Kelley is co-founder and CEO of Blue Studios.io, a family friendly crypto wallet, a former AVP at American Express and JPMorgan and 3rd generation entrepreneur.
Episode 12 Season 2
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Find this episode in all your usual podcast places: Spotify | Apple | Google
In this episode we discuss:
- The hype around web3, crypto, NFT and blockchain
- Why Andi’s wild predictions about the death of web3 might not be right!
- Why Blue Studios focuses on the family
- The benefits of being a start up v incumbent in a fast growing space
- Why building a community is essential for the growth of Blue Studios
- How communities can spread the word crypto love
- Why having a hyper focus is essential for a start up
- Kelley’s background and why jumping out of big corporate was an obvious move
- The lessons of being a 3rd generation entrepreneur
Kelley Cambry
Kelley Cambry is co-founder and CEO of Blue Studios.io. Blue Studios.io builds tools and software to onboard families into Web3. Kelley spent time at Discover Card, in Consumer Card Acquisition.
She was also Assistant Vice President of Digital and Product Manager for companies like American Express and JPMorgan.
With her background in Fintech and Computer Science, Kelley wanted to start a company to do her small part in changing the world leveraging her entrepreneurial spirit as a third-gen entrepreneur. Kelley is also a graduate of Howard University.
Find Kelley on Twitter
Book Recommendations
#NFTsForGood on Twitter Spaces
Digital Marketing Strategy Course
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Andi Jarvis
If you have any questions or want to talk about anything that was discussed in the show, the best place to get me is on Twitter or LinkedIn.
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Andi Jarvis, Eximo Marketing.
Interview Transcript
This transcript has been done automagically using Happy Scribe and hasn’t been checked by a real person, so there may be some hilarious mistakes where the AI can’t work out our accents – I’m sure they’re trained on just the American accent.
Hey, Hope, and welcome to the strategy sessions. Thank you for joining me today. And today my guest is Kelley Cambrey. Kelley, how are you doing?
I am doing well. Thanks for having me.
So first of all, all your listeners, my listeners in the UK and Ireland are probably thinking that’s not a local accent. So Where’s your accent from? Where are you based at the minute?
Yeah. So based in New York City.
Excellent stuff. So welcome from New York City. Now tell us a little bit about yourself. You’ve got an amazing resume, an amazing product at the moment. So we’re going to start at the beginning and we’re going to work backwards through your career and then we’ll probably end up coming back to the beginning. Anyway, where is it you work at the minute? Where is it that you run? I should say at the minute.
Hi there. I’m Kelley Cambridge, the co founder of Blue Studios. We basically take content, crypto and communities to help on board the 2 billion Gen Alpha and their families into web three. We’re doing that with a family friendly crypto wallet and a little bit about me. So my background is in fintech, in computer science. I’m a technical founder. Started my career out in discover card Andi consumer card acquisition. I was assistant vice President of digital and product manager for companies like American Express and JP Morgan. But for like most entrepreneurs, I was at a crossroads. I was on track to become senior VP at JP Morgan. And for me, I was at a crossroads and corporate was great, but I wanted to do my small part in changing the world by creating a fintech company. And also, I don’t know if I mentioned this one back. I am a third generation entrepreneur, so my parents and grandparents on both sides are entrepreneurs and I grew up in a maker space. So I grew up in a super hands on learning environment. It was a production studio and marketing agency, so there’s tonnes going on all day and I just absorbed all those learnings.
Andi it was such a great childhood experience for me. And it was in this environment where I learned how to code, taught myself graphic design and just how to be a lifelong learner. So that’s a little bit about me and what we’re doing at Blue Studios.
Excellent. Well, we’re going to unpack everything you’ve said there over the next 45, 50 minutes. So as I said, let’s start at the beginning, because NFCs, crypto, web three, there’s a lot of discussion. It’s kind of a real hot topic now in marketing, but not just in marketing, kind of just in general life and discussion, but there’s a lot of misunderstandings about it. A lot of people, including me, I’ll be honest, you don’t really understand all the different terms and what they mean. So your products for a younger audience as well. So you must be really slick explaining what all this means in terms that children can understand. So let’s go with that. Let’s start there.
