We don’t need MORE NFT projects we need more NFT projects that do this! | Episode 228

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 0:42

Welcome back to another episode of NFT 365. And I know my voice might sound sexier than normal, or maybe sexy is it’s the eye or the ear of the beholder that are amazing listeners. But this is the post called COVID slash. Your throat feels like you just swallow razor blades and probably talked for five days straight in New York leading into COVID voice. Don’t recommend it for anyone. But that’s what we’re rolling with here on the podcast. And I just want to welcome everybody into the show. And you know, appreciate everybody supporting, if this is your first episode listening, I just wanna say thank you for spending the time and jumping in. If you’ve been listening to every episode, I apologize, that’s a whole lot of me. And I know that yeah, kind of get the roll on the roller coaster of this journey. And you know, for those that are maybe stopping in and out, right, that’s the beauty of this podcast, is that it is evergreen content. And, you know, for today’s episode, part of I want to connect the dots there on that idea of welcoming people in and really, what is it? What are our roles within an NFT project? Right. And I think, you know, one of the episodes I talked about a while back was about, you know, why I believe community might community and web three might be one of the most difficult, you know, components of community building that we’ve ever experienced before. And I believe part of that is because of the transient nature, that NFT’s in power, right? The fact that if you are no longer getting value, you sell and you leave, and that secondary market is actually something that helps NFT communities thrive. But let’s face it, that also means that within your within your strategy within an NFT project, the onboarding component is not a hey, we’re doing that at the beginning, or we’re doing that as we’re scaling. It’s an everyday thing, right? Like, how do we make people feel welcome, if today is their first day in NFT project, or they’ve been in since the very beginning. And I’ve said this for a while that most communities fail at scaling, because they rely solely on the founders or the original members, to be the ones that are welcoming people in. And I think when you think about scaling a community, it’s not about the founders welcoming everybody, but it’s about the community welcoming people in right, like having those open arms. And that also kind of falls into this idea of like, does everyone really need their own NFT project? And before you think about answering that, I’m gonna answer it for you and say, No, it’s kind of like saying that everyone should be an entrepreneur. Like I’ve hated that statement for forever. And there’s some been some giant named people that have come out and said, everyone’s should be an entrepreneur, I’m like, Have you been an entrepreneur before? Like, there are a lot of components about being an entrepreneur, that suck, that no one really tells you about until you become an entrepreneur, like, oh, you need to chase down your own invoice, you need to be self motivated, self taught, you need to be sales, your marketing, your human resources, your financial person, oh, by the way, you have to learn how to ride a roller coaster where one day you feel like you’re amazing. The next day, you wake up and someone tells you you suck. And you’re the only one to blame. We’re the only one to take all that on. That’s like the life of an entrepreneur. And I think the thing that’s always that I’ve wrapped my head around that, and I’ve given a keynote on this topic in the past was that I believe there are components of entrepreneurship that everyone believes that they want to embrace, right? Like the the freedom of choose your own work hours, the ability to be to be rewarded and incentivized based on the results, not just the time you put in, right, just because like, just because I log in nine to five as an entrepreneur does not mean my bills are getting paid. Right. And, and so there’s those components. And so that’s why I have I believe that even in web three, we’re going to move much more towards result driven multi entrepreneur opportunities where you don’t have to be technically your own entrepreneur, but you can work across multiple vehicles. Well, that also comes into play when it comes into NFT projects, right? And I am a big believer in saying that, hey, if if I have an idea for an NFT project and there There isn’t one out there that is similar or that is aligned, then that you should be the one that builds it. But here’s the caveat to that. Are you actually doing the research to make sure that there isn’t one out there that does that. And there might be one that has the right audience, not the right utility, or maybe the, the, the actual strategy originally might not be there. