EXPLORING WEB3 002
gasper stih - Chief Marketing Officer @TernoaChain
Watch: Youtube
Welcome back to Exploring Web3, the podcast that delves deep into the world of crypto and blockchain. In today's episode, we have a special guest joining us, the Chief Marketing Officer of TernoaChain. Get ready to explore the ins and outs of effective marketing strategies and what it takes to build and optimize an internal team within the crypto industry. Our guest will share their journey, from their humble beginnings in Slovenia to their courageous move abroad and how those experiences shaped their career. We'll also learn about the importance of finding the right balance between internal teams and agencies, as well as the value of taking opportunities and embracing new challenges. So, stay tuned as we uncover the secrets to success in the ever-evolving world of crypto. This is an episode you won't want to miss. Welcome to ORCDAO, where we bring you the latest insights and expert advice in the world of crypto. Let's dive in!
Gasper & ternoa
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timestamps
[00:01:38] Sports in school, built confidence, didn't pursue professional sports, no regrets.
[00:05:34] Living abroad shaped my personality and opened my mind.
[00:12:40] Career progression from student work to crypto marketing.
[00:27:05] Progression from one-man team to leadership role
[00:40:26] Building a team and managing agencies.
[00:51:27] Time management tips for working with agencies: Designate a point of contact for efficient communication and delegation of tasks.
[00:59:29] Seizing opportunities is crucial for success.
[01:04:24] Gasper shared his journey and recommendations. Grateful for his time and insights.
transcript
Devin
Gasper maybe we can just get things started and jump right in.
Gasper Stih
Yeah, I'm ready. Okay.
Devin
What I'd love to know is kind of where it all started, right? Maybe not like where you were born and all there, but maybe just so we can kind of have a good, I guess, entrance into kind of like the working environment. Maybe we start in high school. So maybe I'll ask the question gasper what type of person were you in high school? Were you shy? Were you outgoing? Were you athletic? Were you not give the audience kind of a background there.
Gasper Stih
Cool. So I was the sport time type of guy since not just high school, also elementary school. Going into high school, I was definitely sporty, maybe a bit shy, but through the high school, when you meet girls and you want to meet them, then you need to build your self confidence. And then towards the end, I would definitely say I was not that shy anymore, but on the same site I was sporty, outgoing. Then I love to party, I went out. And then also towards the end of the high school, I stopped. My wish was to be some kind of professional football player. But then in the end, the school and also, let's say outside the school, things that are not related to sports kind of dragged me a bit more than being a professional sportsman. And then even back then I was thinking about my future career, what should be in a couple of years, how should everything be going? And then in the end, I guess I made right decision because I know all the professionals, like you can play up until 30, maybe now 35, but then what would you do next? Of course, sometimes I think I could be a good soccer player, football player for Europeans. But then in the end, I really do not regret anything that happened from high school on, or even in high school as well.
Devin
What I often ask people is did what you were preparing for? Did what you think you would be when you were older in high school change at all as you kind of got further maybe into more education and onward, or was it always kind of the same? I know you mentioned sports, but you also while playing sports, thinking more long term about what you could do after in that time, what was it did you think was the future going to have?
Gasper Stih
Oh, I was definitely not thinking about very distant future at all now. Like in previous sentence I sounded like, yeah, my life was planned on but in reality I didn't know what I'll do next week so I guess we'll get more into it through what I went through. But definitely I hadn't had planned my life off. I have never imagined I'll be where I am at the moment. I changed in between, especially in student years, I changed a lot of, let's say professions. I tried a lot of different things and then one thing lead to another to another, which all connected in this nice package of experience, but I was always prepared to move on. So I was never the kind of person that would stay in one place and being satisfied with where I am at the moment and that led to where I am now. But if I would be saying that that was the plan from the beginning, I would be definitely lying 100% because it was just like one thing after another and then I just saw different opportunities that opened and I jumped for it. So yeah, not planned at all.
Devin
That's awesome. And I guess before we kind of move on, kind of before who you were in the beginning. One thing I'll ask is, is there anything kind of looking back now that happened in your teenage years? Maybe high school? Or around high school that maybe was an indicator of where you'd be now or that you think influenced you in the decisions that you made to get where you are.
