Around the Block With Jefferson Nunn – Interview With Christian Reza

Jefferson Nunn  0:08   

Welcome to another edition of Around the Block with Jefferson Nunn, and I’m here today with very special guest, Christian Reza. Welcome to the show. How you doing? 

Christian Reza  0:18   

Hey, Jefferson, I’m doing very well. Happy to be here. It’s a beautiful morning. 

Jefferson Nunn  0:24   

Awesome, awesome. So glad you’re here. And I just wanted to get a little bit of an understanding a bit more about trading strategies. I mean, myself, I tended to focus on the major, like, you know, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and so forth. But now with all this NFT, Metaverse, Web 3.0, and oh my God, there’s more coming out every day. It’s kind of overwhelming. What would you recommend for, you know, somebody like me? How to handle this overwhelming space? 

Christian Reza  1:02   

Well, no doubt about it, it’s, I guess you could definitely categorize it as overwhelming. There’s a lot that is happening every day, and it’s constantly changing, right? You know, in terms of strategy, and particularly investment strategy, I’m always looking at the people behind the desk, right? So, you know, who, you know, and I guess even if we’re talking about NFTs, for example. NFTs if you’re just looking at it from an art perspective, it’s if it’s an art product, you know, looking at how people buy fine art, how do they buy fine art, they go to an art show, they meet the seller, you know, they find out what, what they like, first and foremost, right?

They kind of get a feel of their style and their taste. And then once they find those pieces, they’re like, you know, what, I would like to meet this artist, you know, and then they go, and they shake the artists, and they asked him what their inspiration was, how they, how they completed their product, their project, and you know, what was their process like? So for me, when it comes to investment, with Ethereum, whether it be you know, Bitcoin Ethereum, or whether it be in NFTs or any projects in the Metaverse, I always go back and look at the person or people behind the desk to say, who is actually making this project? What is their strategy behind it? What is their plan? You know, what are their goals? And what was their inspiration, I like to meet those people so that I can have more of a human-to-human connection. 

Jefferson Nunn  2:40   

I think that’s an excellent idea. Definitely would like to take that to heart. And so along those lines, are there any projects right now that you’ve been looking at that seem compelling? 

Christian Reza  2:57   

Well, I’m very fascinated with what Polygon has accomplished. In the crypto space. And I mean, they’re their use cases now are just innumerous. There’s so many with regards to NFTs. I’m fascinated by what this is maybe a little more edgy, but the murderer had death Club was done by liquid Death Mountain water. They’re very well-known water company, and it’s really just because of their marketing. But their project is fascinating is what well, and I’m interested to see how that develops over time. But in a very, very short period of time, if my opinion done well to position themselves and it aligns well with brand as well. So, but yeah, Polygon I’m most interested in polygon right now and some here in there NFT projects. 

Jefferson Nunn  3:54   

Yeah, Polygon has been making some major advancements. And I think even with that Ethereum upgrade that’s coming. I think they’re gonna continue to innovate. And I think that’s one of the major things to look for is, you know, they gotta be a flash in the pan or are they’re gonna continue to move forward. Right? 

Christian Reza  4:15   

Right, exactly. (unintelligible). The New Ethereum upgrade can’t come soon enough. Can it. 

Jefferson Nunn  4:21   

Right. Yes, I’ve been following it for a while. And I think they’re saying by fall, they’ll be ready and I’d rather it be done right then to have it blow up, right. 

Christian Reza  4:31   

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, agreed. 

Jefferson Nunn  4:34   

So, along the same lines with, you know, strategies that tend to blow up. I know a lot of investors you know, sometimes they throw it all on red and when it comes up black, you know, they don’t make it. So, how did the investor cope with what’s a good strategy to go about in this space aside from checking out you know, the people behind it what do you do? 

Christian Reza  5:01   

Well, with any product of business that is blockchain based, you know, whether that be somebody’s NFT project or whether that be, you know, a new coin or APIs, something, some sort of plug in anything. It always goes back to obviously, you have a business strategy, you started a business, you know what your business strategy is. But then what precedes marketing and sales and user acquisition is your brand strategy. And that’s something that I’ve seen overlooked, unfortunately, by many companies in this space. And it’s not something that you really can overlook, because brand drives, it drives human interaction, it drives the human desire to connect, because at the end of the day, 100% of your customers are humans, they’re all human beings, and they all have the same core human drives, they want to feel they want to experience, they want to feel important, and they want to feel like they belong. And if you can’t accomplish that, if your business doesn’t have a strategy to support those core human drives, you’re just not going to make any sort of traction.

