The Intersection of Engineering and Digital Marketing

Hello everyone. Welcome to this episode of E Coffee with Experts. I am your host, Matt Fraser, and on today’s show I have with me a very special guest, Andy Kulkarni. He is a dynamic leader with a wealth of experience in the digital marketing world.

As the co-founder and head of consulting and marketing at Coin Bound Gaming, Andy is the driving innovation in blockchain marketing for NFTs and crypto games, helping game developers and publishers navigate this exciting new space. In addition, he is also a co-founder at New Kind Digital, a lead and demand generation agency that specialize in creating customized digital marketing strategies for service-based businesses.

Through new kind digital, Andy and his team help their clients achieve their goals by developing tailored marketing campaigns that drive results with a keen eye for market trends and an unwavering commitment to excellence. Andy is at the forefront of digital marketing, providing exceptional results for his clients in both the blockchain and service-based industries.

Andy, thank you so much for being here. It’s a pleasure to have you on the show,

Matt. I’m extremely excited and thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.

Right on. Yeah, no problem. No problem. Hey, one question I’d like to ask all of our guests is how would your university professors describe you as a student?

Oh, good lord. I think My uni professors I’ve had a few my uni journey started in Australia in 2016 I would like to take it from there. The uni professors in in Latrobe Australia, I would say they would describe me a little bit curious, a little bit detail oriented.

They did say that, you are amongst those hardworking bunch of people who like to ask questions, seek answers, and explore new ideas. So yeah, I would say a bit of a mix of curiosity and self-aware. Hardworking individual. But I used to love going to parties and take participation in all these different events and stuff yeah. Yeah. I’m I’m safe to say that I enjoyed my uni life.

Why not? What did you like most about it? The parties?

Oh yes.

I was just kidding,

oh, but look, I think the exciting part about being in uni is you get to meet with so many different individuals who are from different domains of subject line.

Okay. And more importantly, they get to share so much of collaborative ideas that could give birth to something that you didn’t even fathom off, you didn’t even think about. So I think, yeah from that perspective, it has really helped me to develop the leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills which you otherwise wouldn’t get.

Outside. So the thing that I’ve realized about in Latrobe, especially in Melbourne is people are multicultural. People come from different walks of life and they have something to always exchange with you, which is great because it’s called give rs gain, whoever gives.

For sure. I’m very familiar with that subject.

So I think it’s a very subconscious givers game that I, I. Experienced myself being in the uni.

That’s awesome. That is absolutely awesome. Do you think university’s for everybody?

I wouldn’t say it’s for everybody. It’s a live example of one of my friend’s cousin he dropped out. Pretty early from the college.

Okay. And he runs a pretty successful business now, does over six figures a month. Has a couple of properties under his belt. Really successful. Okay. And more importantly, a fantastic human being. Okay. So if someone has the notion of you gotta go study to become a better human being, I think it’s the wrong notion.

Okay. And your behavior is largely dependent on where you spend your time or where do you like, like where is the most of your time’s gone? Yeah. If most of your time is gone with learning new skills, meeting new people and the right people, more importantly, you are undoubtedly gonna be one of them.

Without even having to have any formal education or any formal degree under your belt. It’s not for everybody. And it is, and in my opinion, education has to be of freedom of education. If you want to study and if you want to get enrolled in uni do if you don’t wish to do it should be if people should be given choice about it.

Okay. In my opinion. That’s encouraging. That’s encouraging. Cuz I, I didn’t go to post-secondary university. But I’ve always been curious and always have had books on the go. And where I’m from, you can with a library card, you can get free access to LinkedIn Learning.

For several years I’ve spent a half hour every day watching various digital courses. I’m always watching the courses on digital marketing, whether it’s SEO or content marketing. I’ve probably completed I don’t know how many courses. So it’s been a value to me to do that. But I don’t think I ever could have gone to school just because I know myself and for certain reasons I wouldn’t have been able to focus as much and I work better on my own than I do being put in a box school.

And but anyway, so you graduated with a degree, I believe in master’s of Engineering

engineering management. Yeah. Yeah.

How, so let me tell you, how did you, this is very interesting. How did you transition from that to where you are today in regards to digital marketing? What made you get interested in this part of it?

Because it’s totally, it’s a little different, right? I understand that there are skill sets and things that you learned in university are probably applicable and applicable to what you’re doing. But tell me about that journey a little bit.

I think My transition to digital marketing happened more when I found an internship in the digital marketing agency in Melbourne.

