Marketing a Dual Mandate: Products and Equity Simultaneously

0:00Brett Stapper:How did you survive? I'm sure there's a lot of factors there, but what do you think you got right? Because a lot of companies, obviously, they didn't survive. Most importantly, it was an aligned management team. We really did go through a lot of aim and personal struggle. Most of us didn't take pay for six plus months. I sold my home at the time because I wasn't getting an income. I know someone else on our management team took out a second mortgage and then others took out personal loans. What types of evolutions have you seen from a brand perspective? When we started, we had one primary business.

0:30As of today, we have six plus business lines and two and a half subsidiaries.

0:35Brett Stapper:Where did your marketing strategy live? Because there's so many different marketing strategies. How do you think about that as a whole? The overarching thing of anything we do is really to try to establish trust and credibility in what we're doing, because people have to trust the brand in order to buy your product or service or invest in your company. So that way there's cohesion and uniformity across all of the messaging we put out across email, social media, or any external marketing efforts.

1:05Brett Stapper:Hey, everyone, and thanks for listening. Today we're speaking with Curtis Schlopman, VP of Marketing and Comms at DeFi Technologies. Curtis, how's it going? Doing all right, man. Another sunny day in California, so can't blame too much. Amazing, man. I love it. let's talk about your journey into this world of crypto how'd you end up here um you know like anybody else i think it's your traditional story uh i was uh more of a skeptic on the on the onset um you know the the typical well it doesn't you know bitcoin doesn't have any underlying value what's up with all these other tokens um there's no value there there's no underlying business but i started working for someone who wrote a crypto newsletter back in 2018 2019-ish and helping with them with build out their their personal brand and at the time due to the nature of just working with him and trying to get to know him and his brand i had to read his newsletter so as i started reading his newsletter i would get more educated on crypto particularly bitcoin on a daily basis and you know over that time it was it was at the very very early stages of your typical crypto bull run or or after you know bitcoin having cycle um and bitcoin continued to appreciate the adoption continued to pick up so i was like well okay maybe thing this thing is real uh so i started buying my first you know bitcoin ethereum um and i think solana was pretty new back then as well but i started purchasing uh digital assets back like early late 2019 uh and then the guy who i was helping build his brand uh was asked to become an advisor for the company i'm currently with defy technologies and they brought me in as their first marketing hire and i guess the rest is history uh the last four five years have been it have been pretty crazy went through a crypto bull cycle our crypto bear bull market bear bear market and now we're back at a bull um but it's certainly been uh interesting times hasn't been boring but uh yeah i got i got a lot of stories yeah i would imagine a lot of stories you survived i feel like a lot of people they come in during the bull market they hit a bear market and they they leave yeah it's not nearly as fun it's uh it's mentally paxing that's for sure why'd you stick around like why didn't you leave during the bear market like so many other uh tourists that they do something they like to call them yeah and i i think i'm pretty open with this uh as well we defy technologies we were a very mature company we were about 40 plus million dollars in debt uh so we we almost went bankrupt uh during the bear market uh you know i i did see the potential of the company when i joined and we had a long-term plan uh just you know very concise business model to give you information our primary business is listing and laughing exchange-traded products in europe with single digital asset underlines that give investors regulated spot exposure to cryptocurrencies and the whole purpose of the company is to provide regulated pipelines so that way investors can get regulated secure access to to cryptocurrencies rather than you know taking the risks of opening up their own crypto wallet having to remember a seed phrase worry about their wallet being hacked or a particular crypto going to zero so they can crypto like they can any other security and we as a management team we really believe that to get mass adoption um folks are going to prefer dating it through regulated familiar means where they have protection and um you know we were still a very young company about a year and a half a year old into coming into 2022 when everything kind of fell apart um so i stuck around one because i believed in the company two i also had options that helped keep me around and and three like you know it's it i i knew we were going to come out if we could survive the bear market and we're going to come out stronger particularly because we were still building the business and it was becoming more mature over time how did you survive i'm sure there's a lot of factors there but like what do you think you got right to navigate that shift because a lot of companies obviously they didn't survive yeah uh i think most importantly was an aligned management team where um we really did go through a lot of pain and personal struggle most of us didn't take take pay for six plus months uh i sold my home at the time because i wasn't getting an income i know someone else on our management team uh took out a second mortgage and then others took out personal loans to help float through the rough times because it was a matter of just maintaining focus and having conviction that we were going to come out the other side if we could make it through that really tough period where asset prices were depressed.

