0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here with an audio masterclass on going from crypto fan to founder in three months to drop these value bonds. I brought Mark Sgambelluri on the mic. Mark helps cryptocurrencies go from concept to product growing one project to $30 million in value. He recently founded xBTC. One of the most diversified in unique tokens in crypto and today Fire Nation. We'll be talking about an overview of cryptocurrencies, a fascinating topic, especially in these times, what does founding a digital asset company look like? How people can get involved or even start their own cryptocurrency and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, looking for a business coach who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you to increase our profitability by an average of 104% per year, all for less money than would cost to hire a full-time minimum wage employee.

0 (54s):
Schedule your free consultation today with Clay Clark, a former small business administration entrepreneur of the year at ThrivetimeShow.com/fire ThrivetimeShow.com/fire. Get your focus back, sleep better and block out the unhealthy effects of blue light. With BLUblox blue light blocking glasses. Get 20% off by going to BLUblox.com/fire or enter code fire at checkout that's BLUBLOX.com/fire for 20% off, or just use a code fire Mark, say what's up to Fire Nation, and what's something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 35s):
Hey everyone, thanks so much for having me Fire Nation and John, thanks for having me on and yeah, for success. You know, I think a lot of people see success as a positive thing and something that rewards positivity, but I think we see so many times that a success is really about network and how many people you're connected to. And as the digital world has come to us, success has become much easier. And so we see a lot of people being successful that we get angry about, but I think, you know, you can't be angry at success. Success is not necessarily a positive, only effect.

1 (2m 17s):
And I think we need to readjust our relationship with success and understand what it is and how to interact with it as a, as a society and individually, I think we have, we have not been interacting with it. Well, recently

0 (2m 30s):
Point is very important, especially with what we're talking about here today, Fire Nation, because listen, cryptocurrency, there's a lot of people that are pissed off they're like, why is this dude or do that, that invested $10,000 or a thousand dollars, you know, 10 years ago, five years ago, even two years ago and the right alt coin now a millionaire or a multimillionaire or in some cases, billionaire. And believe me, I see them down here in Puerto Rico. They come down here because 0% capital gains. So come down, exchange your Bitcoin and no taxes are paid. So just a little side note there, but there's a lot of people that are upset about that. And those people, I understand, you know, why they're frustrated because they maybe have spent their whole lives grinding at some job that they hate.

0 (3m 16s):
And they look at their bank account and they see like $143,000, which isn't an insignificant sum, but they're about to retire. And they're like, I got, I spent my whole life working on for this, and this is the money that I have. And this person just threw a couple thousand dollars in Bitcoin or some all coin, you know, a little while ago and look at where they're at now, this isn't fair and they get mad and angry. And so listen, I just want to have a real candid conversation today about cryptocurrency. So we can all learn a little bit more about this. And Mark went from crypto fan to a founder in three months. And like for most of us, including me, it's like, what does that even mean? What does that even mean? So Mark, give us an overview of cryptocurrencies and then just space overall.

1 (4m 0s):
Yeah. And I think before I go there, just to your point, yeah. I think a lot of people don't see all the research and time that people put into picking that perfect altcoin that makes them a millionaire. You know, that's one side of it. There's definitely in the, the, you know, the fear and scare being scared every day of like, Oh, this could all go to zero and having to work through that. And you know, what mental capacity it takes to do that. But on the other side, there's also the lottery ticket, right? The, the wall street bets that we've all seen on the news recently. And those people are just on online forum and, you know, jump into something and then get lucky. So there's also lottery tickets for sure. But you should have the same feeling about people who win the lottery as you would about those people.

1 (4m 44s):
So, yeah, that's definitely an interesting angle. I love that angle, but zooming out to the whole cryptocurrency space, I mean, for a primer, the basics are cryptocurrency is just a technology that's called blockchain. And really the simplest definition is that it's a, it's basically digital trust. There's a way to trust someone digitally. You can make a transaction, use a social media platform, right. A legal contract digitally, and know that that is backed by the network and trustworthy. So traditionally Facebook or visa or Microsoft guarantee an online transaction or interaction for us, but here in digital assets, the network is what verifies and guarantees it.

