John Riley III, VP Business Services at Orion | Blockchain & Business

The only podcast you need for your business, let's do this. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host Scott. Join me as we explore and demystify the latest trends, technologies and strategies used to achieve massive growth in 10X businesses. I'll be sitting down with sales, marketing and business leaders to dissect what's work for them, dispel myths and deliver actionable insights that you can use to ensure repeatable, sustainable and predictable revenue in your business. Welcome to sales versus marketing. I'm your host Scott and today I'm very excited to be sitting down with John Riley III. He is the VP of business services at Orion and Orion is a software company focusing on both traditional software as well as emerging technology. They play in the blockchain, IoT, AI and machine learning space, so that's very exciting. So, John's responsibility at Orion is sales and marketing. So that's what VP business services does at Orion. He has an extensive career coming from the military, John transitioned into various sales roles, enterprise sales roles at Oracle and SAP before eventually landing in the role of VP of business services at Orion. I'm going to let John tell his story, but right now, Orion, just to give a little bit of context, there are a firm that's been around since 2012 with a significant amount of software industry experience and they have recently expanded their service and product offering to include emerging technologies, so they're not new in terms of their business and how long they've been around and serving customers, but they are making a very smart addition to their core skill set and core competency by including the ability to build up these new, disruptive and emerging technologies for both small business and all the way up to enterprise. And obviously, I'm going to let John speak a little bit more about that as well. So thanks again, John, for joining us. It's great to sit down and chat with you. I was very excited after taking a look at what you do in the emerging tech space. That's something that I'm a huge proponent and fan and evangelist for as before I do what I do now. I was doing some consulting with emerging tech companies, so I get how exciting it is. But anyways, give us a little bit of an introduction, who are you and what are you doing right now? I'm really happy if you have business services now, so I've been there just over nine months now, primarily helping one of the company scale, along with new partners and new new customers as well by the mean and because of that company's been a place since 2008, 2012, sorry. So the founder of the company has been in the software industry for 30 years. Most are almost all of our clients, so those years have been from referrals. So we've never really had to go out and proactively market, which is great. We have just over. Makes your job easy. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. But now as we're looking at scaling, now here comes the Lexington branding, what's our new branding and it'll look like, how do we want to go to market with it? How do we want to work sales approach with it? Of course leveraging that existing relationship, all from referrals is always key, but how do you scale if it's just that? So that's kind of where I'm teamed up with Mark Asselin, who's the founder of the company. We both are in a blockchain space, that's how we're going to get together. And it's kind of been going from there, but in fact, and we have just over 115 developers that we work with overseas that we've been a part of Orion product for the past 10 years. So you started, so this company started in 2012. You started more recently, obviously, after you connected with the founder, CEO. So Orion, this is the company that originally started, and have they just sort of shifted from different software development, I guess, like have they changed their product rather or their service offering as the technology landscape has evolved over the years? Is that kind of what's led them to where they are today? Yeah, I think you just nailed it right there, because in this space, you have to pivot. And if you don't pivot, and the timing of it, and this emerging tech space of blockchain, AI and IoT, and all these things are going on, you have to be able to speak on it as fast as possible. So what it was happening is, three years ago, customers were reaching out from here on blockchain, so they were like, all right, we need to get the spin on blockchain. And as things were going, they're like, all right, we're starting to get a lot more requested on blockchain. And it wasn't their focus, because it only did the blockchain company. And we don't, it's more than a lot of, let's dig down to you talking to us as well. Let's see what your business processes and your problems are, and see if blockchain is fixed, not a fit. And let's figure out what the right solution is going to be. So from that standpoint, we haven't changed the model of how we got to market with that strategy. It's just that blockchain is at the forefront of so many and so much interest that we have to go, okay, we're doing a lot of blockchain projects. Let's go in the demand is it's not saying, hey, we're a blockchain company. We just have the skills that are around it. Very cool. So when, when you have all these customers coming to you that are very, like you are proficient in the blockchain space, which has allowed these allowed you to take on some of these customers, how do you in such a, you know, a hot market kind of like you would have probably had to deal with in the dot com. How do you source through the good clients versus the bad clients, the ones that you actually want to bring into your business to help Orion grow to keep like the Orion name as a strong name, a strong provider, and sort of get rid of all the bullshit, really. And that's the thing and I think is, you know, you have the background block as well. It's shifting through and qualifying as fast as possible. It's qualifying people you want to partner with as fast as possible. So when it starts saying, oh, we're going to blockchain this and that, we know this. But we want to start getting down the weeds and asking these questions and you're seeing that they don't have that kind of tangible background to it. And you go, okay, what do you think? It's like solving it. But even with clients of, you know, hey, we're going to a blockchain project and we're like, well, why? Why do you need blockchain? How much do you know about it? You know, you want to go with the people that have at least done, I say, five minutes of Google research on it to know, okay, okay, this was going to miss you. And I just, hey, we need blockchain, you know, like, okay, well, do you know these things are going to change? Do you know the business process are going to change? You know, you know, you're going to manage drives are going to change. Well, we haven't thought about this as well. It's not different from other