Growing Lean
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Growing Lean
From the Depths to the Digital Frontier: Jhonmar Castillo's Journey of Transforming Technology and Creativity
Embark on an insightful journey with the unstoppable Jhonmar Castillo, an entrepreneur who's redefining the boundaries of technology and creativity. In a riveting conversation, we uncover his transformation from an immigrant and professional diver to a pioneering force in the realms of virtual reality and AI. Jhonmar's narrative isn't just about change—it's a masterclass in seizing every opportunity, from establishing an art gallery to harnessing the power of MyVR Creator for shaping the future of influencer content.
This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for those ready to harness artificial intelligence and adapt to the digital shifts in the business landscape. We delve into the ways AI, like ChatGPT, is revolutionizing business workflows and remote team management, drawing on valuable lessons from the pandemic about the indispensability of an online presence. Jhonmar's eagerness to collaborate is palpable as we guide you on where to connect with him and explore the myriad of opportunities his ventures offer. Ready your entrepreneurial spirit; this is your invitation to the front lines of innovation with a visionary whose work is not just groundbreaking—it's a blueprint for the leaders of tomorrow.
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Hey folks, welcome back to the growing Lean podcast sponsored by Lean Discovery Group, an award-winning app and software development firm based out of Virginia. This is your host, dylan Burke, also known as Deige, and I'm happy to be here today with John Marquisteo, founder and CEO of VRHops, co-founder and creative director at MyVR, creator and executive creative director of Foremost Strategy and Mocha Productions Lab. Hi, I'm John Marquisteo.
Speaker 2:Hello sir, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thanks for being here today. I'm excited to learn more about you. So, to get us started, could you give us a little bit about your history or background and how you ended up doing what you do today?
Speaker 2:Sure, well, I can start by saying that I'm an immigrant. I'm originally from Caracas, venezuela. I moved here in the early 90s. I was a very young gentleman who arrived here with a lot of expectations. I was an athlete at the time so I was focused on my athlete career. At some I was a diver, a professional diver.
Speaker 2:But once I started going to school and looking for work opportunities in the United States, I realized that working on a space or for a corporation or corporate America was no my cup of tea, and that had a lot to do with the time, with the fact that I'm a go-getter, I'm a workaholic, I love working. That's my past now and that's when I find the best time for me to develop, to learn. I love to learn. I have to learn something new every day and the corporate box was a little too tight for me. I like to go quicker, faster. I wanna know what's happening tomorrow. I don't care about what we digested, so what we do Monday.
Speaker 2:You know, that kind of situation put me in a position where I started my own business. So I started with an open in our gallery in the early 2000. And the art gallery was a challenging business because it's a business that you have to market very well and it's very niche. You have to find the right people to buy the artwork that you're working on. So that's how Mocha Production starts. In the background of the gallery, I started working with creating a production studio, creating my own content for to promote the art that I was selling at the art gallery. That was working very well, and then other art galleries and other businesses who wanted me to help them as well. At the time, you know, video was a big thing. Video was everything. Video was a new thing. To edit a video. You needed to know how to edit a video.
Speaker 2:You need a software, you need a memory, you need to be computers for that Today, not so much things, a lot lighter, but one of the things that I love about it is that you see how everyone right now with the remote works. It's fantastic, yes, it is fantastic. Have been remote my entire life and I love it. That's why, I think, you know, growing my businesses was a goal of mine, and the reason why there are multiple businesses is because the needs grow at the knowledge grow and at the knowledge grow, and clients have bigger needs, stronger needs. I move into creating companies that will solve those problems for them and give me more capability to continue to learn, to stay on top of the knowledge, to stay on top of what is happening at the moment, you know. So we start with Mocha Productions. Mocha Productions then opens an opportunity for me to start working with political content. It was a space that I really was looking forward to get into, because I also love data, and it was. It was. It's a difficult space to market in the political arena After 2016,. At the 2016,. Things got a little more complicated in that space and I decided to jump in to make things a little. You know more, even in a way. So Formal Strategy was born and then, with Formal Strategy, we have had a better social career since 2016. We have elected over 80 judges, secretaries, states, mayors, congressmen so I mean it has been a really wonderful space where we learn about micro-targeting. I learned more and focus more on micro-targeting, and I was a part of the marketing. I started marketing. It was different to what I was doing with Mocha Production, which was production, so two companies now who serve one client, one on the marketing aspect and the other one on the content creation.
Speaker 2:Now I'm on my way out of politics. I want absolutely nothing to do with politics because I'm moving on. This new technology is happening, ai is blowing up and I'm in it. So the way I work is I create teams, international teams. I have colleagues that I work with in all over the world, from Algeria to India, china, you name it. So I create these teams of people with a lot of great quality, capacity to create great work, and I put together these teams, I manage these teams and produce work for clients. So last year two years ago no, last year, sorry, last year I got extremely interested on virtual reality and artificial intelligence and also augmented reality, so I started working with a group of international, with an international team, to work on the creation of what I like to call the national evolution of the Lincoln bio.
