.png){kind=logo}
Leveraging Blockchain to Revolutionize eCommerce
Transcript
Leveraging Blockchain to Revolutionize eCommerce
Alex Ivanoff
Welcome to Mission Control, where we give you step-by-step instructions on how to take your eCommerce store to levels only a rocket can reach. Each episode, we'll be interviewing an expert in the eCommerce industry that is going to give you simple actionable advice on how to attract new customers, retain them, and build a brand that you are proud of. This show is brought to you by the makers of RocketCart, an eCommerce services and solutions company.
All right, welcome to the next episode of Mission Control. I'm your host Alex Ivanoff. of RocketCart. And today we have a really awesome guest, good friend of mine, Adam Andrews, calling out of Austin, and super excited to have you, Adam. You know, tell us a little bit about you know, what you do? And you know, just introduce yourself.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, hey, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. And I'm actually calling in from California right now. Went home to celebrate the holidays with the family. I'm spending some time out here. But yeah, so Hey, guys, I'm Adam Andrews. I guess you could describe me as a serial entrepreneur. I've been in business since I was like 12, 13 years old. Started from like mowing lawns, and lemonade stands all the way up to eCommerce, Instagram, influencer marketing, And now I got my hands in a bunch of crypto stuff, NFT related, and yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, we're super pumped. I mean, you're the probably the first guests that we've had that has as much experience as you do in the Web3 world, even though I think, you know, we'll talk about it, but you just recently like, got, you know, elbow deep into crypto less than or maybe around a year ago. But you know, you're already like, off to the races with a lot of projects. So that this is gonna be super interesting. And we're, you know, definitely here to talk about like the intersection between eCom and Web3, because I know you have experienced in both. So to talk about your story a little bit and to kind of dig deep into your background. You got into eCom and online marketing in high school, right? 2012?
Adam Andrews
Yeah, yes, somewhere around there. I think I was like 13 or 14 years old. And I believe it was like my late freshman early sophomore year of high school is when I got into like influencer marketing and ecommerce.
Alex Ivanoff
Tell us about that. Like, how did you get in there? And you got off to a quick start. Cuz I remember you said like, you were doing influencer marketing, and you were getting some pretty big numbers. Right, right off the start.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, yeah. So what I had initially done was, once I realized, and I got on Instagram, I kind of got on Instagram pretty late. Like, I was one of those people in high school, who was like, I don't want to waste my time on that, you know, I can be doing other things. And then once I started seeing a bunch of brands get on it, and like big businesses paying attention to it, I was like, okay, there, there's probably something here. And so what I did was started some niche pages. So I love cars. I'm very passionate about cars, and you know, making money online. And so my very first Instagram page, don't quote me on this, but I believe it was Money Making Mindset was that or something like that. And I just started posting like, luxury content. And I started a couple other car, posting pages and started posting.
Alex Ivanoff
My page was Exclusive Customs. Like I put custom builds of like cars or Custom Wrap, like gaming consoles, or sneakers and stuff. I did that for like, a month. And I had like 20 posts, and I went back on like, couple years later with a couple of 1000 followers. It's like, Oh, shit.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, I did so like, I pretty much started in the same way. You know, I just started copying what people were doing posting, you know, content that was going viral. And then I was constantly seeing on the newsfeed and the Explore page and, and so, you know, I slowly started realizing when brands started reaching out to these pages once they hit 10, 20, 50,000 followers, that they would pay me to post their products and promote their their businesses. And I was like, Yo, what? I can just like make money from my phone and repost other people's like content. Hell, yeah. This is awesome. And so I went like, I mean heavily into Instagram influencer marketing, there's a point when I had multiple iPads and phones with different accounts before you can have multiple accounts on one device. Like, and I was like logging in and out of like different accounts. I mean, I probably had 40 or 50 accounts at one point that were owned solely by me and following have a little over 36 million and a network of other Instagram influencers, who would like and comment and help promote my stuff and We had over a billion followers in audience reach.
Alex Ivanoff
Wow.
Adam Andrews
And so when I started really leveraging that network and selling ads on my own network and like pimping out my other network followers and like my homies who also have pages and giving them business and getting a kickback, I was like, Yo, this is alright, cool. Like, let's, let's keep doing this. And, you know, I just started building pages. And then it kind of just real niche pages. So like luxury, cars, tech-related, you know, anything that I saw, there would be a buyer for on social media in terms of like, I don't know knickknack items like like phone cases, or air pods, or, you know, earbuds and whatever. And then I kind of got into eCommerce, I got into the side of things, I met someone who was a brand owner who had purchased a bunch of, you know, social media posts through my niche pages. And I asked him, I was like, Yo, like, How much money do you make when you pay me 1000 bucks to post on all my social media? He's like, Oh, I don't know. Let me let me check in like, these were literally Instagram messages.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah.
Adam Andrews
He goes, I don't know, let me check. And then he sends back a screenshot of the seven day window from when we started promoting, and when we were done promoting on my pages, and he made $18,000. And I was like, Whoa, Will you teach me? And he was like, no, but you can learn from my mentor and he sent me a link to someone who was teaching dropshipping online and I was like, and then I just went down this dropshipping rabbit hole and started drop shipping and ecommerce. And yeah, that's that's kind of how I got started in eCommerce and like online marketing.
Alex Ivanoff
That's, that's awesome. So your high school kid, sophomore, junior, and you're managing 40, 50 Instagram pages. You must have literally like, not been doing homework and just going home and spending the time on your devices like posting all day, right? Like, what are you doing with your life?
Adam Andrews
Yeah. So in a brief stint before I started doing like Instagram, influencer marketing, I did some stock trading. And so I was used to getting up early in the morning, because I lived in California at the time. And market opens in the East Coast, you got to, you know, be up at five prepping a trading strategy for the day and like figuring out what you're gonna buy. And so I was used to getting up early, so I just woke up.
And I had my posting schedule schedule set for I would post once on each account before I went to school, once during lunch when I was at school, and then twice after school, like once right after school whenever I got a WiFi signal, and then, you know, later in the evening, so four times on every account like four times on every cat. Yeah, so I was posting like, I don't know, what is that?
Alex Ivanoff
200 posts a day.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, like it was an insane amount of.
Alex Ivanoff
So you were bringing all these devices into the lunch table at lunch?
Adam Andrews
Oh, yeah. Right. Just like a stack of phones, bro.
Alex Ivanoff
Your friends probably thought you were insane. And then you probably showed them how much money you're making.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, I got Yeah, absolutely. It's like the typical entrepreneurship thing where like, your friends are like, Oh, that's weird. Like, why do you have somebody? You're not gonna make any money. And it's like, I'm not gonna tell you how much money I'm making. But like, Hey, bro, I drive my own car, you know? Yours. And you're in high school. So that's kind of like a low key flex like I pay for Right? Right. You know?
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know, I've paid my own, like a toll ticket or whatever. Yeah. Okay, so now or so after that, you know, you get into eCommerce and I believe, where do you go from here? Like, do you start your own eCommerce agency after you're doing drop shipping? Or, you know, where do you go from here?