Yeah. So basically, unfortunately, crypto web three NFPs are kind of getting a bad rap in the media because it’s more fun to talk about bad things. Right. Than good things. Good news doesn’t spread as fast as bad news. But one of the things that we believe and we are seeing in the space, and you’ve just even seen over the course of the pandemic that there’s a rapid adoption of crypto increasing at a rate faster than the adoption of the Internet. And it’s really why we do what we do at Blue Studios is that it’s our thesis that every contract from a house, insurance, identity, digital ownership will be on the blockchain. And for us, we do target younger folks that we really see ourselves as targeting, like the family unit with the millennial parent at the centre and just giving an opportunity for every family to have the most accessible way to manage their digital assets. And that’s exactly why we’re building a family wallet and why we’ve focused before completing the wallet on building the audience. Right. So we have thousands of parents that we speak to every day, that we connect them with each other to help them through this new phase of the Internet and figuring out how to bring their family along on the journey.
So there’s two things in there. You’ve got your product, which is a family wallet. And it’s about making crypto accessible effectively. Because I saw a stat once. I was at a conference recently, Digital DNA, where somebody was speaking about crypto and said only about 1% of the world’s population has Holden crypto. Now, I can’t stand by that stat, but it feels about right. So there’s a huge market there, but there’s a lot of people where the barriers to entry to this is just so high, they don’t know how they’re worried that they’ve heard all the negativity. So you’re trying to make it accessible, safe and secure for families. That’s the kind of the main thrust of the product, right?
Exactly. And we start with content, honestly. We have family friendly, fun, high end, 3D animated content that helps kids Andi families honestly learn together and also earn, eat and other crypto rewards every single day. Andi the way that we really see this crypto movement is that, hey, we’re building this product in this community where the puck is going, not where the puck currently is. I mean, Bitcoin has been around for 15 years and fees have been around for five years. And I saw a stat somewhere that said 83% of millennial millionaires own crypto and more than half of their portfolio is in crypto. Andi the same goes for most average millennials as well. A big part of millennial wealth will be in crypto and is in crypto assets. I saw somewhere that NFC made more than the film industry last month. They gross more, which is insane. Right. So I say all of this to say that Web Three is not a new thing that just started, and there’s a huge white space in this area, and we’re really aggressively filling it by being a trusted place for families to hang out in the Web Three space.
Yeah. Andi you will kind of get into your history as well as we go through. But you’ve worked in financial services a lot of your career, and I’ve worked with one or two financial services clients over my marketing career. And the big thing that they all major on, as far as I can see, is trust. If that makes them a little bit boring, that’s fine because you trust them. If that makes them a little bit risk averse, that’s fine because you trust them. If they don’t have trust, they don’t have a product. Excuse me, but in the crypto space, because of all this bad news that’s going around, there’s also this concern about how do you keep that trust in there. And I think what you’re building on, what you’re talking about building is about trying to build that trust element to what you’re offering.
Yeah, exactly. I think most folks, when it comes to fintech, especially in crypto, there’s not enough consumerization of it just yet. Most take a kind of, hey, I’m going to build this cool app and folks will come, but that’s not going to scale. At the end of the day, the family unit is the basic unit of wealth generation and digital asset management. And you’re going to have to find ways to get into the lives of families, which we’ve been doing. Andi with my background in fintech, I knew that we needed an audience first approach to build that trust and do it in a very cost effective way as well. And that’s something that I think if you haven’t been in the space or just getting into thinking of yourself as a larger fintech play, you’re not going to figure that out until it’s too late. But content marketing, content sponsorship is something that’s really big in financial services because like you said, you have to build trust. So we’ve already built that engine for ourselves.
I love it. Tell us a bit more. To my mind, it’s a publishing house that you built. Now, whether you call it that or not, I don’t know. But you built your own publishing house. Now, I can see lots of benefits of that. It takes time and it’s costly. But your product in many ways. Andi I’m not trying to be critical of your product, but your product is not overly unique, is it? Maybe the way you put a few things together, but that’s quite easy to copy for somebody with the technical skills. But years of investment in a great product and a publishing house that’s really difficult to copy, even with economies of scale. You can’t copy that.
Yeah, that’s one thing that we really see as our moat, because at the end of the day, they’re going to be wallets that come out with different features and functionality. But if you don’t have that audience first and you don’t have that trust, Andi at the end of the day, parents talk to each other. It’s a big word of mouth industry as well. You’re going to always have to play catch up. That’s one of the reasons why, given my background and experience in understanding how hard it is to acquire customers in fintech. That’s why fintech Andi banking and a bunch of other services they offer you so much upfront like $500, just open a bank account, $1,000, et cetera, because they know how expensive it is to get you to switch over to them. And the fact that we already have that in place definitely put those light years ahead. And like you said, it’s hard for folks to catch up.
