thought i would post the work i did for skycoin’s leadership after they contacted me and asked me to work for them.
we ultimately weren’t able to get together on the work and they apparently went with other marketing pros. i thought i’d like to at least have my work out there so that it gets some visibility by someone who might like it or benefit from it.
if anyone wants to talk with me about marketing work, please comment
Hi Skycoin team,
Thank you kindly for agreeing to review my proposal. Having been originally asked to perform marketing and social movement research, I am presenting here what I believe to be a somewhat well-informed perception of Skycoin’s market positioning, a suggestion of what I would consider to be a desired and fortuitous larger position for the project, and a set of activities designed to achieve this enhanced positioning performed by my office in coordination with and/or in support of your existing marketing resources.
Establishing the Working Relationship
Firstly, I present here some assertions and representations designed to facilitate some mutual understanding of one another for establishing a functionally effective working relationship by which I may best serve the project.
To begin with, if this proposal gains Skycoin internal project-planning traction, please communicate to those who may receive it such as the 2 PR firms I understand were recently hired as well as the gentleman named Enda Crowley who I understand serves as Marketing Director, that I merely seek to offer supplemental research and advisory as well as certain outreach and authoring activities which may sit outside and unrelated to these parties’ work or by which it may be enhanced or supported in the event of overlap.
That said, if resource assignments for the research/advisory services as well as the recommended initiatives I present below have not already taken place or been considered, I can confidently recommend contracting with me to assist if Skycoin has the budget to invest in this particular plan of work.
Lastly, you may find that your team already has awareness everything I have written here or even disagrees with it. I have provided lengthy documentation in an attempt to demonstrate that I understand the challenges faced and am capable of the role(s) I propose. Again, upon review it may be discovered by Skycoin team members that I have misperceived or outright failed in what I report to have observed. Feedback is most welcome.
General Description of Current Market Position and Investor Base along with Project Goals
As perhaps a matter of formality, I describe Skycoin here as what I respectfully designate to be in the category of shadow coin — in this case a crypto-asset project:
whose team finds it best to obscure developer identities, only putting forth that of its Marketing Director
which seeks to subvert and replace existing systems of currency provisioning, exchange, monitoring, and store of value as well as eliminating/inherently preventing artificial manipulative controls
which seeks to subvert and replace existing systems of information sharing/exchange by way of social platform disintermediation and even of the internet itself as well as privatization of activity
With the project scoring a 10/10 on both the ambition and subversive scales, it attracts early adopter investors/followers likely fitting a profile of highly intelligent, perceptive, critically thinking, technically capable (often coders/other devs), and having a belief and education on how legacy systems are failing us.
Market penetration status currently appears to remain at the hardcore enthusiast level, strongly bitcointalk and telegram-centric with little or no mindshare in the YouTube enthusiast community which can be said to be representative the next tier of interested parties — that of the wider blockchain project investor.
Adoption Approach
Skycoin’s user adoption approach differs from that of other blockchain projects also seeking to disrupt industries in that it does not seek to usher in the new age by creating a direct relationship between founders serving as spokespeople for the project and the public which may then be built upon toward adoption and in many cases, thereafter gradually discarded as leadership decentralizes its platform, divorces itself from its role, and places total control in users’ hands.
This shadow coin approach relies on acceptance of the concept of the trustless society in the social consciousness and adoption of its manifestation in commerce, not necessarily in that order, for the project to gain wide adoption, without personal relationships leveraged to provide familiarity, comfort, and confidence by way of education facilitated by identifiable people with work histories, families, interests, beliefs, etc. The shadow coin adoption approach appears to have worked well for attracting early adopter enthusiasts but presents some challenges in appealing to the wider audience.
Branding and Leadership’s Communication to the Market
Without leadership having the aforementioned some-to-many direct relationships with the public, another kind of relationship has taken form which may have no historical precedent.
