Cyrus Taghehchian - Tokenize your engagement How web3 rewards loyalty

Cyrus Taghehchian - Tokenize your engagement How web3 rewards loyalty.

Participants;

JP ( CBO of AdLunam Inc.)

Cyrus (CEO of ShopX)

JP: 00:22

Welcome, welcome. Welcome to this episode of Diving into Crypto. This is JP from AdLunam Inc. bringing you everything about web3. We on the show, we look at the journey that's taken and made the leaders, the industry specialists, the candlestick watchers, the movers, the shakers and everybody in between bringing you their stories, their journeys, and most importantly, the insights and the gems that they have to share with the Web3 community. This is one of the only spaces the only industry is to be to be honest, where people will share very freely everything that they know. And we really should be grateful that we're here.

This show ladies and gentlemen is brought to you by AdLunam. For those of you that that don't know who we are, we are the first Engage to Earn web3 investing platform, taking projects from zero to IDO, as fast as they can go. And on the show today, we have a special guest who's going to talk to you about tying in engagement with brands and so we'll probably be sharing with you his journey about ShopX and the loyalty that will connect you to everything in the web3 space. Now that being said for and before we begin, I should remind you that you all have emoji buttons on your in this space, which I would like for you to use. As soon as you hear something that is a gem that's dropped or an insightful piece of information drop, tweet this to your friends feed this to everybody so that they can jump in on the show. But also tweet more importantly, what the speaker has shared with you that has been extremely insightful. In this journey, things that you have learned things that you would absolutely enjoy about that you've heard on the show, in case we get cut off the same way that I can get in in case we get or have come back to AdLunam Inc. and you'll find yourself on a building to get back to her and continue this discussion. Towards the end of the hour Ladies and gentlemen, we will open the room for question and answers. But in the meantime, hey, if you have some questions, feel free to tweet them in. We will either take them we can take them up on the show or we can have our speakers more than happy to send you a reply immediately after. That being said without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, let's do a quick sound test for a guest , Cyprus can you say hi to the audience in the room, eager to hear from you.

Cyrus: 02:54

Hey, good morning, or good afternoon or evening wherever you are on the world. My name is Cyrus Good to be here. Thanks for having me, guys.

JP: 03:01

All right, sorry, as you're coming across loud and clear, so stoked that you accepted our invitation to be on the show today. You know, I know that you are a strategic minded senior executive with over 20 years of being an entrepreneur, someone you know, top notch person in the technical and business execution you are good at Deloitte Consulting arm and Ecommerce and digital marketing. And goodness gracious, you know you've got successful exits. Being a serial entrepreneur, with two successful exits generating over $300 million dollars in returns for investors. That's a phenomenal track. Cyrus, you know, I know that there's much more to you than just a blurb about your journey as an entrepreneur. So please welcome once again, but do tell us and tell the audience, you know a little about yourself and who Cyrus is.

Cyrus: 04:00

Yeah. Thanks for that introduction. That's very kind. Yes, good success in business and my career is always great. But first and foremost, I'm a human just like everybody else. I enjoy humanly things. I live near the beach and sort of descending outside meditating, hockey, golf, reading, just like normal things like everybody else. But I got into crypto and 2014 My friend mentioned something about Bitcoin and I was always a tech geek innovator. I was always building the first computers when I was a kid. So you know, something that I was very interested in, I looked into it and I was like, Oh, that's pretty cool. Let me let me let me get some and about a year or two later, because Bitcoin when I first got in was about like a 500 to $1,000. I actually read the white paper and I was blown away about what Bitcoin and decentralization and crypto could do so I just dedicated my life to Bill obeying web3 technologies since then. And I've had the opportunity to meet some really, really awesome people over the years, you know, traveling and like-minded people who want to make life and the world a better place. And that's just my purpose right now is helping us leverage this awesome technology that Satoshi had started for us. And using that in a way to make everyday people's lives better. And so we can focus on the things that really matter, like experiences and friends and family.

JP: 05:35

Thank you for sharing that. Sorry, I, you know, I've heard a little about your introduction, and did a little background, you know, about what ShopX does and things that you're building? You know, every step of our journey brings us to a particular point, right? And there has to have been a moment in which as you said, your friend introduced you to Bitcoin, but I'm certain that there was a moment that that thought of thought of making the state and making you say, web3, is the space to be for me. What was that like for you?

Cyrus: 06:10

Yeah, that's great question, I can answer it two different ways. So I'll give you both. Two for one for you, guys are getting a good deal. This one topic sounds about

