Phillip Alexeev | Evergrow.io
Why should marketers care about Web3? NFTs? The blockchain? Cryto currency?
In this episode, Evergrow.io founder Phillip Alexeev breaks this topic down and explains, in plain English, what the blockchain, Web3 and NFTs are, how they can be used by marketers, and what, specifically, B2B marketers should know about their role in the marketing mix.
If you’ve heard these terms and have been wondering what they have to do with marketing, this is the episode for you.
Check out the full episode to hear what Phillip had to say.
Resources from this episode:
Connect with Phillip on LinkedIn
Follow Phillip on Twitter
Phillip and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:02):
Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Phillip Alexeev, who is the founder of evergrow.io. Welcome to the podcast, Phillip.
Phillip (00:26):
Thanks for having me, Kathleen.
Kathleen (00:28):
Yeah, I'm really excited about this episode. I have to be honest. And this is the first and probably what will be a series of interviews that I'm doing with people who are going to teach me, and along with me, all of you who are listening more about Web3 and NFTs specifically. So I can only speak for myself and say that I'm fascinated by this, but I also feel like an idiot <laugh> <laugh> because it is, it is complicated, right? And and before we get into that, I wanna do some table setting. And have you talk about your background, which is really interesting because I think it also kind of provides context for why you're the person I wanted to talk to about this topic. So can you just share with my listeners a little bit about your history and what you've worked on and what you're doing now?
Phillip (01:20):
Absolutely. For, so I've been in growth marketing for, well over a decade at this point. In a nutshell, basically what I do is I help companies acquire, monetize and retain customers across their entire funnel. And so my career trajectory has definitely been a pretty interesting one. Straight out of college founded a boutique marketing agency, worked with a lot of local businesses, then transitioned over to kind of SaaS based businesses. So really, you know, found that niche there. And then from there I actually moved on to being a CMO of a telecom company, which was a pretty interesting couple of years. And then after that sort of made my foray into emerging technology. And so after the telecom company, I worked as head of growth for a company called Shapeways. It's the world's largest 3d printing platform and 3d printing service.
Phillip (02:17):
So people outsource their 3d models and then Shapeways basically prints them and then gets them fulfilled and takes care of all the logistics. So spent a couple years there and from Shapeways, just through my network in the 3d space moved on to being head of growth of a company called Sketchfab, where I spent a little bit over four years. And so at Sketchfab it was really interesting because it started off as a 3d platform, but then very much so kind of moved into the direction of, of virtual reality, augmented reality, just kind of like that whole, like what we call the metaverse today. And so, yeah, sketch was a very interesting experience because this was like the very, very early days of of like virtual reality back when, you know, the Google cardboard was the coolest thing. And now that we have all these awesome devices like the Oculus, so it's crazy to see how far it's come, but really there's where I would say, like I embrace kind of my, you know, emerging technology background and, and sort of just figured, Hey, if it's new and if it's interesting and if it might change the world then Hey, I'm on board, right?
Phillip (03:20):
So, so that was kinda beginning half of my career. And then during my time at Sketchfab, I actually was lucky enough to get introduced to a couple of really cool companies. One of them that I think a lot of us know in the crypto space nowadays is it's called Decentraland. So I was an early advisor to Decentraland and really through that, I mean, I've been investing in the blockchain for, for quite a long time like, you know, early Bitcoin, early Ethereum, but I think Decentraland really opened my eyes to a whole new world of protocols and suites of products that are really, you know, taking something that was somewhat vague, you know, blockchain technology. And I feel like, you know, especially back in the day when I would mention Bitcoin to people, it'd be one of two answers.
Phillip (04:05):
Like I have no idea what that is, or that's a total scam stay away from that stuff. And I mean, we can see how that's played out since, but yeah, it's, it really kicked off my, my journey into, into the blockchain space and working with companies in the blockchain base after Sketchfab, I kind of split my time between doing a lot of advisory work for B2B companies, specifically, B2B, just cuz I noticed that, you know, as far as marketing efforts are concerned, like the ROI is just so much higher on B2B, right? Like you, you might spend a little bit more to acquire a customer, but at the same time, like those, those average contract values are, you know, significantly higher than they a direct to consumer purchase. Right? So spent a lot of time advising B2B companies on basically the same thing, just setting up their baseline, like customer acquisition, monetization funnels, like working with sales teams to really help align pipeline.
Phillip (04:57):
And just like how marketing and sales worked at these very early stage companies. Then on the other side, sort of my nights and weekends really spend diving into the world of Web3 and you know, just having a lot of conversations and, and, and talking with a lot of really interesting projects and founders and kind of seeing what they were doing and what I've noticed was slowly but surely I became really good at applying my B2B and of just like general growth marketing in the SaaS world, applying those skills to the Web3 space. Now, the way that marketing is done in the Web3 space is a little bit different, right? I would say on the B2B and B2C side, it's a lot of direct response. It's a lot of brand building, but when it comes down to Web3, I mean, it really is all about community.
Phillip (05:40):
Every other sort of marketing effort is very kind of tangential to this, this epicenter of community, right? And so all of your traffic sources, all of your funnels, everything, ultimately you're trying to drive people to an engaging community where they want to be a part of it. They wanna stick around, they want to hang out, they wanna learn and meet other people. So it was really interesting to see how the time that I spent at Shapeways and Sketchfab, which were both very much so community based businesses, right. Shapeways was a huge community of 3d printing enthusiasts sketch was a massive community. I think now over 7 million strong of, of 3d modeling folks. Right? So, and by the way, both of those companies, I'm glad to say had pretty successful exits this year. So definitely you can see the power of community and the power of a great product and platform how that pan out.
Phillip (06:29):
But yeah, I've really started noticing, you know, a lot of similarities between, you know, what I was doing there and kind of the Web3 space. And so I would say probably the last year and a half has really been heads down into the Web3 space, working with a bunch of great projects, working with a ton of great companies. And, and really, I would say, you know, as much as I know, and as much context that I have, I'm definitely still learning to this day. And it's, it's definitely, you know, every single day that to have conversations, just like, wow, this is mind blowing. And and yeah, it's, <laugh>, it's been an interesting ride thus far. And I feel like it's only beginning.
