Latest / The CXChronicles Podcast / CXChronicles Podcast Episode 34 -- Cyrpto, Blockchain and Venture Capital with Ryan O'Connor

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CXChronicles Podcast Episode 34 -- Cyrpto, Blockchain and Venture Capital with Ryan O'Connor · The CXChronicles Podcast

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hi and welcome to the cx chronicles, podcasts for customer service managers, vps of customer experience, and all of you other cxos exercise out there.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Every week we're going to dig into topics, challenges, wins, and updates in the cx or customer service community.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, Adrian Brady Trisana.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Check us out at the CX chronicle stocking up.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Feel free to reach out to us anytime.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being a part of the cx chronicles nation,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: right.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Today's episode of the cx chronicles podcast.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: Ryan is an early stage startup operator who's been through multiple exits across multiple businesses and industries.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: He comes on the show today to chat with the cx nation about customer experience development venture capital into the impact of blockchain technology and today's world.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Ryan is currently working at Targhee labs, a global group of contributors to the Tare blockchain project, whose mission is to steward the most useful decentralized platform that empowers anyone to create digitally scarce things that people love, like virtual goods in games or concert tickets.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: He was responsible for overseeing the fundraising process.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Ryan and I have known each other for years, working together to help build one fine stay in New York City.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: He's a great story to tell in is very entertaining to listen to.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome my friend Ryan O'connor to the cx chronicles podcast,
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: Zen desk.
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: The best customer experiences are built with Zen desk.
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: Our customer service engagement platform is powerful and flexible and it scales to meet the needs of any business.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: Connect with your customers on any channel using zen desk.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: All right guys, thanks so much for listening to the cx chronicles podcast.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: I have Brian O'connor with me today.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: Ryan, welcome to the show.
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: Thank you Adrian.
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: It is always a pleasure.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Absolutely meant so.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: So for the CX nation folks that, uh, folks that are listening, Ryan and I actually go way back.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: We spent time working together in New York City and we have stayed connected, uh, ever since then.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Ryan is a, is a pleasure to have on have you on the show.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: And again, I'm really excited for you to tell the CX nation your story.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: Let's hop right into it.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Ryan, in five to 10 minutes, can you tell us about your personal customer experience, service and sales journey?
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: Tell, tell the CX nation how did you get to where you are today?
• 3:13
  Speaker 5: Believe it or not, I started off as a musician, so I, I have a degree in music from the Berklee College of music, which is as employable as it sounds and the, uh, and I land into, um, and I toured, I toured and I, I love performing.
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: And uh, I played basically every shitty club, uh, you could name up and down the east coast and had a blast doing it.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: What was your instrument?
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: I play the drums.
• 3:42
  Speaker 5: I play the drums and I can take the piano, the piano to impress, to impress women.
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: But now that I'm married that I don't do that anymore.
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: So the, uh, the, uh, it's a little hard to stare a need somebody on the drama.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: So the, uh, and, and so, you know, I did that for a couple of years and it kind of became obvious.
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: Uh, you know, so my, my, my personal circumstances.
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: And so I, I have type one diabetes, you know, it's a, it's a disability that I'd been living with for almost 20 years and it's a very expensive disability.
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: And so I kind of was on the road, was always sort of thinking of like, all right, well, you know, how do I, how do I, how do I make sure that I, I make enough where I can support myself and obviously, you know, pay for this disease.
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: So now it became really clear that while the career I was on was really, really fun, it was not profitable and so I kinda had to do a realignment of things and I had to say, okay, like, you know, what are, what?
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: I strip everything down.
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: Like what do I really love about my current situation and what I love the tongue was.
• 4:47
  Speaker 5: I love the deal making.
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: I went to school, I studied the music business.
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: I'm at Berkeley, but unfortunately while I was in college, uh, Youtube came out, why I'm wired came out of the Internet effectively eight my industry.
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: And so the, I had to pivot, I had to take it personally.
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: And so, you know, I boiled it down to I love selling, I love marketing, but I also knew that I wasn't very good on the, um, on the tactical things, uh, understanding the language of finance, for example, like it was just alien to.
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: And so I ultimately went back to school when I got my Mba.
• 5:23
  Speaker 5: And so I was glad I was getting my master's.
