Want to Launch Your Own NFT Project in the Fall of 2022? Here’s What You Must Consider! | Episode 233

Kevin Sturmer 0:00
You’re listening to NFT 365. The first daily podcast on NFT is with your host Fanzo, talking crypto, blockchain, web 3, non-fungible tokens, metaverse, and

What the f*ck is a non-fungible token?

We’ll get to that. It’s time for today’s episode of NFT 365. The only daily NFT podcast minting an NF T every day for 365 days. Powered by the ADHD coin at rally.io. Here’s your host and digital futurist, the ADHD superpowered to Brian Fanzo.

This show is not financial advice. So, do your own damn research.

Brian Fanzo 0:43

What’s up friends, welcome back to another episode of NFT 365. And we are sponsored by the Crypto Business Conference. Crypto Business Conference is happening in San Diego, October 9, to the 11th Make sure to check that out, there is a link in the bio and you know, on this journey through, you know, NFT’s and since we really started, you know, part of the whole beauty of this was embracing kind of like the curiosity and the desire, like the yearning to continue to learn, right, and one of the things that I’ve tried to stress really hard here on the podcast is that I for sure don’t know everything. And a lot of what I share is like my perspective, or, you know, the lessons that I’m learning and kind of on the way and, and part of that is allows us like kind of like the freedom to like learn together, right? All of you that are listening, you’re coming on this journey with us. And that also includes trying to figure out your ways to provide more value to you, the audience who the listener, you know, we have our YouTube videos, we put a blog post up on the website every day. And we we know, we’ve heard a lot of requests on, you know, taking us through the journey of buying the NFT’s. And so part of that is we’re going to try to add that in this as well. And we’ll jump into some of the the topic for the podcast. And so one of the things I wanted to kind of just share a touch on, you know, for this, our most recent, you know, the actual NFT that we’ve purchased most recently was one that was titled Scarcity. And it’s a Solana NFT. And really, I when I look at Solana NFT’s, I will tell you, most of the time I’m looking at the gaming style NFT’s right, I really look at what not makes the most sense. They’re on on Solana. And the thing that jumped out about this project was, you know, one of the things with, you know, the gaming projects, it seems to be a lot of projects are launching their NFT as a gaming project. But there’s really no timeline or understanding of when they’re going to deliver that video or what their video skill set is, or, you know, who’s on the team to kind of deliver all of that. And the beauty of this project scarcity that we minted yesterday for earlier this week for Mint 365 was, you know, not only they have kind of a direct kind of understanding of like, it is a multiplayer city building game. But they also kind of allowed you to understand which people on the team are responsible for what aspects of the project and, and why they’re actually on the team and what all that matters. So that was the the NFT that we minted earlier. And I think it actually kind of plays perfectly into this topic today. Because the other part of this is that we’ve been talking a lot we do, we do a video call for those that are holding 93 ADHD coin, we do our SuperPOWER Hour on Tuesdays. And one of the big things that I’ve been hearing a lot lately and I think it’s a good sign. But it also is it’s something that is I would say not hard to answer, but we are still it’s kind of evolving is that like what is it what is the team need to look like for an NFT project? You know, pre launch during launch, you know, what are the what are the what are the roles that need to make sure that that are covered inside of NFT projects and I will tell you like one of the things that that you know we’ve talked a lot about here on the podcast one of the things that I think is really important to understand is that you know the way a lot of NFT projects that we love like a lot of a lot of your favorite NFT projects today. A lot of them did not do or think about the things that we’re going to talk about on this podcast episode. But here’s the here’s the point on that is it’s okay that they didn’t do that because they were launching in a different time where a lot of this was evolving right and we were willing to invest in throw our our crypto our ETH around really depending on what we were looking for. Like the we didn’t really understand exactly what we were looking for why we needed certain things and and I’m just going to say like we’re where this current bear market is going to push us out on at the end is is going to push us out in like this in like what I like to believe in a web three world that’s gonna require us to build The businesses around our NFT projects with a web two kind of approach. And what I mean by that is, let’s, I’ll kind of give the stages right last summer. I jokingly say like, if you just sneezed out and an NFT project, it would sell out, right? There was no real, like, need for like strategy or implementation. And then in the in the fall, a lot of it was kind of hype, right? Like, how much hype could you get? Was your art fancy, like a mecca verse? Or was