I have been working with blockchain technology for many years and appreciate the challenges ahead of me in adopting it. On Valentine’s Day 2024, the first Smart Contracts for the Square Deal Network (SDN) were deployed. Here are some of the things I learned after deployment.

It took five years to design the heart of the approach to deliver the qualities of low business disruption and increased quality of leads. I conducted many sessions defining the “low disruption” elements of the approach. With all of the distractions in the industry, I was fortunate to gather lots of input from many great folks.

Lesson One: If you do not have venture capital pressure, it is easier to get things right. The concepts have a long adoption cycle. Patient money is difficult to find. Thank goodness I funded this myself.

Lesson Two: Be patient because you have to cover the same ground many times. Diagrams based on relatable business scenarios are a great help and experience at teaching is a plus. You have to be nice and emphasize that:

• SDN is not a crypto play
• No proprietary coins are minted
• Innovation is continuous

Lesson Three: Drop the techno-speak. Everything needs to be in terms of a day in life on the streets. This applies to demonstrations as well. I may be impressed watching addresses exchanging messages, but a broker loses interest quickly unless they are looking at something they can relate to. No one wants to become a technical guru. At the end of the day, there is advertising and leads.

Lesson Four: Group and name services that are easy to relate to. In the case of SDN:

Lesson Five: Listen to the objections and adjust the course. When you hit an objection, address it directly. It hurts your credibility when you pretend it does not exist.

I also enjoyed watching and adjusting the Smart Contracts as they interacted with each other. As new situations were encountered, the Smart Contracts needed adjustment but the data was preserved. I believe I have a feeling where these kinds of real-time micro-adjustments are heading, but I will leave that for another post.

I will be posting more frequently now that the year of “shakedown” has passed so cheers until next time.