Cyrus: 06:22

Great value. So the first way I'll describe it technically. So there was a way I fell in love with the technology. And that was when I read the white paper of Bitcoin, it was around 2016, right around when Ethereum was coming out. And when I was reading the white paper, there was something in the paper that I just thought was very phenomenal. And that was that Bitcoin prevents something called a double spend. And for those of you don't know what a double spend is, it means that in the day of digital, everything is digital, we could copy and paste, right? So you could go into your computer, you make a copy of a file, you can copy any type of data on your computers. So when we moved our financial system, to the digital age onto computers, there was a method to copy and paste money, which we kind of still do with the Federal Reserve. But that's a different story that we could just print money and make money from there. But when we transfer money from one person to another, how do we know that the person actually took the money out of their account and put it into someone else's account or didn't copy it or did some sort of nefarious act. And that's why we have banks, banks are the intermediary to ensure that I take money out of my account and puts them into someone else's account. And they provided a service, and they needed to, but unfortunately, it gave them a lot of power, and unchecked power, meaning they saw all of the financial transactions, they saw who had money, who was making money who was doing and they use that information against the people for different in numerous different ways. They sold that data to others, they then saw who they could, you know, who's moving money around and use that information for their benefit. So what Bitcoin was able to introduce, and this is what I read as the double spend how it solves the double spend problem is that Bitcoin through its blockchain mechanism, and through its consensus mechanism, with a lot of cool math that I won't get into. But there's a lot of math that makes this work. You now could send money from me to somebody else without needing a bank and using something called the public ledger. And if we all know the blockchain is just a public ledger, meaning everybody has a copy of the database. So technically speaking, I thought that was a marvel in the internet stage, internet age where we bring truth, we could bring governance, and if people ask me, what is crypto if you could describe it in one word, I would say governance and that word means we're able to create a system, which is fair, everybody understands the rules. And there isn't any of these backdoor shady deals that happen similarly to what's happening, either in the gray markets, the government making deals that they don't want their citizens to know, etc, etc. Blockchain solves all of that. So technically speaking, I fell in love with that because I truly believe that people should be able to make conscious decisions and choices in their life and they need that with truth. Right? We need to be able to see what the truth is and let people make decisions what's best for them, rather than the government or media or central power, deciding on how to manipulate or, or use propaganda to influence people to do certain things, which is usually in their benefit, and that's not in the best interest of the human. So technically speaking, I thought that was a marvel that could transcend humanity and society into the next phase. of what humans are all about. I mean, right now we're in the consumerism phase, which I mean, I guess it's kind of cool. I like my cars, homes, gadgets and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, there's more to life than that. And I think from humanity perspective, if we could transcend beyond the kind of paradigm we're living in today, we could really do some cool things as species. So that was more you know, grander technical speaking that what I really fell in love with Blockchain, but from I would also say, in 2016, so around the same period, the community, the people, that the fact that there are other people out there that you know, money is great, I love money, don't get me wrong, I'm a capitalist. And I would like to maximize the efficiency of use of capital and money. However, there's more to life than that. And they're law, the crypto crowd, yeah, there is the noise. There's the Degens and let's go to the moon and buy some Bored Apes in which, you know, I have but like, you know, that part is fun. It is fun, right? But it's not life. And if you really get to know the people behind the projects behind, you know, Ethereum proud of that they're magicians or Bitcoin, with block stream and other groups of people, these are really brilliant people thinking about social issues, financial fiscal issues that are plaguing our society today, and having conversations with them going out dinners, events, and building a community that was really the big kicker for me is that we're like minded people, we want our freedoms. And, you know, we want to do it in a way that prevents another oligopoly, another monopoly, another, you know, centralized power from coming in, and extorting the populace. And having conversations with people like that just really gets me excited. So those are the two things I think, you know, the people and the technology are the two things that really made me fall in love with Bitcoin at first and Ethereum. But then just the web3 space at large over the years.

JP: 12:03

You know, the stars that there was a very impassioned jail kale an explanation of what made you fall in love with it? And of course, every love and conjoining of two souls, if you will, starts with a residence and an ability to communicate? Would you think that or would you say that technology is in that way, the communication for rebels?

Cyrus: 12:31

The communication for rebels? You know, I would actually say it's not the technology, the technology just the means to build the life we want. Right? So technology can be used for good it can be used for bad so I wouldn't say technology as a whole. But I'd say freedom. Freedom is the fuel for rebels, you know, we want to be free and then freedom also comes with a lot of different flavors, but freedom without wanting to harm others. Sounds very libertarian, but it goes beyond just libertarian because libertarianism is more about I just care about myself and nobody else data my way I'll stay out of your way which is nice premise. But I mean, we're social creatures, we want to be able to help each other out there is a lot of fulfillment that comes with being in service and giving back so I think there is this balance but to me, I think freedom is that like emotional driver to rebel against the big tech, the big Corp, the big government looks like my two cents.

JP: 13:37

Oh, no, that it makes perfect sense. You know, because people have had enough. And it's led to that necessity for this type of innovation. Right? You know, that. Okay, way back? What were we talking about? 2000, 2008, 2009, We started speaking about digital cash, we you know, we had Bitcoins, white paper out there. And, you know, I think in many ways a lot of people who were at the start of this you know, have been some of the biggest beneficiaries to be able to see bitcoin’s evolution, for example, cryptos evolution, for example, because they were right at the heart of it. And one of the, I'd like to share this part with you, because one of the ways in which you know that something's really taking off is when you have very rarely popular TV shows, start speaking about, you know, trends that otherwise are not so popular. So I was catching a rerun of billions where Bobby Axelrod you know, hands and moving dollars in Bitcoin on a hard drive, I don't know hard drive really on a hard wallet to do somebody else, as you know, as a manner of framing. And it struck me because it's relevant now, but I don't know how many people will recognize at that point. What that action meant.

Cyrus: 15:00

Yeah, bitcoin is pop culture. And that is evident by seeing it show up in Hollywood and other media outlets or YouTube. And it's becoming a bigger than itself, it's kind of becoming a symbol. And again, that symbol is rooted in freedom and essentially freeing ourselves from a centralized money printer that, you know, it doesn't have society's best interest in place. And I, you know, I've seen this happen in a lot of movies. I mean, they talk about it, and not just buildings, but Mr. Robot, if you if you guys are just saying that, yeah, it's phenomenal show that actually does show a dystopian future that, you know, kind of, we're getting into like 1984s, and then they use things such as Bitcoin. In fact, that show is really interesting, because it introduced this it was a foreshadowing where we are today as a society, they have nailed that they got that one fairly well, but I agree with you, I've seen a lot of bitcoins showing up in pop culture. And what that means now is, so it started off in Hollywood. And then we got into MSNBC and our financial media outlets, right, everybody was talking about Bitcoin back in 2017, 18, when it first hit up to 20 kind of died off for a while during the bear market, but kind of came back up and it's cyclical. But I think the thing that's really fascinating for me now, when it comes to Bitcoin marketing, as you were mentioning, it became a pop culture icon in like, 2015,16,17 after it broke, like 4 or 5 thousand. But now it's becoming something that is a unstoppable force. And I'll tell you why. Because of the ETFs and the Bitcoin ETFs, everybody's been talking about, oh, my god, institutional money is coming in. That's great. And yeah, all of that's true. But there's another element, a byproduct of the ETFs getting approved that I don't think people are really talking about, and that's Bitcoin marketing. If y'all don't know, Google and Facebook, they lifted their crypto bans on advertising crypto products, and what a coincidence that happened during the time that ETFs got approved. So now the likes of Ibet, the likes of Blackrock Vanguard, which now they said they want to get into it, and everybody else, they have a Bitcoin ETF, they could mark it on Google. Now, what's more interesting is that all of these big ETFs there's like 10, or 15 of them, the big ones, they have to compete with one another to gain customers for their Bitcoin ETF. So they're pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into advertising for Bitcoin ETFs. And that means that the average person is going to see more Bitcoin ads along with a reputable and when I say reputable, I'm just saying, you know, there might not be a lot of reputable things about Black Rock, wink, wink. But when I say reputable like a well known brand, and now you're going to see a lot of people see Bitcoin with BlackRock and they're advertising on Google, I've seen advertisements for it on MSNBC on TV, and that's going to explode the awareness and understanding of what Bitcoin is. And mainly it's because, you know, the government and big corpse and big banks figured out how to monetize it through an ETF, you know, all of the gain all of the money was in Coinbase, and Kraken and Gemini, because that's the only way you could really legally in the US acquire, you know, Bitcoin, because then, you know, the government could somehow track it through something, but now they have the ETFs. And, but I think there's going to be this bull run is going to be a little different, not because of the ETFs. But because of the ability to market. And the approval of the ETFs has now given the green lights from the government to these corporations to heavily market crypto. And I think that's what we're going to see a major change and shift and adoption in the next five years.