1 (5m 24s):
Everyone in it, it's a very democratized system. Some are not, but the basic idea is to be democratized and, and what that means for the users, that you can be a part of the network and benefit from it and profit from it because you are making the network better by verifying it. And so it's really, I mean, literally it's like Silicon Valley, basically it's Silicon Valley online back when Silicon Valley existed, you had to be in Palo Alto or in Seattle. And that, but now the digital revolution is like open to anyone across the globe it's happening online and remotely. And just like Amazon brought bookstores online or Facebook brought social networks online and we saw how much those flourished and grew.

1 (6m 8s):
Now there's a whole new platform and a whole new technology for our world to exist in. And if you're an artist, if you're a lawyer, if you're a teacher, there's a place somewhere on the blockchain right now for you where your line of work is now being digitized in this new digital trust way. And so it's really a whole new space of innovation.

0 (6m 28s):
It is a whole new space, and that's why I think a lot of people are potentially, and hopefully intrigued by this conversation that we're having right now. And by the overall title of this audio masterclass going from crypto fan to founder in three months, like to me, that's just like what I need to hear this story. So tell us the story. What does founding a digital asset company look like? Like what was the process?

1 (6m 50s):
And I guess the, the founding is a three months fire, but obviously I've been in much longer. And you know, I've been in the space since 2013 and really just, you know, a, an interested party, an evangelist, someone who was really interested in this idea of decentralization and opening up the world. And so it's still, yeah, a world, a weird corner of this technology in the technology world in general, the internet space, because there's really like not a lot of clear guidance around starting a digital asset. You know, there's still some gray area around the finances and the legal structures. It's not as easy as just starting a drop shipping company on Amazon or starting an online store on Etsy or whatever it may be.

1 (7m 31s):
And so you really have to build relationships and build networks and partner with lawyers or companies that like work in this space to really help you navigate it. So it's not simple, but it's all about that network and having people to know how to navigate it, but once you squared away the legal and the financial side, or you can also just open a decentralized business and open it up and w if you're completely decentralized and not taking in a clear profit stream or anything like that, you can actually start one without a lot of the legal and financial structure, but that's a whole another, that'd be an another podcast entirely. So at that point, it's just like building a website or a software as a service, a SAS business, where you're building the technology and then letting users use it.

1 (8m 13s):
And, you know, we have the, the internet to build our traditional sasses, but now you have, Etherium is the most popular one. It's an operating system and you build your app or you build your software on Etherium and then let other people use it. So you need a really strong technical founder with those coding skills, but the team needs a graphic designer, a community manager, a, a writer, and anyone on that team can have the idea for the product. So once you have that idea, you find that team, you build it out and then you start building out the actual product with the team and vetting the idea. And then it's really just a lot of online project management and timeline creation and mapping out where the is going to go and having those key outcomes that you hit, just like with any other business.

0 (9m 1s):
So Fire Nation, I hope you realize that everything is really just one step in front of the other. For me, it's just like, where do I go to learn from the best, or to learn from other people who have been there and done that. And frankly, like, I love talking to people like Mark, who, you know, have done this fairly recently. I mean, he's been in the game for a while and he's been researching and educate himself for awhile, but he's not like super far removed from being at square one. And like when people aren't that far removed, they remember what it's like, and they can really help educate others who are at that place. So how can people actually get involved or start their own cryptocurrency if that's even an interest that people have?