Gasper Stih
Of course, yes. Some of the decisions that I made and opportunities that I took definitely helped to being what I am now and definitely helped shaping my personality. For instance, one of the biggest things is I went living abroad, I was doing some traveling and I think this period shaped my personality really well because when you're in home environment, you're not making so much changes as if you go and live abroad. And I did in my student years, I went to different places but then in the end I also moved to Hawaii for a couple of months twice. Definitely I recommend everyone going there, but what I figure out there is that you need to struggle to advance in some places because when I got there, it was all yeah, you're going into paradise, everything is good, you have student job there, you'll be teaching kite boarding, et cetera, et cetera. But then you got there and reality hits you and you are on ground zero. You need to start building your own reputation. You need to talk with people. You need to kind of sell yourself, sell the lessons. And it was really hard. Like for first two, three weeks, I was really struggling with everything. Living in newer environment, everything was very pricey. I couldn't afford my rent, so all these things combined. And then it was like just a click, pretty much. And then I started, okay, I need to do this, this to reach this and this and this. And then from being in really bad place, next three, four months became the best time of my life, probably. And that's one thing that you carry with yourself for the rest of your life. So wherever you go, you can see how it is and how it went. And also the biggest change that I noticed is when I got back home, how differently I was thinking, how more open I was towards everything, towards not just like, let's say now we're talking about ideas, business ideas, but also just in a relationship, how open you are, just talking with your mom. You're more open than you were before. And like mixture of different cultures and experience them. That's definitely one thing that helps you build a nice profile for yourself and also for just living the life, not just in professional sense.
Devin
That's awesome. And I've experienced the same thing. I think living alone, moving, kind of going to a new place, it can be a little scary to some people, but kind of having confidence in yourself and really sticking through it for the weeks or months things may be new to you, always leaves you a better person. And the skills that you learn there, you can take to pretty much everything you do after. Maybe to give the audience and myself a little bit more context, explain, I guess, like how old you were when you made this transition. So where was home and then was Hawai the first time you went abroad? And when was that?
Gasper Stih
So, yeah, I come from Slovenia, so that's Central Europe, I would say like really small country, 2 million people. So you can imagine, we are pretty closed community. Of course, we have Balkans. We are part of Yugoslavia, back in time, but still we consider ourselves as open. But then when you go abroad, you see that you are pretty tight in that relation. And then I was traveling before, but yeah, my first big, let's say move that I went for a longer period of time, not just like two weeks, three weeks travel was Hawai. And that was when I was fully 21 years old. Yeah, 21. It was american. I was old enough to drink beer in America. So that was my first, let's say, move abroad, going out without anyone, without friends, without parents. So just going into new environment, totally new environment. My english was not as good. So it was pretty scary place to go because of all the things I needed to do. And it was not just like the rest of, let's say student work abroad when you go into some camp or amusement park and then you are not in contact with people. So actually my job there was coming in Hawai, I had to speak with my client for most likely 3 hours and then that build up my confidence. But also it was a blocker for me not pursuing some other stuff because I was just afraid my English wasn't good enough. But then going through this process, then you learn that this effort that you're putting in, people really appreciate it no matter what. And especially when this is not your first language, it makes it even better and everybody accepts you. So no matter where I went next, I felt accepted right away. Of course, not from everybody. But you will find your own community that you will hang in wherever you go. And when you move somewhere else, there are people like minded. And, yeah, it's one thing that I pretty much would recommend anyone to do at least once in their lifetime, just to go somewhere. And it's definitely easier when you're young and not a bit older, like me right now with family and girlfriend and it's harder to pack everything and drag along. But, yeah, it's doable as well.
Devin
That's awesome. So I think after Hawai we start getting into more of the career focused things but maybe from here we could just talk about you spoke about how whenever you moved here, learning a language was scary and worrying about rent and everything else in terms of what you actually did while you're in Hawai. Once that stage kind of passed from doing a little research, I think this is where you got into kite boarding and other stuff like that. So why don't you speak a little.
