Explode Your Sales with Hema Dey and Craig Petronella

This is Encrypted Ambition, a podcast about the builders rewriting the rules. Join Petronella Technology Group as we decode the ideas, challenges, and momentum behind tomorrow's business, technology, and leadership breakthroughs. All right, welcome to another podcast episode.

Today is July twentieth already. Oh my gosh, this month is already over. Yeah, we have us more than halfway through the year. Yeah, Christmas in July. I don't know about that cake. Oh, that's a big event here at my house. Oh, is it right? It well, I'm from New Zealand, and and and it's winter there now, so we have a mid you know midwinter Christmas.

Kind of environment, yeah. But it's slightly hot in California. Awesome. Well, Emma, introduce yourself. So, tell us a little bit about yourself and your company. So, Craig, thank you for this opportunity. You know, I started my company in 2006. It's called Eiffel International. I really wanted to to build foundations in.

In sales, predominantly using marketing, so sales and marketing. And my tagline is "Your marketing department," because I felt that companies that didn't have the overheads to invest in a VP of sales and marketing and a team could just instantly get someone, you know, to come in and quarterback the entire sales organization. And I use the word sales.

A lot, because I think a lot of people don't want to talk about that word. They want to talk about the word marketing more. Why? Why do you think that they they're scared of the word sales? I'm not sure. I think it becomes like a, you know, it cripples some people, or it naturally gravitates towards the notion of that that really annoying car salesman. You know.

And and so, at the end of the day, we deal with business-to-business transactions, and it's about building relationships. And today, it's about building relationships online. And the truth is that COVID actually accelerated all of this. And if people don't have the understanding of how to connect and build relationships online, then.

Than their competitors actually getting the phone call or the lead, so it's really you know my passion is is sales and so to connect the dots with search engine optimization or anything online marketing, I've I've branded this proprietary process called SEO to sales, as opposed to SEO. Woohoo! We're on page one. Great, you know, but it's about connecting the dots with.

The people that matter to you, and I think business to business, it's really, really important to get that, get that process down, packed your laser focus strategy. I like what you just said about people that matter to you. So one thing I learned a long time ago is it's not about how many people are on your.

List or in your system, it's about the quality of those people, and if you want them to be there, and ultimately they want to listen to you. So it's uh, you know, if you're using Mailchimp or some other CRM system like SharpSpring, or the you know the names are endless these days. But the point is that it's not about the quantity; it's about the relationship that you have with your list, and it could be only five or ten or a handful, and then it'll grow, but.

The point is not to look at it from a numbers perspective, and I like your your your sales approach, even though that might be the the taboo word. I like the sales because I'm a a detail oriented, results based person. So I like sales. I like numbers. I like to increase sales, and I'm sure that most people would like that as well. And I'm sure that they've heard the buzzword SEO before.

But tell us a little bit more about you and your secret sauce, and you know why. I'm sure people have heard about SEO, and I'm sure they've, if they're an entrepreneur, they know about marketing. So, you know, why, Emma? Why SEO to sales? You know, I'm an academic marketer as well. I mean, I started off that way, and if you look back at the principles of marketing.

It's based around the notion of a of a war game, right? And and when in a war game, you've got yourself and then you who you're combating, right? And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs have been made confused on what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, because it's.

Let's face it. The word marketing, the word advertising, all of this has been bastardized. People don't understand it. People don't understand that just because your friend says Facebook, it doesn't mean that you got to go down the rabbit hole of Facebook for social media. And and and a lot of people come to me and they they say, "Oh, I just need a website." And and the truth is that yeah, you do need a website today, and it's kind of your ambassador.

Your brand, your messaging, of your people on on the internet. But the other notion of the website is that it's your it's your race car that you race on the Google freeway. So if you if you're not going to invest in a race car that works for you to connect with the right people, then then you shot yourself in the foot.

And then, if you don't have the formula, and I go back to the car analogy because I think people get it. If you don't put if you put diesel in a BMW racer, it's just not going to work. So you got to have the right formula for your business to combat the competition. And I think once you get that framework in your head.

A lot of other things just fall into place, and I think entrepreneurs are just confused, and they go down one rabbit hole, and then they're in that rabbit hole for for a long time because online marketing takes takes a while to get get going. And then if you're going down the wrong path, or you you're you're hit with different ideas and you're confused, that six months to twelve months, you're.

Out of the loop, and and and a lot of us can't gamble with that. Absolutely. And the other thing too, Craig, is that I believe that online marketing and aggressive SEO or or SEM, for that matter, paid ads is just not for everyone. I still believe that that referral marketing has a place.

For certain businesses, right? Some of us are just not cut out for that. And and for example, you know, if I use my my business and websites, I do so much more than websites. And if I go head on with just ranking myself a websites, I'm benchmarked against the Wix and the VistaPrints of the world, and and that's not what we do.