Branding and leadership’s relationship with the market are much more closely related, almost intertwined in that:
the weight of branding in representing leadership is unusually heavy
leadership’s chosen items to communicate to the market add to or serve an unusually large role in the branding
In this kind of interdependent branding and leadership communication scenario in which the 2 assets to do not sit somewhat independently and thereby able to serve as buffer for missteps of counterpart, it would follow that great care is needed in choices on brand messaging and leadership’s response to market inquiry. Some recommendations are presented in a later section.
The Road Ahead
Skycoin’s future is multi-faceted and exists at a number of levels of abstraction that I believe we would do well to consider in order to formulate a cohesive set of market position strengthening/penetration initiatives. I present some discussion topics below to set up understanding from which we may view proposed pursuits.
Marriage of the Original Vision of Blockchain and Populist Counter-Culture
I believe there is a need for partnership between these two historic human events both of which have economic and social implications, are unstoppable, flush with talent and financial resources, and in my opinion, critical to the perpetuation of humankind and perfectly aligned with one another.
Given that the aforementioned counter-culture is well under way in overthrowing the globalists/cultural marxists/cultural relativists/multi-culturalists, hereafter referred to for simplicity’s sake as the globalists, an opportunity to not only contribute to a dismantling of their damnable and corrupt manipulation of mass human organization but also to create one or more of the market components for decentralized stewarding and facilitation of the healthy will of the people presents itself to blockchain and specifically to Skycoin due to the tech’s particular functionality born of a team with one or more members who appear to be, when looking beyond the mainstream facing marketing assets, zealously committed to all of the above.
Tiered Market Segmentation Hierarchy
While perhaps an oversimplification, for now let’s assume for the sake of discussion and planning that 3 tiers exist in the blockchain user/investor market from small-ish group of tens of thousands all the way to the entire population of developed or nearly developed countries.
Tier 3) Hardcore Enthusiast Early Adopters
Skycoin occupies a nice position in this community described above due to the sheer capability of the tech along with the particular flavor of Skycoin’s branding which appeals to this audience.
Tier 2) The YouTube Investor Community
This community follows and invests in coins ranging down to about 50th on coinmarketcap.com along with new projects having strong enough marketing to receive coverage of ICO. Nearly zero attention is directed to projects below rank 50 or to those presale projects without adequate investment in marketing appeals to this segment.
This tier of the market is accompanied by participation on platforms other than YT, but that participation’s relevance is subordinate to YT activity. While YT’s parent company is globalist controlled and continues to make aggressive censorship moves against ‘undesirable’ content creators via onerous partnerships and demonetization policies along with a recently announced planned crippling of these channels using globalist influenced AI adjudication, YT currently happens to serve as the primary home of both the tier 2 crypto-investment community as well as populist counter-culture movement.
Tier 1) The Gen Pop
While likely another oversimplification in stratification, let us assume that the next tier in the hierarchy is essentially everyone else, the general population, our parents, aunties, accountants, etc.
A well-known difference in demographics and consumer behavior exists between tiers 1 and 2 which is most exemplified by the extreme disparity in news consumption preference with tier 1’s use of YT to be relatively non-existent in favor of mainstream media outlets.
Implications of Project Goals
Skycoin plans are particularly far reaching in that it aims to fundamentally alter nation-scale cost and power structures which often directly and otherwise indirectly support critical human activity systems in all industries and endeavor. The project’s final target userbase is therefore nearly all of humankind.
We might do well to consider a multi-year and multi-phased set of parallel and successive marketing initiatives in order to see about the project’s success.
Recommendations
I present here some recommendations based on my somewhat constrained time getting to know the Skycoin project. Hopefully I’m presenting some helpful insights and ideas. Some activities/initiatives/services/investments here are successive while others can be treated as standalone matters.
YouTube Crypto-Commentator Sponsorship
From a logical progression standpoint, the lowest hanging fruit would be to pursue interest from the existing YT crypto-enthusiast investor community, the members of which actively look for new projects to satisfy their appetites from week to week as they remain abreast of new happenings with the known projects. With a fairly good position with the tier 3 market segment of hardcore early adopters already established with some potential need for additional investment and attention described in a later recommendation, it appears viable to begin pursuing tier 2.