JP: 19:17

Indeed, indeed, on that note, very, very quickly, who's the next celebrity you think is going to come out with Bitcoin blink?

Cyrus: 19:25

That's the liberty with Bitcoin blink. This will never happen. But I would love to see this happen as Keanu Reeves. I think that'd be hilarious. And he's such an iconic internet meme already and you add Bitcoin to it, I think. Yeah, no.

JP: 19:44

I mean, it will be it will be epic in the next you know, the next installment of John Wick he came out and said of gold coins. You had a president.

Cyrus: 19:53

John Wick five. Let's go bro. Let's go.

JP: 19:59

That would be efficacy. Good. All right. So we, you know, I know that it's hard to, as you saying, right? It was always hard to bring crypto mainstream to have that same status as you pointed out a reputable brand in in let's talk about companies that have done that. But when it comes to these brands, right, it's always about people being able to identify somewhere. And for the longest part, or other at least up until now, you know, people have never had the output to say, to say up front that, hey, you know what? I stand up crypto in a way? How do you see this loyalty Building up? You know, in comparison to what mainstream over the years had so many years and decades to do?

JP: 20:56

When you say loyalty means specifically the ShopX or loyalty to web3 in general, can you launch either web3, in general, with loyalty to web3 in general, you know, literally being able to come out a lot more, vocally, be able to you know, just have federal regulations, and then it not be so in so many ways. So regulated. So, you know, suppress that using crypto is a bad word.

Cyrus: 21:25

Yeah, that's a good question. And this, it's very similar to the cannabis conversation that we had in the United States over the past 10 years, and we're still having now with psychedelics and mushrooms, is how can the government monetize crypto. And if they could monetize crypto, then we can talk about it. If they can't monetize it, then it's taboo. And then they're going to make us feel like if we do anything or talk about it, they're going to come after our money, they're going to deport us, they're going to sue us, they're going to come after us with IRS and taxes. It's a lot of fear mongering, and I really implore all of us to stand strong and stand up and be vocal. I mean, look, it's already happened. And what I just mentioned earlier about the ETFs, in the marketing, the way that awareness works is that you know, when someone sees something, you know, 6, 7, 8 times they become familiar with it, they become like, Oh, this is something that I know. And even if you only seen it eight times and passing on and on a commercial on TV, or whatever, that's still programming, assuming our brains are programmable in lots of different ways. But one of them is through sound and visuals, and when we're seeing all these advertisements, but that's going to really change the way we think about things. So let's look about this. Look at this historically, or maliciously men look in the past few years, what's been happening with Bitcoin programming ,FTX collapsed. Oh, my God and bitcoins the worst, right? There was a lot of like, block fine. Other things have went down. The media went to town. The government, though with some like senators and Congress people, they went to town saying that Bitcoin is bad. Crypto is bad. We must demolish crypto, there was a lot of angst amongst corporations, because they had public shareholders that they couldn't really want to talk about crypto, otherwise shareholders will sell off the government will frown upon them. The lobbyists want to be able to get the government to pass certain laws that they wanted, so that for two years, it was a lot of bad sentiment around crypto. And it's because that's what the media and maybe the government if you're a conspiracy theorist thinking that the government owns the media, but the media was pushing that narrative for whatever reason, right? Everybody has their own reason. But that's a fact that that's this overall sentiment about Bitcoin and crypto was bad. And now it's kind of changing. You know, now the sentiment around crypto with Bitcoin being at an all time high, a lot of people are like, Oh, my God, bitcoins great. And within all of this social media has been a wild card. Because social media is a little bit erratic. Like now there is some controls with algorithms that X and Facebook, Meta, Google have to be able to censor or change what people see, there's a lot of policies of what you can say or what you can say, in ads, or on social or how their algorithm will take your content and amplify to the masses. But it's it we live in a place now that a lot of people are seeing a lot of the corruption. They're seeing a lot of the inefficiencies in our system, and it's being really amplified through social media. And that's something that, you know, a government or a media or an entity can't really control and that does put a lot of power in the hands of Google Facebook, Meta, you know, Amazon in this sense, which is one of the reasons why you know, I am in the space and doing what I'm doing with ShopX. But with that being said, it's really important that you know, we stand up with our values and we stand loud and clear because we are, you know, the government works for us. You know, no matter where you are, most governments are set up in such a way that they are servants to the public. And we are private citizens, and they are public servants, meaning they should work for us, for us to be scared and not speak up. But what we want is exactly what they're trying to do. So I think we live in a time in place right now that there is a little bit of unrest amongst the economy and people because of the economy. And I think it's the time to get vocal and speak up and, you know, change the narrative change the direction that we're going. And I mean, I mean, I hope it's not through some sort of, you know, revolution and war, but we are heading that way. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, right. There's definitely different ways to do it. And I don't think we're savages like we were over the past 5,10,1000 years as humans, you know, doing what we're doing. But then again, we see things that are happening around the world with warm bombs still dropping, it's kind of disheartening, but we need to change. And the only way we're going to change this is to start changing ourselves and changing our local communities. Right? This is one thing I really realized. Like, if you want to change the world, you know, you have to start looking within yourself first and then changing two or three people around you. And if everybody had that mindset, it's kind of like the centralization. It's kind of like nodes. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, running your Ethereum node, if there's 5000 Ethrium nodes running, it's powerful. But if there's only one doing it, it's not because then you're just a centralized server, does that same analogy that a lot of people just need to pick up that attitude and mindset. And I think we're there I'm really, I'm really hopeful and grateful about where we are as a society. And yeah, there's some things that could be better, but I think we're moving in the right direction. It's an exciting time. For us, even though there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of hurt, right now, there's a lot of loss, you know, money is tight. For a lot of people, the income inequality has skyrocketed. So there's a lot of issues that are rising, but that's healthy. And it's kind of like a body, when you get sick, you get a fever, right? Right, a fever, you're going to cough, those are no fun. But it's a good thing to get a fever, because that means that you're shedding out whatever infection or cold that you have virus that you have, yeah. And that's what we're happening right now in our society and how we're structured, it's sick, we're coughing, we have a fever, that's what's happening. And this is normal. So as all things in life, this time, we'll shall pass to. And I'm just really hopeful to see the other side of what we put together. Like I said, one of the things that really got me excited and sold on what three, and crypto was the type of humans that were working in this space, that are trying to build for a better tomorrow.