We we bring solutions, holistic solutions for companies, and I that's why I go back to each each case and and I ask, what is your core business? You know, what makes you different from your competition? And it's really really important that that before you embark on any marketing campaign, that you you hand on your heart, you need to be saying, this is what makes us different.

Absolutely, well said. And I, you know, going back to the website thing, I think a lot of people they start, especially entrepreneurs, they like to roll their sleeves up. They like to do things themselves first, right? So they try to do things on their own. They might start off with a GoDaddy or a Wix or something, and pay the eight dollars for the domain or whatever, and you know, eight or ten bucks a month for hosting. Not, you know, just.

Kind of blindly choosing, right? But then they quickly find, okay, they might have a WYSIWYG builder, and you know, you know, to to put elements on the webpage. But there's really an art to the graphics of a website, and there's also an art to the words that are on the website. And you know, most entrepreneurs are probably not the best writers, you know. So, so there's all these other pieces that go to. You know, everybody knows what a quote unquote website is.

But all the time and effort that goes into a quality website - it's art, it's words. Sometimes less is more, you know. So that's kind of what I think of when you were talking about that. Yeah, and it's it's it's not only that. I think from a content writing standpoint, we gravitate as business owners to write about ourselves a lot, because that's the path of least resistance.

And most websites are all about your business and what you do so well. And if you can just pivot, pivot to talking about that ideal connection, the ideal person that that you want as a client, and what problems they actually have, then we have emotional engagement. Then we have a you know a connection.

Because now they can say, "Oh my God, these people understand me." You know, these people understand what I am going through, and they can possibly help me. So, this is this, I think, is a very critical element in in website content generation. Because a lot of people, it's not a mistake, because it is what everyone does. You start writing, and the first thing you can write about is yourself, because that's the the part that's the easiest.

But empathy is the name of the game here, and it's hard. It's really hard. Well, yeah, and I mean, you can hire somebody just to do the writing part of it too, and and to try to you know get that different perspective and and get it all put together. Yes, well, I'm I'm sure glad that I met you through you know the Provisors business membership that we have together.

But tell us a little bit more about, you know, one thing that you were talking about was the ingrown toenail. Tell us what that means, and I mean, I know what it means, but tell tell the listeners how you help that doctor, you know, pretty much explode her practice. Yeah, I think you know a lot of like I go back to being laser focused and different.

And and and that that doctor was a very accomplished surgeon and podiatrist, and she did everything around foot and ankle problems, right? And so, when I first met her, I said to her, I stood at a reception and I said, "What do I get you visible for out in the marketplace on Google, social media, and and?"

They call in here, you treat them, they pay you, and you make a profit. Well, this was just a foreign question to this doctor, and but she she warmed to she warmed to that question as an as a business owner. And on the outside, I thought it was going to be surgery.

Amputation - you know, cut off a foot, make make a few bucks. I had a bad enough image in my head of the ingrown toenail. Now I've got a cut off leg. I mean, you would think, you know, that's major stuff, right? Because it's it goes through a lot of a lot of procedures, and and t here is a hospital involved, and you know.

That's not the profit center for her. It was ingrown toenails. Now, had I, as her marketing person, come in and quarterbacked based on assumptions, surgery, amputations, then I would have done her no favors in growing her, yeah, right.

And and so when she said ingrown toenails, it helped. It helped just declutter all the noise and get into something that was a cash cow for her because she accepted cash and PPO patients, Medicare as well. And and and we went and studied every patient psychology when you have an ingrown toenail from the pain levels.

The the association of diabetics who who you know if you get a cut you got to have it treated quickly to avoid gangrene which leads to amputation and so a lot of people tend to go to a nail salon to get an ingrown toenail cleaned out but that's such a wrong a wrong thing to do especially if you're diabetic because a nail spa is not a medical office right.

Right, so so we created content all around this, you know, how how patients need to react, how patients need to handle pain when they have an ingrown toenail, and I kid you not, in three weeks the phone started to ring, and because it was cash and PPO and Medicare, now you've got someone who's an expert at ingrown toenails.

No, no, you know, no five hours in a surgical theater. In six months, she was cash rich. She opened up a medical foot spa for diabetics, and then during COVID nineteen, she expanded it into a larger facility. And I think six months ago, she hired a second surgeon. And so, this I know.

Is about a podiatrist, but the truth is that this methodology applies to all businesses, yours and mine included. But it's very easy when you are a small business to say, "I want everything," yeah, because you don't know which way it's going to go. The problem with that is that the investment in one funnel has to be one hundred percent. So, if you got five funnels, you better be ready to one hundred percent.

