In this episode, Adam and Carlton are joined by Marco Marandiz, the founder of Drop Party. Marco talks about getting funding, switching from a platform to productized service, working with celebrities, and where he sees the future of experiential marketing going through Web3 and NFTs.
Highlights from the conversation:
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Transcription generated by Otter.ai
Adam Vazquez 0:05
Marco Marandiz is the founder of Drop Party as well as previously being the head of marketing for Elliot. He’s worked as a product manager for HomeAway, and prior to that worked at Oracle.
I first came across Marco when he was the head of marketing at Elliott. He made a specific trailer announcing that brand’s launch that absolutely enthralled me. We even stole parts of it for our own brand down the road. I absolutely loved it so got ahold of him then and I’ve just continued to follow his journey over the years. Really thankful Marco came on the show.
We got into a bunch of things during the conversation with Marco including how he started Drop Party, getting funding, switching from a platform to a productized service, working with celebrities like Will Smith and Patrick Mahomes, and where he sees the future of experiential marketing going through Web3 and NFTs.
I really enjoyed this conversation with Marco. I think you will, too. Let’s dive in with Marco Marandiz.
Carlton Riffel 1:27
We’re recording, so that’s it. We’re going. Are you ready?
Adam Vazquez 1:30
Alright, we’re going? Alright. So we had Marco Marandiz on the show this week and, Carlton, I told you immediately after I got off of it, I think I Slacked you, “This will be the best episode we’ve done.” What did you think? Did it live up to that?
Carlton Riffel 1:48
Oh, absolutely. I messaged you right after. I’m like, sheesh, that was incredible. Is there anything that that guy cannot do or has not done? It just one thing after the other. He was just slipping in there that he went to law school and then he figured out that wasn’t for him so he became a developer and then— I don’t want to steal his fire, but he really has such a broad scope of a path.
Adam Vazquez 2:13
There was a bunch of those subtle drops. I think I called one or two out, but he would be like, yeah, and then it’s like, “Getting Will Smith on board is important.” And it’s like, “Woah, woah, wait.” So yeah, I really appreciated that. And I think the other thing I really appreciated about Marco and the story that he told was just the blindness to obstacles, and maybe he’s just portraying that. But I, as he was telling his story, there was a million red flags going off in my brain as to like, Okay, I don’t know if I could, if I would push through that, or that would seem scary to me. And at least the way that he talks about it, it doesn’t seem to faze him on that level. Did you notice that?
Carlton Riffel 2:56
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s part of what he enjoys it and what he really thrives on is the challenge, and figuring out something that just isn’t easy. And so there are several times where he probably could have stuck with something and done okay with their business or in a certain position. But he kept pushing himself to take those things to the next level. And that’s really what stood out to me was, he was relentless in some of those pursuits of just getting to that next thing and making it something incredible.
Adam Vazquez 3:27
Hmm, cool. Well, I think we’ve hyped this one up enough. Hopefully it pays off for everyone listening. Let’s get into it with Marco Marandiz.
All right, we’ve got Marco Marandiz from Drop Party founder and CEO of drop party. Marco, thank you so much for joining the show.
Marco Marandiz 3:52
Thanks for having me, man.
Adam Vazquez 3:54
So for those who are unacquainted— that would not include me, obviously. I’ve been stalking your Twitter for years at this point. I’d be curious how you describe your career in a nutshell. It’s been kind of all over the place, traditional to what you’re doing now. Would just love to hear that picture from you.
Marco Marandiz 4:10
Yeah, of course. Yeah. I would say that my career is probably pretty similar to a lot of entrepreneurs, but it feels very unique to me. So like I started as a musician in LA, I was doing music for the first three years after high school that didn’t work out because I was around many talented people and I was like, I’m gonna pivot. Went back to school I was gonna do a philosophy degree and become a lawyer, and partway through my philosophy degree pivoted to computer science, knock that out, then worked as a software engineer, then got recruited as a product manager at an Expedia company here in Austin, Texas. So I moved here for that. Two years after that I quit to figure out what I want to do because corporate life was killing me. He started doing some DTC consulting in Austin that brought me to New York, met a bunch of interesting brands consulted with some very sizable Interesting brands that I was able to impact to whatever degree I was allowed to I can, and then I joined the eCommerce startup as a head of marketing. That was a lot of fun, tumultuous, short ride. And then after that happened after that ride, there was over I started dropped party. So it’s been everything from music, to engineering, to product management, to direct consumer marketing, which is kind of like set me up very well for what I’m doing right now, which is kind of surprising and exciting.