The YT investor community ranges from simpleton to sophisticate with the majority somewhat easy to persuade of opportunity with examples of projects going viral with minimal marketing efforts resulting in tens of millions raised (ex. Bancor).
I believe it would be fortuitous to sponsor a handful of 4 or 5 of the 50 or so top crypto-commentators on YT. The market roundup and news reporting space is quite immature and subscribership therefore is in the tens of thousands or less. A few personalities already have sponsors but most do not. The space is blowing up. This scenario describes an ideal opportunity for creating relationships with future major influencers who thus far have no sponsorship but are destined to have subscribership in the hundreds of thousands as well as platform buildout extending beyond simple daily news, opinion, evangelist, and coin evaluations to include destination event coverage and blockchain celebrity guest spots, which we are already beginning to see.
At any rate, due to the early stages of the space, sponsorship should be quite affordable. I recommend having me design, negotiate, and broker 2 kinds of arrangements with the YouTubers:
a simple mention at the beginning of the video as is typical (should be quite cheap)
paid full episodes covering Skycoin (should have costs in hundreds of USD)
In anticipation of potentially working for Skycoin in this regard, I have already made preliminary inquiry to a couple of channels and received positive responses.
I had a sense that Skycoin’s recent ascension to position in the top 100 ranking was precarious due to newer projects simply appearing as fresher flavors-of-the-month as they launch. In my opinion, last week’s loss of positioning in the top 100 is problematic for future positioning and adoption efforts with the tier 2 segment as they generally are far less interested in projects outside of the top 50 and essentially never, as a result of merely their own curiosity, consider those below 100 . Marketing appeals are necessary in order to hope to gain the interest of tier 2. I therefore recommend that investment in YT channel sponsorship be pursued with some urgency.
YouTube Populist Counter-Culture Sponsorship
In 2016, the so-called skeptic community gained traction on YouTube and then absolutely blew up this year. As we begin to see negative overtones associated with the term skeptic community as a result of fairly recent internal dramas, it probably serves better to refer to this community as the populist counterculture movement (PCM), which I believe most accurately describes it in the abstract despite the numerous aspects and notions in the ideologies held by participants.
I believe a new market segment within the PCM’s audience can be created with marriage between the blockchain space and the PCM due to shared values and the goal of democratization, and I recommend sponsorship attempts be made whereby creators are contracted with to put forth a mini thesis included in the beginning of their videos in typical endorsement fashion. We would ask the creator to employ his or her exceptional perception, insight, and argumentation skills to elucidate how the goals of the PCM are aligned with that of blockchain and specifically with Skycoin according to the project’s existing/planned functionality. The sponsored message can then be repeated at the beginning of new videos in accordance with Skycoin budgeting decisions.
I recommend having me design, negotiate, and broker this kind of arrangement with these YouTubers. We can either have the creator pen the messaging entirely to then be approved by Skycoin, or I can co-author it with them and have it thereafter approved/adjusted by Skycoin.
In anticipation of potentially working for Skycoin in this regard, I have already made preliminary inquiry to one channel and received a positive response.
We might consider this initiative to follow that of the buildout of the tier 2 segment pursuit or run the initiative in parallel depending on Skycoin’s feelings on the matter as well as its budgetary constraints.
Trustless Society, Decentralization, Democratization, and Disintermediation Public Education Coalition
When considering pursuit of tier 1 market adoption, we might assume that it is only for us to support adoption by tier 2 with existing/proposed initiatives and let things take their course in the public consciousness with an expectation of mass adoption by tier 1 in years to come. I would surmise however that active investment in participation and persuasive shaping of the wider public’s education and evolving opinion offers an opportunity to position the brand of Skycoin in a way such that it acquires prominent future mindshare.
As part of a far-term initiative such as 6 months to a 1yr from now, we might consider a pooling of financial resources with other blockchain projects, many of which are inherently subversive and therefore have teams with shared values and similar goals. We may then create educational PSA style adverts with placement in non-blockchain and non-PCM YouTube videos according to YT feed algorithms which would cause placement in Recommended offerings to users who are likely be receptive to the topic.