Gasper Stih
Bit on that true, let me just go two or three years back so it will be a bit more clear. Everything so from let's say high school to college transition I did a lot of student work, I was lifeguard, I did some, let's say entrepreneur gigs that now would be but to be honest, it was just like buying things on Alibaba and then selling them on different platforms, our own country. And from there if I would have knowledge that I had today, I would probably be in some ecommerce or something like that. But maybe everything was just too early for the status of the things that were back then and payment providers for online shopping and stuff like that. But then from that I started working as a product manager in SDA Travel, which is travel agency. I had taken international student card project management and some live abroad programs as well. And that's why actually because of that I also went then second time leaving to hawai. First time was before this, and then after that, I was in sta travel, which kind of one thing opened the door to another, and then this working here opened the door going back, and in between, this whole career around crypto happened. So that was in 2017, where this all ICO saga started. I just got like, call from my friend, and he was like, yeah, I'm doing this and this and this. Do you want to join in? And of course, the person I am, I was like, yes, of course. I didn't have a clue what I will be doing. It was like, yeah, you're marketing guy, you will do that and that, and that what we'll be selling. Yeah, you'll figure out. I jumped on board pretty much without any knowledge. Good thing was, back then, it wasn't as developed as it is now. There was not as much as information. The whole ecosystem was not as developed. Like, first chains come on board, things started happen, but I just jumped in, we started talking, and then after a while, of course, we did our own ICO, which was very successful. I went through all the processes, I learned a lot in between. So once you're doing things, you're learning as well. But then in the end, like a lot of ICOs, this one came to an end as well in 2018 when the bear market came for Crypto at that time. And from there on, I then remained in Crypto because it's really nice environment and you are with people that connect with you and then you have same things to talk about and also they have some kind of vision what will happen next? At that time, I joined cryptocurrency exchange, leading the marketing team. It was like, now I'm talking like, very big exchange, to be honest. It's like very small cryptocurrency exchange. The marketing team was like three, four people. I was part of it, and I was just taking over all the strategies, organization and stuff. So I learned from the inside everything that it's done in crypto. They gave me all the necessary tools to learn. I learned a lot from marketing side, I learned a lot from crypto side. I learned a lot about technology. I'm not saying I know how to program, definitely not there, I don't think I'll ever but I learned a lot of different stuff, a lot of procedures, what's good to be done about growth hacking. So pretty much you name it, you got it. So in that period of time with the cryptocurrency exchange, I learned really a lot of things. And let's say I became quite a pro on a lot of those things that we were doing. But then, of course, after you progress, then you see you need some help. You start onboarding new people and then handing over the stuff that you were taking care of. And of course people are coming, they're more eager. You're getting older you know how to structure things, they know how to do things, and a lot of times they do better than you do. So you need to just kind of, let's say even though you're leading them, you're giving them all the necessary tools to grow the project with you. And from there on, after a while, I built it a team. We did pretty much like classical IPO in Europe. We raised 22 million for the crypto currency exchange. It was one of the biggest regular raises in Europe for the last ten years, I would say. And after all this kind of happened, this new era of IDOs NFDS came along. Of course I had some appetites and as I mentioned in the beginning, the person I am, I'm always going for the next thing. But it's not just me. I would say this is like a natural thing for everyone. Always you think it's enough what you have, but then you see the next big thing and you just want to go there. Or maybe not, but I'm like that. And then I saw all this happening and then that's where we met. So I was called by nitro league team. They had this great idea about racing game NFT, and who am I to say no to that? Cars, racing and games going from financial sector directly into gaming. I jumped the board. To be honest, I didn't have that much knowledge about NFDS at the time. So some of the things were definitely new to me. I had to learn. I listened to different podcasts, I listened to different shows, I read some articles, but then also you learn a lot by just doing it. So when I joined, it was idea of a project, some things were built and then from my side we started building the project. So we did idea, which was very successful in the end. We totally, I think we altogether it was around $10 million that was raised through private investors, through ideas. We did three different ideas, which was not the greatest idea, but we did it, and unfortunately successfully. Then I built the team on at nitro league. We had quite a few agencies, we had quite a few KOLs, a lot of partnership, et cetera. And then this layer, one ternoa that I'm currently part of this ecosystem came and asked well, not just ask, it was like, yeah, are you interested? I looked at it, I was like, yeah, I'm pretty much thrilled. It's huge ecosystem project, you're doing some great stuff. They were like building things that I haven't heard of, like southbound tokens and things like that. And they were definitely in front of the time. So I was like, okay, these guys are definitely going to be they will have big chunk of the polka dot ecosystem project just because of the features they're building, where they're going. And yeah, probably it was a month or a month and a half of talks and then we came to an agreement. I joined the team, they had like really like here we can say they had big team before me. So it was probably around 15 people working in marketing at the time. So we did some cutting. So we did like remodeling of the marketing team in the end. Now what I'm good at, it's building a team that is built to succeed to everybody knows what they're doing. So I'm not saying I'm the best advertiser out there, I'm not saying I can run social media the best way. I am not the one who will be writing blocks that will be out of this world. Definitely there are specialists out there who are doing these jobs better than I do. But I have a really good sense of how to put all these pieces together and to create really great and work marketing team and I think I'm doing great job also here at Ternoa. That's why we are where we are. We are building things, we are growing in sense of the numbers, in sense of pretty much everything. I'm not saying that we touch because that would be a cliche, but yeah, I'll just put some good words for us.