technologies where, oh, let's install it. We'll figure it out. We'll do shadow IT on the side of the thing. We'll figure it out. Blockchain is not that. So do you, do you find a lot of the clients that you're selling to our entrepreneurial early stage? Or do you find that you have enterprise type companies that are looking to integrate, like, what's your, what's your target, your target client? It ranges. We work with enterprise companies. We, you know, a few projects right now in the price size companies, but because we have the entrepreneurial side of which we'd like to start up, but there's a caveat to that. And it's a requirement, you know, a lot of them want to come to you like, hey, can you build this product and we'll give you equity or let that or, you know, the ones that we're still doing tokens or we'll give you tokens and we're like, no, no, either you give us feedback. And if it's successful, we'll look at many thinking equity and setting that standard of place allows us to sit through or push out the people that are just coming at us and entrepreneurs or the ones that are serious. We got funding. We want to give you this to build our MVP force. Okay. That's our problem. We'll do that. That's funny. Entrepreneurs, they're like, they're such dreamers, but it's like, you know, you have to, as a business, you'd like, you get excited about some of these projects, but you really have to, you know, you have to almost like tell people to simmer down and think through their process because I'm sure like, if they're trying to build it their business, you're probably one of the first people they go to before they are even pitching to investors or validating like their business concept with like friends and family. So they're going to you and then you're the one who has to sort of be like, hey, listen, we'll slow your roll like, that's very, that's an exciting space to be in, man. It's a crazy space to be in, but it's exciting. Absolutely. And, you know, as now's the past few years, and you're in a place, this blockchain, I tell people, you know, before blockchain is to move at a fast nail space, but when you're in it, I mean, it's every week, you're like, what happened, what, who just did an update? And I look at last year this time in 2018, you know, blockchain just made a few parts of the crypto winner and night and, but at the end of the year, there were so many enterprise companies that got in a blockchain or I was like, wow, yeah, it moved faster than I saw it. And, you know, now you have all these, you know, protocols out there that people like, well, what's going on? And it's hard. How do you keep up? How do you keep up? How do you keep up? How do you keep up? How do you properly, how do you even forecast like traditional business practice? How do you forecast? How do you, how do you manage your pipeline when, when every single day there's a new tech coming out, a new protocol coming out, you have companies like IBM that are involved in the space, you have like all these major enterprise, I know there's a whole bunch of enterprise companies that are involved. So how do you, how do you even, you know, maintain a sensible business practice like that? It's, it's really making for the education that preparedness is up front of anybody's going into it going, hey, you could be looking at quarter today. But you know what, me here, you might want to switch with Aaron, you might want to switch to Hyperlegic fabric, depending on what you're doing and be preparing them because the mentality, I mean, my background is to work for work for a number of years and I say big. So I think solving service is case so so that old mentality of, hey, we'll buy it and install it and we'll wait until version 2.0 comes out, blockchain, you can be like, okay, what just happened? Okay, I need to switch. So setting your systems up to unplug and unplug something else is going to be ideal. To change that mindset is the hardest thing to prepare people for. So we look at the pipeline and say, hey, we want to probably want to start this project now, but we have to date on what's coming down the pipe and preparing for our clients are saying, hey, we're starting this here, but we know what we've been hearing the noise on this. It might be better to move this because provides more value in your vertical, whatever industry you're in. So so what what I'm hearing and correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying is even though you're in a fast moving environment, the way that you're educating your customers and helping them understand the industry as a whole, which is in my opinion, the best practice for a marketer or a business to try and grow. You're still, it's still the same thing. It doesn't, it doesn't change. You're still top, but you know, you're forefront of education. You're keeping people informed and you're like that subject matter experts. So when they go to you, obviously provide the service, but the most important thing you do is keep them educated and sort of just in line with the way the industry is going because they may not know and they may not have a concept compared to everything else they've known before in terms of traditional like SaaS products or technical products, okay? Cool. Yeah. And I think you know that because you know, that now you see digital transformation coming to place so much more and even I mean, I have to grab a chance to get different conferences when I come to blockchain media groups and having it back up with all the services. This transformation used to be a kind of a buzzword, but now it's really relevant because you have this in text and you look at this transformation, people think it's just about technologic. I think the mindset and the culture have changed that when you get executives into it and like, oh, we want this, like, no, no, you need to change how you're going to market, you know, your strategic roadmap is going to change. Are you prepared to get your build up this thing? And it's a different thing and that's where it's hard for people to grasp when it comes to blockchain. They're like, well, it's just a McDonald's, they're like, no, it's not. It's more 80% business, 20% technology. Yeah. And I remember, you know, reading my first article by Deloitte Consulting when he said that and that's when that's when the resident was like, wow, it's more than business side changing. Yeah. IT is the handle of technical side, but that business side is going to be disrupted and you talk about here's the change, you know, I'm like, all right, I want to see it. So that whole workflow from when you, like, you throw out your entire business, like even down to, like, so you have your sales, your marketing, your finance, your customer success, every way you interact with your customer, if you're implementing a new technology, it impacts like external, but it's massive, massive disruption internally. So it's not just like you just bought a new piece of software, you implement it, you set it, forget it. Like it's, it's, it's more invasive. It permeates the business more than that when it's so disruptive. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. And that's where a lot of people in the executives, especially the sea level, we have the heart of grasping that. They just want to buy it, tell my guys to put it in, we'll learn about it on the way we go. Even in my short form, they buy stuff, okay, I'm like, well, you need to get, you know, don't worry, our guys are smart. I'm like, no, this is your responsibility now. This is different because if you're not before from leading a change with it, how are you going to get everybody else to follow along saying, hey, we need to change our governance models now. How do we do that with blockchain? People are still trying to figure that out. So just that preparedness right there is key. So, and I told people, hey, you want blockchain, but are you prepared to go through what's going to be needed? You know, if it's not some exchange or tokenization or something like that, and it's just enterprise-wide that you're changing, you know, just to see what map and HR and supply chain. You know, you look at Walmart where they got into a 2016 by last year, they're mandating companies to be on it. And I was like, okay, you know, if you were one of those companies that wasn't prepared, what were you going to do? I like to think that Walmart came the heads up, but then the day, that's where the destruction comes. So how did you, okay, so that's great. So people that are obviously listening, they kind of know what blockchain is. You went into some topics that some people are listening, have no clue what they are, but like high level, like it's very disruptive. There's so many use cases for it. So to put it in perspective, it's a technology that isn't just pigeonholed into one particular business unit. Like it's not just sales or it's not just supply chain or it's not just accounting and finance. Like there's so many different use cases. It's just infrastructure. It's like replacing your entire core business infrastructure. And there's been good. There's been bad. It's been, you know, it's been all over the place in terms of the industry. Yeah. So that's, so that's really cool. It's really, I think it's a very cool space to play in and I've worked with blockchain companies before. But just to keep it more, to more generalized, how did you find yourself, you worked for Oracle. So obviously you're a tech guy. So what's your, what's your background like, how did you get into this because it's not something that everybody just falls into, right? It's not as funny, you know, working in the world without the software out of business spaces. You know, you get a mindset, okay, it's what to do with these versions, here's a news tool, here's a new widget. I came up with blockchain by chance. And I was in an airport reading a feebley store, it's a blockchains, unhackable, it's going to change the world. I was like, nothing's unhackable. And what I got into it, I started reading it and I was like, wow, that's different. And I started asking the engineers, I worked with it, none of them said, oh, I'm not to speak on that. And that's what it interests me. I'm like, okay, I'm a sales guy. So if you don't know about it, I don't want to know what this stuff really is now. And I got into it. I read the book, Blockchain Revolution by Donald Alexander, and such an easy way for me to understand from a business side of, it wasn't going into the details and technical side of past times and all this thing, it was like, here's the business impact. Here's how it's going to change governments and social good. And I was like, okay, and I started getting excited about it. And what got me was, I started with talking to people and lived in kind of like how we connected globally. So I was with talking to people in Singapore and in Sweden and in Italy, and I was always asking them, can we have a call? Tell me what you're doing, Blockchain. And I always get a different story. And that's when I was like, everybody sees value in it in different ways. Like you said, use cases. There's different use cases depending on where people see the value. And I was like, wow, this is not just business, it's even social good for people to have access to banks and be able to land rights and property rights. You can store in this immutable database or legend with people off there, I'm familiar with it. And I was like, okay, this is different and it's evolving. And honestly, I thought I was linked to the game, like I do it. And people like, no, no, no, you're really, really early. So in that kind of, I say, I went in the blockchain radical up to a two, three in the morning throughout the week, my wife's asking me what I'm doing. And I was just like, I'm a lot of studying. It's like, really, it's two in the morning. But it kind of got me and being in the space was like, okay, this is great, but as time has gone on in the past three years, you see how it's changed. So you have to understand how do you pivot? So yeah, that's a great technology. I'm still with them when they got the AI and machine learning that I'm evolving now. But now say, okay, I have a great understanding of this. I have a heart to call myself an expert. I say, I'm really proficient in understanding blockchain enterprise-wide. Yeah, there's a few lots that I agree with consider experts. But like I said, you have to be in every single day, and it's impossible to learn everything about blockchain. So talking to people like you and other people is how I even educate myself as well. So your sales guy by nature, what makes you think, okay, this is an emerging technology. I know that I can sell, I've worked for some tech companies. I want to pivot my career and work in such a disruptive space, knowing that it changes. That's such a risky for a lot of people, a risky groom move, right? Yeah, it was, and it's kind of, you know, it was, I found it, I think I found a technology that I was passionate about. I mean, that's what it got me. That I saw a bigger vision done, or it's just your back office changes just for HR or CFOs organization. This has impacted so many different things in the world and global level. That's what I like. A global technology that I spoke with people like, wow, I can even look at different areas to be in. It's not just that I have to focus on supply chain with this. I have to focus on finance with this. I can have a conversation and go in any different direction and still not feel like, hey, I'm not even fully up to speed on it, but I like that because then you're not complacent. So when it comes to places, it's so easy to go, yeah, I know about that stuff. And with the next version, it comes out and I'll take a certification. This is like, you ask the steering toes with it. But it comes with this because you do, I call it, you do get blocks of burnout. So you can definitely talk about it way too much and get to the point of, okay, I don't want to answer another question about it, but knowing how to navigate that, to me, it was the exciting part