JP: 27:47

Oh, indeed, and that's one of the things I absolutely love about the space is that, you know, even though even though you don't always have the opportunity to have too many people in the same, you know, in the same space around you, the very fact that you can reach out anywhere across the globe. So find people who are willing to help, willing to share information in you know, actually help build up what you are, what you're doing. And I think that that's, that's an absolute gem. I haven't seen, I've worked across 14 different industries, this this is this is the first one that's actually doing that on a regular basis. Right. And, you know, without expectation, right? So it also in some way ties into it also, in some way ties into the fact that you feel an affinity to, to, to a community as a whole. And I know that at ShopX, you're trying to build something like that. So you've mentioned ShopX twice already. Tell us a little about what it is you're trying to build with ShopX and you know, what is the what is the solution That it brings.

Cyrus: 28:50

Yeah, so I like a vision are high level, we live in a day and age now that government or centralized entities are controlling different parts and aspects of our life. Sometimes that's not a bad thing. You know, I always joke that, you know, right now, there's a lot of us that are sitting around and be like, hey, no, centralization sucks. All these big corpse and big tech and big governments, they need to go down, we need decentralization, and 100 years from now I could see a bunch of kids sitting around be like, Hey, we're totally centralized, we need more centralization. So I think it's a pendulum that swings back and forth, and we need to find a balance. But there is one aspect that I truly, you know, passionately believed, needs to be more decentralized, and that is our method of shopping, commerce retail. And I believe in free markets in a free market, you know, money and inventory flows freely, right? It's healthy money is like water currencies. Water is an energy and needs to flow and when it starts piling up and centralizing it gets stale like water. And if it becomes stale, it gets moldy. And then bad things happen. So when too many people just get too much of the money, bad things arise from that. And that's why I really believe that. I mean, why do we have money so we could trade? Right? So instead of fixing the money, we should fix the trade the protocol of how trade works. So ShopX is aiming to build ecommerce 2.0, the free market, or I'm calling it freedom economy, where we are building the protocols and the way that brands can engage with their customers without any other middlemen, interaction or intervention, like a government or even some big corpse are even more powerful than governments now, and they are dictating how trade happens. It's not based on merit, it's based on who you know, or if somebody likes you. And that's kind of where we're seeing what's happening in our, in our commerce markets. And the thing that kills me the most is that small medium businesses dying. I mean, I mean, I mean, COVID even made it worse. So everything is just going Amazon now. And this country, in the US, and just humanity, the spirit of humanity were explorers, you know, even before we started colonizing, we were nomads, foraging, you know, food from moving from place to place, we're explorers were frontiers. That's just the way humanity is. And as, as we built, you know, the US and a lot of other countries were also built off of this might not all but a lot of other countries were based off of innovators, people who were entrepreneurs who wanted to build a business that built a local business for whatever it was, it could be for creating shoes, or a blacksmith or whatever, that that spirit is starting to die. And ShopX is going to ensure that that spirit lives on longer, because that is the spirit of a human and not us becoming a slave to a big corporation, like Amazon going into a nine to five job working and just coming home feeling unfulfilled. That is the not the life of how a American or more broadly, a human anywhere should be living their life. Like I mean, yeah, there are times that you're going to have to do things to learn experience and wisdom. I'm not saying that don't put in hard work. And that's another issue. It's like, you know, again, it's like the fine balance. It's like you have to go through phases of your life to gain that experience and wisdom. And that's what Shopify is doing. So how does Tropics do that? So this is more broadly speaking of our like, our vision, that we're building a free market that doesn't have any intervention from a government or big tech that determine who's successful or not, it's all based on merit. And what we do now is we help brands monetize web3, that's very simple. And we do that in such a way that makes a more intimate relationship between a brand and a customer that they don't have to pay, you know, a third party intermediary or a government or whatever, which will reduce the deadweight loss. That's an economic term. Sorry, I'm a recovering economist, economist. But deadweight loss is just an efficiency in how money works. So let's say if I want to send you $10, but PayPal charges me $1,the dollar just went to waste because of it and efficiency, you know, in our way, we could exchange money and we needed to high pay people to do that. Now, what if I could send you $10 With only a one cent charge, right? That we just reduced the deadweight loss in that whole economy by 99 cents. And there are ways that we could do that with shop X and crypto at large. And that's, that's what we're showing that with the first version of ShopX we've already built, that we can build a relationship between a brand and a customer. And a brand can make money from a customer pays less, because the brand doesn't have to pay a bunch of other people. It's a win win situation for everybody. And if this becomes more of the standard, across more aspects of Ecommerce, we're going to get to a point where, hey, it's not Amazon, Google or the government deciding who becomes a billionaire. It's people deciding who becomes the next millionaire or billionaire or whatever. It's because, you know, the algorithms are set in such a place. Yeah, that's the great word. There you go. There's abundance.

