The King is dead.. Long Live the King. Clients are not longer Kings.. they are equal partners with their vendors in the pursuit of success. How do you pick good clients and how does that one choice impact your business. Brining over 20 years of battle tested experience is Tony Drummond. The CEO and Co Founder of Moonbound Consulting LLP. Mr. Tony Drummond . Part businessman part tech geek 100% great guest.

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Tony Drummond - Moonbound Consulting

Participants:

• JP (CMO of AdLunam)

• Tony Drummond (CEO and Co-Founder of Moonbound consulting LLP)

00:22

JP

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, again, thank you so much for being here. This is JP from AdLunam Inc. bringing you everything about Web3, the show where we take a deep dive into everything that is about everything that's happening in the Web3 space, bringing you thought leaders, the movers, the shakers, the candlestick watchers, and the people that are making things happen in this industry. And I'd like to share with you a few of the few announcements before we start. Of course, in case we do get cut off, please remember to go to AdLunam Inc. For the new link, because the gods of Twitter spaces sometimes decide to take a ride. Additionally, views expressed on this program belong to that of the speaker and is meant for educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as financial advice. So that being said, ladies and welcome to this episode of Diving into Crypto.

01:22

JP

I know our thoughts and prayers go out to the people in Turkey and Syria who are affected. Let's send some positive vibes that side and whatever help we can offer to our brethren in that space. Let's take a second to think about what we can do. That being said, I'm very excited today to have Mr. Tony Drummond on our show today. He has a diverse two decade experience in business equipment operations, software engineering, customer service, project management, and if I keep reading the list, I think we'll cover pretty much a whole plethora of industries that he's got some experience in. He's also consulted for both small businesses and several multibillion dollar corporations. I'm curious to learn a lot more about what he brings to the table. He's the former CEO and CTO of Micro Pets, which scaled from 550,000 to 207,000,000 on market cap valuation in just three weeks and got a community of 70,000 all within that time.

02:33

JP

So this is somebody that's been in a space that has done a lot of work across multiple industries, including this one. And so, ladies and gentlemen, let's put our emojis on, because I know that we can't hear you clapping with your applause, but give it a try. Let's welcome our guest today, Tony Drummond. Tony, say hi.

02:56

Tony

Hey, JP. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you very much, and pleasure to be here with you today.

03:03

JP

Thank you for taking the time to make it. I know that you've got a busy schedule, and my team went through a lot of effort to get you here. So I'm really excited that you finally said yes and that you're on the show today.

03:16

Tony

Yes. Awesome to be here. And Nadja and I have been kind of chatting back and forth on LinkedIn, so it's great to have here as well. And finally speak, so it's awesome. Thank you.

03:27

JP

Amazing. Yeah, I had to come today because we've been talking so much and I just had to actually hear you speak rather than just watch your videos while.

03:37

Tony

You so very excited. Awesome. Thank you so much.

03:43

JP

Yeah, it's amazing. We know that Nadja hosts The Future of NFTs, our sister show here at AdLunam, so I'm really glad. Nadja, thank you for being here as well. Means a lot.

04:00

Tony

Okay.

04:00

JP

That being said, Tony, back to you. I know that I've read a small bio, but tell us a little about yourself.

04:04

Tony

Yeah, well, to start things off, so I actually got my career in the printing industry. That's why you see, like, manufacturing and such in my bio. But I've always been a computer nerd, so I've been programming since I was 16 years old, actually. However, I just never wanted to sit in front of a computer all day. So eventually I got into various aspects of business. I was actually able to get off that piece of equipment I was on in the printing industry and actually work in sales marketing roles. I've actually worked for major brands such as BMW, Mercedes, Alpha Romeo, like a marketing and sales environment, managing a lot of really crazy, difficult projects. And I've also consulted as a process improvement consultant for several multibillion dollar corporations where I would train their teams in lean six Sigma methodologies and everything from how to improve processes to statistical analysis and things of that nature.

04:54

Tony

And eventually I began to run regions, facilities, run plants, and then I made my way into Web3, and then I found my true calling. And why that is because, like I said, I'm a nerd. But I also love product, I love sales, I love marketing. And now I'm able to blend all of that with this incredible technology that is really going to transform what I believe, the world around us. So that's what makes me so excited about this stuff. And that's what prompted me to start my own project. And I never would have expected what would have happened with it. As you mentioned, we never expected it to go that crazy. But primarily what I love doing today is just taking a lot of learned experiences. There was things with that project that worked very well, things that did not work very well. And really, I think that if us as professionals in this space work to share our knowledge, collectively, we can enable everybody to succeed much faster.

05:43

Tony

And that's really what my company is about. That's exactly what I'm about. And if you follow me on LinkedIn, which is where I primarily am active, you'll see nothing but me doing just that. It's no fluff. It's all what you can learn from and take away. So I highly encourage you, if you're a founder, to follow me on LinkedIn and you will learn a lot. Trust me on that. There's no fluff. So hopefully this is a helpful intro for you guys.

06:05

JP

Yeah, I remember reading somewhere that is you get the real deal and there's no BS in anything that you're offering. So thank you. Keeping it real and sharing that. I'm going to give the audience a moment in which they'll be able to connect with you. Of course, they can connect with you on Twitter, and I understand that your links are also on there, is that right?

