From Crypto Fan to Founder in 3 Months with Mark Sgambelluri: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the ideal destination for business professionals with great shows like My First Million. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to go from crypto fan to founder in three months. To drop these value bombs, I brought Mark Scamberlini in the EO Fire studios. Mark helps cryptocurrencies go from concept to product and is growing one project to$30 million in value. He recently founded XBTC, one of the most diversified and unique tokens in crypto.

0:35And today, Foundation, we'll talk about how cryptocurrency is blockchain technology, how there are many thought leaders in cryptocurrency on social media and they want to engage, how to start building networks and relationships and be generous in sharing your skills and time and be part of the community and so much more. And Fire Nation, as always, when it comes to any financial investment, do your own research, consult your financial professional and be careful out there. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Mark and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

1:11Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought of giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com to join Taylor's free training, where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.

1:50Mark, say what's up to Fire Nation. And what's something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for having me, Fire Nation and John. Thanks for having me on. And yeah, for success, 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 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 and I think we need to readjust our relationship with success and understand what it is and how to interact with it as a society and individually.

2:50I think we have not been interacting with it well recently. I think that 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 dudette that invested$10 ,000 or$1 ,000 10 years ago, five years ago, even two years ago in the right altcoin, 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.

3:29So just a little side note there. But there's a lot of people that are upset about that. And those people, I understand why they're frustrated because they maybe have spent their whole lives grinding at some job that they hate. 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 spent my whole life working for this and this is the money that I have. And this person just threw a couple thousand dollars in Bitcoin or some altcoin a little while ago and look at where they're at now. This isn't fair. And they get mad and angry.

4:02And 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 the just space overall. 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 in time that people put into picking that perfect altcoin that makes them a millionaire, You know, that's one side of it.

4:36There's definitely in 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 Wall Street bets that we've all seen on the news recently. And those people are just on an 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. So yeah, that's definitely an interesting angle.

5:09I 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 basically digital trust. There's a way to trust someone digitally. You can make a transaction, use a social media platform, write 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, everyone in it.

5:49It's a very democratized system. Some are not, but the basic idea is to be democratized. And what that means for the user is 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. But now the digital revolution is open to anyone across the globe. It's all 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.

6:31Now 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. 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?

7:07I need to hear this story. So tell us the story. What does founding a digital asset company look like? Like, what was the process? Yeah, and I guess the founding is the three-month part, but obviously, I've been in much longer, and I've been in the space since 2013, and really just an interested party, an evangelist, someone who's really interested in this idea of decentralization and opening up the world. And so it's still, yeah, a weird corner of this technology and the technology world in general, the internet space, because there's really not a lot of clear guidance around starting a digital asset.

7:43There's still some gray area around the finances and the legal structures. It's not as easy as just starting a dropshipping company on Amazon or starting an online store on Etsy or whatever it may be. And so you really have to build relationships and build networks and partner with lawyers or companies that 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 who know how to navigate it. But once you square away the legal and the financial side, or you can also just open a decentralized business and open it up. And 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.

8:24But that's a whole nother, that would be another podcast entirely. So at that point, it's just like building a website or a software as a service, a SaaS business where you're building the technology and then letting users use it. And, you know, we have the internet to build our traditional SaaS's, but now you have Ethereum is the most popular one. It's an operating system and you build your app or you build your software on Ethereum 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 writer, and anyone on that team can have the idea for the product.

9:05So 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 product is going to go and having those key outcomes that you hit just like with any other business. 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, I love talking to people like Mark who have done this fairly recently.

9:39I mean, he's been in the game for a while and he's been researching and educating himself for a while, but he's not like super far removed from being a square one. And like when people aren't that far removed, they remember what it's like and they can really help and 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? Yeah, I mean, for me right now, I really started in June getting really interested in the space in a more engaged way. and before that I was really just researching and taking in news and more larger forums and then in June with COVID everybody's stuck inside, you have a lot more free time.

10:18At 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 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, follow links they drop, find podcasts or YouTube videos that mention the project and then listen to them and just start understanding the space and then buy some crypto.

10:59You know, literally just$20 here, $20 there to just see what the experience is like. And especially if you can find a crypto where you can use it like a Theta 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. 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 with 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.