I can offer to arrange the coalition formation and co-author the messaging with Skycoin and coalition project members.
Brand Message Authoring, Editing/Enhancing, and Shape Coaching
I can offer to provide assistance with brand messaging across the above spectrum of involvement from very involved by way of actual authoring to be then approved by Skycoin all the way to much less involved by simply offering opinion on the kind of language and leanings that should be seen in the messaging.
In order to provide full authoring services, I would need to receive an abstract description of a market appeal to be made on the part of Skycoin that I would then flesh out into a full piece of either just a paragraph or two for the homepage, or an entire blog post for Medium or wherever.
If editing and enhancing is all that is desired, I would be able to perform simple proofing but more importantly could elaborate upon points and punch up the language for effect in order to generate interest by the tier 2 and 1 market segments while also tempering the messaging to ensure its palatability to tier 2 and especially to tier 1. Skycoin has already begun making good decisions on these matters when for example, use of the video with what I recall to have had darknet overtones on the previous version of the homepage was not used again in the new homepage revision.
In the event that Skycoin desires an opinion along with feedback on in-house authored content, I could provide a response in writing with my predicted audience emotional and analytic response along with suggested adjustment of language or topics as needed. Alternatively, I could offer to do calls and discuss these matters.
The proposed activities in this section as well as that of the section below may be helpful in strengthening or improving market positioning with the tier 3 segment.
On-Demand PR Crisis Management
In the ongoing management of the conversation between Skycoin and the tier 3 audience on bitcointalk forums and telegram, I can offer to provide on-demand post and response guidance as needed to shape the conversation in order to assist in putting the project forth in the best light possible.
China and Other Asia Marketing
As I understand it, Skycoin has China market relations well handled. At any rate, I have some Chinese advertising channel relationships and could assist in brokering press release and other placements in China if desired. Additionally, my agency Future Connexions which facilitates these advertisements and also brokers ICO presale arrangements with Chinese investor groups has plans to expand to Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. If desired, I could offer to make arrangements utilizing these relationships if there is a perceived benefit for Skycoin.
A Menu of Services/Activities
The above suggestions under Recommendations are presented as an offer to perform one or more of them. I would be most pleased to work on any of the items presented or even some needed that the Skycoin team feels I may have failed to identify.
My Availability
I’m currently available two days per week as I currently serve other clients. Going forward, if Skycoin is pleased with my work and wishes to retain me for a greater number of hours, I would consider phasing out existing clients depending on the arrangement proposed.
Compensation
The 2 days per week of available time in my schedule are currently spent in discussions with a couple of other enterprises with which I am only recently beginning negotiations on scope of work and compensation as I hope to do as well with Skycoin.
I would suggest that up to two days per week would be a good way for us to get started together as this kind of commitment would not require me phasing out any of my existing clients and is also a relatively low-risk initial partnering approach. Of course, I would again entertain offers extending beyond 2 days per week if Skycoin feels strongly about it despite the complications it would present for my existing working relationships.
If possible, can I trouble you to make an offer of compensation along with associated scope of work for the one or two days I have available? Perhaps a billable hours arrangement would be suitable. If your team could provide me with an offer, it would be helpful for me to be able to move the discussions forward I’m having with Skycoin and others, and would allow me to most effectively close these discussions and move forward with a plan of work.
Please feel free to choose one or more services/activities from the menu above in the Recommendations.
Alternatively, if one or more members of your team would like to discuss scope of work or any other matters which you may feel would be helpful in forming a work arrangement, I would be most pleased to do so.
Lastly, I would of course be pleased to receive compensation in any form including SKY.
Many thanks,
the following piece is something i wrote up after my call with skycoin leadership but did not end up sending it, choosing rather to send an alternate version that follows
Hi Skycoin team,
Hope you’re doing well. I’m writing to thank you for the recent call and to offer a followup to our ongoing discussion to see if we might find an arrangement that is truly beneficial to the project.
To begin with, thank you kindly for the offer of work. Although I initially had to turn it down, I am grateful for your interest in having me join your team. And I would still like to find a way to make that happen.