06:25

Tony

Yes, absolutely. If you hit my Twitter profile, you go to my link tree and I should probably put my LinkedIn on there as well. But you'll see my website, Moonboundconsulting.com, we also have a mastermind program we actually just launched yesterday called Moonboundmastermind.com, and that is really going to enable us to help founders at scale and save them a ton of money along the way. That's our vision for this is just how to drive as much value as possible for people and give them the right guidance. There's so many people that tell you they don't even know what they're talking about and they're trying to take on clients and stuff. And until you've done this stuff before, you don't know it. I just tell you right now, you can't know it unless you've done it. So that's the only way to learn it.

07:01

JP

Amen amen I'm with you on that? I am curious to understand, though. I mean, I know that you've got a range of experience, as you've just said, across multiple industries, but you finally settled now in the Web3 space. So what was that moment? What was that moment in which you said, hey, Web3 is the space to be for me?

07:22

Tony

Yeah, well, I'll tell you, when I had my project going and I saw that people liked how I spoke professionally, they liked how I operated professionally, they liked a lot of things about what I was doing that told me that I had something on my hands here. And I'd always been a little bit frustrated in my career where I hadn't felt like I found something that I truly loved. Right. I would go in and out of interests, but nothing that was as addictive to me as it is right now as Web3. And what I found is it's something where literally every day I wake up and I'm like, yes, I get to do this. And to me, that tells me I'm in the right place. And now, like I've also described, I love helping people and using a very diverse skill set that I have and sharing knowledge across a wide variety of subjects.

08:08

Tony

Now, when we think about Web3, it literally touches everything. So when somebody speaks about product development, I can help them there. When they speak about marketing, I spent over a million dollars marketing my project. I could save them a lot of money by helping them there. So when I think about what my own experiences and what I, as professional, could leverage. And I quit my job to run my project. We didn't take a salary. There none of that. We put everything into the project. So taking the ethical approach as well and saying, you know what? There's so many people trying to do things wrong. If I, as professional, can try and do things right and whatever that might look like, yes, I will make my share of mistakes. However, if that's my intention, I will differentiate, and I will stand out, and then my business will grow, assuming I can actually sell and market.

08:54

Tony

So that's what my realization was. And that's why I'm so happy today to have this company, is that's exactly what we're doing, is we're helping so many people. I know we'll dig in later on, probably on what I'm doing specifically, but that's why, personally, I love this space, is I can make such an impact through my own painful, learned experiences and help so many other people bring their ideas to life. And that's why I love doing it.

09:20

JP

So, Tony, I got to ask, is that what drives you? Is that what fuels your passion every day? Are there more factors that are at play here?

09:28

Tony

You know what? That's it. And you know what? That's why I've yet to see somebody else have this. But if you go to my website, you'll see something on there called the no BS guarantee. What that means is any client who starts, if you don't like it right away, I'll give you all your money back. I don't want it, and nobody else has that. So that sort of aligns with the purpose of what I just outlined, is that's the sole purpose is to help founders. I do not take referral fees. I do not take commissions. I do not take tokens from people to sell them later. People who offer that, I say, I'm not even interested in that. So I take the very ethical approach, and I align everything around that sole purpose of helping people. All of my decisions revolve around that. All of my content revolves around that.

10:08

Tony

Our discussion today will revolve around that. People will walk away if they're running a project, say, wow, this guy saved me a lot of money, and I will as we talk a little bit later. And that's really what my purpose is. And I like all the actions around.

10:22

JP

You know, tony, listening to you about the endeavor you've started on, not just the project, the endeavor that you've started on. I'm quite certain that, as the saying goes, behind every successful person, there is a team. Right. Tell us a little about the team that's there with you.

10:43

Tony

Yeah, so initially, I just started this business about seven months ago, formally. And right now, I have multiple team members. So first of all, I have Richard, who was actually a former client of mine, and when the market took a downturn, his project idea was no longer good. It was in marketing, and nobody's really marketing. So Richard started this other idea, and I said, Richard, I love working with you, man. Let's work on this together. And that's our mastermind now. So Richard and I are partners in our mastermind. Okay? So we both have 50% of that. That's how I'm doing it, is find a great person, collaborate with them, and let's grow together through mutual success. In the development side, I have the same exact approach. In fact, my development team that built all of my infrastructure, we had tens of thousands of users on it.

11:26

Tony

They were incredible guys. Worked our asses off for months. Not a complaint, not an excuse. Hit every roadmap, milestone. That's the people that I work with when somebody needs help with development. And I'm also a fractional CTO in that case, because I understand the technology. And if the client also works with me as a consultant, I understand their utilities, their whole platform, everything, so they don't have to waste their time managing technology, especially if they're nontechnical. I can help alleviate that pain and help them there, which is also how I approach that. Now I'm also getting into diagrams where I can actually model out full simulations of game economies, the Tokenomics model, the financial models. And for that, again, my development team and I are spinning that process up. I'm programming them now, but we noticed that we can scale even faster if they help me with the development, and we like doing it.

12:16

Tony

So that's another initiative that I'm doing. And so that's really how I grow my team is I'm not looking to have all these employees. I'm looking to say who are great people that are great at what they do, and how do we create value for people and all win together? And that's how I'm building this business. I don't want to manage people. I've done that. I've managed 50 people at one time. I don't want to go back to that. I love what I'm doing right now. Let's get the great people and work together.

12:44

JP

Yeah. It really does take a village to raise a child and to be surrounded by people that share the same passion as you. What more could someone ask for, right? And to be able to do that every day.

