considered as mistakes, I think they made sense. They all have given me something and I all learned. I learned from all of those opportunities and experiences as well. And I wouldn't be the same without them. So I don't believe in ri regret that way. And once you go through your career, that's my final advice,
01:35:14
Speaker
It doesn't matter what sort of steps you do and what gaps you have there. You should always think about your own story. And I think if you have your own story, then you can get jobs anywhere at any point. Because like I said before, it's about storytelling. ah You can wake me up at three in the morning and I can ace any interview and I can guarantee you that I will get the job.
01:35:37
Speaker
I know that about myself now because I have a story that I tell, the story of emo essentially and how this person can help your business and I do it, I know it so well now that it's very convincing and that's the one thing I really learned in sort of climbing the ladder is that this is important.
01:35:58
Speaker
If you cannot sell yourself, how would how should they and why should they trust you that you're able to sell their product? And so many people don't know how to talk about themselves and sell themselves. And that's the only way to be convincing is just to really have a story. And what it also helps is that you start appreciating yourself more.
01:36:18
Speaker
um you It's almost like a mental diary. and And there is a paragraph that you read out loud in an interview. And it's, you wouldn't say that, oh, well, you know, I get really anxious and all these sort of things. You know, you focus on the positives. And this is the story you tell to yourself and tell other adult others, and then you believe it. um And this also helped with the imposter syndrome. I do feel it even now sometimes. But then it always helps me to think about what I've been through and what I've done.
01:36:47
Speaker
And then he's just like, well, actually, I think I'm good at my job. I i shouldn't feel this way. That's great advice. Brilliant advice. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to have a conversation today.
01:37:01
Speaker
ah Like I said previously, i've I've learned a lot from this conversation. I'm going to go back and and listen to this episode a few times over and make a bunch of notes. um yeah My weekend's now going to be full with looking at my own my own story and Unbear Recruitment brand and yeah just to yeah see see what I'm missing.
01:37:19
Speaker
um but ah um if If anyone's got any questions or they want to follow up with anything, um say they wanted to ask you your advice on certain topics and that kind of thing, um are they able to reach out to you on LinkedIn or is it Twitter? um Yeah, both. i like that link linkedin LinkedIn and Twitter works. i'm I'm sure you will share it when you post about this. but Yeah, I only really use those two. um LinkedIn, actually, I prefer more than X lately. um But yeah, just drop me a DM or or say that you have seen me here and you have questions. I actually quite enjoy talking to ah people who are starting their careers and they have questions. I actually really admire that because I didn't do it. um I think it's super clever. I think if you're a person who wants to learn this way, at the start of your career, you will go far.
01:38:10
Speaker
um it's you know It takes it takes um humility to actually just be like, I just want to learn from you. Yeah, I agree. Having that growth mindset, especially at the start of your career is yeah massively important. Yeah, I think it's very impressive. I certainly wasn't like that when I was young.
01:38:30
Speaker
No, I don't think I was when I started my career, to be honest. i was um I was always very arrogant in a way that I know exactly what I'm doing right now. Even when I didn't know that I'm doing it, I fooled myself that no, no, this is... I have this. I'll figure it out.
01:38:49
Speaker
Nice. well um Well, yeah, I encourage anyone listening to reach out to you and yeah, if they have questions on marketing or about their career, yeah, I'll ah i'll tag you and when i when I post and yeah, people can reach out and drop me a line. Perfect. Yeah, mate. Thank you very much for taking the time again and daalam I'll speak to you soon. Thank you. Bye. Take care.