of it. That risk you talk about coming out to renew it, just before I come over here to Orion, that's where maybe you might be consulting advisory company because I wanted to have people get started and how to prepare for it. And that was a risk. So jumping off that edge and just kind of that, a guess of, okay, I'll take this risk. But I knew it was going to be something that was, it's emergent. So like being early for the internet and I thought people, if you were around then, you know, hindsight of 2020, would you invest in Amazon when it was $15 and it was, you know, 2001? And I'm like, this is what you need to prepare because you don't know how impactful it's going to be from a business standpoint for what you could do for your organization if you kind of take a visionary approach to it. And that's the hardest thing with it. You know, you have to get a big, a big professional approach with it. Yeah, that's, listen, honestly, man, I can, I think it's amazing that you, that you took this leap and that you're, you know, it's a, it's a certain type of personality I find somebody that actually enjoys that risk and, and the opportunity to learn. So it's definitely, um, it's definitely something that not a lot of, not everybody has, but obviously somebody who can exceed and excel in this kind of environment and this, in this kind of industry, um, you need to have it for sure. So like, if I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm just looking, you know, on, you used to be in the army. Is that, is that correct? Is that where you came from? Orange. Yeah. Do you think that, do you think that that led to, um, uh, like was that a personality type jumping from, uh, the Marines, um, and, and massive respect for doing that? Uh, so thank you. But moving from the Marines and being able to jump into a tech job, um, is that the same kind of jump that you had to make when you moved into into blockchain? Honestly, it's, it kind of prepares you because, you know, in the Marines and military, you have to prepare for the unknown. You have to have that certain, what they call, you know, 42, you have that mental toughness to, it's going to be in line. It's going to be hard, be prepared for the unknown, be able to push through it, suck it out because it's not going to be easy. That friend of mine definitely helped out going into the tech space because it was something I'd never done before. I mean, like, I got out of the Marines, the flood's going to be a cop and life just throws your curveball and get work out that way. And as I got, I was, okay, what do you know about software and my, nothing? But when my father was, you know, military and Marines, like, you teach him how to do it, I'll learn it. So I said, you give me, I stopped training, got hired and went a bit selling past a lot of people was working with it. It's been there for a while. It was like, okay, once I get the speed of it, that's fine. That helped me go and, okay, what else could I be a part of? And as I got older and kind of got an Oracle and knowing that space, like, okay, this is new emerging and a few other companies or enterprise companies are already on board. That's telling me there are indeed departments and already done a ton of research on it. So it's not going anywhere. And despite, you know, people understanding what Bitcoin, the difference between Bitcoin and blockchain was, once you understand how you go, wow, I know where the value is, that's my focus is going to be. And the fun thing was, I learned about blockchain before I learned about Bitcoin. So for me, it was easier to really grasp what I could do because I learned about Bitcoin second, but okay, now I see, get the tie together, but my passions are going to be blocked. Because now you understand that's just one use case of the tech. So if you, and I think a lot of people, because of, you know, mainstream media learn about it the opposite way. So I don't know who this is a quote from, but it's something like blockchain is only famous because of Bitcoin or blockchain is only known because of Bitcoin. And the real way that you should learn about it is understand the technology. And then you understand Bitcoin is just one use case of it. That's really cool. So I thought you were a military and I just wanted to ask because I always like talking to military guys because they always have a really cool story because you went from, you went from military right into Oracle. And you know, that's just very, very cool. It's like, there's a little gap when the Marines in Oracle, so I was from the military to working at a bank for like four years. So I then went to, which was helpful, you know, because for me, the bank was like the military. It was very, very rigid and corporate in the life. So we fit right in, anybody was in the military there. But then I realized just two, I was like, okay, it's too stiff for me. I want to be more sales. I want to have more, like you're talking about being more comfortable. So I got to sales. And in software sales was great. One, I love the travel, two, it was like, okay, I can learn something new and I can nation push myself outside of what I thought I could do before. So I find a lot of people who get into sales, they don't do it intentionally. And there's not really, there's not really like, like I think now there is some schools teach sales. But if you look at all the different business units, like you look at finance, accounting, you look at marketing, you look at HR, there's all these courses and certifications where sales, you just, a lot of people are just do it. And they kind of learn as they go, right? So that's what it, but it's, yeah. And that's nothing about sales because sales evolved. You know, yeah, but sales techniques from just three years ago and what they thought would work then is not totally different. You add in social media, you add in these different avenues to reach out to people to resume yourself. Yeah. And it has to be done in a different way because, you know, you have to evolve. You can't be like, hey, you want to buy me stuff? No, you want to buy my stuff? No, you know, it's different. So you talked about Orion was, it was a major player and it was getting a lot of referral business. And now you're trying to grow it. So walk, walk us through sort of like the strategy. So if it's like marketing strategy or a sales strategy that you're trying to build out with the presence of Orion, you know, do some biz dev, reach out to new clients. What's, and are you sort of leading that right now with, I guess, the founder? Yeah. What we're leaving that initiative right there is really, some of the more than strategy, the sales chance strategy approach. The partner alignment is also very key, especially in the space of consulting it, but you're just in a blockchain space of teaming up with the right people, you know, people that are unfamiliar with blockchain, you're here with consortiums. And they always say, blockchain is a team sport, but there's no way you can tackle it by yourself. But if you