12:57

Tony

Absolutely, man. When you have people that love working together, it's a lot of fun, too. And that's the other part of that. It's a grind. I mean, granted, this space is a grind, right? But you have great people around you. It doesn't seem as painful if you have reliable people.

13:17

JP

Yeah, I kid you not. I hear that in the office from Nadja. I hear that also from Jason, our other co-founder, who's in the room. He's jumping on the show today as well. So, Jason, shout out to you. That's one of the things he keeps at the forefront, keeps focusing on is the more that you have the team all in alignment, the better for everybody, and that's exactly what we're doing here. So it's good to hear the same resonance coming from you, Tony. I'm glad to have shared that with you. I'm curious, though, when you were sharing a little earlier about not just building the team, but finding the right people. And I know that finding the right people is imperative, especially when it comes to projects in the Web3 space.

14:07

Tony

Right.

14:08

JP

You spend a lot of hours together. You've got to love what you're doing. And while these two things are something that people commonly hear, I also know that it's important on two ends from your experience, that there are certain factors you look for in a project team. So what makes you say yes to the type of project you want to work with? Because that's the space that you're in. You want to work with these guys to be able to these new teams, these new projects, to be able to take them Moonbound, as you say.

14:42

Tony

Right.

14:43

JP

So what is it for you that does that? What do you look for?

14:46

Tony

Yeah. So to answer your question, well, first of all, what I don't look for is if anyone has a dog with a space helmet for a logo, this kind of stuff, I don't even take the meeting, and if I see it on my calendar, I'll actually cancel the call. So that's step number one is really like, what?

15:07

JP

Okay.

15:08

Tony

Is this something that actually has value to it, or is it sort of like an idea? Right. And it doesn't really have much value to it. So that's really step number one is the last thing I want to do is get involved with a product or a utility that I do not believe will become successful. And granted, in the beginning, it could have its own share of issues, and that's my job as a consultant, is to help the client. But if the whole thing in general looks like it's not going to work and it's far-fetched, and sometimes we see these ourselves, then I don't even really do the call, or I don't move forward with the client. However, when I find a founder who has professional business experience that looks like they have great capabilities and it doesn't have to be technical because I could help on the technical side, but when they have a good work ethic, when they're personable, when they're very professional, I check all their LinkedIns.

15:55

Tony

Somebody who has a nice LinkedIn profile, that's the type of person that I will like to work with. Okay. And I'll just be honest with you right now, can't book a sales call right now for probably about two weeks if you try. And the reason why that is because I'm kind of picky on who I'm working with. Well, because I'm picky on who I'm working with, I don't have a lot of churn in my business because I bring in people who like to work with me as a professional and I like to work with them as a professional and we help each other grow and therefore you're a lot stickier. So as time goes on, you don't lose the client, right? And so that's really what I'm looking for is I'm looking for the quick cash. And I've actually fired two clients so far in my business because they were not a fit for me and they ate up way too much time.

16:37

Tony

They were sending messages day and night. They were proceeding forward in the wrong direction. And then it's like you don't want somebody who's going to light a dumpster on fire every day, then ask you to put it out, and then that's your client. You don't want that. And that's not what's going to win in this space either, because that mentality will not become successful. So in that example, what I did in the following month, I said, I'm not going to renew your next month contract. I'm not taking your money next month. I do not believe what you're doing anymore, and therefore I'm going to find somebody else that would prefer to work with instead. And that's exactly what I did a couple of weeks ago. It was not a low paying client either. To me, it doesn't matter because I know that right away I'm going to get some great people to work with.

17:16

Tony

And that's really what I judge and look for, is that professionalism people who really want a strong partner, who know how to work with other people. And when you're blowing somebody up day and night, that means that you don't know how to work with a supplier. You don't value other people's time. And so that is a big red flag for me. That's also going to create problems not only with team members when they're getting hit day and night and they get upset, or even any partners that you're working with as well. And it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare to work like that. So that's what I would kind of look for and kind of avoid is unprofessionalism neediness. This is not going to become successful. Someone who's extremely needy does not have the own inherent skill set to be able to make their own decisions, otherwise they would not be needy.

17:54

Tony

Right? And that's sort of what I'm looking for in the space, is a good professional person who I would love to work with.

18:03

JP

Well, we certainly should be so lucky. And I'm glad that you're sharing some ideas about how to pick them, Tony, because for a lot of projects that come up, this may be some of the missing factors and sharing that on the show with the audience that's in the room. I know now that they will, of course, be looking more for that as they go forward in their journey. In the web3 space. If I were to summarize what you were saying is the first one is, of course, have some experience. Somebody that has or the team that has a very professional outlook, they know how to respect time and don't light dumpsters on fire on a daily basis.

18:47

Tony

Yeah. Actually having a plan, knowing how to operate as professional, knowing how to hire the right people. I mean, these are very critical skill sets. And if you do not have them, you're going to be in big trouble here because you're going to hire people who will scam you, people who take all your money, and that's usually investment capital that you've taken in. And that's really where I see the root of incompetence kind of roll in. And so that's what I would just say is the team needs to have professionals who know how to operate. This is a business, and if you're not somebody who is a business professional, you're going to have a big problem. So your team should be encompassed of people who know how to run businesses. And if you're not, then you're going to have to be honest with yourselves and find partners who have done that can help you.