Kathleen (07:05):
Yeah. It's, it's fascinating to me. It's really fascinating to me. What's happened even just in the last year with respect to how all this Web3 stuff is starting. You get applied in the marketing world and, and now with B2B marketing and that's really the first, first thing I wanna cover. And, and, and by the way, why I'm doing several interviews on this, for those of you who are listening is twofold one, because I'm just really interested. And selfishly as the host, I get to decide what the topics are <laugh>. But two, this is too big of a topic to cover holistically in one interview. So I'm breaking it up into chunks and, or, you know, some people call it like eating the elephant one bite at a time, which is kind of a gross analogy, go with it. And so the bite that we're taking today is specific to NFTs. And I think some people are probably listen and rolling their eyes and going, like, what does this have to do with me? Like I'm a B2B marketer. They might even be people who are personally interested in NFTs, but they just don't think that it's something that has to do with the way they do B2B marketing. And so can we just start out by very, very high level? Can you explain why a B2B marketer should care about this?
Phillip (08:21):
Absolutely. Well, I think at the crux of everything you know, given the landscape of the NFT world right now, you kind of have two sides to it, right? You have one side, which is very much so just kind of feeding off the hype and, and just like with any market, just like with 3d printing, just with augmented reality for, or true reality, there's always a massive hype cycle. Everybody gets extremely excited. Every single person starts using NFT in their marketing and in their communications. And then, you know, usually what ends up happening is you end up falling into this phase called like the trough of disillusionment, right. Which is like all the hype passes, the smoke clears. And it's like, well, what now? Like that didn't quite pan out the way that I thought it was. So you have that side of NFTs and you have the other side of NFTs.
Phillip (09:08):
And, and I guess just to zoom out for a second, NFT stands for non fungible token. It's really just a I guess it's your mark on the blockchain. And it's designated as you know, the ownership of a specific asset as it relates to the wallet, that's holding it on the blockchain, right? So you can technically mint anything as an NFT. You can mint an images, an NFT, a video clip, and audio clip. You can, basically an NFt can do one of two things. One, it could be sort of serve as a collectible. And then on the other side, it can also give you utilitarian access to a variety of things. And, and we can go into that later in the interview of how some companies are really doing it in a cool way. But I would say as a marketer, I think the reason that people should pay attention to NFTs aside, just like, you know, the hype cycle and everybody talking about them and everybody wanting to make quick money flipping and trading NFTs, which by the way, keep in mind, there are taxes tax liabilities, <laugh>, <laugh> that people should look into.
Phillip (10:09):
I, I love seeing people like, oh yeah, I made five ether trading NFTs. I'm like, you should really think about how that's gonna impact your taxes before you, you start buying and selling crypto assets. But I think the reason that marketers should really care about NFTs is because I think they are going to eventually when this initial hype cycle passes, they are really going to revolutionize and disrupt the way the creators get paid for their content and, and for their attention. Right. So I think we're moving into a world where, you know, you have all of these social media platforms, you kinda have all of these like online communities. And I think we've all become very accustomed to the fact that, you know, they're free to access, they're free to participate in, but then they're really monetizing us in our attention via advertising. Right.
Phillip (10:53):
That's, that's usually the model that you know, sort of the approach that most companies take these days, right. If we're not buying the product, you are the product precisely. Precisely. Yeah. And so I think the cool thing with NFTs is not only is there a, you know, a, a functional sort of purpose for them, meaning you can hold an NFT to participate in a specific community. You can hold an NFT to get access, to be able to be one of the first to bias, specific product in hold, an NFT for, you know, a multitude of reasons. But I think in the long run, it really is just fundamentally changing the way we think about online interactions. And you have a lot of different verticals, basically taking their own approach to it. So for example, even in the video game industry, a lot of the industry is moving over to something called Play to Earn, right?
Phillip (11:40):
So you're no longer just playing video games for free and wasting your time. And everybody in your family is mad at you. Like, well, why haven't you left the computer for 16 hours?
Kathleen (11:48):
I have a 15 year old that that is our conversation.
Phillip (11:51):
<Laugh> you you've seen it. You've seen it. I, my nephews and some of my friends too, like they can <laugh>, they can really go and, you know, get stuck in that downward spiral. But I think now, even that is moving over to like a play to earn model. You are now actually getting paid for your time, spent in that community for participating. And the same is happening across us. The board think people are within the next three to five years, for sure. Every single person that's gonna be participating in any form of online community is gonna have some form of expectation of compensation.
Phillip (12:24):
Right. And so I think fundamentally that just kind of changes the way that we interact with people, the way that we build communities as marketers, the way that we keep those communities engaged and really the value that people get out of those communities. Right? So we have all kinds of like meetups and, you know, private business groups and, and, and those are all great. And I'm a part of a ton of them. But I think at the same time, it's gonna be very, very interesting to see that shift going from like, Hey, I'm in this group for free and I'm getting value and I'm meeting people and I'm getting knowledge to now, Hey, actually being a member of this group holds a, an actual tangential, you know, financial value. Right. And, and not only that, but me as an NFT holder, I have a lot of opportunities to do interesting things.
Phillip (13:07):
Like I can always sell that NFT, AKA sell my membership to a specific community or, or to a specific group. Right. I can always rent that NFT out. I can always fractionalize my NFT and basically split it into shards and share it with multiple folks. So I think the opportunities are endless, but, you know, as a marketer, when I first started sort of looking into the world of NFTs, right before this big hype cycle, and everybody started posting about them and everything of my Instagram feed is about which celebrity bought, which NFT I really did sort of have that aha moment, that spark that was like, oh my God, this is just gonna change how we interact online. And there's just to sort of cap that off. There's this beautiful graphic that I saw, which was this kind of like web one web two Web3, right?