Definitely. Is this a worry of yours, or do you look forward to the day when all the big players like some of the places you used to work and just the normal high street financial institutions? Do you look forward to the day when they wake up to this and go, we need to catch up in that space? Or are you just kind of quietly tiptoeing along going, I hope they never work out what opportunity they’re missing.
I definitely see us. I think for major financial institutions, it’s a little bit difficult for them to fully go into D Fi because they do have stockholders in public markets. They have a lot of risk and exposure. But what I do see as an opportunity for us to work with big financial institutions in the future to help package decentralised products and wealth building products for families and be that tool for them to sell Andi upsell to their current base. So we see ourselves being able to work with those financial institutions in the future Andi being like a really symbiotic relationship. But in terms of them fully jumping into it in a way that is natively Web three, I think it’s very challenging for those large institutions.
I think sometimes the story of Kodak is overblown in the tech space about how they frittered away a huge advantage and they had a digital camera, but they didn’t see the benefit of it because it would affect their film business, their physical business, Andi think what people do is make a really simplistic take on what was probably a complex multi year issue. But one of the lessons from it is that when you’re making a stack of money in Pot A, Pot B, even though it looks like it’s big and growing and fast Andi interesting, is still only quite small compared to Pot A, it’s really hard for an institution of any size to have proper focus on that, to say, okay, let’s do that well, and with any business, if you’re only doing it from the side of a desk. If you’re messing about with it, it’s never really going to succeed, is it? So this is your sole focus. It’s building Blue studio. So that kind of small nimbleness is really your superpower, isn’t it?
Yeah, it is. It really is. That’s the benefit of being a startup?
Absolutely.
You can move fast when they say move fast and make things happen. So something that takes I’ve been in corporations, right. There’s a reason why things move slower Andi are more cross functional in corporations. It has to be. And there’s a big advantage of being able to go full speed and not have to worry about so many cross functional teams getting involved and who owns what in the organisation.
And things like that can be really challenging all of the politics, definitely. I want to look back, first of all, Andi then start to look forward to looking back. Why did you land in this space of the family wallet? With the skills you have and the experience you have, there’s probably bigger elements of the crypto Andi the web three space at the minute. But why did you go for this particular nation? What was the excitement Andi the attraction for you?
Yeah, I mean, the excitement and attraction for me was first as a technical founder, was I really loved the technical challenges that are existing in the web three space. Andi so as a family, as a team, we’ve all been in early crypto investors, we participated in early NFC projects. And if you’ve been through the web to a movement, you can tell that this is the beginning, like the beginning of kind of combining of the whole web to movement. It feels the same, but actually even better than those times. Andi so I think for me, number one, it’s a great technical challenge. And then number two, given that the way that I grew up and just the way that me and my family work together and I got to work in my parents business and things like that, I just have a big passion for family. I think family is super important. I love kids. I love the idea of families working together to achieve their own financial goals. Andi it’s something that I want for my family in the future. When I have kids one day I’m building something that I actually want to use and leverage one day.
So that’s kind of why I’m Super excited about this. And I’m really bullish on the family friendly approach in the market.
It’s brilliant. Andi family is almost in every culture, in every country, anywhere in the world, the family unit. While he’s a little bit different, he’s also remarkably similar, isn’t it, the bond between children and parents and grandparents. Andi yeah, it does change in different places depending on where you are, but it’s remarkably similar. So having not thought about that before this conversation, it also gives you really scalable products in an area that might actually be quite loose in terms of competition because people are going after different areas.
Yeah, exactly. When we did our go to market into the space with our entity project, it’s almost like we uncovered the hidden layer in the market where you have people who are kind of pretending to be kind of lone Wolf in the space. But in reality, if you dig a little bit deeper, you can see that this is something that is actually a family activity. So it might be the dad or the mom, but then you start going a level deeper and that parents have been able to reveal themselves in the space, their full selves, not just like that one anonymous profile pick, but they’re sharing like, hey, today, me and my wife, we got an opportunity to watch this class from Blue Studios on Bitcoin with my family, and they actually share that experience with us. So we see a parent saying, like, hey, I just earned enough eat. My child just earned enough eat from your daily learn to earn challenges to buy their own NFT. Andi so we’re basically allowing people to be their full selves, which includes being a mom, a father, aunt, uncle within the Web Three space. Andi where I think previously, they weren’t as comfortable revealing those parts of themselves in the space.