19:26

Tony

That's really what you have to do.

19:31

JP

I agree with you. I'm curious though, to understand because like I said, there are multiple projects that do come in and they will come in from different experiences because a large number of teams are generally formed with people with a similar skill set, right? Yeah. So you'll have a group of maybe developers that get together and say, hey, you know what, this is a solution that we can solve, but that may not be the only point when it comes to having a strong team. Tony, what are some of the qualities, the skills that a strong team has, in your opinion?

20:11

Tony

Yeah, well, you hit on a really good point when we talk about what's the diversity of the team. Right. If you have one of the same type of a profile of person right across your whole team, well, then you're not going to be very diverse, are you? You're going to continue to have a bunch of you're going to have the same people doing the same things. Right? And so what I personally think about is here's the areas that you need to be successful for your project. Okay? First, and your team needs to be able to handle all these different things. For example, you need somebody who knows how to build and actually create a good product. Okay? You need somebody who knows how to understand financials, such as tokenomics, such as fundraising. You need somebody who needs to understand how to build partnerships. You need somebody who needs to understand branding and design so that anyone who goes to your actual website or brand assets are like, wow, this looks great.

21:01

Tony

You need somebody who knows how to do verbal and written communication. Why is that important because you hear right now, this is exactly what we're doing. And if we want to communicate and get people to buy into what we're doing, we also need a sales skill. If we don't have sales skill, we're not going to know how to sell our products. Right. You also need somebody who also needs they have the technical experience to handle the development team and make sure that the product is being built correctly, whether that's the actual development of the application, the DAP, or whether that's a game or whatever you might be doing. Furthermore, you also need somebody who understands operations, who can lay out a very clear roadmap with very clear planning and execution aligned around a specific timeline right. And can also hold the team accountable for that.

21:39

Tony

So you need a very strong manager in operations. Okay? So lastly, you need somebody who knows how to market. If you don't know how to market, you're going to be in for a world of pain. You're going to spend a ton of money figuring it out and it's going to cost you deeply, really going to cost you deeply. And then one other thing is you need somebody who knows how to basically be a community manager, who knows how to actually get people together, how to engage them, how to chat with them the right way, how to create relationships, how to have events where people can collaborate. These, in my opinion, are very critical skill sets across the entire team that I just outlined.

22:16

JP

Certainly. Okay, so a diverse set of skills required for any strong team to be successful, to go the mile, to share the same passion, of course. That is certainly, what do you say, an ideal dream team to have, if you will.

22:35

Tony

Right.

22:36

JP

The second part I want to bring back to you is when you're talking about somebody, when it comes to managing, community is important, no doubt.

22:44

Tony

Right.

22:45

JP

But when it comes to crucial success of a Web3 project, it does become more important.

22:56

JP

Let’s take this question from two parts, right? So what are some of the qualities that a person needs to have to be a good community manager? And the second part is from there, what constitutes an engaged community?

23:10

Tony

Okay. Yeah. So first of all, a community manager, in my opinion, should be somebody who can be the voice of the project. Okay? So they're usually the first interaction. Okay? So now they're also responsible for that engagement. So for example, when people come into my telegram chat, I would send a voice note and say hello to them as a CEO. They'd be like, holy cow, look at this guy said something to me. This is cool. They wouldn't really see much of that. That right there is when that's the starting of engagement. Okay? However, the community manager, if I'm not there, they need to be able to do that as well. So people who come in, feel like they're welcome. Like if you walk into a shop, someone says, hey JP, how can I help you? Welcome. How can I help you? Can I answer any questions?

23:50

Tony

So I think that as professionals, we try and manage a chat versus manage a community and grow relationships with people. And those are two separate different skill sets. So, for example, if the community manager cannot write properly, whether whatever the language is of the majority of the community members, usually it's in English, right? If they cannot, then they will not show as much professionalism. Also, if you have members from around the world, such as Asia, you need to make sure you have communities there as well where they can get the information, their respective language and understand that and also recognize that if you're speaking that, they might not be able to understand that. So they might need something in writing. So you need people who can communicate, whether in written or verbal across the board and make sure that everybody is informed of what you're doing and their questions are answered, right.

24:39

Tony

And that right there brings everybody together, regardless of those language barriers. So having a professional who's also not late, they're active, they manage the chat. For example, if I go into a telegram, I see 600 pin messages. That's a disaster for the community management. I should be able to go into the chat. A new person joins, they should pay attention to the user's journey and go in there and say, what does somebody new coming in want to find out about what this is about? Instead of just saying, I'm just going to spend all day chatting. Right. That to me, is the difference between greatness and being just a general community manager. Now, when it comes to an engaged community, how I look at that is what I really ask myself is this question what would make somebody want to come back to this thing every day?

25:22

Tony

If you can answer that question, or furthermore, if you could break it down and invert the problem and say, what would make somebody not want to come back? Well, first of all, we could have no news or updates. We could never have any messages amongst other community members in here. Anytime somebody asks a bad question, we would shun them immediately and shut them down and say, don't ask that right. There are ways that we can invert that problem and come up with all the ways that we can literally have a disengaged community. Now, if we invert that, we can also understand the ways that we can create an engaged community. For example, if we're available on voice chat, like I was every single day, every day I was available on voice chat and come in and ask anything. Okay, so when we talk about engagement, what does that communicate to people?