Phillip (13:55):
One is like, give us your email and sign up. Web two is like, connect your Facebook or log in through Twitter. And that's how you get access. Web3 is connect your wallet, you connect your wallet, you verify what you're holding in your wallet and, and that's how you gain access to these communities. And so that's kind of the way that the internet is evolving. And I think even though there is a lot of hype, there's a lot of, excuse my language. There's a lot of out there at the same time. I really do think that, you know, the, the world of NFTs and as it's playing out right now will actually revolutionize the way that we communicate online. We participate in online communities.
Kathleen (14:31):
Oh, I'm like so excited to get into this conversation. I wanna start, there are so many questions also. I wanna start just with the most common pushback I hear, which is people who say like that NVS are ridiculous that, you know, like why would I buy some digital image of a monkey when I could just literally create it myself, blah, blah, blah. And, and, you know, and how easily theoretically replicable these digital things are, you know, you know, and you, as you said, there's different types of NFTs. Some are artwork then there are other things that are totally different in terms of the value they convey for me. And I don't know the, the, the right answer to this, but for me, the thing that made it make more sense. And, and I always think like maybe other people will find this helpful is that I have a 15 year old who plays video games.
Kathleen (15:21):
And someone once described this to me as think about when your son is playing Fortnite. And he buys a skin, a skin is effectively like the same as an NFT in the sense that it's a digital asset that, that somebody has found value in. Like he wanted it, he was willing to pay for it. Right. And, you know, that's a fake thing in a fake world. And I always used to tease him, like stop spending your money on things that don't really exist. <Laugh>. But that to me, I was like, okay, I, I get it. Like, he's willing to part with real money for this. And right now there's not like an aftermarket to trade skins. Like there is with NFTs, but, you know, for me, it goes back to my, my economics classes, way back in the day of the law of supply and demand, and also just perceived value.
Kathleen (16:08):
And as marketers, we have to understand, like, we create perceived value. That's one of things that, that we do for a living, like you think of diamonds and DeBeers diamonds inherently are not a scarce thing, but they have created value by, by building an aura of scarcity around them. So all of those concepts have helped me, I think, just begin to wrap my head around it, but like, I would love it if you could sort of break it down a little further and, and answer that question of like, why anybody care if it's something that in theory they could replicate. And I think that only applies to a certain class of NFT. Am I correct about that?
Phillip (16:41):
For sure. So there's, there's this very popular sort of pushback in the community and everybody says, oh yeah. Why not just like, right click say that. Right. Like, that's, that's been-
Kathleen (16:51):
It's like the digital baseball card kind of analogy.
Phillip (16:55):
Precisely. Yeah. I mean, I think the, the thing that sort of differentiates just the image itself from the functionality of the NFT is that the NFT is actually registered on the blockchain. It's a distributed node of computers all around the world. That basically all confirm autonomously that you are indeed the owner of this particular non fungible token. Right. So yes, I can always right. Click save as an image. It could live on my computer. I can even send it to my, you know, apple watch background if I wanted to, but when it comes down to it, I think, and again, this separates the, the NFT collections that are actually gonna make a difference from the hype cycle NFTs. A lot of them indeed, the art is doesn't really have too much value if there's an aftermarket, that's fantastic. Maybe you can make some quick money flipping it, but I think some of the best NFT collections, what they really do is aside from just the art, they give you access and they provide utility.
Phillip (17:54):
And so I think like that's just something that a JPEG wouldn't be able to do. And just like in, you know, for example, with your son's example, right. We're spending so much time in the digital world. I would say these days, especially with COVID like the proliferation of digital communication has, has basically superseded in real life connections. Right? Like, I don't remember the last time that I spoke on a, in real life panel or I was at, you know, some sort of like meetup or anything. But for multitude of reasons. But I think also, you know, I think the world is generally becoming more comfortable with spending time online and it's, especially with the advent of the metaverse and, and kind of how that's gonna impact both our social relationships as well as our, our careers. And so I think, you know, really there my pushback to those folks would be, yes, you can save images on your computer all day, but can you use them for anything else other than to look at them? And the answer is usually no. Right. And so I think it's that whole other side of utilitarian value that really separates you know, NFTs from just regular digital collectibles, like baseball cards, cuz owning a baseball card, first of all, that second of all verified authenticity.
Kathleen (19:08):
I mean, I was gonna say it's like in the real, there are, there are people out there who can make insanely accurate copies of the Mona Lisa. And so it would, that's the equivalent of right clicking and saving as, but it's not the Mona Lisa and everybody knows it. Right. Because there's a way to verify it. And to me it's the same thing in the digital world. Like yes, you can right click can save as, but you don't, like you're saying there's, there is a way to independently verify whether you have the original thing or not.
Phillip (19:39):
Yes, precisely. And it's also, it's also not up to a specific third party, right. It's a distributed network of nodes. So it's not just one person or one art committee, the, or, or one sort of exactly. It's not a gatekeeper society. It is, it is a fully distributed verification network. Right. And so I think that also adds to the complexity of trying to fake something. Basically it's impossible to fake that you're holding an NFT, all of the you know all of the crypto wallets are public, right? So at any point in time, if somebody knows your wallet, they can always verify what you're holding in your wallet. Yeah. And I think that transparency also again, then adds to sort of the reinforce, like, you know, this is a credible thing. Like you are indeed the NFT holder and we can dive into like what being an NFT holder does for some community members within certain worlds. But yeah, absolutely. It's like very much so verifiable. We've all heard the even recently like Logan, Paul famous influencer, he got scammed on buying a bunch of Pokemon cards that just wouldn't happen in the NFT world cuz there's that verification and that validation, which is very hard to do when it comes down to like physical art, for example. Yeah.