Adam Andrews
No, so I kind of simultaneously ran those accounts while learning dropshipping and like Facebook ads strategy. And like, I didn't start my first my my own dropshipping store for probably six months, I did like probably six months worth of like research. And then once I realized I wanted to go that route, I started selling off some of these Instagram pages that I own. So I could put more time into focusing on eCommerce and developing my skill set there. And so I started selling those off and slowly selling those off until I got to a point where I was like, okay, like I got these couple of niche pages that are pretty, pretty broad in audience right. They weren't like car specific or tech specific. They were kind of like a gen like you would have a general store for dropshipping right, like a ton of products that you test. I just had like a general meme page and a couple of them right to post ads on. And so I started this general store and like, you know, go through the typical product testing You know, five hours a day on Facebook ads strategy like that and then posting on my Instagram pages and, you know, I started with a general store and that kind of like, fizzled out. I couldn't really get any good products to, to really generate any good income. I was pretty much breaking even for at least the first six months and then fidget spinners came out. Remember those? Oh, my gosh, bro.
Alex Ivanoff
My brother printed them, like in a 3d.
Adam Andrews
Oh, that's cool. So, right when that trend started to pop off, I was like, alright, like, we definitely have to hop on there. So, like we had a bunch of different fidget spinners. We, you know, grabbed a website URL, threw it up on Shopify, and made it look nice. I started promoting it on on the influencer accounts that I that I own those niche pages. And it really started to take off. And I think that's when I I think I made my first 20,000 in profit from fidgets spinners. Okay. And I was like, Yo, there's, there's really something here. I could do six figures this month. It happened in like seven days. Yeah. And I was like, Whoa,.
Alex Ivanoff
How are you promoting it? Or how are you getting traffic to it?
Adam Andrews
So Facebook ads, and Instagram influencer marketing through my pages? And then once I realized
Alex Ivanoff
Did you teach yourself all that, or like beside taught yourself the advertising?
Adam Andrews
Yeah. So that course that the guy who sent me like the dropshipping course, for from when he was buying ads, from my niche pages, he sent me a dropshipping course that he was taking. And I went through that, and learned and then went through a bunch of like YouTube videos on Facebook marketing. What was his name? Ben, Ben mylol. Ben, Ben something. And he had just like this great Facebook ads strategy, supposedly was making a ton of money. You know, I don't really know. I don't know where he's at now. Probably still doing marketing. But yeah, I learned all my stuff from like, Facebook blueprint and YouTube videos and some courses. And so I just went, Hey, like, let's try it. Let's see what happens, you know, and fidget spinners really, really popped off for me. And then, like, even more so of those like Knick-Knack things that you would just like play with that were complementary to those fidget spinners. Were pretty hot for a while. And so I had this like, weird general store that was just like, a bunch of Aliexpress products that were shipped out. And it was, it was a good learning experience. I, I apologize if you've ever ordered from that store. Because like, my customer service was just not there. Or like it was me. I was like answering emails, people were pissed, because like, they were shipping from China.
Alex Ivanoff
Wow.
Adam Andrews
So take like 30 days to get the product. They're like, I want this now because it was like, you know, fidget spinners. Everybody had that. And they want to instantly because they wanted to take it to school with them or like whatever. And so my clients how was like very, I don't want to say low-end. But you know, it was like probably high schoolers and college shirts like wanting a fidget spinner, right. And so they were not the most patient customers, and I was also not the most patient, service provider or product provider. So that didn't really go well. After I don't know, probably after like, a year of that I had a lot of ups and downs in terms of like revenue, and finding good products. couldn't really make any, any good products work. And so it's like, you know what drop shipping is, I don't I don't think this is it, man. This is like, I don't know, let's let's reset and focus on something else and see what we can do. And that's when I launched my first like fashion brand. It was like, it was a legit brand. It was me trying to launch a legit fashion brand. And it was called The Real Dapper Fit. And we did we did an okay job. We launched that with I think $2,500 In total marketing expenses. We were influencers only because I was just wasting money on I couldn't figure out Facebook cold. And so I was like, let's just push a bunch of traffic that comes from Instagram, to our page, and then just retarget them with whatever they viewed using Facebook because you know retargeting is easy, that's just that's just easy money. And, and so I did that. And we launched that with $2,500 in, you know, ads that we that we sent to influencers. And we did like 25k in the first month. And it was like, whoa, okay, cool. Let's keep doing this. We did that for like six months and then some fashion conglomerate in Texas reached out and they're like, hey, we want to purchase we want to purchase The Real Dapper Fit. And I was like really? Why?
Alex Ivanoff
Why?
Adam Andrews
It was nothing spent, like do looking back on it now and the knowledge that I have now and I was like, wow, I cannot believe somebody bought that store. But yeah, they ended up buying it, they, they wanted the customer list and they wanted the list of influencers that we were marketing with, and the contacts directly to that. And so I was like, Sure, you know, you can give me that amount. I can't say it. At the time, you can, um, it wasn't that big. It was like a few 1000 I think, probably in the range of like four or 5000 at the six month point. So like it was it was a it was a decent amount. In terms of like returning customers, I really just don't remember. But yeah, I think we had that was my biggest taste in eCom. Like, that was the first six figures we ever did. And, and that really turned me on to like Facebook advertising I, I operate my life with kind of like a little chip on my shoulder like I need to be able to do everything or like I need to be able to understand everything. And so once I finished with that, the real dapper fit. And that like dropshipping store, I was like, Alright, I got a chip on my shoulder and it's Facebook ads, and I cannot figure these things out.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah.
Adam Andrews
So like, I just dove into Facebook ads full time trying to figure it out, offering to run ads for free for like solar companies or plumbers in my local area. Because I was like, alright, like, I gotta figure this out, there's got to be something here. There's a ton of people talking about it. Like, there's loads of people making money using Facebook ads, like, that's all I see on the internet. And so I just dove really deeply down this rabbit hole spent probably 10 or 15,000 on different courses from different, you know, Facebook ad experts, right? And, and I finally like, I think after like a year of learning, and just headache after headache, I finally like cracked the code and was able to start generating leads for local businesses. And I was like, Okay, well, that was a long time. That was that was a lot of effort to figure this out. But then I figured it out. And I was like, Ah, okay, it's just all clicked. And, yeah, that's, uh, I guess, how I got started in eCommerce, I suppose. I don't remember the question, how the conversation started.
Alex Ivanoff
No, It's very interesting to see, like people's progression. I don't know if you know, if you follow Alex Hormozi at all, but he has this concept of skill stacking. And it's not even like a new concept. It's just like a nice label for it. Where people go through phases in their life, and I learned a certain skill. And you know, after step one, the phase two, phase three, phase four, they're, they're building on that first skill, the second skill that they learned, so seems like your first skill you learned was like, hustling. And then your second skill was just social media and going viral with stuff, then it's like, oh, how do I network with influencers on top of my virality and make money doing so, you know, then it's how do I build a brand and get it, get it going viral myself. And then now it's, you know, learning the marketing, it's, you know, the cold marketing, digital audience stuff, you know, for your brands. So it's an interesting way to kind of dive deep into, you know, how that that came about. So fast forwarding, you know, now, the past few years, you've had your own agency where you're running, you know, like you said,,for other brands, I mean, the eCommerce brands, I don't think you do it too much anymore, but you did it for a while. And then you started getting into Web3. So talk about I guess, as you started to wind down in the eCommerce world, you told me personally, that you kind of like lost a little bit of a passion for the eCommerce world. I don't know if it was due to you just finding more of a passion for Web3, or just something else that eCom but talk to me a little bit about that transition?