your did you have the right influencers? Or people in the, in the in the actual project? And then sort of this year, earlier this year? You know, I’d say that first, you know, it’s a January through April? timeframe. A lot of it was like, Okay, what is missing in the market? And then what are the things that are is working in the market? And how do those work inside of of projects that maybe have a fully Doc’s team, right? And so like, all of a sudden, it went from, like, the thing that we were looking for? Is the Docs team, a team that we can we know their name, we know that they have the reputation on the line, we can look them up on LinkedIn, whatever that may be. And now we emerge into like, what would be called, you know, crypto winter or this summer? And a lot of what happened with the free mints was that, well, just if everything’s free, and maybe you’re just taking a bunch of flyers to try to hit that lottery ticket, the question now comes back, it’s like, wait a second, like, what were some of these things that made sense early and didn’t make sense. And I will tell you, for the most part, most NFT projects over the last year, had been designed and deployed, pretty much upside down from a traditional startup or business. And that actually even includes the utility, that and the roadmap that they’re actually putting out there. And the funny part about it is the thing that we we kind of asked for, and we were demanding last summer and fall was, we want to know, like your utility, and we want to know your roadmap, that we even cared about those things more so than if the team was anonymous, or they weren’t using their real names. But what we realized was, if a project does not have a business plan, or an understanding of utility and community and the team required to execute on that, I don’t care what your roadmap has, like your roadmap. I actually think of this a little bit like Shark Tank, right? When we all watch Shark Tank, I probably everybody that’s listening to this show has watched Shark Tank at one point. And we’ve all been there where someone presents it, they have a really great idea. But they can’t answer any of the sharks questions on like, what are you going to use the money for? How do you plan on implementing that? Who is your biggest competition? What are the things that you? What is the motivation? What is the story? Are you going to commit your full time job? Like all those, and it kind of is like a little cringe worthy, right? When you’re watching Shark Tank, and you’re like, Man, those people had a great idea they got all into TV, but they didn’t think out those ideas. Well, a lot of the NFT projects, that’s what was happening. And we were almost forcing NFT projects, to give us things that they couldn’t deliver, we’re like, give us a roadmap with dates, let us know the utility that you’re going to deploy in your project. And so all of a sudden, people just start throwing out things, right, we’re going to include a game, we’re going to have an mental health app, we’re going to be diversity and inclusion, we’re going to, we’re going to you know, have a sitcom on Netflix, we’re going to scale to you know, 400,000 people and you know, all these different things, we’re going to use tokenomics and staking and all of that. And what I believe had hat, what has kind of emerged from that is that what really makes sense for NFT projects moving forward is to operate and to deploy, as if you are not only you are a business, but you are you are mapping out and you are putting out to the world, the things that you can deliver on, and then the things that you are working towards. And so when we think about utility, and I’ve heard this a lot lately, and actually it’s something I’d say it’s a little bit of a pet peeve of mine right now, is that some there’s a tendency for people that will, when they’re launching their own NFT project, they say, Brian, you know what, I’m so tired of these projects not delivering on a utility and not delivering against the roadmap. I’m not gonna have any utility. And I was like, Well hold on a second. Like, we want people to deliver on utility because we want something of value for what we’re buying. And just not doing it doesn’t that doesn’t solve the problem. You know, the other the other part is like, Well, Brian, I’m only going to, I’m going to I’m going to actually put like the on the roadmap, I’m going to put the dates way out so that I can, I can under I was I can under promise and over deliver. And it’s like wait a second, but then why would I buy it now? Like there’s a lot of NF T’s that when I look at the utility, it has some great utility, but it’s not going to be executed on for six to eight months at the earliest? And I’m like, well, I’ll check back in on the prod Just six months from now, you’re not going to, I’m not going to crowdfund your project, if you don’t have a way for me to have value and come along with you on this journey throughout, you’ll leading up to that. And it’s why actually one of my favorite projects psychedelics anonymous, it’s one of the things that they I think they did better than any projects that out there is that the ultimate utility of psychedelics anonymous, that when it was deployed, was they wanted to create a mental health app. And they wanted to provide and bring mental health support and and leaders