And obviously that journey drew me into learning a little bit more about what digital marketing actually is. Got me into this sort of an understanding where the power of internet and the technology and the ability that it has to connect different businesses. Oh gosh. Yeah. And make money.

Without you physically being there. So the ability to do that without creating so much tangibility around it was just fascinating to me. Wasn’t something like. I would say, as an engineering student, I developed the deeper understanding on how technology works in general. But you know what I saw the power of internet and the digital marketing to revolutionize how businesses reach to their clients was just amazing.

That’s the next step of technology that I have seen. And what particularly intrigued me was. The overall data-driven approach of marketing in general is to be able to measure the success of different campaigns basically, make bit more data-driven, Amazon, biggest example.

Oh, for sure. Amazon is a data center. Yes, it is not. It is not an e-commerce business. It’s a data center.

It’s a data center. You’re so right. So you knows like McDonald’s isn’t a restaurant, they’re a real estate company.

Exactly the point. So that’s or drew me a little bit closer to digital marketing.

And, nothing against what I’ve done in terms of engineering management. I’ve learned a lot of ropes in terms of the overall tech plus the management skills. And I think I was able to take those skills and implement it into my agency now. As to how better, how I can basically create my agency as an operational house.

Operational. Like a house where it just works like clockwork. Like basically, keeps working. Keeps working. I see. Without me having to be in it on regular basis.

Oh, that’s so smart. Yeah. Cuz there’s so many people who work in their business instead of on their business, including agency owners.

And a great book that I learned from that philosophy was Michael Gerber’s, the E-myth Revisited in which he talks about systematizing your business and creating. Roles and responsibilities and organizational charts of the entire company before you even start and assigning who’s going to do what right from the beginning.

And creating the actual training manuals and SOPs for all of it so that, so you have a business in a box that you can literally scale. Cause without that, you’re always gonna be pulling your hair out. It’s such a phenomenal book, but that’s awesome that you talked about that.

I’ve always been a big operational guy myself. I like to create SOPs. I like to create templates. And I believe the fact that if you templatize something, you can scale it. If you cannot templatize it, it is impossible to scale.

Impossible to scale. Totally agree with you.

So I think that’s what I have learned from engineering management and I have now applied that principles or those principles into my marketing. Yeah. And I have seen at least three hours of, or saved at least three to four hours a day into doing the stuff that but now in three to four hours a day, if you ask me, okay, so what’s what? What are you getting three to four hours a day? It’s a never ending process. An SOP that I created two years ago probably will be useless after two years. Wow. So I have to redo those. Yeah. So I divide those three hours into revisiting the older SOPs. Creating new SOPs, creating a better templates and processes and auditing it. Because at the moment I do have operation Manager with me. Okay. But then I’d like to audit that in a way that it becomes, or it is up to date. So whenever we are hiring a new team member, that member gets the fresh first tip of what the SOPs and templates are.

Yeah. Oh, that’s so amazing. That’s the only way to scale. And like for instance, if I was to start a digital agency tomorrow, that’s what I would do. And I would either get the SOP from somewhere else, but like a friend of mine told me, Matt, you should document everything you’re doing every 15 minutes so that a hundred percent you can create the SOPs based on the activities hundred percent of the draw role that you’re doing

I have a book and pen by right next to me all the time. Yeah. I never live without a book and pen. It’s a brain dump, so I keep dumping it.

Yeah. And then you can create training videos with screen capture software to like document all the training and all that stuff. It’s amazing what you can do nowadays.

No, that’s so exciting. Hey, do you mind if I, what tools do you use for your s o p management? Is there certain project management that you love?

Great question. I’m a massive follower of, click up Airtable. Slack. Yeah. And Loom. Okay. If you have these four tools under the belt, yeah. You can work from any part of the world.

Yeah. Yeah. I am such a fan of Click up. I’m so glad you said that because I’ve used them all, man. And click up is the cat’s, bees, knees, the cats now it, gosh

Its just amazing what you can do.

They have changed the landscape of how. At least agency owners manage their tasks Yeah. And their day to day activities. And the best part about it is the integrations that you have with the other softwares Yeah. Is just phenomenal. Like the process at the moment we have with agency. So with the integration that we have at the moment with the Agency is as soon as someone onboards or as soon as someone signs the new agreement with us, we have automation set up from Airtable to click up to Slack to Loom, so that potential client gets a, an onboarding kit via click up.

