Crafting Winning Strategies for the NFT Marketplace with Arvin Khamseh | S3 E44

WEBVTT
00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:03.876
If you go put your head under water at some point you have to give in.
00:00:03.876 --> 00:00:05.464
You have to come up and just breathe.
00:00:05.464 --> 00:00:10.470
You can't just keep saying I'm gonna will it because I said I'm gonna do five hours, I'm gonna do it.
00:00:10.470 --> 00:00:11.592
It just doesn't work.
00:00:11.592 --> 00:00:21.931
So the example in web three what I've seen a lot of times happen is, let's say, a founder, come in, grab the team and they're like we think we're gonna spend two months on this project.
00:00:22.841 --> 00:00:26.571
Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast.
00:00:26.571 --> 00:00:34.549
My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm excited to be joined by Arvin Khamseh.
00:00:34.549 --> 00:00:35.451
Arvin, how are you
00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:37.682
Thank you for having me.
00:00:39.240 --> 00:00:41.220
Happy to have you on the show, guys.
00:00:41.220 --> 00:00:45.951
If you don't know, Arvin and I will have a look at your LinkedIn profile.
00:00:45.951 --> 00:01:05.742
What I read on the headline is that you are a globally recognized NFT marketing expert 50 million plus sold out in crypto marketing, 81% success rate in web three marketing which sounds impressive too, and you're also into investor relationship marketing so all subjects.
00:01:05.742 --> 00:01:07.989
That is really interesting for my listeners.
00:01:07.989 --> 00:01:16.965
Arvin, this was a really short intro, so I give you also the floor, the opportunity to give a bit more, tell a bit more about your background and what you're doing right now.
00:01:17.106 --> 00:01:17.808
Yeah, absolutely.
00:01:17.808 --> 00:01:37.787
I started with marketing specifically paid ads for, started with very small businesses, even startups, even local businesses, and then made my way into larger businesses, saas companies with lots of budget, then public companies with even way more budget, all the way to 500K months advertising spending.
00:01:37.787 --> 00:01:50.194
And then, around 2021 ish, I was introduced to NFTs, let's say, in a very supposed professional way.
00:01:50.194 --> 00:01:57.009
So some artists actually came to me and was like hey, can you use this paid ads that you could with just use it in in the web three?
00:01:57.009 --> 00:01:59.385
And no one done that at that time.
00:01:59.385 --> 00:02:02.087
And then I thought, okay, cool, I give it a shot.
00:02:02.087 --> 00:02:03.829
Didn't know much about it, but I told him.
00:02:03.829 --> 00:02:12.949
I said, look, if you just tell me what the product is, who your buyers are, what problem you're solving, blah, blah, blah, I'll be able to run some ads and then help you sell out.
00:02:12.949 --> 00:02:14.885
And so he sold out fairly quickly.
00:02:14.885 --> 00:02:28.584
And then that really was the, the proof of concept where I thought, oh, cool, so there's a something I know from a different vector, from a different industry, that I can bring to the web three.
00:02:28.584 --> 00:02:30.282
And then I brought it in.
00:02:30.704 --> 00:02:33.031
Of course, strategies change.
00:02:33.031 --> 00:02:43.907
I think strategies in web three have a shelf life around two to three months, but we got really popular for selling out NFTs and then that's when, so that NFTs was born.
00:02:43.907 --> 00:02:47.729
And then, of course, that was the bull market.
00:02:47.729 --> 00:02:49.907
A lot of people were selling in a lot of NFTs.
00:02:49.907 --> 00:02:54.711
It was high P and he wasn't as hard to even sell NFTs.
00:02:54.730 --> 00:03:01.689
To be honest, it was somewhat simple and at that time I remember a lot of projects will come in.
00:03:01.689 --> 00:03:06.729
Some of them didn't even know why they're there in the in the space, but they will come in.
00:03:06.729 --> 00:03:10.588
They had an idea, they had a promise they would sell out fast forward.