Devin
Nice. What I will say Gaspar. Thank you for taking us basically through the whole thing. Now that I kind of have a summary, I'm probably going to go back into specific points and ask more. But I think that really is for sure, much like you mentioned, your job at Ternoa is very much putting together the pieces and making sure that everything's getting done and that totally makes sense from standpoint of a CMO. A CMO from a high level should understand marketing for a whole organization and find everyone part of the team that can do that. There probably is personal experience that you have in doing each of those puzzle pieces yourself and that's what allows you to accumulate everything and make sure it's being done correctly. So now what I want to go into, much like you said, the puzzle pieces is to kind of look at the foundations. What are each puzzle piece that you kind of worked on along the way. So I did a little bit of research and I think for the listeners, I'm just going to kind of give a few dates as well as a little more description on each of those steps that you talked about. So the first thing that you mentioned was once you kind of went abroad in Hawai, afterwards you went back home and you are kind of doing your own thing. It sounds like you are doing Ecommerce arbitrage at the beginning, looking at Alibaba, seeing what you could send things at home. I actually have a story of something very similar so I think that's really awesome. But in that phase where you're kind of just exploring, you ran into your friend who actually had his own project and they were trying to ICO, and your marketing experience really took hold, and that's something you took an opportunity of. So it was the skills that you've accumulated previously put you in a position where you could actually connect with one of your friends who needed that. And you both, I guess, succeeded at the time together. So for the little bit of research that I can find, it's hedge was what the company was called, and this was in 2017, pretty much the ICO craze. You did mention that you learned a ton, but due to the bear market that came right after the ICO craze, it may not have succeeded and prospered as long as you guys wanted to. I have a lot of experience with that too. Right after I got out of college, I went to Austin and California, and I was involved in a lot of tech startups. The two that I got involved in both blew up. They couldn't raise their series. B and I joined in series A or in the seed. And it is in that time that it's unfortunate, but you learn because whenever a company is in those conditions, you have to do more things. You have to wear more hats, you have to have new roles and be learning things every day. So even though those things are unfortunate, I think there are great opportunities, and it may get you down for the time, but when you bounce back like you did, it was something really awesome. So on the back of that ICO, it looks like the next thing you talked about, where you had more of a traditional marketing role and a traditional IPO was through blocktrade. And that was the exchange that you talked about. And then from there, you went from block trade to Nitro League, which is more of a gaming space where you reinvented yourself again, and then from gaming to Turnuro, which is an L, one blockchain that may have some use in gaming, but everywhere else. So that is kind of a five to six year journey from the ICO in 2017 to where we are now. What I want to know is maybe let's take each one, let's do the ICO in 2017, all the way to I believe it's block trade to then we had Nitro League and then Trenoa. What are the skills that you learned at the very beginning that helped you actually get to that next phase?
Gasper Stih
I would say that you need to go through all these phases because in the beginning, like, when we are young, when we're in 20s, we all think about, yeah, we will go, we will lead the teams, we'll be the best. And then the first job, you came, everybody is just like, pretty much throwing you around. You're a gopher for everything. Go there, go do that, go do that. And you feel like I'm not valued, but that's the reality. Unfortunately, when you're young, you have all the energy in the world. You want to do all the things, and a lot of times you are able to do a lot of things, but then in the end, you see how much experiences come into play through the years that you're working, no matter the place where you are. Like, we can apply this not just to business. We can apply this to school, we can apply this to sports. Because also when you're like say freshman and then when you graduate, when you look back, you see how easier would it be if you would have had experience instead of just sheer wheel. It's same with sports. When you go, let's say to the when you go to the pro league or just when you go out of younger sections and then start playing with older guys, you see that kind of you feel you're better than them, let's say faster and all these things. But then in the end they beat you due to their experiences in the field. And it's same here with me. So I started with Hatch, very unexperienced guy. Did everything, so everything, every single thing. I cooked coffee for the people that were coming in, for the investors that we were speaking with. Then I was presenting them marketing plan, pitch deck. So it was days where never before in my career I came across a pitch deck. And now I had to shape one. And then I had like this student designer with me. And then we went through tens of different pitch decks to see what people are putting things in, how to shape it, how they will look like. We went all in on every possible marketing field you can imagine. So it's from building pitch deck then to classical social media, to opening all the accounts, TG, building groups. Back then it was not this easy to like it was the same, but now the bots are way more improved. So back then I actually remembered we started the ICO, the first ICO that I was starting, we actually used Slack for the community. And then in Slack it was really easy to create same profile as the founder or anyone else. So it was a lot of scams. And then from Slack it went to TG and now discord. But yeah, back then it was Telegram. So I did that. Then we did advertising. Talking with one of the first Kol, I remember what was that guy? Oh my gosh, probably everybody knows him, it was big bitcoin shiller, all he did was shield coins. But then in the end nothing happened. But yeah, you go through all these experiences, you came across scams back then already. And then when you come back in like for the first time, when you come into the, let's say crypto space for web three now, you're very thrilled, you start, you create, let's say someone creates their first TG because it's totally new. And then people start at I want to list your coin in finance and everybody's very excited, oh, we