Adam Vazquez 5:36
Yeah, that’s cool. I didn’t know about the music or the law thing. That’s funny, we have that in common. I was enrolled in two different law schools simultaneously, for like, two days, and then didn’t go. I’m thankful I didn’t go. I feel like that’s like a thing people do. It’s like, “I don’t know where I’m going to do so Law School seems like a good fit.” But anyway, I want to drill in on the part there at the end you talked about.
So you were at an eCom startup called Elliot, that’s actually how I first came across you and your work. You guys made this awesome website and this beautiful teaser video, as you could call it. And it was, it was just so different than anything else I had really seen in the space. And so obviously, that didn’t end well. But I guess my question is, if I was in that role that you were in, where you built this incredible brand, it was very successful, you got tons of hype and tons of, I would say, attention as a result of your work. And then it didn’t end well. What led you to be like, Alright, I’m gonna go take another, essentially another risk and start a new company, as opposed to going back to something that’s maybe more tried and true.
Marco Marandiz 6:46
Yeah, I asked myself that a lot too because I think there are a lot easier ways to make money than what I’m doing right now. I think startups are very hard. But yeah, coming off the end of that like, that got a lot of inbound interest to join a bunch of startups that have marketing and head of retail, a bunch of opportunities that were really cool and had big payday opportunities. But I was, I kind of felt like, the reason that things didn’t go well was because, obviously, this interaction of a bunch of events that some of them you can’t predict whatever. But I think like, leadership is important. And I thought, actually, the ideas were great, the execution was good, in some situations was poor and the other and I thought, well, if I’m in charge, I would make very different decisions. And I wasn’t ready to go back and work for anybody else. After that, I was working for the CEO of Elliot, he had a great vision, but just didn’t work out the way that he wanted, or that we wanted, due to personal issues due to whatever happened there. I thought, actually, I think I’m pretty well poised to lead a team. And I’m pretty self-aware. And I think that was like a big opportunity, then for me to say, I could either go the opposite way, go back to a safe, normal, kind of like employed life where I can continue down this path where I’m right at the edge of a big opportunity here, I don’t know what’s gonna look like. So basically, after that, some of the relationships that I had built, when I was at Elliott, were still looking for help, they were gonna move on to the platform, and hey, I guess not gonna happen anymore, but I could still support you. And that’s kind of when I started working with Will Smith’s team on their merchandising aspects around their movies and TV shows. And that was like the first opportunity where I was like, the first time working with them where I kind of saw where there was a big gap in the market, which is that like, everybody is serving celebrities, everybody’s serving the brands, nobody’s really serving the fans. If you look from the direct consumer world, this is very much like, “customer comes first.” Everything is about the customer, it’s customer-oriented. But in entertainment and media, the customer is the celebrity brand or Toyota or whoever the consultant is trying to make money from, but they are only valuable because Toyota or celebrities serve the fans or customers in the long run because they’re making great content, great movies, they’re sponsoring things that are brand valuable in some way. And the content doesn’t exist, and it doesn’t exist in the merchandise really, it’s like, oh, great, we’re gonna launch a store because that’s what this movie needs a merch store. I’m like, Well, okay, cool. But if you’re making a t-shirt for $5, and you’re selling it for 80, everybody’s gonna know when the quality is terrible. Yeah, yeah. So over time, we kind of moved from, okay, actually, I should probably take a step back. What drop party is it for anybody who’s like Fallen One day, our job party really is that we do drops for fandoms. So we’re really focused on creating and deepening the relationship between a brand and entertainment brand media brand, any cultural moment and the fans of that. And now we’ve actually brought in another dimension, which is there are sponsors and other more traditional brands that want to be associated with culture and don’t actually have anything to offer directly Besides cash and draw party is becoming that medium between the brand with the money, the cultural moment or the talent and these fans that want to have these great experiences, that’s kind of where we exist, we exist that intersection. When we started, we thought, Oh, we’re gonna build the drops platform, we’re going to be a better merchandising opportunity, merchandising partner. And now we’ve actually realized, we’re really a drops production studio, and we partner with the best in entertainment and media to extend out their movie releases their content releases, their big cultural moments, like the World Cup or Formula One season or something like that. That’s where we kind of sit is handling all that logistical backend chaos with like a production studio would Yeah, weaving in the creative and the partnerships and the fan and the brands all together into a big activation?
