Step into the world of Janine, a Kiwi crypto pioneer, as she takes us through her journey to becoming somewhat of the poster child of Kiwi tech.
Janine and her brother took the leap into the unpredictable currents of digital finance with Easy Crypto.
Navigating the cryptocurrency cosmos can be daunting. Janine takes us through a wonderful origin story from a five-day coding marathon to processing a staggering $2.5 billion in volume in 2024.
We hear her approach to combating burnout and championing the importance of well-being in the workplace. As she navigates the challenges of leadership and the demands of being a public figure, Janine’s tale is a candid reminder of the importance of self-belief and the power of confidence.
Her dedication to fostering equal opportunities in the workplace not only reveals her commitment to change but also serves as an inspiration for a more equitable and inclusive financial future for all.
You can connect with Janine via LinkedIn.
Coal Mine Rhythm - Short Version B by Dan Ayalon
Step into the world of Janine, a Kiwi crypto pioneer, as she takes us through her journey to becoming somewhat of the poster child of Kiwi tech.
Janine and her brother took the leap into the unpredictable currents of digital finance with Easy Crypto.
Navigating the cryptocurrency cosmos can be daunting. Janine takes us through a wonderful origin story from a five-day coding marathon to processing a staggering $2.5 billion in volume in 2024.
We hear her approach to combating burnout and championing the importance of well-being in the workplace. As she navigates the challenges of leadership and the demands of being a public figure, Janine’s tale is a candid reminder of the importance of self-belief and the power of confidence.
Her dedication to fostering equal opportunities in the workplace not only reveals her commitment to change but also serves as an inspiration for a more equitable and inclusive financial future for all.
You can connect with Janine via LinkedIn.
Coal Mine Rhythm - Short Version B by Dan Ayalon
Just offline, janine, we were just sort of talking there a little bit about your whiskey room, which feels like a really good place to start. Tell me about that. You've got a whiskey room like a whole room, yeah.
Speaker 2:I have a four bedroom villa in Kingsland which is possibly a little bit too big, so I turned one of the rooms into a whiskey lounge. I'm very proud of it. I love my whiskies. But I did this all DIY, so I painted it. It's this beautiful dark green color, including the ceiling. I've got one of those library letters that you can slide along the wall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this really cool wallpaper on this like a feature wall, like I love it. It's a really nice place, sort of in a winter night to sit down, and it's also my actual library, so I've got all my books in there and my whiskies and can sit of an evening if I have any time after the startup grind to drink a whiskey and read a book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that's insanely cool. And is the wallpaper like one of these sort of high end ones that have got like weird designs and things on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like this beautiful, like rich green, with like parrots and flowers and stuff on it. It's sort of like those old, you know stately houses in Europe that you see. I got my parents to come and help me hang it because I'd never hung wallpaper before in my life and I was like this is not, you know, at $400 a roll, it's not the kind of thing you want to mess up.
Speaker 1:So and speaking, speaking of parents, you've just got back from overseas or something, haven't you? So yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:I just went my my mum and dad they haven't, you know, had the opportunity to travel much recently and they booked a trip to Norway to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, and when my brother and I heard about that, we're like that sounds awesome, well, come to. So we invited ourselves on their trip and it was really lovely. It sort of helped me sort of realise that what I most want to be doing with my time and what I most want to sort of invest in, is those kind of things like being with my family and the people I love and creating the memories, and so it's something I'm really committed to. Making sure we do more often and, you know, while we're still young and healthy and able to travel, is the kind of thing that is, you know, is really worth investing in, I think.
Speaker 1:You're somebody who really seems to have their head screwed on. Well, I must admit, when I was thinking about this, this interview, I actually feel a bit intimidated by it because I know nothing. I mean nothing about the world of crypto other than being, you know, a human and alive and sort of being broadly aware of it. But I am keen to sort of dig into into that a little bit. But before we do, I'd love to kind of get a little bit of an origin story to how you got going. You know who were you as a kid and what led you to become an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:I've always felt like I've had a bit of an entrepreneurial gene in that, you know, as a kid I was doing things like my. My parents, my parents, were fantastic at teaching us about money, and that's something that I think my brother and I are a lot of kudos to them for how they brought us up and taught us to sort of understand the importance of, you know, you know things like how debt works, how investments work, savings, that kind of thing really important. And I remember one time when I was a kid, my dad organized, you know, for us to have a garage sale. Then the proceeds of the garage sale, as a family we decided what to invest them in. So you know, it would have been a couple hundred bucks and we like, we bought shares and in the warehouse and other things. And but you know, going back to the entrepreneurial streak, after we ran this garage sale I was like, hey, I'm good at selling stuff and organizing garage sales isn't that hard and lots of people in my neighborhood must have garages full of crap. So I went around my friends and family and neighbors and offered to organize garage sales for people and took a 30% cut of the profits.
Speaker 2:So you know, this was, I guess, a little cottage industry as a kid. So there's always that entrepreneurial streak. But with Easy Crypto I think it sort of happened a bit by accident. But one of the things that really I think was the magic for me in that it was the relationship between my brother and I and the different strengths that we brought. And I'm a great entrepreneur in terms of thinking of things and having ideas and putting the commercial models around them and the strategy, but not so much in terms of the execution. I'm not, you know, I'm more of a ideas person than a doer, whereas my brother is an incredible problem solver and really good at delivering and, just like you know, smashes work out so quickly. So that combination, I think, was, you know, a real great key to our origin story, which actually I should probably tell you the origin story right.
Speaker 1:I'd be keen to hear it because it's, you know, as I say, like crypto is not something that I know a thing about, and it doesn't sound like the easiest thing to get started. Tell us a bit about that origin.