Of five channels, and and that's hard for a small business. Well, and that's probably what happen. What happens with a lot of small businesses? They start off that way, and then they just don't do it long enough to make it successful, and don't put enough energy into it, and they're spread too thin. Right, exactly, exactly. And and you know, go back to my academic side in marketing and.

You know, I did a a whole paper and study around competitive advantage, and and you do if you're if you're if you're going to go on price, then go on price and become like a gas station, right? And it's a numbers game. Well, it's a race to zero. It's a quantity game and a race to zero. So differentiation and focus is key, and so.

Spending that time up front to really understand what makes you different is super critical, and a lot of people don't realize this. But it's the people that make it different too. So, how do you bring up personal branding in all of this? How do you bring out what's different about you to your competition? And and you know, a whole raft of things can support that from reviews to testimonials.

To case studies, all of this requires content, and a lot of people, you know, they struggle with that. And and this is where this is where I think we, you know, that that's elements we can help, but we also need the market to respond to to reviews, for example, authentic reviews is is critical. Sure. Yeah.

Well, it's that social proof, you know, that people are so looking for these days. I mean, I mean, I know for me, when I search for something new, first thing I look for is reviews, and I start reading them, and then I go to the negative reviews and see what people are talking about. Right, right, right. It's it's it's a nightmare for all business owners, but yeah, it it's painful.

It's painful, and and some agencies tend to say we can help you get reviews. But I believe in authentic reviews. Now, the reviews we get, we coach and we nudge and we nurture with our clients. You'll see that people are writing their heartfelt, right attitude, and that is very different to some robot that's saying.

Yada yada yada, right? And and that is where I think, makes you even more special in the eyes of someone who doesn't know you. Well, and I think there's, you know, some suspicion that's brought up about perfect too. You know, you don't want to be so perfect that you have all these canned reviews that are five stars.

You know, it. I think there's an art to how you respond to a negative review and how you, you know, publicly show that as you know, from a customer service perspective. Because you know, you're going to have good customers and bad customers, and you're going to, you know, everybody's not going to be the right fit for you, and you're going to, as a professional, do the best job you can do. But you can't please everybody, but.

At least, if you have that approach and you respond to those reviews that might be negative, and you wash them out with more positive reviews from, because you know it's not natural. And a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, they're busy. The last thing they want to do is write a review. They might be happy with somebody's service, but it's time consuming to write that quality review, right? Right, right, yeah.

I mean, a bad review is bad, but it's also an opportunity for you to rebuttal and make right, right. And if if you, I mean, there are instances where we've we've coached our clients when they get a one star review, how to reverse that from a perception standpoint in the marketplace. We we turn it into a story story in the sense that okay, this is.

This is what happened, and we're we're committed to making it right. Right. This is how we made it right, and then in some instances, the client actually comes back with the positive review and closes that loop and say, "Wow, they really did something here." So it's powerful, powerful storytelling. Yeah. Well, I I think in your business, you know, you had said that.

You know, you do websites, but it's so much more than websites, right? You actually roll your sleeves up. You get to know the business owner. You figure out what's profitable for the company. Sometimes the entrepreneur might not even know what what a KPI or key performance index is. You know, you know what metrics to look at. So it's it's it's just a very interesting and thorough approach. Yeah, I, you know, I go back to the notion of sales.

And shaking trees and making sure that you you have a pipeline and closing something is important. Closing a sale, a lead is important, and a lot of people don't know how to do that. Yeah. And and and actually, Craig, some people have invested in marketing, but they have forgotten one key element: the directors of first impressions.

And when the phone rings, Craig, and your director of first impressions, which could be your receptionist, it could be your sales team, it could be your call centers, you'd be surprised how many law firms they answer the phone like this, law office. Oh yeah. And you think, well, why would I want to work with this?

Why would I want to go to the next level and make an appointment with the attorney when they don't even have the courtesy to say how are you? Right. How can I help you today? And so I, you know, I I love this. I love answering phones personally. You know, in my corporate life, I mean, this was the pulse of the business. You knew whether people were happy.

Whether they were interested, whether they were unhappy with something. Yeah, I mean, if the receptionists didn't pick up on the three rings, I would be on the phone straight away. Yeah, I mean that that pulse is super critical. The other thing is web leads when it comes in through the website. If a sales manager doesn't attend to it within twenty four hours, we've got a problem.

Oh, absolutely! I remember when I used to do the Google AdWords for myself back in 2006. If you didn't answer that, like pretty much immediate, you burn the lead. I mean, they've moved on. It's like they go down the list of you know they're going to call you, then they're going to call the next competitor, the next competitor, whoever talks to them or returns their answer is is the winner. It's a game.

