IAM1463 – How this Social Media Influencer and Side Hustler has become a Global Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Expert

Ian Balina is an influential Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Investor, Advisor, and Evangelist. A former Analytics Evangelist at IBM, Ian is now investing in cryptocurrency token sales (ICOs). I thought the awesome thing about Ian is how he found a niche or something to focus on and he’s just running with it which is something all entrepreneurs can learn from. For Ian it’s the cryptocurrency for us it could be a multitude of different things. I also appreciated the fact that he’s had so many side ventures and businesses which show his work ethic and he seems to see opportunities everywhere. So sit back and enjoy this CEO Chat with Ian Balina.

Topics:
– What is cryptocurrency and what is blockchain? Why are they important?
– The future of the industry
– Building a personal social media brand
– Advice on going viral on social media
– How he has been influenced by Gary Vaynerchuk to create content
– Advice for people looking to start a side hustle

Website: https://www.coinbase.com/

Mentioned:

Book: Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money

Book: The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order

Ian's Book: The Complete Freelancer Guide: Become your own boss, do what you love, and make money doing it

Website: ianbalina.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ianbalina/

Twitter: twitter.com/diaryofamademan

Instagram: instagram.com/diaryofamademan

Youtube: youtube.com/diaryofamademan

Snapchat: snapchat.com/add/diaryofamademan

Episode Link: https://ceochat.co/episodes/chat-44-social-media-influencer-side-hustlers-become-global-blockchain-cryptocurrency/

Check out one of our favorite CEO Hack’s Audible. Get your free audiobook and check out more of our favorite CEO Hacks HERE

Transcription

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Please Note: Our team is using the AI CEO Hacks: Exemplary AI and Otter.ai to support our podcast transcription. While we know it's improving there may be some inaccuracies, we are updating and improving them. Please contact us if you notice any issues, you can also test out Exemplary AI here

00:22 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:04 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and formerly the CEO Chad podcast. So doing something a little bit different as we ease into the fall from the summer and you know, everybody's traveling a lot more, you know, life is obviously a lot different than it has been in the last four years, definitely since I started this, let alone the last two years or so. But I had a podcast called the CEO Chat Podcast, which is a lot more of a long-form podcast. I didn't really reach the 1400-plus episodes that we did with the IMCO podcast. So there's a lot more long-flowing, a lot more conversational, but might be dusting off the the CEO Chat podcast and bringing that back out.

So with that being said, while considering that what I wanted to do is go through some of the interviews that I had that were some of my favorites and share those. It's not going to obviously be the entire interview. We're going to have links in the show notes so that you can listen to the full interview. But I wanted to do some snippets that you can get. You're going to hear, of course, you know, the visibility, either the resources or the connections in each of these different snippets. So it's going to be one of those things that are really going to help you to hopefully learn more about the guests that are on the show, what they do, how they do it, why they do it, but also get that opportunity to really learn about some resources that can make you more effective and efficient. So sit back and enjoy this special throwback CEO Chat episode.

This was an awesome chat with Ian Balena, and he is an influential blockchain and cryptocurrency investor advisor and evangelist. He's a former analytics evangelist at IBM and Ian is now investing in cryptocurrency token sales. And I thought the awesome thing about Ian is how he found that specific niche or something to focus on and he's just flat out running with it. Something that all entrepreneurs and business owners can learn from. For Ian, it's cryptocurrency. For us, it might be a multitude of other things, but I really appreciated the fact that he's had a lot of side ventures in businesses which shows his work ethic. And he seems to be able to find and see opportunities everywhere from Airbnb sales to a multitude of other things that he's doing. So what I want you to do is just sit back and enjoy this CEO chat with Ian Bellina. All right? Ian, are you still there with me?

[restrict paid=”true”]

02:20 – Ian Balina

Yes, I am.

02:21- Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I wanted to thank you so much for taking some time out of your schedule. I know you're juggling a lot, so I truly appreciate you kind of taking some time to tell us a little bit about you and your background in your business. So one of the first questions I usually have for everyone is if you could introduce yourself to us, tell us a little bit about you, your story, and what kind of led you to start your business.