00:03:10.588 --> 00:03:14.931
We went to a bear market instead of changing our titles, becoming something else.
00:03:14.931 --> 00:03:18.248
Ai was that was big at that time during the bear market.
00:03:18.248 --> 00:03:26.467
So there was obviously the shiny opportunity of just completely switching and course correcting, going into something else, but we didn't.
00:03:26.467 --> 00:03:27.383
So we stayed on.
00:03:27.383 --> 00:03:29.425
We sit on inside the NFTs.
00:03:29.425 --> 00:03:39.689
Obviously, we expanded on working with tokens, with working with apps inside, with three web two companies wanting to come into web three, all sorts of things inside the web three.
00:03:39.689 --> 00:03:45.609
But that's all we've been doing and we continue to do so as we're approaching the upcoming bull run as well.
00:03:46.931 --> 00:03:48.806
Yeah, it's lovely to hear that you see the.
00:03:48.806 --> 00:03:54.247
Of course, every time after a bull run, we have the bear market and then there is a bull again.
00:03:54.247 --> 00:03:55.242
That's how it goes.
00:03:55.242 --> 00:04:03.008
But of course, because of that, because of the market changes also you mentioned, the strategies are changing so fast.
00:04:03.008 --> 00:04:08.009
So how have you seen everything evolve since the bull market to the bear market?
00:04:08.009 --> 00:04:11.586
And, yeah, how have your strategies been?
00:04:11.747 --> 00:04:12.269
adapted.
00:04:12.269 --> 00:04:18.682
This is a somewhat very exciting industry and sometimes very frustrating for service providers.
00:04:18.682 --> 00:04:28.245
So there's a side of my business that's about providing services, providing advising, consulting, source that, those kinds of stuff and I have my own collection as well.
00:04:28.245 --> 00:04:33.968
So I don't just talk about how to do a collection I have, I'm building my own as well on the side.
00:04:33.968 --> 00:04:37.041
So those are the two sides of it, I suppose, my business.
00:04:37.101 --> 00:04:47.250
But everything that we've done since 2021 worked for, let's say, two, three months, and then we were to completely change the strategies.
00:04:47.250 --> 00:04:51.769
So, let's say, at the very beginning, it was all about community.
00:04:51.769 --> 00:04:52.831
Everyone was so excited.
00:04:52.831 --> 00:04:58.673
Let's just build a huge discord, community and then about a third of those people would buy the NFTs.
00:04:58.673 --> 00:05:07.791
Very simple, just because as long as you had some people essentially as long as you had eyeballs on your project enough eyeballs and a percentage of them would just buy.
00:05:07.791 --> 00:05:09.985
That was really just the short of it.
00:05:10.166 --> 00:05:12.524
At the very beginning, I didn't know what's going to change.
00:05:12.524 --> 00:05:13.749
I thought that's it.
00:05:13.749 --> 00:05:17.110
I got into this and I just went full force, just thinking, oh, this is great.
00:05:17.110 --> 00:05:18.706
I just kept going, just doing that.
00:05:18.706 --> 00:05:19.964
I was like, no, this is amazing.
00:05:19.964 --> 00:05:22.384
But obviously I found out soon.
00:05:22.384 --> 00:05:26.447
That's not the case, we would have to keep changing the strategies.
00:05:26.447 --> 00:05:29.809
So later on we started doing something else.
00:05:29.809 --> 00:05:41.000
We started actually, instead of just building discord, we would then actually use influencers a lot more, and then that also didn't last more than two, three months Past.
00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:42.427
That we would have to change again.
00:05:42.427 --> 00:05:52.706
Then we started using influencers, community and paydads, and then that also stopped working and we changed that again to just paydads.
00:05:52.706 --> 00:05:54.050
That worked for a while.
00:05:54.050 --> 00:05:55.324
Then it stopped working as well.
00:05:55.324 --> 00:06:05.677
So essentially we had to keep changing the strategy, potentially because the narrative in the industry keeps changing.