Right. So, from a business to business standpoint, yeah, some are more international leads, and some could be domestic leads. So, there's time zones as well. So, if it's coming in from from the east coast to the west coast, they're already three hours ahead, waiting for an answer. So, the anxiety for the answer is is three hours delayed, right? And so, that urgency and that.

You know, at the end of the day, Craig, there are two kinds of sales personalities. If I were to categorize them, one is the hunter, one's the farmer. And if you don't have a hunter on your on your team, then the DNA to be a hunter is not something you can actually inject and foster.

You have to be very careful, you know, who you put in that front line. But, and but farmers are easier to find. But for example, if your receptionist is shy, don't think that she's going to become a hunter just with training. Now, now you're getting into personalities and strength zones, people, and exactly. Yeah, it's it's tough because.

Because at the end of the day, if you're going to invest in all of this, this SEO, the sales, social media marketing, anything like that, you've got to have hunters receiving at the other end, right? And but that's a law firm, whether it's a medical practice, whether it's a a factory that that is producing widgets. You know, at the end of the day, you've got to close the sale.

You got to catch it first, but then you got to close the sale. Yeah. Well, I think that you help them clearly identify their process, if if they have one, and then you help them find the gaps in the process. So, like in this case, if they paid for ads and they drop the ball because the person didn't answer the phone, the right. So you find the part that's broken in their business, and then you know where to zero in. Right. Exactly.

Yeah, and and and at the end of the day, it's a partnership. So not everyone enjoys this level of detail. Some entrepreneurs want to, you know, just outsource it and not be part of the process. And and I I personally don't think that works. We do all the heavy lifting. But if you, for example, we say, you know.

Your team needs training in how to triage leads. If they're not receptive to that, then then there's there's going to be issues in the sense that we can't perform if the the it's not a closed loop strategy. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know for my business, what we do is so complicated for a lot of folks. You know, like with the the ransomware, for example. You know, how much does it cost for a ransomware assessment?

I don't know. We have to talk about it. You know, we need to know about their business. We need to know how many locations or how many endpoints do they have. You know, what applications. You know, we have to do a thorough assessment process, much like what you're describing, to figure out, even to scope the job properly. To figure it out, the price. Everybody wants to jump to price right away, but it's not an off-the-shelf product like.

Tide detergent, you know, you are not. Yeah, and it's not commodity. Yeah, that's right. And you know what, Craig? To be honest with you, I am assessing the vulnerability of my clients in terms of ransomware and cybersecurity as part of the deal. And and you know, you are very much part of the the the recipe here because websites are vulnerable to hacking.

And what people don't realize is that if you don't have a level of protection, even on your website, I'm just using websites as an example here, is that all that investment on SEO and the equity you build up can just be will just vanish if you get hacked and and pulled down. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, we've had we've had many clients come from us that start with GoDaddy hosting and then they get hacked.

Right. Like, well, I thought GoDaddy was covering that for us. No, if you read what they're doing, that's why it's nine dollars hosting. You know, they're not doing any security. You have to add your own. And you know, then then we get them into a package, and you know, depending on what that package is, will depend on the price. But oftentimes, it might be two hundred and fifty, three hundred dollars or more per month for hosting, because we have all the necessary security in place to make sure that they don't get defaced and they don't have these problems. So.

You know, it was interesting to hear you say that. You know, sometimes you get people that want a website, but then you have that conversation with them, and they need so much more than just a website. They need you to go through their business and help them figure out where are their oil wells or profit centers. What should they be focusing on? So you are almost like a business coach too. Yeah, it's funny you should say that because someone else just said, "Can you just coach me?" and I go.

I never thought of that. Thought of it that way, but sure. And and, but you know, going. I'm not. I want to emphasize this here on this interview because the security element of of anything internet, anything, cyber, is an architectural nightmare for some people.

And and I I want to urge IT folks who don't understand cybersecurity or ransomware protection that they need to partner with someone like yourself to make it happen. Because I think that even small businesses like law firms are getting attacked. Absolutely, yeah, they are. And the cost of it is not just five hundred bucks. You know, it's millions. Yeah. Yeah.

And it could see someone go into bankruptcy. Absolutely. Yeah. So I, I would like to, you know, the the way I look at this is that it's your architecture, right? Your entire architecture of online marketing and security. It has to be hand in hand. You're absolutely correct.

Absolutely. I mean, a lot of people they they think of security as the secondary. Like, oh, we'll get to that later. It's kind of like backups, right? Prevention. Yeah. I bet a lot of your clients they don't back up their website unless you tell them to. Yeah, the ones that are on our maintenance plan, we do it for them. But I'm saying before they come to you, though, I bet nine out of ten before they come to you are not backing up. They didn't even think about that.

They don't even know where the passwords are. Right, and usually it's the same password that they were using for everything else. Yeah, and and this is another thing is that in my world, passwords we have thousands of them. Oh yeah, and and storing passwords is something that a lot of people, you know, they put it on a piece of paper, or that's right.