1 (9m 35s):
Yeah. I mean, for me right now, I really started in June getting really interested in the space in a more engaged way. And, you know, before that, I was really just researching and taking in news and more larger forums. And then in June with the, you know, Covid, everybody's stuck inside, you have a lot more free time at that point. I just really started sitting back and observing more and trying to observe as much as possible. And so you need to find where these things are happening and where communities are talking and in digital assets, that's really telegram or discord. And so you just join a dozen telegram groups of different digital assets. So just, you know, go to any digital asset website that tracks digital assets and click on their website and then find their telegram or their discord link on the main page and go to their community and just sit back and watch just consume, consume, consume, listen to people in the group, following they drop a fine podcast or YouTube videos that mentioned the project and then listen to them and just start understanding the space and then buy some crypto, you know, literally just $20 here, $20 there to just see what the experience is like.

1 (10m 39s):
And especially if you can find a crypto where you can use it like a feta or SNX or two that you can look into that actually have platforms where you can use the crypto and see what it means to actually have crypto and use it, and then help out. Like once you understand that community and understand that project, if you're a business major, help them with the business plan. If you're a marketer, help them in marketing, if you're an artist, do some banners or announcements or logos for them, and really build those relationships and just be kind and giving. And that's really what I did. I just sat back. And then this project that I had started falling on telegram, didn't have a plan, like a business plan. They call it a white paper. And so I helped them start creating it. And I just started writing it because I was interested in the concept.

1 (11m 21s):
And then once you grasp the technology and get deeper into those teams and collaborate with them, just start considering what problems do you face in the space for face in real life, find analogies in your career, or things that you read and find a problem that you can solve or want to solve, and that blockchain can solve and then go back and leverage those relationships. You've created to start making the idea,

0 (11m 41s):
Fire Nation. I really hope you're understanding this process. It's not just because it's cryptocurrency and these, all of these potentially foreign names and words that makes it confusing. It's just another thing that can be figured out as Forleo says, which I love everything is figure outable you sit down, you figure it out. A lot of people, by the way, and any topic you'd like, you want to know more about. You're passionate about sit down over one weekend, use YouTube use tools like masterclass or lynda.com. I mean, LinkedIn learning, you can literally become amazingly educated in a topic and potentially even be 90, 95, sometimes 99% more knowledgeable than the rest of the world on that topic. And like four to six to 10 dedicated hours of study.

0 (12m 21s):
It can really be that simple. Now I'm not saying success is that simple, but getting educated really is. We're going to be talking about product design about what engagement in marketing looks like in 2021 for crypto. And Hey, what's next for SBTC like, what does Mark see in the future as we go forward here, when we get back from thanking our sponsors, my ability to focus throughout the day in my sleep are my top priority. And when either these things is out of whack, everything else is affected. That's why after figuring out so much of my restlessness and distractions were being caused by too much exposure to blue lights, I started researching the best blue light blocking glasses. What did I find? BLUblox BLUblox was created to block out the blue light with high-quality lenses.

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0 (13m 54s):
At minimum wage employee, I are nation meets Clay Clark clay has been coaching businesses just like yours since 2006. Yup. Even through the great recession. And he does it for less money than would cost to hire a full-time minimum wage employee at a time when Inc magazine reports that by default 96% of businesses will fail. Within 10 years, clay is helping businesses like yours to grow on average by 104% annually. How's this even possible Clay only takes on 160 clients. So he personally designed your business plan. Plus Clay's team helps you execute that plan with access to graphic designers, Google certified search engine, optimizers, web developers, online ad managers, videographers workflow, mappers and accounting coaches visit ThrivetimeShow.com/fire, to see thousands of video testimonials from real people, just like you, who clay has helped over the years.

0 (14m 39s):
That's right. Do your research and view thousands, not hundreds of proven documented in archive, video testimonials from real people, just like you at ThrivetimeShow.com/fire, ThrivetimeShow.com/fire. Then schedule your free consultation with clay himself to see how he and his team can help you thrive. So Mark we're back and let's talk about product design. Like how does that even fit in what we're talking about here today and how do you think?