Adam Andrews
Yeah, it was it was like, honestly, it was a little bit of both. Having worked in eCommerce and like, the agency side of eCommerce in terms of like, ad spend, and paid media, and that whole management, I just, I kind of lost the passion for the clients and, and and the work I was doing as a whole, right? It just felt repetitive. It wasn't fun anymore. Because like, to me, I don't think I'll ever lose the passion for ecommerce or commerce in general. I love the challenge of taking a product like this, putting an image online and then putting text in front of some random stranger that I've never heard of in my life, and convincing them to sell or convincing them to buy this product, right? Whether it be a hat, a glasses, t shirt, whatever it is, but it just got to a point where it was just it's so repetitive, that I was like, honestly, this is boring, the clientele was like, not worth the money. And I was like, I kind of want to just figure out something else. And so at this point in time, I kind of started stepping away, I partnered with another ads agency to keep a little bit more income coming in as I like, let go of clients, right, because I still needed money. And so I was, I took a media buying position at an agency and was partnering with them on their growth strategy. And, and then I just fell into this rabbit hole of NFTs and crypto like I was going through a bad breakup at the time, and I was trying to give myself something to do after work hours. And like After managing my business, that wasn't business focus, because you can only do so much in a day. And so I would often scroll YouTube or TikTok, and watch like motorcycle related content. I love motorcycles. That's a huge passion of mine. And one day, I was just scrolling through YouTube and I saw this video that said "How I Made $10,000 in 10 Minutes Flipping an NFT". And it reminded me of eCommerce and like diving down the rabbit hole of like, I made X amount with X amount on Facebook in seven days, right? It it flipped that switch in my head and I was like, is this like another Facebook ads 2.0 type thing like, let okay, it's a 10-minute video. Fuck it. Let's watch it. And so I watched it and then I just dove down this rabbit hole into NFTs and eCommerce, not eCommerce, NFTs and crypto and realized I wanted to really step away from eCommerce and I think like maybe two months after diving down that NFT rabbit hole, I was like, Alright, I'm going to like pretty much completely even stopped talking to clients, like I want to automate myself out 100% I want to stop doing media buying like, I broke off the partnership I had and kind of like walked away clean, right? And so I left that business to be managed and just took one meeting a week and just dove full on into NFTs. And yeah, thisthat's where I am today.
Alex Ivanoff
This is 2021 or what time?
Adam Andrews
This was like, I got into, like the first video I watched that $10,000 in 10 Minutes video was like late August or early September.
Alex Ivanoff
Of 2021?
Adam Andrews
Because I remember vividly, yeah, of 2021. I remember vividly making my first like $18,000 trade off of a $600 NFT and I was like, Whoa! What just happenned?
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, you got in in Crypto time.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, and so I did I really did. I think timing has a lot to do with it. And yeah, but yeah. Anyways, a couple months later, we launched our own project. And now we got a bunch of different stuff going on.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, I remember August 2021, is when I started to learn what NFTs were. And you know, I think I bought my first few that month or maybe September. And it just seemed like everyone and their mother was getting rich in NFTs. And it was impossible to lose money. If you if you just sold if you held it for like two days and sold it. And everybody kept thinking it was just gonna keep going and going and going. And I remember vividly, like in September, looking back after open sea released the trading volume for August, and then comparing it to the rest of 2021 it was like exponentially like 10 times higher than July and every other month that came before that. And I don't think it's ever touched the August 2021 levels since that month was just insane. So yeah, definitely you got in a really good time. You picked a good spot. Seems like you, same thing with the the influencer thing and then the viral meme pages like you kind of just sniped everything at a perfect time.
Adam Andrews
I feel like I have gotten to market at a at a good time. For sure. I don't think it was a purposeful thing at all. Like you know, I gave myself a $2,500 investment budget when I got into NFTs and I was like, Alright, if this doesn't work out, we'll just go back to media buying or like, go go do something else. And dude, I think the the the first trade I lost 650 And I was like ughh, it is true. Like this shit is just, this is bullshit.
Alex Ivanoff
Right.
Adam Andrews
And then the second trade I made I made 18,000 And that was like yo no way. And then you know it was a It was a sloppy road after that, I think I made like eight or nine pretty bad trades I had like $652 left in my Metamask wallet at the time of that 2500. And then all the other ones were like in NFTs that either didn't sell weren't worth shit or I was waiting to sell them because I thought they were going to go up. And so I got in on this, this mint called Mecca verse. And I was able to buy one that's it was $648 after all fees and stuff that are associated with the blockchain.
Alex Ivanoff
And how much was left in the wallet?
Adam Andrews
Like, like $4 or something there was 652.
Alex Ivanoff
652 and 648, yeah.
Adam Andrews
So there was like 4 or 4 bucks left. And I was like, Alright,
Alex Ivanoff
Literally 30 seconds later, the gas fees were even too much.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, seriously. And so I was like, Alright, this is it. Like this is this is my last tray with the 2500 bucks. I sold that NFT like, two or three days later for $30,000.
Alex Ivanoff
Crazy, man,
Adam Andrews
yeah, bro. So So I took that that 30 grand after after OS fees and royalty fees for the project. It was it came out to like 28,000. So I took that 28,000 And I took that 18,000 I put it together and traded up to close to a half million dollar portfolio of NFTs in like the next six months. Which is like mind boggling in retrospect, but yeah, and then the market just took a shit. Yeah, so that's kind of like NFT trading journey and whatnot. And in the midst of all that I launched a project and now we're launching multiple and everyone a podcast. Yeah,
Alex Ivanoff
I was gonna say if it only makes sense, right, someone that's they know they want to get to eCom, they start diving headfirst into crypto, they make 30 grand on one trade half a million in six months. Like it only makes sense that you start your own project. So let's get into that you have the ones I know about are JustCubes and Blockchain Bottles. So I'm sure there's a couple more in the works are already live. Let's let's let's hear about them. So you know, tell us about those two at least.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, yeah. So JustCubes is the baby. You know, we're coming up on, I believe is today the 27th? Yeah, today's the 27th. Today is our one year tweet anniversary from when we launched the Twitter account. Nice. Congrats. Cheers to one year. Yeah, so we launched that. And it took us about four months to get everything ready to you know, actually launch into the market.
Alex Ivanoff
Who do you launch it with? Just people that you met in the community?
Adam Andrews
Yeah, dude some some random people that I met within a Discord somewhere and we just became friends started talking on a daily basis and trading NFTs and you know, the blockchain allows you to do that through smart contract technology, you can launch a business. And if you understand how to read a smart contract, you know, you're not going to get screwed out of whatever portion of the funds that you raise, or that you you know, NFT value that you sell, you know, you're not going to get screwed, right. And so that made it feel really safe, right. And we ended up launching that project, launch didn't go as planned, we actually only that ended up selling 50% of the original supply we had planned on selling. But at that point, like, honestly, we're just happy because the market literally just started tanking. And, yeah, we sold out of our collection. You know, I think it was like April 6, April 6, or 7 one of those two days, is when we had just a giant influx of buyers. And, you know, ever since then we've just been trying to like develop new projects, and products within that ecosystem for JustCubes. And so I'll kind of just give you a brief overview of like, what JustCubes does. So similar to a payment processor, there is a fee that's involved. So for you eCom guys that are listening, you know, let's say it's Stripe, and that transaction that is happening takes, let's say, five seconds to go through on the computer screen for your customer, right? Now, if you're selling exclusive things that sell out very quickly, like let's say Supreme, those are often botted in and they sell out instantly. And as a normal everyday user, you likely don't have a chance of getting a drop or an allocation of like a piece of clothing. And so what our technology does is it helps you get in front of that line. It helps you decrease your transaction time on the Ethereum blockchain, therefore getting an allocation of an NFT or of a token first, right? So it allows you essentially to get ahead of the line, get your NFT or get your crypto and then be able to quickly get out if it spikes, right. And so that's what our technology does in the bull market it is absolutely unparalleled. I mean We're we have people that are that are, you know, competing with bots, using our technology just, you know, clicking computers like screen, buttons on the computer screen right?