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t help shape another projects, utility or roadmap and build upon that, because here’s the other caveat to this. Building a community from scratch and web three sucks. Building a project from scratch takes a ton of work takes a ton of research, like I mean, I’ve shared this before, right? Like when, you know, I have a fairly large social footprint. I’ve been, you know, early adopter for many, many years, seven, eight plus years. But when I looked about launching a project back in August, I was like, I don’t believe I have enough trust with the web three community yet to actually build that at the way that I wanted to. And so the question you have to ask yourself is like, what is your strategy and your runway for building trust and growing a community that will be there and ready to launch? Because here’s the other part of this, that is very hard, you know, it’s a tough realization, pressing the damn button. And putting your project out there live is a lot harder than you might think. Yes, we have the poop and fts. And we have NF T’s that are dropped every 30 seconds, it feels like Right. But those are a bunch of DJs that give zero craps. Most of them are attached to an anonymous name, right? Like, I can tell you, I can drop a lot of things that if they were not attached to my brand, because I’d be like, You know what, let’s try it throw throw to the wall. But for me, putting out something that is attached to my brand, my business, my reputation, something that I’ve been building for many, many years, there’s a lot of like risk to that, right. And you guys might have heard the episode with Carter a couple of days ago. And Carter actually brought that up in one of our conversations he was asking me about, you know, like, when I when I put, you know, when I’m when I’m creating something out there, like, Am I worried about, like, you know, is this NFT project, if this is the one NFT project, you really don’t get like a second NFT project. And I’m like, You’re right. Like, it’s partially why I want to make sure that a Well, first of all, it’s not perfect, because perfection is a fairy tale. But I want to make sure that is it is aligned enough that I can mold it to my brand and my vision. Without it being getting me like stuck down like a rabbit hole where I might be, I might feel as though like, Man, that was my one time and I missed the shot. And so there’s two parts of this, I just want to like, help us kind of look at right like is that we can actually be the people that join projects. They become they go from a NFT owner, to an NFT project ambassador to maybe we are put onto the Social Council, you heard from Travefy. A couple episodes ago, he was you know, he submitted to be on the crypto chicks, Social Council. And he didn’t join that project saying how do I how do I become on the board and get more time. But because he was so active and loved where the project was going in the founders, he actually submitted his name for that role. And that’s something that everyone can do. And I will tell you, if your favorite NFT project does not have a Social Council, why don’t you bring it up? And say, hey, founders, have you ever thought about creating a social Council, I would love to help organize that are helped create, like the framework around that? Because there are, I mean, I believe every project needs to have a better understanding of the actual boots on the ground, right? And I will tell you, No, I’m a marketer at heart. And I have a keynote that I’ve given probably more than I have anything else. And it’s called Think like a fan. Right? And my last name is fan XO, it works pretty well. But the whole premise of Think like a fan is can you put yourself in the shoes of your fans. And what I mean by that is you have to be empathetic to every single one of those owners, because you want to know where they came from, what they’re about, what are the things that brought them into the project? What are the good, good NFT experiences? What are the bad NFT’s experiences? Why are they still holding your NFT project, like I would love for, you know, if you’re a founder of an NFT project that I personally hold? I would love for you to reach out to me and say, Brian, why are you holding it? Now here’s the problem with that. You have to be prepared for my answer. Like, like one of the things that is really interesting when it comes to like data and information is a lot of people love to ask for feedback or like I would love to have the community’s involvement. But for a lot of us, we’re not prepared to hear what we’re going to hear. Because a lot of times people are going to say things that we don’t, we didn’t expect or might not even be what we wanted. Now the question just becomes how you kind of handle that feedback. And then the other part of this is, like I mentioned at the start of the episode, right? How do you make people will feel welcomed. Like if I buy an NFT project, let’s shut out Women and Weapons. Women and Weapons as a project I minted back on October 23, October 23 of last year, which was in NFT years is 15 years ago. But October 23, I minted that NFT. Now, interestingly enough, I still own that exact NFT. I’ve never sold it. It is I got very lucky, it was the 69th most rare. And I know I didn’t make that up 69th. I was born on 69 as well, that all it all makes a lot of sense in the big, the big picture. But that NFT I meant it right, I mentioned that one, it happens to be a rather rare one. I love the project in the vision. Well, they just rolled out Season Two this past week. And we actually minted it for our Mint 365 project. And I love the founders, I love their vision. Now, I will tell you, they put out and said originally, they’ll allow the mint to go up to 50,000. But they’re going to put a time limit on it. And so the time limit, I believe just expired. So they just did the reveal today. And I got the reveal and shout out we got a what looks like a rare one, we got one of like the aliens or