00:06:06.105 --> 00:06:07.648
It's not that just people.
00:06:07.648 --> 00:06:18.156
It's partly because people getting more sophisticated as they go through this supposed changes, but also partly because what they care about also changes over time.
00:06:18.156 --> 00:06:20.831
And it's very annoying, to be honest.
00:06:20.831 --> 00:06:38.516
Run a business every two, three months, all your processes become irrelevant, and then, if I am the one that coming up with these processes every time I team, we have to start again from just training them from scratch, and so it's not as simple as it looks, maybe from the outside.
00:06:38.516 --> 00:06:46.910
Like other businesses, you come up with a process and that process potentially that process has been around for years and then you just maybe perfected it.
00:06:46.910 --> 00:06:58.108
Maybe it's like an improved offer, maybe your offering is better or maybe you perfected certain things, but it's pretty much the same concept that you work with Versus.
00:06:58.148 --> 00:07:07.137
For us, like every few months, we just literally have to just say, okay, what's special about the way it worked in the past?
00:07:07.137 --> 00:07:17.795
And then just take on, basically deconstruct the reasons why people buy inside the Web3, and then come back to the core and then just create something new with it.
00:07:17.795 --> 00:07:22.704
Just be like okay, so if that's true, if those there's certain concepts are always going to be true, right.
00:07:22.704 --> 00:07:23.105
So what?
00:07:23.105 --> 00:07:23.928
For example, what?
00:07:23.928 --> 00:07:25.533
Why people invest on something?
00:07:25.533 --> 00:07:29.315
That is, if they're going to be thinking, what am I going to make my money back?
00:07:29.315 --> 00:07:32.625
Right, or how long is it going to take for me to make my money back?
00:07:32.625 --> 00:07:36.874
And maybe two Xs, three Xs, something like that, right, so those concepts are always going to be the same.
00:07:36.874 --> 00:07:46.504
But then if we really go back to those kind of concepts that are just always true, then come back and just create another look for how we're going to market.
00:07:46.504 --> 00:07:48.031
That's basically been the game.
00:07:48.850 --> 00:08:00.877
Yeah, it's challenging, of course, two, three months but so I imagine you should have good analytics in place and testing, and because if you change the strategy like that, it's not always sure that it will work.
00:08:00.877 --> 00:08:05.201
If you saw you, I guess you're your big data that you're using right.
00:08:05.302 --> 00:08:06.125
That's actually a really good question.
00:08:06.125 --> 00:08:07.812
So I soon figured that out.
00:08:07.812 --> 00:08:13.593
I realized I was like, okay, and I didn't always have my own collection, so I couldn't always just test it on my own first.
00:08:13.593 --> 00:08:26.725
So then I realized I was like, okay, if that's the case where no one knows what's the next thing, what's the next solution, and everyone's just wondering about things In the bull market, no one was wondering.
00:08:26.725 --> 00:08:27.548
It was very simple.
00:08:27.548 --> 00:08:29.524
Right In the bear market, now everyone was wondering.
00:08:29.524 --> 00:08:31.285
I was like, okay, so what is the solution?
00:08:31.285 --> 00:08:34.053
How do we get the word out for this project?
00:08:34.053 --> 00:08:36.850
And just so, I guess, give it some insight.
00:08:36.870 --> 00:08:37.773
You talked about analytics.
00:08:37.773 --> 00:08:38.816
Give some insight to people.
00:08:38.816 --> 00:08:43.556
So on Ethereum alone, it's somewhere around 150,000 collections.
00:08:43.556 --> 00:08:50.304
So long, let's say, half of that or a little bit more, maybe 80,000, 90,000 collections.
00:08:50.304 --> 00:08:52.813
So you have to be able to stand out right.
00:08:52.813 --> 00:08:54.669
So there's not that many.
00:08:54.669 --> 00:08:57.417
There's not that many wallets, active wallets online.
00:08:57.417 --> 00:09:06.610
So maybe there's 2 million, something like that, total and you've got to be able to actually sell to all of those same people and they've probably bought something in the past.