It's crazy how people are are just. I guess until you burn, you don't know what that burn feels like. But see, you could do everything right, and then if you're reusing that password because of somebody other, some other company that did something wrong that got hacked, and you're reusing that password, that's how you get hacked.

Right. So you're right. I mean, a lot of people. It starts with passwords and hygiene, right? You know, and the quick fix to that is get a good encrypted password manager and store your passwords there. And then once you get organized in that process, harden the security of that with a token technology, which is a hardware technology that makes it more secure.

So a hacker can't hack your long password, you know, because that's the big fear, right? Oh, I don't want to put my passwords on my computer because then somebody will hack my computer and get all my passwords, right? Which there's ways to mitigate the risk, but the point is that moving away from using the same password for different things is much more secure.

Yes, and then also adopting what's called trustless technology that doesn't even require a password in the first place is even better because then you don't have to worry about a password for that particular technology. Yeah, so I think, I think, Craig, I think the the work that you do is super critical in in in business risk mitigation and protection. I mean, the bleed. I mean.

What would you estimate a bleed would be on a law firm if they get hacked? Most will go out. Most will go out of business. Oh, great. Okay. I mean, I think the latest statistic is like if if you've had a breach, I think it's crazy. It's like nine out of ten go out of business. And and so the investment, though, like for a small law firm per year, would be.

To protect themselves from going out of business, would be what with your service? I mean, it depends on the size of the law firm and the complexity. But I mean, it could be, could be. Let's say it's five five people in the law firm. A really small law firm might be ten twenty thousand dollars. You know, could be less, could be more. It just really depends on the complexity of their model. Some small law firms are more complicated than a fifty person firm. So it just really kind of depends. But

You know, it's all about layers. I always talk about layers when I do speaking engagements. The more layers that if you have a at your house, you might have an alarm system. You might have a sign. You might have taps on the windows. You might have cameras. You might have a dog. All those things I call layers. The more layers you have, when a criminal is profiling your house, because it does happen.

They're looking at your house, and they're like, "Oh, I see a sign. I see cameras all over the place. I, you know, complexity. I don't want to break into that house. That's going to be. I look at the neighbor. It's all dark. There's nothing there. The neighbor's the one that's going to get hit. It's the same thing with hackers. They're oftentimes they're smart and lazy, and they're using programs and automation to scan the networks to find their low-hanging fruit."

So, if you harden your business and you have your data protected from ransomware, and you keep it encrypted and you keep it offline or separate in a trustless bucket, then the hacker, the ransomware hackers, they can't get at your data, so they can't hold your ransom. Now, there are different levels of ransomware. So, you, if you have complexity in your business model, maybe has a server at that law firm and it's running.

Time Matters, or TimeSlips, or Clio, or some other law firm software that's popular. And that server were to get breached, well, now you've got other problems. You've got the the business application that no longer works because that server's locked up. But then you've also got the investigation or forensic investigation that needs to be done. Did the hackers take anything and exfiltrate it out?

Because sometimes what they're doing is they're stealing intellectual property, and they're saying, "Oh, we've got all this intellectual property on you. We're going to release it to all your competitors and put it on the dark web, unless you pay us ten million dollars or whatever it is." Right? Tell me more about this dark web, Craig. The dark, mysterious web. How do you even get in there? You know.

So you get in there with it's called the onion router or Tor. So most people, so you can't. So Google and popular surfing of the web is much different on the dark web. There's no, the the websites don't come up in a Google search engine, for example. They're all anonymized. If you remember back in the day.

Remember when Napster was really popular, and then there were peer-to-peer applications. Do you remember the application? This is dating myself now, but do you remember the application called Kazaa? No. Okay, so that was a that was an application that came out shortly after Napster, and it was a way it was a peer-to-peer program that you would put on your computer.

And it was a way that you can share music file or files with other people, but there was no central server. That's what Napster did wrong. There was a central server, and the feds shut them down. Right. So it's kind of like this segues into cryptocurrency. So decentralization of a server, in this case, of peer-to-peer, is how the dark web works. So.

If your information is is posted on the the the big bad dark web, it's peer to peer, meaning meaning others that join the pool can get to it through the Tor browser or the Onion router, and you can download Tor browser on your desktop or your phone even, and you can search these.dot onion or dark web websites. And my point is that.

There's no central server to go after. That's why it's this mysterious place. And a lot of people will buy or sell drugs on there and do, you know, other illegal activities because it's it's anonymized. So you're typically using a VPN and you're you're creating these peer-to-peer connections, and you can't get caught.