6:24And fortunately, it does help when you have the management with a track record of success and had made a bit of money to help operations flow. And we did a couple of private placements where we were able to inject some money back into the business, raise it through a friend and family, and then help load operations, keep the business alive. And then, you know, 2020, tail end of 2024, I think it was, the Bitcoin ETFs were launched here in the United States. And Bitcoin went from 17K to$40 ,000 within a couple of months. And that turned our revenue engines back on and it was a game on for us again.

7:05Brett Stapper:So when you say you went through pain, it's like, it's the next level of pain. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of personal sacrifice. And, you know, fortunately I had a very supportive girlfriend, now fiance. I'm marrying her because, partly because she put up with all the BS. She was very resilient aside. She was very resilient. and then standing at my side throughout the entire time. So what was the marketing plan? Like, what were you marketing then during the bear market? Were you not thinking too much about marketing? Was it more or less? Well, it was, you know, we didn't have any money, right? We were just funding the business enough to stay, you know, to keep it afloat and keep operations alive.

7:49So a lot of it was face-to-face. Non-deal roadshows is what they call it. pitching the business pitching the products talking to people on a one-on-one basis and coming up with a narrative of hey this is where we're at now but if we can get to here this is where we'll see you know uh really strong growth and uh if if we were looking for someone to actually buy the stock or you know in terms of the product suite like we're we have the most diverse product suite globally of any crypto asset manager. So with that diversity, we're able to have a competitive edge and offer investors regulated exposure to particular digital assets they couldn't get anywhere else in the world.

8:38So that was an edge. You just have to figure out what your edge is, what your competitive advantage is, and come up with a narrative and story to tell to effectively tell why someone should buy your product or why someone should believe in your company. And we were able to do that over the course of the company's history. We've never had a month of outflows from our products. The digital assets that make up our AUM on an aggregate basis, we have month-over-month inflows. So we have a pretty sticky and oil investor base in our product suite.

9:14Brett Stapper:when it comes to who your target is or your current marketing efforts like who are you primarily trying to reach keep in and pitch it for it's like if you were to do one of those like customer personas like what does it look like yeah so it's it's a bit different from your as a public company it's a bit different from your general you know private company sass b2b whatever it is you have a dual mandate you're marketing not only to customers who are going to buy your products or services but you're also marketing to investors who are going to buy your stock and are buying into the future upside of the company for the products you're looking at folks who as i mentioned aren't going to or don't want to open up a crypto wallet trade crypto on a decentralized or centralized exchange like coinbase or uniswap remember a seed phrase worry about their wallet being hacked or trying to stake their crypto.

10:08Do all of these sorts of crypto degem things that if you've created crypto before, you're pretty familiar with. These are folks that are traditional investors looking for the high upside that these assets offer rather than your traditional assets where you're getting a 10 % year is great in your traditional investments. But these folks are looking for those higher yield gains of anywhere from 20 % to hundreds of percent on a yearly basis, depending on the particular digital asset. So very much traditional investor who is looking for the regulated and secure way to access cryptocurrencies. And then I would say the same for folks who are looking to buy the equity of our company and invest in the company, who are looking for spot exposure or exposure to the industry as a whole.

11:06because I mentioned we offer the most diverse array of digital assets in a regulated fashion of any digital asset manager globally. So by default, our equity is one of the most diverse plays you can make in regards to getting exposure to the industry as a whole. So it's more of like a call option on that digital asset sector as a whole for folks who don't want to pick the winners and losers or invest in a single digital asset and potentially take on that risk, they can have a much lower risk profile by investing in the company directly.

11:43Brett Stapper:What would you say is like the average profile for each of those personas? Is it trending younger? Is it older? What does that look like? Yeah, I think generally we have, it's probably 30, the age 35 plus. So it is trending a little older. in both aspects don't get me wrong we'll have 20 year olds and probably gen z's um buying this or buying our equity probably more so buying our equity but in terms of our regulated products it's folks who are in a trend older um i mean i'm 39 but i guess i'm i'm older in that sense uh so yeah it's whereas like your your 20 something year olds and even your early 30 year olds and obviously some some guys or or gals our age are probably more uh crypto native and just buy the crypto on decentralized of centralized exchanges um but yeah i i think that that answers the question what about your split so those are you know two very different personas you know two varied products we could say that you're you're marketing to them like are you is it like 80 20 Is it 50-50?

