IAM2384 – Founder Helps Stakers Maximize their Impact through Crowdfunding Platform

James Jackson Leach is an entrepreneur from Austin, Texas, known for his work in business development, blockchain technology, and film production.

In 2014, James built his first Bitcoin mining rig and has continued to support emerging blockchain platforms.

James is the inventor of two US technology patents, a mobile algorithm allowing content creators the ability to copyright intellectual property from their mobile devices straight to the Library of Congress.

James developed Crowdstake as a crowdfunding platform for film projects, where users could delegate their staking rewards from cryptocurrencies like Ethereum to fund films.

James emphasizes the importance of trial and error in entrepreneurship, reflecting that failures are opportunities to learn and grow.

He encourages entrepreneurs to recognize their progress by documenting accomplishments and being kind to themselves.

James advises focusing on where to allocate time and energy, especially when scaling a business.

Furthermore, James reflects on the growth he’s experienced, saying that once you have the right team, you don’t need to micromanage every aspect of the business.

Website: Crowdstake

LinkedIn: James Jackson Leach

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Transcription:

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James Leach Teaser 00:00

And then we just released a tool for like, Twitch content creators so that they have their own widget so they can get crypto donations to their channels.

So now we're going to start partnering streamers and nonprofits together so that there's content being made for charities through corporate donations that are going to the charities funding the streamers to generate content.

So we're just trying to create the ecosystem for more money to flood into charities because unfortunately, we live in a world where nonprofits are needed.

Intro 00:29

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:58

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have James Jackson Leach. James, excited to have you on the show.

James Leach 01:07

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:09

Yes, absolutely. Super excited as well too. James is doing so many phenomenal things. I'm super excited to kind of dive in and have a phenomenal conversation.

So, of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about James so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

And James is an entrepreneur from Austin, Texas, wood a focus on business development, blockchain technology, and film production.

In 2014, James built his first bitcoin mining rig and has continued to support emerging blockchain platforms.

Most recently, he launched Crowdstake, an innovative source for nonprofits to collect new sources of revenue, enabling users to redirect their web3 staking rewards to fund various initiatives, including investments, donations, and purchases without needing to unstake their principal assets.

James is the inventor of two US technology patents, a mobile algorithm allowing content creators the ability to copyright intellectual property from their mobile devices straight to the Library of Congress.

And he also recently produced a featured film called the Dirty Weekend, which was pretty cool as well too.

So I'm excited about all the things that he's doing, and I think so many times we think that we can't do well by doing good.

We can't do both of those things. So I love that he merges all those things together. So, James, excited to have you on the show. You ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

James Leach 02:22

Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited.

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Gresham Harkless 02:23

Well, let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off. Let's rewind the clock. Hear a little bit more on how you got started what I call your CEO story.

James Leach 02:30

Oh man. I mean I'm sure you get this all the time from guests. Like where to begin? Going off of some of the bio you said, I was just a nerd on I think a Reddit form when Reddit came out and that's when I was reading about mining and kind of thought, oh cool, I'll build my own mining rig.

And so I started building these GPU based mining rigs and mining litecoin and dogecoin had just come out.

So I was just mining all those things back then and that's kind of where I was able to from those I wouldn't even call that skill. Just luck.

And being a nerd that I was able to later on in life have capital to do some of my ideas because I was right place, right time.

But I born and raised in Austin, Texas. My grandfather was an entrepreneur and he was a big influence.

So some stuff rubbed off on me from him. And he was in like cable television startup world back then.

I mean when he was. And there was no television, cable television when he was born. So he was a big pioneer in that space and he was just a huge influence.

So I got to a point in my life where I actually lived with him. My grandma passed away and my parents, I asked my parents if I could move in with my grandpa.

He was only 8 minute drive down the road and they were, they wanted me to because he was by himself.

And so at the age of like 14, 15, I moved in with him and lived with him until he passed away. So I was able to really absorb a lot of stories and I was able to go out in the world and fail a lot and kind of just go debrief with him. And that was pretty much, I mean that was life changing, man.

Gresham Harkless 04:06

Yeah. So I guess take me through Crowdstake. So how did that come about? Was that one of those five ideas in five years type of thing that kind of came about from there.

James Leach 04:13

So then I went off and was doing some various other projects. I like bought a brewery here in Austin, Texas.

Me and my friends were growing that and then proof of stake started coming around and that had smart contracts and I was like now I know how to get people to do smart contracts to send their ethereum into investor holding accounts that are escrow.

And once we hit certain thresholds and that money gets released and it's kind of like a decentralized escrow account and I started playing with ideas.

It was a whole crowdfunding platform where you could go pick out a movie, we were going to curate it, have one or three movies at a time on there.