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: I was in New York doing that college.
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: And while I was doing that, I got introduced to the founder of tickets lie, Andrew dressed again and a, and Andrew basically looked at my resume and said, you have a degree in finance and you have this background in music.
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: Um, you should come aboard and take us Pillai for those who don't know whether a concert ticketing application all a ticket master.
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: Um, and it was in the early, early days, pre series a is, I think they just have like a couple of million bucks raise and they were to add on.
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: We're going to add on outside, like their first sort of outside sales hiring outside of their closest friends they had been in the business with for decades and they took her, they took a risk on me to give me a 90 day contracts and they basically, it was, they handed me a deck and a list of phone numbers and they said just figure it out.
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: And so unfortunately, um, I figured it out and so that career grew into, um, so we, we, we, I did great in the sales role
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: and smiling and dialing.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: Were you dropping by people's offices and meet with them, the person were you, how were you getting to these people?
• 6:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it was literally.
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: So it was a sort of whole false, like just full end to end sales role.
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: I literally sdrm before Fdr or cold calling, eating shit on the phone, emailing and then trying to set your appointments up and then going and doing it.
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: And I really honestly learned trial by fire.
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: Um, and so I, I had, I was lucky that I had great mentors that ticket fly specifically in the two senior sales guys.
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: Brian are known and Tom, you all who were just like veterans and, and made out a fucking leather in terms of, you know, they'd seen everything and, and, uh, you know, they were phenomenal from a mentoring standpoint because they shared with me their failures.
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: They weren't afraid to show the junior guy there rejection emails.
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: They weren't afraid to put me on cold calls where the, where the prospect was, you know, an ornery and didn't want to deal with them.
• 7:28
  Speaker 5: And uh, you know, and they're, and they're exceptionally Brian is now, I think he's a ceo of and I think that's his title of CEO of a, of a major ticketing company.
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: Now I'm, you know, doing many, many millions of revenue and Tom is still like the senior top dog.
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: And I'd take a fly which is now owned by, by event pride and easily like the number one salesperson there.
• 7:47
  Speaker 5: So there was, uh, it was, uh, it was, it was very cool to get to learn underneath those two guys and, and address again.
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: And then it was also great to know.
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: And so anyway, but it was, it was full stack.
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: And it was, it was setting appointments and then you know, taking the opportunities and converting them all the way to close and really where you kind of stepped out with on a day to day to client management piece.
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: But you know, it's such a house to house business.
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: It was, it was really, you know, it's stuff went wrong.
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: You were, you got a phone call from the client, so it was a, you know, plenty of, plenty of 1:00 AM phone calls because it was night life and when the software we go down, it would typically be an inopportune moments, you know, during the height of a show which was in the wee hours of the morning.
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: So it was full end to end, which I thought which was a great, great first sort of entree into sales or just being in that sink or swim mode.
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: But that's how I got started.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: In terms of, you don't want to go back to something you talked about with sharing the failures.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: I'm really happy you brought that up because it sounds like you were lucky early on in your journey to have some leaders who were really open to showing you what, what wasn't working because here's the reality, folks love to only talk about successes and they like to talk about all the winners and they like to talk about the champions, but each and every one of those people got there by failing again and again and again and just getting up and doing it again and again and again.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: Um, that's huge.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: And I think that that must've been a really, really positive jumping off point for you in terms of seeing that it was okay to fail early, but also just to have the confidence to go, to go to bat as many times as he could.
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I, I nailed it and it's funny because now when I interview people, whether it's sales or, or anything at this point, you know, I asked them specifically on the deal making side.
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: He does.
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: Everybody can print out their, their salesforce report and anybody can sort of, they can spend their numbers effectively.
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: Like we are, it's part of our job, a little bit of spinning and so the, you know, I always ask, tell me about a time when a deal just literally blew up in your parking space by just telling me about a time where like you just eat it and like it, if they tell the story with a, with a higher level of self deprecation where they can make a little fun out of it and have fun out of themselves, you know, and like, and, and, and that, and you know, take, you know, take 100 percent of the responsibility, you know, and, and, and, and in terms of where they screwed up, um, you know, that's, that's when I want to hear and that's what I want to see because it is just, it is them.
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: It's just about winning more than you lose.