12:55Brett Stapper:As a marketer, how do you split your time and your focus? I spend more time on the DeFi Technologies equity investment side, whereas we do have on-the-ground dedicated marketing teams that are catering to each demographic in Europe because they can be quite different. Those instruments trade across different regulated exchanges in Europe and in their own native currencies. So each demographic is a little different in their likes and dislikes or how they like to go about doing things, particularly because we do have different instruments in different regions throughout Europe. So the marketing is a bit more nuanced when it comes to that.

13:43Whereas if you're looking at DeFi technologies and buying the equity, it's pretty standard across the board. You're doing non-deal roadshows. You're doing banner advertisements, native ads, influencer marketing, and then other things of the like.

14:03Brett Stapper:So you're primarily marketing the stock. Is that a fair way to kind of summarize that? Yeah, that's where I spend the majority of my time. And then I think it's more so, you know, I'm the final go-to on any brand messaging for the company as a whole, that includes our subsidiary in Euro. What types of evolutions have you seen from a brand perspective? Are there maybe like chapters of the company? Yeah, I would think so. We were, when we started, we had one primary business. As of today, we have six plus business lines and two and a half subsidiaries, half because we had a majority of, just the majority share of the other one.

14:48so certainly the the narrative have the narrative has significantly changed over the past couple of years and to be quite honest we've we've probably grown so fast that we're still fine-tuning that narrative um and helping people you know tell a story to help people understand what our business actually does as a whole um it's really easy when you can talk about it individually because you have a brand identity but it becomes more difficult when your subsidiaries don't have the same names as the parent company so they each have their own individual narrative and how do you tie those together in an overarching thesis and that's something that continually flush out and work on particularly because we continue to launch new products we acquired two and a half businesses last year and we're launching new business lines as you know our newest one as of last month we have more products coming another business line coming soon so it's like how do we wrap our hands around a cohesive narrative with so much going on um so that's where the evolution has come from and that's where the evolution continues to go uh and it's it's tough right because it's like ice you're stuck in the ground you're stuck with the same sort of like it things when you're when you're in it things don't seem like they're progressing really quickly but if you look away from the business for a couple weeks and a couple things have changed just like, whoa, what happened?

16:14What's the story now?

16:16Brett Stapper:So you have to keep pace with the fast growth. I mean, that just seems like a lot. I feel like that's like five jobs packed into one job kind of. Oh, wow. It's a little crazy, but, you know, it helps that, you know, you got to be a little insane for startup culture in general. And fortunately, like my background is primarily startups and faster-paced growth environments. And I still have the energy to keep up. I'm still figuratively young. But yeah, it's challenging, but it's not boring, right? So I think that's what keeps you going. There's like levels of insanity. It's like level one, it's not amazing than like crypto, like even more crazy.

17:04Brett Stapper:So a crypto startup, it's like, it says a lot of that's like, how insane is it? I guess we're, because it's not like a um it's not like a well-established industry that has been around for decades and it's sort of it's it pays to slow down everything is always changing every day there's new developments every day so you're you're constantly having to iterate and adapt to the environment that is quickly changing around you and then also internally the business is quickly changing as well so it's like you're you're spinning multiple plates at the same time that are moving at a very fast rate. Where does your marketing strategy live?

17:41Brett Stapper:Because there are so many different marketing strategies. Is there one doc that you're updating on a regular basis? Are there 10 different marketing strategies? How do you think about that as a whole? Yeah, I think fortunately, all of our subsidiaries are pretty established at this point, even the ones we acquired over the past couple of years. They're independent businesses on their own. We just brought them under our umbrella. So they have highly competent teams. They're all generating revenue. They're all profitable. So that makes it a bit easier. But the overarching thing is, how do you tell a tight narrative that encompasses what exactly the umbrella companies do?

18:26So we have an evolving narrative document that exists that highlights this is the business, this is what we do, this is what separates us from our competition, this is where we're going. So it's a living document of sorts in that way, which I'm continually adding to as conditions change, as we update things, as we make new acquisitions, or we launch new products. So there certainly is that.