JP: 34:24

Yeah, spot on. Okay, so, you know, I'm sorry, can you show up? Do you want you want to finish that thought? I want to pick on one more point to expand on exactly what you say. Yeah, let's go. Okay, all right. So when it comes to so obviously, you know, the holy grail for every business, the holy grail for every business is to have loyal repeat customers, you know, for multiple purposes, the practicality of having your steady income stream you know, the fact that you have people who will who will stay with you, you know, for the entire their entire life. Okay, right. But at the same time, you will know that, you know, Lauren T is a fickle mistress, right? It's only assertion that a couple of bad experiences or even something to the effect of, you know, it could be any experiences you can break away that aspect of loyalty. But that being said, in so many ways, how are mainstream businesses today still trying to focus on loyalty with a bent on, you know, innovatively trying to build up loyalty? I'm going to stop there and then look at again, once again, you know, how you are changing the narrative?

Cyrus: 35:42

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, one, while you build a business, there's been a lot of emphasis on, let's get new customers, grow. I mean, that's the Wall Street narrative, we want more revenue, more customers more. And that has an effect on how businesses run. So you get to a point where, and these social media platforms also added fuel to that, because now you could just go and mark it to the masses and reach a lot more people than before, like doing radio or TV ads, you know, how often were people on TV or radio, but they're now on their cell phones almost all day, you know, I think the average time that humans spends on their phone is about eight hours, that's a full time job on their phones, and then you can advertise to them. So there's been a lot of emphasis on that. And what we're seeing though, is, as more and more brands and companies have come into the market, because of the internet, it's become more saturated, and when it becomes more saturated. The emphasis now for brands is like, wait a second, hey, I could keep on trying to get more and more and more customers, but that cost me more and more money? And how do I keep the current customers I have that are paying me and turn them into a lifetime customer. And that's the part that we haven't really figured out yet. And it's kind of a broken system, because again, Wall Street doesn't reward us for keeping loyalty. Wall Street rewards us for getting new customers. But then from a business perspective, only makes money on costs, you know, their revenue minus their costs equals their profits. But when the costs are rising to acquire a customer, and the revenues are shrinking, because there's more competition, that means that a lot of more brands are going out of business. And this is a typical thing, again, in economics. So what do brands need to focus on, they need to focus on retention, customer retention. And unfortunately, Wall Street doesn't reward you for that, right? Wall Street doesn't care if you retain your customers, as long as you're getting more customers, more net customers in and out. And this creates another inefficiency. So this has been the problem. And if you're a commerce person, and if you're interested in Ecommerce or building your brand online or becoming an entrepreneur, by selling a product or service, there's a word you must learn, and it's called CAC to LTV and that's science for customer acquisition costs to lifetime value. So what does it cost for me to acquire a customer? And how long does that person stay a customer. So if you're selling a product for $100, and it costs you $200, to acquire that customer, you're negative $100. But if your lifetime value, meaning the customer will stay with you for three months, so after three months, the customer would have paid you $300. So that's a net positive, right. And there's this formula that you can figure out and I won't bore everybody on this call with all the math and formulas on this, but just want you to understand that that's the formula that these brands are playing, they need to figure out how to keep their customers around for longer. And that's the best way for them to protect their brand, their business and their income that they bring in. And right now they've started doing things like loyalty points, you know, he you can throw me an emoji if you have a loyalty point with an airline with Uber or with any product and a Sephora has it. There's a lot of loyalty programs out there. And what they're doing, it's a way to capture more of your money though. The all the loyalty programs today are a one way street, meaning it only benefits the brand or the company, it doesn't benefit the consumer. And the consumer may think it's benefiting them like I am spending hundreds of dollars on this product and they give me another $20 Free that I could go spit back on the product but you're taking your money and they're capturing it to be to be used at their store. So while there is some benefits to that, yeah, if you're somebody that's constantly buying one product and you're getting an extra 20 bucks, that's going to be good, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a one way street it only makes the brand a little better. And there are programs out there that are doing that. And I built one of my previous startups was building those technologies, I'll be, you know, I did a little bit differently than others, you know, trying to take care of more transparency and social commerce. But that's the state of where we're at today is, loyalty is really important, it's actually more important than acquiring a customer for our brand, if they want to be profitable, and they want to stay, you know, in business. On the other hand, we're being sold by the media on Wall Street, that you need to get more and more customers. And that's mainly for like big corporations. So there's a tension between the two, and a lot of people are lost when they're building a business. It's like, well, what's the most important thing I need to focus on. And I think that should be focusing on your fans, people who truly love your product, service them and take care of them. And that loyalty that base will create a defensible revenue stream, meaning that no matter what happens, those fans and those customers will stay loyal to you. And if you just focus on taking care of those people, that you would have a great thriving business and not get lost in this, Hey, I want to acquire, you know, 1000 or a million people and I want to sell my company for a billion dollars. Yeah, all of that stuff is cool. But if you just focus on the fundamentals, you might get to a point where you're making $100 million a year from your business and profit then why would you want to try to sell your company for 10 billion, or whatever you see on the internet or the news? To me, it's like, once you live your life, you pick a number, how much money do you need? I need to make $10 million, $5 million, even $500,000 a year, okay? Why don't you just go focus on that and build a community that will constantly pay you that money, and then build a product that's better than anybody else. And just focus on that. Don't focus on trying to, you know, go for, you know, if you're, if your life was set up, and you're very happy that you could spend time with your family, your kids, your friends, your family, you could travel, you eat? Well, you have nice things and you're happy, and you're making $5 million a year. That's great, right? Build that, make that your, your solid foundation, and then yeah, if you want to go build other companies to make more money, that's great. Or if you want to go travel the world, and just, you know, drink, Pinacoladas all day, that's great, too. But you, you have to build your business and cater to your customer base. And I think that's where the loyalty programs are failing today is that they're only benefiting the brand, most of the time and not the customer.