Kathleen (20:51):
Now you mentioned something really interesting, which is the, the difference between the kind of NFT as artwork and then NFT as a conveyor of other utilitarian value. And I, I would love for you to give some examples of what you mean by that because I think probably people listening are like, okay, tell me more. <Laugh>
Phillip (21:15):
Absolutely. So for example, just some of the, some of the more interesting and more recent ones that I could think of recently. So for example, Adidas launched an NFT collection. They sold out pretty quickly. I think they made 22 million bucks or something, which I, I guess for Adidas is really a drop in the bucket. But I think it was a really interesting example of how real world brand that sells physical products is able to then monetize their digital community and their digital presence. So they sold 22 million bucks of these NFT. And then basically, you know, just recently they launched their discord server and all of these NFT communities, by the way, for the most part, they all live in discord servers, discord, which is like a, a gaming chat platform has really proven to be kind of like the foundational cornerstone of like how NFT communities into interact and engage in our build. And so Adidas opened up this NFT server. And so now Adidas is doing collabs with other sort of highend brands. I, I think the last one that they announced was Prada, or maybe they haven't announced that yet.
Kathleen (22:22):
You heard it here first on the Inbound Success podcast.
Phillip (22:27):
Insider info still. So the cool thing is about that is that now as an Adidas NFT holder, you now get priority access to buy this new product. So basically when you're logging into their online portal, basically just the, the e-commerce website, you are now going have to validate that you are the owner of an NFT by connecting your wallet and they see that it's wallet to even get access to buy this specific product is now you can see, I mean, about as marketers, right? We're all about exclusivity and scarcity and like building these communities that just like, it's not easy to access depending on what you're marketing and kind of the context. But really as marketers, we love like exclusivity. I feel like that's such a big selling point when it comes like projects and things that we're working on. And so NFT is like, they really do create that exclusivity and that scarcity because there's only so many of them and holding it gets you access to this whole world of, of amazing goodies.
Phillip (23:23):
The cool thing also is that it's still so early after the release, the Adidas NFT that I don't even think hold a are fully aware of the full scope of what the benefits are going to be. And so a lot of these companies getting into the space right now, they just don't have the time to think all these things through just want to get it out there, want to get it into the hands of holders. They want to take advantage of the hype cycle. But I think with some of these NFT collections, you start to see ecosystems forming around them. Another great example is like Gary V right? He launched an NFT collection called VFR, basically just some hand drawn stuff. I pretty sure he just squiggled it. <Laugh> right. And took a picture of it. But it's not about the art there. It's about you are now part of Gary V's network.
Phillip (24:11):
You have exclusive access to go and like meet up with him and hang out with him. And they throw parties. And I think he was even talking about building a restaurant where you can only get a table at the restaurant if you're holding one of these V friends NFTs and even more. So some of the more popular NFT collections, for example, like Bored Ape Yacht Club, it really kind of started off for the art. And that was really one of the ones that kind of like very much so took off is I would say it's like a blue chip NFT as they call it in the industry. It's like one of the more expensive and more popular collections. Well now not only do you get the benefits to what the board API club community is doing. They threw a yacht party during NFT week NYC, right?
Phillip (24:52):
They are doing all kinds of like crazy, exclusive meetups and beautiful places around the world, but even more so holding a Bored Ape now gets you access to other NFT communities. That's almost like an homage, right? They respect the, the giving. Exactly. They're like, oh, this guy it's, you can think about it. Like as if you're like wearing a Rolex and you walk into a club and people just kind of look at you different. It's the same thing as if you're holding one of these blue chip NFTs, your access is different. Your communities are different. The types of people that are willing to speak to are different. It's almost like the new verified check marks to speak. Right.
Kathleen (25:27):
That's so fascinating. So, so coming back to like the listeners of this podcast are by and large B2B and there's definitely, I think some great examples out there of how B2C companies are starting to use this. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> for B2B marketers, what should they be thinking about in terms of, of how NFTs can be used as part of the marketing mix?
Phillip (25:52):
Absolutely. Well, so I think, you know, if, if you think about the things that we do as B2B, right? So we have, you know, for example, like in person events that we like to throw as B2B marketers, we have our exclusive like consumer to development groups, right? Where we talk with like a small group of people and, and they can give product product feedback and just generally engage with our customers. And then we also have like special gifts that we like to give people, right? So we love to like send things in the mail and especially if it's a high value prospect or a high value customer, you always wanna sort of take a multi-channel to how you engage those folks, how you keep those folks happy, how you you know, keep their attention and eventually like monetize and retain them for lifetime value.
Phillip (26:36):
Well, I think now if you're looking at, you know, sort of the NFT space, well, these these physical gifts that we've been sending, right? The bottles of whiskey that we send to a client when the contract closes or the Starbucks gift card that we send to somebody, when we wanna get on a call with them, you can really start seeing how, you know, potentially what if you airdrop everybody in NFT, right? And, and if you have a group of customers, they get one specific NFT. If you have a group of pro like potential prospects, you can send them all an email saying, Hey, we're doing an NFT airdrop. You need to give us this information in order to participate in it, you get them excited. You create that scarcity. You say there's only so many of them left. And now the ones that are holding the NFT, they can start getting, enter into a series of programs that are only available if you're actually holding that NFT.
Phillip (27:28):
Right. So any executive dinner, any specific type of event, any after party after some sort of conference, like all of these things that we like to do as B2B marketers, but now we're even even more so limiting access. Right. We're, we're even more so making it's scarce and hard to, to really like, you know, join that community and then inherently, it just creates value. Right? So, so you're basically assigning more value to it. Whereas before, I mean, you know, self-admittedly, I've definitely snuck into a few after parties at conferences that I wasn't invited to and is relatively easy to do, but you can see how that system is, is, you know, quickly changing. And basically now you are gonna have to have blockchain verified proof that yes, I indeed have access to this thing and, and I'm here and let's make this happen. And so I think it really is attaching that personal identity to that digital collectible.
Phillip (28:21):
And I think I, in general create groups or, or almost cohorts or segments of folks, right. With different types of NFTs and you, you can quickly see, like, again, what I like to say to folks especially companies that I work with, like the possibilities are endless. It's all about how you take the technology and then tailor it to your brand. So it's not just about doing the thing and like, so some sort of cool collectable artwork, it's about how do you basically apply the technology and, and all of your existing marketing efforts and how do you make them more interesting more exclusive and, and basically more cool through, through sort of like these NFT collectibles, if that makes sense. Yeah.