So it’s almost like we allowed them to open up a little bit more, be more sharing, and allow them to connect with other people who are going through who are at similar stages in their families as well.
Brilliant. Okay. That’s a real opportunity. And I do love the product and the niche in the way that you’re building it. So I want you to look forward and maybe gazing to your Crystal ball a little bit, because there are some people around, including me sometimes, who have sort of declared Web Three as a passing fad. It’s great, but it’s not really going anywhere. And once the tech Bros get bored of it, everyone else will get bored of it and all that sort of stuff. I’m big enough to admit that I may be wrong. I may have been wrong. Right. Where do you think that Web Three is going in the next ten years?
Yeah, I just think it’s going to be everywhere. Like I mentioned earlier, and I’ll go back actually, one of the reasons why we have created this audience, this community, and I also do a weekly Twitter spaces on this whole concept of NFPs for good. Websites for good is to show that to kind of like counteract the narrative that this is a fad and that there aren’t actual people in this space building every single day to make a better internet for us all Andi think for me, it’s also inspirational to hear project founder stories and just different founders of different E five products who are quietly working every single day. They might not get the attention that the negative things get, but they are working every single day Andi they’re really rethinking utility ownership and just creating a more fair environment for everybody to exist in. I think the big picture is that again, every single person is going to have a digital wallet by which they manage their digital assets. So imagine you have your house in the form of maybe an NFT, right? And you have that in your wallet. And if you want to pass it on to your kids, you can set up governance kind of like a Dow where you can split it between all your kids automatically.
So that’s basically how we are going to be managing our digital assets in a more efficient, cleaner, transparent way for all of our family members to engage with. So to open the door to your car, to own a house, you name it, Andi in the way that it’s going to implicate Gen Alpha again, which is who are the children of millennials? They’re growing. After 2010, they’re going to reach 2 billion globally. So this is going to be a big generation of kids. And just like everyone has a phone, kids are getting phones younger and younger, right? Most kids get a phone before the age of eleven. When I was growing up, eight year olds didn’t have phones. Almost all eight year olds have phones now. The same with wallets, just like we saw with family shared bank accounts. Kids are going to get crypto wallets younger and younger because they’re going to need that as part of their digital identity in order to play, learn and grow on this new web three. Andi for those kids, they won’t even consider them to be crypto wallets. We think of having a regular bank account and a crypto wallet.
For them, it will just be wallet, they won’t understand the difference. And then on top of that, kids are going to live in a world where playing a game or watching content that doesn’t have a crypto incentive is going to be unheard of, right? They are going to expect to get something for the time that they spend. So it’s like telling a kid that in order to record, to watch a show later that you used to put a tape in the VCR and at the press record exactly at the time it aired and they were to watch it, they’re going to be like, wait, what? Like you just don’t go to YouTube or Netflix, literally, kids can watch anything on demand nowadays. They’re going to think that we were crazy for playing games without getting paid for it. Given that, that’s why we want to be the centre of that digital experience Andi that digital asset management and just create an amazing experience and to help kids and families manage that digital wallet and digital experience Andi think it’s a big opportunity. And if you are hesitant about web three or not sure about crypto and NFCs.
Find your tribe within the space. Find somebody you know who has already played around with crypto investments, who played around with NFPs, et cetera, and just learn. Just ask them questions. Learn. Try to understand how it works. I think if it’s like there’s this process by which you’re on the outside and there’s a complete scepticism and then when you jump in, you’re like, wait, this is actually great. Andi so I would say don’t be afraid to find that person in your friend circle or your family who can kind of just help you through this new paradigm shift and help you do it in a really safe, slow Andi steady way. Just try it out. Try getting a wallet, try understanding how it works. Because again, everyone’s going to have one at the end of the day. Andi so I think that’s why it’s important to just get up to speed and try to learn as much today.
I often think one of the problems for Web Three and I’m not trying to be negative, I’m just thinking out loud here.
Oh, yeah.
Is that for Web Three to really realise its full potential, particularly crypto, but not just cryptocurrency, is that there are a number of really well cashed up industries that are going to get hammered by this. So even just from when you’ve been talking, there legal firms, if you can verify ownership of something like property, cars without having to go through a law firm, they’ve got issues. Now, law firms are big. They don’t like change and they’ve got a load of money. Insurance industry or insurance particularly, could struggle because it’s easy to prove banks another sector that doesn’t like change, they’re slow moving and very cash up. But even the gaming sector, which is bigger than the movie sector these days, is your attention. You pay them and then give their products all your attention. You’re saying actually they’ll be paying you for your attention. Social media, you are the product because you’re giving it your attention and they’re selling ads on the back of that. Andi that model, as you’re suggesting, is going to be flipped where they’ll pay you for your attention. And that’s just the ones I can think of in the last two minutes while you’ve been talking.