Speaker 2:Well, that actually was part of the origin is that it wasn't easy. So, in I personally got involved in crypto back around 2014. And then you know my brother, you know I told him about it. He got involved. And then, come 2017, which was the last time that we were in a big bull run and everyone it was really, I think, the first time crypto came onto public consciousness People were talking about Bitcoin. Blockchain was suddenly a word that people heard of, even if they didn't know what it meant. And at that stage I was working in banking and people at the bank knew that I knew things about cryptocurrency because I had some and I got the nickname Jcoin and I became sort of like the little local expert on the stuff and you know, was asked to give talks around the bank and to customers and different teams around what these things were and what they might mean.
Speaker 2:And at that stage it was really challenging to buy cryptocurrency in New Zealand. There wasn't much offering locally. If you wanted to go internationally, you had to, like you know, send an international wire transfer to some random, you know potentially dodgy overseas company that you know. You didn't have any much way to figure out who they were. There wasn't a lot of regulation and locally there were a few players, but the markups were crazy. Like there was something like 15% above the global market for Bitcoin, which this is a fully digital product with no shipping costs and it's like, why are we in New Zealand getting stung with such high markups? And it was just because it wasn't easy.
Speaker 2:So, my brother being the great problem solver that he is set out to solve this problem and this is this is my favorite part of the origin story it is absolutely true he sits down one day and the first thing he does is Google what language are people coding in these days?
Speaker 2:Then he teaches himself to code by building the first version of the EC crypto site and then he puts it live. And this is a time period of five days from starting to learn to code and push it live. And then, after he's pushed it live and sort of strangers on the internet are buying cryptocurrency through his site, he calls up his little sister and is like I've done this thing and I was like, oh dear God, please take that offline right now. I'm like I don't know what laws you're breaking, but I'm sure you cannot just start selling magic internet money to strangers. So then that's how I got involved. So you know, first few days was just Alan and then I came in within the first week to bring us on the street and narrow and get all of the compliance and regulation and accounting and finance and customer support and, you know, kind of all of that other stuff that you have to wrap around the business.
Speaker 1:And so at that point it's just the two of you, just you and Alan, and yeah, that's right. So you've left your day job?
Speaker 2:You've left no, and this is something that you know I think is a great way for people who are thinking about doing startups to de-risk is to just start it as a side hustle, like so many startups started side hustles. You don't have to go full noise straight away. We had Alan had actually already left his job. He'd been working at L'Oreal running their IT and then he decided to go travel and so he was already backpacking around Southeast Asia and, you know, could pick this up relatively full time. I, on the other hand, kept my job and sort of I used the money from my job to kind of fund us and fund the business. So I sort of, you know, de-risked the income side of it, and it wasn't until just before COVID, actually, that I went full time in the business. So I'd been working at Air New Zealand at that stage and was in a strategy role, and then in February 2020, just before COVID hit, I left the airline to take Easy Crypto full time and it was a great move.
Speaker 2:I think it was like well, no, because I was actually a little bit disappointed, because I was like, can you imagine a more interesting and challenging time to be in strategy for an airline than when the whole world's just been grounded for the first time ever? Like fascinating. But we were also facing a huge increase in business for Easy Crypto at that time. Like we just you know we there's this article in the wall at Mum and Dad's house which is one of the first press articles I think Ellen and I got, and it talked about this was, you know, 18 months after we started the business, and it talked about how we turned over $10 million in volumes. So this is our first 18 months we talked to get $10 million.
Speaker 1:Just saying that's got to be the fastest growth rate of any certainly Kiwi company that I'm aware of.
Speaker 2:Oh, no wait, you haven't heard the, you haven't heard the next half of the story. And over COVID, we were turning over $10 million on a day sometimes, oh my God. And this isn't profit, this is volume.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Our margins are less than 1%, but still it's like we were processing huge amounts of you know as a business. We've turned over you know $2.5 billion. It's like crypto isn't small in New Zealand, it's not insignificant, it's just perhaps still a bit under the radar and not necessarily mainstreamed yet, but it's still. It's huge, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what? So, for those listening who are a little bit like me and really struggle to get their crypto, what's, in layman's terms, what is crypto?
Speaker 2:It's just a digital representation of value. I will break that down into perhaps four different types of crypto which I think is useful to know about. I'll start with the fringes, which is NFTs, because most people, I think, when they think NFTs, they just think of monkey JPEGs and silly artworks. But an NFT is actually a unique digital asset. So to be able to represent a unique thing digitally it's technically incredibly complex Because if you think of, say, a song or something like that, you can copy an email, you can copy a picture, but to be able to make it unique and trackable is really challenging and that problem has been solved by blockchain. When you think about unique representations of something, digital identity is a really obvious use case of that. Digital identity is something that we know we need to solve, for I think the technology behind NFTs we're going to see a lot more of in things that aren't just artworks but actually real valuable use cases supply chain logistics, id voting, all sorts of stuff. That's one of the four NFTs.
Speaker 2:Then you go have your cryptocurrencies, which operate more like money. The ones that operate most like money are stablecoins, so you've got things like USDT, USDC. In New Zealand we have NZDD, which EasyCrypto actually launched late last year. All of these are pegged to the underlying value, to an underlying asset like the New Zealand dollar, for example. What these mean is that you can take all of the. There's a lot of views out there around. All cryptocurrencies are never going to take off because they're so volatile. So stablecoins leverage all of the benefits of a digital currency, which is that it's instantly transferable anywhere in the world between any two parties with almost, in many cases, pretty much zero fees. When you think about how much more efficient our money systems could operate if we could move money like that, but without any volatility, because they're pegged directly to an underlying asset. Another really interesting thing about stablecoins and those digital assets is that they're programmable. So if you think about what that might mean if we have programmable money money that, say, you have a sale and purchase agreement on a house, if the conditions of the contract were automatically met, the money could automatically be sent and that could reduce huge amounts of costs for things like lawyers and all those settlement layers that we have on all transactions. So that's first category, nfts. Second, stablecoins.