team up with the right people, that's also one of being tasked with finding the right partners to team up with. But then you look at the sales strategy, the marketing strategy, it's like, okay, now we're going through rebranding. You know, we're rebranding the website and our logos and everything. And then our, even our messaging is going to be different. So that is another stage of, okay, we were doing this for a long time. Now we didn't know we need to change the shook gears. Do one more business, then we need to show that we have the experience. We've done, you know, over 30 or 40 projects in blockchain, we have this strong developer team that we work with. We have tons of experience in the software and software development. Yeah. So to put that out there, it needs to be done in crafting the way that it's not overbearing. It's just saying, hey, you're the facts. It's not being bragging. Oh, look at us. We've done this. Like here, we've done this. We've worked with willing apps. We've worked in, you know, we'll show it like all the use cases and really just the social proof behind your company. Yeah. And do you find it difficult in, in like a fast moving, more or less unregulated space to differentiate yourself as a company? Yes and no. I mean, one, because the nice thing is because we're on the enterprise side, it's not really a hammered hub, I'd say held back by the regulation, because really, you know, you look at corporations like, you know, like we said, we put our Walmart or you look at JP Morgan and, you know, you look at Bank of America, all these corporations now that pushing forward these blockchain initiatives, it's like, okay, it's, you know, there's nothing to regulate. It's just finding their value on it. Now, it's getting people to see that why would they invest all that money in this technology if they didn't value on it? You know, here's why you should probably start looking at it. So kind of bringing that messaging in an educational way, I think it's key, it's not just, hey, you can do this, this, this, this, and this, and it's going to save you this time. The messaging is different. It's not functional as it features. It's more like, hey, here's the value. Yeah. So craft messaging, marketing around the value part, you know, I think it's more important than ever with the blockchain, so that's kind of the strategy we're taking with it. No, that's smart. And I guess you deal with a lot of misconceptions about the technology in your space. And I'm assuming yes, but obviously enlighten me, but what are some of the, the largest misconceptions that you sort of have to overcome when you, when you speak with companies, when you educate them about blockchain and what it is and what it isn't? Yeah, it's, it's funny because, you know, I thought it'd be passive, but a lot of people still like, oh, and that's that Bitcoin stuff. And I go, okay, you know, and it's, you know, for the past three years, you're still explaining that, but it's showing, and it's the basic education is the kind of misconception of, do you understand what the value is? Do you understand what's going on? I tell people, look at blockchain on a global level, not just where you're living in the US or Canada, look at what people around the globe are doing with it. And I throw out, you know, why is the buy moving the entire infrastructure to it by 2021? I said, that's a huge step, and that's a major investment. So when you think about, we do the research, I say, why would they do that? Why would they go ahead and do the, why are these other countries, a China and Estonia, we would put it all the way in place years ago? Why would they go ahead and take this technology that's an innovative and be the first ones out there? So the thing is, it's really saying, hey, if you're going to be like the market, you're really setting yourself up the failure. You're going to miss that trend for at least. And it's not to say, because they're so ingrained in how they know to do things now, it's hard to get on a thinking, and that's the challenge right there in misconceptions. And when you, so that's like the biggest challenge that you're facing as a company right now, that's, this people just aren't thinking bigger, broader, global, basically. And for the people that do come to us, they know about it, it's not, it's, it's a nobody from any conversation. As long as we know that the product they have, and they've done their research and, hey, here's why we want to use blockchain. We want to fractionalize the world, tease on oil and gas in this well. Okay, let's help you set that up to doing the way, or you're setting up a real state investment trust. Okay, we want to be able to fractionalize this in a way, but cut out third party vendors. Okay, and you know exactly why you want to use blockchain. Yeah, it's the ones that, if they come to you and they're like, oh, one blockchain, you go, why are you like, well, you know, we heard, we heard it can help us with this. Yeah, Ken, but what else? Do you know what's going to mean? And that's where it's the challenge is for us. It's not necessarily going to find those customers. We want to put it out there for the ones that are ready. There wasn't one to talk to. Not provide, not convinced them aren't, I say change or mindset. Yeah, you don't want to, you don't want to persuade people that aren't, aren't already somewhat on board. You kind of have to like qualify those out because that's going to be a heavy lift. But the people that are already looking forward and in the right direction, those are the ones that you can sort of bring over and sort of point in the right direction. So to speak, but you also mentioned something that's very cool that you mentioned consortiums, which traditional, like a traditional business development strategy would be a channel or a value added reseller, it explained for people listening what a consortium is. I don't even completely know what it is, but I think that it's kind of like a reseller channel or a partner channel or a partner network. How do you build those out like where do you find these people and what value do they bring? Is it sales, is it marketing, is it software development, is it just like, you know, you're sharing customers information? I don't know how that works. So explain that one. Yeah, if you look at consortiums, it's really, it's a new business model, a really blockchain that's going on. And I remember the first time I heard it, and the executive from IBM was speaking on the conference and I was still new to blockchain. It was a blockchain to team sport and I kind of laughed. Because it's the only technology you're seeing competitors team up to tackle how to use this technology with putting new processes in their vertical. So you look at supply chain. So it's blockchain traditional lines has all these supply chain companies apart. We have Walmart, we have Home Depot, we have all those organizations that are, what they're doing is they're coming together sitting in a room and say, hey, we're all looking to leverage