You’ve got huge industries with billions and billions and billions of dollars of capital tied up who must be looking at this going, we’re screwed. Andi we know what power and institutions are like when they don’t like change. They don’t want this change and they start to legislate. I’m just thinking out loud, I’m not the first person in the world to have these thoughts. Right. So how are the big players reacting to the Web Three space?
Yeah, there are big players who are embracing the space. A lot of the major banks are embracing the space and getting behind different companies and pieces of technology, including folks like JPMorgan. But it is going to require a little bit of a paradigm shift for some of those businesses. But just like in every new phase of the Internet, there are things that can change their industries that were able to change and adapt. There are some that are going to have a challenge. And we might see some big folks topple if they don’t get on board with this new ship, because at the end of the day, in the way I kind of see it is content consumption is a form of work. It’s your time, it’s your energy. You can be doing other things with your time Besides playing a game or absorbing content. Right. Andi so the way that Millennials, not as much, but Gen Z and Jen Alpha kind of see their time is something that you have to pay for. And if you think about how much advertising costs, how much cap costs, how expensive it is to get a new customer versus keep an old one, when you think about an incentive driven shredded, it actually probably saves you money just paying your customers directly.
Honestly. Yeah. Because they’ll stay with you. They’ll be your net promoter and they’ll bring other people into your community with their word of mouth. They’ll talk about you every single day when we launch our learn to earn. We have folks who are net promoters. We call them our super promoters. They talk about us every single day. They bring in their friends and family into our ecosystem. Andi so for us, we’ve definitely seen a big difference in offering the incentives and just how much value those folks bring into our community. I think sometimes people feel like it’s kind of like a pay to play type of negative aspect of it, but you’re just giving back to your community. It’s like a loyalty programme, if anything, brilliant.
So keep in talking about your products and then we’re a marketing podcast. Right. So who are you targeting? Are you aiming at parents to bring in the younger audience? Are you aiming at youngsters to bring the parents in? Which way do you play it?
Yeah. So we basically see ourselves as targeting the millennial parents because almost in terms of generational breakdown, over half of millennials own crypto. And for us, 75% of those 70 million millennials just in the US, I’m just talking about the US will be parents. So we’re really designing a solution with them in mind. Andi for them, the millennial is the centre, because they are the crypto native and we’re helping them bring their kids, Gen Alpha, into the space safely and securely, because we talk to our parents every single day who are in this space. And the main thing that they just want is oversight. That’s all they want. They understand the Internet very well because they grew up in the Internet and all the best and the worst parts of the Internet that we’ve all experienced as a millennial. So they understand the risk involved in a new phase of the Internet. So they want their kids to explore, make mistakes. It’s fine. But I want to know what you’re doing. That’s all I need to know. I just need to approve the transaction. I need to make sure you’re not buying a sketchy NFP.
And that’s all I want. But I want you to learn, grow, have your own identity online. But I just need to know what’s going on. And then down the road, we also see or not down the road. But in addition, we also see an opportunity for that same millennial to bring in that baby Boomer as well and help with that generational wealth transfer. So helping that grandparent start work with the millennial parent on starting a College savings account or helping put that down payment, the first down payment on a home. Right. Andi so we see this ability for the entire family to kind of be central, but with the millennial parent being the key person in that equation.
Brilliant. You mentioned about generational wealth and the transfer of that. We’ll not get into this. I’m just going to win quickly about actually the wealth transition is going from every generation to baby boomers, pretty much in most countries, isn’t it? They just get everything anyway.
That’s a whole nother conversation.
Yeah, that’s a whole different podcast. Why Boomers get everything? In marketing terms, I talked to my clients about what question? What’s their big problem that they’re going to try and solve this year from a marketing perspective? Not a product perspective, but from a marketing perspective. So is it customer recruitment? Is it retention? Is it people accessing the product and the games more? What’s the big challenge you’ve got for the next year? Is it just growth in numbers? What’s the big thing you focused on?
Yeah. So the main thing that we are focused on is just continuing to build our thriving community. So we’re driving our wait list sign ups and we’re just building a community that sees the need for wealth and digital management with the flexibility to customise their own governance. So that’s what we’re really focused on is continuing to grow this parent community and get them on boarded into the wallet.