Adam Vazquez 10:45
And I’d say the cultural relevancy, right, like, that’s what I think unique about what you all are doing versus like, just a traditional, I mean, what you described is what a lot of agencies functionally do, but bringing that cultural relevancy to a new set of brand that didn’t have it implicitly is a differentiator. I want to go back for one second, you were talking about, that you had the self-awareness that you would be able to make decisions and guide a new company onto the frontier. I’m curious. So like, a lot of it reminds me and it’s not a similar situation in a lot of ways. But it reminds me of someone like Ryan Holliday, who went through the American Apparel experience, and then he comes out of it and it doesn’t end well. But he still has that confidence to continue on and do all the different things he’s done. What do you think it was inside of you? Was it the way you grew up? Or just some character trait that you have that gave you that ability to pause and be like, Okay, I wasn’t the issue here. There was there was extenuating circumstances. Let’s go try this again.
Marco Marandiz 11:47
I’ve always been pretty entrepreneurial. But I didn’t quite like internalize my as I didn’t internalize that, as an identity. For myself. I wasn’t an entrepreneur. I moved to LA at 17 to do music and lived alone and did that for three years before I went back to school. Like, that’s a pretty like, risky, ambitious thing to do. And like, in hindsight, yeah, I can see that. But then after I went back to school, it was like back in the like, Okay, you have a degree, and then you get a job, you should climb the ladder. And I remember, like, one of my managers, when I was working at Capitol was engineer, he’s like, I was like, I want to be a product manager, because those people that make the decisions about the product for the customer, and he’s like, Yeah, but you could make more money as an engineer, if you just like, you’re a smart guy who can speak like, well to both sides of the problem. So just make more money and make like, three or $4,000 a year easily. And I was like, yeah, no thanks. I was still in the reality of working inside of an organization. I’ve been inside of organizations for so long, when I left to do consulting, after my Expedia gig, that was really empowering to be like, Oh, I can make money. And I can do my own consulting and make three to 5x when I was making a job. But consulting didn’t really like have, it wasn’t fulfilling to me, it just like, it was a consulting gig that in and of itself didn’t lead to anything else. But another consulting gig with a new relationship. I’m sure there are other better consultants than me that figure out how to navigate that better. But that was for me. And then that’s when I went back to this job thing, like, well, here’s a startup that I can be part of, and help this thing grow. And I’m not the founder, but I can be part of this. And then, at the end of that, I noticed that I was operating from a position of fear for most of my career, I think not like true fear, and not like, “Oh, my God, I can’t do anything.” But like, “Why take the risk?” Why take the risk? There’s good money and any downside can be attributed to somebody else in the company because I work for them. Not that like, that’s not how I operate in my roles anyway, so my, why not just take all the risk and all the upside, yeah, into my own hands and just handle it that way. And that’s like, it’s an interesting approach. It’s now like, looking back at how I made decisions, I think you kind of just got to trust your gut in the moment of like, what feels right. And I really like, uh, one thing that I work on a lot is like cultivating and maintaining an abundance mindset. Like, there is more than enough money for us all to have successful businesses if we choose to, but we don’t want to take those risks. And that’s honestly I think, a big part of like, the wealth gap that saying the wealth gap is caused by this, but that there is there are so there are very few people that are willing to risk their career or their ego-based attachment to their careers. So that like they’re the people who are starting businesses are able to accumulate all this wealth because there are fewer businesses than there possibly could be to create that competition. And I thought, I can go and take this risk on my own and the worst-case scenario is I go back to one of the jobs that will pay me a lot of money. Like, there’s no real downside. Actually, I will be a better employee, more valued, and more experienced if I fail and have to go to a job than if I just went straight through the career. Like, people want leaders at all their companies that are ambitious and entrepreneurial. You don’t want a pencil pusher. Nobody wants a pencil pusher as the VP of marketing. You want somebody who’s taking those risks anyway. So take the risk, shoot for the stars. And if you fall short— whatever that phrase is.
Adam Vazquez 15:35
It’s so good. It’s such a good point and it’s true because, even in my situation, I’m like 65% of the way there. I’m in that consulting phase of what you’re talking about. But I think there’s there’s a risk to just like going all-in on just like a pure idea or pure concept. Because I know, in terms of consulting and those types of things. You can always find the next one, you can always find the next client that’s a lower risk profile, but being able to just go out there and say, like, there’s no downside, really, but there is mentally and I think overcoming that is is powerful.
Okay, so you do that. You come to Drop Party, and then you kind of threw this out there casually, which I love. But your first customer is Will Smith. How did that happen?
