A three-step plan for web3 businesses, job seekers and NFT traders

Transcript

gmgm welcome to another episode of web3 Academy your trusted source for relevant and legitimate web3 information so you don't fall behind the internet Revolution don't get caught up in the hype cycle folks I'm Jaybird and I believe that web3 is going to change the world that's why I'm here to guide the world's top talent down the rabbit hole as you contribute and capitalize on the opportunity today super stoked to have zenica back on the show zenica is a leading web 3 and nft investor we talk a little bit about his nft collection which he doesn't even know how big it is

at this point thousands including many of the top nft projects in the space he's also an advisor or content creator and a project founder with Zen Academy he writes newsletters on nfts he hosts two podcasts he runs a YouTube channel he's got 300 1000 followers on Twitter and he manages two nft businesses or communities to the 333 club and Zen Academy and his focus in general is all about creating educational content to help people learn about web3 and how to learn in a confident manner which is something we talk here at web3 Academy about there's

such an overlap between our beliefs and between zeneca's beliefs in today's episode we have a really wide-ranging conversation where we kind of hit on a whole bunch of topics but the overarching theme is trying to figure out if you're a founder or an operator of an existing business what's your plan for web3 if you're a entrepreneur looking to launch a new business in web3 what should your plan be if you're a job Seeker if you're looking for a job what should your plan be if you're an nft Trader what should your plan be and if you're a Creator what should your plan bring so we talk

about each one of these different types of people and we break down what we have each seen that works well examples of what works well in each of these categories what we have seen that doesn't work zeneca specifically talks about his experience from Zen Academy and how he started that project by launching an nft and you're going to want to hear what he has to say about whether he would do that again and we also step back and think about okay what makes the most sense in this space now in this market in this macro environment fascinating show I hope you all enjoy it it's just such a pleasure to have such a

giga brain in the space on the podcast so enjoy this episode with xenica before we jump in just need to take a minute to hear from our sponsors who make this show possible the future of social media is here and that future lives in web 3 on top of lens protocol web 2 social platforms are broken and right for disruption you see the epicenter of social media is the creators and yet they are the most neglected web 2 platforms like Facebook Tick Tock and Instagram are all essentially robbing creators of their worth creators are a new type of entrepreneur forming new types of businesses yet with web 2 platforms creators don't own their content to the profiles and that's their product in business instead they are tied to the platforms they choose to

create on well just like how crypto is freeing us from Banks web3 is freeing us from these centralized platforms on lens protocol all creators own their content own their profile and even their social graphic followers in the form of nfts this allows you to move freely from one social application to another with your content profile and followers moving along with you lens protocol enables self-sovereignty for your social graph and interoperability across the internet at web Theory Academy we believe this is the future of Social and that's why we've partnered with lens to ensure that the path of social media is heading in the right direction visit lens.xyz to learn more today what if I told you that industry Pioneers from Flagship web 3 Brands such

as consensus polygon binance Unstoppable domains Ledger and uniswap will all meet up in one place this summer you don't want to miss this I'm talking about the Epic web 3 conference taking place in beautiful Lisbon on the 9th of June with over 20 curated talks speed consultations with web3 experts networking sessions with investors and even the opportunity to raise funds this conference has it all and you'll get the tools you need to succeed in this industry plus we at Webster Academy will attend it hosts a community Meetup with you in the other smart Community before the main event so come along meet us Network and start building alongside leading web 3 innovators we can't wait

to meet you remember Lisbon Portugal 9th of June we've got a 15 discount for you but ticket prices go up every few days so get your tickets today by using the link in the show notes and to the promo code web3 Academy 15 to secure your spot or if you become a pro member you can get an even bigger discount so GoPro today and we'll see you in Lisbon Portugal the 9th of June at the Epic web 3 conference zenfest so host stoked to have you back on the show again since last July we had you on the show how are things going how you doing I'm doing well like last July honestly feels like decades ago at least years ago time in this space is weird I'm doing well though I'm happy to be

back how are you doing yeah I'm good I'm good that's very nice nobody asked me how I'm doing it if you're on these shots okay so today's gonna be a fun show we're gonna sort of have a conversation between the two of us as two business Founders you more on the start of your business with an nft and me I'm a little bit more vanilla and traditional and I took a while to put an nft into my business so maybe that's fear maybe that is a good decision but we'll talk about that so yeah I'm so curious you started Zen academy by launching an entity is that correct that's basically correct so I started Zen Academy I

created a Discord server and I called it Zen Academy and then I was gonna launch an nft and then I decided I didn't want to do that anymore and then I again decided all right let me do it and so we had a Discord for a few months and like a community around the Zen Academy idea but it really took off with the nft launch in November 2021. okay okay so yeah important to mention that it was November 2021 timing and everything yeah everything in this space let's actually just to give the context you started with the two collections both were 333 club and Genesis 333 was 333 Genesis was 10 000. Genesis was actually an open

Edition two-week open Edition uncapped Supply back before they were cool to do you did open Edition way before then the total supply of that ended up being seven 1848 so okay yeah okay and what was the mint phrase so for the 333 Club it was high 3.33 eth and that actually took about say six months to to Mint out it was a really slow mint the other one and which I'm really happy for the Genesis was 0.033 each so in the other direction it was back then a lot of projects were minting out at 0.1 ish so we went the cheaper option there and so both have been very successful both are above

their remain price both floors are about you go they are even now projects they can say that yeah I feel good about especially given how little we promised basically nothing under promised over deliver I think that was one of our keys to whatever success we've had so far so okay so what I want to discuss to start off the show is Looking Back Now two years almost well a year and a half later would you recommend that other businesses start by launching an nft and if yes or no what are the considerations that you would have to that process there's so many perspectives but I'll let you sort of start off yeah I mean there's so much

to this I generally think it's not the best idea and I would say in today's market it's a really difficult slog to do that however back in 2021 it was like a really easy way to gain funding and so that is a really good way to start a business as long as you're sort of transparent and honest with the people buying the nft as to what they're buying and one of the biggest problems in this entire space is mismatched expectations actually impossible expectations because you have often thousands of people buying nft everyone has different expectations everyone has a different reason for buying some people are buying because they like the art or they want to collect it some people are buying to flip it tomorrow or later the same day some people want to hold for a year etc

etc and so I think nft sales can be a good way to kick start a business if done well and I think 99.99 of the time it's not done well including ours like I don't think ours was a great there's a lot I would change but okay worked out you know we've made it work tell us more what would you've changed I guess I didn't even really think of it at the time as launching a business I was like I want to create a community and over time it obviously naturally inorganically evolved into a proper business where I was thinking about you know revenue streams and employing other people and all that kind of stuff but it really just started out I just wanted to bring together a community I had no romance I was like