11:31And that's really what I did. I just sat back and then this project that I started following 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. I just started writing it because I was interested in the concept. And then once you grasp the technology and get deeper into those teams and collaborate with them, just start considering what problems you faced in the space or 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.

12:00and then go back and leverage those relationships you create to start making the idea. Fire Nation, I really hope you're understanding this process. It's not just because it's cryptocurrency and all of these potentially foreign names and words that makes it confusing. It's just another thing that can be figured out. As Marie Forleo says, which I love, everything is figureoutable. You sit down, you figure it out. A lot of people, by the way, in any topic you 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 in like four to six to 10 dedicated hours of study.

12:45It 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 XBTC? Like what does Mark see in the future as we go forward here? When we get back from thanking our sponsors, the new year is upon us. And that means new goals, more growth and upgrading your day to day workflow. While most sales folk are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data and tracking down leads. Let me share with you a better way to win so you can crush your Q1.

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15:03That's thought-leader.com slash fire. 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 through that? 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 100 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?

15:38And then I also, you know, I know that this is a very innovative space. And by holding 100 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 call them alt 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. 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's price goes up. If Facebook's triples or Amazon's quadruples, Microsoft's not keeping up with the pack.

16:16So its 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're 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's this idea that we could really track every single other altcoin versus Bitcoin by just tracking Bitcoin dominance. And so then we started creating a utility token to actually track that and to keep that tracked for people to use if they wanted to use it.

16:52And so it was really about a personal pain point. And I 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. Fire Nation, 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. 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 cryptocurrencies, Chamath Palapatea, is a great example of this.

17:32Like 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 like the podcast he was on, he'll literally respond to you on Twitter or like your tweet. You know, he's actively engaged with that community. And there'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, once you have that engaged people, you really marketing crypto is 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.

18:09And you really get that direct feedback, which can be amazing sometimes. And then terrible other times, right? You're directly talking to them every day about 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. The space is very open. It's very nascent. It's just starting out. And so it's really about building those connections and finding those mutually beneficial relationships to push each other forward and building out that network. It's a very communal setting right now because it's so new.

18:41It'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. 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're not that knowledge about and you just maybe are a little scared of because of those reasons, guess what?

19:13Apply 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 it, Mark, was XBTC. What's next for XBTC and for just digital assets more broadly? Yeah, I think it's really about we just want to keep building and finding ways for people to access us and support our community and doing that also. Digital assets is all about decentralization and community engagement.

19:49And the community will 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 spreading XBDC and in developing new use cases for it. And I think for the whole space, that is what it is about, is about spreading ease of use and utility. Finding ways to be useful and then making them easy to access. I think right now you can get 8 % to 15 % in safe savings accounts. Literally just putting USD into crypto and keeping it as USD, you can get 8 % to 15 % returns, which is way better than your 0.5 % at Ally Bank or whatever bank you use.

20:27and 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 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 then? 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 XBTC, we want to simplify and make it more accessible so people understand it and then people can access it.

21:03And so it's all about lowering the barrier to entry and helping people to onboard to this brand new space and brand new world of power that they can find, just like the internet did in the 90s. It is a brand new space and it's an exciting space. And there's so much out there that, you know, my recommendation, Fire Nation, 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 learn there and see what that leads you to.

21:43And if it doesn't lead you to anything over a little while, that's not a bad thing. You've learned some things for sure. Now shift, pivot, tweak your progress and see where you want to go from there. And Mark, that's kind of where I want 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. What do you want to make sure Fire Nation walks away with? 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.

22:16Like, 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 then build that network so you can talk directly to these people. and so I think that that idea 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 in to supporting and then creating your own 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.

23:03Give us 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. Yeah, definitely search XBTC official on Twitter. You can also go to XBTC.fi, XBTC.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 telegram, start joining discourse, just get involved in the community and start talking and listening.

23:39And we hope to see you in our telegram and say hi. 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. If you head over to eofire.com and just type Mark in the search bar, his show notes page will pop right up. Best show notes 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 the flip side. Definitely. Thank you so much, John. Thank you so much, Fire Nation. And yeah, build and go forth and create.

24:12Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb 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, in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. We're talking step by step. So check out thefreedomjournal.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. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.