1 (15m 4s):
Yeah, I think it's like any other industry really it's about finding a problem or finding a pain point and then moving to a solution, finding a way to solve it through the technology. And for me, you know, I hold over a hundred cryptos and that was really cumbersome to keep all those organized and all the different exchanges and wallets to keep all that together. And so I thought through, you know, what is a way that I can make this simpler? And then I also, you know, I know that this is a very innovative space and by holding a hundred cryptos, obviously I'm a lot more interested in the space than just Bitcoin. And so, you know, how do I access all these different coins? And they called them all to coins, alternative coins. And so in thinking about that one thing that really measures that is Bitcoin market cap dominance, which is basically its dominance in the marketplace.

1 (15m 50s):
So an analogy would be Microsoft and the NASDAQ, if Cisco and Facebook and Google all do a lot better than Microsoft, it doesn't matter if Microsoft price goes up. If Facebook's triples or Amazon's quadruples, Microsoft's not keeping up with the pack. So it's dominance is going down. And so with Bitcoin, you can measure that with market cap dominance. What percentage of all of the market caps does Bitcoin hold of all of the coins? And so then we struck an idea. We were like, Oh, if you're tracking that you actually are tracking how successful Bitcoin is versus all the other coins. And so that was just the spark. There was this idea that we could really track every single other altcoin versus Bitcoin by just tracking Bitcoin dominance.

1 (16m 34s):
And so then we started creating a utility token to actually track that in, to keep that track for people to use if they want it to use it. And so it was really about a personal pain point, and that was my first fan. And I was finding scratching my own itch. And that's really what you have to do to create a great product

0 (16m 53s):
At the end of the day, you need to create a great product. So I want to move into what engagement and marketing looks like in crypto more broadly in 2021. So Mark break that down for us.

1 (17m 5s):
Yeah. For engaging your community and for marketing, it's really, you know, in the space, there's a lot of being a thought leader and really giving your ideas to people and being generous with your ideas. And, you know, I think one person who's actually into cryptocurrency is shamatha pub Matea is a great example of this. Like this year, he's just jettisoned the notoriety by just speaking openly speaking directly speaking his mind and being accessible. Like if you comment that you liked the podcast, he was on, he'll literally respond to you on Twitter or like your tweet, you know, he's actively engaged by community. And there's a lot, that's a lot of thought leaders on crypto and crypto Twitter that you can follow and see what engagement looks like in the space and for the marketing side of it.

1 (17m 47s):
Once you have that engaged people, you really marketing super personal, it's very direct person to person like you are in your telegram group or in your discord talking directly to the people who are using the product and you really get it, that direct feedback, which can be amazing sometimes, and then terrible other times, right? You're, you're directly talking to them every day about what the pain points and what you need to solve and what you need to change and what you need to upgrade. And so it's really about that daily engagement and then partnerships. So the space is very open. It's very nascent, it's just starting out. And so it was really about building those connections and finding those mutually beneficial relationships to push each other forward and building out that network is a very communal setting right now because it's so new.

1 (18m 31s):
It's like I said, it's very much like Silicon Valley where everyone is collaborating and talking to each other. And every company is kind of connected in the background in one way or another.

0 (18m 39s):
What I love about this conversation, Fire Nation is that when you kind of peel back the layers of this onion, you recognize a simple fact that simple fact businesses are run like businesses. They really are, and that's such a powerful thing. So even if it's a space you're not aware of that you're maybe not super excited about, or you don't have that knowledge about, and you just maybe are a little scared of, because of those reasons, guess what apply the fundamentals that work in X into Y. And that will work because that is the key fundamentals that work in this business. And this business that I'm talking about is being an entrepreneur, is coming from an idea, providing a solution to a real problem. So your solution to a real problem, as you saw, Mark was xBTC, what's next for xBTC and for just digital assets more broadly.

0 (19m 28s):
Yeah,

1 (19m 28s):
It's really about, we just want to keep building and finding ways for people to access us and support our community in doing that. Also, you know, digital assets is all about decentralization and community engagement in the community. We'll build more than we could ever build alone. And so it's really about empowering and enabling and supporting our community. And we really want to support them in, in spreading XPC and, and in developing new use cases for it. And I think for the whole space, that that is what it is about, is about spreading ease of use and utility, you know, finding ways to be useful and then making them easy to access. I think right now you can get, you know, eight to 15% in like safe savings accounts. Like literally just putting USD into crypto and keeping it as a USD, you can get eight to 15% returns, which is way better than your 0.5% at ally bank or whatever bank you use.