I'm going to figure it out where I go from here and I would say it worked it served its purpose it's worked well I'm really thrilled with Where We Are but I think you know knowing what I know now I'd never been a Founder before this is my first business first startup all of that so I think everyone who's probably done multiple startups has that same thing where you do things a little differently going back and I would definitely do things a little differently I'll probably treat it either fully like a community or fully like a business and it was sort of been in this weird middle ground for a while like I think most projects are now I think we've got a lot more clarity about what we are and how we're operating but for a long time it was like I just figured out to go along and it worked

but I just have more knowledge now and I would do things definitely next time around yeah I think any founder who wouldn't do things differently yeah they either failed miserably and they don't want to talk about it or I don't know I don't think it's possible not to make mistakes okay so I actually want to touch base on this point you made of business versus Community because that's an interesting point I very much think about things from the business mindset and I agree with you if I were to start a business now not only because of the market conditions just in general I would not launch a token in the beginning whether it be nftl or fungible token that would not be where I would start and my own business is a good

example of that we at web3 Academy we didn't launch an nft until over a year into the business and even then our nft is tied to our newsletter premium subscription okay there's no art to it right it is a pure utility-based nft like I don't even know if I would call it an nft because it's buzzworthy and everybody wants an nft and it's great marketing but it took us a while to launch one because quite frankly in our case we were worried about the expectations of the holders and you know the best line I heard recently was when

lucanets was on overpriced jpegs and he said having nft holders is like having a startup and Equity holders all at the same time except your Equity holders don't have experience so it's not like they're coming to you being like oh here's the road map and the Playbook you know I've done this with 10 other businesses no they're just yelling at you to put the floor price yeah that sounds about right and you have thousands of them and you've thousands of them yeah before we go on this community thing though that's interesting maybe the one way that you would start with a token is if you were launching a community what is there a think of an example of that I feel like everything's a business to me that is yeah I think generally if you want to

build community I wouldn't advise launching a turkey and I think that just confuses things it just automatically adds money to the equation and unless you do it some other way there have been some good examples of GM down is one that comes to mind I think the founder just basically started giving out tokens to people who just engaged on Twitter and sort of seemed like good humans and he's just like one by one built this incredible community of people and then turned it into a proper Dow and then now they auction off some tokens for Treasury and all that kind of stuff but it really was built one by one from the ground up I think that's a good option but yeah I think if you're trying to build a community generally don't want to add Financial speculation into the mix especially early on it can obviously

work we've seen it work a bunch of times but it just makes things more difficult I mean I feel like this is where the free mint model has worked so well the problem is they don't stay free forever and oh yeah again it's like Freemans are great they're very Equitable and anyone can participate almost but then like with Goblin Town they went to a 90th floor and even if they get to like 0.5 East or 0.2 now you have people admitted for free and they have one set of expectations and then you have people that paid 0.2 or five eighth or whatever and they have different expectations and the other thing is that sure there's royalties or there was you know that's a

whole other topic but if you mint out at 0.05 and then the floor price runs up to three someone buys it either the founders or the team don't get three eth that you're buying it from another person but then they're sometimes thinking well I've just paid three ethernet I won three eighth worth of value when in reality you should only quote unquote expect what the original mint was plus potentially a little bit of royalty there's a tension there for sure later in the show I want to talk a bit about nft trading because I think both of us have perspectives on that okay let's see if we can come up with if you're launching a new business and you want it to be a web 3 business what's the three-step plan for a Founder to

launch that business what do you think the steps are and you don't have to give the three steps first of all start with why this is I think something really important everyone should do just think about why you're doing this what's I mean why do you want to start a business like that's the thing that a lot of people skip over that step in a way I did as well like I didn't set out to start a business I was like let me just experiment launch an nfts here with his leads and then I ended up creating a business I didn't necessarily set out to do that think about like product Market fit like how can you deliver value to other people you can't create a successful business unless you're offering something of value that other people want could be content could be a product could be

software it could be whatever think about those and then think about how you're going to make money all of these steps are before you even do anything to actually launch the thing before you open a bank account you've got to think measure twice cut once just think a lot before you actually start it and all these things are they're not unique to a web 3 business no not at all any business any organization you start I love that you mentioned start with why what's the why of Zen Academy the why was to help people and it's very general it's evolved originally it was to help people understand nfts and web3 because I had just gone through 2021 myself learning about this space and learning

curve is deep and I made a bunch of mistakes and I lost a bunch of money and it was just everyone I spoke to went through the same experience and we'd all had this instance where like a family member or a friend or a code worker comes up to us especially in 2021 when nfts were buzzword of the year and they're like hey you're into nfts I'm interested how do I get started and there was no good answer that there still aren't too many great answers but I wanted to provide a solution to that problem and situation so I thought let me help onboard people into nfts specifically that then expanded to web3 and crypto at large analysis expanding even further where it's like all right we're going to teach people about more than just this like AI is obviously the big thing now it's like emerging Tech