Brilliant. Andi parents are a great target because lots of companies want parents as well. So how’s your business model built? Do you ever see a time where you go, well, we’ve got so many million parents on our database and we can make money in a different way from that. Or are you all kind of product based business model?
Yeah, we are a primarily product based business model, but we definitely see opportunities to upsell parents into more like Dow structured wealth management tools. Andi so obviously our main focus right now is to really drive that daily active users to make sure that they think about their wallet with us every single day. So that’s why we’re doing the learn to earn play to earn fun family content. That we’re building that thriving community where people can talk to each other, give each other advice, and lead each other through different processes in this web three space. So our drive is really to focus on that daily active usage and then eventually upsell them into more advanced wealth management tools.
Brilliant. And that clarity must be really helpful when you’re a small team of building the product and pushing new releases and all that, as well as how are we going to do it? So focusing on we need to build daily active users. Clarity is really important, isn’t it, on the times like this?
Yeah. No, it definitely is. Because at the end of the day, we want people to have an emotional connection to us. That’s the way that you keep customers. And if they’re engaging with us every single day, if the kids can’t wait to see what’s in their wallet, they can’t wait. They’re like, hey, Mom, dad, what’s in the wallet today? What did I earn? What did I learn today? We believe that we can have those core super promoters, and that’s exactly what you need at this stage in our business.
Brilliant. Andi you’re us only at the minute you’re entirely based within the United States, is that right?
Actually, over half of our parents are overseas, so we have folks in Europe, we have folks in Southeast Asia all over the place. So we’re 24/7. So once our US folks go to sleep, all of our overseas wake up and start chatting with us as well.
This is the time where I go and kill my researcher. So apologies for that.
It’s interesting. I think, obviously we’re us based, but we didn’t realise how much. Andi we have folks in Australia, too. We didn’t quite realise how global we were until we started digging, digging deeper into our community and saying like, oh, wow, this definitely has global reach and global implications. Andi I’ll say I think also given that all families have gone through the challenge of the pandemic, which made them really rethink how they’re managing their assets, how they’re managing their wealth, and also how they’re spending their time with their family Andi making sure that they’re putting the more I talk to these parents, the more that they’re honed in on putting family time first. Andi they definitely see their experience with us as a way for kids to not only be empowered financially and their families to be empowered financially, but also for them to spend time together doing something that’s fun. Cool. Kids like buying other kids. Nfps they like uploading their own. Nfps they like trading with each other. They like spending time with their parents on a learn to earn project and seeing it uploaded and seeing that eat in their wallet at the end of the day or the end of the week.
And so this has just been we basically been at the centre of these family experiences, and they talk about us every single day. And so I think that says something about the way that we design this very intentionally.
Brilliant. Brilliant. There’s a feature in the show called Top Tips. Now, I didn’t tell you about this, but I have a terrible theme tune for Top Tips, which I sing. And as you’re going through that and talking about it, it’s just reminding me that I have an investment in Bitcoin, which I seem to bought right at the peak of Bitcoin. And now it’s worth next to nothing compared to what I bought it for. It’s a long term investment. Maybe it will come back at what sort of tips do you have for people getting into investing in crypto, whether it’s an ethos in Bitcoin or whatever, and kind of looking at volatility in the market, especially in a product like you’ve got, where young people and children are in focus. So what some tips do you let me do the top tip thing tune as well, because it’s the only part of the show people seem to love. So it goes like this. T-O-P-T-I-P-O-P-T-I-P. Anyway, sorry about that. I should have warned you I was going to do that in advance.
Oh, my goodness, that is super funny. I don’t want to give financial advice because I am not a financial manager. Obviously, I mentioned earlier that the thing about crypto and just web through in general is the easiest way I always say to get involved with it is to do it with others. It is almost like a group project, right?
Yeah.
So again, give together a tribe, whether it’s friends, family, cousins, whatever, whoever you can trust, a group of three to five folks. And I would say you guys work together on just learning as much as possible and trying things out in a way that doesn’t obviously ruin your whole savings, right. Don’t invest your whole savings into something. Or if there’s like a super pumped project on an NFP land, don’t put your whole life savings on it or anything like that. As much as people like to say there is no get rich quick scheme in web three or crypto, it’s the same as web two. It’s the exact same. There is no get rich quick scheme over in web two. There is no get rich quick theme in web three. And that’s how a lot of people get burned. A lot of people get burned out by the space by kind of chasing things, just invest in things that you see have a utility that you think it’s just like, hey, I hate to use McDonald’s. I don’t eat at McDonald’s. Let’s say, like, you eat at McDonald’s every day. You might as well buy McDonald’s stock, right?