You can. I mean, you know, just like people get caught with ransomware and Bitcoin, you know, they think that it's untraceable, or there is a way to trace it. But it all goes down to: Do you remember the recent breach that just happened, where the FBI claimed that they reclaimed some of the money that they captured back, some of the money from the Colonial Pipeline?

Well, yeah, but I don't understand how they would do something like that. Yeah, so so it wasn't that the FBI did something amazing. I mean, the FBI is great, and I like the FBI, but and and I'm you know on the good side. But my point is that the hackers made a mistake. Okay, what the hackers did, the hackers were stupid. What they did was they took the Bitcoin, they went to an exchange.

Like Kraken or Coinbase, wherever, and then they exchange the Bitcoin for fiat for currency. Well, the FBI was smart. Okay, kudos to the FBI because they were already sitting at the exchanges waiting for the hackers to cash out. Interesting. So, had the hackers never cashed it out, or cashed it out outside of?

Where the FBI was looking, they wouldn't have gotten caught, right. So they got caught because they were, they cashed out their money at an exchange that was monitored by the FBI, and that's how they were able to capture the funds back, right. But it wasn't, it wasn't some amazing feat that happened. You know what I mean? It was a mistake. The hackers made a mistake, right.

So, so are they are they put away now? They caught? I haven't followed through with the investigation of the rest of what happened with the story. If they are, then great. But the but the fact of the matter is that they, you know, the Dark Side Hacker Group, the one that claimed credit for it originally, they also said, "Oh, we're going to go under. We're not going to do this anymore. We feel bad."

Well, I mean, come on. The reality of the situation is they're they're going to reform their group as a different name because they were exposed, right? So now they're going to come up, and and that's what they've done. I mean, we're dealing with nation states, and we're dealing with with countries that are investing billions of dollars in cyber, and that's why we're all these companies are getting hacked because they don't have all of the essential.

Building blocks of cybersecurity and good hygiene. That's why ransomware is such a bad problem right now. Right, right. So this this whole crypto thing. I mean, I I love the blockchain thing, blockchain theory, and I think that's the way of the future. We've been you know hooking up websites to receive payments as a payment portal. Yeah.

Five years ago, I was in this and went and see mines and and understand how crypto is generated and all of that. Fell in love with it, but you know, what's your take on on the security standpoint for companies to embark on crypto payments? Ah, such a loaded question. So many many moons and years ago, I bought a domain called BlockchainSecurity dot com.

Because I saw the future of wow, we're going to have a lot of blockchain adoption, but once again, nobody thinks about security until later, right? So, how do we secure all this stuff? So, I'll tell you a little little story. When a lot of people were mining and and still are mining Bitcoin, right? Everybody wants to mine Bitcoin now because the price is depressed, right?

So, so they're buying these miners, and that's why Nvidia and all the big graphic. You can't buy anything; everything's out of stock, right? Well, long story short, people are buying ASIC miners on the market, paying inflated prices. I did this years ago, back in 2017, because I wanted to learn how to mine and I wanted to go through the process. But what I'm getting at is, again, you're getting the public.

Or the techies to figure this out, do it on their own, right in their garage or wherever. But again, security is not taking - they're not security experts. So when they set this stuff up, they might use the same password that they used when they got breached or something. So then, what happens is the hackers will break in to the miner and change the destination blockchain address of where the mining proceeds go.

Yeah, to the hackers. So that that happens all the time right now. Right. So, so answer your question: Security is is going to be a huge cyber security is going to be huge for blockchain. Do I think that some blockchains are secure? Absolutely. I mean, look at Bitcoin. That's why it's the it's the long the longest chain, the longest blockchain is the most secure chain. Right. Every day as it gets longer and longer, it becomes more secure.

Got it. Okay, so the the miners that participate in Bitcoin right now, the reason why it's thirty thousand or whatever it is today, is because it's the longest chain, and it still has even with the China crackdown. I mean, I don't know if you read about the China thing, but Bitcoin's not going to die because China is not wanting Bitcoin. China doesn't want Bitcoin because it gives the

Bitcoin gives the people too much power over the proposed digital law. Right. Okay. So if if they let Bitcoin let it live, then they would no longer have control over their own currency. Got it. So this is why the world every day is like.

Well, we can't print money anymore. What are we going to do? So, I mean, if you think about that for a minute, that's pretty. This is a disruptor. This is a major disruptor to finance. So, when you said that, you know, I I want to accept Bitcoin on my website, I think that's fantastic. But just so you know, and I'm sure you know this already, a lot of banks.

And a lot of payment gateways and all this technology that we work with today for accepting payments on a website - we don't need all that with cryptocurrency. I know, you know. But but here is the thing: it disrupts their business model. And these are banks and big financial institutions that have a lot of money, so they're gonna they're gonna try to. It's funny you should say. Is because we have become our own banks.