are doing good job, but in reality there is a big scam behind that, just trying to get some of your money. But yeah, going back what I learned so at Hedge I learned everything, everything even about creating wallets, sending, using my first ledger. So, like, all the basic stuff about cryptocurrency I learned at Hedge and then moving to Cryptocurrency Exchange. Then it came a lot about processes, how things work, about Custodity, about crypto to Fiat Rams, about all the regulation that needs to be behind KYC support, even though I was not support. We had like support agent and then different tools and then integrating everything in between, helping each other. So all these startups you learn a lot because it's not just one thing that you're doing, you need to cover multiple places and then over the years you start learning what is important or in which section you really need improvements or in what let's say how you would like to develop yourself as well. Is it like you can then specialize in, I don't know, let's say advertising or you specialize in writing content or some other or moderation or whatever you have like few different spots in crypto company that you can take part of. For me it was definitely that organizational part that was very attractive for me and that's why I wanted to do that pretty much while I was chasing the block trade, I wanted to be the one that is organizing things. So block trade is part of bigger, let's say holding and that holding had their own marketing team that I was reporting into about block trade and we had one pretty big CMO at that time who I learned a lot even though I was not working with him directly. So we had our own chat, but I was not part of his daily routine. But he had this really nice way of leading team, giving them access to himself, but then letting them to do their own stuff. And that's where I learned quite a lot about leadership and how to talk with people, how to deal with people. Of course everybody has their own way because that's how our personality is, how you grow up. I'm more friendly, I won't go and scream at my employee or my peer because I'm not that kind of person, but I will tell them that sometimes that's not good. And now when you're working remotely, it's less personal. So sometimes it's even easier to write some things to the person that you would never probably say in their face, which is sad in one way, but on the other hand, sometimes it makes your work a bit easier in the end. I don't know what is better, but it is how it is. That's how we work at the moment. So with him I learned a lot about processes, how to put things in. Places all the necessary tools or unnecessary tools as well because you came across a lot of tools that in the end you don't need at all. So this is where I learned all these things, how to shape a team and to make it work as it should and to see and how to measure results and what is expected from people and how to see if somebody is actually doing or is he slacking. So in the end you have a pretty clear image who is doing what and what's being done in, sorry, what's done on the day or in the long term as well. And then from that part also came to strategy building for the company on the long term, what you're doing, how you're doing, what things, what steps it needs to be taken. And in these four years at Block Trade I learned also how important it is to have things written down and organized. Because a lot of times when I was younger I was like why all these people are writing these reports, why you need to take notes in the meetings, why somebody's writing, why there's agenda, why we need to cover those points, et cetera, et cetera. And this is where you learn that this needs to be part of it. Otherwise nobody will know what is done in the end and how it will be done. Even though sometimes it feels really boring, it doesn't feel that it's needed. But if you look then when the team is building without this it will be definitely dysfunctional. Nobody will know what they need to do and how to do it. So this is the second part that I took from this CMO to be where I am. And then all this mixture of skills that I got at the Block Trade really opened the door to now let's say the highest positions in web three because I went through all these steps. When I'm talking in an interview for, let's say for a job, they always ask and they also see my progression. So I went from pretty much round zero, being one man team, being promoted to have like, three, four people, and then building my presence, taking time, building knowledge, and then moving to, let's say, bigger projects or more adventurous. Projects with bigger teams, with bigger budgets for marketing and then having grown teams to, I don't know, 1520 people with some agency on the side and just putting everything in structured way, which is the most important thing that people want to see when they are asking what you're doing, because you can. Yeah, okay. For instance, just like small example usually CEO won't go and check your Twitter account and TG what his company is doing in there. He will just ask how is this and this? He won't go checking, okay, you posted my blog, you did a YouTube video, you promoted there. All he will be in board meeting. He'll just ask yeah. Was this done? And then he will share his part of ideas and then you need to put this into structure and then distribute across the teams that they will do and they will report back to you and then you will report back to the board. So this is how it works when you get to this part. But to get here you need to go through, I think all the steps. The stairway needs to be you need to create your own path and go there. Otherwise even if you jump over a few steps, most likely someday you will have to go back and walk them again.
Devin
Totally agree and thanks for sharing that. And what I know is you really took us through the progression, like you mentioned, of everything you've learned starting at Hedge and really kind of doing everything, getting your blockchain fundamentals because going into that you didn't even know that much about blockchain. Then getting your marketing fundamentals, taking that into Next Trade where you were learning, but further improving your marketing fundamentals into what I learned was a whole four year journey you had at Next Trade. It was getting promoted within there, starting to have your own team and then having a mentor that was the CMO of the holding company of Next Trade. That really taught you a lot of the things that you needed to go on and assume that role for other companies. And I think that is where we get into Nitro League and then turnoa. So it's up to you where you want to go with this because I feel like you've laid the background a lot. We could briefly touch Nitro League and then go into everything that's happening in turnoa since it's more recent, if that's what you feel like.