00:09:06.610 --> 00:09:11.490
Some of them, some of them maybe they haven't, but some of them they already bought, so they have their own experiences.
00:09:11.490 --> 00:09:15.913
So maybe they're salty, maybe they're jaded, and then you have to actually speak to that too.
00:09:15.913 --> 00:09:27.393
You have to speak to the previous experiences as well, and so the point is, the analytics of things is also something that's not really easy to calculate because there's no website.
00:09:27.393 --> 00:09:32.669
There's like maybe one or two websites out there that they actually produce the analytics of, for example, nonfungiblecom.
00:09:32.669 --> 00:09:43.556
I believe they do that, but the problem is you don't really have like there's certain things that they're interested to research and find the numbers, but it's not the same as what we would want to research.
00:09:43.725 --> 00:09:44.850
I'll give you an example of that.
00:09:44.850 --> 00:09:49.517
So there was a strategy where we would do a lot of whitelist strategy.
00:09:49.517 --> 00:10:06.015
So for audience, if they don't know what whitelist are essentially, if you think about people who are somewhat privileged in making a purchase decision for your product whatever that is, that being at an earlier time, they buy it, or maybe at a cheaper price, or maybe they can buy more, so on and so forth.
00:10:06.015 --> 00:10:09.715
Or maybe they get some more benefits and maybe cheaper, so on and so forth.
00:10:09.715 --> 00:10:20.333
Now, for that, there was a platform at the time that everyone was using, and I was actually remember I was going speaking at different events and I was just telling everyone be like, okay, just use this platform.
00:10:20.333 --> 00:10:21.870
They have their own community as well.
00:10:21.870 --> 00:10:29.138
You can use their traffic, you can bring your own traffic there and, being able to actually do really well with your whitelist, let's convert them.
00:10:29.245 --> 00:10:40.011
But then later on I actually had to actually calculate myself to see what percentage of that Whitelisters would actually become a buyer.
00:10:40.011 --> 00:10:44.684
At the very beginning in the bull market used to be like about 50 to 80 percent.
00:10:44.684 --> 00:10:50.136
As as we actually approached the bear market and inside the bear market, that percentage went down.
00:10:50.136 --> 00:10:55.436
He got to the point where somewhere around, let's say, 7% of people would buy.
00:10:55.436 --> 00:10:58.432
And it's not easy For anyone.
00:10:58.432 --> 00:11:07.739
If you, let's say, if you have 10,000 wallets that are Whitelisters and AR wasn't that big, by the way, that time, now you can upload things on on chat, GPT and just have it work for you.
00:11:07.739 --> 00:11:15.548
At that time it wasn't, so we had to actually manually do some of these things and figure out the analytics, because no one else knew that.
00:11:15.587 --> 00:11:19.524
The answer to that question so how, what percentage of whitelist are gonna convert?
00:11:19.524 --> 00:11:23.780
So if you don't know the answer to that question, then you'd be like, okay, I have some whitelist there's.
00:11:23.780 --> 00:11:24.684
What does that mean?
00:11:24.684 --> 00:11:25.687
Is that enough?
00:11:25.687 --> 00:11:26.551
Is it not enough?
00:11:26.551 --> 00:11:27.253
Should I test it?
00:11:27.253 --> 00:11:28.176
I don't want to test it.
00:11:28.176 --> 00:11:33.340
I spend already, let's say, close to six figures building my collection inside the web 3.
00:11:33.340 --> 00:11:37.232
Or it could be any products really, maybe token or NFT or whatever that is.
00:11:37.232 --> 00:11:39.260
I don't want to test it.
00:11:39.260 --> 00:11:40.104
I want to know.
00:11:40.104 --> 00:11:51.638
Right, I want to go into the, that public sale, with confidence, knowing I have enough backers, I have enough people to buy it and buy it quickly, because that's another thing with web 3, you have to have people buy quickly from you.