26:04

Tony

Yes, come on in. I'll answer anything you want to know about the. Project. You want to know about what this wallet is doing, send it to me. I'll share it with you, I don't care. So that enables that engagement. Also when they're there in that chat, what are you sharing with them? And what I would also do is I would teach them how to find scams, how to use the scanners, how to go through wallets, how to find opportunities out in the space, and my own collective knowledge. So what that did is people actually found value of it outside of the project and that engaged them and brought them in a different way. Furthermore being random. So for example, we would do a Friday poker night and the Friday poker night, I would come in there and we didn't have a prize, okay? We do not want to set it up with prizes and stuff because you have to do that every week.

26:46

Tony

And you don't want to do giveaways. That's not the right mentality you want to create. However, what I would do is I would come in there and say, you know what, guys, for my personal portfolio, I'm going to give you an NFT. If you take out this other guy, I'll put a bounty on his head. The community manager, for example, is usually the target. So now everyone's having fun, they're going after this guy, he's like, Tony, why'd you do that to me? Right? And so you send people on them. But think about what that environment creates and then randomly that guy would get taken out, right? And I'd say, you know what, now this other guy, he's really giving me a problem here. Whoever takes this guy out, I'll give you another pet and I'd buy it off the marketplace. They'd see it, I'd buy it and I'd send it right to somebody's wallet after they took him out, right?

27:25

Tony

So when we speak about engagement, usually we're spending too much time in our own minds. We're not thinking about what other people value and why they would want to come back. And that's really what engagement is all about. So if you take the inverse of that problem, you'll be able to figure a lot of things out. And if you look at your favorite projects of what makes you want to keep coming back, what do they do? Right? You can steal so much from there as well that really you can leverage.

27:53

JP

Well, that's certainly a lot to think about, Tony. And thank you for sharing those particular points, because when it comes to a one on one engagement, it does become OK. But this certainly seems to be a strategy for a one to many. And I know that there may be more cases. Would you like to share some that you've experimented with or tried out which have been successful?

28:15

Tony

Yeah, sure.

28:16

JP

Or that you may be missing today?

28:18

Tony

Yeah. So one too many, how I did a lot of that was really being very active in my chat as the CEO, okay? So for example, in the Telegram, you can actually look at this a little bit differently. And if you're active in your chat all the time, all right, there's tracking tools that will actually show who's the most active person in the chat. From like a leader list, I was usually in the top five on top of everything else I was doing, right? And so if I am in there active, they see that I'm active. I'm engaging with people, and for example, they might like something that maybe somebody said that was nice or maybe they helped the project and want to recognize them publicly. What I would do is I'd actually make them a custom profile picture, ask them what their favorite pet was, put their name in it, and other people would see that in the chat, right?

29:03

Tony

So when we think about engagement, it's really how do we do things that are also visible in front of other people to show that we're rewarding positive actions, right? The other thing is if you also look at if you can leverage the engagement of your community and then take your social media posts and bring those into that community and enable them to help engage and drive that up, what that's going to do is it's going to dramatically extend your reach and your impression count. That will also help you reach new people who will then if you have a clear journey for those prospects or those community members to figure out how to get your chat, that's also a failure. Point we can talk about is people don't even know where to go, right? But that clear. I gave an example a couple of days ago on LinkedIn about a haunted house.

29:42

Tony

When I go in a haunted house, I don't get lost. I go right off the other end. If people got lost in a haunted house, be a disaster, wouldn't it? So it's the same way to think about it. But anyway, once they're there, now, I have new people I can engage and build relationships with, and then I put another post out there every day. And the more I keep doing that, the more I compound the reach, the more I compound the engagement. And that's how were able to do that where, not kidding you, even six months in on a Monday morning, I'd have about 80 people in the voice chat listening. And that was a project that was six months old. And the reason why were able to do that is from being a very outspoken outward leader that they see that is doing work all day long that they will respect for that.

30:23

Tony

Because most people are not even active in their own projects when you look at the CEO. So that's the easiest way to do it. If you're a founder, you're an executive, be active in your community. That's the easiest way to drive engagement. People would want to build a relationship with you. They love hearing from you and that's something that you can do. The only thing holding you back is effort. Right? That's it.

30:44

JP

Fair point. Fair point. When you have leadership down with the people, it works across multiple places. You see it across corporations, you see it across recently, I think who was it was Apple and that took a huge pickup so that they would be able to maintain staff. Those moves really connect a lot more with people within the company as well as a community outside. So yes, leadership among the masses. Definitely. Good move. Curious to find out.

31:21

JP

When you're working with, of course, communities, with these projects, you're choosing the ones that you feel are on the same wavelength with you are really going I'm trying to form the question here, Tony. In terms of the types of projects that have had wild successes and some of them, of course, not so much successful or have not really done some things that have been, they could have done better.

31:55

Tony

Right.

31:55

JP

To put a positive spin on it, what would be in your experience, some of these cases that have occurred where projects have gone drastically south because they weren't able to pull off x, y and z, right. If you've ever encountered those experiences and.

32:16

Tony

You’d care to share them yes. Not from any particular client. So I'll just be clear, I am advising no clients to launch right now. I do not believe the market is in good shape. However, I will not say any names, but I will mention some common failure points that I've personally seen. Okay. One of the failure points is when you have a lot of airdrops. So for example, if you look at the tokenomics of the project, that's the first thing I look at in the white paper. I look at the tokenomics and if the tokenomics, if I see a small fraction for public and a lot of private and seed, I'm out of there. I know that's going to be a disaster. So the tokenomics is also something I'm personally extremely passionate about because that's also a pain point that I experienced in my project where I got hit by a ton of selling pressure and I had to go back and recalibrate everything and I had it like a phoenix from the ashes, I say.