So, one thing that I tend to, as I, you know, consultant advise, I mainly talk about, well, let’s look at where you want your brand to be positioned. And then what makes you truly different, you know, what is your competitive differentiation in the market? There are 1000 Other NFT projects, there are 1000 coins, like, what makes you truly different? And how can you present? How can you position yourself to be so different, right? And then from there, we look at Alright, great. Well, let’s talk about your target audience now. You know, people talk like, oh, my target audiences, you know, crypto enthusiast. It’s like, well, sure, yeah, of course. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s lesser-known industry right now, right, and the general sense.

But I want you to go even deeper. So, you know, who is the actual person that you’re trying to target? Describe them, you know, talk to me about, talk to me about what they value some of their value prompts, talk to me about their pain points, you know, what, what are their goals, you know, maybe what triggered them to seek out your services, you know, and you really got to look at it as a as a journey. So, you understand this person, where they are and where they want to go, then you can start to map out, oh, okay, I know what they look like. Now I know what they, you know, I know what they sound like, I know the communities that they’re in. I know their age group, whether they had education, what their income level might be. And you can start grouping them into five or six different personas. And those personas will help guide you towards a better customer experience and customer journey overall. So, I kind of start with that. And obviously, there’s a lot more to it. But those are a couple of things that really are missing quite a bit in the space that I’ve seen. 

Jefferson Nunn  8:37   

Yeah, I think that’s fantastic advice for anybody getting started in this space and trying to get traction. I think the user experience is probably one of the most important things, if not the most important thing, you got to make sure that users can use the product. Otherwise, you know, it’s not going to get us as like the Microsoft HoloLens it now not being the US Army. Right? Correct. So, so Well, speaking of future tech, I mean, there’s a lot of it like web 3.0, and so forth. What do you think is the next big thing for this space? 

Christian Reza  9:21   

Obviously, NFTs are taking off, actually with regards to, you know, I’m a marketing guy. So, my eyes go in certain directions, right. I looked at some Ad tech recently, and I’ve been studying up on Ad tech, you know, Google is getting rid of like third party cookies and things like that. So, from a marketing perspective, you know, we’re always looking for a solution for that or we’ve been looking for solutions for that. One of the solutions that is coming up actually is a blockchain based identifier. And consensus is building one. I believe. IBM has already built one and there’s a couple of smaller companies. He’s doing that as well. But I see more technology-based products, you know, software products that will really drive the space that you know, it’s not just NFTs though NFTs are, I think the obvious, biggest opportunity now moving forward that if you combine that with the metaverse, those two areas are going to blow up in the next three to five years as more users pile in, and the growth already has been. I mean, outrageous.

The growth in those spaces has been outrageous, but I’m more so looking at the opportunities in software to use blockchain based software. And where that takes us. I think, from a B2B standpoint, or just a, you know, overall business standpoint, we’re gonna see a lot of those companies start coming up. And that’s going to open the space up even more for the rest of the users that maybe are hesitant. We’re going to start seeing mass adoption in the next three to five years for all of the different blockchain technologies and, and use cases.  

Jefferson Nunn  11:20   

Hmm, fascinating. Do you think maybe NFT is ultimately will be used to be like an identifier instead of a cookie? Do you think that might be the case? 

Christian Reza  11:31   

It definitely could be. I mean, we’re essentially getting to that point. Now with actually, it’s funny, there’s a company called Persona that basically takes your takes your Ethereum address, and with a little bit of JavaScript, it transforms it into a name. And like, as you know, it could be a pseudo name. And for some reason, zodiac sign, I don’t know why. But, you know, it’s, it’s things like that, where we’re getting closer and closer to blockchain based identifiers that can be used easily, you know, that aren’t hard to implement. And, yeah, you could use persona to you know, you can, you can change your pseudo name there. So, it’s not your entire Ethereum address, and it’s just, you know, your pseudo name. And obviously, you can do that with, you know, purchasing a DNS domain or whatever.

But we are getting so much closer to identifiers. And yes, that’s going to replace the cookie. And it’ll be more powerful than any of the web2 solutions that are out there. Right now, the web 2 solutions are fine, but they’re just not. They’re just not going to be made for longevity. And with everyone desiring less centralization, and, you know, in ownership of their data, people, people want the self-sovereign data rights, people want the self-sovereign identity and information, they want to give that when they want to, we’re moving for we’re merging, moving further away from centralization, with regards to data and more towards decentralization. So, it’s blockchain is going to be the front runner in the next three to five years. Yeah, that’s something to definitely look out for. 

Jefferson Nunn  13:21   

Fascinating. And then of course, there’s chain analysis, right? They’re a huge business. It’s all based around, you know, trying to figure out who’s using the blockchain. 