Kathleen (29:02):
As I'm listening to you talk about this, I'm like a couple of use cases popped into my head. One is, you know, you're sponsoring a conference and you have a booth and you wanna drive traffic to the booth. Can you do it by saying, you, if you come to the booth, we'll give you an NFT, which will then gain you access, as you said to like the, the happy hour or the party that's happening on the rooftop or whatever. Then there's the kind of community aspect of either you need the NFT to join the community, or you can join the community, but you then need the NFT to like, get into certain levels or what have you. And then there's the customer gifting side. It, it, there's so many interesting use cases, I guess in my mind, it's like, okay. And we can get into, like, how do you even create these things?
Kathleen (29:53):
Like <laugh>, you know, is it, is it a drawing on a napkin? And then you take a picture of like, there's, there's that aspect of it. But then it's, it's like the strategy behind giving it out. And, and there, there's gonna be a lot of questions here, and this is a very disorganized way of asking them, but you're, you're seeing the sausage making happening in my head. Like, as I was listening to you talk about Adidas, and then you gave the example of customer gifting in my head. I'm like, okay, like if I were gonna create NFTs for my business and I wanted to give one to each of my customers, let's say, I'm, I'm just gonna make numbers up. Let's say I had 50 customers. Do I make, do I, do I create 50 NFTs? Or do I create a thousand and give 50 of them away? And like, am I holding some in reserve knowing that like in the future, sure. I'm gonna be wanting to give giving more away or, and or that it's going to appreciate in value. And I wanna hold some of that value back for myself to be able to trade on it. Like, I don't even know where to begin. I have so many questions <laugh>
Phillip (30:56):
For sure. No, it's, it's really interesting. And that, that is a great question, actually. So there's a, there's a multitude of way is in which you can do it and, and the way that it's been done. And so, for example, what you could do is you can create a collection of limited drops, right? So let's say like this first collection, it has 50 in it. The next one is gonna have 50 in it. The next one is gonna have 50 in it. And so now you're basically creating the hype cycle that like a clothing brand, like Supreme creates, right? Where every time they do a drop, you get hundreds of people lining up outside the store. You have thousands of people sitting there just clicking, refresh online to try to get their hands on it. And they're all being minted for. So for example, in the Supreme example, their clothing, retail, not that expensive, really, they're not selling shoes or shirts for thousands of dollars.
Phillip (31:42):
It's really that after market value, that gives it the pricing that, that we see. Right. And so when it comes to NFT collections basically like I said, you can create small limited drops and basically roll them out that way. Or you can create one huge collection and then over time sort of auction them off. Right? And, and you can also do a multitude of, of ways of actually minting the NFT. You can have an auction which basically drives the price up and people can bid on it and you can have a buy it. Now you can have something called a Dutch auction, which basically the price reduces over time with every new person that bids on it, essentially the price gets reduced and, and people have to, people have to catch it at the right time. It's almost like trying to catch a, a if you will.
Phillip (32:25):
Right? Mm. So I think there are so many different mechanics for you can for how you can actually either sell or distribute NFTs. And I think it really just depends on what the goal is, right? So if you're trying to create scarcity, then of course doing smaller limited drops, like that is absolutely the way to go. If you're trying to drive a value, then you should focus on an auction model. If you're trying to, you know, seed engagement, then you should just do an airdrop. And every single person that puts their wallet in automatically gets that NFT, or is able to mint it for free, right. Also in the world of NFTs, you have to remember especially on the Ethereum blockchain, and maybe this is going a little bit too deep, but NFTs can live on a multitude of blockchains, right? So it's not just Ethereum.
Phillip (33:08):
It's also blockchains like Avalanche and Solana and, and there's so many other cool blockchains. They have their own benefits, right? Speed of transactions, cost of transactions. But the majority of the, I would say blue chip NFTs, they're mostly being minted on the Ethereum blockchain. Again, maybe that's gonna change by the time this episode is published. Probably not, but in the next year or so, I, I could definitely see a multi chain world in which different chains are used for different purposes, but on the Ethereum blockchain, you have something called a gas feed, which is basically your transaction fee to the network to reward miners for validating the transactions. And so basically, you know, what, what ends up happening sometimes. And I've seen this play out before where, you know, a brand will drop an NFT and the NFT itself is very cheap to minute, let's say 0.01 ether or something, but then you end up paying more in as fees, then you actually end up paying for the NFT itself.
Phillip (34:03):
And so that's another factor to consider is that even if you're giving something away for free, there's still an inherent cost to, to claiming that NFT, right. There's still, and, and I think even more so you're creating the need for people to have a wallet that they can use to hold their NFT. They need some Ethereum to pay that gas cost. So the barrier to entry is still there. Like it's, it's not, I, I wouldn't say it's as seamless as, you know, picking, picking up your phone and ordering something from Amazon. Right. I think like that's the business that Amazon is in is like, let's make it as easy as possible for people to buy from us to do business with us. I think even though the general Web3 world and the NFT world is headed in that direction, there's definitely still that barrier to entry where like, there are a few prerequisite steps that you need to take to even be able to hold an NFT. Right. So mean, that's, that's also an interesting piece of it.
Kathleen (34:59):
Yeah. It's so this is why I hope people are listening are now starting to understand why I'm doing like three or four interviews with people on this topic. Because I, I mean, like, this is amazing. I've learned so much just in the time we have, but I feel like we're only scratching the surface. A couple of questions. Number one is who in the B2B world is doing this well, right now are any examples in the wild that we can point to for people to check out?
Phillip (35:26):
Yeah, I would say, I think from a brand perspective, there's nothing that I could think of that comes to mind. That's like, oh, this has been wildly successful. I know a lot of brands are experimenting with it. And two, two good examples that I can give I think from a community value perspective. So I'm not sure if you're familiar with Kevin Rose, he's like a technologist. He's just been in the tech space for so long. And I, I think he works for Google and all, you know, a ton of the big tech companies. And he's really been kind leading the charge of like Web3, as it comes to sort of bridging the gap between traditional tech and, and the Web3 space. And so he has an NFT project called the proof collective, which is an NFT it's very expensive at this point.