That's exactly right. So, so what Bitcoin and other crypto does is it gives the unbanked banking ability. And there's a bazillion people that don't have bank accounts. So my point is, I'm not saying that banks are going to go completely gone and go away. I mean, people are always going to need to borrow money and things like that. I'm saying that the role of a bank, being that third party,

Yes, is rapidly changing, and there is a lot of inefficiency in the old business model that is no longer needed in 2021. I mean, if I want to send you ten thousand dollars, I should be able to do that on my own, and you should be able to receive it in seconds or minutes, right? No third party involvement. Now.

There may be a use case where I don't trust you, and you don't trust me. So you may want a trust or some third party to help you with that, and that's fine. And there will be places that that exist in crypto world that'll do that. Yes, and maybe that will be the the two point oh version of what a bank does in addition to lending money and things like that. Well, yeah, I mean it's I mean I.

I've I know it's happened where real estate transactions have taken place with Bitcoin. Yeah, and I mean that's what you're talking about is the the escrow version of crypto to facilitate the transfer of funds, etc., etc., including well at some point smart contracts as well. Well, look at if we just talk about real estate real quick.

So, if you've ever bought a house, you need to get something called title insurance. Yes. Okay. Do you know title insurance? You're paying a third party that basically says this is what you're you're paying this entity for an insurance policy that basically attests and says what what you're buying, what you know, the land, the you know, all the stuff, right? Right.

If all that's stored on a blockchain, it all goes away. There's no need for the third party, right? Because everybody in the world can publicly look at the public ledger. Yes, nobody can change it. Correct. So any business, like supply chain, or any model that can work on a ledger in what's called an append-only basis, which is a lot, by the way, a lot of government, you know.

Real estate, you know, marriage licenses, anything like that - that you you you have this event, it's recorded, and then that's it. It's on the public ledger, right? Yes. All all the businesses that are being paid today to vouch for, like title insurance things, are going to get wiped, and their their model is going to be need to be reinvented.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, it'd be interesting to see how things evolve in the U.S. You know, Yellen isn't so in favor of of all of this, but the truth is that with with inflation at at its you know at where it is today, I mean, some people say it'll crash, some people say it'll just continue this way, and the government's just going to keep printing money, but.

I think at some point crypto is just going to overtake the situation. Well, here's the thing: I don't know if you've read a lot on the history of money, but you and I determine what's valuable. If we're going to do a transaction together, you and I determine what's valuable and what we want to exchange. Right. Okay. But a government can't tell us what to do with that.

If you want this bottle of water and you're in a desert, yeah, and you're about to die, right? You'll probably pay fifty thousand dollars for that bottle of water, or whatever it is. It's it's market value and timing, right? Correct. So my point is that a government doesn't need to dictate and say what that should be. It's an individual, personalized transaction between us. Yes.

Okay, but if a government can't control its currency and keeps printing money, and let's say they print twenty trillion more dollars tomorrow and keep just deflating the crap out of the currency, well, what happens globally? Globally, people in other countries are going to be like, "You just made my dollar worth ten cents." That's right, and I've got.

A hundred thousand dollars that I saved my life, lifetime savings in my bank account. You just made it worth ten thousand dollars. They're going to get upset, right? I mean, I think so. Then this is where they worked really hard to get the USD. Well, right, yeah, they worked really hard, and and this is where wars and conflicts happen. You know. But my point is, let let's put that aside. Let's say that happens. Let's let's just speculate and say that.

It's worth one tenth of what it is now. Well, what's going to happen? People are going to look for, and you can look in history. People did this with all different things. Right. The the point is that you're going to find some other currency that's valuable to you. It could be, you know, the reason why people don't transfer transfer gold bars is because they're heavy, they're bulky. You know.

And there's not a lot of utility with it. If you have a gold bar, I mean, what do you do with it? You know, it's not. It's so. I mean, there's differences in in who values what as currency. But I think in our country, especially with innovation and tech, we need to get the right people in office to be able to to figure out. Do I think it needs to be regulated? Sure. I mean, everything needs to be regulated at some point, but.

Do I think it can be stopped? No, not really. I mean, it's going to be super hard, especially if you're getting. I mean, it's just the the depth and reach is is near impossible. Even if you shut every miner down in the U.S., other ones will pop up in other parts of the world. Correct. You know, so you're never going to shut. You would have to stop Bitcoin. You would have to power down every single miner in the world.

Right. Everyone would have to go dark. Right. It's not. It's not going to happen. Right. It's not going to. I mean, there's just other places in the world that embrace it, that want it. I mean, there's even mayors in different parts of our states and our country that they want it. They see the the reality of it. Well, El Salvador has made it an official currency. It makes sense. I mean, what.