The reason I turned down the offer was partially because of the money, but primarily because of something that I did not have time during the call to reflect on and adequately respond to at the time. Upon consideration, I want to offer my elaborated reason which will serve as a problem statement for which I will propose a solution. And I would actually very much like to accept the offer of work if we can agree on me taking on responsibilities to help you get handled some things that I hope you will agree upon reading this explanation the project really needs.
In this writeup, I will be speaking from an organizational behavior and operations standpoint rather than marketing. As you may know, I have a broad range of work experience ranging from door-to-door sales to CEO with activities including strategic visioning, capital allocation, recruiting, designing job descriptions, management control systems with associated compensation plans, reporting structure and communication practices/protocols, and business processes, authoring policies and contracts, risk management including liability exposure management, crisis management, conflict resolution, business development, and marketing.
I Don’t Want to Get Fired Too
Throughout this piece, it will be necessary for me to put forth certain criticisms that may at first not be appreciated by one or more Skycoin team members as these criticisms surmise the existence of what I believe to be problematic practices or choices taking place. Please know that I have nothing but appreciation and admiration for the wildly talented individuals on the team and that I make these criticisms as part of a consultative effort to offer insight supporting the long-term health of the organization surrounding the project and its ability to achieve the success it deserves.
And please know that my working relationship with Skycoin is important to me. Your project’s goals are noble, may very well be part a larger movement that saves the world, and are indeed something I hope to join you in. And I have a need to take care of my wife and 7 month old son. Although I have other work, an additional opportunity working with you to ensure I can take good care of my family is something I’m treating with great care. My family back home in Michigan receives all updates on developments in my working relationship with Skycoin and are supporting and cheering for me in our efforts to come together.
I have had to take some risks with our working relationship in this writeup in an attempt to bring something of true value to your team and your project’s future and am doing so from a place of service and certainly not to cheese off anyone, especially Brandon who has been kind enough to spend some time getting to know me and telling me about the project’s current needs.
In the interest of making friends and an additional opportunity to support my family doing the work I love, I hope to win you all over and join the team.
Let me now begin laying out the explanation of the problems I have found which have given me no choice but to turn down the offer of work in its current form, which is to perform what I would describe as just content production management while there are other matters that I feel require attention before such work can bring about good results.
Brandon and I had a great talk about the project. I learned that:
- One or more marketing agencies/consultants have been brought onboard and thereafter fired for non-performance.
- A number of content creators are currently on some kind of contract but are not producing.
- Talent resources are expected to make tactical and strategic decisions and self-direct their work to an extent with what might be only broad direction provided by leadership.
- A number of high profile entities are in the process of adopting/utilizing components of the platform.
My personal experience with recruiting by Skycoin has been lengthy, with responses from the team and subsequent developments in the discussion/arrangement sometimes taking months (not a complaint but rather just another data point for the following analysis in this piece of diagnostic work). And the investment on the part of Skycoin has been minimal (again, not a complaint).
Analysis
What does all of this tell us? From altitude, an observation can be made that procurement of non-developer talent generally does not appear to be highly prioritized by Skycoin leadership, perhaps justifiably so with the platform’s reported increasing adoption success without effective marketing assets in place and working, with evidence as follows.
First, while leadership has chosen to allocate financial resources toward marketing, it has an inclination to not allocate human capital in the form of time spent with normal recruiting activities including clear and structured interviewing both of the candidate and of the organization by the candidate, scope of work discussions, and detailed work activity descriptions and clarifications along with the consideration and preparation for covering these topics prior to meeting time. During and after onboarding, there is a choice to invest minimally in carefully considered guidance and direction in the course of responsibilities assignment and ongoing performance management. The above do happen to be characterizations of recruiting activities rather than sterile descriptions of past events, but they are not intended to be inflammatory. Rather, they are meant to foster a narrative to assist in the illumination of what could be considered systemic problems that I believe will limit the project’s long-term success. And, while I have made characterizations, I’m largely not guessing on these events. They are what I experienced and in a way what you reported to me.