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: That's all it's about, you know, and so, and the idea that you run a perfect record is just silly and I think it's been effective.
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: It's just, it just doesn't make you, it doesn't increase your empathy for the customer, for other sales people.
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: I mean, it just, you know, it's um, you know, and, and it, it, it's just, it's, it's not the best way to go about your career.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: Yup.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: No, I think that's, I think that's absolutely correct.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: I think that's absolutely correct, right.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: To, to, to kind of swing the camera in a different direction for a second.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: And um, as you know, we spent a ton of time on this show talking about the four cx success pillars, team tools, process in feedback.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: I'd love to ask you a question that I'd like to ask all the guests, but with those four pillars in, in, throughout your career and running these teams and building these client portfolios and closing deals, which of those four cx success pillars have you spent the bulk of your time focusing on team tools, process and feedback?
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: I'd say that I would, out of all those rank ordering them in terms of my focus, it would really be team process feedback and tools.
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: Um, I feel like, I feel like for me, um, you know, the team has to be, you have to like not just in terms of talent, in terms of quality of that pallet, but back to sort of that, that each, you know, that that sells, that ability to self deprecate, that ability to sort of look at yourself honestly and be able to do an assessment and inventory of, of, of why things are working or candidly why things are not working yet.
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: Um, you know, and that's really kind of paramount and feedback is sort of, I look at it as sort of like a sub layer.
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: It's almost like I put in the teaming process and then underneath it feedback kind of encapsulates both of those wings and tools kind of wraps around all light, all three of those things where it's, it's, you know, the um, the ability for every feedback has to be built into the process loop.
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: It has to be, it has to be one of those like those contract mechanisms, like when, when, when designing, when designing product and you know, you want that user feedback loop.
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: So you can always iterate and always improve.
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: You want that internally now.
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: So for example, you know, after every sales conference, every year, every sales call, then right now I'm doing sales calls with me and the co founder, CEO, CEO of our, of our, of our latest project.
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: Um, and after every pitch, you know, we look at each other like, all right, any feedback for you, any feedback for me?
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: We've been doing this, you've been doing this for 20 fucking years, you know, and I've been doing it for 10, 15 and it was just like you can never, I don't think you can ever ever stop looking for looking for ways just to shave off, you know, like if it's a race, just want to shave off a quarter of a second, you know, just just that, just an eighth of an eighth of a second.
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: Um, you know, off your, off your time.
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: And so that's Kinda how I, that's Kinda how I look at a tools for me is sort of like if you don't have process and you have a good team, you can have all the tools in the world.
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: And you're not going to be able to do, he can't do shit with, um, but at the same time it's like, it's, you know, it, it is definitely, it's an accelerant, but it's not a, uh, you know, it.
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: It's not like, uh, if they're, if they're, I mean, now granted we can go all the way down so low we consider email and telephones tools and obviously you have have tools.
• 13:59
  Speaker 5: Um, there's like a baseline of understanding that like, you know, the need, you know, an email tracking system as soon as your starting day one, you know, maybe you know, but like, you know, can you be good for a quarter without it, you know, also maybe you know, you need a document tracking system like a doc send out of the, out of the gate.
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: You know, maybe.
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: I mean, there's some, there's some table stakes I email and telephone, but if you don't have a great team, you don't have a great process for figuring out how to move the widget down the line, you know, all the way to a finished product or to a closed deal or do a hand up the client services.
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: Um, you know, tools, it doesn't really matter.
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: Um, so the, uh, the uh, sort of like the facilitator for the process,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: tons of awesome stuff there.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: This leads into another question.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: You've already given a tremendous amount of advice and tips for young and upcoming cx sales leaders or even startup founders.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, right?
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: You have a ton of ton of experience specifically dealing with the vcs as you've been talking about.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: But if you had to give a short clip piece of advice for the CX and sales leaders, are these startup founders that are, are going to be going through the gauntlet and learning all the things that you've learned over the years.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: What's the, what's, what's the short advice that you would give those folks in terms of growing their business and really, really getting things started with their business?
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: I would absolutely say always give before you get that, you know, don't, don't look, don't be, don't be transactional, but understand that there are going to be plenty of people you interact with that are transactional and identifying them as such can be beneficial and should be done.