02:40 – Ian Balina

All right, sounds good. So, hi everyone, my name is Ian Belina. I'm a full-time cryptocurrency investor. I'm investing in cryptocurrencies, so things like Bitcoin, and Ethereum. I'm also a social media influencer, I guess is the term they call it nowadays. I create educational content on different channels like YouTube, podcasts, blogs, and different private groups to educate people on how to invest in cryptocurrencies because I think this is the next big thing in the future. I got involved in this space about a year ago. Prior to that, I worked for four years at IBM. I worked for one year as I was covering big data and analytics under the IBM open-source brand.

Prior to that worked for three years as a sales engineer for IBM Watson Analytics. Prior to that, I worked in IT as an IT consultant at Deloitte Consulting Group. And yeah, I have a technical background, but I've also been an entrepreneur at heart. I love the side hustle. The entire time while working in the corporate world, I always had different side hustles, from a video production company to an e-commerce business. I've done everything as a side hustle. I'm also the author of The Complete Freelancer Guide, a book on freelancing. I also have a startup called Peer Hustle, which is basically think Uber for freelancers and Uber for local freelancers. So these are multiple different things I'm working on at the same time. They let me basically live by my passion of being an entrepreneur and other skill sets I like and just being able to work with people and build something into something big.

03:58 – Gresham Harkless

Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. I mean, you definitely threw out a lot of terms I'm going to have to ask you more about, especially the idea of cryptocurrency. It's going to be hard for me to spell, even harder for me to say, but what exactly is cryptocurrency and why is that important?

04:12 – Ian Balina

All right, so cryptocurrencies are basically just digital currencies, online currency, right? So regular currency is physical paper Cash, right? Then it kind of became digitized with credit cards and online payments. But digital currencies are basically a new form of. Cryptocurrencies are a new form of digital currency. The biggest one is Bitcoin. But the value of this is that it allows people all over the world who are right now called the unbanked population, people who don't have access to banks because of where they live. The infrastructure is not developed yet.

It allows them to join the revolution, join the banking revolution, despite whatever is holding them back. With dictatorships with governments, whether the economy, infrastructure, or whatever, anybody in the world now has access to money. Money. But not just that. They have access to money in a decentralized manner, meaning that they own the money. It's not owned by the government. Right. So if you're in a corrupt region, the government can't tell you what to do. The government can't just take your money. Right?

So the money is being put in the hands of the people. Right. And they have control of it. So this is why I think it's the next big thing. Bitcoin was the best-performing currency of last year, beating out any other currency worldwide. When I joined Bitcoin, it was valid. When I joined this whole cryptocurrency community, bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency, was valid at only about $900. Right now, as we speak, it's worth over $7,000 for one bitcoin. So what other investment asset class can you get a 7x return in less than one year? So this is why this space is blowing up. It's been featured in the Wall Street Journal. A bitcoin investor was actually on the COVID of Forbes, I think a few months ago. So this is a very hot space. And I think it's the biggest innovation since the Internet itself in terms of blockchain technology, which we can talk about later. But it's the underlying technology that makes cryptocurrencies work.

05:50 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. So I would like to hear a little bit more about like, what exactly blockchain is and how it's related. But I guess even a further question I have is when you say you became involved with it, like, what does that mean? What does that look like? So I'm sure a lot of people are listening and would love to be involved or learn more information, but they're not sure exactly what that means.

06:07 – Ian Balina

So for me, it started last year. I was working at IBM. I had a friend of mine from D.C. a while back. I met up with him in Silicon Valley, just kind of seeing what he's up to. And he told me about blockchain bitcoin. He was pestering me for almost a month to get me to introduce him to the director of blockchain at IBM. So I'm like, why do you care about this blockchain bitcoin stuff? So he told me he's launching a cryptocurrency fund, basically a hedge fund, to invest in cryptocurrencies.

And I'm like, aren't you my age? What are you doing to start a hedge fund? So we got talking about the space and how much money he was making, and I'm like, all right, so tell me the actual numbers, how much money you're making. He told me he was making about 200% in one year, just buying and holding Bitcoin and Ethereum. And me being an investor and an entrepreneur and somebody who likes money, they said, okay, that beats the stock market.

So that's when I kind of woke up and I kind of had that coming to Jesus moment. I was like, wow, we can actually make money investing in cryptocurrencies and stuff like Bitcoin. Back then I had the notion that this was just for drug dealers, anarchists, people trying to break away from the government and the Fed, and all those kinds of people. But once I realized that there were actually investors in this space, I basically went through this and got the value from this space, and that's when I began looking into it. So I just went to sites like Coinbase.com, it's probably the main site most beginners go to. It's kind of like a standard exchange. You just hook up your bank account, credit card, whatever. You can buy Bitcoin, buy Ethereum.