Speaker 2:I'm working backwards through probably the least known to the most known. Then you've got all of your crypto assets, which fall into two categories really, which is Bitcoin and everything else. So the everything else category like there's a lot of stuff in here. There's all sorts of different projects. There's well-known ones like Ethereum which are really working that smart contract layer. There's stuff that's very bespoke, but they're all. Time will tell which and if any of those ones have value and if they have longevity in them.
Speaker 2:But Bitcoin is definitely in a category of its own because of the as the first ever cryptocurrency created. It solved the problem of being able to do value digitally and it has this really interesting. There's a lot of people who are very skeptical around crypto assets in general, but there's a lot of views that with Bitcoin it's different because you've got this store of value which is accessible to anyone anywhere in the world, so it's very democratic. It's not controlled by any government, it can't be devalued by someone just printing more money, like we have with fiat currencies, and so it's this really. It offers a way for us to transition to a different monetary system, which is really quite fascinating. It's like that's a whole other topic in and of itself.
Speaker 1:Well, we might even get into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah, I think it's useful to think of in crypto assets. There's Bitcoin and everything else, and there are some really big distinctions there. Then you have your stable coins, which are actually more functional, and then you've got your NFTs, which is probably unique. Digital assets is something we'll probably see more of in the future.
Speaker 1:I hope that won't take long of an answer. That was actually an exceptionally good answer and I guess, if we just explain for those people who don't necessarily know what a fiat currency is and this is probably not a great definition, but a fiat currency, I guess, is a currency that is linked to some sort of nation. Potentially it's a type of economy.
Speaker 2:As an economics student. I'll give you the definition of that one Give me the definition.
Speaker 2:Back in the day, currencies used to be linked to gold, so a pound was originally worth a pound of gold and for a long time we had the gold standard and you could actually take a banknote into a bank and redeem it for gold. In I think it was the 50s, we moved off the gold standard and banknotes became what's called fiat money, which is they don't actually have any underlying value. They're just issued by the government of that country and there's nothing that they peg to or backed by. It's just the system right. We have faith in the system. I have faith that a $20 note is going to be accepted by any merchant in New Zealand and that I can redeem it for $20 worth of goods and services, but there's no actual back end behind it. So that's what fiat money means.
Speaker 1:And I guess this is where some people get a little bit uncertain about value with other cryptos because in essence, and if you look at the economics of a fiat currency, there is some underlying tie to the economy of the nation.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, whereas the gold is not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is where there's an argument against Bitcoin that hey look, the US dollar is backed by the strength of the US economy. Bitcoin's backed by nothing. But I think there is also a counter argument that gold also isn't really backed by anything. It does have use cases, but it's more of. There is a. As a society, we've agreed that this thing has value and can be bartered. And if, as a society, we agree the same about Bitcoin, bitcoin's actually got some really strong reasons why it is a good store of value, which is that it's finite, it's accessible to everyone, it's not controlled by any central bank or anything like that. So there is a lot of reasons and we can see it's increasing in value and adoption and while it's not, there's no core value behind it that says, yes, we should all adopt it if, as a society, we all agree to it. It's got a lot of really useful selling points that it is a good thing to be used as a store of value. It's effectively digitizing what we've done for centuries with different forms of barter.
Speaker 1:And what about outside of Bitcoin, with other crypto? Is that same thing, true or not in terms of the sense of an underlying value?
Speaker 2:I think other crypto needs to prove its value from its use cases. So Ethereum's the second largest cryptocurrency out there and it's had a lot of use cases. It's put itself as a platform that other people can build on top of. So if, for example, we're talking about NFTs and like, hey, you want to build a digital voting system for use in New Zealand and have digital identity, that all needs to sit on top of a blockchain, and Ethereum is one of many competing blockchains for that kind of use case. So I think Bitcoin I think in my mind, just my view only but I think Bitcoin is really the only cryptocurrency that can stand alone as a it's worth, as its brand and its you know, its mana. Everything else, I think, needs to have the use cases to support it having value. Otherwise it's just speculation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's super interesting, and this is obviously if people are looking for more detailed understanding of crypto. There are many podcasts and content online for them to really go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker 2:Yeah, edacryptocom is a great place for educational content. We try to make it really simple and cover all the basics really well as well as more advanced stuff.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think edacrypto is incredibly important.
Speaker 2:If you do want to get involved, do some research first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do some research and then I guess, in stepping back from the detail of how crypto works, the business itself like. So we go back to that. You and Alan are there, you eventually leave your full-time job and you're doing this. How do you go about it, Do you? Are you raising money straight away? Are you building the team? How did that work?
Speaker 2:We tried raising. Once we got traction really quickly, we were solving a problem that genuinely existed in the market of it being hard to get crypto, and we became the largest provider in New Zealand within the first year. We could see we had product market fit and I went out trying to raise some capital Because I'm like that's what you do you start a business, then you get other people to invest in it. We couldn't raise capital for our first few years because crypto was just too fringe. So many investors were like no, we don't want to look at crypto, or they didn't understand what we're doing. I remember someone saying to us are we only invest in SaaS? And I'm like, yeah, but you don't really understand what we're doing if you're not seeing us in that ballpark.
Speaker 2:So we couldn't raise capital to start with, and that was actually a really good thing, because we ended up we had to bootstrap. So we had to be very careful on our allocation of funds. We had to only build what we could do ourselves. We couldn't hire others in. So it made us a lot more careful, I guess, in our growth. Then 2021 hit, or 2020, 2021, like massive bull run for crypto and at that point we did go out and raise and we were successful this time.
Speaker 1:And it's an interesting.