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: Um, you know, there is a, a, a, a good, plenty of mine was actually either an angel investor now in San Diego have come off and we went to the route together and uh, you know, he had a great saying.
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: He would, these open houses for our MBA program I'm doing.
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: Somebody would ask for like, Hey, give us some advice we haven't heard at Nyu or at Wharton or Columbia and a show, but always say I'm fire 90 percent of your classmates because because only 10 percent you're going to find you really connect with and are worth doing business with.
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: And when you do that, they're going to, you're going to be doing business with with them for the rest of your life.
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: Like Uni, like you and I read at one fine stay.
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: How many people were at one fine stay that just like candidly like you're fucking fired.
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: Like just like, like I know I don't ever want to do with you again, no offense will apply to state.
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: True.
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: But there was like literally two or three people.
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: One fine stay and they're fucking killers and it's like.
• 16:47
  Speaker 5: And it's like, and I'll answer their phone call every single fucking time.
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: And so and so the, the same thing goes with as you're building your network, but also understand that there are, there is value in people that are transactional and only hit you up when they want something and as long as separate stating it.
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: As long as when you ask them for a favor, they return it to you.
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: You know, you don't have to be fucking best friends, but as long as that, that information or that translate that, that exchange of goods is like going back and forth grade.
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: And the second, it doesn't chop it off, you know, but it, it, it's, it's to me, it's like when you enter, when you enter the world of like, Hey, you know, if you want to know how I got into all these early stage vcs, here's how I did it.
• 17:30
  Speaker 5: I emailed every single one in New York, everyone, partners, principles, associates, and just said, hey, I've got this background in early stage startups.
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: You need deal flow.
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: I mean, I'm sure you don't read the alphabet, but you need qualified deal flow, right?
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: Like, I'd love to learn about your business.
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: This is exactly what I, I'd love to learn about your business.
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: And then I love this sort of talk to you about the various founders that I've, you know, gotten to know over time.
• 17:57
  Speaker 5: And then you know, anybody who was looking for money that is in your wheelhouse, you know, so like if you're, if you're a Fintech me, see, you know, and you wanna, you wanna, you wanna you want a subject matter expert on student loans.
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: Well, you know, I got a guy for you to talk to, you know, or if you're in consumer and you know, you just think like natural foods is going to launch off.
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: I got a woman who started a business and she's absolutely the person you need to talk to and so it's just like, as opposed to like this massive spray and pray and just offering them the Rolodex, offering them three to five names and saying like, look over my career, I've met these three to five people I think would add value to your portfolio or help you navigate these spaces that you invest in or you could know possibly investing yourself.
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: Please let me know.
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: And I got an amazing response.
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: I mean, I got, I got, you know, there's, I'm trying to think the guys over at, uh, John Franco read ffpc, you know, this guy, you see him talking all over the place.
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: You need probably speak like 50 times a year.
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: And uh, you know, he wrote me right back like five minutes.
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: I'll take a call, you know, and it's like, we took a call and we had a great time in a call and then I followed up with them, you know, and he, you know, he took the intros and then, um, you know, another, another phenomenal vc who I got to meet, um, was uh, was a Jesus Christ wider band and Chris over at first round capital who was a founding partner or first round and the, uh, and so the, the, he took the meeting and not only that, not only do they take the meeting, but he was prepared.
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: Like he knew my background.
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: He knew the whole nine and, and we just chatted and it was like, you know, who can I connect you with?
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: And so, you know, that was many, many months.
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: And so when I got the call from, uh, from the tare eyes, specifically Dan to re and ended up being Jane, who I've known for many, many years.
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: Also just building a relationship over, like giving before you get, um, you know, I went back to that, well 30 of 30 vcs and basically everybody took the meeting.
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: And so it was, it was, it was, it was like, it was just like we have this wonderful goodwill built up for, you know, they gave me invaluable information on insights into how they run their fund and their business models.
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: And it was a phenomenal conversation and, you know, and I followed up with what I could, you know, there's no way I can match a Chris frolic with what he gave me, but I tried, uh, so, you know, and that, and that turned into the meetings about supporting our current project and it made our process, you know, made our process a lot easier.