Brian Fanzo 11:14
lizards or we got something that looked rare to not look like a women in weapons. You know, art that I originally thought of. But here’s the reason I brought I connect those dots is that if if I didn’t originally meant that project back in October, and I was jumping into their project today, how welcoming do they make me feel? Right? Because there are a lot of projects that you’re we get excited about. And welcoming doesn’t mean everyone’s like, rah, rah, thanks so much for coming in, tell us your life story. But it’s making people feel like when they are commenting, a that their voice is heard. Because here’s a little lesson for everybody. Most people don’t need to know that what their input is actually being used for. They just want to know their voices heard. And let me say that again. If you ask people for feedback, or you ask people for their thoughts, most people assume like, oh my gosh, I’m not going to do everything that everyone is telling me. Well, here’s the truth most people don’t even expect you to. But what the problem becomes is if you don’t acknowledge that someone is voicing is putting themselves out there that they’re, they’re letting their voice be heard. What would inspire them a to do it again, or be to take up your action, right? If you’re like, hey, I want to hear everybody’s feedback, and you get a whole bunch of feedback. But you don’t let people know that you heard their feedback. When you ask the next time, like a month later, like, Hey, I love everybody’s feedback on this. And if you aren’t acknowledging them, saying, hey, thanks so much for submitting or giving them a heart on Twitter, right? Like every single time My name is mentioned on Twitter, every single app mentioned on Twitter, I hit the like button. That’s me giving a fist bump. It’s acknowledgment saying, I hear you. Thank you. Now, I don’t reply to everyone because some of them don’t need a reply. In some other cases, I’m not even sure what I reply. But I put that out there because how we welcome people into a project. And then the role that we allow people to create within a project, I believe, is essential for growth. And right now, a lot of NFT projects, the founders or founding founders are floundering Is that even a free founders, founder founders, founders or founding? Yeah, sorry, my, between my voice and my lack of dictation. And I did say dictation, which makes me laugh every time I say that as well, because I’m just never gonna grow up. But the idea that you’re like, how we empower people, right? There are a lot of founders right now. They’re struggling. They feel like they’re burnt out, like how do I interact in discord? How do I how do I satisfy my whales? How do I help us launch our new project? Do you know how you do all of that you empower the people that already believe in your project, which are the people that are already active that are already owners, they don’t have to own 10 of your NFT to give them a role that allows them to help scale the community that helps them welcome people, but also takes things off of your plate. Like I would argue if I was a founder, it for every founder of an NFT project that’s listening to this right now. Your mission and goal should be to bring people in in your community so much so that they feel like they don’t need to launch their own NFT project that they feel soak, they feel like their input, their value is so connected and and really leveraged within the projects that they are already founders on. Now, the hard truth of this was when I’m thinking about that right now, in my head,

Brian Fanzo 14:46
I think there’s only four NFT projects that I belong to, that I can actually think off the top my head and say, Wow, those founders in power. They’re they’re NFT owners to take a more visible role only for maybe five, okay, maybe there’s a fifth one that just jumped to my head. Which just means there’s a lot of space for that. The other part of this is, if you are not an owner, or you’re not a founder, but you are an owner of an NFT, the web two way would be, let me wait until the owner, the founders give me permission to have a more powerful role. The web three way is, we are owners, we need to take that upon ourselves to step up to take on these roles, if there is no social Council, volunteer to create the Social Council, if you can’t get on the radar of the founder of the project, start creating