Might as well. If you’re that big of a customer, like buy their stock, that’s fine. But I’d say just put your investor hat on just like any other investment. And think about the utility, think about the plan that that token or that team has in place, and just make your bet on that. Make your bet on the utility. Not necessarily like something seems to be rising, rising, rising. And like, oh, let me hurry up and get in, because at the end of the day, for projects like that, there’s probably a level of insider trading and you’re an outside trader.
Right.
So you want to make sure you’re investing in a way that you’re like, hey, I just believe in this product. I believe in this utility, I believe in this token. And I’m going to go along for the ride and make sure you have the ability to go along for the ride as well.
Good. No, I love that. Thank you very much. So I want to talk about you now for a little bit because you mentioned some of your background at the beginning, and it’s fascinating. And the bit that fascinates me, you’ve worked some great companies where most people would see as kind of a career dream destination is getting to SVP at one of the major financial institutions, not just in the US, but globally. Right. Andi you were on your way to becoming an SVP there. What was it like basically working inside the corporate machine? It’s big, it’s global. People kind of know of it. But what’s it really like in there, how did you start going through that decision process of thinking? Maybe I just want to scratch the itch of being a creative and a founder Andi doing that.
Yeah. I have a strong entrepreneurial spirit. I had businesses as a kid. I had Kelley’s leaf breaking service. I actually had a balloon animal making service business that I did with my sister in high school where I got corporate clients for us and everything like that. So I’ve always really enjoyed building something for nothing, bringing people along the way, working with great people and just like, solving challenges. Right. That are out in the market. And for me, I really enjoyed my time in corporate. I learned so much. I met so many amazing people. And for me, I think given what I’ve seen, how much entrepreneurship can contribute, even on a larger level, how you can build a product that can literally change people’s lives. I think that was super attractive to me because I’ve seen it in my family as well. I think if you want to grow and take yourself to the next level, sometimes you have to jump off and take that leap of faith. Andi for me, I think while I learned so much in corporate, going out into the startup, because you learn like, especially in the Web three, it’s a fire hose of learnings every single day.
Andi so if you’re that type of person who likes things to move fast, learn something new every single day. That’s exactly why I do. What I do is change the world, make the world a better place, help families realise their full potential, and also just grow as a person myself Andi how to problem solve Andi overcome challenges every single day is something that it can be tiring, but it’s made me grow so much as a person Andi as a leader.
One of the last guests I had on the show was just checking the quote there. Brittany Mueller said, Pressure makes diamonds, and it was one of those quotes. Andi it’s not her court, obviously, but I think you’re saying something similar, but actually the pressure of the situation Andi to try and build and learn on your way is a really important part of that journey, isn’t it?
Yes, it is. Andi think, somebody told me that sometimes you realise the process when you first start out, you think you’re building a company, but really what you are is like building yourself. Somebody said that to me and I was like, wow, that’s really deep. I’m going to use that.
What I love about that though, is that you come, as you mentioned, from third generation or business owner Andi founder. Business owner and founder, slightly different, but you come from third generation entrepreneurs. And even with that background, it took somebody else to mention that to you that actually you’re building yourself, not just building a product.
Yeah.
So you’re always learning that, but you’ve come from a great background of people building things, right?
Yeah, exactly. The amount of learning is like infinite. And I think that’s what makes everything so exciting.
Yeah. And so you mentioned your parents business was a content studio, did you say?
Yeah, they’re marketing agency and production studio. So they would basically put together full marketing campaigns and produce all the content for brands. Back in the day, if a brand wanted to distribute a video, they would actually have to create a bunch of VHS and actually distribute them. If they had to do a presentation, they had to actually create slides for a Slideshow. I’m dating myself, but I remember watching all of this to be produced in my parents office, in their production studio. Andi there’s plenty of technology, plenty of equipment. My parents are always bringing in new pieces of technology in order to optimise their content creation process. Andi so I just absorbed that from day one.
This is slightly before my time, but the youth of the millennials and Gen Z, they don’t know anything. Right. This is just how the struggle used to be. So copy deadlines and going to print deadlines. When I first started in marketing used to be days Andi days and days, depending on weeks and months in advance. And I remember talking to the art director of an agency we worked with and he was recalling days where they used to have to kind of use scalpels to cut and stick films together to make commercials because the editing process was literally done with razor blades.