It's more smartphones in the world than human beings. You know, it it makes sense to have currency where you don't have to go physically to a bank. In some of these countries, you got to go to the bank to get you know to get your money out. And well, look at it. Look at look at it from. Let's just kind of touch on that for a second. If everyone right now went to the bank and said, "I want all my money and I want to close my account."

What do you think would happen? The banks couldn't do it. Correct. You're right. They could not service all. So then, what happens? People are going to get really angry. I want my money. Right. Right. They can't get it. Now you. Now you've got huge conflict. So yeah. So this stuff goes away with. And I'm not saying you know.

Maybe it's Bitcoin, maybe it's not. But the point is that in the crypto, I think it's Bitcoin from a utility perspective or for a long-term value perspective. I don't think it's the most efficient coin. You know that I don't know if you've read about Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin and other other things that are you know more more like everyday transactions. My point is though that Bitcoin's fixed supply.

Makes it scarce and valuable. Correct. Okay, so if nobody can mess with that supply, no government, no nation state, no person, doesn't matter how bad they want to, they cannot mess with that supply. Right. What happens over time? What are we at now? Out of twenty-one, I think it's twenty-one million, right? Well, it used to be.

I think it was 21 or 22 million. But here's the other thing: a lot of people lost their passwords. I know. There's so many that gone missing. The supply is actually a lot less. I think the usable supply is probably less than 18 million. Right, right. So if there's only 18 million of these things, and we've got billions of people on Earth.

There's not enough to go around, right? Yeah. So, because of Ethereum scarcity, you what you're saying is that at some point that value has to shoot up. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And yeah, I do think that there's always going to be use cases for exchange of. You may want to change that Bitcoin to Ethereum, or you might want to swap it for fiat, or you know, there's there's going to be.

Again, different types of money or forms of money mean different things to different people, right? So, if you want to buy something from a business and they find that they need Ethereum, they're going to accept Ethereum. But there's ways to flip this stuff, right? I have to tell you something, and and and you, I think the music here. Yes, I have a doctor client. He's a surgeon, a vascular surgeon, and he has decided to differentiate himself by being the first doctor in his area in this region.

To accept crypto cryptocurrency, and he loves Dogecoin, thanks to Elon Musk. And he's a surgeon, you know, saying, "I'll do it." Yeah, that's taking out a traditional paradigm and thinking, and and just going with. Well, look at look at like MicroStrategy. Have you followed Michael Saylor? No, I have not. Oh gosh.

Well, that's a whole other podcast. Well, anyway, he's borrowed record. He has borrowed record amounts of money on paper notes, like took loans, so that he could buy more Bitcoin. He has like tens of thousands of Bitcoin. He's got one of the largest stakeholders of Bitcoin because he knows and he sees the future of the scarcity.

Right. Well i I think that I think that um I think that it is the future. I think that many retailers have actually been doing Overstock. dot com accept crypto for you know to buy a pillow or a rug or whatever it is. But um, but but I think Craig, people do need to understand the fundamentals of it.

You know, like you know, even a jeweler, a high-end jeweler in Beverly Hills, is looking at how they can accept crypto payments because you know credit card payments are at risk for them. It's a high-ticket item. Merchant service providers don't look at them favorably. Crypto is safe, but you just need to set it up correctly. You need to set it up correctly and secure it properly. Correct.

Right, right, but this has been a fascinating discussion. Great, thanks. Oh, always a good, always a good chat. Well, thank you. I know time's running up against this year, but but thank you for joining. I'm I'm glad that we're able to talk about your business and segue into some of these other technologies like blockchain and crypto.

Yeah, I really do believe that there is a future for it, and I think at some point, businesses are going to want all the documents, all the HR folders, all on the blockchain. It makes sense. So it's interesting that you say that. So SiaCoin is another coin that I like. It's it's an altcoin, of course. On the Sia network, it's a Web 3.0 technology.

You can store data on the blockchain through Sia's network. So, if you think about that for a minute, if you stored your critical data on on a blockchain, and it's append only, ransomware can't get to it. They can't steal it. They can't take it. Oh, wow! Right. There you go. I'll leave you with that to think about.

Let's do another one of these. Yeah, absolutely. I need to look at ZayaCoin. In fact, you've mentioned this a few times to me. I haven't done it yet. Yeah, they got some really awesome technology, and not just them, but others. Other types of blockchains can work in the same fashion. The point is that, from a ransomware perspective, if you protect your data and make it so that the hackers can't get to it.

You don't. You don't have to pay the ransom. Oh, I'll be darned. Well, thank you, Emma. I appreciate it. Craig will be in touch. Awesome, thanks. Thank you. That's a wrap on this episode of Encrypted Ambition. Subscribe wherever you listen, and if today's guest inspired you, leave us a review or share the show with someone in your circle.

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