this technology in our space and they might, I mean, they might even like each other. By the same, we know if we can come together on what the standards are going to be with this technology for us, then we can all leverage it in a way that is a standard across the industry. It's happening in length. So banks have been doing it for the past few years as well. Whether trying to figure out what's the best standard to leverage blockchain technology in the banking industry. So when companies are looking to be a part of consortium, look at people or even competitors in your market and say, hey, because what you do is you can share the cost of the research and building it of being a part of technology for your space. But also, you're sharing your knowledge. You're sharing these, you know, all the smart people from one company to another getting together and, hey, you know, we know you have the same challenges we do. We're not going to share our secret sauce. But we don't have the same problem. So now we are watching. So I was thinking, I was actually, I think I misunderstood. So I was thinking that a consortium was more of like a channel partner network for your business, like building it your business. But your thing is more like a think tank of just all these huge enterprise companies that share, that's very cool because I don't know if any other industry or technology where that would be a thing. A lot of it's proprietary, a lot of it's built internal to the company. Yeah, you have open source development communities. But generally, if somebody's building like a piece of proprietary tech for the company, that stuff is license and it's not, it's not, you know, shared. And the secret sauce or the, you know, the source code isn't something that you just put out there and hope people contribute to. So this is something that all these enter you name some not small names that are, you know, sitting in the same room and doing this. And that's how they, and with that consortium, then involve a specialist, or do you think they would, they would have their own experts in house amongst this think tank that would be building out this tech for whatever industry? Usually they bring their own people internally in there. So you look at a hydrology platform and it's part of the Linus Foundation. And that's kind of where I think the sort of really started coming into play because part of hydrology, you have Oracle, you have SAP, you have Microsoft, you have all these banks, IBM is a part of them. So whenever you've seen these major players, these corporations that are out the beginning of this other, all want to work on the same technology together. Yeah. Because they know that one, when you get into a blockchain, there will not be one blockchain platform to move them all. And once you grasp that and you know that, that's what makes sense to you, hey, we're not, you know, we're teaming up, we're going to add to the value of this in this open source community sharing this data. Because as it scales, we can all contribute to it, it's killing faster, we're just going to help all of our customers. So I didn't tie in. Sorry, go ahead and I'll go ahead. And then tie into even other platforms, but this is the nice thing about it. Because when you start seeing that and other companies see that, they say, hey, if the major players can team up around technology, then I can reach out to a competitor in my industry, those, hey, where, you know, we might have to beat, but if you're in blocks that I am, let's do a consortium and let's see how we can set some standards that work for both of us. But how do you, now, that's really cool for those companies, those massive enterprise companies. But what about you as like the small little development firm? How do you compete when companies are okay with doing that? Because that's really, that could be your customer. You could be selling to any of these, these people. So how do you, how do you say relevant? It's, it's, you stay relevant right now because the experience in the space is so small that you need a, whether it's Oracle, whatever. And everybody has a different way they're going to market with it. So Oracle is really focused on smart contracts. You know, and they really have a good idea of going to market what, how that works for them, getting their customers on the speed on it very quickly. Other people are doing it in different ways. You know, Walmart's with supply chain. They're teaming it even not just hyper-ledging with it, doing different blockchains. When is that ever happened? Whether they'll get people on a party with another tech company here. And it's the only different blockchain platforms. So they're saying, hey, we can help in any other way. So it's easy to say, now you know these business models that used to be one way, can go any direction you want. And if you can grasp that, it makes it easier to have other customers out there saying, hey, I don't want to work on this. I like to work with a smaller company like you that's going to help me get up the speed and understand it. Because they might say, hey, let's just get you up on a platform. We're going to block you up. Or any of your funds, it's it. Or I was like, hey, I need to understand how I'm going to leverage this in a business capacity that, as I scale, I understand that one of these, the entertainment too, I might need to change my platform. And if they're not set up in a way, then you're looking at every other technology of, okay, just install the next version. But really not taking advantage of it. So it's evolving how people are seeing it. And people that are new to it, are you like, hey, you're going to go with these, just stand it up. I go with the big company like, hey, nobody gets fired for hire oracle. Okay, I'll go with them. Yeah. Or I'll say, hey, what? These guys are really helping me get up the speed and make me feel comfortable that I'm making my decision. I want to work with them. Because they're providing more vibes than just installing blockchain. They're really giving me education of preparedness that even if I'm not working with them, I know what I need to stand top of. And if I don't, then I can reach out to them. I mean, even if they're hiring people, you know, just people are out there saying, hey, hire me and next we're like, we'll say, let us qualify and play it. If they really know what to talk about, then hey, hire me. If not, we'll let you know. So providing that is the value as well. There's, there's, yeah, there's a huge education under underpinning into your into your strategy. That's that's really where that, I think that's what really differentiates you. Because there's so many, there's so many things that you bring to the table that are outside of just again, we already sort of is a little bit redundant, but just like implementing a tech. No, that's really cool, man. That's like for me, for me, that's really what I wanted to dive into because building out an emerging tech business, I'm sure is not easy. But that's really what I wanted to sort