At Zaprite, we are building products to make it easy for individuals and businesses to accept bitcoin as payment.
Half the battle (maybe more) is helping to educate on the importance of bitcoin payments as a logical extension of holding bitcoin. Once an individual figures out that bitcoin will store value and why, the idea logically follows–that accepting bitcoin as payment is functionally similar to buying bitcoin but with added benefits of direct access to customers and a more efficient (i.e. faster and cheaper) way to acquire bitcoin. Even still, a large part of our job is helping to connect these ideas for business owners in addition to making the tools easy to use.
Realistically, while many businesses have been accepting bitcoin payments for years, adoption of bitcoin as a medium of exchange in direct commerce for goods or services is still early enough that every business choosing to do so today is a trailblazer–either in their local community, within their profession or just as a vanguard ushering in the broader global trend. Practically, every business or individual deciding to bill their time, or offer a good or service, directly for bitcoin has to have intentionally and consciously evaluated the long-term incentives and often times, hearing from other business owners (or entrepreneurs) who have already made the decision as to why it is important to them and why they have made the decision is particularly helpful.
We have begun to spotlight our Customer Stories for the principal reason of alignment. It is beneficial to our customers to get their stories out there, it is helpful to us as a business to have our current customers share their experiences with prospective customers, and it is valuable to the future wave(s) of individuals and business owners accepting bitcoin as payment to hear from peers who have gone before them. Today, we are spotlighting Frontside Consulting with a Q&A interview of their founder Joe Kim.
Would you share your story and journey to understanding Bitcoin? (e.g. when did you become interested in Bitcoin, how did you become interested in it, what made it click, etc.).
So I heard about bitcoin very early on, but initially dismissed it. I didn’t understand the point of it; why would you need digital money if Visa and Mastercard worked just fine?
I remember in college distinctly questioning fiat currency, inflationary environments and how the monetary system worked, but in the 90’s and 2000’s, society seemed to be more or less functional so it didn’t seem necessary to investigate. Whatever “inflation” was, it didn’t seem to matter because society worked. I also remembered thinking Ron Paul was a nut for wanting to go back to the gold standard, but I stand corrected.
Fast forward to 2020, housing got stupid expensive due to quantitative easing, COVID was in full swing and I had just seen the chart that showed that 40% of all dollars in existence had been printed in the last 6 months. I have a degree in business and was familiar with some macroeconomic principles about how money was created, but my understanding of how money worked was limited. Even still, there was no way that the massive amount of money printing that had just happened wouldn’t be inflationary. I had a little bit of money saved up so I was looking to deploy that money as quickly as possible. I started researching all kinds of investments as a way to protect myself.
During the time when I was investigating different ways to protect myself financially, I came across a Tim Ferriss podcast where he was talking to Naval Ravikant. These were two people I respected quite a bit, and the topic of bitcoin and cryptocurrency came up enough times where I decided I needed to understand what the heck this stuff is. Enter Lex Friedman’s podcasts, interviews with Saifedean Ammous, Robert Breedlove and Michael Saylor. Once I got through the “What is Money” Saylor Series, it was game over and I was bought in.
Why is Bitcoin important to you on a personal level?
At a certain point in my adult life, I figured out that people all have unique innate traits, viewpoints and corresponding values. Some people are just born artists, caregivers, engineers, connectors, etc… It’s what makes Austrian Economics and the Subjectivity Theory of Value real. Personally, I found out that I’m an entrepreneur, a connector of people, and value freedom. My life satisfaction exploded once I figured that out and stayed disciplined to my values and interests.
Money really is the ability to project your personality and values upon the world and the freedom to express yourself as you see fit. I know many people whose true vocation is something that doesn’t make a lot of money, and it pains me that the fiat system takes that away from them. How many more mothers, artists and restauranteurs would we have if you didn’t have to sacrifice a decent life to pursue your vocation? I’m lucky that as an entrepreneur and business owner, I have the ability to produce value at scale that can better outpace inflation than most, but I realize that’s not for everyone. I hope that a future with bitcoin means that people can better have the means to self express what they’re born to do and be.
For someone that is not very familiar with digital advertising, can you explain what you do as a business and how you deliver value for your customers?
Digital advertising isn’t much different than any other kind of advertising, but the context is online. We use different signals (demographics, user behavior, search queries) to identify users who we think are likely going to be customers of our clients. We then test in order to match the message (a product, service or offer) to those users, within the digital context that we are coming across them.
That sounds simple, but the complexity comes in the nuances of the message, understanding how to test and connecting the dots between user behavior/context and messaging.