So I began small. I just bought 100 bucks worth of Bitcoin, and 100 bucks worth of Ethereum, which is a different cryptocurrency. And I just bought and held that for about a month, and it went up 25% in the first month. That's when I was like, wow, this is pretty legit. So then I bought some more about, like $250 worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Then in about two months, it went up 25% again. But it wasn't until, like, I would say, probably early this year, probably around February or March, when as I had more confidence in the technology, right, I began adding more money. I put in 2,500 bucks in both Bitcoin and Ethereum.

And Ethereum doubled in about a week and a half. So I doubled My money in about a week and a half. And I'm like, you know what, guys? This is it. Like, sell everything, you know, put in as much money. Like, stop sending Money to your 401k. Put it in Bitcoin, Ethereum. That's when I began becoming more active in this space. I began attending conferences. So when I went to the conferences, I met the people in this space in real life and met other people who inspired me, other people who made millions. Just investing in this about three years back and having dinner with them, being able to ask them questions and see their journey through this is what really made me kind of become full-time in this space. Right. So in terms of where people can start, I would say start small. I began by just going out there.

I went on Amazon, and got the best two books on cryptocurrencies, in my opinion, and also based on Amazon's ratings. One book called Digital Gold, it's by, I think New York Times writer. The second book is called The Age of Cryptocurrency. These two books pretty much give you the history of where cryptocurrencies came from, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and where the space is today. And they're basically good guys to educate you. And those two books are pretty much what gave me the confidence to start betting big on this space.

09:05 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, definitely make sure to try to have those links for those two books in our notes for sure to let anybody who wants to pick those up. So no, that's awesome. That I guess it's kind of a way of investing. Is that the correct way to kind of term it? Like if you're investing in stocks, you can also invest in cryptocurrency and kind of like a similar way. Just like the stock market or the New York Stock Exchange.

09:26 – Ian Balina

Yes. Yeah, correct.

09:27 – Gresham Harkless

How? You know, social media has helped you to build that brand and helped out your business.

09:31 – Ian Balina

Yes. So I say social media for. I began, I basically launched a platform early in the year just to kind of create content and educate people about finance, mainly millennials about finance. So initially it was just how to make six figures, how to find a six-figure job, how to have a side hustle, how to be an entrepreneur, and how to make money on the side. Right. So I was doing that and then made content via YouTube, Instagram, blog posts, and podcasts. But after a while, just kind of doing content every single week. Eventually, I started to have a few contents. I made videos and articles go viral and that kind of began getting me a bigger and bigger audience.

And now to a point where I've become an influencer. And when I say something, I can basically, people really, really take my word or my opinion. Very valued in my opinion. So, for example, if I say, hey, I like this currency I'm investing in, or, hey, I like this project, or, hey, I like this people really take that into account, and you can measure that effect in terms of analytics, data traffic. So now I get invited to travel around the world for different conferences. This came back from a press trip for a project in Poland. They basically put me out there just to meet their team and show me what they're working on because they respect my opinion and they think I have a good audience and a good following.

So I did this just by trying out multiple channels at the same time. I basically try to diversify different channels because you always be surprised by what channel gets the biggest reactions. So initially I wasn't really big on Twitter, but after a while, I kind of figured Twitter out. Then I kind of went viral on Twitter. Now I have a. Now Twitter is one of my top two social media platforms. YouTube took a while as well. But after a while, when I once found the topic that my audience liked the most, which happened to be cryptocurrencies, and I kind of basically just kept on doubling down on that, that's when I really began to go viral and get that network effect. So now I have a video that I filmed in my basement about four months ago, which now has over 120,000 views. So that video as well has kind of brought in that additional attention. Right. That's where right now most of my audience comes from that video.

11:31 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I think a lot of people don't necessarily see, like, there's a tremendous amount of opportunities around. You just have to kind of have your eyes open and look at them, right?

11:40 – Ian Balina

Yeah, absolutely.

11:41 – Gresham Harkless

Well, Awesome. So I know you mentioned a little about, you know, the Washington Redskins, which I'm a huge Cowboys fan, so I'm not crazy about them. But I do respect the fact of being in this area and there are so many opportunities and things to do for people here. So I guess being in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area, what do you think makes this a great place to be an entrepreneur and business owner?