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: And it's also because we had, we have a great team, a great idea, like all those other things aligned, but, you know, in terms of raising the amount that we raised and in the time in which we did at building on effectively momentum that week that, you know, that we created, um, sort of, sort of arbitrarily, uh, you know, we made the luck, you know, we, you know, it was, you know, those coffees and all that stuff because, you know, months before it was, it was, you know, it was many hours at night just writing an email.
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: And candidly, I'm using the same tools like Mixmax, uh, that I do for fundraising that I did for my own personal networking and making sure that like after a couple of days and send these guys a paying if I didn't hear back and I had a, I had template it outreach and uh, and it worked.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: And again, you're right, that's not luck man.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: That's activity and that's hard work and dedication.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: That's commitment.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: Um, you know, I've known you long time and I know that for some of our younger emerging sales leaders that are listening to the show right now, you guys probably already know this.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: If you're, if you're killing it and sales and if you're doing a great job helping to grow your business by bringing new clients on each and every day in each and every weekend quarter, you know that there's only one way to get there.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: And that's hard work.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: It's working your ass off.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: It's smiling, it's dialing right?
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: To your point, it's the breakfast, it's the lunches, the dinners, it's the cocktails.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: It's whatever you need to do to build those relationships to get to, to really kind of make sure that you're sharing each other's stories and understanding why you're going to do business with each other.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: It's not always about the product or the company, their service, but it's the people that you're going to be doing the business, doing the interactions and doing the ongoing work with.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: And that's, that's huge.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: So Ryan, awesome job painting that picture for us and thank you so much for, for sharing all of that color and all of the, uh, all the fantastic ideas and advice and tip points that you gave.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: Um, right before we wind down the show, is there anything else that you want to pitch for the CX nation or share with us or better yet?
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: Is there any, any customer interactions maybe or, or, or, or, or like, you know, favorite customer interactions are most entertaining customer interactions that you want to share with the CX nation before we wind down the show today?
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: Man, I think the one that comes to mind involves a lot of swearing.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: We've got to listeners in this show.
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: This one's rough.
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: This one is rough.
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: What I would most memorable story or, or shell store rather, uh, uh, comes from, comes from an incident and have an early, early on in my career where, uh, where we found a, a client.
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: So in ticketing, uh, the way it works is you sign exclusive deals and the deals over three, four, five years.
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: They also come with a lot of financial incentive.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: So, uh, so, you know, so the sign of venue of any real size, any material size would typically come with what's called a signing bonus, which basically means ticketing company pays a fair amount of money out of their revenue to the client as a form of thank you for having, for the pleasure of simply, um, of having their business.
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: And so it's a, it's a very cash heavy game which not a lot of people understand about ticketing and then we normally is all the kind of the world you will enter those intricacies.
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: But suffice to say, I paid somebody a lot of money to get an exclusive deal for three years.
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: And it was actually, it was, it was, it was in the New York state, upstate New York.
• 24:08
  Speaker 5: So it Kinda like in your backyard.
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: And uh, and, and gave them money.
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: Now the way, the way the terms work was a 50 percent of the signing bonus gets wired day.
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: One 50 percent gets wired over, um, after the first ticket have sold because there's some, there's some time between some people will sign up with a new ticketing deal a year or six months before their, their old one expire.
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: So there's a smooth transition.
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: So the, uh, so anyway, so what ended up happening was this client took, took the first check, no problem.
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: Then went onto our platform, created a really tiny rank eating show and a sold a ticket to it.
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: So technically he triggered the second part of it.
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: And so, and me being the green salesperson that I am, he emails me and he goes, hey man, just sold my first couple of tickets, send that second part of the bonus over.
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: And I liked right away over.
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: Oh.
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: And I'm like, this guy sold his first 12 tickets, you know, wire that money.
• 25:14
  Speaker 5: And it was like, it was like 50 cheese.
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: It was not, you know, it wasn't immaterial.
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: And so I'm watching his account because my commissions based on tickets sold and I'm watching this account and I'm noticing I'm noticing that, that there are no more new of that being put up on the system, on our system, but there are no events being put up on his old system.
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: And so it dawned on me, I was like, this motherfucker just named me like put a tiny shuffle about sweet, treat this as a bonus.
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: So I call them up and I say, Hey man, I've noticed that since we paid you the full bonus, there's been no more activity on, on, on your ticket fly account.