Our main channels that we manage are Google and Meta, however we dabble in LinkedIn, Pinterest, Microsoft Ads and Amazon Ads. Similar to banking, digital advertising has become highly monopolized and centralized, and unfortunately it’s become somewhat mandatory to participate in these platforms. We provide value to our clients by helping them navigate how to use these channels and protect them from the extractive practices that these tech giants perpetuate. I personally have 14 years of experience in the space and you learn a lot about how incentives are masked and how to navigate the space in a way that’s effective for the advertisers and our clients.
It’s why we’ve adopted the motto of “Your Guides to Growth.”
How do you think about bitcoin in a business context? Do you think about it differently than as an individual and if so, how?
For a professional services business, it’s not a ton different. We have some operating capital as reserves to hold us through some of the seasonal downturns that are natural in our line of business. As an entrepreneur, you go from being a person that “does work” to a person that “deploys capital” and cash/money is a responsibility you have to deploy effectively. Yes, we need some operating capital and a rainy day fund, but we have to be aware that its purchasing power is being debased. We don’t have any other real tangible assets that are appreciating against the dollar so in our case the small amount of bitcoin held is pretty much it.
How do you see the values of bitcoin aligning with your business, with your customers and with the relationship between you and your customers?
So fundamentally, digital marketing is sales, and sales is about connecting people with other people and things they value. Our clients need to be connected with their customers, and we do that through the expertise of using and running advertising channels like Google and Meta.
We also have the perspective that Google and Meta are monopolies, and they do things that monopolies do once they’ve become centralized. If you’re a small business and need to get the word out about your product or service, you don’t really have a choice but to interact with these tech giants. I have enough experience in the field to understand how these ad platforms take advantage of small advertisers, and we see it as our duty to protect our clients from the extractive practices that these companies put on their customers.
At Frontside Consulting, we work hard to protect our clients’ ad budgets from overspending and the extractive practices of these major ad platforms in the same way that bitcoin protects the purchasing power of your hard-earned revenues from inflation and debasement.
Why did you decide to accept bitcoin as payment for your business?
As bitcoin has become a fundamental expression of my personal values, I’ve been looking for small ways that I can help increase adoption and find others who share the same values. Also, coming across Zaprite, it turns out that it’s a lot simpler to do and doesn’t have a ton of tax exposure that I initially thought there would be. So why not? A 10–20 minute settlement of payment is still faster than ACH or a credit card payment anyhow.
How is your service differentiated and how could you help businesses that value bitcoin (whether businesses in the business of Bitcoin or more broadly) grow in a more profitable and efficient way by leveraging your services?
Our core business, which is retainer-based digital marketing services, isn’t highly differentiated from our competition. The main thing that we do differently is operate from a place of integrity as best we can which is actually a lot given the number of grifters in the space. That can be a little bit difficult to communicate, but as an example, we’ve let clients go when it became clear that we were doing more harm to the business than good and that expending ad dollars when it didn’t make sense wasn’t the right thing for the client.
One thing we’re doing differently from our competition is that we’ve identified a need in our space for more of a strategic advisory package, so we’ve put together a one-time consulting package that can help small businesses who have some capacity in-house to manage. I’ve been calling it the “Papa Murphy’s Take & Bake” of digital marketing.
What is one thing you have learned about founding and running your business from an operating perspective that you wish you had known when you started?
From an operating perspective, it’s all about getting the business model right. If your inputs and outputs don’t make sense, you won’t be in business long and I found that out the hard way initially. A business isn’t the federal government and you can’t just raise a “debt ceiling” or something asinine like that. The way that your business charges its customers should be proportional to the value that you provide the client, not some other silly metric like the time it took for you to do the work. It took a while to get out of that mindset from working hourly and salaried W2 jobs. It’s what allows a business to scale.
Additionally, I wish I had learned to sell earlier. It’s become my favorite part of the business and I’ve become a fan of Jordan Belfort, Chris Voss and Zig Ziglar. When you genuinely believe that you can provide value to your clients and customers, it becomes a fun process of learning about new people, businesses and how you can help them achieve their goals. It’s even more fun when you actually get them there.
What advice would you give other business owners who are thinking about accepting bitcoin as payment?
It’s not nearly as difficult as it sounds, particularly if you have a good partner in the game, like Zaprite. Do it, why not?
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Frontside Consulting brings over a decade of digital marketing and e-commerce technology experience for its clients in creating tailored strategies and executing campaigns. The goal of Frontside consulting is to provide high-value, high-trust marketing solutions with complete transparency to long-term clients.
Zaprite is helping businesses migrate onto a bitcoin standard by allowing anyone to seamlessly accept bitcoin and fiat in one integrated platform, whether you’re issuing invoices or selling goods or services online. Try it out with a free 30 day trial.