12:02 – Ian Balina

I mean, because you have so many different people, it's one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. Right. And because you have D.C. you also have Maryland, you have Virginia. Then you also have the colleges. Right. You have Georgetown, G.W. Howard, American. Right. All these different colleges, Park George Mason. Right. So almost anything you want to do, is within reach here in DC, Right? Maybe you have to go to Virginia or DC or Nova, whatever. But everything you want to do doesn't matter what kind of business, what kind of skill you're trying to do, what kind of hustle you're trying to do, it can be done here in D.C. if you just kind of find that right place and kind of delve into that niche, go deep down, build your brand there. I think anything you want to do is available here. So that's what makes it great.

12:41 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I would definitely agree and definitely echo that. And I know you mentioned some things that you had in the works for the future. Could you give us an idea of maybe some projects that you're working on in the future?

12:51- Ian Balina

Yeah, I mean, so right now I'm looking to. I mean, I left IBM about a month and a half ago, and now full-time investing cryptocurrencies from traveling the world as I'm basically kind of playing kind of like Shark Tank, trying to find blockchain startups to invest in. And while doing that, I'm also creating content around that. Right. So it's kind of following 1 of the people I look up to, as I mentioned earlier, Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V. Starting a video log where I travel around the world and basically have a camera crew kind of like document the process, the journey of investing in this space. It's pretty exciting. I have a videographer who used to work with Will. I am. So now they're going to take what I'm doing already, just documenting that and making content out of that. We can then repurpose it into different platforms for YouTube, Instagram, and what have you, while I'm also out there investing in this space.

13:41 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, that's definitely in the vein of Gary V. Where he's always traveling around. He has a videographer to kind of document everything. So that'd be pretty exciting to see, especially for people who aren't familiar with cryptocurrency or learning just a little bit about it. You're kind of like the tail end, or at the very beginning, I should say, of it taking off. So that'll be pretty exciting to kind of see.

14:01 – Ian Balina

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Cool.

14:03 – Gresham Harkless

So is there anything? I know we touched on a lot of different things. You gave us a lot of tremendous value and I appreciate that. Is there anything else that you think that you might want to tell our readers or our listeners? And then another question that I have is, you know after that is just what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

14:19 – Ian Balina

Yeah, so other things I'm working on, I mean, I'm just trying to put out as much content as possible in this space, right? I want to educate people and give people lots of content for free. Right. Because I think this is the next big thing, but people are still sleeping on it. So this kind of my job right now is to go out there, evangelize blockchain, evangelize investing in cryptocurrencies, because this can really change people's lives. I mean, people can retire from this. I mean, like, for me, I've been able to retire at the age of 29 from this, right?

So I think this is definitely big. So I just want to go out there and educate people, especially millennials, because this is the wave of the future. So I want to make sure people who are trying to make extra money on the side, whether be the job full time or find a new way to make money. I think I just want to make content around this space. The best way to reach me, I have a website, ianbalina.com I a n b a l I n com you can find me on social media. My handle on all different platforms is Diary of a Made Man. Diary of a Made Man an so iriofamademan. So that's my hand up for Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, everywhere.

15:31 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, Ian. I truly appreciate that. And we'll have the links for those in your handle in the show notes. So anybody that might be driving or something, you can make sure that you can still follow them. So I truly appreciate you kind of taking time out of your schedule. There's a lot of great content, a lot of great information I see while you're traveling across the world. So just want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule. I truly appreciate that.

15:51 – Ian Balina

Well, thank you for having me.

15:52 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. You have a good rest of the day, Ian.

15:54 – Ian Balina

All right, you too.

15:55 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello, Hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast and the CEO Chat podcast. And I hope you enjoyed this special episode. Give us an opportunity to kind of take some of the snippets from some of the longer-form podcasts that we have and repurpose them here. And we might be dusting off the CEO Chad podcast and talking a little bit more about some of those longer form episodes and hopefully some of the people that have been on the I AM CEO podcast on the longer form episodes. But I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you enjoy this little snapshot. Of course, you can go to CEOchat Co and have the opportunity to listen to the full, complete version of the episode. But also you can maybe see that it's very important to create content but also to be able to listen to and take in the hacks, the nuggets, the stories, just all the things that make these interviews so unique and so special. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and be sure to follow up with the guests, follow up with the CO chat podcast, and hear about all the awesome things we're working on.

16:55 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

[/restrict]