and like how to prepare for the future but also just how to I'm a big fan of philosophy so a lot of my writing is on how I think about the world and how to think and I think that people find Value in that so it's at its core it's literally just helping people and I think that if any business can do that then have a good chance to succeed you have to have a why when you start but you also have to understand it could easily change and it's fluid and product Market fit is one of the most important things and you mentioned that and in order to find product Market fit you need to look at both sides and there's the product that you make but there's also a market that you naturally attract a lot of businesses especially now where everybody is a Creator and a lot of

people can start a business off the backs of their platform right similar to what you did you know you have a platform on Twitter or whatever social media might be and so you have a lot of people that follow you and you want to create a and stuff that are a community off that well it's not just what you want it also what are your followers what is your audience what are they interested in and finding that fit is something that it takes time and it takes a lot of testing to figure it out yeah 100 it's a living organism and it's always about iterating and getting feedback from people and adjusting to the market and the world honestly the world is changing faster than it ever has and it's kind of keep

up or get left behind and we're really going to see that happen with AI yeah no kidding okay I have to mention quickly what's your web 3 definition I only bring this up because when you say AI I want to make sure that people understand that AI is part of web3 I'm guessing that you feel that way but tell me if it's interesting so my definition of web3 I'm not certain would Encompass AI but maybe so I think of web one as early days the internet where you can read content web 2 is read and write where you can add to social media and blogs and all that kind of stuff and then web 3 is read write and own where you now have the ability to own digital assets but coupled with that is the creator economy and I think AI unlocks the

creative economy but I wouldn't naturally I think group AI in web 3. so now I'm curious to know what you think so I sort of expand on what what you said I think of web 2 in two ways in terms of the Innovation that came with web 2 is it wasn't just the read write it was also mobile and the hardware that really created web to social media so when I think about web 3 I think about basically what are the emerging Tech that fit into the current time right and it just happens to be that there is I

don't know the exact number but I think Raul Paul said that there's like 10 emerging texts right now that are all happening at the same time right when the exponential age the first time we ever had this many so I would include crypto and blockchain and I'd probably keep them separate like I'd make them two separate categories nfts would fall within blockchain in my mind then I would include AI then I would include the hardware that's coming so VR AR hardware and even wallets might have a place in that like Hardware wallets or whatever happens with the future of wallets and then I would also include the future of like I guess this fits within AI like machine learning and

the future Hardware that's going to allow bigger computation which actually I think takes us to the metaverse probably and get this to that point yeah no I mean I think that's a very reasonable definition and I think that robotics as well is another one to throw in there right it's emerging technology yeah you can kind of think of the web as like these Generations I guess web one was you know the I guess really the 90s and the early 2000s you go back a little bit earlier web 2 was like kind of like 2000 six onwards or something it wasn't five six onwards and then 2020 onwards is probably when web 3 kind of 2021 I guess is the real boom and it's sort of like in 2017 obviously blockchain crypto blew up and

then it went away and there was very few people who stuck around that I think 2021 blew up and then went away but there's a lot more people people and companies so yeah I can definitely come around at that definition it's really interesting how everyone has to do it's like not something that is known what that makes me think of it and something like I always want to remind everybody of is we are so early like yes we know something that the rest of the world doesn't know like it's like you got invited to this secret party just by listening to this podcast just by being you know a crypto holder you got invited to a secret party that somehow you happened upon that the rest of the world is just they're not there yet and that's okay there's nothing wrong with that it's so important to remember because I

think that I know you talk a lot about mental health and it's very easy to feel like oh I'm so much fomo and I missed out and I [ __ ] up and like I'm not moving fast enough no you are so so early you're doing everything great like well done give yourself on the back you're here I was just gonna say the same thing especially if you're listening to this like in April 2023 most people have been watched out most people left and this is still the really early days okay so our three-step plan for a new business in web3 is going to be start with why product Market fit slash business plan bait like p l like how are you going to make Revenue yeah and

I kind of want to say that in my third step is participate in existing oh yeah and existing businesses like go find a business don't find an nft project find a business and you don't even necessarily need to buy the nft or buy their token but get involved and see how they are using tokenomics is obviously a key thing that you need to understand whether it be on the nft side or on the fungible token side you need to understand that and so and you got to participate you got to play with the tech right you've got to own you have to have a wallet you've got to be using these memberships using these nfts and just seeing the big thing is if you're using somebody's product and you find

which I think most people do that the ux sucks and it's difficult to use then the same thing will be true if you go and do that for your customers so be aware of that yeah a group all that in is like market research I think that is like perfect go and be a Community member yep there's no substitute and we see it all the time where someone and often people who have like tremendous web to experience they were like eight figure entrepreneur raised you know an exited five startups worked at Google all that kind of stuff they come in and they absolutely fall flat on their face in web 3 because they don't get it and they yeah miss the critical step step three actually then okay so Step One is let's start with why step two is market research and step three is join the 333

Club because that's the community that you need there you go yeah you know there's so many Founders in there that we will we will help you there you go yeah you gotta quickly explain actually 333 for everybody give everyone a breakdown so when I launched Zen Academy in November 2021 I had started doing some advising Consulting for projects a few months earlier and it was obviously a bull market but the demand or the amount of people that wanted to sort of bring me on as an advisor was far beyond what I could realistically work for like maybe at most I can be working three to four projects at once depending on how much time they're looking for I actually remember I put like a Google format and there were like 80 responses in 20 24 hours and it was like all right this is crazy and so my friend or friends who

are helping me with the smart contracts they were like what about putting you know a different tier in here because we were doing ERC 1155s it's a token touch it was easy enough to put a second option in there and I was pretty on the fence about I wasn't certain that it was justifiable that people would pay for it that is a good reason or a good thing but basically came around to the idea of well it is obviously not scalable for me to work with 300 Founders or even 50 but maybe I can put together a community of people where the goal is to bring together Founders Builders developers people who are serious about the space serious about building in the space to get some level of access to my time effectively so like give out some advisory services that way but also to