Alex Ivanoff
Without having to run their own bot basically.
Adam Andrews
Exactly without having to have their own bot. And so we offered that. And then we were like, Hey, why don't we build our own bot? So we started developing our own bot back in, like May. And, you know, we've we've done that we have a few other features. I won't get to nitty gritty in terms of like details of, of how things work. But yeah, that's what that's what our software does. And then we got approached by somebody who owns the branding rights to the Saltus family name. And that is in relation to Blockchain Bottles, the actual full entity name is Blockchain Bottles by Saltus. And what that is, is a Web3 whiskey brand, built by degens for degens with origins from a degen, and if any listeners don't understand.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, tell us what that means.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, it's just like, a degenerate, right? Someone who, like that's, that's our, that's how people view the, the people in the NFT space, like, we just find monkey JPEGs and get high and make millions of dollars, right. And so were labeled as degenerates, right? Or like the black sheep. And so yeah, we were approached by the Saltus family and the owners of that brand. And they were like, hey, we want to do a whiskey. Can you do the marketing because they saw that we did the marketing for JustCubes, which I will say, was very hard. It's very hard to sell a pixelated cube on the internet, even with all the hype, and so they were like, Dude, we saw what you did. Like, that's really impressive. Do you want to do something in the whiskey space? And I was like, huh, I never thought about that. let me think about it. Sure. And so we got on a call. And they were like, you know, if you guys want to integrate blockchain technology in some way, feel free. And so we just started brainstorming ideas. And we're like, dude, what if we just did like, super exclusive, high end whiskey drops that were very limited. So we're doing a collection of 2222 as our first drop, where we'll split up the, I guess, selection of whiskey by a two year pecan-flavored bourbon, and then a four-year Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. And so you'll be able to mint either of those, and those NFTs that are tied to the bottles will get you access to private events around the world that we're going to host or that we're sponsoring, crypto events that we have booths at you know, private access to whiskey and cigar lounges that we work out deals with, and discounts to different, you know, barware products or glassware or things like that, right?
Alex Ivanoff
So drinking club.
Adam Andrews
Right, pretty much a drinking club, and to just kind of continue adding value to that NFT on the back end, instead of it just getting you a bottle, right? And so yeah, there's only ever going to be 2222 of this first drop, like, there will be no more. We do have bottles that are saved from marketing and stuff. But those won't get labeled with the, you know, one of 2222 Yeah, and our goal with this is to just help onboard more people into Web3, right? We want to bring Web3 to a traditionally web2 market and, and tap into that market and be like, hey, look, this is what what NFT technology can do. Come in here, enjoy high end whiskey, learn about the technology behind it and like the benefits of it and enjoy a great whiskey with with friends. So we just want it to be like a place where people come hang out talk about crypto talk about you know, whiskey, and, and chill, right? We want it to be a very chill laid back educational fun environment for for our end user.
Alex Ivanoff
Go. So I could see where the concept for Blockchain Bottles came from. Where did the concept for JustCubes come from? Because I'm a Rubik's Cube freak. I have these on my desk all the time. And if they are sitting there unsolved, my OCD triggers and I have to solve it. A lot of my teammates yell at me because in the background of zoom meetings, if it's allowed one, I can just, they're gonna hear me and I'm fiddling with it. Oh, it's just like an OCD thing. But you know, I love Rubik's cubes. So I'm just curious, like, where did the cubes idea come from?
Adam Andrews
Yeah, dude, it came from us being degens man. We were. We were brainstorming one night. We really didn't want to be another. Like Bored Ape Yacht Club knockoff, right? We didn't want to be another crypto punk knockoff. We didn't want to be you know, some some knockoff we wanted to do something original. So like we were looking and trying to find something to do original, we were like, what if we did like shapes with faces on them and my co-founder, he's actually a lawyer. But he's our artists for the project as well. He was playing around on his iPad one night, we were drunk in Discord, voice chat, just hanging out, sending different ideas, trying to formulate like what we were going to do. And he sends this cube, and it's not animated. It's just got like, this stupid looking face on it. And I was like, No, I don't know. That looks dumb. And he was like, No, I think it kind of looks cute. It's got a chakra too. And I was like, Nah, like, I'm not selling cubes, like, gonna happen. Like that's, that's a that's a that's a negative for me.
Alex Ivanoff
Sure.
Adam Andrews
And then, I don't know, we fucked around for a couple hours and, I'm sorry, I didn't ask if we could curse.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, you're good.
Adam Andrews
Alright cool.
Alex Ivanoff
By the way you curse earlier too.
Adam Andrews
But I was so in like a flow of the conversation. I was like, they'll edit it out.
Alex Ivanoff
It's all good. Yeah, no, it's all good.
Adam Andrews
Sorry, I didn't even bother to ask. But yeah, so we were just messing around and ended up like falling asleep on Discord voice chat, I think in my chair, and I woke up, and there's just like, a wall of these cubes in this Discord. And there's just, you know, it's just a bunch of there like 20 or 30 of these things. And he had been working on them at the at the timestamp of when I said goodnight to the last message that he sent. He'd been working on for like four hours at like, midnight. And I was like, Wait, these kind of look good. Why did they look good? And I called them and I was like, Yo, why did these look so good? And he's like, I don't know. I just played around. I was just like, trying to do different stuff. And I was like, what if we, let's hop on on Discord voice chat, we all hopped on Discord, voice chat. And we started brainstorming name ideas. And we just came up with JustCubes. Like, it's just a cube. And we thought it was kind of funny. We thought it was ironic, because it's not just a cube. It's not just like a picture like a normal NFT project would be right at that time. Like you got a PFP. And you're lucky if you got access to like, I don't know anything. Like anything's.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah it's very limited.
Adam Andrews
And still, like the utility was super limited. And we're like, what if we just named it JustCubes. So people think like, oh, it's just a cube. But on the back end, we just provide a shitload of utility, like a trading bot trading alerts, you know, wallet tracking software, a node, and we were just like, I think we're onto something here. And so we typed up a little bio and sent it to some of our homies. And they were like, huh, it's gonna be a hard sell. But I think once people understand, like, the utility behind it, they'll get they'll get on board. And so yeah, long story short, we, like we developed the game as well, and a bunch of different utilities, and when we continue to do so. And so yeah, that's long story short of how JustCubes came about, you know, it definitely wasn't like, it wasn't my first choice to pick a cube PFP and go market it. It was it was pretty difficult. But yeah, it turned out pretty well.
Alex Ivanoff
I've always wondered what the fascination is because it you know, for anyone listening, you know, if you're listening to the audio version, go to go to JustCubes NFT on Open Sea, and you'll see like these, these are pixelated cubes, like it's not high resolution at all. And it reminds you of crypto punks a little bit. I've always wondered like, what was the fascination with Crypto Punks being the number one project in the world and they look absolutely awful. You don't even know what you're looking at, really. So you know what, what was, in your perspective, the reason that people buy into stuff like this, where it's just you're not buying it for like, the high quality art really, obviously, you're gonna have utility too, but in the art, there's not like high quality.