JP: 42:28

You know, that's such a fundamental point and look after with any business, right, you take care of your customers, your customers will take care of you. And it seems to be skewed now, just because of, you know, diktats from Wall Street, say that you increase your bottom line, increase your profits, purely for, you know, a centralized purpose, so to speak. You know, that being said, I'm glad you shared that with me, because I'm looking for more, you know, insights were outside as everyone in this room, you know, very outside as to how the system works. But Cyrus, you're an insider in this entire program, right? What are what are some of the things that you can tell us being an insider when it comes to, you know, online shopping or even building loyalty? What are some of the things that that we should know?

Cyrus: 43:29

Okay, I have some fun little tips for you. All right, I'll give you one really funny one. So you being in commerce, and I've been doing this for 15. Maybe longer, yeah, but 15 years. And what I've noticed is that every brand is out there just to get your money. It really is. And at least that's the way you should train your mind. Yeah, I have my passion. I love certain you know, things like I have like a mountain valley water die love to drink or freedom water that I have now too. And I have like, you know, my Greek yogurt and all that kind of stuff I love to buy. But I know that no matter anytime I see it anywhere. The purpose of the market, the marketing, or the literature, or rhetoric, or slogan, or anything I see is about programming me to buy more of that stuff. So if we understand that, that's fundamentally how the system is working right now. And I don't know that that could be a good thing and a bad thing, right? It could just be go both ways. But you just need to be careful as a human and you'd be critical thinking to be like, Okay, do I want to do I need to buy this right now. And if I do buy it, but if I don't, then it's just all noise in marketing. That being said, a lot of people a lot of brands are now getting smart with the way they market. So let me tell you something. If you go to any website, and you want to purchase something and you put it into your cart, and you don't purchase it That is called an abandoned cart. And that is a metric that a lot of brands follow. Now, why is that relevant? There's something in marketing and commerce called retargeting, meaning you retarget somebody you already targeted. So if somebody went to your website and put something in the cart, and abandoned, then you can retarget that person. And what a lot of brands, I won't say all but I would say 90% It's a very high number, it's definitely in the 90th percentile of times that it happens, you'll see that a brand will send you an email saying, Hey, we saw that you left something in the cart. Here's 10% or 15% off if you come back and buy it. So if anybody wants to buy anything a little cheaper, test this out, wow. Send me a DM, whatever you want to buy, go put it in the shopping cart, don't buy leave the website, wait two, three days, and within two, three days, you will receive an email saying, Hey, we noticed you left something on the cart. Here's a coupon if you make a purchase now and then you go buy that I have done that I least 20, 30 times a year. I mean, I don't buy a lot of things anymore. Just I'm trying to live you know, in a lean consumer lifestyle. But that when I do buy certain things, I'll just go leave it in the cart. And I sit down there and I laugh and I'm like, Oh, I know what you guys are doing. It's the oldest trick and an Ecommerce right now is retargeting abandoned carts by sending them a 10 to 15% coupon just if they make the purchase then so I hope you guys get a good laugh out of them and saves you some money. But that is definitely one of the tricks of Commerce today.

JP: 46:41

That’s a gem ,that's a real gem yours. Tell me something, Does it work? Does it work if I tried in a supermarket too?

Cyrus: 46:52

No, I haven't. I haven't seen the supermarkets retarget except Amazon. I've seen them work on Amazon. So if you do your shopping, and if you're living in the United States, and you know Amazon bought Whole Foods, and if you're using it that way , this only works in digital commerce or in digital retail. Right? Like if I walked into a store, there isn't the mechanics to retarget you IRL, I guess there was there. I mean, they did it back in the day. If you think about it with coupons, right? If you go to the supermarket, they know who you are. And they'll send you a coupon book and you look at the coupons. You'd be like, Oh, I could go buy this, but it wasn't as targeted. But that was I guess that was the first version of what we were seeing that would happen to IRL and they just built upon it and made it bigger and quote unquote better and meaning getting people's money by retargeting the abandoned carts with emails,

JP: 47:44

okay, okay, this is something definitely I'm certain that every one of us are going to try. It doesn't matter if you're shopping with us and gentlemen, just go ahead and try it. Because like you said, it's an algorithm that, you know, a lot of them would copy and a lot of them will follow. And hey, you know, if you're empowering people with the knowledge and information, why shouldn't they use it? Right? Yeah,

Cyrus: 48:05

exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's a brand that said it was okay, they programmed it in there. So you know, if you know about it, might as well go use it. If you don't someone else is going to use it. Right. So why would you get free money away? And unfortunately, what that does, yeah, that just increases the price of goods. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, yeah. Because then brands are getting smart. They'll be like, Okay, well, now that I have to give 10 to 15% off on a certain percentage of my sales, I need to factor that into how I price my product. Right. So this is where the inefficiencies of Ecommerce come into play. Like if we're building, if we're fully on the full ShopX ecommerce protocol, framework, meaning and ShopX is like, shopping isn't a website. It's not like amazon.com. It's like the internet for shopping. So think of what the internet that for websites. ShopX is the internet doing it for ecommerce Store, server, all the back end piping to make sure that all of the inventory and all the money and all the marketing is fair. And there isn't any type of nefarious bad actors, there isn't anybody stealing your money. And there isn't any, you know, big players like Amazon, Google or Facebook determining who gets to make money or not. So that's what topics does. And we build that through that piping of who on the back end, we build that free market that we're able to use. So just like you used to like we're using the internet today to talk right we don't see that the packets is called TCP IP, the transmission control protocol for inert. There's a bunch of little data packets that are getting sent between my phone everybody's phone on this thing that we're all hearing and everybody has a different type of phone. So the packets have to be normalized meaning the packets show up one way and they get transformed into something that every phone could understand. It's like a language, it's the universal language for computers to talk, ShopX is building the universal language for all of the brands to be able to communicate with each other. And if you do that, then you don't need Amazon anymore, because all of the brands are connected to one another. And he could create really cool stuff, economies and collaborations with that sort of technology. And I'm really excited that what Shopify is doing, and what they're bringing out, you know, for, you know, what we've already done for the past three, four years, and what we're going to be doing for the next 10,

JP: 50:34

Cyrus, thank you for sharing that with us. Because my next question to you was, you know, how do you envision this landscape changing over the next five years?