Speaker 2:Like you know, in hindsight I'm like I don't know if I would have raised again. Like there is something really powerful about bootstrapping because as a founder it gives you, you know, complete control over your business If you're not giving away equity to other investors. It also gives you a real strong focus. You know, like 50-50 on whether I would have done the raise again. Hindsight is a great thing and maybe you know we were just. You know the market timing. It probably wasn't in our favor. But yeah, sorry I'm sort of lost off track of the question. We're talking about how we ran the business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, no, it's great and actually we'll dig into that. So you raised capital, you how?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we. Our claim to fame is that we set the record as the largest first funding raise in New Zealand. Because we went straight into series A, because we'd never been able to do angel or seed investment, because no one wanted to invest in crypto. So we just like went, you know, full noise into a series A in 2021 was the, you know we pretty much raised at the height of tech stock valuations. So, you know, great for us as founders in terms of how much equity we gave away for how much investment, but also, you know, does put, you know that's a big weight on my shoulders of I need to make sure I'm getting my investors a good return out of this.
Speaker 1:And how does that impact what you do with the business you know, knowing that you've got investors there, does that, does that influence, in a way, how you think about what you need to do?
Speaker 2:Absolutely like, because and that's the thing is like even if you only in my mind and maybe there's you know I'm different from others. Like you know, we have 10, 11% external investment in the business, but from my point of view, like, even if you only have 1% external investment is still not your business anymore. When you're 100% on is it's your business, you could do what you like. But as soon as anyone else is on the cap table, you've got responsibilities and obligations, and so it definitely changes the way that I do business and how I look at. You know our burn, our. You know what we're investing in our strategy. You know a lot of that is driven by I need to make sure I do right by my investors, not just, ah, it's me and Alan, just you know doing our own thing and you know whatever feels good.
Speaker 1:Do you, though, like, do you not think that you know you could have conversations with the investors to go hey, it is Alan and I. We own, let's call it, 90%? The best thing for this business is to grow this thing and to do it with your, with your leadership. So just let me get out, get out there and do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like not, my investors are amazing, Like they don't sort of get in the way or anything like that. It's just more the sense of obligation I think I have in terms of I need to make you know, get them the return on their investment. And whereas, you know, if it was just Alan and I, you know we could make different choices about do we invest for growth versus, you know, just take dividends out of the business? And because one of the challenges that for any New Zealand startup, that is, you know, if you're looking for growth, it's not going to be a New Zealand you have to go off shore right. And so for us, you know, if we're just Alan and I, you know the New Zealand market is more than big enough for us to, you know, have a happy life out of, you know, running this business. But because we have external investors, we have to look for growth, and so we're looking for, you know, where do we find those growth opportunities to ensure we can get, you know, a good payback for our investors?
Speaker 1:Yeah, now, because of who you are and you know, if I get this right in addition to just being the co-founder of Easy Crypto, you know you're a top 10 woman in Web3, you've become the high tech, you know, inspiring individual 40 under 40. I mean, you're now you know you are the poster child, certainly in this part of the world, for particularly females and tech, but also around Web3. Does that, does that play on you in any way? Because you don't have necessarily the freedom to just sort of do what you were doing before and just treat this as a cool science experiment, like you are.
Speaker 1:You know, you're kind of under the spotlight a little bit and there's a bunch of people rooting for you and going go, janine, this is awesome, but does it impact you? Does that?
Speaker 2:I don't know if I'd do anything differently, like I don't think there's anything. I'm like, oh, I'm constrained and I can't do that because I'm this poster child, but I think it is something that I'm really like, particularly around, you know, women in Web3 and crypto. Like I'm really proud to be quite loud and obvious in that space because it does feel like, you know, crypto bros is not just a meme, like it's so real and I go to a lot of crypto conferences and it's getting better. But you know, there's so many times I'd be the only woman in the room and like, as a CEO and founder of a crypto company, you know, I'm, you know I am really proud to be able to show that it's not just a boys club and women can really make a mess in the space.
Speaker 2:There is a side note on that. There's probably a little bit of a careful what you wish for in here as well, because I remember and you know we might touch on it later when we're talking about sort of more of the startup advice but for me, one thing that is really has been really, really important Our journey has been having a clear focus on like, where are we going to? Having really clear goals putting in place, you know, KPIs of how we're going to get there and then measurement of that. And I remember in our very first strategy session, one of the goals that I had was I wanted to be the John Bolton of crypto and I don't know if you know Bolton JB, but like you know, he every time anyone anywhere was talking about mortgage rates, jb would be quoted.
Speaker 2:And so you know I had this aspiration of I want to be the go to person when people in the media want to know things about crypto, because that would obviously be great for the business. And so I had this aspiration to be the JB of crypto. And I called JB up and I was like, hey, can I sit down with you, have a coffee and learn about how you did what you did? And this is one of the things I love about New Zealand is that you can do that to pretty much anyone, just message them and be like can I catch up in your brains? And so he gave me some pointers.
Speaker 2:And then you know, like I think I've achieved that mission of being the JB of crypto. I was actually just on TV and Z6 PM news earlier this week for the first time, which is great, but it's like it's yeah, it is a bit of a you know care for what you wish for, because it has yeah, it does, I guess, feel a bit of a responsibility that my name is somewhat synonymous with crypto in New Zealand and that's had a big thing, I guess, for my personal brand as well. But yeah, it's been interesting.
Speaker 1:It's. It must be really interesting. If you're sitting back in the whiskey room some night, it's just quietly contemplating. You know you've just been on on TV news or whatever. And and what about the relationship with your brother? Obviously you've got a very close relationship with your brother. Has being in business with him affected that? How do you manage that in the relationship with him?
Speaker 2:It's been great. Like one of the questions that, can I say. You sent me questions in advance, or is that off the record? You can you?
Speaker 1:can totally say that I sent you questions in advance. The fact that I'm not sticking to them.
Speaker 2:He asked me one. Yeah, I'm like I was correct.
Speaker 1:None of the questions I'm asking you were questions that I see you in advance, like it's like I pray for the interview.