Adam Andrews
Right. So I think that plays back into the gaming era, right? 8-bit games, and kind of like that era of gaming. A lot of the people in the NFT space are like, from the age of 20 to 45. And so they grew up playing these like not so great games, but they were great back then Right? So like Galaga, PacMan Pong, all these like pixel games. I think that's where the love and appreciation for that art comes from for, you know, Crypto Punks, or JustCubes and like that 8-bit art, right? I just I just really think it taps into like a deep, subconscious thing of children loving the game that they were playing as they were gaming growing up with friends, and then growing up with these friends and investing in like NFT projects that have similar art right? I think that's where It comes from,
Alex Ivanoff
It's the same reason. And it makes sense. It's a good answer. It's the same reason of boomers like prized possessions is like their 1955, you know, car like Ford Stingray or Ford, you know, whatever, muscle car. So I get that, that that definitely makes sense, obviously, like if you didn't play those games, or if you, you know, someone if you're like 21 years old right now, if you've never experienced games at that level, so it's just you don't get it. But it makes sense. So you're kind of backing up here. You've you've had two successful projects. And you know, you're working on a lot of other things within the Web3, you know, we'll talk about the future of Web3, and overall, the whole community and the whole industry. But I want to, you know, understand you a little bit more, we talked about skill stacking in the back, you know, earlier in the show, what is it from eCommerce and the ability to sell things you talked about, like the idea of like, just a picture of something that sells online, helps you launch these products, these projects in Web3, like what from eCom transit translated into, into Web3?
Adam Andrews
I think it really just, it boils down to one thing, and that's like understanding the, like human connection to the internet, and just like understanding how to sell to humans in general. Right. And so it, that answer is like the short answer, but the longer answer is, I started door knocking, selling lawn mowing services at a young age, right. And so I did that. And then I did solar sales, in between all these different things of like learning Facebook ads. You know, at some point, those Facebook ads, were not making any money, and I had to make money at some some somehow. So selling solar, I had a solar cleaning business at one point, and I was running Facebook ads through that. And so it was a lot of just door knocking, and getting doors shut in my face and getting turned down to understand how to sell to someone. And then it came, you know, skill stacking, right? I was like, Okay, I'm not getting any better at this. How can I and then it was learning right? Now, I never went to college I did one semester, and I think I failed all my classes, and then I dropped out. And so I was like, I, I value education, I don't value the structured college system. And so I was like, Okay, what am I going to learn, I need to learn sales, because that's what I'm in right now. And so I just learned sales and continuously was implementing what I was going to say at the door, when I was presenting to these, you know, homeowners of a service to sell them. And so I think a lot of my human understanding, and the ability to sell comes from that. And then it just kind of trickled into eCommerce and understanding the consumer mindset. And it it really played into like crypto as well, and understanding your market and the target demographic that you're you're, you know, selling something to, or at least putting something in front of. And I think that plays a huge factor in in the reason that we were successful in the long term.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, I like that you put it that way. Because I have this conversation a lot with people who I know, I'm not an expert salesman, myself. But I understand that, if you're afraid of sales, it's easy to to kind of just back up and say and look at what sales is, right? What is sales sales is you have something that people want, they have something that you want, and you're just helping them make the decision to make the trade. At the end of the day, it's if they value what you have enough, or if you have a good offer, or if you're persuasive enough, it's there, you're gonna make them make that trade. And if that's, that's a sales transaction, and hopefully you're selling something that is good for them, and is ethically or whatever, you know, good for them. And you're helping them just make that decision that you believe strongly is right for them. So it's really not, that's really at the core of what it is. And people who kind of get scared of sales, they, you know, they look at it like, oh, it's like the sleazy thing, but it's really it's really not and if you understand it at its core, like how I just put it, that translates from to any industry, like you said, you're just understanding the consumer, the market, where they live, where they interact, where their attention is, and then how to put the product in front of them how to offer to them, and, you know, make the transaction so I think it makes sense, you know, just understanding the basics of sales is gonna help you obviously in econ, and it went through and, you know, with the attention the attention span in the in the global, you know, hype around Web3, definitely helps you out too.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, that 100% played a factor into, you know, launching what we did, successfully, or at least, you know, for now successfully, who knows what the future holds, you know?
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, so, I mean, Web3, obviously, Crypto, NFTs all of it is super Yeah. Long relative to any technology, most people don't even understand I'm pretty sure majority of you will have no idea how it works and they think it's BS. Would you also say that ecom? You know, for the brand owners listening is very young, and it still needs like a lot of I mean, would you agree that it just needs a lot of runway to innovate? You know, we're only, what, 20 years into this, like, online commerce thing?
Adam Andrews
Yeah, I absolutely, I would agree with that statement, you know, look at, look at any industry that's been around for over, let's say, 100 years, or let's, let's just say 50 years, it's easier to get that many, right. You got automotive, and real estate, real estate hasn't developed very much. But look at automotive, the technology, like the technological advancement in an automobile, over the last 50 years, has just been astronomical. So granted, it's not something so new, that it's going to have that much advancement. But I do believe that, you know, ecommerce, and selling online as a whole is going to be one of the biggest industries, we have an opportunity to take advantage of, literally, at our fingertips from the use of a cell phone, you can launch an eCommerce brand nowadays, you know, with Shopify, I literally know someone who launched a six-figure eCommerce brand, did it from his phone entirely, and then finally bought a computer with the profits. Yeah, I swear. And it's, it's, it's crazy. So I definitely do foresee the technology advancing tremendously. And I still keep a pulse on the market quite a bit and talk with, you know, media buyers and agency owners quite a bit still. And so it's something that I'm still paying attention to, I still, potentially would want to come back into, maybe in a different aspect, maybe as a brand owner, you know, I do love launching this whiskey brand. And like, launching a brand and owning it was a very fun experience for me when we we launched The Real Dapper Fit and so I would consider coming back and doing that again, God forbid, you know, all my crypto Web3 stuff, just, you know, hits the fan, or, you know, Blockchain doesn't exist eight months from now. So yeah, I definitely still foresee a massive, massive amount of innovation coming to the eCommerce space over the next couple of years.
Alex Ivanoff
I definitely agree. I mean, we've had founders on the show, as guests that are working on SaaS companies and different ways of innovating the online experience or, you know, the online marketing of from, you know, from a technological standpoint of eCommerce. And if you think about it, like Shopify has been around, I think 10, 15 years, but they've only been mainstream for like five, like, it's only been five to seven years ish, where Big eight, nine figure brands have built their store on Shopify, or migrated from like a custom built store to Shopify. And so you know, Shopify is like the number one right now, but who knows where it's gonna be in another 510 years? Who knows what the online commerce experience looks like, you know, we're still using Visa, Amex and MasterCard as our main payment processing 100 years into it, that's obviously going to change. And it's already starting to, I mean, PayPal made a dent, but you know, Crypto is gonna make a dent in that. So overall, like, there's going to be a lot of things where technology and Web3, disrupt eCom. So I want to get your, your take on where you see the intersection going, because if we were so early in Web3, but how is it going to affect overall ecommerce or just the average brand owner?
Adam Andrews
That's an interesting question. It it there, it could go so many routes, right. And I think one of the biggest routes that it will go is the route of like stockX or Go, right? the certification and authenticity of an asset of a piece of clothing of a pair of shoes. You know, there's there's a clothing brand, and they they call it Phygital, physical and digital ownership of a physical garment of clothing, right. And they're called uniquelo, uniquely? I don't know how to pronounce it.
Alex Ivanoff
I know yeah.