Gasper Stih
Yeah. So then going to Nitro League, my personality, my position was pretty much well shaped. And then all you do when you come into this position, you work a lot. So it's always like this. So whenever you go higher, it's never less work. And thinking going on your own to work less, it just ain't going to work. Usually you work more. So coming into Nitro I also started had to start to build a team. Every person, what they will do if they have enough work to do or they are looking in the air and doing nothing. Then having all different agencies working on your case. Because it was like at Nitro we went from zero to 100 in 2.5 seconds because everything needed to go fast. We were just before the, let's say bear market now. So we needed to execute all these things before getting into building phase. We put on board, let's say one of the best PR companies for Web Three. We put on board european PR company. We had social media company that was working on social media. Then we had community management company. Then we had another agency who was helping with like limb campaigns. Then we have ten different well, ten is not enough. So we had plenty of KOLs, I would say over 20 KOLs. And then we needed to organize everything around it. And now it sounds it's not much because, yeah, one agency is doing that, the other is doing that, the third is doing that. And you pretty much sit in your seat and waiting for things to happen. It's not going to work like that because whenever you go to an agency, they are your extended hand. So you need to do a lot of things for them and then they will carry the message for you. So you need to brief everything. And they won't usually do some extra stuff. They will just do what you tell them to do. So you just go, okay, we need this and this. And then they do that and it's like, okay, it's done, but why didn't you do this, this and this? This is like very logical to do it on top. Yeah, you didn't say that. So you need to be very clear. You need to brief all those themes. Then you need to prepare documents that is easier for you to communicate with them. So you just share a file with them and they can kind of follow that lead. And that goes across all the agencies where a lot of money goes out, but they take a lot of your time and then comes to your internal team, which is I think it's the most important and the most essential part of marketing. Because without a team, I don't think you can do really good marketing because you need to put together core marketing team, have all the messages developed, have the strategy, have everything. And once this small, let's say small marketing team works well, then you start adding marketing agency who will take the core of marketing and just spread it across the globe. And this is like a really big thing. And to get this marketing core nice and healthy, there is a lot of work to be inputted there. You need right pieces, you need right people who know what you're doing, understand what you're doing and they understand their role. So they're all specialists in their roles. But you need to put these roles into play and then every day you need to have tasks for them, even though you have, okay, at the end of the month, we want to reach this, this and this. KPI they need some encouragement. I'm not saying you need to micromanage them. I hate that when I need to micromanage some person. I know he's not the person for my team because I just need constantly looking after him, what he's doing, how he's doing it, and what will be the next step. But I just want them taking the load and carry on and I'm there to support them and not to criticize them. So it's always supporting them, helping them opening door to them to do what they do best with the less effort, so they can do even more than other things that are on their table. They can do that as well. So it's pretty much, yeah, I'm there for their no matter what. If somebody asks me can you create a mailer or send out, I will do it. If that will take, I don't know, half an hour of their time that they want to do something else, I'll definitely take off. I'll just do the mailer thing. That's why you need all this kind of skill set to do all this small stuff, even though you won't be using it regularly, but then if the time comes, you are there to help that as well. And that's what people kind of liked at Nitro. When I joined in, I was all over the place. So it was like when we came at the meeting and it was like, okay, we need this, this and this. And then for, let's say for idea, okay, we need to open mailer account and start collecting emails. So we send out the whitelist and I was just like, yeah, mailer is already open. And they're like, okay, yeah, gaspar, you're cool, you're thinking ahead. So it was all like this. And this is what I like from my team members as well, that they are coming to me with ideas. So I don't need, let's say every week when we have my marketing meeting, I don't need to just, yeah, did we do this, this and this. These are my ideas. It's more like I want to share what we're doing. So okay, we did this, this and this. We decided on this. We have open problem here, we want to do that. And then I let the team talk to me about their problems, what they want to do, how they want to do it, and then I just like either. I agree, because they're definitely the specialist in their field and I'm just there to tweak something because, okay, this not goes along with our strategy in this part, but most of the time they are good ideas. So I'm there to encourage them. And I also want to spotlight everything they do. So it's not me to take the credit for their work. If somebody takes credit of your work, it means it's afraid of you. So it's afraid that you will take his spot. And I'm definitely not afraid somebody will take my spot. Even if they do it's for a good reason. Either they're better than me and then company if I did a good job, they will then just either reposition me or they will fire me. It is what it is. But from everything you learn something new, even if you get laid off, people get laid off. Like FTX, everybody got laid off not because they were working badly, but this is just the way of life regression. You learn something new from that as well. You learn how then to build your own profile, to go on LinkedIn, to find new job or to get head hunted or whatever. And then from Nitro, when we are talking about what I learned previously at Nitro, I learned a lot of technical stuff and also a lot of, let's say a bit of higher level communication because I was included in all the investors calls. I was included in, let's say listing fees, in contracts, in everything. So I was included in that part as well. So it's a bit more of responsibility. But also I got a lot of knowledge, I got to know how to communicate, let's say on a higher level, even though it's not higher level, but there is certain way of communicating and sharing information. It's just not like just laying your plain hand. It's always you need to hold back something for negotiation, et cetera, et cetera. So at Nitro I did this, let's say, major step in between leading the team and being part of hire management. So this is where I did this step where it's not just about marketing and getting all the instructions from the company leading team or lead board or CEO or however. So I was becoming part of it and then I know how to translate that into the marketing team. It was just not just like listening to what we should do, what the pet would be, what is the strategy, but I was the one shaping the strategy with the board and then translating that into marketing team.