Marco Marandiz 16:28
Yeah, I guess I don’t appreciate the opportunities that have been in front of me. But like the work we do that Elliot, like you said, was like, got a lot of attention. And a lot of the relationships that we build got us in touch with like, the head of merchandising, and whatever, like part of an organ is part of the organization at Will Smith, Don Wilson, this team that I had to rely to start to build a relationship with. And when it didn’t work, I was like, Look, I’ll help you. So I started consulting with them like, Yeah, I’ll be your external head of commerce, essentially, I’ll help you source your products handle your fulfill May your production, all that stuff, I’ll, I’ll deal with that eCommerce. And they wanted more and more. They basically were starting to talk to me about like, “Oh, what does it look like to come in-house?” And I was like, that’s interesting. But I don’t think what you need is what I can build while having to report up to somebody else. I was like, it was a very short one. It’s like about a month period from like, we started ramping up quickly, like, Well, why don’t you just come in-house and do this and I thought, like, what I think you need can’t be done as an employee of you, I need to be able to set my own boundaries and my own ambitions for to be able to even serve you better so, but it was just really a relationship, a relationship that I was maybe relentless about pursuing. I think I’m relatively personable and charismatic and I can get into those conversations with people pretty easily. But what I noticed is that I have a lot of relationships that I hustled into. There people are like one or two degrees of separation. I’m like, I know you know this person, make the introduction. Like I can. Okay, what do you need from me? I just make, not in an aggressive way, but I will figure out the right levers to pull to get in that conversation or provide value in a way that like, so working with Will Smith, then open doors through their relationships to Patrick Mahomes. There are then open doors continuing to open doors to the Fresh Prince store in the bad boys store. Yeah. And that led him to Jaden Smith work. And that led into Red Table talk work. And then like, all of a sudden my portfolio was massive. And it only took me three months to build it. And I was like, oh, okay, well, I realized that what I offer is coming from a music background, being able to communicate with people that are moving culture, but not being like the stiff square. I’m like, I’m Yeah, commerce guy, a product guy. But I’m, I’m not like this. I don’t know, if you talk to people who like are smarter than you in other areas, and they kind of come off as condescending and like I just, I’m like a normal guy to talk to them. But I’m the only person with this specific set of skills that lets them offload stuff to me. So that was kind of my role. And I realize there’s a business to build around this, but I can craft what this vision will be. It’s not just doing whatever they want as an agency or as a consultant. It’s what is the product and the service that is very structured that I think will be beneficial to not only these celebrities, but also their fans. Yeah, and over time, we really started to realize like, the celebrity doesn’t really matter. I mean, they do, they do as a channel for fandom for the fans. And if you’re focused on this, if you’re looking at the celebrity you’re serving their needs, if you’re focused on the fans, you’re serving the fans needs via the celebrity and everybody’s happy in the end because the celebrity the talent they are they’re happy with Their fans are happy. Yeah. And then everybody’s making money.
Adam Vazquez 20:02
It’s so true. You made the analogy earlier. But I mean, in no other industry do we, like go to the product and say like, Hey, product, what do you want us to do in order to sell this better like, which is essentially what the talent is in entertainment. We go to the fans, we go to the customers, oh, you know all those things. So it makes sense that you’d be audience-centric with a platform like this. I think it’s interesting, you basically said, you layered all these different unique life experiences. My business partner, Derek always talks about that. If you can keep layering concentric circles enough, you become the best at this thing. Can you just talk a little bit about, you glanced over it at the beginning, but what is it actually that the— is it a platform? Or is Drop Party a product or service? How do you talk about that?
Marco Marandiz 20:48
Yeah, I think we started as a platform, we thought we were actually going to be building like the Shopify for drops. And I realized there is a need for that. But drops overall, is a mechanism of engagement with an audience. So you use hype, urgency and scarcity, in varying degrees, to manipulate audiences to share on social to build a lot of excitement around like you use those things. Actually, a lot of those skills that I understood, I honed when I was at Elliott trying to build our brand that way, and that I was like, Well, I can apply this here with drops. And I thought, I realized that the platform like a technology angle was not the solution, because it’s actually a knowledge gap. That is what’s what differentiates a successful drops company or company that does drops from an unsuccessful, I would say that mischief has like a stranglehold on how to do this successfully. They know how to build hype, in excitement around what they do. So we started out building a platform and then more we work with these like celebrities, we’re like, Okay, well, merchandise is a part of what they want, we’ll help them with that realize like merchandise is actually like a big differentiator between a fan that loves, okay, a celebrity or some talent that makes merchandise that’s low quality, all it can do is negatively impact the relationship that they have with their fans. High-quality merchandise is such a great deepening of that relationship. So we realized, okay, there’s technology, but also know-how but also premium merchandise. Okay, well, that’s a lot. Okay. And then like, so how do we work with people there? That’s an agency is an agency is the platform, okay, so we had to raise some money for it. Because like, I was still kind of like feeling around the dark of what this could be. We raised a little bit of cash. And then in the process of that kind of got even further along, realizing like, we’re not even really a platform, because it’s not a self serve thing. It’s not a completely scalable thing. Like your brand doesn’t deserve a drop party. My personal brand doesn’t deserve a drop party. Like, you need to have an audience right, like, right, hundreds of 1000s or millions of people that are like diehard fans of what you do. So like, honestly, drop parties really only exist for like the top 1% of fandoms.