Cyrus: 50:47

Yeah, I mean, I talked about a little bit earlier. And I think this is a point, I'll say, again, if you didn't listen,

Cyrus: 50:54

the landscape is aggressively changing. And not because of, you know, a person, it's because it's a energy force that's happening, because there's a lot of issues within the rest of the world. So one of the things I mentioned earlier was the ETFs, and that's because the ETFs are bringing money in from institutions, but because now they're able to market it on Google, on MSNBC on TV. So a lot of people are going to become more aware of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin. So that is a huge driver in the next two years, I think that we're going to see a lot of mass adoption. Now with a lot of mass adoption. That's also going to mean that we need better wallet technology. Everybody here I know. Yeah. Give me a little crying face a happy laughing face if you know how difficult and joke it is to use crypto with wallets and, you know, hardware wallets. And what does it even mean? A lot of people don't even understand that a hardware wallet is just a key, you don't actually have your Bitcoin in the hardware wallet. It's on the blockchain, which is in the cloud, essentially. And your hardware key just gives you access to move the coins around in the cloud. A lot of people don't understand that. So there has to be a lot of education and better wallet technology. And we're already getting there. So there's the likes of cross mint, who's built a really good enterprise ready wallet system. We've worked with them. So I'm very familiar with them shout out to crossman's. You know, they're great, great technology and building the infrastructure for the mass adoption to happen. You have magic links, which is essentially using a username and password to store your crypto. However, the private key is now also embedded on your device using cookies and cash. Again, I won't get into the technical specifics, but they've built something really innovative on how to use passwords and usernames. So something very similar that people are used to today while still having the security of having your own private key. So very innovative in that I think those things were going to really change the adoption of Bitcoin. And when that happens, and a lot of people are left three brands I don't know if you guys know what this word means are Simps. Simps is simple as you know a guy who will do anything for a girl to take her on a date and it can be kind of a cute way or it could be looking negatively whatever. But brands are doing the same thing to get a customer. So when brands see all of these customers now have wept three wallets because they're easier and because of all the marketing and all of them are bitcoins at 100,000 200,000 There's a lot of hype brands are going to see that there is a way to create revenue from from these from these channels. And what's going to happen is we're going to see a lot of brands start accepting crypto as a form of payment. We're going to see a lot of brands start offering other sorts of crypto or web3 initiatives and we've already seen it with the likes of you know, Fox entertainment, which we worked with offering and NFT for their TV shows and creating merch back ends Mac parkland, one of our inaugural or customers we launched with check them out they build really cool hype wear and sneakers and hats and stuff like that using NFTs as a way method of creating loyalty. We've seen that with L'Oreal creating their own NFT loyalty systems and I mean who would have thought L'Oreal but you know the makeup shampoo and cosmetics line. They're heavily into web three right now too. So there's a lot of brands and they haven't figured it out yet. I'll say that like they haven't still figured it out. I mean ShopX if you haven't figured it out, come talk to me and ShopX because we we've helped brands make 25 times more money with us and help customers save money because they don't have to waste their money and pay for other fees and you know, the brands will have to pay Amazon and they pass those savings back to the customer so they attract more customers. But a lot of brands haven't figured out but once they do, and this will happen within five years mark my word. Once they do you're going to see a lot of initiatives and shopping and FTS or ERC 20 tokens or any sort of digital asset become a medium of Exchange Online for commerce. And I, you know, that narrative is a little biased because I have been shopping. But that's also why I'm building and timing is everything. And I think the time to build Bitcoin to change the banking industry that already happened, right, so if bitcoin is doing what it was supposed to do, a lot of those things are already happening. And I think the next major pillar to really change the day to day lives of everybody is going to be shopping, it's the universal language of the world, everybody shops, no matter what culture, what language you speak, where you're located in the world, there is some elements of trade and shopping. And I think that crypto will really, really change the way we interact. And we shop with one another. So that's kind of my prediction of what's going to happen the next five years. And that's going to cause a lot of panic, and governments, because now governments are going to lose the control that they had using web two technologies, because they control the data, they control the database. Now, there is a decentralized database with crypto no matter if you're using it for shopping, or banking or DeFi or NFTs. It's a decentralized database, and they're going to lose control. So you're going to see a lot of panic from governments, and they're going to be doing a lot of stupid shit. And if you haven't been following what's happening in the US, the US has been doing a lot of stupid shit, the past two years, because they're panicking. They don't know what I'm gonna say this one last thing on this topic, George Washington, which was the first president of the United States, he said that whatever the government fears that their time is coming to an end. So let me say that one more time, whatever the government, the Congress, people, the Senate, the President, and everybody else that works for the government starts to sense that the government is going to collapse, the first thing they're going to do is make a run on the Treasury. And think about why wanted that. And we're seeing that happen right now. We're seeing, like we between up until Obama as the US as the president, United States, we had accumulated what, seven $7 trillion in debt, which is the lot, but those that were like 2200 years of presidencies, after Obama till now 24, 25$ trillion in debt, and just what, eight years. So 200 years, we did $7 trillion in debt, which is a lot still, and then, what, eight years, 10 years, we've done $25 trillion in debt. So we're seeing the government start to make a run on the money. They're taking all of this money, and what are they doing with that? They're buying assets, they're giving it to Vanguard and BlackRock and whatever. And they're buying assets. So whenever we moved from this financial system to the next financial system, and here's another crazy tick, I think that's going to happen in the next. I think that's going to happen in the next five years, I think we're going to see a shift in how our financial system works for the better or worse, I don't know, I hope Bitcoin prevails and Bitcoin wins. But there's a lot of talks about CBDCs. And I'll say this, obviously, I think I hope everybody understands that CBDC's are bad. And if you don't know what that is, it's a central bank, digital currency. So basically, a government or central bank could then create a digital currency, but a digital currency while sounds sexy, it's centralized, meaning they could turn off your money and turn it on or decide where you spend it. And that's really scary. And that's already happened in places like Canada, when Canadian government turned off the money for truckers because they were on a strike because they wanted more money. And they were like, well, if you don't drive, we're going to take away money. I mean, you can't do that. You really can't do you can't do that violence. That's a violation of people's liberties. And, and, and freedom. Right. And he's in India. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can't have that happen. So we're seeing that happen right now. And George Washington was right, you know, and we're seeing the government print more money. I mean, in fact, I mean, call me conspiracy theories, but all of this war that's happening around the world, it's just a mechanism for the government to funnel money out of the US and money launder it through a war and then have it come back in USDT. I said that USDT is the government choice of currency that they bring it back in USDT back to the oligarchs of the US. And that that is, in my opinion happening. And I think what that means is that the government knows that the current form of the government is going to collapse. And when I say collapse, it doesn't have to mean burning buildings and famines and guns blazing. It doesn't have to be like that. But the way we're structured and the way decisions are made, I think it's going to fundamentally change. And go Who knows, I mean, we'll see what the there's 30 presidential elections happening this year, not just the US. So who's gonna win in the US who's going to win in some of these other you know, Pivotal countries? Yeah, and we're gonna see what happens but that's my thing. is that, you know, we're going to see a lot more crypto shopping. And we're going to see a shift in the way the government and their financial system works. I mean, even Jamie Dimon said that we're on a tenure cliff, meaning that the US dollar and the current economy and banking structure is going to collapse in 10 years, one of the most famous bankers in the world that goes to the World Economic Forum, that's part of the Bilderberg Group, that's the CEO of one of the biggest banks in the world. Well, I said that we are on a 10 year cliff, it's all going to come crashing down. And if he's saying it's a 10 year, Cliff, I'm telling you folks pay attention. It means we're on a five year cliff, you know, he's not going to come and say we're on a tenure cliff. And here's the thing, he doesn't want to take care of everybody out there. He's only trying to protect themselves and his family. So y'all, I'm telling you, you need to protect yourself and your family. You need to do your homework, do your research, make sure you stay aware. Listen to the right people. If you like what I have to say, Follow me, I make monthly YouTube videos about the state of affairs of macroeconomics and what's happening at ShopX. So follow us at ShopX labs, Twitter or on YouTube. But yeah, like I Jamie diamond saying that means to me, y'all, we got about three to five years left, and the current financial structure that we have, I'm not saying that it's going to be bad afterwards. I don't know what it's going to be afterwards. But all I know is everything I'm doing today has to maximize the financial,