Christian Reza  13:34   

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.  

Jefferson Nunn  13:37   

So, companies like that, I think are gonna be even larger in the upcoming years. So, exciting stuff. Well, how did you get the start in the industry? What was the trigger point for you? 

Christian Reza  13:53   

That’s a great question. Actually, it’s an it’s a fun story. I do like to tell it. I have a good friend of mine who introduced me into this space. And he was somewhat of a mentor of mine. And, you know, I remember he was we would always talk investing and things like that. And he told me once he’s like, hey, you got to go and buy some Ethereum. You’ve got to go and buy Cardona. And he goes in start looking at NFTs. This was a year; this was the beginning of 2020. Yes, beginning of 2020. And I was like, okay, whatever, I don’t know.

So, I made an eToro account, he told me eToro. And then I made an eToro account started looking and I was like, okay, and so, you know, a few months later, maybe the middle of the of the year, I asked him again, I was like, hey, what’s you know, what do I what do I get? What do I buy? What does it do? You know, and he said, well, you know, take a look at Bitcoin for sure. Look at Ethereum and at the time, he said Cardona and Cardona was like at, I think, if I’m not mistaken, like 17 cents or seven cents, something like that. And I was like, okay, yeah, I’ll take a look. I did, I purchased the little on the latter end of the year. And then when it dropped a little around the holidays, I immediately panic sold, and like, just got rid of everything. I was like, oh, no, I’m gonna lose all my money. So, I got rid of it. Sold it. And I realized, you know, not much longer after that, that that was a huge mistake. And so, at the beginning of 2021, I reinvested and have been investing and learning and building and working with different projects and advising ever since. So, it’s been a fun journey, since I guess that’s about 16 months ago, something like that. And yeah, there’s, there’s no going back. 

Jefferson Nunn  16:04   

Quite right, I find that a lot of even major brand main, you know, financial types are leaving large. I mean, they they’re well placed are ready executives at this large financial institution. And they’re leaving that to do something in crypto, which is very telling. You don’t leave like Morgan Stanley, at the Vice President, unless you know, something’s going down. Right. So, yeah, so for the young, you know, say 21-year-old college student that’s trying to figure out what’s next in life? What advice would you give to them to, you know, when they’re checking out the space? 

Christian Reza  16:49   

Well, I mean, it really depends on their goals, right. Like, for me, I’m so interested in the space and the role there. But for me, I’m so interested in the space that this is something that I want to be completely. What’s the word, I want to be completely involved in this space, I want to be surrounded by the space, I want to continue to grow and, and help others in this space and enter. But with regards to some, you know, 21-year-old kid that’s kind of in college or college student, it always goes back to look at how the technology itself is going to shape the world understand how it works, research, at least 20 to 40 hours, before you say I’m out. Right, like, take a lot of time to understand how this works. And particularly look at all the use cases. So, you know, it’s all about education, if you’re a college student, and you’re not taking a blockchain course, or something, like maybe they don’t have one. But you can self-educate, you know, there’s no, there’s nothing that will bar you from educating yourself in this space. So, look at the technology, in particular, look at all the use cases. And look at those areas where you can see your life goals align with, you know, life and career goals align with that same technology.

You know, if you’re, if you’re a kid, and you want to work for the NFL, or if you want to work for some corporate company, see how that corporate company is going to is going to do in the future. You know, maybe you want to work for Apple One day, well, they’re obviously going to be in this space, you can see that, but some of the other companies, it might be less obvious to see those. So, I would say I challenge you to take a deeper look and see how your future goals will align with the technology that is being used right now. Because it’s going to be used in your organization. Everyone’s looking at this. And they’re kind of like, oh, maybe. But if you’ve been in this space, if you’ve, if you understand how this works, there is no question about it. This is going to be used in every company, in every corporation, every small business, in the near future within our lifetime. So, you need to know everything you can about the technology and understand where your life and career goals align with that technology. That would be my best advice is educate yourself and see the use cases. 

Jefferson Nunn  19:44   

Excellent advice, Christian. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. This has been a great, great show. If people want to get in touch with you, how can they do so? 

Christian Reza  19:56   

LinkedIn is the best way to contact me so at linkedin.com/in/christian-reza-strategy you can find me there. 

Jefferson Nunn  20:07   

Cool. Cool. Thank you so much. The show will have your link at the very top of the show page. And thank you so much. I’d love to reconnect with you at some point in the future. 

Christian Reza  20:18   

Thanks, Jefferson. Appreciate your time. This was fun. 

Jefferson Nunn  20:21   

Thanks. Have a great one.  

Christian Reza  20:23   

You too.