33:03

Tony

It was kind of where I had to go. And that tokenomics is a major failure point for a lot of projects they don't see and in fact, they spend more time in their marketing, they spend more time in development, more time in product than they just split the pie chart and say they did their tokenomics. But the main point is if the tokenomics are not set up properly so that you can raise a proper liquidity pool, for example, on a DEX, well, then you have a very thin amount of liquidity in which your project can become successful. The moment selling pressure comes in, you're going to have a ton of volatility and you're going to have a big dump and crash down at the bottom. So that's what I often see is tokenomics not really being set up right in projects. The other thing I see is when they make their smart contract, for example, with the token, they do not look at how they can prevent scenarios of, let's say, snipers, for example.

33:52

Tony

I've seen some really great projects that get sniped. And really what you're going to do in your sniper protection is you're going to enable trading at first, but you're going to have a timer that's kind of set. And when the timer runs out, all those wallets that would have bought get blacklisted, essentially. And the value of that is when you put your liquidity on the decks, the snipers watch for that and they try and be the first buys in and buy up all these different wallets across the whole floor of that price with small buys. And then when it pumps up, they sell and they can destroy your project. I've seen it destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars of value in seconds. So not having sniper protection in your token is also a critical failure point while also making sure you're not using a proxy contract for your token because those can be changed later on as well.

34:34

Tony

And that will disable you from actually passing an audit on top of having a Mint function in your smart contract. That's another thing I've seen lately is people do that. And if you have a mint function, you will also fail all the automated scanners. So that's a huge one that I see. Another one I see is in the marketing side. So for example, they don't identify who their target audience is, who their avatars are, who should actually be interested in their project. And as such, all their marketing brings in all the wrong people. And then those people are primarily speculators instead of the people who actually want to buy the token. And as such, when it does launch and things start taking a downturn, they don't have raving fans who want to use and buy more. They have people who will panic, sell and destroy the project.

35:15

Tony

And that all stems from how they built the project and who they enabled to actually get whitelisted and maybe buy in at the launch pad. That's really where the failures kind of set in. So these are the failure points that I see a lot in the market and then now lately, like I said, one other failure point I'll mention that's huge is on the development side. For example, I see a lot of people hiring development teams that say, you know what, we're going to charge you this monthly rate of, let's say it's ten grand a month or whatever it is, and they're going to have four people on the job. Well, they don't even have to manage the people because as long as they can bring in the clients and then they can rope them in, then they can hold them hostage with their code.

35:51

Tony

And let's say the people don't do a good job, what do they care? They're just marking up their rates. So if they can bring in more clients than they lose, they will continue to make money, and then they will continue to grow their business and continue to upset clients and continue to damage the reputation. Yet they're good at sales, and if they're cheap enough, they will rope in more and more clients. That's another major failure point, is hiring developers. So that's why I am so fortunate to have the people I have that are great people, because, man, I've seen that really destroy projects. I know people who have lost $200,000 due to development. Actually, I know two people that have right now. Two people right now have lost that. So those are the failure points that I will outline here. And I could keep going on and on, but we'll take another question.

36:37

JP

I remember you writing about this on LinkedIn. This is exactly the same point, and I thought it was absolutely fascinating, right. Because that's one of the things that you miss. You create so much of a dependency on a supplier without and it may be the case with a lot of us, because I personally am not technically inclined. So that will be a blind spot for me, right. But at the same time, this is such good advice for those of us that are starting web3 projects. Those of us that want to get into the industry as one of the flags to watch out for, right. You don't want to be held hostage when your key technology is with somebody else and certainly some point to look at very closely.

37:24

Tony

Absolutely. And I'll outline how to solve that specific problem is you have a fixed cost job with the scope of work. So you get very clear in what you're building. You take your time as a professional, write out all of your documentation on your product to the best of your ability. For example, one technical documentation I did was 22 pages long for a client. Now, if I bid that job out, good luck saying, I didn't tell you something. Good luck trying to increase my cost later on. See, that's the thought process you need to have as you're so thorough, well, that also enables that supplier to become successful as well. So now they can't say, oh, you didn't tell me that, or I didn't know this, and you get all this crap that happens after the fact. Well, if you're so planned out in front and you take care of that's why I say the project management part of me, that's why I leverage a lot of that is if you front load that with clarity and written verbal communication meetings.

38:17

Tony

You map it all out very clearly. You take two weeks to do that. You will save yourself months later on. And most people do not want to put in the work for the two weeks. And you know what? It doesn't make any logical sense to me because I'll easily wait two weeks before I hire somebody and then I'll just literally almost walk away, in a sense because I don't have to worry as much about it. If I can get a great person in and I give them all their instructions, all I have to do is just check in and disable roadblocks if they pop up that maybe I didn't think of. If there were gaps. So it makes it easier as a leader to manage your own time as well. Because you don't want to be managing all these developers either. It's not your job.

38:53

Tony

Your job is to run your project. So that's why I just share here briefly.