to web three, right? So the idea was, there was an app that would connect with different holders, and some holders could be, you know, certified, some of holders could just be support. And that was the that was the, the actual, like, utility of Psychedelics Anonymous, and a lot of people that have hold the NFT pro don’t even know that. But there was an understanding, like, what does that even look like? And how long is that going to take to deploy. And so what they did was they came up with this gamification, that would get us from point A to point B. And so just recently, they rolled out the beta version of that app that they’re rolling out for the mental health side. And funny enough, that there was nobody complaining about the utility being nine months out, because they provided a value, a utility, and a really a community engagement mechanism over that nine months to kind of get us to there. And so I look at NFT projects, and I know many of you, you know, this is the I hear this pretty much every single day, as you know, we’re getting messages where by Brian, I found your podcasts are Brian. So I’ve been listening to podcasts the whole time. And I finally have like my my project that I want to deploy to the world and, and I love that I love the idea that we are all like embracing our inner creator. But I also think it’s important to realize that, first of all, just like entrepreneurship, not everyone needs to create their own NFT project, I’ve made this argument now for a little while that I think a lot of people are actually going to be better served, taking on a very leadership role in a project that they hold a lot of, rather than starting from a project from scratch. The other part of this is, because we’ve now demanded a lot more components into an NF T launch, the team, the structure, even the funding, and your plans on using funding, when you’re creating an NF T project are much more elaborate and much more, I think strategic than what anyone was realizing six months ago, three months ago, nine months ago. And so when you’re thinking about this, right, you have to think about, not only do you need a dev to help you build out the smart contract, and connect the smart contract to the website for the minting mechanics and, and you need a dev to also make sure you’re integrating the art and using kind of, you know, depending on how you’re using metadata and the platform you’re supplying. But you also think about a dev from integration into your website, content marketing, right there looks like there’s that that role of the dev. And then of course, you have the art, or maybe it’s the video or maybe it’s the spoken word, whatever it may be as your as your like kind of your placeholder in your NFT project. And then the other magic, right, so you have like the founder and the face, that’s the storyteller. And then you also are going to need your community managers and your moderators, right, if you’re using discord, you’re gonna need discord mods, going into a community manager that understands not only the overall community feeling, but can help manage things like social media posts and content, you know, user generated content from your your community. And then the, the crazy part is, you think about all that team. And you haven’t even factored in the utility yet. And I will tell you, this is one that actually is a little bit concerning for me is that a lot of utility, when we think about the utility that we can provide within an NFT project. A lot of times it comes down to like access or information, right, you’re going to, we’re going to give people or experiences, right? Those are kind of like the three buckets, we’re going to give people access to maybe a mastermind access to a online course access to a virtual event or offline event access to something that you’re providing that only only the holders can have. And then you have information one’s right, you’re going to raise money for awareness around web three, and women in tech or whatever that may be. And then the third one being that experiences right, so your utility is a it’s a game or it’s a Metaverse scenario or it is, you know, you’re you’re going to, you’re going to create something, a type of experience that has never existed before you’re going to bring these worlds together. The hardest, the thing that I believe that most of us have not factored in, and I say us because we’re all learning this together. Is that who, how and where are you delivering that utility? And the thing about this is that you don’t actually have to have all of your utility defined on the day that you meant, like, it doesn’t need to be all in the smart contract on day one, it doesn’t need to be all on the website on day one. But what you do have to have on day one, is you have to have a clear plan on not only what how that utility is going to be delivered, but who’s gonna be the one delivering it. And I see this on a regular basis where a lot of projects, you know, they’re outsourcing the like, Okay, we’re gonna do a comic book, or we’re gonna do a coffee table piece, or we’re going to, we’re going to do merchandise, whatever that may be, well, here’s the thing about that is like, who’s now crafting the preview graphics, who’s now writing the copy for inside of the discord, who’s educating the audience on what they’re going to need to do to