As an aside, let me be clear, I’m not indicating an appreciation for micro-managing staff. A management professional skilled in the art of managing resources does so in quite the opposite fashion. Micro-managing is actually a sign of low natural management savvy and talent. Rather, skilled and born managers direct their resources with broad and detailed descriptions of work along with written policies having authored response guidance on all events easily conceived to be encountered by the resource in question followed by periodic guidance and feedback as well as adverse event aversion interventions as needed, and not by standing over peoples’ shoulders. That’s called supervising, not management.
For example, while not my favorite, my biggest client is the City of Detroit. I have a staff of 20 arranged in a hierarchical reporting structure serving this contract. Aided by the kind of aforementioned adequate investment in staffing activities including a few hundred pages of policies as well as a management control system tied to compensation plans compelling performance by all, I generally only have to do around 5 emails and 2 phone chats with leadership members of that team per month. Of course, there’s a lot of other work I have to do every week to keep that show going. But in terms of talking with my staff? Very little.
Digging in a little bit on the marketing agency that was fired — It was reported to me that this outfit was paid 5M USD, did nothing, and was therefore fired. Oh no no no, we organizational behavior diagnostic professionals don’t just let that one go without scrutiny as there’s invariably more to this kind of story. It’s a huge red flag. Such an event calls into question issues of procurement and the integrity of its processes to begin with. After onboarding, why was 5M USD issued to this party before the arrangement was terminated? Such an event or series of events resulting in a total of 5M spent calls into question issues of performance management and the level of attention invested into monitoring and guidance activities along with the frequency, relevance, and quality of feedback provided throughout.
If Skycoin’s approach to marketing or marketing management talent procurement is as described above, is it indicative of the approach to interfacing with and capacity building of all functional areas other than software development? Even if so, is it necessarily a problem that Skycoin does not currently prioritize careful and effective onboarding of resources for functional areas other than software development? This is blockchain Marc. It’s the wild west. Things are moving fast. Components of our platform are getting adopted by some big players. We haven’t the need to encumber our growth with these legacy structures and slow plodding processes.
Fine. Maybe so. Well…
Scalability
I’m guessing the Skycoin team is made up of nearly 100% top-rate developers with either CS degrees or otherwise having heavy coding experience which makes up the overwhelming majority of their work experience. I say nearly because I have gathered there is a Chinese investor member of leadership with a broad range of business experience by the name of Zhang Ho (I couldn’t quite make out her name during our call)?
At any rate, I’m guessing you’re largely a team of brilliant coders who are passionate and likeminded. Because of your gifts, you haven’t had to work in what many consider to be the more boring areas of companies and thereby don’t have experience with stuff like HR. And your natural inclination and history of coming together, especially in this project, is to recruit others with similar backgrounds who speak your language in an organic and synergistic growth pattern that historically has not required significant investment into the creation and maintenance of highly structured working relationships. Everyone just throws in together, rolls up their sleeves, and excellence is brought into the world. I’ve actually seen it happening in the telegram chat. I hope I’m not too far off here or overstepping.
And I do envy you. I have a CS minor and would love to have worked in software development these past 20yrs or so and been positioned to be working alongside you all now, creating the new internet. But my talents did not turn out to be in coding. I could do it, but not like you.
Your project is producing amazing technology as we speak with a developer team that works well together. Adoption is reported to be taking off. Why is it important to invest in additional organizational competencies? Scalability.
In the coming months and years, like every successful enterprise, Skycoin will need organizational competencies with some history to serve as a foundation for expanding operations. Have you heard of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM)? It’s a framework to describe organizational maturity with a CMM level 1 company described as a handful of extremely capable and like-minded guys in their 20’s working 120hrs a week building something great, and with a CMM level 5 company described as a well-established organization with documented and repeatable processes along with resource redundancies to shield against risk, among other things to ensure resiliency and stability.