Phillip (36:10):
Think it's upwards of like 40, $50,000 to join. And, and, and we spoke about this before. It's, it's essentially a digital community that has some of the brightest minds in tech. So some of the people that's basically impossible to get access to those people. Otherwise they don't really take calls. They don't, you know, take cold emails. Like it's very hard to reach these folks. So now they have this NFT basically by holding it, you now get access to this exclusive discord group where you can interact with folks that are really at the top of their game, across the board, and like, you know, the tech industry and the crypto industry. And so that's a really good example of like purely creating community value. There's no other way for you to gain access to these people or these conversations other than by holding this specific NFT.
Phillip (36:56):
And so, as you can imagine, as with any close society, there's a lot of deals happening in there. There's a lot of conversations happening in there. There's a lot of things happening in that community that are probably gonna pan out at scale in the tech world over the next like couple years. Right. And so I would say like, that is an, is an amazing example of even though it's not directly B2B, I would say it's like almost like executive relationships, right. Are happening there. Same thing. There's another really good community. It's called crypto packaged goods. Lot of really. And, and that's one that we spoke about before is lot of really, really smart people in the consumer packaged goods and the e-commerce e-com space. Like basically any of like the big influencers that you can think of, like their impact. And again, it's quite expensive to, to participate being the aftermarket resale value of these NFTs are like wild 20, 30, $40,000.
Phillip (37:49):
But I think the cool thing about them is they were all minting pretty cheap originally, right? So like, I, I, I forgot what the mint price with the starting price was for the Proof Collective, the Kevin Rosen NFT project, but it was a Dutch option. And, and basically they were minting for way less than the reselling now, same thing with crypto packaged goods. And I think also on the crypto packaged good side, the amount that you could mint was relatively low. And I think they, in order to see the community and to really, you know, create the power that community, they actually distributed a bunch to some of these really smart and, and prolific folks. Right.
Kathleen (38:26):
That would make sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stack the deck. <Laugh>.
Phillip (38:30):
Precisely.
Kathleen (38:35):
Yeah. So interesting. Well, and, and for those who are listening, I am gonna be interviewing somebody from the marketing team at Yotpo, which is an e-commerce platform that has just just dropped some NFT as, as part of a community they're building on discord. So it's early days for them. But that'll be, that'll be an interesting interview where we're gonna get into, to like exactly how they did that and what their plans are. So we'll take a deep dive into a community use case for a, a B2B company with that conversation. The, my next question is really, if somebody's listening and we've peaked their interest enough that they're like, okay, I'll bite. Maybe I wanna, you know, get an NFT or see what this is all about. What does someone need to know to start participating in, in this economy?
Phillip (39:24):
Well, like I mentioned, there's a couple of prerequisites before you can even consider buying an NFT first and foremost, you need to have a wallet, right? So you can have, for example, a Trust wallet or, or a Metamask wallet, but basically you need to have a digital wallet that's crypto compatible in order for you to even be able to transact and, and hold the NFT somewhere. And then the other thing is you are going to need to buy some Ethereum or Solana or Avalanche or whatever, the native sort of blockchain that you're looking to operate on. Like I said, the majority of the, the blue chip projects really are operating on the Ethereum blockchain. And so you're gonna need to hold some Ethereum in your wallet to pay for the NFT itself and to pay for the gas fees.
Phillip (40:09):
And then, yeah, I would say those, those are really kind of the big prerequisites. And I would say as far as where to where to buy an NFT mean, arguably the most popular platform today is Open Sea. And, and so basically it's an NFT marketplace probably, mm, safe to say like, definitely well over 50% of the traffic of the entire sort of like NFT space goes to Open Sea. There are other projects. So for example Gemini, which is a large centralized exchange, they are partnered or maybe they even own one called Nifty Gateway. There's Coinbase, which is another huge centralized exchange they're planning on launching their own NFT project. And it's really interesting. There's so much kind conversation about it. There's so much hype about it. The total amount of NFT holders in the entire world is less than a million people.
Phillip (41:06):
Like it, it literally is less than a million people, but the cool thing is Coinbase, for example, like their NFT marketplace that they're launching. I think that their wait list is about like one and a half million people. Wow. Right. And so like, you can see how slowly, but surely it's proliferating to a much larger group of folks through these like existing communities that coin base is built out. The Gemini is built up and you're gonna start to see that happening more and more. And I think even some of the larger, like Walmart just announced that they're starting to work on some NFT stuff. All of the biggest companies in the world definitely have R and D departments that are absolutely researching this type of stuff. And I think it, we kind of have no choice, but to, at that point, right. And that's, that's what I like to say about the metaverse too, if Google and Facebook and apple, the companies that arguably own pretty much all of our attention, if they're all working on metaverse projects and that's something that they're gonna be pushing heavily, we're just gonna have no choice to participate.
Phillip (42:11):
Same thing happen with the intern. Same thing happened with social media. Same thing is gonna happen with the metaverse same thing is gonna happen with Web3, once there's enough buy-in from like the creme de la creme or like the top 1% that has all of our attention. We're just gonna have to fall in line and, and I think make the best of it. And, and I do truly think that you know, again, I have high hopes and, and I'm always an optimist when it comes to these things, but I really do think that this type of technology and the integration of it into our world is gonna do way more good than it will do hard.
Kathleen (42:46):
So you just touched on something that kind of partially answers a question I have, and, and that I think will help us round out this conversation, which is, I do feel like the other kind of aspect of, of skepticism that people bring to this conversation is, has to, especially marketers has to do with the audience. Right. And I was just having this conversation the other day with somebody about, you know, when you think about B2B marketing, you're always thinking about your audience and trying to meet the audience where they are. And a lot of will listen to this and say, okay, this is definitely, I, I, I believe everything you're saying, but my audience isn't paying attention to this yet. And, or, you know, my audience won't understand it, or my audience like won't have a wallet. So can you you already said there's only a million people that currently hold them. Can you give me a sense of the, what you, you would consider to be the demographic profiles, plural of those people, as well as like the roadmap to wider adoption? Like how do you see that evolving?