00:11:52.386 --> 00:11:57.284
So anyways, out of all those things, I kept doing these things on my own.
00:11:57.284 --> 00:11:59.609
Obviously, I had a team and they were helping me.
00:11:59.609 --> 00:12:07.831
But, and what I realized is it's not a one-man and it's not even a one-brand kind of thing, it's more of a lots of different.
00:12:07.831 --> 00:12:13.070
If you have lots of different brands all together, we would do certain experiments.
00:12:13.070 --> 00:12:13.971
We wouldn't have to.
00:12:13.971 --> 00:12:17.219
We wouldn't have to actually repeat the same mistakes of each other.
00:12:17.219 --> 00:12:20.735
We would actually be able to collect data a lot quicker.
00:12:21.807 --> 00:12:25.664
So then I realized I was like, okay, I have all these brands that are advised.
00:12:25.664 --> 00:12:34.837
What if I pull all of them together and just have them talk, and so we would do a weekly call where everyone would just essentially bring their own information.
00:12:34.837 --> 00:12:40.528
They would do something, and I would rather them not doing the same thing, I would rather them doing different things.
00:12:40.528 --> 00:12:45.899
So we could quickly get to the solution and at the, at some point it gets to a.
00:12:45.899 --> 00:13:02.845
You get to a realization where you're like okay, I don't mind also trying out if we know it's like a team of people, we're all trying different solutions, where if one of us figures it out, then it's much better than me on my own just trying a bunch of things and potentially I could die in the in the web theory.
00:13:02.845 --> 00:13:03.788
Right, I'm not a money.
00:13:03.788 --> 00:13:04.812
I thought that would be the end of me.
00:13:05.466 --> 00:13:16.626
But so that's what we did and we could come up with solution a lot faster because we could iterate and Come up with a theory between all these brands and then just say, hey, let's just do this.
00:13:16.626 --> 00:13:28.711
And bunch of people would like, let's say, do plan a, bunch of people do plan B, bunch of people do plan C, and then we will come up with essentially, so we will see plan a, we see, okay, why didn't work out.
00:13:28.711 --> 00:13:31.164
And then if someone just reads my case studies.
00:13:31.164 --> 00:13:38.585
It's like pages after pages are literally just come up with like, hey, we did this, and then this was the numbers, this is the percentage they convert it.
00:13:38.585 --> 00:13:44.873
This is we counted this many wallets came from this platform and then this is what the conversions are and this is what they say.
00:13:44.873 --> 00:13:51.894
The conversions are things like that, and then eventually you have enough data that you can make the best guess and Then you have that solution.
00:13:51.894 --> 00:13:54.424
At that time, you go with that solution for two months.
00:13:54.424 --> 00:13:58.176
It works and you have to start again and do different speech.
00:13:59.306 --> 00:14:01.731
Is there not a difference also between the different markets?
00:14:01.731 --> 00:14:04.538
You have different industries, different niches.
00:14:05.166 --> 00:14:09.360
Yeah, absolutely, and that's the thing, not so that's actually problem with.
00:14:09.360 --> 00:14:10.764
There are actually a lot of problems.
00:14:10.764 --> 00:14:15.445
The reason collections fail it's actually comes down to the individuals a lot of times I found.
00:14:15.445 --> 00:14:20.658
So one of those problem is that people don't do research.
00:14:20.658 --> 00:14:23.245
So they come in they see just NFTs on the surface.
00:14:23.245 --> 00:14:25.009
They look oh look at this project.
00:14:25.811 --> 00:14:29.418
I personally feel their art is not as good as mine.
00:14:29.418 --> 00:14:37.297
Therefore, I'm gonna sell out even sooner than them and then, just based on that, I'll grab a team and just go and then no one questions me.
00:14:37.297 --> 00:14:39.884
Be like oh you sure, what is this based on?
00:14:39.884 --> 00:14:48.349
That's one way I found a lot of people actually have these judgment calls that's based on absolutely nothing, has no substance behind it.