And you could say, I'm going to delegate all the APY I'm earning from my Ethereum, my Avalanche, my whatever. And I'm going to, yeah, Avalanche has a P chain and C chain.

So for anyone listening that says you can't delegate automatically your things. It's. I'm aware technologically of the, that I say when I wanted to cancel my technology skills.

Gresham Harkless 05:09

There you go.

James Leach 05:11

Yeah, so then it was a crowdfunding platform where people could delegate their APY, let's say 500, a thousand people join a crowd staking campaign. That's the term that we've trademarked, crowd staking.

And then we have an underwriter that says, cool guys, you've got 500 people that are going to give your APY, give APY to the project for a year.

That's going to equal $100,000. Here's $100,000 right now. Go make your movie. And the underwriter, through smart contracts, all non custodially gets the APY back to the underwriter to pay back for the film investment.

So that whole thing was built and it, probably should have launched, I should have launched it. But what happened is like video game company said, well, what about video game financing?

Nonprofits were like, well what about delegating that APY to us? And then after getting ready to.

So we were raising the money, D5 Films, which needed a easily half million dollars ad budget just to drive revenue to it.

At that point we were like, okay, we need to rebrand this as something more broad. So that's where Crowdstake came about.

And then as we rebranded through the charities that we had relationships with, we said this is probably a much cheaper, more efficient go to market strategy.

And now on Crowdstake.com we have every single charity in the country in our marketplace. And you can go donate cash, I mean credit, debit, ach, one time crypto, or if you're into staking pools, you can delegate your APY, you're earning in a staking pool to a charity and you get an automatic tax receipt back for any form of it, any way of it.

And then you can log in and then you can get your tax receipts and all that stuff through Crowdstake.com right now.

So it started as film financing and now it's in philanthropy. And now we're building AI chatbots so you can talk to say American Red Cross on our platform and say, how much did y'all spend on programming last year?

How much did y'all. How much did the executive director get paid? You can really just talk to it and learn more about just that individual organization.

And I used to do a theater company back in the day I started, I was writing a bunch of screenplays. That's ultimately how I got into film-making was theater.

But anyway, that's. And what we're going to do later is we're going to launch a film component of Crowdstake.

But it's interesting how it started as a film platform through crowdfunding, circled back through for crowd staking for charities and getting charities more financing.

And then we just released a tool for like Twitch content creators so that they have their own widget so they can get crypto donations to their channels.

So now we're going to start partnering streamers and nonprofits together so that there's content being made for charities through corporate donations that are going to the charities funding the streamers to generate content.

So we're just trying to create the ecosystem for more money to flood into charities because unfortunately we live in a world where nonprofits are needed. But anyway, there you go. That's one. That's a long winded answer.

Gresham Harkless 08:14

Yeah, that's a perfect answer. Though I almost wonder if that's part of what I would like to call your secret sauce. Could be for yourself personally, the business, or a combination of both.

But I know you mentioned that you had that luck and you were a geek, but I wonder if that curiosity, that desire to try to try out things, to see things and frankly to be willing, it sounds like to have things not, I don't want to say fail, but not go the way you want them to go.

But still learn from, even those conversations it sounds like you were having with your granddad, still having that mentality. Do you feel like that's part of what sets you apart and makes you unique?

James Leach 08:44

I mean, yeah, I don't want to say like you should fail because I've actually read some report that shows that first time founders that succeed never had a pre existing.

A lot of them never had a previous failure but. But then they struggle to have second and third time successes and stuff like that too.

But yeah, you have to be in the mentality of like, I mean, who's gonna like paint? Who's gonna. Their first book they write gonna be a success?

I mean it's just like, you have to trial and error and you got to figure things out. And if you haven't done a pitch, then if you haven't done a term sheet, then you haven't done a turn for you.

You got to go through that process a lot. And it's the mentality for sure. But the, the thing about it is you have to understand that as you're going through that journey, it's going to emotionally start taking a toll.

When you can't zoom out and see that you're taking three steps forward, two steps back, you might think, three steps forward, three steps back.

And then you'll feel like you're doomed or failing. But really, it's just, you gotta really write it down.

You gotta write down what you want to get done, what was great that you did. Because when I zoom out, like, I'm one of those guys that if I had a hundred million dollars, I'd spend 99 of it on trying to go to space.

Like, I'm like, I want, I'm all in on like my ideas. I probably spend all this. If I wasn't married, I'd spend all of it.

But now that I'm married, I gotta leave a little bit there. But that's the thing is I have that approach and you just got to write down what you've accomplished.

Because when you zoom out, you can go, oh, I did some shit. Like, you really got to give yourself pats on the back when they're due.