Phillip (43:46):
Yeah, for sure. I think so as interesting to touch on your first point, I think that's the most fun part of marketing on is taking something that's like somewhat difficult to understand and, you know, just like not the easiest thing to convey and really boiling it down to the easiest possible way, like creating that on-ramp for people and especially in B2B, right. When it comes to like, you know, high value and, and high ticket items technologies, like, they're not always easy to explain, but when it's the right person and they have the right problem and you can solve that problem for them, it's, it's extremely easy to like, you know, tap in with that market. I think with the NFT side, what we're gonna see happen is basically the same exact thing that happened with the internet. You had this group of early adopters, they were relatively young, they were relatively tech savvy, and they kind of started working with this thing and doing things.
Phillip (44:48):
And I forgot the eight night show. There was a per perfect example that they love to use in the Web3 community. There were some late night show where they were like talking about the internet and making fun of it, making fun of people using it, right? Like now look at us, we're having a zoom conversation. That's gonna get published to the rest of the internet. But I think the same thing happens with all new emerging tech. And it's a pattern that I've just seen in my career. I saw it happen with 3d printing. I saw it happen with augmented reality, virtual reality. You always have a really small group of early adopters, again, like demographics wise. And, and this is just me kind of speaking from gut instinct and like some of the research that I've done, but it really is like males between the ages of like 18 to 35 you know, like working in tech and like really just like, you know, kinda entrenched if tech bros exactly.
Kathleen (45:42):
They all wearing Patagonia logo, puffer vests while they buy their NFTs? <Laugh>
Phillip (45:48):
Well, actually, no, that's, that's more like the finance crowd tech. That's true. Those are finance pros. Yeah. Tech rows wear Allbirds. Hoodies. Hoodies. Yes. Yes. <Laugh> yes. So, so it's like the Allbirds and hoodies community. I think they're really the early adopters. Not only are they, I would say benefiting a lot just because they're early in the space and like, they're definitely making the money and they're making the connections, but think also they're taking the brunt of the damage as it comes to like, you know, scam, NFT, collections and rug pulls. And I mean, look, even mark Cuban, there's been examples of like mark Cuban getting scammed on, on like NFT, not NFT drops like token drops, but the smartest people are, you know, taking full advantage of it and definitely profiting the most, but also at the same time, like definitely like dealing with some of those learning curves.
Phillip (46:36):
And I think once we come out of that phase of like, we understand it much better, we know what to look for. We, we understand how the technology works. We've seen people actually use it, right? We've seen the use cases and the case studies come out of it. And you can equate that to like a B2B business, right? You're not gonna sell a huge enterprise company until you have a case study. It's almost like chicken and egg, right? Like we need the logos, but we need the logos to get logos. Same exact thing happens in, in the tech space where you have these early adopters, they kind of work with it. They understand what's going on. They document this stuff, they write about it, they speak about it. They spread it to a wider audience. That audience then comes in, starts slowly trickling in and starts growing the foundation.
Phillip (47:18):
And then you basically have a lot of these, like, you know, consumer oriented brands that are gonna really help make that final push to mass adoption. Right? So, you know, anybody that's participating in the Facebook ecosystem Twitter, for example, just recently, they just launched the NFT profile picture verification. They launched a model to every single user on the platform that says you can now use your NFT as your profile picture and not just by uploading the picture by actually your wallet via blockchain to Twitter. And now they verify your picture. And so that's what I was saying. That's the example of like, I have a Rolex look at me, I'm rich. Well, I have a Bored Ape Yacht Club, it's my NFT profile picture on Twitter. And you can understand the ramifications of a company like Twitter telling their entire audio space that you can use NFTs, like, like that's millions and millions of people that just over the last few days are like NFTs.
Phillip (48:17):
Whoa. Like, that's the thing. So as you can see, like that's, that's kind of the way that these things start to proliferate. And again, I, I think like five, 10 years from now, like we're gonna be surprised we even like the NFTs and blockchain, and we're already seeing that play out with like Web3 with like the, you know, blue chip, big Bitcoin. And Ethereums, I think a little bit more skeptical on like the metaverse side. I think there's a lot of hype and there's definitely a huge hype bubble, but again, at the same time, like it will pan out and same thing goes for NFTs, not to even men, you know, if there's any sort of like, and I know a lot of companies like to collaborate with artists and influencers and things like that, but the way that those people are getting rewarded for the content to create the time they invest and, and, and basically their participation, like it just really changes the way that we do that these days not, I do think it actually pans out way better for the creator in the long run,
Kathleen (49:13):
Which is great. I feel like we, that it's boomeranging back from an, from an era in which creators really got screwed. <Laugh>, you know, there's no better way to say it than that. So absolutely. That's, that's good for them. All right. We are gonna run outta time. I could talk to you about this forever. But we, I have forever. So I'm gonna actually ask you a modified version of my two normal questions. The first one is I normally ask people generally like how they stay on top of the marketing world and, and learn. But I wanna specifically know how you stay on top of what's happening with all this Web3 stuff. Like, are there certain sources you rely to stay educated?
Phillip (49:54):
Yeah. So I would say the two most powerful sources of information that I have that I, that I think like I've probably learned the absolute most from are Twitter. Twitter is I would say where most of the information about Web3 and NFT, these are being shared and there's, there's too many sort of accounts to follow, to name. Maybe I could send you a list as well.
Kathleen (50:18):
Well, everybody could just look at your Twitter profile and see who you're following if it's public.