Adam Andrews
Exactly. So they do this really well. And they have these embedded little tags inside of their clothing and you can scan your phone next to it and it'll pop up with the NFT right and so I think that will be a huge avenue for brands and you know, online retailers to tap into to one avoid these fake knockoff another Then take items and really help mitigate that market from growing. And there's just, there's a lot of opportunity for the eCommerce space and the Web3 space to kind of like conjoin. Obviously payments. That's a massive, massive, massive one, right? The ability and scalability of the blockchain for that specifically is insane. And so, I think those are probably two points, that would definitely be at the top of my radar and like that I would be paying attention to as a brand owner, you know, adopting crypto payments sooner than your competition could be a good thing could be beneficial, right, that gives you you know, that edgy kind of forward-facing Tech Tech focused kind of brand, I guess, position that you can now utilize on social media to gain just that much more market share, right?
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, so as a brand owner, I'm imagining the huge value add is you're saving much much money on on processing fees, you know, instead of paying 3% for Stripe or Shopify Pay, or whatever it is, you know, you're probably giving up a couple, couple cents every now and then to Polygon or, you know, whatever, whatever blockchain you're transacting on. What is the value add for the average consumer? Why? Why would they let's say in 10 years, why would they be shopping on a Shopify store with their MetaMask wallet instead of their credit card.
Adam Andrews
Because I think we're gonna see in the next 10 years, a lot of like, banks, and these credit cards, and just just the whole system, in general, having this giant kind of reset, and it's probably not going to be pretty, you know, fractional reserve banking just literally doesn't make sense at all, if you understand the concept of it. And so, at some point, this system has to break. And there's a reason that these governments are, you know, now purchasing a ton of Bitcoin accepting it at, you know, DMVs, you know, there's a reason El Salvador, you know, turned it into an acceptable payment system throughout their entire country. It's because this technology is so functional, and it works really, really, really well. Granted, there are still a bunch of flaws to iron out, and issues that you have to address before it can become mainstream. But, you know, I think that this like globalist kind of push to have a one world currency or, or things like that will be a driving factor in Cryptocurrency being adopted by, you know, your mom and my mom in the coming years, you know, and then actually using that, because they don't want to use this one world currency. Or maybe it's, you know, the, the digital US dollar. Yeah, there's a pilot program going on right now for the digital US dollar, it's a DUSD. And that's scary. Because when they take away that, that physical intangible thing, it just turns into numbers on a screen at some point, right? And so if it's just numbers on a screen, then why should you be able to, like infinitely print more of it, just like they're doing with the US Dollar as it is, if there's a finite supply, the supply and demand it, the economics just work with Blockchain technology. And so that's, that's why I really, truly believe in, in the future of blockchain technology being integrated into eCommerce and, and just everyday life at a massive, massive rates over the next 5, 10 years.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, I mean, it solves a lot of problems, you know, and I think people definitely have to understand how inefficient our conventional banking system can be. And, you know, like, like you said, the government is already piloting digital currencies, because they understand that I mean, I think I just saw headlines last week or the week before, where the government lost like $500 billion, or a trillion dollars or something, I forget what it was. But there's been headlines like that all the time. Like, there was a couple headlines like that. I remember specifically around 911, and people thought that was like a conspiracy, where the government can't find a trillion dollars or something that, you know, whatever. You know, we, we, we lend money to other governments all the time, and there's a lot of trillions and trillions of dollars of debt. That is hard to track. And, you know, once the institutions and I think you're right, once the institutions start to catch on, the consumer is going to have no choice. If my bank saying, you know, hey, you know, your checking account with TD is here, but, you know, get this bonus for signing up with our digital wallet, right? And you know, putting half your money Eath or whatever it is, now it becomes a mainstream standard to start having a MetaMask wallet or whatever, whatever the wallet is, and shopping with it. And I think, you know who God knows how long that might take. But it's, it's going to come in some way, shape or form, I think it's gonna be interesting to see how efficient it happens, the first go around, like, it's gonna be hard to like, zoom out and be like, Oh, this is going well, or this is not going well. You know, I would love to talk to someone that was like in finance, when like online banking started to be a thing and seeing like how that went. When we started to actually having digital collections and Ledger's of our of our money, but I don't know, what do you think?
Adam Andrews
Yeah, it's, it's interesting to see kind of how these, I guess you could call them like big players are going about doing things. They're they're really, when you look at it, and you look at the statements from these larger businesses like banking, or even, you know, Facebook and Meta, right? People don't know that they've been building Metaverses and Crypto-focused things for years, Microsoft has been developing a Metaverse for six years now. That's not an understanding of mainstream, you know, people, right, because they're not ready. I think over the next couple of years. When these big corporations are ready, they're, they're gonna go, Alright, turn it on. Like we built the systems, turn it on, right and all in my mind. I'm kind of like diving down conspiracy theory rabbit holes, or like trying to just understand from different perspectives. And I truly believe that the big banks and the big people that actually run these giant corporations across the world, are conspiring together to launch a Cryptocurrency and or Cryptocurrency system, or Metaverse, all at once. So that the the little guys me, who are building something in the space has no advantage and are just completely wiped out, right? Yeah. Because they want it they want they want control. They want to own everything. They want power,
Alex Ivanoff
Who has the most power? It's the US because it's the world's reserve currency.
Adam Andrews
Exactly. And so, you know, you have a bunch of these bigger nations looking at that and going okay, how can we undermine that with our own Crypto or with our own Metaverse? Or how can we start, you know, taking out of their economy? You know, and so I think, I think there's just going to be this massive switch one day, and it's just going to happen, and everyone's going to forget that it happened like that one day, like, it's just going to be one of the biggest financial events in history. And it'll just happen at the flip of a switch, right? Or at the press of a button or like the Yes, of a phone call, like, Alright, today's the day we're going to like, everybody.
Alex Ivanoff
Change the world today.
Adam Andrews
Exactly. And so I think that's a little scary, and like conspiracy theoryist, but you know, I
Alex Ivanoff
We have you on tape, we'll come back to that.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, right? Clip that and send it to me, please. But you did you did mention one thing that I just want to touch on briefly, before we continue is, you said a lot of your audience doesn't understand like NFT technology, and how it can be used because they're ecommerce ecommerce focused. Right? So if you are still with us, thank you for listening for so long. I tend to ramble on at some points. But the easiest way to understand NFT technology specifically, is digital ownership. Right? So just like your customer gets an email receipt with, you know, their order ID, with crypto technology and NFTs they could purchase said, Pat from your website and get it hat NFT. That is their proof of purchase, right? But it doesn't go to their email, it just goes to their NFT wallet or their wallet, right? Their crypto wallet. And so it's just digital ownership. Digital proof of ownership is all NFTs are.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah. And so diving deeper into that, right? It's not just brand owners, everybody, like there's a majority, very vast majority of people do not understand Web3, Crypto, Blockchain NFTs. What, how did they acquire those skills? What skills do they need? Like how do they from a brand owner? And I'm like, Alright, I'm convinced, you know, I gotta I gotta start getting with the time here. I don't want to like, do what Adam did and drop everything and go into it three, but you know, I want to I want to understand it because when it when that time comes, if the day comes where the switch is flipped, or you know, whatever, if it's a gradual change, I want to be prepared. So, you know, I'm a technologist, I'm prepared for the future. How do I do it?