Speaker 2:No one of the questions you asked me in advance was what's? What is a question? Nobody has asked you that you wish they would.
Speaker 2:And my answer to that was would you do it again? Yeah, and that's something I've been reflecting on a lot recently because I don't know if you saw it, but the CEO of Nvidia did an interview maybe six months ago I think I met you actually before of like where someone said to him oh, if you could do it all over again, what would you do differently? And he's like, well, I wouldn't. And like this is a guy whose personal net worth is worth billions because of the company he's built, but it was so hard that he actually, given the choice, would not do it again. I'm like that is fascinating and, in my reflection of what I do, this again one of the things that stood out to me and this I am actually segueing back to your question but it's like one of the big benefits me from the easy crypto journey, Like there's been lots. I've learned so much. I've grown massively as a person. I've built a personal brand. You know whether that's a good thing or not, I don't know. It's been awesome. But the thing that but there has been a lot of really hard times as well, but the thing that has been them stand out for me of the best benefit of running easy crypto and doing this journey is this relationship that I've built with my brother.
Speaker 2:Through it, Like before this, you know, we were mates. We always got on well, but when we were building the business, we were talking every day, all day, every day, we were building things together, we were fighting over stuff, we were like we just built this super strong relationship which, you know, I'm really it's been a great takeout for me of that and, you know, going back to sort of what we start at the top of, what's the most important thing in life, like you know, your whanau and your, your friends and those relationships is huge, and so I'm really glad that easy crypto has given me the opportunity to build really strong relationship with my brother, and you know he lives overseas, so you know we don't get to see each other that often, but we're constantly in touch with the business and that's been, yeah, something I've really loved.
Speaker 1:So one of the questions that I did send you that are sort of more prescriptive, so, yeah, half an hour and then I'll ask you the first question that actually that I sort of asked you about earlier what is the hardest thing that you've had to experience in and starting easy crypto to date? Because there may still be hard things yet, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's so many hard things about running the business. Like in the early years, it just felt like we were constantly bashing our head against brick walls and having doors closed and, like you know, even something like getting a bank account for you know, for most businesses that's kind of just one on one as you start a business, register a company, get a bank account, but we couldn't get banking because we're crypto and so, yeah, there's so many hard things, but, without a doubt, the hardest thing I've had to deal with is making people redundant and like I hate that. It's yeah, I know that it's something that CEOs have to deal with and it's, you know, obviously Also probably exacerbated with being start up, that you have cycles. Sorry, my dog is just barking. Do you want me to pause for?
Speaker 1:a while, don't worry about it. If the dog is barking, let the dog bark. Seriously, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, I can't hear the dog barking and so therefore I can't hear it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the microphones on these laptops are very impressive. Um Sorry, should I just take that again. You might want to edit this bit.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, you just keep going yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm getting discouraged. Um, yeah, redundancy is horrible, like it's, you know, possibly an unavoidable part of start up life and CEO life, but it's not something that I ever want to have to do it again. And it, yeah, yeah, it sucks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that is. That is super tough. I think anytime that you have people on the team is this whole sort of analogy that's often used around we have family and Then, so then when people leave, it's like saying about a family. There's another school of thought, which is actually we're not family, this is a business and this is a high-performing sports team, and sometimes we we need to make changes to the team. Where do you view that like? What's your view on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I see the rationale for the second one. I think it's probably more healthy. I think for me personally, though, because I'm so in relationship driven, it's hard not to sort of still have feelings in the other camp. And you know, for example, I remember the first person that ever quit easy crypto. I didn't see it coming and I was like really like personally, like oh my gosh, you're leaving, you're leaving me, and like I took it quite personally that someone would leave and that I hadn't, you know, done my best to make them happy and keep them engaged Interesting, you know that was so. That was an interesting journey for me to go through and, funnily enough, that person is actually now back working for us again.
Speaker 2:So it's like, you know, I do love that about the company. We have a really, really great culture. That's something I've been very, very intentional about. We have that, you know, 95% of our staff. You know I serve everyone like every two months and consistently in the high 90s, people say that they're, you know, happy to work here and they enjoy the work that they do. And I see that as well, that you know people who have left, whether by their own choice or, unfortunately, you know, through a downsize and whatever, they might have had to be made redundant. We have those people come back and work for us again in the future, which I absolutely love. We've had a number of people come back after going other places and returning, so it's yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 1:Why do you think that they are so happy like what is it about the culture? I don't know if too many people know about the culture of easy crypto, why is it?
Speaker 2:This is something that I'm like in my like post, easy crypto. You know what I do after easy crypto world, I'm like wonder if I should, like, you know, get into studying workplace culture and learn more about it. And like because I'm really keen to unpack it more and I have discussed it with my team quite a bit and I think, I Think, with two main things for us is that there's a really high level of transparency. So I'm, you know, very, you know, like the person I am coming across in this interview, where I'm just like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like that's who I am with my team, like I'm very authentic. People know what's going on. They can also come and talk to me about anything, and so that sort of transparency Right from the top down and also a high level of trust. Like we're a fully remote business. Everyone works from home. That you know the debates you see in the media are about. You know People are calling people back to the office because they don't think they're actually working. I mean, like that's not even a discussion point at easy crypto.
Speaker 2:I'm like none of my team. I don't have any expectations that people are at their desk. You know nine to five. It's like we've got this really flexible working policy and I just expect people to get the job done. I trust them to do that and I do my best to empower them to do that. And you know, I think that gets paid back with, because people people want to feel empowered, they want to be able to do a good job, they want to enjoy what they do and if you give them the tools and try to set it up, you'll get the best out of people.
Speaker 1:How does it work from a cultural point of view? Because I know I've run a fully we're not fully remote, but near fully remote company before and it was challenging around the connection piece. How do you how?
Speaker 2:do you build a?