It was audio, too. Audio, video, all that stuff. My parents even had a dark room. I remember my dad did photography videography. I remember being in the dark room with him Andi actually really enjoyed the dark room because you get to see the picture actually come to life, like you’re putting it in the solution. Andi it was a cool process. But yeah, that was very different back in the day, getting content and marketing and messaging out to customers. There was so much more lead time.
Now what do you do? You got one of these things. You got a cell phone or mobile phone, as we call them here in the UK, in your hand, you point, you press shoot, and everyone’s a photographer now. Everyone’s on video, everyone’s doing Tik Tok.
Exactly.
Wow. This is just shortcut the process so much. It’s amazing. I mean, look, it’s brilliant, right? I’m not criticising it. I’m not being misty eyed and romantic. I love it. I think it’s brilliant.
Yeah, I do. I love it, too. I think about how much work it took my parents to put out a video for a client. Andi now we have a content machine that can produce hundreds of pieces of content a month Andi don’t even have to think about it. It’s amazing Andi think, obviously that process took many more years, but I think that we’re going to see the same thing in luxury, crypto, NFCs. It’s going to happen even faster because there really aren’t as many barriers to entry and getting those things up Andi running.
You’re just going to quickly have to talk me through because I’m keeping an eye on the time here, but you’re going to have to quickly talk me through. How do you produce so much content? What’s the idea process? Because that’s often the delivery of the content for most people isn’t the biggest problem. It’s actually the ideas of what you’re going to deliver. If you’re delivering such a volume of content, where do all the ideas come from?
Yeah. So we actually have a writer’s room, so we have easily decentralised writers room where we had folks who are everything from moms themselves, former teachers. We have folks who have worked at like Netflix, who worked at Geo, Disney, etc. Who basically worked together to submit their ideas. We’re able to get those things animated and recorded using things like motion capture technology, which makes it super fast and cheaper to produce the type of quality of content that kids expect nowadays. And we’re able to put it through a quality control process and everything and get that stuff uploaded and streamed to our platform. So that’s something that I knew we had to solve for and do so in a very operationalized way with all the right cheques and balances.
Brilliant. Thank you very much for that. That’s a really great insight into how it’s all put together. So brilliant. Thank you. So as we get towards the end Of The end of the Podcast, I Always Ask the Guests The Same Two Questions. Right. So the first one Is do You Have Any Books Or Resources Or Podcasts, anything you’d Recommend, newsletters that People Could Sign Up For to Help Them Get More About This Space.
Yeah. So first off, we do Have A Weekly Twitter Spaces Called NFPs for Good. We talk about NFPs, but We Talk About general Web, three projects and Companies in General would love for you To Cheque It Out. You can follow me at Mrs. M-R-S. Kelley Kelleyohh, and you can follow me. I post Updates About The Weekly Twitter spaces and we try to Be Like A Really Safe Space Where People can Ask Questions, talk to Those founders And Understand Their Motivations, the way that they See The World Growing. And I think it’s a really Great Starting Point for You To connect With People who can help you along the Process. Another blog Or Newsletter I Subscribe To Is Barnum Street Andi love that because it Just Talks about Decision Making. That’s Like The main Focus Of the Whole blog. It’s like, how do you make Better decisions? And of course, There Are Tonnes Of Fintech Publications Like Short Squeeze, the Fintech Blueprint. We also have Average Joe as well. So there are a Couple of Different FinSet Publications That You can subscribe To To Just Keep You Up to Date on The Latest and greatest, but definitely feel free to join Our Community.
We love new folks. There’s no such thing as A Stupid Question for US. So come on and enjoy the Movement over here.
Brilliant. And there’ll Be Links to all of Those in the show notes. So if you think, oh, I like The Sound Of That One, just have A Look around where You’re Listening. Click on the link, it’ll take you there. Great. Kelley, thank You Very Much For Your Time. Thanks for Being A Brilliant Guest On The Show Andi kind Of Opening The Door Into A World Which Many People Are Still Trying To Work Out. What Does This All Mean? So thank you for that.
Oh, thank you for Having Me. Thank you for doing this Podcast. This is such a Unique Way To Kind Of dig Deep With Folks Who are digital Marketers, Essentially, and creating New Spaces, creating new products, services, and just Like Paving the Way For us others. And so thank you So Much for Providing This Opportunity To Folks Like Me.
The pleasure is all Mine. Thank you very much, Kelley. See you later. Thank you.
Thanks. Bye.