create this community where people get to know each other help each other support each other and that's basically what's happened over the course of because almost 18 months now I've done five to six hundred hours of calls with the community like one-on-one plus reducing group calls and things like that and then community members have gone off and done amazing things together so it's really just small intimate Community Builders and I think you said this to me before was you sort of tokenized your time which I thought was very very unique I haven't really seen other projects do that but I can see that being a use case in the future the only other example I remember was I think it was Carly from opj was talking about a tattoo artist who sold

all tattoos he was gonna do for the rest of his life as an nft so I kind of remember this yeah like 5 000 attack nfts and that's the only way you can get a tattoo from him it's sort of like tokenizing his time in a way yeah there's so much to that that I think we barely scratched the surface and I think we're going to see a lot more innovation in that area as time goes on cool okay let's move to an existing business and I think this is a good transition from 333 is Founders web 3 native businesses you also I know do Consulting and you work a lot with exist existing businesses whether they be tech companies or I'm sure you work with banks probably any company right many companies other Banks

yet other companies yeah well Banks should be calling you because they need help what's the Playbook or what's the three-step plan in your mind for an existing business to get into web 3 and to use web three the biggest thing is to have your why and think about what is your reason and every company is different some companies look at it purely is like oh is this an additional Revenue Source can we do something in this area to generate revenue for the company other people see it as the writing is on the wall that this is the future and they just want to dip their toes in and get some experience other people look at it as a way to really enhance their company and like I guess Empower their existing Community or find new community members and like build like with the community which is also a

really cool way all the people want to build out their IP and do that with so there's so many different reasons and a lot of the biggest failures I've seen is when you know a company has mismatched or misaligned expectations or it isn't clear on why they're doing what they're doing or especially this happens in like larger companies where there's like a hierarchical structure where the people at the top have a different idea than the people who are actually working on it and it's really a shame where the people at the top they're looking at as a revenue source and a revenue driver and then the people at the bottom they're like the actual web three djans and enthusiasts and they're putting together a project and you know this has happened even like this year where a really big company and then they're like we're in this terrible bear Market but

we have to raise five million dollars for the mint and you know if we don't because we've been working on it for 18 months and we first pitched in 2021 and our superiors are expecting this and if we don't do that they're going to shut down the whole web 3 thing and we're never going to do anything and then you realize the bureaucracy that's involved and how difficult it can be so I think just having the clarity between everyone working on it and realistic expectations is definitely the first step which is tough because most expectations at the top level are going to be tied to revenue and price profit so I think about it very much from the standpoint of all existing businesses they need to go through a learning phase so everybody in your team get a wallet start playing in the space start using nfts start

using Discord start testing these things out and learn and so you need to go through that phase first then I think the second phase is you need to test things I think a lot of the 10 000 collection was probably one of the worst things that happened nowhere did it say that had to be ten thousand like but everyone started doing it and you don't have to do 10 000 no you know I mean you can do open Edition I think open edition free mint or small free mint is the way I would go for any existing business just because you can get an entity into your user's hands and you can start to play around with okay what does an allow

us to do now because the other challenge is as you said there's so many use cases for this Tech it totally depends right on like you and I could rhyme off so many 10 different examples right now of how you could use this Tech and it would achieve different things from everything from you know customer feedback and engagement to Community to product development like there's so much literally everything tickets I mean odd Collectibles oh yeah okay so figure out your why get involved get involved get your hands dirty understand the space do you agree with my step three of launched something small is that what you would do not necessarily for I think that's a really good approach I think other approaches can work I am a big fan of free mints

especially if you're a very big well-established company especially because it's hard to disappoint like your expectations are low like you're never going to get too much backlash against a free minute but I think we've seen some examples like I always refer to Tiffany's what they did with the punk pendants it was like 25 8th mid price or something ridiculous and they're only 50 of them that is perfectly on brand for Tiffany's like if Tiffany's came out and did 10K they'd be like what are you doing but for them to do an exclusive small thing targeted towards like this premium luxury team like oh that kind of makes sense I would say maybe do something that like is in line with your brand and the Tiffany is that hyper exclusive high price point but I would say for most brands I think a free mint

and you know the marketing and the publicity and the lack of expectations is a very sensible approach the bringing up Tiffany's brings up another great Playbook which I think is Partnerships and collaborations right you don't even need to launch your own Community you can just I mean Tiffany's case they partnered with crypto punks crypto plus make a lot of sense very similar I wonder actually crypto function holders probably did previously by Tiffany's they probably are a bit more djan and a bit more I mean there's obviously like a newer crypto book holders but I would say the original communities probably I agree a bit more edgy than Tiffany's no I definitely agree the original but but

the partnership makes a lot of sense because crypto punks has become really the one of the leading Collections and if you're a crypto broncoder you want to flex your crypto Punk and as g-money said you want you know Flex is so important in Social Capital is so important that's why he made that famous thread years ago about buying his crypto Punk so yeah just to stay on collaboration and partnership any other thoughts on that did you find yourself recommending that as a pass yeah absolutely I think that no matter how you're looking into the space well who you are whether you're a big brand or a web 3 native project or somewhere in the middle Partnerships make the world go around there's so many win-win-win-win-win-win opportunities where you win the project you partner

with when their Community wins your community wins the space can win it's really magical and I think that yeah more of that more sensible Partnerships Gucci just partnered with Yugo and like that's like a big big thing and it seems cool and makes sense and got visibility on both of them and yeah we just more of that curious it just because you brought that up any idea what that's going to be no I honestly haven't really been paying attention I just saw the headline basically yeah and it really was just a headline and then an image that showed like a bottle of fluid and then had the other side logo and the Gucci logo on it so it's don't know what it's going to be the speculation I saw was that it was going to be something with Gucci's perfume line

so you might be able to buy like a perfume bottle that's other side branded and then maybe it somehow connects to Something in other side in the metaverse so I don't know which like maybe you buy the potion in the metaverse and then you get sent us a physical bottle of perfume or something like that would be pretty cool that would be cool like yeah or you just they start selling them in all their stores it's like other side is The Branding I don't think I've ever bought anything from Gucci in my life but I would buy that okay so Partnerships is a really great way to enter this space yeah really great way just while we're on Partnerships I want to tee you up on Zen Academy side I don't actually know apologies even though I am a proud member of Zen Academy I'm so busy that I