Whether or not the events I have touched on above represent mistakes on the part of Skycoin leadership is debatable. The choice to not invest substantially in systems for healthy organizational functioning and departmental capacity building has had certain costs, and certain benefits. 5M USD spent on a marketing firm that produced no usable assets or market positioning enhancements and had to be fired is hard to brush off. But of course, there is an opportunity cost for everything. And if Skycoin had made a bigger investment in managing that resource, the tech side of the project would consequently be less far along.
Taking into account the original vision of the blockchain — I’m aware of and have great appreciation for the general end-goal of most founders to eventually divorce themselves from management and development of their projects, placing them into the hands of humankind for decentralization; the original vision. I get that. But if adoption by the tier 2 segment I described in my prior proposal doesn’t occur, well… And Skycoin isn’t Bitcoin. It doesn’t have first-mover advantage and I don’t believe it will be adopted by the tier 2 segment only by way of developer community efforts no matter how talented, hardworking, and numerous its members are. In order for Skycoin to see desired adoption, I believe it will also need the aforementioned foundation of organizational competencies which will lead to among other things, neither a 5M USD marketing expenditure with zero ROI, nor me agreeing to do some work that isn’t actually the work your project needs from where I sit and thereby also getting myself fired like the other guys
Recommendations
Capacity Building
I would like to assist the team in building the organizational competencies and systems to effectively procure talent for functional areas other than software development such as marketing so that the work I have been asked to manage can get done. I would very much like to accept your offer of work and would like to begin by helping to get the pieces in place to ensure it goes well rather than jumping in on what was described as needed and just hoping it goes well. Doing so, I believe my work for Skycoin could not only serve the project well but could also give me something to count on for my future without significant worry of having an overly stressful and dysfunctional part of my work week that ultimately results in termination.
Competencies and systems would include the kinds of step by step processes I described above that normally take place in the course of recruiting and thereafter to create working relationships with clear expectations, few disconnects and disappointments, and nobody getting fired unless absolutely necessary or producers just left to be idle because there aren’t adequate performance management systems in place.
We’re essentially talking about business development work if you consider that BD has two major areas, one of which is creating the systems to generate new business with external market building activities, and the other is to accommodate new business with internal capacity and competency building activities, which to begin with is what I would like to help with specifically to get handled Skycoin’s current marketing needs, some of the work for which has been offered to me.
We can get into place some working relationships and communication protocols which connect Skycoin leadership to content producers and effectively convey the project’s current marketing needs as they relate to its medium to long-term goals. And we can get some workflows into place to ensure timely and ongoing delivery by content producers to meet those needs.
An example of what this work would look like would be for me make probing inquiry and press for clarification as needed to ensure without question that Skycoin leadership’s marketing needs are well understood and can thereafter be effectively communicated by me to producers. Let me handle the heavy lifting of these communication activities you have historically been unable to perform at the expense of your development work. Let me support you to be freed up to focus on your work by handling these things for you.
Doing so, I may effectively perform the kind of content production management I’ve been asked to do. I hope to do the work of getting Skycoin’s marketing management systems built out to represent a functionally healthy department creating market awareness that leads to adoption results.
During our call, I wasn’t able to clearly make out what was said for a moment. But I think what I heard later in the call was that you guys could do $50 or $60 per hour after originally offering $40. If you can do $60, I would gladly accept and will be crossing my fingers waiting to hear back from you.
Thank you kindly once again for spending the time to explore a possible arrangement for me on your team. I can confidently assert that the project would benefit from it as I can be counted on to take my responsibilities seriously and not accept less than what is truly valuable in how I spend my time serving.
With warm regard,
here is the piece i ultimately sent to skycoin leadership in response to their offer of work
Hi Skycoin team,
Hope you’re doing well. I’m writing to thank you for the offer of work recently made to me and to let you know how grateful I am for the opportunity. Thank you very much. I hope to get started with you soon.
Please forgive the weeks it has taken for me to respond. I’ve had some other offers to deal with and I wanted not only to do a proper and good response to Skycoin, I also needed to spend some time considering a plan of work that I can do to help the project avoid the problems with managing marketing talent reported to me during our call so that our work together can be successful.