Cyrus: 1:01:27

the financials that I'm putting for myself and my family. So that because after five years, I don't know what's going to happen. So I just need to be able to have the optionality to protect myself and my family five years from now. And I think everybody should be thinking that way, for the next five years.

JP: 1:01:40

Oh, indeedindeed. It's something to think about now. Sorry, I know that we've come to the end of the show, but I can't let you go without asking you this one particular question, right? You've, you've shared with us thoughts about brand loyalty, macroeconomics, you know, Bitcoin, and then of course, movies. But I have really have no, right. What's your personal philosophy? Mate? What keeps you going?

Cyrus: 1:02:09

Yeah, you know, my curiosity. Really? Okay. But my curiosity and ambition. You know, it's not just one thing. It's curiosity, ambition and kindness. So curiosity is the catalyst that kind of, we live in a world, you know, it's a playground, go have fun, right? The world is meant to have fun. And if you're not, if you're not enjoying the world, for all of the treasures, and everything it has, then I think you're missing out on the point of life. So it's just going having fun being present. And then being ambitious and ambitious, doesn't necessarily always have to be make more money, have a purpose, your purpose, because I want to start a family, it could be that I want to build my clothes, it could be, you know, I want to become Elon Musk and build a Tesla and SpaceX and go, you know, build cool gadgets, whatever it is, have an ambition. Yeah. And, and keep that discipline. And, and the last part is, no matter what you do, be kind, like i That's why I have my username the way it is. And that that is one thing that I have, you know, that's driven me to have much better experiences, life is kindness, and more importantly, be kind to yourself. One thing I can if everybody takes away, it's normal, how you're feeling right now, whether if it's good or bad, everything, everything comes and goes, time will pass. So wherever you are right now, just give yourself a pat on the back and be like, I made it this far. And that means something it really does, you are in your life right now, because of the choices you made. And, you know, you came into this world with nothing. Right? And you have something now and you're already in the positive, right? And then you're gonna leave this world with nothing. So it's just being grateful for everything that you have, and being kind to yourself and others and having fun while you're doing it. And just you know, stay curious. You know, life is an experience. Yeah, have fun.

JP: 1:04:05

Indeed, Cyrus, thank you so much for sharing your insights and your thoughts on the show. It was absolutely an absolute treat speaking to you. I know, we started with a few glitches, but we've, crossed the line. But I was, you know, I'm completely delighted to have the opportunity to speak to you today. And I'm certain that our audience listening now and those that are going to be listening on Spotify later as well. You know, we'll find a lot that they can resonate with. So once again, thank you so much for being on the show today. Yeah,

Cyrus: 1:04:34

thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun. And hopefully you all take something away from today. It makes sure you go put something in the cart, leave it for two, three days and you'll get an email for a discount. And then, you know, come tweet at me or tag me or DM me, you know, just tell me your story. I would love to hear it.

JP: 1:04:51

It's super rare. You've heard it here ladies and gentlemen. You know you can please follow ShopX as well .You can drop in your questions to him I'm sorry we're out of time, but I'm certainly gonna find some time to answer them. Thank you for being on the show today everybody this is JP from AdLunam Inc. bringing you everything about web3. Have a good one. Cheers.