participate in this. And maybe most importantly, we also really haven’t factored in what is the role of like PR and comms in this, like kind of digital, you know, let’s just say digital NFT world, because here’s a prediction that I have is that, I believe, the days of expecting people to go in your discord, to get updates information, and to not miss out on the utility that they get for holding their NFT the days of relying with that as the only way to communicate are over. I believe, I believe that it’s we you know, especially as we get new blood into this space, like I find it you know, I find it extremely lazy in a way right that that we’ve become so like entitled in a way that we say like, Hey, I know you bought this NFT for a couple $100. I know, I promised to deliver these things. But on top of that, the only way that you can be aware of that is if you come into another app, and you sign up for notifications, and you’re active there. Because like I almost feel like one of the utilities that people should put on the website is that like to to, to get the value out of this NFT that you that we are describing. You must be active in discord, right? And no one’s going to put that in there, because that’s going to scare people away. And so now when we take like a kind of a step back, before launching your NFT project, you not only have to treat this like a business as far as building out the team, but you also have to have a business plan that takes into account all of that execution, what is the what are the business goals that you are measuring along the way? And then like, how are you communicating that, and I will tell you, the the idea of mismanaging expectations is the root cause I believe, of 99% of the of the founders stress today, I believe a lot of founders and NFT projects there, they’ve either over promised way over promised or they are so under communicating that even if they deliver on their promise, people are so burnt out or feel like they’re not being included in the process, that they they don’t even really care what the execution is on the end. And as I mentioned on that psychedelics anonymous example that I shared a little bit earlier, you know, the gamification that was that was deployed the tokenomics elements, it almost took on its own world, right? There’s this lore around the project where people were reading between the lines and understanding the storytelling and, and it was it was a lot of fun and dynamic. And, and this is coming from someone that I don’t think, if you would have told me that that was the main component of the project, I don’t think I would have been that excited about being a part of that. Now. The caveat to all of this, is that there are plenty of of NFT examples of projects that aren’t requiring all of these things. But here’s the truth.

Brian Fanzo 18:49
No project moving forward, in my opinion, will just be a PFP projects rail profile probe project, right? Crypto punks, is technically just a profile project, right? It is the art is ultimate. It’s art and access to people that hold that art. But I think as we move forward, you will have artists that will have their one on ones and their collections. But then when you’re when we’re looking at everything from membership communities, to access communities, to thought leadership communities, or even just to the idea of a book community that are mission or purpose driven, we really have to dial in that that business value we have to dial in that roadmap and and the two places that I would say that I think we have to really understand is a the importance of communicating and over communicating and be understanding the importance of managing your expectations that you are putting out there but also this be willing to evolve and roll with the punches and and add more utility and move move your expectations because the market has changed. I will tell you right now As I’m researching a lot of these NFT projects, the NFT projects that are not reading the room, right, the ones that are not realizing that the state of Bucha say the world right now, right, the recession and, and so many things going on, the ones that are not factoring that in and adapting their launch of their Mints are the launch of their second phase are going to fail right now. And they’re and they’re failing right now around us. There are a lot of great projects. And it’s unfortunate, there’s some really great projects right now that are deploying, but their second phase of their NFT project, or they finally launched their their mints, or maybe they launched their genesis a little bit early. And they’re, they’re, you know, on phase two, and unfortunately, I believe they are deploying it as if like, whoa, we worked before. So we’re just going to stick to what worked. And we’re not going to recognize this kind of environment. And here’s the the mindset and approach that I believe founders have to have. As, as NFT project founders, we have to have a mindset and approach that we we communicate and manage expectations. But we are willing to throw out the strategy, if something else if there are other factors that come in, and we are also willing to scratch out part of the strategy. And recognize you know what? The Metaverse is kind of dead right now. And if your NFT project is pitching me for where you’re going to have an amazing experience