38:59

JP

And I'm glad that you did because this is certainly something that comes through years of experience across multiple sectors. And even when you're, especially if you're in marketing and sales, right? It's one of the things that you have to watch out for when it comes to vendors. Not everybody can be in the purchasing department to look at that specific function. But that being said, Tony, there was another point that you raised which I found extremely curious was when it comes to developing good Tokenomics, I'm certain that a number of people have that as a pain point. And it's not difficult to assume that a lot of projects would look at tokenomics, look at a similar project, having a similar function, copy that same tokenomics, but not really know how to make that function. Given that you've got some experience in this, Tony, what are some of the things know new projects should be looking out for when it comes to developing the Token architecture, token utility?

40:08

Tony

That's a really good question, JP, because you're right, a lot of people do follow the copy paste approach. I believe they don't openly admit it, but I believe that's what they're doing because they don't know it when you ask them the questions, right? Like how'd you come up with this?

40:21

JP

Like you said.

40:22

Tony

No BS. Yeah, I've actually had somebody where I asked them that and they said I made it up. And I was like, all right, great, now we know where we're starting off. Great. You know what I mean? I appreciate people who say that I didn't know I made it up. Great, now we can work. And so what I'll share is, first of all, there's a lot of resources online. So if you follow me on LinkedIn, I do a lot of content and tokenomics. I also have in my LinkedIn profile, the first featured section. I have a checklist that you could also look at that has 150 points. And some of that is also across the tokenomics part of it. There's a whole page on that, I believe. So when it comes tokenomics, I would encourage the listeners to just check that because that will give you a lot of information.

41:03

Tony

Okay. And hey, great to see you rich. So that will give you a lot.

41:07

JP

Yeah, there he is.

41:08

Tony

That will give you a lot of information. Now, let me just lay out what I'm also looking at. First of all, when I look at the seed and oftentimes the private as put together, if that is a lot of money being raised, well, what that's doing is that's doing two things. First of all, it's increasing your fully diluted market cap. Because now if I say, all right, I'm at a $10 million fully diluted, I'm going to sell a million dollars worth of tokens. Well, that's 10% of the supply I'm selling, okay? And the more I increase that, the more I have to sell more of the supply to a seed or a private who is usually at the bottom of the barrel price that can have the most selling pressure later, right? So when we think about that, what's our budget? What do we actually have to raise?

41:47

Tony

That's the question I ask myself is what do I actually have to raise instead of just how much money can I get? Like so many people are trying to get as much money as possible. They don't think about what that's doing. That's putting a lot of the supply in the hands of a very small group of people or stakeholders, rather. Now, instead, if I look at the public allocation, let's say that's 5% in the seed and the private together are 20%. Well, the seed and the private have four times more of the supply than the public, and the public might be tens of thousands of people. If you think about that dichotomy right there, that's really going to be usually the wrong pathway, right. And you want to enable the public, who are usually the stakeholders, of what you're building to have the most say.

42:31

Tony

Now, another thing that we also want to consider is if we have any kind of incentive, any kind of reward, here's how you do it. You do not have a separate allocation. You drop it all into there, and I'll tell you why is because if you have, let's say I'm going to have 5% and I have a $10 million fully diluted market cap, I'm going to have 5% of $10 million that's going to be sitting on the side for this, right? And if I give that out as an incentive, it's not aligned at all of the platform performance. What if nobody uses the token? Now I'm just giving out a bunch of tokens and I'm getting crushed with selling pressure. While I actually think I'm growing and I'm not, I'm actually killing myself. And the way to kind of stab that off instead is to say, okay, if we want to have some kind of an incentive program, well, let's reward it.

43:14

Tony

When value is actually created. And what that looks like is, first of all, understanding how tokens are actually bought from a liquidity pool. For example, if I have ether and I want to buy a token, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put my ether into that liquidity pool. I'm going to take my tokens out, okay? Therefore, I'm going to have more ether in the pool and less tokens. The price will go up. When I'm selling tokens, I put them into the liquidity pool, I take ether out. Therefore it brings the price down, okay? So it's really important to understand that relationship. Therefore, if we have actual utility on our platform, people who are buying the tokens from the liquidity pool, increasing the overall value of the token, then they spend it on a platform. They send them to you, the owner of the project, let's say, and you slice off, let's say, 5% of that as an incentive.

44:01

Tony

Now what you've done is you still retained 95% of the value that was actually in that liquidity pool put in, right? And so oftentimes, well, oh, the rewards aren't good enough, tony well, think about what you're saying is you want to give people things to sell the crap out of your token on you. That's what you're saying, right? Like if the rewards aren't good enough, it's not about rewards. And that's what I got frustrated in my project, is to me, it was never about a reward. To me, it was about building a technology. And instead it brought in the wrong people, okay? It brought in the wrong people who were looking for a reward. So what I would also share is that to me is a personal pain point, is when you think about value and how we're slicing off tokens, how we're using tokens, how do we make sure that it's through value creation versus value extraction versus just trying to get people in just to sell the token later on.

44:47

Tony

That's not what you want to do. You want to be able to grow organically, bring in the right people, show them your product, get them to want to use the product. And if you can do that, then they will use the token on the product. And then therefore, you will have price appreciation. Right? It's really not a complicated calculation, but also far too much speculation usually rolls in, or they set it all up incorrectly, like I said. And as time goes on and the vesting schedule unlocks, then what happens is they have a ton of selling pressure roll in with all the private and seed, okay? So that's really what rolls in. And then what happens also is any holders who see the unlocked timing will also begin to sell off in anticipation of that destroying the price. So these are things that I personally love to watch out for.