Speaker 1:culture. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It is hard, but it's something that you do have to be intentional about as well and I think, like for us you know, every company is gonna be different. For us, our company lives on slack and so we have a lot of you know, we have a lot of engagement, like we'll have a lot of banter and fun and you know just people being themselves there and so you sort of build in relationships with people even if you haven't met face to face. We also try to do some. You know we'll have Globe. You know in all team get together once a month We'll do social events. We have sort of, you know, competitions and fun stuff.
Speaker 2:So try to bring in a bit of the the water cooler kind of conversation and the after work. You know hangouts as well. It definitely is harder with remote only, but it's not impossible. Interestingly enough, we're having our. For the first time since COVID, we're getting our whole team together, so this will be the first time. So we're around 50 people at the moment. We're all gonna go to Bali next and two weeks time.
Speaker 1:Now I know why you've got 95% ratings we actually have.
Speaker 2:We have our marketing team is actually based out of Indonesia and mostly in Bali. So it made sense to you know it was either gonna be Auckland, because we have tons of people here, or Bali, and I put it out to a vote for the team and, surprisingly, most people voted for Bali. So that's where we're going, but yeah, so we're all gonna get together and for the for the majority, the team that will be the first time They've met each other, and so I'm really interested to see how our culture changes after that. I imagine it will be massively positive and I think you know there definitely is more efficiency from working together, because sometimes something that someone might be, you know, noodling on for a day or a week, it might be solved in a five minute conversation with someone else, and we miss that by being fully remote or we don't leverage it. We can't leverage it as well.
Speaker 2:But there's also massive benefits, like we can hire talent anywhere in the world. Our staff love being remote, like they do enjoy engaging with each other online. But you know none of my team, I think if I said, would you prefer to work in an office 9 to 5, none of them would say yes, they, you know they love being able to just have that freedom and flexibility and trust and the funny thing about getting people together when they've never actually met is suddenly discovering that they're actually 5 foot 4 or all this 6 foot 4 or something.
Speaker 2:I've had the pleasure, I think, of meeting You've almost everyone in the team. I think I'm a laser based team. I haven't met you, but everyone else I have. So you know, no surprises for me, but definitely there's been a few first meetings where I'm like whoa, looking up or looking down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, how tall are you? Because I can't tell.
Speaker 2:I think I'm 5, 8, something like that that's pretty, that's pretty tall.
Speaker 1:Indonesian team particularly for the Indonesian team, and I think, um, you know, one of the questions I I have got in the, in the, in the preparatory questions, but I've never actually asked this question, is what is the funniest thing that you've ever had in your, in your start-up life? Did you have an answer for that?
Speaker 2:I was hoping you were gonna ask me this one. Probably the thing that amuses me the most is being recognized like small world, new Zealand and all that and like, or when you know. Yeah, just like the casual conversations yet with people like my mom was a dental hygienist yesterday and they asked her what she did. She works in the business as well. I just had to talk about crypto and then, like you know, it's, it's a funny. You know, everyone is usually quite interested in it and so, yeah, I get asked by a lot of strangers, particularly if they see me driving around in the easy crypto car, I'll, you know, I'll get a lot of people starting conversations about crypto with me, which is always kind of amusing.
Speaker 1:And this is this is not a question that I have prepared you for, but in terms of like most of the rest of them. So, in terms of You're a very bright person and you're running a business that is quite a. You know it's a complicated kind of market that you're in and you've got a. The fact that you know about economics and banking and and some of the geopolitical stuff is is a real asset, but you have to be bright, and bright people typically have lots of other ideas and thoughts that are popping off in their head. Do you get distracted away from easy crypto? Do you start thinking about lots of business ideas that you want to do or things you want to do in your personal life, or whatever Is that? Is that common thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, unfortunately. Like, if I'm on a, if I'm in a good headspace, I'm tends to be quite creative, and I think there's a bit of a running joke in my team about if Janine has a holiday, she's gonna come back and like have it us to something completely random. Like at the end of last year, I had this great idea for a dating app and I actually was like oh, should I spin up this completely? And my board and I we were talking about do we start easy crypto ventures as a vehicle for all of these other random ideas?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is hard to stay focused sometimes, but Unfortunately, when I'm stressed and overworked, the creativity isn't there and it's a lot easier to just stay on BAU so and sort of you know where things have been a lot over the last couple of years just with how, how busy and how hard the startup journey has been.
Speaker 1:What are you?
Speaker 2:I'll come up with some more random business.
Speaker 1:Exactly your team. Your team's number one job is to stop you leaving the country. And what's what is a typical week look like for you? Do you have you know? Do you work crazy hours? Do you work? Are you really good at managing your work time Like what? What does that look like I?
Speaker 2:This is something I've been working on a lot over the last few months. I've been posting on it a bit on LinkedIn as well, just around. Like I personally have been struggling a lot with burnout and just Last, 2022 was a really, really hard year for my business because that's where we had to downsize. We had had there's a whole lot of stuff behind that. Then 2023, we worked really hard on building a couple of products. It was like a really really so. We had two years really hard for different reasons back to back. Then I know everyone's just been exhausted post-COVID and it felt hopefully this summer has been better, but going into the end of 2023, it just felt like we haven't really had a break since COVID and everyone running on empty.
Speaker 2:For me personally, I've been really noticing it, like I was saying just things like not having creativity, not having the same joy and passion that I used to have. I've been working on trying to reduce my work days down to three days a week of where I have can have meetings, do work-related stuff, and two days a week free. The two days a week free tend to just be taken up with other work-related stuff, but I've noticed a real difference to me personally just in having those days clear of meetings, that I've got more headspace. I've got more ability to focus on the stuff that matters, to think about the strategic stuff and not just be. What I've been doing for the last couple of years was just back-to-back meetings all day, every day. Sometimes I'd have 10, 12, 14 meetings in a day, and particularly with working around different time zones.