Devin
That's awesome. It sounds like from what you just explained there, you really learned at Nitroleak to be a CMO, but also to be a co founder in effect. And what was really interesting about the marketing side is it sounded like you were trying to go so fast due to the market conditions and fundraising that it may not have made the most sense to build your own internal team up as much. What you wanted to do was have a small internal team who could direct other agencies that could be deployed in a faster way than just trying to hire dozens of people for whatever roles they needed. So I feel like that was very helpful in explaining how you manage those agencies from the co founder lens. Like you talked about talking to investors and doing fundraising, learning how to blend the narrative and direct it in a pitch deck just like you were in their marketing campaigns. Now more you're selling the company instead of selling like a marketing campaign, then you also talked about things like listings and other things that I'm sure being a co founder really entails. So now we take that to Ternoa, which is a little bit different. It's not just a game, it's an L one blockchain with all types of things going on. So yeah, I'd love to know kind of just what the day to day is there? Is it more of an internal team or there's still agencies? How does that work?
Gasper Stih
Yeah, I'll just jump 1 second back. So just quick tip for everyone that is listening and will be in this kind of situation. When you work with a lot of agencies, it's really nice to have a person who is their point of contact. So POC with your internal team because it will take a huge burden off your chest. Because he will be the one communicating. He will be because there's always some kind of request and a lot of times those requests are not as important. So pretty much anyone can just forward their message. And it's really nice to have someone who is just being POC for the agency so going back and forth with them and then if there's something big, they will come and report to you. It doesn't sound like a full time job, but it is. So yeah, if you have two or three agencies, if you want to have very effective agencies, then you should have one person to dealing with them, otherwise things will slip through cracks and going to ternoa here, they employed me for the one reason to build a team. So they had big team, big marketing team, but it was a bit dysfunctional or it was functional, but they needed one person to just, let's say, tweak it a bit to work better. They got me and I think in my first six months we perfected this job. Now everybody knows what they're doing, what are their tasks, what are their day to day, what they need to take care of and what are their responsibilities. So this is what was the kind of main task and to build this internal team, to grow it and to have it core and then just pinpoint some agencies that will help us reach the goal, reach the people. That we want to reach, expand to local communities and stuff like that. But Main focus is still more internally because the project is very healthy. We have money, we are building really great ecosystem and features so it's not that much of a focus on quickly do some promotion and fundraising. It's more about doing quality stuff that will work on the long term and especially when markets turns we will be there where we need to be bringing more projects to build on our chain. So we are talking with different regulatory instances. We are talking with different games, pretty much anything. Any project that can potentially gain some things from building on ternoa, anybody can because technology is really good and our developers just heads off to them. They're doing amazing stuff, developing new features and new stuff. And it's all on main net, so they're making my life easier. But on the other side, it's also a bit harder because then expectation raised because we are having a good product. And then, of course, Board is like, come on, man, what you're doing? We're giving you such a good palette of colors, and you're painting with black and white what's going on. So, yeah, it's perks and cons, but it's a pleasure to have really good product behind it and market it. And that's what my goal now, is to properly market it. We created like a marketing team now. I think it's around 15 people at the moment doing different stuff from moderation design, content writing, social media. Also just kind of, let's say it marketing role to set up things and stuff. But yeah, my focus here is to properly distribute the work, to do the best we can, to promote Ternoa and to bring it to more people. And then, of course, in between, I'm the one taking all the, let's say, projects on board. I need to lead the meetings, then communicating with the team, communicating with the board, having reports like all this stuff that seems not that much necessary, but in reality, without those, nothing would work. It would be the same as if you would say running numbers in accounting is boring and it doesn't make much sense because you need to distribute money and that's it, all is paid, and then what is left? It's companies, but when you go deeper and dive deeper, it's not like that. And it's the same in marketing. So once you're one person, you know everything must be done. And then, let's say reporting is not as important. Then when there are four people, you need to have at least internal reports to see what others are doing. And then when you grow your team, you need them to pretty much break it down. You have like, layer one, layer two, layer three, layer four, and you need reports for everything. And then report that to board, report that to finance, report that to HR, how everybody's doing? Then have every month have a call with each person how they feel, how they would like to progress, so they're not just there. It's like, yeah, you need to be friend, but also you need to have some kind of reputation in between your peers. That's how it works. But then when you find the balance, if you find it, you're a magician. If you don't, then you suffer a bit.