Phillip (50:21):
Absolutely, absolutely. It's definitely public. And I also have some lists perfect that I I've created of like influencers in the space and smart people. And the funniest thing is I've noticed it's not the people with millions of followers that are actually giving out the best information. It's like those niche folks, couple thousand pop followers, but it's like the power players that are then followed by the massive influence. Yeah. Right. So you really have to dig in and, and with Twitter, it's one of, of those things where like, there's a lot of noise to sift through, but once you've gotten really good at some of the search functions that they have on Twitter and then sifting through that noise and, and going down the rabbit hole of following, oh, this person's following this person, they're following this person. Then you really start to build up a very powerful repository of information every morning. I don't really use Instagram much anymore. I definitely haven't used Facebook for years at this point, every single morning. I'm not even opening up feed lead to get a, a, you know, RSS feed of my news. Now I'm going on Twitter. I'm following this list of folks, this list of folks, my feed, like I've curated in a way that, yeah, literally if I spent 30 minutes in the morning going on my Twitter, I'm a much smarter person at the end of that 30 minutes.
Kathleen (51:32):
It's so interesting. You say that, cuz I, that has been a re I've been on Twitter forever, but it's really been in the last year that I've kind of had the same thing happen with me where I, especially in the world of eCommerce, the most interesting conversations are happening on Twitter. And there's, you just have to heavily curate your feed so that you're getting the good information. And I do the same thing you do. I was like, I, I found that person. Who's interesting. And then I'm like, who's replying to their tweets. Who's saying something interesting. And like it's fascinating. So couldn't agree more. Second question is I usually ask people, you know, the, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Who's doing really well right now. But I, I'm just curious, like who who's doing Web3 really well right now. Who should we be following for that?
Phillip (52:22):
Yeah, no, that's a fantastic question. I think the, the cool thing about it. Oh, by the way. So, so there was Twitter and then also just joint discord servers. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> just go and jump into the world. Participating in the communities like actually interact, actually engage, spend a hundred dollars and buy an NFT on open sea. That's got a vibrant community. Like you have to do the thing until you do the thing. You just, it's very, very hard to, to understand conceptually what's going on. Once you dive in, give it like 30 days, you'll be an expert in no time. You'll like it you'll, you'll be fully on top of it.
Kathleen (52:53):
And by the way, Open Sea has, has like smartphone apps. So you can get the app on your iPhone or whatever phone you have and you can look through NFTs. You can filter by the type I was doing that earlier this week. And there's a lot on there. So it's, it's very accessible.
Phillip (53:08):
Yeah. And what I love to do on Open Sea as well at some of the other marketplaces, I like to go to their rankings and stats and basically look at over the last seven days, which NFT collections have had the highest volume traded. Right? So you can see where, where there's the most activities you go into that collection. You follow their Twitter, you join their Discord. You basically start like getting tentacles into these communities and, and slowly but surely you just get these like massive just wealth of information. But to, to, to your other question, who's kind of talking about Web3 in the best way possible. So I'd say there are a lot of people and it depends on the level of granularity that you're really interested in. There's people talking about it from a very high level perspective. And then there are people talking about like code fundamentals, right?
Phillip (53:57):
And like why specific blockchains are better than others? I think two people, if you're basically just starting out people that I would really highly suggest to follow specifically for the world of Web3 and NFTs is Naval Ravikant. He is just a massively prolific investor. I don't even want to think about how much money this man has made, but he's such a smart dude, not only when it comes to business, but also when it comes so like life and, and life philosophies, not just a huge fan of them. But he also is really prolific in the world of Web3. And I would say he's, he's the man that's tapped in with pretty much everyone that matters in that space. So if you follow him on his Twitter, he also has a podcast. It's also got a blog. This is just, just what a genius person.
Phillip (54:46):
And then I would say the other person, I think to dive a little bit more granularly specifically into the world of Ethereum, I'd say the, the creator of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin. Another really good person to follow. I think he, he gets a little bit deeper into like tech fundamentals and kind of like what's going on in the space. But if you look at for example, him and anybody that he's following, that's a really good rabbit hole to go down, right? So if you go to his Twitter and you just go to the list of accounts that he's following, you follow all those people. Those are very smart people like that. They'll help you educate. And I would say like, tho those are the two folks that kind of immediately come to mind. There's so many thought leaders in this space. There's so many people. And, and actually, you know, I can, I can give you a list of 10 right now, but even just this last week, there was, I'm not even gonna mention his name, but there was this like a huge prolific, like Web3 influencer that was, you know, just very vocal and, and a lot of followers and a lot of people were following him and then they just like surface like homophobic and racist.
Phillip (55:49):
Oh yeah. From like 2004. So, I mean, I, I don't wanna, I don't wanna shoot myself in the foot by naming specific names. Cause people,
Kathleen (55:57):
I think you did a great job of, of giving us a roadmap. I think that's, that's like, I know what I'm gonna do next in terms of going to Twitter and following people. So hugely helpful. Last question is if somebody, I know people are gonna have questions after this, if somebody has a question or they wanna learn more or they'd like to reach out and connect with you, what is the best way for them to do that?
Phillip (56:17):
Very active on the internet, very active on Twitter, very active on LinkedIn. You can always yeah. Reach out to me on one of those, those two channels, I would say probably quickest to respond. You can go to my website, phillionaire.com and you can put your email in and I send out the cadence is a little bit wonky, just cuz sometimes I'm like super busy and sometimes I'm like, I have, you know, a bunch of free time, but I send out a newsletter at least once a month, that kind of covers cool things I'm seeing in the space and, and companies that I'm working with and companies I'm investing in and just kind of like that, that sort of newsletter summary there. So yeah, billionaire.com. You can connect with me on, on Twitter, it's @phillionaireFTW. And then you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. It's my name Phillip. Or you can go linkedin.com/in/phillionaire and you could find me there.
Kathleen (57:08):
Love it. All right. And as always, I will put all of the links that you just mentioned in the show notes, which are available at kathleen-booth.com and head to apple podcasts and give this episode an awesome review because it, I mean, you just gave us so much great information. I feel like I understand this so much better now. So I really appreciate it and it, and as always, if you know somebody else who you think is doing amazing marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Phil. This was amazing.
Phillip (57:42):
Thanks Kathleen. Pleasure.