Adam Andrews
Listening to podcasts like this, and just like, doing a little bit of research here and there on, you know, Hey, what's new in the Crypto and NFT space this month? Like what what software's are integrating with Stripe? What software's are, you know, now accepting payments on Shopify in Cryptocurrency, like just keeping a pulse on the market and that like the transition, right there, because once you start to identify, you know, software's that are coming out that you can start implementing in your business and using that rely on NFT, or crypto blockchain technology, I think that will keep you at the forefront of understanding what's going on in the industry. And what's going on with those industries merging together, right? And so I think you'll be able to identify, you know, opportunities and pounce on them before your competition, right. So listening to podcasts like this. And listening to a podcast with somebody from the NFT space and learning something new, coming on to an eCommerce podcast, right? Like this year, I have a big goal of going on to a lot more of like entrepreneurship, business-focused podcasts, and talking about blockchain technology in my business knowledge. And I think that just listening to these things, paying attention, keeping your pulse on the finger, GaryVee is a perfect person to follow, because he's just like, whether you like him or hate him, he's got a really good pulse on the market, just like pop culture and the culture in general. So yeah, paying attention to what those big players are doing is a really good way to keep your eye on the market and figure out what you can do as a a brand owner to incorporate crypto. When it's the right time for your brand, right? Like don't go out tomorrow and just, you know, try to create NFTs off your your clothing brand that has 6000 followers on Instagram, like, it's just it won't be adopted very, very sure. Quickly, right? Whereas if Lululemon did it? Well, it would work? Because it's Lululemon. Right. And I think there's, I think there's a big opportunity for brands who do something like Starbucks did, which is they created an NFT program, but they didn't call it an NFT. Right? You don't, you can call it whatever the hell you want. Yeah, for the customer, it doesn't matter to the customer, how their transaction happens. If your customer swipes their credit card, or you know, and puts their credit card information on your website, and clicks checkout, they don't care what payment processors you're using the back-end and complete that payment, they just care that it got completed. And so when NFT technology comes into the space, and is able to make that seamless transition, there's going to be a ton of opportunity there to really utilize NFT and blockchain technology in your brand, especially especially in the back end without customers knowing.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, exactly. If it's seamless, and it's not something that requires a big barrier to education to transact with it's going to be, it's going to be easy for your customers to adapt. And I think you hit the nail on the head, like podcasts are a great resource because there's so many niche knowledge bases of people that you know, spread their wisdom on on different topics. And there's very niche podcasts for each thing that you're looking for. I would also recommend font, like you said,
Follow the brands and see what they're doing. Follow the Starbucks and aluminum and blue lemons of the world. But also, like, follow the headlines of, you know, certain, you know, influential, I don't wanna say news outlets, but people that are covering this space, Twitter and LinkedIn are really good for this. If you if you find a information page that is really covering the Web3 space or the eCommerce space, very closely, read those articles that come out, because it's going to give you I mean, there's, if you follow the right pages, there's a headline every day that's worth reading, you know, and when I was getting into Crypto and NFT and just understanding it not like becoming a big player, I would click on those articles at least once a day and just you know, skim through it, get learn a little bit more every day. You know, again, preparing yourself for what the future is going to bring. That would be my advice. You know, moving on here talking about Blockchain Bottles, and just you've been you know, you I'm sure you got a couple other things coming. What is the biggest challenge that you're facing other than a bear market in your projects? And you know, how are you how are you dealing with that and preparing for it?
Adam Andrews
Oh, my gosh, that's so funny that you said other than a bear market because that was literally my answer. You sent me these notes before the podcast and my answer was going to be bear market.
Alex Ivanoff
Bear market is a good answer, right? It's not about it.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, well, you know, I think I think the I think it's probably the loss of people and interest in the space as a whole, right? Like we were building really cool things we, still are. And we were getting a lot of just instantaneous feedback. Like, imagine launching a clothing brand. And like, you put this hat design in your Discord, and you're like, Yo, yes or no. Right? And you instantly have 400 answers, telling you whether to put this to market or not. Like that was the feedback we were getting. So we were able to really quickly develop our business ideas and like, our vision for the future for the brand and for the business. And then the bear market came and like, there's barely anyone interacting, like we kind of have to make the decisions on our own, which we want the community to be involved in. But it's just dead. Like, it really is. It's just that the the bear market is the number one hardest thing to combat right now.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, I get it. I've seen a lot of developers not bail on their projects in a malicious way. But they're like, you know, there's no point in doing this anymore. As much as I love the 20 of you guys, I can't get back the 2000 of the people that I had, you know, six months ago. And so I totally get it. I guess what do you do? Do you just are you like, you know, as a as a founder in the space and you just kind of like waiting it out? Or?
Adam Andrews
Yeah, I mean, to an extent there's waiting it out. It's definitely slower. Like, you know, I don't have 20 hour work days anymore. But then again, I also have kind of went down this rabbit hole of like, trying to treat my body the way it needs to be treated. And like actually, you know, being in this for the long run, because I don't want to be 40 years old and just can't can't go anymore. You know what I mean? Yeah, and so I think. I lost my train of thought, I'm gonna be honest, I just completely lost my train of thought bro.
Alex Ivanoff
It's all good. You can cut it.
Adam Andrews
Yeah. Dude where. I completely just, dude just blank. There's nothing going on my head right now. Can you refresh me on the question real quick.
Alex Ivanoff
So, like, like Spark? How are you preparing for? Are you just waiting out this bear market? Or?
Adam Andrews
Oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry, editor. Yeah, so like, I like I was saying, I went down this like rabbit hole of, of self care and take care of my body big time during this bear market. And really just getting my myself mentally and physically ready, as well as continuing to develop new ideas, and structuring the back end of the business better, so that we can take on funding, we're going to raise capital here pretty soon for a software that we're going to develop and, and deliver to market pretty soon. And so just learning and studying and growing and skill stacking, you know what I mean? Yeah, like you were saying, stacking skills, learning becoming better networking a ton. And I launched a podcast. I launched about, yeah, so I launched the podcast as well in the NFT space. And I am utilizing that as a way to, you know, continuously keep my pulse on the market, even though I run businesses in the space, but also be able to interview people who are higher up or that I look up to in the space, from a knowledge perspective, and be able to ask them the questions that I want to ask them about growing a business in this space. And so I'm utilizing that a ton to stay active in the space, continuously trying to grow the space by putting out content related to NFTs and crypto. And it just, it also helps give me another thing to do after, you know, managing the other businesses.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, makes sense. It's like coach, coach putting you on the bench and saying, hey, you know, get ready, stay loose. You're gonna be back in on the fourth quarter.
Adam Andrews
This is this is the warmup for staying loose, yeah.
Alex Ivanoff
What would you classify as your biggest success? You mentioned a couple financially but you know, different different companies different projects. You you've owned some of the big name NFTs which some would say is like a huge success owning like a Bored Ape and stuff but you know, what, what would you in Adam Andrews' mind say is your biggest success?
Adam Andrews
Bigest success in business, right?
Alex Ivanoff
Anything, business or life, yeah.
Adam Andrews
Probably proud Like honestly, probably launching JustCubes like that was that was pretty big moment, dude. You know we I've done some crazy numbers for our clients in in the the media buying space and Facebook advertising like, I was looking at results the other day and I was like, damn, I used to be pretty good. Like yeah, it's been a minute since I last ran an ad but like, oh shit. But yeah, dude, I think I think launching JustCubes man we we did a really, really good job. You know, there were certain circumstances that came into play during our midday Discord crash where it was just out of our hands. And we couldn't do anything about it. But sure, yeah, did we, we put in a lot of sweat equity. And this is in a video that's going to be posted soon anyway. So I'll just tell you, we turned 6k in to 1.9 million in nine months.
Alex Ivanoff
I think it's on your bio on Instagram as well.
Adam Andrews
Is it really? Um, and yeah. So. So we turned 6k to 1.9 million in nine months and then we did another 500,000 in like royalties and other business services that we offer. And so that was that was a pretty big one.
Alex Ivanoff
This is JustCubes?
Adam Andrews
Yeah this is JustCubes.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah. So you're talking about like 1.9 million in revenue on the project through royalties?