The onboarding click has the kit has air table links in it. As soon as the air table links are filled up, he and he or she will be invited into Slack automatically, and that Slack will start sending Loom videos for the onboarding stuff. So they’ll have my loom recorded videos in them. So that, so I actually see them after the 14 days, once they have completely onboarded and know who I am and what I do.

So the first 14 days, I don’t even talk to my clients. Because they’re still learning so much about it and they’re happy because they’ve got on so much in advance as a value.

So you’ve provided so much value. I rarely meet someone who is as sophisticated as you in this stuff. Trust me, I talk to a lot of people, no offense to all anybody else who’s been on the show, but I just know that a lot of agencies don’t have their stuff together when it comes to that detailed level of, and I think maybe your engineering background has contributed and obviously unique way you think. I didn’t even think about putting Airtable and click up together and using them together.

It’s a game changer. Yeah, it’s a game changer.

No, I’m definitely gonna look into it.

I’ll show you a link. Okay. I’ll show you a link. And you can test it out how it looks like for you.

Okay, sure. We can do that after the show, yeah, I have marketing automation.

I’m a certified partner for a Groundhog marketing automation WordPress plugin. And There’s marketing automation SOPs that I’ve put together based on what I’ve done with marketing automation and I’ve developed templates in click up, but, to be able to do what you’re saying to onboard in that fashion, that would be something I’d be very interested in.

And which our audience would be interested in as well. If you want to, you create some YouTube video or some offer, some course that you wanna sell people will probably be up for that. Can you provide some more insight into new kind digital and coin bound gaming and how they’re changing their respective industries?

Absolutely. With new kind, I started it in 2020 just before the pandemic happened. It was quite a tough a decision that I made, but then I was kind enough because my business partner Yeah. Already has an existing aesthetic technology business. So what he does he sells all the FDA approved, DGA approved devices like laser hair removal. I’m not sure how familiar you are with aesthetics in general,

I need to get my hair rep, I need to get hair transplant. That’s all.

You look just fine. Don’t worry about it. So I think with aesthetics, because he was selling more of the B2B sides he had a lot of clients coming to him selling, okay, look We, we’ve got this machine, how do we get more clients? And then he approached me saying, would you be open to join hands and perhaps, you can give your marketing expertise to these guys and help them.

And when I started my business by God’s grace and fairly lucky, I had 11 clients in my first week of starting a business. So I actually made three times the money that I used to get paid as a project manager in my previous agency. Wow. In one week. Good for you. That’s amazing.

Yeah. And I, yeah, and that’s when I had the first taste of what business could do for you if you have the right things in place and Yeah. Yeah, for sure. The right connections in place. Yeah. And it took off from there. And at the moment we have about 50 plus clients. Majority of them are coming from my business partner’s business.

And with new kind, what we do is we like a lead gen on a demand gen agency. Okay. A lot of people don’t understand the difference between lead gen and demand. Gen. Lead gen is more, yeah. What is the difference going towards lead gen is more from an acquisition perspective and demand gen is more from an overall brand awareness perspective.

So what Nike and Adidas does, they do demand generation. Because they already have a brand established and they elevate their brand presence to a certain level where people have a more affinity towards the brand. So you get more inbound leads. And with lead generation it’s more of going out, which is more of a push marketing.

So you’re pushing the message out there. To capture more leads to you.

Okay. Is it push versus pull? Could it be push versus pull? Could it be simplified?

That push versus pull? Push versus pull. Okay. That’s right. Okay. So we do lead gen and demand gen and obviously helping service-based businesses.

I have quite a few service businesses including home services mechanics roofers, electricians, working with us. Yeah, we do have plenty of mortgage brokers, some realtors as well.

I don’t. I don’t wanna pry too much. But is that, are you mainly in the Australia market or do you dabble everywhere?

I have about 80% of my clientele in Australia. And the other clientele I have, some of them are in Dubai, uae, some of them are in us. Okay. And we are expanding the market now to uk by this year. Yeah. But yeah, like at the end of the day our ultimate goal is to generate more inquiries and convergence.

Absolutely. And obviously drive more revenue from new kind perspective.

Yeah. Hey. In your opinion, how will the rise of blockchain, blockchain gaming impact the video game industry in the coming years?

It’s interesting because from where I come from, especially my experience with Coin Bound okay, it’s gonna significantly impact the overall future of the video gaming industry.

And there are several reasons to it. First of all, blockchain technology allows the game developers to create. A unique gaming experience which was impossible before with, call of Duty and stuff like that. Now, because the blockchain is such a decentralized sort of a technology yeah, nothing is held back unlike the Web two or unlike the other gaming.