can't follow everything Partnerships on your end that you guys have been doing anything you want to talk about or share there well we did one like yesterday actually well two days ago we dropped with this web three most of our Partnerships I think almost all are with like web 3 native projects and companies this is Project called little Atlas and what they basically doing is they figured out or they built the infrastructure where you can take tokenized communities they have a world map so you log in with your nft you approve ownership and then you say where you are in the world and then it's this way to like get the community knowing where the rest of the community is it's so simple but it's so brilliant and then you can go in and you can organize meetups through the app natively you can chat to other people you can send gifts

and it's just like this way of like really bringing the community together so I'm very excited about that that's like I think for this month we're really going to put an emphasis on encouraging the community to meet you know yeah eat up with each other because that's like how you build a really strong community that there's actually before we announce this last week we were just chatting on we have a daily Twitter space Zen daily and one of the days we just asked the community hey what city from put in the comments and then go see if someone else is in your city and maybe you get to know them by the end of the week there were two people who had found each other from Bozeman Montana I think is the state like a 50 000 population and they were waiting for coffee and they'd found themselves

directly and then like that is amazing and I think that you know little atlas's partnership is really going to help encourage and amplify that so I'm I'm happy with this one I love that and I think it brings up a really interesting point for web 3 native projects is and I kind of want to like put this on a billboard and I want to be like just because I'm in web 3 does not mean I don't want to meet in person it's like everyone thinks that all of us you know I'm gonna put in air quotes all of us you know crypto nftp yeah we only want to hang out online and in the metaverse and it's like no like everybody needs in person in person is how communities are built we need both to happen yeah so I think that it's a

really good point and I see more of the communities and the nft projects air quotes the businesses that I'm a part of that are leaning into that are the ones that are succeeding and are growing yeah 100 like this well one that always comes to mind is Unchained monkeys they're like every single live event there's a bunch of them and they're always meeting up and they're amazing and it's always great to see I don't know on chain monkeys yeah no it's a cool project it's they were a free man actually I believe the coach is a free man but like 18 months ago very very cool project very cool okay let's keep going job Seekers creators and nft Traders I want to talk about each one of those categories businesses took longer than expected but hey this is the fun of

podcasting right okay let's talk about Job Seekers we have a lot of job seekers in web3 academy I think you do and Zen Academy I mean I think pretty much as we both said before we hit record today in any Community there's a lot of people that see this is an opportunity to advance their life and change their trajectory in their life through a new career by getting in early which I completely agree with so if you were looking for a job or you were advising somebody that was looking for a job in web 3 what would your three staff depth plan be for them it's so difficult to answer as a general thing because people are in vastly different situations so I'll try and group it into two buckets one is experienced professionals so this

might be someone who has 15 years of experience as a digital marketer but they've never been in web 3 and they want to get into web free or they're an artist or a creative or a this that or the other a lawyer or someone who just wants to be working in web3 actually I guess the approach is kind of the same where it's like you get be part of the Community Network get to know people and tell them that you're available and looking for whatever capacity that you're looking for so if you are a marketing professional reach out to project and be like hey you know I have this experience I'd love to work are you looking for any help and if you're not one of those experienced professionals let's say you're 17 18 19 or you know you don't have that much experience but

you have time on your hand then really just like again do the same thing jump into communities that you want to work for and be part of that community and just get to know the team and reach out to be like hey do you need any help with moderators do you need any help with Community managers what can I do what skills can you offer do you people creating memes creating content there's so many different ways you can find work but the best way is to be part of the community part of the space and go on Twitter spaces and talk to people and DM people and yes you're going to get a lot of Silence a lot of it's not going to necessarily go somewhere specifically but you'll make a lot of connections that do go somewhere and like that is to me the best way to find a job and the

third option is like just find job listing apply for them as well like those they do exist in web3 I think you kind of laughing right now because I don't know do those work I don't think I would ever tell anybody to apply to a job I've literally I've just been like who actually gets a job from a job listing like you get a job because you know somebody like even the job listing it's just because the hiring manager their bar was like you must do this the right way but I don't know I I've been asked this question probably 50 times I've literally never said job listing until just now because I'm starting to see it more and more and I think it probably is a an option it's probably more for the professionals like people who are looking for someone the one that's in my mind is D Gods they're

looking for like some creative director artist person they're like right eight years as an art director and all this kind of stuff and like all right if someone's looking for that sort of specialized role maybe they'll get it through a job listing but yeah you know every single person I've I've never put a job listing out and if I had 25 people so right yeah exactly so so if you want to work at Zen Academy join the community be in the Discord like I think everyone except maybe one or two would just like community members in the Discord and I got to know them and then yeah yes and I completely agree it's very interesting you put split it into like that that was a great categorization of experienced professional versus unexperienced because there definitely is a difference the thing that I always

want to make clear to people is that I think there's this tendency that when you when you want to get into a new industry or a new tech that you might feel behind but if you have a skill set even if it has nothing to do with web 3 like you have a marketing skill set or you have a finance skill set or a graphic design skill setting all of these things don't go away like all of these things are needed in web3 so you might not be able to you know talk the talk of like what an ERC 1155 is versus an ER 721a but like who cares I think mainly what I end up talking a lot about is like dropping the Imposter syndrome and recognizing that you actually you have a lot of value to add and so like

go forth confidently because you you don't need to be a blockchain expert there is already people in the company I actually think that is what most web3 native businesses need is non-web three people who can challenge their View and make them see it differently I totally agree and again we're starting to see this like the space is evolving and maturing a little bit you know back in 2021 it seemed that everyone was rejecting anything web2 like and they were like you know web 2 is bad we're going to do things our way in the new way and yes maybe there's some bad stuff in web true that you don't want to bring forward but like there's decades centuries of business knowledge and