Adam Andrews
Yeah. Through through the the initial midday, like the sale of the NFTs themselves, and then on top royalties, as well. And we offer business services for other projects to offer a similar utility that we offer to their projects. But you know, it's a software as a service, right. So we have that. I do have a grand vision for JustCubes for the next, like three years, three to five years of just becoming a giant conglomerate of a SaaS product, right? Somewhere where, like, grandma can come to our website, get set up and understand crypto and then be able to utilize it in whatever industry that she wants to utilize it right, like buying clothes online, like you need a wallet, right. So I really want to turn it into like, I guess conglomerate was probably the wrong word, but like ecosystem of different utilities and things that you can get access to. And so that's, that's my, that's my grand vision for JustCubes for the next, I think 3-5 years.
Alex Ivanoff
That's awesome. It's a very grand vision. And I think it's like you mentioned this a little bit earlier, where you education is super important. And it's kind of your job right now to kind of educate as many as you can. And a lot of lot of people have said that, because it's the biggest, same thing with when the internet launched, like people didn't know what the internet was, how to use it, it what its utility was, and the same thing with the space, you know, Web1, or Web3, or whatever. And so, you know, we need, we need more educated people in the space to really utilize it. So I'm very interested in seeing how you guys fulfill that vision. We'd love to have you back in, you know, however long, you know, a year and kind of look back and say, Oh, let's see the progress that we've made in a year, three years or five years and see, you know, what just keeps doing to make a dent in the space. But my I guess my last question before we get into our Roundup is, you know, when you started in crypto, you kind of crazy. Just to give context, I started to learn about crypto late 2020. And you got a nine months after me and still wants to projects before I do. So you're a quick action taker. Man, that's pretty awesome. But what I will say is, I guess what I will ask is, you know, going back to August, September, barely knew as much as you did. Now. What do you wish you knew back then? Obviously, a lot of things went right, but what things maybe went wrong, and you just wish you could have avoided or knew?
Adam Andrews
$700,000 on a lass play because I didn't know how to mint from a contract, bro.
Alex Ivanoff
How did that, how did that happen?
Adam Andrews
So there's this project called NeoTokyo. And they created this like.
Alex Ivanoff
Alex Becker's project, right?
Adam Andrews
Yeah, Alex Becker's project. Yeah. And so they created this like, riddle eco system that was just like scattered online, you had to figure out what different things meant. Anyways, it got you onto the list to mint the NFT is that they were dropping NeoTokyo Citizens is what they were called. And so well, they were called Identities and then they turned into Citizens, but I was in wave two. So I was like, the 400th person or something out of probably 12,000 that I was able to mint. So my wallet was at like whitelisted for this mint. And I didn't understand how to mint from a contract at that point and I say it's a $700,000 Miss play, because that's what the floor price was at the top, like the tippity, top of the NFT market. But I mean, literally, within three days, it was a $50,000 loss that I could have avoided had I known how to MIT from a smart contract. So, like, just understanding like, one simple thing of how to interact with a smart contract was, yeah, easily, easily a half a million dollars lost.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah. It goes back to preparation, right?
Adam Andrews
It does. It does go back to preparation and just understanding the market you're in. It was, did I think I was like, 19 days in at that point, I hadn't even had my that $30,000 trade that I that I had made. I don't think I made that at that point yet. So I was still super fresh and just didn't understand how to mend from a contract. And I wish I did.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah. Interesting. It's a it's a, it's gonna be a common trend for a lot of people not knowing the basic stuff. So you know, make sure you know it, make sure you do some Googling, some YouTubing, some podcasting. All right. So one question we'd like to ask all of our guests as we wrap up here at the end of the show. If you could sit in a room with a bunch of mentors once every morning to help guide you advise you throughout your day, they could be alive or dead, who would be in that room?
Adam Andrews
I like that question. That's an interesting one. I need to come up with something to end my podcasts like that. Yeah. I would. Is there like a max?
Alex Ivanoff
I have, like, I have like 9 or 10 or 11 people.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, the ones that just like, immediately come to mind are Andrew Carnegie, Sam Walton, Elon Musk, of course, fucking genius. GaryVee, for sure. And somebody who's like very in depth in the industry that I'm in is Alex Becker. And I'm sure a lot of you guys listening know who Alex Becker is. Just very smart businessman, eCommerce-focused, NFTs, and crypto. Definitely Alex Becker. And I think that that's like, that's kind of it that comes to mind. Right, right off the bat. There was one Oh, Henry Ford. I was just reading a book that quoted him and I was like, gosh, I would have. I'd give a lot of money to speak to him, you know what I mean? So I think he would be in there as well. And I think that's it that that comes to mind. You know, right off the right off the bat.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, you really hope the Andrew Carnegie, Sam Waltons, the Henry Ford, you know, in another 100 years, you really hope those names don't die out because of how much of an influence they had and how just how brilliant they were, in their own respects.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, seriously.
Alex Ivanoff
I mean, Henry Ford, just transformed manufacturing and efficiency, you know, operationally. So, you know, just things like that. It's, you know, people got to study those, those people more because they're, there's a reason they're classic. And they have classic ideals. But I like those answers.
Adam Andrews
There's this quote. Thank you. There's, there's this quote or study rather than quote that was done. And it it comes back to like, those older names not dying. The way to prove that a book has legs and is actually something especially in the business space, that has value is how long it's existed for. So look at Think and Grow Rich, How to Win Friends and Influence People. You know, Sam Walton's, what is it.
Alex Ivanoff
Made in America.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, Made in America. So if you just look at the older books that have stand, like stood the tests of time, and learning from those, I think you have a really good head on your shoulders and like you can learn some some extremely valuable skills that will stay here for a very long time. If you if you understand that concept of, of, you know, being here for the long run and having that knowledge, like actually be valuable.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah. So you're saying like, if the books are still being printed, and they still "exist" then obviously they're still valuable 100 years later.
Adam Andrews
The older the book that had is still being printed and still being purchased and sold.a lot is a very, very valuable book.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's Very interesting. Good way to look at it. Look at the classics first. A lot of people will write books and they're not all that good. So, you know, look at the ones that have stood the test of time. Well, cool, Adam. It's been a it's been a pleasure. This is awesome. I know. There's a lot of cool stories that were shared, shared and a lot of knowledge that was dropped. So super excited for people to listen to this. Where can people follow you, your projects, everything that you're doing, get to know, you know, get to follow you and what you're doing.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, Twitter is a super great way to connect with me. It's just @AdamAndrews97. That's my handle everywhere. So Instagram, Twitter. You know, wherever you want to find me. It's @AdamAndrews97. I'll give you some of the links as well for my businesses that we spoke about so you can put them into podcast show notes, but yet, thank you again for having me, dude. It was a great conversation.
I love having conversations like this and just thinking deeply about things and how things can interlink together, specifically eCommerce and, and Web3 in this podcast.
Yeah, dude, I had a great time. Looking forward to listening to the episode and sharing it with some friends.
Alex Ivanoff
Yeah, same. It's been awesome. What is your podcast, by the way, so that everyone can check it out? We talked about resources.
Adam Andrews
Yeah, it's called NFT Bros podcast.
Alex Ivanoff
Okay, nice. So check it out. We'll put a link in the description.
Adam Andrews
Thank you.
Alex Ivanoff
Alright, Thanks, Adam. See you all later and go check out our show on GoRocketCart.com/MissionControl, and you can see our podcasts and all these different episodes of Mission Control. So, thank you all and see you next time.