So what that also means is you can leverage powers of blockchain where the developers can create games to allow players to own and control certain in-game assets. Which you can truly earn like real time rewards, achievements and stuff like that in the form of tokens. And this creates an opportunity for the players to engage with their favorite games in a much more meaningful way.

And that creates a better retention and loyalty rather than recollecting maybe a limited edition poster of that particular game, if that makes sense to you.

Yeah. Blockchain technology is fascinating. You would say we’re at the forefront of it. That, would you say we’re at the forefront of all of those things right now?

No. There’s still so much development left

Yeah. That’s what I mean. We’re at the, we’re at the beginning, I guess forefront maybe was the wrong word. We’re at the very beginning stages of all of this.

Yeah. Yeah. At the very beginning. Yeah. The very beginning. Yeah. The very beginning. Yes. But not, forefront.

If you say the entire industry needs a massive regulation. Because it went it went a bit ballistics last year. That’s why the market is crashing now. It is crashing, from where we stand at the moment, yes, we are at the very beginning of it, but then the more people realize the importance of it, the better it is because then the more ideas could come together and build it as.

Or strengthen, those leaky buckets that we had in the last year. Okay. Cause of blockchain.

Okay. What’s the difference between web 2.0 or web two? And web three? Is web three the blockchain? Yes. Forgive my ignorance. Okay. What’s the difference between web two and web three?

Oh, I think the biggest difference between web two and web three, in my opinion and I might trigger a few people here which is fine.

That’s ok. Is transparency and security Okay. The biggest difference between web two and web three. Okay. To give you biggest example, web two largely governed by agencies or largely governed by projects or companies like Google Meta. And Snapchats and talks and stuff where it’s just a one way street.

You do not know what’s going on inside that whole

yeah. The algorithm is secret

Correct. You have no idea what’s going on. So the transparency and the security is literally zero for an end user. Yeah. Web three on the other hand, because it’s decentralized and it’s peer to pay sort of a thing.

The ability for you to figure out what’s going on in your network and what’s going on in that platform is much higher because if one payer goes down that are 10 other peers to give you the same information. Okay? Which creates a bit more transparency and security, which previously. Web two was impossible.

And that was the reason why Web three was introduced, because it allows you for a much more secure and transparent transaction, prevents all these frauds, cheating. And, all these fraudulent activities. And ultimately the goal for technology should be to gain confidence and trust of the human rights, especially what’s happening with AI now.

Yeah, people tend to look at technology as Armageddon.

Yeah. They’re, yes. Absolutely. If someone wanted to learn more about all these things what, where, what’s your go-to source to learn about blockchain and web three and so on and so forth? If there’s some blogs I follow a few Twitter accounts.

Yeah. I. I follow a few newsletters on LinkedIn. I’m always on Bitcoin talk. I’m going on crypto potato. These are few websites I tend to engage with. Twitter is one of the biggest source or resource that you can go and have a chat with people that are amazing people out there on Twitter, especially in Web three community.

Okay. They’re ready to engage with you. They’re ready to give you knowledge and information about what’s going on and what’s not. And more importantly, they’re very open to trying new things out and basically validating their ideas right away in the inbox without you having to jump on like a demo call and Okay.

All that. Stuff like, especially in SaaS, you have to always jump on a demo. Call to show Exactly. Demonstrate how the whole thing works. Yeah. And then they can make a decision whether it’s a right word or not. Yeah. But with web three and blockchain in general I’ve seen people giving their 2 cents.

As soon as they realize that, okay, this is worth pursuing, they’ll be like, oh, look, this is great. I think you should go after it. Which is what I love because the immediate feedback is what gonna take you to the next level? Yeah. It’s quite encouraging.

Hey, this is all fascinating. I’m wondering if we’re coming to the end of our time and if you’d like to come back for a part two where, cuz there’s so many more things to explore.

Just a sec. So yeah I’ll definitely come back for part two and have you back on the show. It’s been absolutely fascinating talking about these things and like you said, we’ve only scratched the surface. In the meantime, if people want to connect with you online, where can they do

oh, they can connect with me on LinkedIn. Okay. My name is Andy Kulkarni. Or you can search on LinkedIn Andy Kulkarni or Andy-Kulkarni. My apologies. Okay. And on Twitter I am the Twitter handle is Imank06282. Would love to chat with anybody who’s interested and see if I can share the value or two.

We’ll definitely put that information in the show notes and we’ll definitely have you back very soon and we’ll just do a part two and explore a lot more of these things to talk about.

Okay. Thank you.