it and saying, Hey, there’s some of us that really care about this project. Let’s do a weekly Twitter space together. And let’s just talk about why we care about the project, I can guarantee you by the third weekly Twitter space you would do, the founders will take notice that people on the team will take notice, and all of a sudden, you’re gonna have a voice and an entry point into these NFT communities that you’ve never had before. And so as we look at this as like, a bigger picture, and as we look at like, you know, I think just like the overall like overarching, you know, space that we’re in, we just have to think about this idea of where where is this all going? And then ultimately, how can we be the best owners that we can be? Right? How do we welcome people into projects? And then also, how do we as as owners realize that sometimes, maybe it’s, we don’t need to create our own NFT project, we just need to help take the NFT projects that we love to the next level, or maybe we take the faction that we love within a project. And we turn that into its own little micro community within a bigger community. Because another way that you can really help communities scale is you empower micro communities within your communities to take it to the next level. It’s why Facebook groups rolled out subgroups a couple of years ago, the reason they rolled out subgroups is they recognized that for when a group gets so big, it’s very hard for everyone’s voice to be heard, and people to feel like their their voice matters. But it doesn’t mean they don’t want to be a part of that overarching community. They just want to find their own little tribe, their own little people within that community to make it thrive. So that’s where I’m going with today’s episode. For those that are out there, you know, I know, you know, a lot of us are coming back and kind of recovering from New York or, you know, figuring out what is our next role. And I will just say this as well. If you’re looking for a role within Web three, create, think about what you love to do. And the value you can provide, like trying to find a label like Brian, I’m not really a dev, I’m not really an artist, I don’t think of myself as a community manager. But these are the things that I want to do. Like, don’t wait for a label, like labels are literally web like, I mean, raise your hand, unless you’re driving, raise your hand, if you like being labeled. Like I’m a proud millennial, but even as a proud millennial being labeled a millennial felt like as a little bit of a scarlet letter for a while. We don’t, no one likes being labeled, but we oftentimes prevent ourselves from stepping into new roles or new opportunities, because we can’t figure out the label that fits around it. Just take a second think about that. Screw the label and web three, understand what your value is, the things that you’d like to work on that how you think the impact of that can be, and then move forward from there. So hopefully, that inspires you. Hopefully, you guys got enough of this sexy COVID voice and hopefully, things will be a little bit cleaner and better. Moving forward tomorrow. But

Brian Fanzo 18:45
you know, as always, my friends, you’ll make it a great day. Remember that you are not alone on this journey. If you are struggling at the moment, just please recognize that it’s okay to not be okay. It’s also important to realize that there are others just like you that are going through the same things you are not alone, that there are you know, if you like underwater basket weaving and you like doing it your socks, I can promise that you can find somebody that also loves that. But if you’re if you feel like man, I’m burnt out or man, this space is just not for me or, you know, this market doesn’t seem like it’s thriving or I can’t find my favorite NFT project. Not only are you not alone, but there are there are others that are feeling that same way. They’re just wishing that they could connect with others in that same way and so you jump into our Discord if you’re looking for more of these types of conversations if you’re looking for a great example of a welcome committee because I will tell you, the welcome committee is not from me. Welcome committee is from our amazing team of moderators and also those that are not even appointed a moderator but I’ve taken on the job and the role of welcoming others when they come into discord and for all of those that do that every day and are described as a thank you. Thank you for for not waiting for a label or a role. To realize that you can play a role in growing this community and making people feel like their voices are heard and making them feel like they’re welcome. This is the true premise of wheeze is greater than me. And you must be of course, the best me that you can be. But to be part of a greater we, it doesn’t mean that you need to get labeled or have a role or have some kind of discord color on your name to make other people feel valued. Instead of my friends. Make it a great day. Cheers.

Kevin Sturmer 20:30
This show is not financial advice, so do your own damn research.