Speaker 2:We've had teams and we've got South Africa, australia, indonesia, malaysia. We had Brazil in the UK, people over there as well at times and it was just bloody exhausting. So I'm going around to questions on this story again, but I think for me something that I've really noticed is the more that I work, the less effective I am, or at least, the more I fill my time up with work, the less effective I am. So I've been really intentional in the last few months of who can I pass different things off to, what can I say no to? How can I free up more time, and that's had a big benefit on generally how I'm able to run the business.
Speaker 1:And just how do you play to your strengths. So what would you or how would you describe your strengths? Obviously, I can see a ton of them, but where's your superpower, if you like?
Speaker 2:I don't know. You tell me I know I'm a really good leader and that's obviously one thing I won't delegate away is sort of like that overall team leadership and I think that genuinely caring about the health of the culture in my company, of my staff, is really important to me, and so that's something that I don't well, yeah, I mean you can't delegate that anyway. Like my team that reports to me all have that same value and vibe for their reportings, et cetera down the chain, but it has to start at the top. This kind of thing like doing PR and interviews, like when I'm getting really exhausted and burnt out I try to avoid it because I think it's hard to bring your best self when you're just running on empty. But it is a hard one for me to delegate away because I am the John Bolton of crypto and I built that for myself, and it's a bit of a double edge sword that I can't just farm that one off because I've built this thing up.
Speaker 2:But and again that's where I guess it comes back to freeing up enough time that I've got the resources and the you know the to be able to do that. And then I guess the strategy stuff as well is like, you know, that's my other strength is sort of thinking about where to take the business and what we can do. And again that one, I just can't do it If I don't, you know, if I've got nothing on the tank. There is no strategy, no vision, no creativity coming out of me. So it just underscores the importance of freeing up time to be able to play to the strengths.
Speaker 1:And how do you fill up the tank? Like, what do you do outside of work to kind of recharge apart from sleep?
Speaker 2:Sleep is super important.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan, tell me about it. I geek out over sleep science, so we won't bore listeners with sleep science. But beyond sleep.
Speaker 2:Actually no on that point, though, because there's this massive trope out there around to be successful, you have to get up at 4 am, or definitely no late in the same, and have your morning routine and get a. No, like, I'm a massive sleeper and I'll usually get up. Like my team know, I've had a lot of book meetings with me before 10. And I usually will get up around you know nine or maybe earlier if I happen to wake up. But I'm like I am not a morning routine person and like, maybe one day I'll be able to put it one in place and decide that it revolutionizes my life. But I would just like to reassure anyone out there who's not a morning person that you don't have to be a morning person with a 6 am meditation routine to be successful, that's right and doing cold plungers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, One of my team just started doing cold plungers and it's telling me how amazing they are. But I'm like I reckon I could do it if someone else made the ice bath for me and all I had to do was jump in. But the idea of actually, like you know, every morning filling up a little plunge pool with frozen milk bottles, I'm like I know I'm never gonna like actually do that.
Speaker 1:So no, no. I'd rather just gently roll out of bed and grab a coffee eventually. Yes With, well, yeah with sleep. I mean, I think it's really interesting. So you really ascribe or prescribe to good sleep and that does, do you find it improves your creativity and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:I'm not a great person at tracking data on myself, so I would expect yes. But, yeah, I mean, I know that I'm not my best when I haven't slept. In fact, I often caveats. You know, if I've had a bad night's sleep, I'll be to my team, I'll be like just. You know, caution on anything I say to them.
Speaker 1:You're usually alone.
Speaker 2:Hips. Well, yeah, Now, sleep is super important and you know exercise as well, obviously, and you know, I think, one of the things that you know, micro breaks are super important, and you know you're talking about. You know what do I do to rest and recharge. Like taking a mid afternoon walk with a dog is something that I find is, you know, really good, and I need to often force myself to do it. Even if it's in my calendar, I need to force myself to do it. But just to get that like break and reset and get some fresh air and see a bit of like you know beautiful nature and you know it's not a big thing, it's not like a week away at a retreat or anything, but it's just those little, you know. And the little ones I think are often as important, if not more important, than the bigger breaks. And are you a napper? No, if I nap, I'm obviously sick. If I can sleep during the day, Right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And there are a bunch of people out there that would love to be you right, like particularly young women who are looking, they're bright and they're ambitious and they want to be doing something pretty cool with their lives. Any advice for them about the world of entrepreneurship, leadership, how they can find you know what they're meant to become.
Speaker 2:I feel like Mm, I think the woman in particular I mean for everyone, but this is, you know, particularly can be the case with women I'd sort of, you know, advise people to trust your gut and back yourself. Like you know, there is no way that when I started Easy Crypto, I would have thought that I could be doing what I'd be doing now, like I just did not have the confidence in myself.
Speaker 2:You know, and as an example, like in my career, like I'd worked at a lot of companies, done you know different things but I'd never managed people.
Speaker 2:And now I'm running a company which you know we've had up to a hundred staff that I've been, you know, ceo across and it's like I never would have backed myself to be able to do this.
Speaker 2:But one thing that you know has really worked for me is recognizing that you grow into things and if you can just back yourself enough to take the next step and not necessarily question too far down the line, but back yourself to take the next step, then look at it, see how you did, and you'll probably find out.
Speaker 2:More likely than not, you'll go actually I nailed that and then just bank that kind of like proof point of I stepped into a thing that I wasn't too sure about and I succeeded at it, I did a good job, I nailed it, and then use that as the impetus to let you take the next step and just make that a self-reinforcing cycle of being able to go a little bit further, stretch a bit more and step into stuff that you're not sure about, because too often with the imposter syndrome and like, oh, I haven't done it before, I don't know if I can. That's a really big challenge for people wanting to start businesses, particularly women, where imposter syndrome is often very strong with us and that kind of just back yourself. But then don't forget to reflect and let yourself, let that self-confidence build up as you progress.