of pull out. It's just like the doubling down on the education and the learning and just sort of the teaching aspect of how to do this properly. Is there anything that I didn't, that I didn't cover that, that you'd like to bring up or that you think? No, I mean, like I said, I mean, the founder of market selling it really, because of his 30 years experience in the software industry and tech and development, you know, he's a big component of, let's help you educate you on everything we're doing for you. And even if it's outside of what we're doing, he's, I love the way his approaches of going always after, hey, if you know about this, if you guys thought about that, it's not saying, hey, let's sign the SOW and we'll just do this work. Yeah, it'll challenge us. Yeah, and there's, for us, that's always the body. We're always looking for how we're providing more value than what they're asking for us. How are we giving even, whether it's social, whether it's just building that strong relationship because you build the right relationships, it turns into better relationships of more opportunities, more business, and then better relationships. Because then you have a credible name of people like, hey, you're more about just a project than just, oh, let's sign this or, hey, let's extend a new change order because we want to extend our business. It's like, you really thought about, here's my problem, but here's other things that we could be focused on that we want to think about. And if we can do that, I think there's more value on that. I think if, I think that the practice industry agnostic, if somebody's under-promising and over-delivering, that's something that any company can take away, and that's a good, good best practice to keep top in mind. So just to wrap this up, where, you know, you've obviously grown in your career, where do you go to learn? Do you have mentors? Do you have books that you like to resource? What's your go-to for sort of your personal professional growth? For me, I've found over years it's kind of taken my own courses of either research on my and that's kind of what I love about blockchain because you always have to do research on it. You always have to be being prepared and understand what's going on. And it's helped me even when I look out the learn for things up, taking an online course about something that I'm not familiar with. You know, I remember, I wasn't up to speed on, hey, I'm just going to learn it. I went and took like an EDX course on that, which is great, okay? So I'm not going to be a tech guy who's throwing it, but let me do this so I am knowledgeable. And that constant growing of education starts to become a pattern as you start going to agree on your growth of, hey, I can't just be complacent on what I know. I can't think that what I would've gotten here successfully is not going to keep me here. So how do I go about, you know, I haven't conversation with someone like, hey, do you know about them? Like, no, I write it down, let me go resource that. Or you see at a conference, you see some news flash comes up and I'm like, I haven't heard of that. Let me go look that up and you go, wow, all right, I need to look into this. And we're a big component of our company. Hey, if you don't know about it, let's go figure it out, let's go learn it. And it's not to say, oh, yeah, we know about it. It's more like, hey, we'll get up the speed on that. And let's be comfortable. So we know that we're not just saying, hey, we're experts on this and this. And we don't have to move in it for you because you know, technology is moving faster and faster. Another year from now, we're going to hear something going, okay, I need to keep an eye on that. Let me start getting up the speed on that. And it's constantly kind of got to be in the forefront of learning how to be sure. Yeah, candid information with people. They have to feel and know that you know what you're talking about. And it's not just buzzwords of blockchain and hashtags and this. It's more in lines of, what are you thinking about when you get into this? Are you sort of about these things? Like, you're looking into this. Then they feel like, okay, you are an SME. You do know the space. You give me things that I wasn't thinking about. Or something that somebody else told me that wasn't true. Now I understand why it fits. So for us, if we're not doing those things, then we're not helping anybody really. And last question, I always like asking this. If you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing, yeah, what would it be? And when I read that question, you said, I had to think about it. I was like, wow, 10 years more than thinking about it. It's a good self-awareness introspective question. Absolutely, absolutely. When you're 20 years old, you're thinking, oh, I got to figure it out. I had this idea. I'll be this and I would tell myself that the biggest thing that I need to know in the next 20 years is patience and understanding that there's going to be a lot of turns and twists and upside down this and times where you want to give up. But it's the patience that you grow the most at and the relationships that you build along the way because I looked back at 20 years ago and wow, yeah, I thought that was going to be the worst time. I'm like, look at what I learned from these experiences that it got me here. And to look back on it going, hey, now I know like a blockchain is like patience is the most important thing, especially even with startups and entrepreneurs. The hardest thing is patience because you want that. Okay, I get spread again. I want it to go and I want it to go. Yeah, it could, but there's so much more that comes with it. And if you're patient, you can make the right relationship with that person goes, you were thinking this, but if you go this route, you'll be more successful. You go, okay, and it's understanding that I'm a lot of patience and then just rushing in. Yeah, I'm going to hold it on this thing. Here's my idea. I'm moving forward. Now it's like take a step back and is it the right way to try to get more feedback? Okay, so for me, I look back and I'm very impatient. So I am too. What I think that I think that I agree with you. I think that's a really strong, at the strong point. I think that a lot of people rush, especially first time entrepreneurs. And people that are so, people that love new tech are probably the ones that are the least impatient, but should be the most patient so that when they try and do some thing, they do it right. You know, so. But okay, so I'll go ahead, sir. No, and yeah, I think you make good points. People attack is the most, the most patient because we want to work out. So if people want to get in touch with you, find you a candidate and where can they go? Sure, you know, either shoot me an email at john and go over on dot com, or you can find me on LinkedIn at john ride is the third or you can make all if you want. So it's seven, seven, four, two, six, seven, one, one, six, five. I live in West Palm Beach, Florida. So if you