18:59Brett Stapper:But from a day-to-day basis, things are pretty in line when there is a material news we'll announce it we'll do a press release we'll we'll coordinate with press if there we're continually running marketing campaigns that can range as i mentioned from from banner ads across financial sites native advertising and landing pages that discuss the value proposition of the business email marketing of course particularly with our investors and then you're you're also marketing to funds and institutions so we're we're doing road shows and meeting face-to-face with fund managers or portfolio managers i've been on the road quite a bit over the last couple of months meeting with with fund managers and and portfolio managers at investment banking conferences is um so the overarching thing of anything we do is is really to try to establish trust and credibility in what we're doing because people have to trust the brand in order to buy your product or service or invest in your company um so i i think that's rule number one in the materials that we put out it has to be impactful has to establish trust and there's sort of a pipeline of announcements or news that we, on a cadence that we, that we utilize to establish that.

20:25And that's where the, the brand guidelines and that living document of the narrative, uh, come into play. So that way there's cohesion and uniformity across all of the messaging we put out across email, social media, uh, or any external marketing efforts.

20:42Brett Stapper:Can you unpack the playbook for us when you have really hot news? So it seems like there's always hot news because you guys are They're always buying something. They're doing something crazy. So you have hot news. Like, what does that process look like? What's the playbook to get that news out there in the world? Yeah, I mean, before we kind of just shoot from the hip, write up a press release the day before, and then distribute it. But now we've kind of taken a step back. We want to be more thoughtful about the news we put out, particularly, you know, wanting it to be impactful and establish credibility.

21:16so you know we have we have our our business development guys that'll bring in deals um or leadership that will establish new mandates think of new business lines or new strategy so then we'll we'll take probably a week or two prior to start thinking up a narrative and how that fits into the as i mentioned that the like that living document and the the long

21:46Brett Stapper:term vision for the company um it all really starts with with drafting a press release based on whatever it is we're talking about um we'll have the press release finalized and then we'll integrate it with uh any current marketing that's that's that's going on um so we we're a pretty lean team internally so i'll use vendors typically when it comes to our marketing efforts um so whatever digital advertising um or if we want to talk about any particular development uh with uh as it pertains to the business then we'll loop in um to our sales investment banking sales desks as well to get us in front of potential funds um or see if there's any upcoming conferences uh that we can present at uh and then once we have the press release finalized Once we have digital marketing lined up with the new messaging or the updated press release, then we'll send out the PR.

22:51We'll push that through email, distribute it through our newswire, and then update our marketing across any, you know, like Financial Times, Bloomberg, SlackTwits, or CEO.ca if you're a Canadian investor. we'll push that out to those channels with banner ads, particular landing page, it'll take you back to the website and then get back on the road or do virtual meetings with hedge funds or Procure Leo managers and we'll continue running those ads at an evergreen pace and then update them as things change so it's we run ongoing campaigns that will change based on news I would say Makes sense.

23:38Brett Stapper:Now, final question. I'm seeing that we're almost up on time or over on time. What's a bet? You can give advice to any marketer who's moving into crypto. So they've worked in startups. They're new to the wallet. What advice do you have to then, or would you have for them to succeed in that new role? Yeah, I think for crypto or capital markets, number one, there are a lot of, and I hate say it but there are a lot of um scammers uh out there and there are a lot of marketing companies that say they have all this experience in marketing and they've done all this stuff and they don't they don't know what they're doing but they don't know what they're talking about so as from a newbie especially working in capital markets and crypto to a certain degree of course like unfortunately i feel like there's more people that are trying to take advantage of you and try to make make a buck off you then then there aren't um so it's really hard to find trustworthy partners in this space uh and i would just be very skeptical um ask very in-depth questions ask them for uh you know examples of the work they've done in the past ask them for evidence of exactly um what they're doing like for example someone was pitching me the other day on oh we can get you in front of our like 225 000 investors through our email list and i was like great then me your c the the back end cms proving that you have 225 000 email subscribers never heard back from them um so like that that's just a simple example but that happens all of all the time um and number two it's just like anything else in a fast paid fast paced environment it you're always learning new things so be open be receptive um and i think in my case in particular i never really as i was moving up i never really said no to anything i was always willing to take things on um so it's not necessarily about being smart it's about being able willing to learn to take on new challenges being able to adapt and most importantly go up and be consistent because it's also really hard to find consistent, reliable folks.

25:57And if you can show up and be consistent,

25:59Brett Stapper:you're going to have an edge over most anyone else. Great advice. All right, man, that's where we're going to leave it. Before we wrap, if there's anyone that's listening in that wants to follow along with you, where should we send them to? I'm on X at C-S-C-H-L-A-U-F. Also on LinkedIn. I don't really have a personal brand of sorts, But yeah, you can find me on X and LinkedIn. Amazing, man. Well, thanks for taking the time. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks, Brad.