45:31

Tony

And by the way, I have about five minutes left before I have to kind of wrap up for another meeting here.

45:37

JP

Sure, no problem. But that particular point I'm glad that you focused on because that is, of course, fundamental and critical to having a successful project and especially the longevity of one. So thank you for sharing that. Given that we have five minutes, I'll do this, Tony. I'm going to go to the last question that I've got in my mind and then also open up some questions to the audience. For those of you that want to share, to ask Tony some questions, feel free to tweet them, to AdLunam Inc. or Tony directly, and we'll have them answered either on the show or if we are out of time, then following that.

46:16

Tony

Okay?

46:16

JP

So, Tony, the last question. You shared a lot about your journey, you shared a lot about the community, the type of people that create projects, what they need to be looking for, the reason you got into the Web Three space, how to develop good project tokenomics, and what to watch out for when it comes to working with other vendors. But I think I want to dive a little into the person who is Tony Drummond.

46:46

Tony

Right?

46:47

JP

And that being said, I'd like to ask you, what is your personal philosophy? What mantra is it that keeps you going?

46:56

Tony

Yeah, you know what? I'll just tell you? I did not do well in high school. I'm not a college graduate, okay? So everything I had to do, I kind of had to learn on my own. And that's really what drives a lot of my philosophy, is that, to be honest with you, I couldn't sit in a freaking art history class for 4 hours and learn nothing I cared about anymore. I couldn't do it. And eventually I was trapped in my career as a reason of that until I got hired off of that machine. And then I kind of saw my potential. And I was lucky to have a great mentor that taught me, you know, and I've always been big into learning, but he really helped amplify that in me. And now my philosophy is I spend at least an hour per day learning something new.

47:36

Tony

Whether that's tackling a challenging problem, whether that's reading a book, whether that's doing a course, whether that's watching a video on YouTube that makes you smarter and that encompasses a myriad subjects, okay? That encompasses myriad subjects. For example, it comes to copywriting, I have Robert Collier's letter book on my desk. I've read all those old school sales letters because I love learning about the philosophy of that. Recently, somebody mentioned the diffusion of innovations. I actually have the book right here on my desk next to me. I had the book there. It's a huge book. Nadja's read it as well. It's a huge, very dry, textbook type book, right? And I also Lean six Sigma. I taught myself inferential statistics. I taught myself Minitab. I've trained over 100 people in this methodology. So really my philosophy is that of how can I keep acquiring as much knowledge as possible so that I, as someone who I believe a core skill set of mine, is to take that knowledge, simplify it, and teach it to others.

48:30

Tony

Can do that. And that's sort of my philosophy. And that's what keeps me going, is that when I have calls like this where I can just share my knowledge, it really makes me happy. I love doing that because not only do people get to learn from it, and a lot of this was a lot of painful experiences on my end as well. They can avoid them of their own, but also it gives me a way that I can add so much value to my following, my community, the market in general. And I believe it will help make the space a lot better. So that's really my philosophy. And everything I do kind of aligns around that core purpose of how can I help enable founders to become more successful through my guidance than they would be on their own while reducing their costs, while reducing their efforts, while also speeding up their execution time?

49:14

Tony

That's really my philosophy. Anything that doesn't align around it, I don't do it. So it's really quite simple. And how can I keep going and growing and learning? And that's just really what keeps me going each and every. Okay.

49:30

JP

Keep learning, keep growing. Got that? Thank you for sharing that, Tony. Okay, I've got a message that's coming in from the audience because I know that we're tight on time. If I could take two minutes. The first question is, how do you do due diligence on projects that you want to launch or that you choose to work with?

49:50

Tony

Yeah, so really, a lot of it's kind of gut reaction. And first of all, in my process, I help map out the project very clearly in general, using mind maps, process maps, everything else. So when I'm doing that process, that's also a big part of my vetting process too, is there are clients, but I will judge how professional they are there. I will judge if I want to keep working with them there. But upfront, like I said before, I'm really looking for that professional profile. If yourself came to me, I can tell just from the way you speak, I can tell just from the way you present, I can tell just from your mannerisms that we would probably work very well together. So I judge by making misjudgments in the past and having learned from them, basically, that's the easiest way I could say it.

50:35

Tony

This person said something great and I went with it. Instead of just thinking back, did they actually prove. That they have done that before. Right. So that's also another thing is if you look at someone's profile and you see, hey, we just got off of McDonald's, Fry line, whatever. Granted, you have to work in your career. You're not going to be a fit for me because you're not going to be able to keep up with my start asking about business terms and stuff. It's just not going to be a fit in most cases. So it's really not going to be something I'm going to want to be part of. Right. So that's really what I'm judging, is that professionalism, not educational background, but also looking at do they have their things together? Are they organized? Are they professional when I meet with them, are they prepared?

51:11

Tony

Are they late? I'll tell you right now, somebody who was I actually sent them an invoice. They did not make the first meeting and they didn't even tell me. And I fired them immediately as a client. And I avoided their invoice. I said, I'm not going to work with someone who does that to my schedule. So I'll just tell you right now that's how I do it. And that has enabled me to find the best people.

51:32

JP

Fair enough. I think that does answer the question. So between honing your own intuition, which is a must for every entrepreneur that's out there, and looking at these particular signs, you get to know the kind of people that you want to work with.