Speaker 2:That is my VR creator. So my creator is imagine a landing page like. There's plenty of them. If you go to Instagram Lincoln bio, there are plenty of people that offer that service.
Speaker 2:The difference from my VR creator is that we offer a platform that has the capability of virtual reality so you can create an environment that is 360 degrees and inside of that environment, you can upload all your content creation. So if you're an influencer which is market that we are going after if you're an influencer, instead of having all your links to external pages and a landing page, you can actually embed your content in the 360. You can do the shopping. You can upload videos, tags, images, galleries. You can upload anything that is content creation. You can upload it there. You have the capability to upload HTML code. So it's a very how will I say? Diverse app. It will help people from all sense of business, from education to your name. So we love that product. We've just finished it.
Speaker 2:About two months ago they were completed all testing. We went into the capital, venture, venture capital market who we have been discussing about might be a creative group of people. It's an environment also that I'm not comfortable with either. So we are deciding to go on our own and to just grow the business our own steps, without going into venture capital. So we're going to give it a go and we're already preparing content to percent to top 1% influencers about how.
Speaker 2:What do we use. That's different. That brings us to the BRHOPs. So BRHOP is the main, is the main business at the moment, and the reason is because we added the Knowledge Integration Company, and as a Knowledge Integration Company, I'm interested in helping businesses to bring in into the system that they already have implemented, to bring new technology, to bring AI, to bring in GoShare Reality, to bring up Integrity, to get a deeper connection with the customers, to make customer service a lot better, use it, interface more efficient, easier, faster. So that's the point right now that I'm extremely interested in working on projects already on that we have on our website.
Speaker 2:We are launching what we're calling Live Projects and on the Live Projects we pretty much are gonna be documenting the building and the branding of a startup from scratch, from meeting with the client first time, discussing the model to finding what's the best way for this business to go to market and how do we maintain this idea, because these are entrepreneurs just like myself who has ideas but don't know how to go about it. I might not have the technical aspect of it of managing all of it. The thing is that we do it all. We do everything from coding to graphic design to video editing I mean, you name it Everything that is part of the business. We built it up from scratch. So that's what we're gonna be working now on on VR hops and that's kind of like all the crazy rollercoaster being with so a lot of hats but I love hats. It's like bring it, what's next?
Speaker 1:That's amazing. And that's incredible that you are able to manage your time so well with all these different companies. That's awesome. How do you manage your time? Do you allocate certain days to certain companies or certain hours, or is it all just intertwined?
Speaker 2:No, it is intertwined. One of the things that I have always had my office next to my house. That have always been a condition for myself. So I always have two separate spaces One is my office and one is my house. That allows me to really focus, to leave my space and go to a space where is my temple. That's my work. I have a lot of screens and those screens manage multiple tasks in different times. These screens have a different function. That's how I kind of manage communication, emails, clients, all of that. The good thing about it is that we usually start with a client in one of the companies and that client moves through the other companies because we do complimentary services to offer a full catalog of services. So if you are an entrepreneur who have an idea for a startup.
Speaker 2:We are a good place to knock at because we can help from the start and make sure that it is done at the end. So putting together the right teams. For example, right now I'm working on AI robot. At the time and what it's doing is I have probably I don't know 200, 300, 200 feet and there's 250 people I work with internationally that do. They're all good at what they do.
Speaker 2:They have a special day, so I have that inventory and now what I do is I have a client who has certain needs. I add it to my queue my robot and ask him who put together my team, and it's fantastic how it accommodates and it creates a list for me what would be the strongest team for that particular project. That is a very interesting way for me to manage these projects, because I know that I'm putting together people that have the skills, people that have the responsibility. I work with people like myself, who are welcome colleagues who are ready to go, who love what they do and they commit. They commit and they have a passion for every project that we jump in, and that is something that is really important for me.
Speaker 1:Okay, a hundred percent, I love it. I love it. And what are the biggest challenges that you face within running multiple businesses and how do you tackle them?
Speaker 2:Well, definitely, the challenges are always keeping or giving clients the enough time that they need, but also the way how I manage that is, I measure that. I made those rules very clear from the beginning. I'm available from certain time to certain time. I do work at 2.30 in the morning, but my clients don't need to know that and they don't need to call me at 2.30 in the morning or ask for things that are no part of the program that we already have. So I try to manage clients and projects and staff and collaborative work to make sure that we're all smooth and that is rule out, meaning that there are engagement rules in a way of how, when and at the deadlines to deliver any kind of material that we need in order to do our work.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of restrictions or not I want to say restrictions, but I'm very straightforward. Everything is very special, everything is very noted. In a way, we have everything right down to the point that nothing can escape or miss something for a particular client. So scheduling of that is an important thing. For that we're also working on the artificial intelligence to help us make that even better. So it's great because before I go there and I tell people about how they should adopt artificial intelligence to their businesses. I need to do it on my own and it has been amazing. Wow, it's like I'm just the world I love it.
Speaker 1:That's great, and it actually brings me to my next question is what AI tools are you making use of on a daily basis? I assume you use chat, gpt, like most of us, but are there any other tools that you use consistently?