Gresham Harkless 10:22

Yeah. And I wonder if that is your CEO hack, which is, can be like an Apple book or a habit, something that makes you more effective and efficient.

But I almost wonder if, like I was talking with a coach, about a year or so ago, and she said I had to create what I call like a no New Ideas Pad.

I put it in my Evernote where every time I had these ideas, I would put them there. But being able to put them there and kind of think through them very similarly, it sounds like to the PowerPoint gave you space to kind of flesh through them.

Not necessarily that you're going to pursue them, but just they were there. Do you feel like creating that space?

And however way, people might decide to do that is so important, especially for those entrepreneurial, creative. I want to try this, that and the third type people.

James Leach 11:02

I'm 100. I mean, that's where the guilt was originally was I was thinking like, oh, I should be working on that thing. Like I raised money for this business, why am I working on something else right now?

But then you realize it's like, well, I'm not starting this. And maybe while that like my wife reads books.

She likes, she loves reading. She reads, I mean probably three books, four books a month. She's read books and a lot of my, a lot of entrepreneur people I know and just non entrepreneurial people, they also read books.

And I don't read books. I read what I need to read for the pertinent information to get something accomplished.

But I don't just read a thick novel of some made up story that I would go watch a movie for. But so instead of reading books and doing other things like that, I love journaling and I love power pointing out ideas to flush out whatever is in my brain.

And then when I revisit with my team about the actual company that I am working on, I believe that can be as therapeutic as journaling.

Because if I'm journaling my thoughts, my ideas, my feelings, one of those things is I've got all this creative energy and I have to put it somewhere.

So I put in PowerPoint and guess what? Maybe in a decade I'll start a 3D printed organ technology going.

Gresham Harkless 12:20

There you go. We're looking forward to having you back on the show for sure. So do you feel like that's what I would call a CEO nugget?

Little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice? I like to say it might be something you would tell yourself if you hopped into a time machine or potentially a client that you're working with.

James Leach 12:35

I think that the fire in me, my greatest asset was my energy. It is. And you have time, energy, money.

When you're young, you've got the time and the energy to do it a lot. And when you get older, you buy back your time and energy with money.

So it's like you got to think about those three resources and spend them accordingly with where you are at in your life and what you want.

And now I'm at a phase where I thoroughly enjoy outsourcing as much work as possible, delegating as much work as possible.

I believe people should start delegating sooner. It's like, oh, I can't afford it. Some people will say, no, do everything yourself as early on as possible.

And I don't think that that trains you to scale. It's like if I only had $500 and I had an idea I would spend all $500 on that, on Fiverr, hiring the artist, illustrator, someone who does, who can do something that's going to take me way too long to figure out just to put that MVP or whatever thing together.

I believe in that type of maximizing, but I don't really have the nugget. The nugget is the fire from within, really. And you have to look for that.

Gresham Harkless 13:50

There you go. Absolutely. So I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And our goal is to have different CEOs on this show. So, James, you might have touched on this, but what does being a CEO mean to you?

James Leach 14:01

To point the ladder in the direction that you want people to climb. You don't tell them necessarily how fast to climb it, but, there's a goal at the top, there's an obstacle, there's a mountain.

And I have learned, I used to think that I had to really be involved in all aspects of, like, the company, of the project.

And it occurred to me that when I, when say there's a product design meeting and we already have set the ladder in the direction that we're moving.

When you've built the right team, you don't have to show up till those meetings. Like, the people know the vision. You've told them they're excited about the same cause. They're super talented.

And once I stopped doing that, they do it. They accomplish the goal, and they do a phenomenal job.

And to be CEO, a good one. I think you focus on finding your tribe within your company, like those core people, and that will take on a life of its own.

And then with that, you can finally, Instead of wearing 10 hats, wear five hats. And then you eventually scale to further beyond that.

Gresham Harkless 15:20

Truly, truly powerful. So, James, truly appreciate that. Obviously, I appreciate your time even more.

So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get a hold of you, find out about you, your team, all the awesome things you all are working on.

James Leach 15:35

Yeah, I would just encourage people to check out Crowdstake.com, browse nonprofits that they currently love and enjoy and. Or find new ones by typing in a certain cause, and go in there and play with it.

Make an account, find a nonprofit, donate, get involved in that kind of world. And then you'll see us launching new features, and then you'll see a marketplace for Twitch streamers and kick streamers.

And a couple months later then you'll see a full fledged marketplace come open for you to launch your own projects.

Gresham Harkless 16:03

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. Well I appreciate that James. Of course they make it even easier.

We're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up, see about all the awesome things that you're doing. I hope you have a phenomenon rest of day.

James Leach 16:13

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you as well.

Outro 16:15

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue16 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 Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five star rating. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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