1 (20m 18s):
And those instruments, you can get a little more risky and do like, you know, basically the analogous of like a corporate bond or like a local bond. That's still yields 25 to hundreds of percent and it's not full risky. It's not like a stock. It's still, you know, a type of bond. And so, you know, why aren't people using it that if you can find these assets and these savings accounts and these actually like secure accounts and really it's the ease of use and spread people just don't know about it and they can't access it easily. And so at SPTC we want to simplify and make it more accessible, so people understand it and then people can access it. And so it's all about lowering the barrier to entry and helping people to onboard to this brand new space and a brand new world of power that they can find just like the internet did.

1 (21m 5s):
And then the nineties,

0 (21m 6s):
This is a brand new space and it's an exciting space. And there's so much out there that, you know, my recommendation foundation, which I've shared before is take one step in front of the other of course, one step at a time. That's the process one foot in front of the other. That's how you roll, but why don't you just choose like a niche, just choose like a tiny part of this broad overall digital asset space that you actually want to start with and see like, what, how that tastes like, what you learned there and see what that leads you to. And if it doesn't lead you to anything over a little while, that's not a bad thing, you've, you've learned some things for sure. Now shift shift, pivot, tweak your progress and see where you want to go from there. And Mark, that's kind of where I wanted to leave this conversation with you sharing the one thing you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from everything we've talked about today, from our entire conversation.

0 (21m 54s):
What do you want to make sure Fire Nation walks away with?

1 (21m 57s):
I think the idea that this whole space is very new and because of that, like it's so like there's such a low barrier to talking to very high up people like, you know, the top five cryptos I've talked to their CEOs, you know, directly, and they're, you know, marketing managers and they're just, everything's so accessible. So just start building networks and be giving of your time and giving of your skill, because that will, that build that network. So you can talk directly to these people. And so I think that that idea of, of you have a skill, just start giving it away for free to start in this space, at least to build those relationships, because that's what this space is. That's where it's at in its trajectory of, you know, relationships are all you need to, to get in and get plugged into supporting and then creating your own.

1 (22m 46s):
And so just be giving of your skill and time and find ways to help and support every, everyone in the space and just be a part of the community.

0 (22m 54s):
Plus a final call to action. How can we find more about you about xBTC, any again, call to action you might have for us to connect and then we'll say goodbye.

1 (23m 4s):
Yeah, definitely search a SPTC official on Twitter. You can also go to SBTC dot F I sptc.fi and find all of our information there. Also again, come join us on telegram. You can find our telegram link at the bottom of our webpage, or actually I think it's at the top of our webpage and then also, yeah, for the whole space, just, yeah. Start joining telegrams started joining discourse, just get involved in the community and start talking and listening. And we hope to see you in our telegram and say, hi

0 (23m 33s):
Fire Nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with MS and JLD today. So let's keep up that heat. You head over to eofire.com and just type Mark in the search bar. His show notes page will pop right up best show nose in the biz. Mark, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on

2 (23m 56s):
The flip side. Definitely. Thank you so much, John. Thank you so much. Fire Nation and yeah. Bills and go forth and create, Hey, Fire Nation

0 (24m 3s):
Today's value bound content was brought to you by Mark and successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the freedom journal to guide you Fire Nation and accomplishing your number one goal in a hundred days. And we're talking step-by-step. So check out the FreedomJournal.com use promo code podcast for a $15 discount. And thank you for listening to my podcast and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side, looking for a business coach who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you to increase their profitability by an average of 104% per year, all for less money than would cost to hire a full-time minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today with clay Clark, a former small business administration entrepreneur of the year at ThrivetimeShow.com/fire ThrivetimeShow.com/fire.

2 (24m 54s):
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