experience that you should and marketing knowledge and accounting and all this kind of stuff that you should not just throw out and now we're starting to see all that stuff come trickling back into the space like paid marketing and affiliate marketing and referrals it was very frowned upon and shunned back in 2021 now people like oh kind of makes sense now oh these businesses they're looking for Revenue maybe it's not a bad idea if they take on you know ethical Affiliates or stuff like that totally totally okay I've just gotta ask since we're on the topic of jobs and just recorded a show earlier this week about Ai and if AI will take our jobs I don't want to go down that rabbit hole what I do want to ask the answer is yes

we're all out of jobs in a decade are you guys using chat GPT or any AI at Zen Academy can you tell us basically running the team uses chat GPT had the thought yesterday to just tell everyone to upgrade to gbd4 they haven't yet and the company will pay for it because it's the best 20 anyone can spend I think basically everyone is already using it because just they as soon as it was an option everyone like yes let's get on it but yeah absolutely I think you'd be stupid not to be using I basically in this like where we're at right now like I said before it's like keep up or get left behind and I am obsessed with AI and I talk about and think about it all the time and for how much I do that I actually don't use it myself that much

obviously I use Chad gbt basically every day for a couple things but I don't spend hours using it but there are members of the team who are using it for a variety of things you know content creation cost structuring we have a couple people in the team who English isn't their first language and they help them draft business emails and and there's just so many benefits you know we're exploring it as like not chat GPT but other AI for like video editing and how we use it for design and like we're working on a pfp project and we use so much mid-journey for like art concept art and so we're embracing it you as well I assume same same we were going to hire another person and we decided that chat GPT was our hire which made it very interesting because it forced us to

train chat GPT so we all approached it as we set up an account that we all share a chat gpt4 account that we all share and within that account we have specific chats where we have trained PT in it in its task basically so you can go in and you know like this chat is for this task it's been trained if you ask it to write an email for example it knows to give you a subject line it knows to give you headers in our style whatever it might be because that I think is one of the things that a lot of people are I I think there's a classic with new tech they download chat GPT they use it once and I actually usually

a new tech you use it once and you're like that was awful I have no idea what I was doing Chad gvt might be the only one where you use it once and you're actually like whoa that was wild but then when you start to try to use it it's not easy right I keep thinking of the first person that's gonna have on their LinkedIn that prompt engineer or prompt analyst is going to be their title on LinkedIn that is going to be a thing I'm sure and I'm sure it already is it is such a valuable skill today I'm just cautious that in a year it might not be like because AI has improved so much that you don't even need to prompt it as much because currently you have to play around ask it additional things and be like Oh in this style oh if you're

talking to a 15 year old or an eight-year-old or be more professional or be more casual et cetera et cetera I suspect that before long you will have to input less for it to understand what you're actually asking for and it'll take much less prompting to get the output that you're you're after plus there'll be so many resources out there of like the types of prompts to use or there'll be like layers built on top of it so I think prompt Engineers are like one of the most in-demand things in the world right now and probably the best way you can spend your time is by being better at that I don't know what a good example is but like yeah in the early days of like website creation knowing HTML and like how to do that was like very in demand and then like WordPress

came along yeah oh I guess we don't need that anymore as much so I think it's probably something similar interesting that's a good take let's do nft Traders next and then we'll see if we have time for creators before we talk about what the three-step plan should be for nft Traders let's just talk about the market as a whole how many people do you think are nft Traders right now of the current market size of nfts is it 90 something like that is it mostly nft Traders they're causing all the volume if we talk about volume in terms of amount of eth or money being turned over 98 of that is by day Traders active

Traders if we talk about the number of people who own an nft then like you said Reddit and people who bought one a year ago and it left the space they still have one it's a much smaller percentage let's say the people who are actively involved in interacting with the space so I'd say it probably don't include most people who haven't read nft that they've never actually self-custody people who are like checking in on Twitter and jumping into Discord there's maybe like 50 000 of us active at the moment it's Bleak I would say maybe 70 to 80 percent would consider them an energy Trader okay okay and does nft trading make sense is it a good idea like is it a profitable thing to do it is a terrible idea for

95 ish percent of people just like day training day trading is a terrible idea for emotions like yeah most people can't do it most people vastly overestimate their own abilities and underestimate the Market's abilities and people think that they're good at it and honestly for a long time the market will you know you'll get lucky or you'll be right place right time and all that kind of stuff in reality honestly it's like temperament more than anything else and the ability to think logically and remove yourself from the emotional side of things but also analyze projects and know when to get in and it's like it's not for most people and as I said earlier I believe that we're early and I really do believe that we all know

something that the rest of the world doesn't yet know but that does not apply to energy trading if you're not a teacher you do not know something that the rest of the world knows in fact you know nothing and you're just trying to keep up and trying to respond to really a very irrational Market at least with day trading and not that I have experiences a day trader but at least with day trading there's a little bit more predictability but with nft trading I mean culture plays into it which never really played into stocks before and culture can a meme can make it nft Fly and you know soar up so yeah yeah it's unpredictable it's wild it's irrational

to the maximum extreme well I it was more irrational in 2021 it's still irrational just like slightly less now but yeah it's just not a good way for most people to spend time we're both saying that nobody should do this so there's day trading nfts there's collecting them because you like them yes only them for the utility there is also you can buy them from the perspective of investing in them but not as a Trader you could be like all right I'm going to buy these nfts that I think will have value cultural value or historical value or artistic value or utility value 10 years from now 20 years from now and I think that there are a reasonable percentage of people that are

in that bucket they wouldn't consider themselves Traders it's more like Buy and Hold it's like people who dollar cost average into eth Bitcoin the S P 500 maybe they allocate a bit of money into buying a little bit of art or a few nfts here and there and that's probably a good strategy for more people put five percent of your portfolio in nfts don't put 95 like a lot of people tend well the problem is that nfts are they're so fun it was the first digital ownership is very fun amazing and only a fungible token isn't fun right so you have all these people who own eth and all of a sudden the value of their eth went up considerably and if you're sitting on