As far as my rate, thank you for coming up from the originally offered $40/hr during our call. There was a moment of choppy voice quality, but I think I could make out clearly that Skycoin could perhaps do $50 or $60/hr. If you can do $60, I will gladly accept this rate for the 2 days per week I am currently available. If all goes well, early next year I am able to explore with you the possibility of an increase in my commitment of hours to the project.
Plan of Work
Marketing Asset Production Management with Communication and Translation of Leadership’s Strategic Visioning
The above title is what I would describe as the primary responsibility I have been asked to handle. Allow me to elaborate.
Vision Translation and Communication
I can serve to create and facilitate a communication channel which conveys Skycoin leadership’s immediate and long-term goals and associated marketing needs to content producers ensuring that Skycoin leadership’s marketing needs are well understood and can thereafter be effectively communicated by me to producers if by chance associated homepage copywriting or Medium posts aren’t easily understood by those who are asked to create associated visual enhancements. Doing so, content producers’ efforts will best capture the vision of Skycoin leadership and effectively make whatever appeal is desired given the current initiative. Having me to perform probing inquiry and clarification to leadership of its needs when necessary should greatly increase efficiency and turnaround of deliverables from producers by reducing the number of variants they are required to create in the hope of accurately conveying/depicting leadership’s desired message.
Skycoin leadership will be largely freed up from the burdensome activity of having to consider and articulate the tech’s value proposition to content producers by having an internal resource like me to develop specialized knowledge of the tech and thereafter to effectively convey needed info in lay terms to producers whether they be internal or external. Leadership can thereby focus on the important work of continuing core tech development rather than be frequently troubled with marketing management responsibilities. Additionally, by having an internal marketing talent resource with specialized knowledge of the tech and able to onboard new resources with relative ease, the project will benefit from increased agility and freedom to choose flexibly from low-cost producer talent available in the open market according to changing initiative budgets.
Procurement and Responsibilities Assignment
As resource needs change according to new and ongoing initiatives, I can effectively source talent in the producer marketplace having had extensive procurement experience and will perform the heavy lifting of resource shopping, review of work history, scope of work discussions, issuing offers, rate negotiations, and contracting. During the assignment of responsibilities, I can perform the project management activity of selecting producer resources to achieve cost-effective best fit.
Performance Management
I have extensive experience creating and implementing management control systems tied to compensation plans which compel performance from producers, and I can be counted on to establish clearly understood deliverable goals with them and to see about completion by associated deadlines to the greatest extent possible given budgeted financial and temporal resources. Having assigned tasks to producers, I can create systems of ongoing inquiry on their progress and provide guidance and support for their efforts when they run into trouble, all the while keeping Skycoin leadership apprised of their progress and any adverse events.
Bonus
If desired and perhaps as our history of work together is built, I can work with Skycoin leadership on strategic marketing choices when it’s deciding what to propose to the world as well as how to do so or in what flavor. I’ve spent the better part of a year immersed in blockchain as an investor and ICO marketer, and I’m well equipped to assist Skycoin leadership with content strategy planning.
Platform Adoption Outreach and Deal-Flow Management
If I have gathered correctly, a current priority for the project is the use of SkyLedger by other project founders to launch their tokens. I have about a decade of sales experience and most recently managed a successful ICO marketing agency facilitating capital investment from a Chinese investor network, raising 1M USD for the Monetha project. As well, I converted all the other founders featured on my Blockchain Speaker Series channel…
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmJMuWnEOz8DnrgiQYcnXAA
…to clients and had their projects scheduled to be presented to my network before the China ICO banhammer came down.
If the Skycoin team comes to trust and believe in my client-facing abilities, I would be pleased to apply my sales and deal-flow management skills to perform the outreach work to generate new SkyLedger utilization opportunities as well as to manage the client relationships from introduction all the way to token launch as a sales agent and account manager.
Once again, I want to express my gratitude for the opportunity to work with the Skycoin team. If the $60/hr isn’t a problem, I’m available to get started now and hope to hear from you as your schedule permits.
Many thanks,
if anyone is interested in hiring me for the kind of work i did and planned to do for skycoin, please comment
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