Adam Vazquez 23:02
Yeah okay. Well, that’s 0.1% probably.
Marco Marandiz 23:05
Yeah, exactly. So now we’re looking at that it’s like, okay, well, now that you’re talking about the top 0.1%, I can’t, it’s really hard to build a platform business off of, or a strictly merchandise business off of that. We need to be partners. How do you become a partner, you got to build a production studio, because every I mean, investor said, this agency said this, everybody said, Well, if you’re trying to build a scalable platform, you can include creative. And I was like, I understood, I started to understand like, yeah, you probably can’t really like, you can’t scale a creative organization to that level, unless you are a production studio, where that is part of your value. And you’re not taking service fee on a monthly basis, you’re splitting revenue off the top with your talent partners. And this is like kind of where we started to get to like we’re producing for production studio for drops. And we’re partnering with certain pieces of talent. But now, the latest unlock in a series of unlocks as a business is that we’re creating seasons or series of films. So we’re doing it kind of categorically based on interests and demographics. So we’re doing one around sports we’re going to do in 2022, we’re going to do a handful of drops around, let’s say Formula One, the NBA Finals in the World Cup, we’re going to do stuff around Web3, with all the relationships that I have in Web3 because actually, most of these Web3 people came from D2C, a lot of the very successful ones came from the direct consumer world. So I have been now we’re trying to build a Web3 season. We’re also going to do one for around emerging artists in entertainment with one of our brand partners that has a massive YouTube channel that breaks these artists. So sharing to see like, now we’re going to be seasons out. And then like any production studio is making a movie well, what’s the product place? Who’s really holding a Coke or Pepsi here are gonna be holding an iPhone or a Google Pixel. I love what are you going to add now that we’ve got the seasons and we have the demographic and we know exactly who we’re targeting. Now we’re talking to sponsors on the back If you say, I want to have my brand be in the checkout, I want to when you’re doing a trip or a giveaway, I want it to be an Airbnb versus a booking.com or Priceline or if we’re doing a flight should be Delta versus Virgin? We’re starting to provide almost like a product placement opportunity for sponsors. You want to be around cultural moments where we already have the relationships with talent, you’re day one these things with their fans.
Adam Vazquez 25:26
You’re manufacturing the moment. So is Drop Party then you’re making you are, although on the customer acquisition side it’s not for the masses, it’s for a very niche audience. On Drop Party the brand, you are making that a consumer-facing brand. That’s what it seems to be digested by.
Marco Marandiz 25:45
Yeah, it’s consumer-facing but maybe more like, yeah, it is a consumer-facing brand, although people aren’t gonna be like, what is the next Drop Party that is happening that if you’re not a fan of 1000 things, you’re a fan of like, probably a real fan of like four or five things? Yeah. And what we want to do is be kind of that mark of quality and experience for that thing, like, you know 824 the production studio? There’s a specific type of movie that they make, right. And it’s always critically acclaimed. It’s always slightly confusing. And it’s all the trademarks of that brand. But what you’re getting into when you go to NATO form. Yep. And you’re sitting in the theater and you see a 24 you’re like, I know what everybody be watching. Yeah. And that’s what we want with drop party. Similarly to how Mischief is very much a consumer brand with its own trip, but you know what Mischief is. When you’re seeing a Mischief drop, you know exactly what they’re going to be like, you kind of get the flavor. There’s a flavor for a drop party as well. And that’s what we’re trying to create, though, like, I’m not gonna say it’s like Kanye X dropped party. Like, it’s not quite like that. It’s this kind of drop bar. Yeah, this is like, I don’t know, this new TV shows drop party or new movies dropped party or a Formula One Drop Party, it’s the kind of the more of a noun, but like kind of a self-defining experience, which we’ll be able to draw the thread through. Because we’re building custom technology. We’re building custom fulfillments production sourcing quality, everything is ours. It’s ambitious.