Devin
So, Gasper, you're saying you're a magician? A marketing magician. Okay, I see.
Gasper Stih
Not yet. I'm still struggling from time to time.
Devin
No worries, we're all on our way. I guess where we could go from here. Gaspar is now really speaking to the listeners. They've gotten a glimpse of your story. You've done a great job breaking down. What were the things that you learned at each stage? It's been a five or six year journey. And from being at heads in the very beginning doing anything all the way to being a CMO for two projects, especially the one that you're on now at Ternoa. I'd love for you to speak to the listeners now if they wanted to know whether they are coming out of college and just figuring out that they want to go into blockchain or whether they are coming from a traditional marketing background and trying to think of what they need to do to become a blockchain. CMO what were the besides the nuggets that you already left and done really well explaining what are some things that you would give to listeners who are aspiring to get a role similar to yours?
Gasper Stih
It's about taking opportunities. So I guess everybody has their own idea where they want to be, what is the progression of their career for whom they want to work. In the end, every pet will be a bit different. There are not many of those who goes directly straight to where they want to be and it was the same for me. So you just take small steps and you take opportunities. You try. Like my friend would say, you need to chip in your chips in casino. If you don't, you can't win and it's the same in business and it's the same also in life if you want to say so, you need to try things, you need to keep on trying. If you go down you can try a position, you will learn something and then if you don't like it you go back somewhere else or you try and start some things on your own. I had some few of my gigs as well. I did my own project more or less. I ended up with losing some money or just making a few bucks. But it was all very valuable experience that you can then translate into some other if you are here, let's say for if you want to go and work in web three, there are plenty of opportunities and it's quite easy to start, especially on the marketing side. You have so many options from creating content. So now with chat AI that's kind of let's say chat Q and T.
Devin
Yes, I've been using that a lot lately.
Gasper Stih
Also if you learn and then you can start also as being a moderator in TG, that's very nice role. You learn a lot, you chat with people and you get some money on top and then from that you become part of the team. You can then kind of be head of community and then if you're very organized you can then translate that into some, let's say product in marketing and go on so it will never be over the night. So one thing that is just keep on grinding. How would I say it?
Devin
I would say straightforward. That's what came to mind.
Gasper Stih
Yeah, nothing is straightforward, correct. So you need to go also me when I started when you start in just one more thing, when you start in startup when we did like first ICO everybody with these flying titles from CEOs it's five men team and all the flying titles but then in the end you figure out that it's not worth much. So you go back to Project Manager and then you see you need to go through all these steps to become those flying titles that can then also translate into real job. So don't be fooled if you just land your CTO CEO whatever job in a startup where the whole team is only you, don't be fooled that this can translate into having ten plus member team over the night. You need to be part of the team to learn some skills and then sometimes it's hard to hear that, but then in the long run, it will be easier for you also to accept going through all the steps. And then in the end, you will definitely feel value and you won't be afraid of people trying to kick you off your chair as well. Awesome.
Devin
Yeah, I think that was well explained. I'm agreeing 100% if you are going for that C title, CMO CTO CEO, but you lack the skills, you'll find that you'll be put in a situation that is not that favorable. You're going to have to learn everything way faster than normal or things aren't going to go very well for you. I'm pulling for you no matter what. But my recommendation as you Gaspar, is to get the skills first to earn that position so that it goes well. Whenever you're ready.
Gasper Stih
Sure, right on.
Devin
Well, Gaspar, I think I don't have very much else. We covered a lot. I feel like in this 1 hour you've taken me through your whole journey and not only how you did it, but you gave recommendations on what you would tell others if they wanted to aspire to be like you one day. So I wanted to say thank you for your time from the very beginning. It looks like I was right out along. Your life really is way more interesting than mine. So thank you for sharing it from each stage. I feel like we learned a ton and I'm going to use a lot of what you told me whenever I was asked the same questions.
Gasper Stih
Hopefully it was well worked also for the listeners and I told you some valuable stuff and yeah, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure chatting with you.
Devin
Yeah. Gaspar. Until next time. I'm sure we'll talk again soon. It was really good having you and thanks again for giving us the last 1 hour of your time.
Gasper Stih
Thanks. Bye.