in decentraland, has anybody been in decentraland? lately? I logged in the other day, it was a ghost town. Because with everything else going on in the world, and not much real value being provided in the metaverse at the moment. What do I just want to run around with a character lost in the metaverse? Like, I’m already running around in this world half lost? Why would I want to do that in a virtual world or a digital world. And so I look at this as being a very strategic right mapping out the you need to build your team, you need to map out that business strategy, the business objectives, your entire business plan. And you also have to factor in like, Okay, if if some and I’m a big fan of this, because it kind of fits into our in this into the blockchain world, right? If this happens, then we’re going to do this. If this happens, we’re going to do this right. And the part of this that we can that I believe and I’ll throw out a couple things here at the end, that, you know, that I think will help is there’s also some things that I think we should try, we should we should test out with NFT projects, one of them and might shock you is like I believe some projects should roll out with a free mint. But a 20% creator royalty. Yep, that’s what I said. I said, I think 20% of secondary sales on a project that is giving people the the the NFT for free, could be a great value prop, right? Because, hey, we’re gonna fund this through secondary sales at 20%. But we’re gonna, we’re gonna provide so much value that only the people that are going to have to pay that 20% are the flippers and those that lose faith. Okay, well, if you believe in the project, and you’re gonna buy into it, with not the hopes of flipping out of it, but with the hopes of getting the utility that they want, does that 20% really even matter to you? If you’re not going to sell yours, because you you believe buying that NF T is gonna be that high a value for you? Like that’s an innovative spot? Right? I believe that it actually is it would be a very creative approach. Another approach that I think we’re going to we’re going to see is this 10,000 piece number is kind of ridiculous, like 10,000 was just kind of thrown out there. Right? And we’ve seen the extremes, right, the Matrix project at 100,000, Gary Vee for VeeFriend series to did 55,000. We’ve seen some projects do a little bit like, for whatever reason, like we’ve still kind of been hovering around that 10,000 mark. But what about a What about an NFT project and said, you know, what, we’re only going to let 500 people in every month. So 500 NFT’s will be deployed this month, next month will be 500. Next month will be 500. Because now we are not only understanding supply and demand, but we’re also kind of letting people know, okay, the reason this is going to work is because if you miss out on month one, yes, you can jump in on month two, but there’s gonna be so much value in between that you’re going to have FOMO, you’re going to, you’re going to wish that you had bought in on phase one. And then that also kind of increases that value on the secondary market. Now, what does that mean, when you get closer to phase two? Well, now you’re gonna have to play with the idea of like, how do you reward those that were in at the beginning? So I think that’s another place they’d be really interesting. The third one, as far as like, you know, when it comes to like utility and the growth is that I actually think we’re going to see more NFT projects that focus on one or two key components of the of their actual NFT drop, and then they’re going to airdrop 15 or 20. differently kind of components on top of the users, for those that are holding and, and I’ve been saying this for a while, and it might maybe it’s just gonna be our project with superpowered here for our NFT project, but I also believe we need to find ways to reward and incentivize those that are holding their original mint NFT. Right. There are some projects right now that I very proudly hold that I was the original owner in August, and that project is still doing well, and I have never sold it, I still hold that original one. I’m the only owner, well, let’s face it, if you’re the only owner of a car, the car’s value goes up. If there’s only been one owner of a baseball card, the value of it goes up, why would that not be the same here in the NFT space. So I think that’s another spot that we’re going to see. But here’s the magic to all of that, is that the business plan, the people that are going to execute on these things, and the ability to get the entire team to really evolve. And I you know, one of the things I like to say is that, you know, I am not a huge fan of rules. Actually, I’ve always hated rules. I, I wasn’t like a kid that got in trouble. So I got in trouble. But it was mostly because I not only do I not like being told what to do, but like I prefer some freedom of my own choice and selection. And so I’ve always preached that we don’t need to create rules, we need to create swim lanes, and swim lanes, you know, get people from one end of the pool to the other end of the pool. But they bob and weave with the water and they allow you as you’re swimming, you can swim to on the left line or the right line, you can you know, you can they’ll move with the water as the as the entire trends of the industry change, you can