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: And uh, he goes, yeah, what about it?
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: And I go, well, it seems to me that there's all these new shows going on and your old account, uh, so it feels like a, you're still under contract with your, with your old provider.
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: And I just handed you$50,000.
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: And he tells me this.
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: He says, look, pretty boy, pull your dick out of my mouth and go put it in somebody else's.
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: Who gives them?
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: I have no idea.
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: What the fuck does that even mean?
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: So I see hangs up on me.
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: So I'm sitting here thinking I'm getting fired, I'm losing my job.
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: I got to go back too.
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: And say like, I just, it you've lost your money,
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: right?
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: We just like, or like we're gonna have to go to court and we're going to pursue this guy and it's going to be a whole thing and that's going to cost money.
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: It's just going to be a massive headache.
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: So I would have a lot on the sales floor and I'm like, spend like all the colors thought out on my face and I'm just like, how do I fucking sexist and I fix this?
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: And the only way I know how and that is, is like the channel.
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: Like, like, you know, my inner New Yorker, my, you know, my, my New Jersey roots.
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: And I basically, I'd go into A.
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: I go into a supply closet because it's the only like private soundproof room from the sales floor.
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: I said, we can while you're up and we can figure this out.
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: And so the, uh, and uh, and so he pauses and he goes, alright, I'll add two more years.
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: And so I go, okay, great.
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: I mean I was ready for him to tell him that he just gets blocked.
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: Am I screaming man ever.
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: And so I sent them an agendum and he signed it.
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: And then once it was signed, I, uh, I went up to, I went to my boss and I was like, so we had a problem and I think that.
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: And here's how it's all gonna work out.
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: I swear to God, I thought I was going to get fucking fired.
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: It was just like, that was, that was unfortunately, I've never had another experience like that.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: You might have just taken the actual cake here on the chronicle's podcasts for the most entertaining, any customer interaction that you've ever had and what you learned from it.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: That is probably the Kings, the kings example right there, sir.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: So that's awesome.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: You said the nicer.
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: That's a great example, guys, of how you fix the problem.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, problems are gonna happen.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: So you just go with that or.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: No, you're absolutely right.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: So Mr O'connor, Brian O'connor, it, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show before we part ways today.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: Uh, any, anything else, any upcoming events or conferences, books, articles, anything that you want the nation to know about, about you or, or any of the projects that you're working on?
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: Absolutely.
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: I think, you know, if you're new to the blockchain space and I encourage everybody to go and to explore it because there's so many industries that are on an inevitable collision with this underlying technology and whether you, whether or not you believe bitcoin is worth what it's worth or theory is worth, what it's worth, sort of irrelevant.
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: It's really, you know, the underlying blockchain technology itself is really a that, that, that I think is here to stay and we have an open source, uh, university of learning that's free for everybody.
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: It's nontechnical, so salespeople can read it.
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: Cx people can read it and it's called tare labs university and it's on Github.
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: It's open source.
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: You can see it all.
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: It's only, it's just started.
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: It's a couple of weeks old.
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: There's lots of resources there and it and it shows you sort of, you know, the level of understanding you need, like what, what are the prerequisites for diving into the topic.
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: And we were, we worked really, really hard to simplify the concepts and if, if you are mafi and you're interested in things like, you know, merkle trees, etc.
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: Believing you can, you can dive down the rabbit hole, but the, uh, for the uninitiated as like, I was back in november, it's a great place to start, so I'd encourage people to go and check that out.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: Well, Brian o'connor, thank you so much for joining the cx chronicles podcast today.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: it's been my absolute pleasure.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: I'm, I can't wait till we can get together in person again, a rise back out on the, on the west coast now.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: But, um, it's been a pleasure, man.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining the show.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: I would love to have you back again in the future because I mean, we've always got a ton to talk about and more importantly that there's always a, there's always something that we can take from what we've learned and through our experiences and share it with the cx nation so that these folks coming up behind us have a little bit, a little bit smoother of a path, so.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining the show today, man.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: It's been an absolute pleasure.
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: My pleasure.
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: Thanks so much.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to another episode of cx chronicles.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe and share with all of your fellow cx and until next time, make happiness a habit.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Cx ironically, station, check us out at cxc chronicle stock car.