Speaker 1:Do you doubt yourself? Do you ever have times where you're like I'm not good enough? Do you suffer imposter syndrome at all?
Speaker 2:Not as much anymore and I think because that's been what I've done, like, definitely, when I started, all the fricking time I was like I don't know what I'm doing, and in a lot of my careers previously as well, and I was always looking for external validation from my managers, from customers, from people to say, hey, janine, you're doing a good job. And when you're running a startup, you don't really have that. No one. I had my co-founder, who's amazing and is so encouraging, but you don't really have people to say, hey, you're doing a good job. So you actually have to do it for yourself and look at those proof points and go, hey, I succeeded in this thing. Hey, I delivered a good product. Hey, I got a good outcome from that meeting. Hey, I managed to sell this thing to a customer. Like, whatever the thing is that you're doing, be your own cheerleader and champion and give yourself that affirmation that you're doing it well. And then I think that's the secret, for me at least, to pushing down imposter syndrome and building that sort of self-confidence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so cool. That's a real lesson for anybody listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and actually I'll give you a proof point on that, actually, please. When I talked about, how you know, back in the day I started this, I was working at a bank and they asked me to do a presentation around what crypto was. The day before that presentation, or maybe the day of, I was going to pull out because I was so freaked out about standing up on stage and it wasn't even a stage, it was just in front of a room and talking to people. I was like I don't know if I can do this, but I did it. And then I banked that, hey, I can do this and keep growing and building.
Speaker 2:And now, like you know, I speak in front of audiences, you know of thousands of people, and actually love it. And, like you know, earlier this week TVNZ called me up and was like, hey, can we record you for the 6pm news? And, like old me, like I remember the first ever media interview I did. It was just, you know, it was a pre-record in a studio voice only and I was so freaked out about it Like, again, I almost pulled out because I was like I don't know if I can do this, but you know, if you just step into those things that scare you. Then you can actually build and grow. And you know, looking back now like there's no way that I could have just rolled onto the 6pm news as my first ever you know media appearance. But I've done enough over time that now that kind of thing doesn't freak me out at all and in fact I enjoy it.
Speaker 1:And I think that's again is such a good lesson for people, because you know the difference between anxiety and just pure excitement that they're not very far apart. Those two things and more. You feel anxious. Actually, just turn that anxiety and that anxiousness into hey, I feel pumped up, you know, I feel excited, so sort of. As we, as we start to close, I'm just I'm like, honestly, this has been like an absolute masterclass for people listening and, I think, not only getting some tips and ideas around how to how to sort of start a business, but also just to believe in themselves and to know that whatever skills they bring, that's uniquely them and actually they sort of they really can, can double down on those. We're too for easy crypto kind of from here, like is the you know 50, 50 odd people? It must be a kind of a hard business to build because you've got it's a very global business a lot of you know people out there wanting to get into the space. We're too.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting one because it's a really challenging industry as well. Like, our industry is hugely cyclical and, like you know, the way how the industry was looking in the outlook for it six months ago is so different from where it is now, but then again it might be so different another six months time. So, you know, obviously, like any business, we're looking for how can we grow and, like, I hope, most businesses, you know that question being overlaid with what is our value and what are we? You know, what are we here to do? And we're really passionate and driven by helping people get into this new financial world.
Speaker 2:Like you know, we really believe in the digitization of finance and we want to make that safe and easy for everyone to get involved in. And so the you know the new products that we launched last year with the wallet and the stablecoin, you know really core part of that and sort of key building blocks. And then this year it's about how do we grow those and also ensure that these products are, you know, genuinely delivering now that they're in the hands of customers. Are they genuinely delivering what people need and meeting those needs? So, yeah, I think, a real focus on growth for us with that and also, you know, focus on growth with purpose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so exciting. I know personally that I'm so keen to just see how you take things forward, because you really only came onto my radar in the last couple of years and sort of seeing what you were doing with the easy crypto and, having met you today, I'm blown away actually by, I think, what you could achieve here, albeit in a kind of a fairly volatile sector, right, like it is a crazy volatile sector. But look, I really want to thank you for just being open and honest and you are leading in such you're just leading in a really, really cool way, and I think there are a bunch of people that are going to see you as a role model. I know that's scary and you can retreat back to your whiskey room to just look on that, but thank you for doing what you do because you are a role model to so many. So, yeah, well done, very impressive.
Speaker 2:I'm going to pick up before we finish, because it's International Women's Day. I'm going to pick up one of the questions that you haven't asked me, which is what question do you think I should ask my next guest? Yes, please. And I would challenge you for your next. Whenever you interview someone who has you know a workforce, say of you know our size or bigger? I'd love you to ask them what their gender pay gap is.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because, personally, I am massively shocked that it is still as big as it is and I think more people need to actually be thinking about it. I was really impressed to hear Brock at Shears is talking about this on a panel recently and you know how much focus they have on it. They're a bigger company than us and we focus on it as well, and I think it's something that you know. Throwing that challenge out there, yeah, that would be awesome.
Speaker 1:I love that. Janine Brock, let's get you on the podcast and we can talk about it.
Speaker 2:You should. Brock's incredible. She's got a great story as well and great mahi out of there.
Speaker 1:I agree. And so, brock, if you're listening to this, let's get you on the show and we can really get into this issue, because I think we need to solve this. I've got two daughters, one son.
Speaker 2:They need to have exactly the same opportunities, same pay, yeah your retirement is not going to get paid for if your two daughters are only earning 80% of what your son is. You've got to maximize that value.
Speaker 1:That's right and I've got very high standards that they're going to need to pay for when they're older. So, hey, thank you so much, janine, or J-Coin, it has been an absolute blast chatting to you today. So, yeah, really appreciate the time you've given.
Speaker 2:No worries, thank you.