easy it's kind of boring you know and then you've got these cool cultural pieces that you know yeah sure maybe it's just a monkey JPEG but it's got a lot of value and it's more fun to own that and it gives you social credit and you can show it off and so what I've seen a lot of people do is they just had a lot of Youth and now it's like every time they get eat they'd all across average in the East and then they just end up buying nfts oh yeah especially again in 2021 it was impossible to have eth in your wallet and not immediately eat it into jpegs it's just yeah there's a point in time when I was obviously out of eighth I had all my money in nfcs all my crypto rather than cheese and then there was a new nft that was minting or

just like I was like oh I gotta get this oh I have to buy on secondary and it's time is of the essence but I have no all right let me go all right what am I on the floor and what am I going to put and maybe accept a bid and then I was going through this and then I don't know if it was like during it or later I realized I had fungible tokens that I could just sell for eth like I had like uni tokens like all these other stuff that like and Link and I was like why am I well why don't you do that and oh there's other ways to get eat I literally thought there was only eth and jpegs that existed in my world and then I was like oh yeah that that would have been smarter rather than

it was a wild time curious how do you personally think now about your Investments your portfolio in what respect do you see yourself as like a Trader or collector right right how many entities do you own you must own too many yeah thousands yeah I guess I'll go first I think about it much more as I believe in investing in certain blockchains is like investing in the future of the internet which you couldn't have done but if you could have bought the internet in yeah the 90s you would have right yeah and buying blockchains the reputable ones that you know the Bitcoin polygon there's a few a handful I believe very strongly and

those and it feels like they're too big to fail now this is not investment advice and like I'm no expert but that's what it feels like yeah whereas like buying nft it's like trying to pick the one business in the early 90s at the start of the internet it was going to make it right it's more risky like maybe you might get it right but there's also going to be a lot that fail right so that's my my general investment philosophy when I think about crypto yeah that is an excellent analogy I hadn't heard it that's brilliant and I'm definitely stealing it it's exactly how it is I think that nfts are extraordinarily risky they're like you know penny stocks in the 90s Penny

internet stocks and like some of them can 100x some of them can a thousand X most of them will go to zero and that's definitely what we've seen happen and we'll see continue to happen so I guess I bought a lot in 2021 I held more than I should I think like most people did and in hindsight would have sold the top or sold more to the top but I was very fortunate regardless in 2021 I now I don't trade almost at all anymore and I haven't for many months running a business creating fun all the other stuff it was just there's not enough time but I will occasionally buy things that I really like with the view to hold or just maybe as an investment or just because I think that you know I just

like the art or something else for the most part I've just been slowly selling for the last many many months I think it was like the Marie condoing of my like digital assets I just want to clean them up and just you know not worry and have fewer collections on my mind and honestly I've been saying this literally since 2021 but I've only more recently actually started to sell in the last I would say six months I've started selling and I'm going to continue selling throughout the year just to clean it up the mental space especially when coming back to the ux thing is if you're not following you miss out you might miss an airdrop you might miss something that's happening in the community you know

that's why nfts to me is not like stock trading it's not only is a financial asset it also is this community key whatever it is it's something with utility and who has the time to be involved in all of that like yeah are there any projects that you find yourself actively I mean I know you're in you guys ecosystem you have a bunch of their nfts like did you do play dookie Dash like are you doing I'm not active in almost any Community I played the bare minimum I needed to play just to get the activating the things but my partner fiancee she was playing and she loved she played on my computer and like got higher medium scores or decent scores and so that was it because I

didn't have the time or wasn't super inclined to spend a bunch of time playing and that's how it is for almost every single project yeah I used to be as soon as like three four months ago pretty active in like the proof room Birds ecosystem and the art blocks our blocks is like my second home I've been very inactive in our blocks even for six months now I miss it but it's just there's too much happening all the time and that's kind of why I think so many projects fizzle out because there were so many projects buying for your attention and if you have your own project and then you have a life outside of crypto and web3 and nfts there's just not enough hours in the days you have to pick and choose and I think that yeah I really don't pay that much attention to

too many the memes by 6529 is increasingly becoming one of my favorite projects and collections because it doesn't really require it does in the sense that you have to stay on top of when the mints are each day and like each week but in terms of like actually holding the nfts and just there's no roadmap really it's just like I'm just going to hold these and hope in 10 years that the cultural artifacts it's just art right like basically yeah explain meme lab it's what he calls it right so meme lab is a new extension that they launched only a few months ago or a couple months ago but the memes by 6529 he launched this the memes yeah yeah the memes yeah yeah I think like mid last year and effectively it was just a way to propagate like memes as nfcs there's a list of like different types of memes

like C is the means of production is one not your keys not your crypto is another and so on and he gets amazing artists like some of the best artists in the entire space to create these pieces sells them for a very very affordable price 0.06529 Ethan always and they're all cc0 so people can do whatever they want with them and propagate them and there's been a lot of them there's been like 80 different memes released of course the last seven eight months and there's no indication of slowing down there's like every quarter I think there's going to be another set and you know you would imagine just goes on forever and the idea is to get these meme spreading and like the best example

you could possibly imagine happened about 12 to 24 hours ago Elon Musk tweeted one of them sees the memes of production and nft meme it's got 6529 on it the full price of these things shot up from like one eighth to nine eight ninety Within an hour now they're back to one each as you'd always expect I think Elon went in went through and actually deleted that tweet maybe he didn't even know that it was a nft probably and probably not but that's the entire point of what 6539 is doing is like to propagate these ideas and he's doing an excellent job of it and he's my favorite person in the space I think so one of my favorite people I would say cool okay let's talk about creators quickly and Creator is probably