call, use the afternoon, I might be at the beach working to get away. Uh, but that's the easiest way to get touched with me. And for me, I love building new relationships. It's not always has to be about a business opportunity. If someone says, Hey, you provided something that was helpful and I'm like, Hey, that's great. You know, let's talk to me. I love that kind of even more sometimes and just, okay, what do you need for business? Yeah, it's then you're really building something that's different. Yeah, I think that, uh, I think the best way to build even a long-term business relationship is to make that relationship before you need the person. And then yes, I think that and then it's authentic as genuine. And then if there is a business opportunity in the future, just so be awesome. And so that's all I have for today. Thanks again so much, John, for joining us, uh, for everybody listening or watching to the sales versus marketing podcast, uh, if you want more of John or if you want to listen to more episodes of the sales versus marketing podcast, you can watch this podcast on YouTube, YouTube slash C slash ROI overload. Or you can listen and download this podcast wherever podcasts are found, uh, Stitcher iTunes, tune in a cast or Google to name a few. You can also go to pod.co slash sales dash versus dash marketing, uh, to listen to all episodes stream all episodes and download all episodes. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of the sales versus marketing podcast. I'm your host Scott. Hope everybody has a great productive and exciting week and look forward to speaking to you next time. Cheers. Bye. So this is my favorite part of the podcast, Scott's thoughts where I dissect what we just spoke about and really give you an idea of why this matters and why it's important for you in your business, in your career journey. So John was speaking about a ton of very interesting topics. And some of the listeners who haven't been so involved in the emerging tech scene, I apologize because some of the stuff that he discussed was very technical, but it is still relevant to any industry. So I would suggest if you are listening to this podcast and you're a fan of being successful and growing, obviously we all are, I would suggest going out and learning about new technologies and you don't have to go as far down the rabbit hole as John did, uh, transitioning his entire career to work in an emerging tech space. But I think that being aware of the things and trends that are going to be impacting business, uh, so not only blockchain, um, but obviously artificial intelligence, robotics, uh, machine learning, uh, and big data. These are all things that are going to have monumental impact impacts on how we do business. And if you are a business owner, a business leader or an employee, uh, some of these things will touch and impact your career, uh, if you're still active in the next, you know, two, three, four, five years, and most definitely will be impacting you if you're still involved in working in any capacity in the next 10 years. So I would suggest that you go and do at least a little bit of self-education, self-teaching and have a cursory knowledge of some of these, uh, some of these technologies. Now I want to discuss two industry-agnostic things that John brought up. Um, I think, I think I'm going to touch on two. The first one was, uh, the massive importance of transitioning a feature and benefit marketing strategy to an education, an educational marketing strategy where you are educating, you are teaching the customers, you are challenging the customers. Even as he mentioned, customers were coming to him and he was turning down customers because they weren't ready for what service and product he had. So it really is an education effort, enabling them to not only, uh, not only on board and implement the product that you're selling, but to do it properly by educating them how it can impact their business, helping them understand how the product can impact their business in more ways than they originally suspected. So that's, that's extremely smart and what I liked about John's approach is not only did he include educational material in the marketing, he included educational material, uh, through the customer success process and onboarding of the product. So you're putting out educational topics and you're, you're educating your target clientele, your target market on the benefits and the nuances of the industry and the product that you're selling. But then after the fact, you're also, uh, you're also educating your market on how this product will, will actually and effectively impact your business after the after you sold it after they've implemented it. Uh, so much more of, a, a consultative approach to, to selling, uh, tied into education, which is what's made, uh, himself and his company Orion. Very successful. And the second piece of advice that I took away and something that I've heard from various business leaders that we've interviewed on this podcast is the number one thing that he would tell himself if he could go back in time and, and, and, and to his 20 year old self and talk about what was the most important thing that he's learned over the course of his career. And that was patience. Um, and he's saying that from, from an emerging tech field. So he's saying it in the fastest moving of industries. He's saying that patience is still paramount. It still has a massive impact on his success. And if you are patient in your career, uh, while still progressing and learning and educating, uh, the end result will be much better. You'll have come much farther. Uh, so obviously now that we've heard it repeatedly, uh, and it's the message that we've heard from very several senior business leaders. If you are young in your career, don't rush things. Don't be stagnant, but don't rush because there's so much time. And I think that it's a, the concept of time is very much lost on a younger generation. Uh, so keep in mind that you are in this for the long run. You have a lot to learn. You don't know what you don't know. And as you grow, if you are patient and you're willing to learn, that's how you will be the most successful. So again, big thanks to John for all the great content and the discussion about a very interesting emerging tech space. I hope you all got some insight from it. As always, uh, if you haven't already hit like a hit subscribe, you can leave any rating you want as long as the five star rating. Um, and share this with your friends, your family, your coworkers, your peers, always leave some feedback and always leave some comments wherever you're watching or, or consuming this podcast. I'd love to know what you thought about it. I'd love to know what you thought about the people we bring on. And I'd love to know any sort of topics or questions that I should bring up on the podcast. And I can definitely address those. So that's all for me today. It's your host, Scott here. Look forward to speaking to you next time. Cheers. Have a great week. Bye now.