Speaker 2:Chat. Gpt is definitely the main source for a lot of things. The reason is because I think right now is the one that has been out the longest, the one that people have feeling more comfortable.
Speaker 2:They know it. They understand it. It is easier to talk to clients about this is power, about chat, gpt, than to explain another, different kind of arrangement to clients. They get a little bit more like well, companies come and go, they disappear. What about? We start with this and then that goes.
Speaker 2:So when I'm involved, you're in the wrong place already. Things are going to change every day and what you need to do is to make sure that you are or may produce, adapt, create it in a way that you are how will you call it Spandable quickly, that you can grow, that there are ways of finding new adoptions of new technologies and incorporating that as quickly as possible. So things are very fluid when designing business models at the moment. We are very fluid. We are tacking the technology that we have at the time, but leaving doors and windows open to integrate new things. We are extremely involved into what's happening every day. We have scouts that are largest going and making sure that we understand what is going on, what is happening, what is being made, who's making it, for what reason. So that is a lot of resources. That is a lot of time in order to understand where things are going, where I'm moving, what's getting the most response from people, what is not getting as much response, and to try to understand also in the business to business, what is it that businesses want these days? You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It seems like there is a lot of doubts about should I invest? Should I move forward with this? This just came out out of nowhere, this new thing out of nowhere. Do I add, invest on that? I said, listen, I started building web sites in 2000 and the first software I bought was from Page 2000. That was my introduction to HTML. Okay, after that I have.
Speaker 2:The other day I was hitting my office and I was doing a little inventory. I had so many gadgets cameras, lenses, filters, pry books, things that I would never use again in my life. There's so much money invested on equipment for a production company where we have to carry lights and green screen and mics and labs and all kind of little gadgets that goes with having a production company and creating video. So all of that is just. I cannot take any of those cameras. I will not take a DSLR camera anywhere. I won't take a 4K camera. I have a iPhone. That's a better camera than all the cameras that we all. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:So that adaptation adapting to new things coming in I think is one of the best things business should focus on right now. It's like stop being so rigid and let's be a little bit more fluid about how we're going to go about the future. We don't know. Future is changing. Today we're doing something, tomorrow something else. Next week I'll start another company because that's the way how things are going to go and we will continue to grow. We will continue to learn in those specific areas you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you. I think it's super important to understand and accept all the change that's coming, because we're at a point now where we are going to experience so much change in the next five years In terms of how businesses run, in terms of how we run our personal lives, just in terms of everything. I think we're at such a pivotal point in technological evolution that if you aren't accepting the changes that are coming and adapting to it, I think you'll sadly fall behind and lose out, which is crazy.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely you know, the whole integration company starts getting COVID. I have a lot of friends who were small business owners who have stores from and, but they were business that were no prepared, they were not ready to sell online, they didn't have an ecosystem, they didn't have a website, they didn't have an e-commerce, they didn't have the technical aspect of being able to sell the products while the storefronts were closed. So a lot of them got crushed because we're not prepared, they were no ready, they could not sell the products and because we were in lockdown, then your business is, you know, suffering for that. So that's a good example and that's not just for storefront. That should go for every business.
Speaker 2:On how can we continue to perform in the worst conditions, worst cases and errors? Can we still perform? Can we still offer our services? How? What do we need to take into consideration All of that? So when consulting businesses about how do you integrate, you know, new technologies, I always like to to give people real examples, to put them on the chairs, to understand what is it that they're missing on or how. I talk about this all the time with business owners.
Speaker 2:On Stop being afraid of AI and becoming afraid of AI, understanding how AI work and understanding how much better, faster, stronger can make a business. That's going to be the difference between being at mid-size, small-size and large corporations. We already know large corporations are investing the money on it already and they are going to continue to dominate and monopolize all the advertising space, all the marketing services, marketing areas, Giving an opportunity to businesses to have a chance to compete at that level, to have a chance to be found just to be found on Google. There are so many things that they need to take into consideration. I mean from social media to marketing strategies and I don't know. Staying connected, like keeping clients becoming part of the client's lives, is something that sometimes businesses forget. They want the business, they take the money, they got the check, but then they forget about that customer. That is something that needs to be addressed and I think that AI can help a lot with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100 percent. I could talk about AI and its benefits for hours, but we are unfortunately out of time here, John Ma. But before you go, what advice would you like to give to other business owners looking to succeed in your industry?
Speaker 2:Just be open-minded. I mean, we got to remember that when we start businesses, we start. Sometimes we don't even know what we're doing. We are going and following our instinct. Well, continue to follow those instincts. The environment is changing. Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention and adapt. Be flexible and pay attention 100 percent.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it so much and thank you so much for your time today. What is the best way for people to reach out to John Ma Castillo If you have any offers for them or if they're looking to follow your journey?
Speaker 2:Of course I can be on. You can follow brhopscom. That would be VR as virtual reality. H-o-p-s. Brhopscom and my email address will be contact at brhopscom. You can always look at moncaproductionslabcom, formostrategycom and myvrcreatorcom. So those are four spaces where I can help you one way or another, and I'll be out of love too.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, same to you. Thank you very much for the opportunity.