kind of evolve with that. And so we really do have to have an understanding of of getting a team that can work in this type of environment. Because here’s the hard truth. A lot of people are struggling to find developers, artists, PR teams, Discord moderators. And the reason is, is because this space is not easy to work in. Everything is always changing. There are a lot of variables that are on that are not controllable. So the truth is, you actually have to find the right people that have the right mindset, and they can work in this environment. And then I believe we just train them on the skills that they need to make all of this work. And I think this is one of those evolving spots where just because someone is, understands smart contracts and can write a smart contract does not mean they might not that they can actually work well within your project, because your projects gonna have all these different moving parts or your projects going to deploy these type of things. And so finding like those right people is is essential. And then the last thing I’ll just throw out there, you know, anyone can launch a project in like real time, right? Like, there’s no like magic, like, oh, like, Okay, we Hey, we build a project and you can launch it, the real magic comes into like listening, evolving, understanding your audience, understanding the industry, and deploying a NFT project at the right time. Now, the right time does not mean it’s a perfect time, the right time does not mean the market has to be way up, or the market can’t be down. But that right time actually requires you to build the plan to have all of this ready, and then be agile enough to deploy it when things make sense. And I think that, to me, is one of the hardest components of this entire NFT space. Because, you know, the idea of just throwing a date on the map and say, Hey, Brian, what do you think about minting the first week of August? Right now, I think I might, it might be a good time, because it’ll be a month out. And we’ll be kind of closing up vacations, but I have no idea what’s gonna happen between now and then. So I think what is better is to actually build all of this, continue to evolve it, but be ready to deploy it and say, Hey, I think the timing is right. Now let’s drop this let’s let’s launch our, our pre mentalist. Let’s put out a date, you know, that’s maybe seven or 10 days out. And then let’s go, let’s go to make it all happen. So that’s where like, where I look at this. And you’ll remember, remember, I, I’m really focused on like, kind of like the business side of this. I’ve always been someone as an early adopter that taps into the business act of activations and, you know, my three dams that we talked about here on the podcast, right, we say, raise your damn hand, which means seize the moments, we talked about, you know, doing your own damn research, which, of course, is that idea of, like, don’t trust other people’s opinions, because their version of success is not always the same as yours, or most of the time is not the same as yours. And then of course, the last one is that idea of pressing the damn button and taking action. And to me that is the piece of this is like finding that, that team that you can set up and be ready so that when, when the timing makes the most sense for you and your project and the audience that you’re trying to deploy to, you’re ready to press the down button. And that’s also kind of ties into, you know, our sponsor crypto Business Conference. I was excited When I started talking to Mike about this event that’s coming up because it is really focused on actionable content and actionable, you know, sessions, the idea of like, how you’re working with people and say, hey, when you leave this session, you’re going to better understand how to do these different things. And, you know, there are different conferences for different things, right. I’ve been to a lot of conferences, some of them are high in thought leadership. Some of them are general onboarding. But I’m excited, you know, that you can not only be involved with crypto business conference, but you should definitely check out the the lineup that is that is being put together for crypto Business Conference, and even just some of the messaging and admission because, you know, there is an element of not only our need and desire to press the down button, but I also understand that we must, we must think beyond the Twitter space, we must think beyond this podcast, and what can we provide IRL, that is going to allow us to really take advantage of the fact that we’re all in the same location. So I’m looking forward to San Diego, October 9 through the 11th. So make sure to check out crypto Business Conference. And I will, you’ll see our team there while but we’re gonna have a lot of fun down there in San Diego and really appreciate them jumping on board and sponsoring. So as always, my friends you know, keep your head up. I understand these times can be a little tough. There are a lot of extenuating circumstances at the moment that are, you know, that are kind of evolving in our world. You’ll take a deep breath, remember that you’re not alone. And as always, I will talk to you tomorrow. So until tomorrow, my friends, make it a great day. Cheers.

Kevin Sturmer 31:34
This show is not financial advice, so do your own damn research.