Adam Vazquez 27:23
No, it’s awesome.
Marco Marandiz 27:23
But I don’t want to build anything that’s not ambitious. I would be very bored doing something else.
Adam Vazquez 27:28
The Day 24 analogy is a great one because if you like their movies, it kind of doesn’t really matter who the star is of that specific one. You’re probably gonna watch it. Because it’s you like that, to your point that style. So similar, similar with you. Cool.
Well, listen, man, this has been really, really good. We haven’t even gotten everything, but I want to be cognizant of time. Just a last question here to kind of round it out. What I think it’s a lot around your business, but what content what trend that you’re able to use for your drops, or maybe just personally has you most excited? I know you have tension around Web3. So it may or may not be that but yeah, I’m just curious what’s got you excited as someone who follows all this stuff?
Marco Marandiz 28:09
I think the Web3 space is like the most interesting thing to watch right now. I participate skeptically. I’m losing money all the time. It’s great. But I mean, I think the thing for me is that many people that are in Web3 in the NFT space, are maximalists, even when they think they’re being kind of measured about it. They’re not. Nobody is, especially when I hear things like Web3 is going to replace Web2 and Web1. It’s like, bro, I’m not paying $3 to send email. Like, it’s not gonna happen. So and this is the thing like we’re looking at now, like analogies are analogously to the past, Web1 was like, read-only websites. Like, here, go here, look at the thing, you read it, awesome. Web2 is more like social, more commerce, things like that. It didn’t replace Web1 site, it only added another dimension to the internet. And Web3 is now about ownership. But it’s not going to replace Twitter, or Facebook or Instagram, there’s not going to be a Web3 Instagram, where you’re paying money to interact. Those are nice pie in the sky ideas. But we’re still trying to take the previous version and make it into a Web3 fit. And this is actually what are the new ideas that exist in Web3. That is an interesting thing. So we’re trying to think about like, what is what how do NFTs work with drop party? How do we think of them as badges of proof of attendance, essentially, participation that allows you to get access to different things, kind of in that model without it Yeah, subsuming what we already do. And I think that, we were talking about before we jumped on, the risk that I see with Web3 is that NFTs for most people are going to lose money. And it is a massive risk to the entertainment industry to enter the web series face blind. Because what’s gonna happen you’re gonna say, I mean, Snoop just did this right? He sold like a bunch of NFTs for $5,000. By the way, this is a couple days after the Super Bowl. So like that whole thing happened. He sold his NFTs and he made like $40 million. And if those things don’t go up in value, for the people who bought it, Snoop just made $40 million off of fans for a picture of something on the blog. I don’t even know what it is. But like, it’s not like, it’s not a judgment on his business. He’s doing it. But it has the opportunity to completely destroy his reputation and relationship with his audience. And now we’re looking at that with like, a bunch of branches lunching and fts. For no reason, except for like, we want to be in the space and be early but they’re not necessarily internalizing the reality that you people are spending, not just like a couple of dollars on a bottle of Pepsi or something you’re spending 1000s of dollars on a Pepsi NFT. What does that do to their relationship with the brand? I think it’s very risky to enter blindly and I think it’s better to, in this case, for brands, it’s better to be late than it is to be early and wrong.
Adam Vazquez 31:17
Yeah, it’s good. Executed wrong and then like have people hate you for holding a bag down the road ever mind? It is your point. No one’s objective. It’s so religious. I haven’t gotten deep into the Web3 space because of my religious affiliations with Bitcoin. And it’s the same thing over there, right? Like, why can’t we just have a different store value? Why does it have to replace all currency? It’s the same thing with this. Why does it have to replace all internet or all social apps? So I think it’s wise words.
Dude, thank you so much. You’re such a, first of all, just a ball of energy and like I feel that energy and appreciate it and have so many, you’re always on the edge of what’s going on. For people who want to keep up with your work, Drop Party, everything that you got going on right now. Where’s the best place to follow you?
Marco Marandiz 32:05
Best place to follow me would be on Twitter @allthingsMarco. I’m the black guy.
Adam Vazquez 32:10
Alright. Be on the lookout for him. Cool.
Marco Marandiz 32:15
Appreciate you having me on, man. This was fun.
Adam Vazquez 32:18
Cool. Thanks, dude.
Carlton Riffel 32:19
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