the hardest we left the hardest one to last I think I'll let you go first if you have thoughts on if you're a Creator and you can decide whether you want to pick a category of creators you want to speak to them all what would be your recommendation to them as a three-step plan to utilize web 3 Tech yeah when you say Creator I always think artist but it's obviously not necessarily you could be a project founder as a Creator you could be a developer in creating you know tools and stuff like that but it always comes down to the same thing as like start with why think about why you're doing this and to use artists as an example there's a lot of reasons an artist might come into web3 it could be to make money it could be to sell their

work to a different audience it could be to connect to people all around the world it could be to money is not even part of it it's just this new technology that they're interested and curious about and to do that and it could be to engage and connect with other artists and and all that kind of stuff so just have that Clarity is the first one I would start with what's so interesting about the advancement of tech is as Tech advances it becomes easier and easier to start a business but also to be a one-man show really that's what the Creator economy is is all of a sudden you had millions of people who were making money all on their own that you couldn't have

done that 10 20 years ago you didn't have the ability to you know make video content or make written content and then have millions of people read it right you would have had to have had an outlet that had that audience and had that traffic and so I think if you're a Creator whatever it is whether you're an artist or any type of Creator but I also think about it like I think about it like artists and I also include like the influencer social media category content creator yeah content creator yeah yeah this is your opportunity to cut more middleman out right and so I'm not actually sure when I would launch something in in the space that I'm kind of hung up on like if I was a visual

artist that feels easy like I would just start making nfts and just see how it goes and that feels simple but others if I was a content creator I'd be trying to use web3 platforms although I probably wouldn't push too hard into them because you access so [ __ ] yeah just a bit early you know it's a bit early exactly but I would try to experiment so I'd be like on lands on Far Caster like trying to experiment with them or if I'm a musician I'd be calling up Ticketmaster and trying to be the next one for what event Sevenfold did and yeah that was like the next beta for that like yeah it feels less clear what the Playbook is yeah next point I was gonna make is sort of again this applies to everyone but

have like relatively low expectations and like don't come in thinking that web 3 is going to be the answer and solve everything and you know it's going to be the way to like unlock all this amazing potential it has the power to do that but we're very early the UI is clunky the space is small it's going to change a lot but it's the time to be understanding the technology because when the next wave comes when adoption happens when it all takes off you don't want to be jumping in then with 100 million other people trying to figure it out you want to be one of the you know 100 000 people that were here before and you already know what's up and how to Mint an nft and sell this thing or token gate your content or you know whatever it is that you're trying

to create and something 6529 says always is that everyone should mint their own nft just try it and it's easy to do there's a lot of no code platforms out there you don't need to be a Dev there's basically like the WordPress of smart contracts it already exists in multiple forms going in an nft see what it's like and deploy your own contract it's something that you know everyone should do I love that I love your point about managing expectations because it sort of takes us back to the first topic of don't do this for Revenue because if you do this for Revenue you're probably doing it for you're gonna do the wrong reasons p b you could be very disappointed in the results I hope that everybody approaches this more as yeah

like we're okay losing money on this but by being there more opportunities will come if you're in the game you got a chance to win if you're not even playing you don't have a chance to win but if you expect that by winning you're gonna make a bunch of money then dangerous 100 under promise over deliver even when you're thinking about yourself that's right okay let's put a wrap on this we talked about Zen Academy but how can people join what do you want people to do how can they follow you online give your show yeah no appreciate it so with Zen Academy there's a few places to go but if you're new to nfts we have this email course designed that's called 30 days of nfts 3-0 the numbers and then

days of nfts 500 Days of nfts.com go enter your email address that's it every day you'll the next month you'll get an email teaching you what an nft is what a blockchain is what a wallet is how to set it up I say it's like safe for your parents and it really is the answer to that question that I had when I set out 18 months ago it's like where do you send people who first they come to you and ask about nfts of nfts.com otherwise at Zen Academy on Twitter zenacademy.com love to enjoying the Discord actually we have a free nft on zenacademy.com forward slash enroll or go to the main site and you'll see a link there student IDs so this is free for everyone they're soul-bound so you can't trade them there's no Financial speculation but it's our way to give everyone access to

an nft and that will get you so a few perks actually in our Discord and with our partners so that's where I direct people to and then there's so much more to dive into if you're curious but how does 30 days of nfts going by the way is there can you share some numbers yeah it's going well about 7 000 people have taken it we launched in I think early December so it's been like four months and do you get a completion certificate or anything not yet that is the plan is to incorporate certificates actually we had this whole badge system and the student IDs and and stuff like that not yet but we have like all the emails so you know if you've taken it you'll probably get a follow-up email at some point in the future saying hey because you've finished the 30 you got all 30 days you

can go and maybe do a quiz and then get access to this thing amazing amazing okay for one final question I was checking out our last episode I don't I think I probably asked you this question I don't remember what you said but I'm sure you don't remember either because the last time we spoke was like six months ago which is it's six years forever but this pose on your philosophical mind if you had a billboard that one billion you didn't ask me this to see what would you write on it I don't remember what I said last time I think I do remember being unsure of what to say I was like oh I don't know but I have a very clear answer this time pay attention to AI I would use all of the space to tell people however I can you are not paying

enough attention it is going to change the way World in unimaginable ways almost no one is prepared and you need to almost wake up and pay attention it is Paradigm altering I think I'm in a bubble of technology and people are crazy about Ai and even within this bubble I don't think I think most people are not taking it seriously enough so I think that if you look at the world there's seven billion 900 million people who are not taking AI seriously enough yeah oh like that's good you're the first person to say that that's for sure okay man this is awesome as always an absolute pleasure thanks for the time thanks for everything you do in the space deep bow we'll look forward to the next time we get you back on thank you

so much it was a real pleasure thanks so much for listening everybody have a great day thank you for listening to web3 Academy we hope this helps you along your web 3 Journey if it does please share this episode And subscribe so you don't miss the next one nothing in this podcast was Financial advice crypto and web 3 can be risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets and price and focus on utility and implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as Financial advice thank you friends and see you in the next one