00:14:48.349 --> 00:14:50.875
And then the other thing is sometimes I see, ego.
00:14:50.875 --> 00:14:54.469
So, for example, you can't fight the Nate nature.
00:14:54.469 --> 00:14:58.298
All right, if you go put your head under water at some point.
00:14:58.298 --> 00:15:00.664
You have to give in, you have to come up and just breathe.
00:15:00.664 --> 00:15:05.684
You can't just keep saying I'm gonna will it because I said I'm gonna do five hours, I'm gonna do it.
00:15:05.684 --> 00:15:06.846
It just doesn't work.
00:15:06.846 --> 00:15:17.278
So the example in web three what I've seen a lot of times happen is, let's say, founder come in, grabs a team and they're like we think we're gonna spend two months on this project.
00:15:17.278 --> 00:15:29.215
And then they have the team, they figured out the salary, everything, and then, let's say, one month in Bitcoin price shut up or went down the other way, and then things change radically.
00:15:29.215 --> 00:15:31.599
And then now they have to course correct.
00:15:31.599 --> 00:15:33.937
But then they didn't account for it and they couldn't.
00:15:33.937 --> 00:15:40.196
It's just, crypto is volatile Now, but they but this is what we're, founder, that's not experienced in web three would say.
00:15:40.196 --> 00:15:47.669
They would be like we said it's gonna be two months, therefore we don't care, on two months on the dot, we're gonna launch our project.
00:15:47.669 --> 00:15:54.582
And they wouldn't say but we don't, we're not ready, we're, we don't have enough white listers, we don't have enough community, whatever.
00:15:54.783 --> 00:15:56.153
I've seen so many people be like.
00:15:56.153 --> 00:15:57.804
And then they start convincing themselves.
00:15:57.804 --> 00:16:02.072
They're like well, look, I have a lot of tickets on my discord, for example.
00:16:02.072 --> 00:16:05.359
Or look, a bunch of people shared meme arts for me.
00:16:05.359 --> 00:16:10.865
So that means like, a lot of people like me and there's a lot of Assumptions.
00:16:10.865 --> 00:16:12.831
That has no basis.
00:16:12.831 --> 00:16:15.758
And then they keep, and sometimes they will make me believe too.
00:16:15.758 --> 00:16:16.489
So I will.
00:16:16.609 --> 00:16:19.524
I, as an advisor, I will listen to them, and they were very convincing.
00:16:19.524 --> 00:16:26.589
They'll be like oh, look like, this is so many people here and then, for example, like, on their discord, they will buy people.
00:16:26.589 --> 00:16:29.076
They will buy chatters, what's called the chatters.
00:16:29.076 --> 00:16:32.034
They'll buy chatters to talk on their discord and then they will forget.
00:16:32.034 --> 00:16:38.077
They will forget that they bought that and then they would count that as, oh, there's engagement on my discord.
00:16:38.077 --> 00:16:46.265
And then they will come to me and I wouldn't know right, they would tell me be like oh, look at this, there's so many people talking, we should be okay, and be like I guess we should be okay, let's go.
00:16:46.265 --> 00:16:48.051
And so that's it's.
00:16:48.292 --> 00:16:54.386
I found that actually the judgment calls in as a, like a personal, as a as found Founders.
00:16:54.386 --> 00:17:13.184
That's way more important, just because it's so volatile and people need to really be factual and that's rare, like a lot of founders are not and so they make their judgments based and especially in crypto, because it's like shiny, some influencer talks about something and it's so exciting, and then they always host only their wins.
00:17:13.184 --> 00:17:14.529
They never say the last money.
00:17:14.529 --> 00:17:16.375
So that's the that's.
00:17:16.375 --> 00:17:18.724
I suppose that's the biggest obstacles for the founders.
00:17:18.724 --> 00:17:26.686
It's just them just looking at things and be like, ah, on the surface, that's what I feel like it is, and then not really like Digging deep.
00:17:27.188 --> 00:17:28.711
Yeah okay, what is it actually?
00:17:29.232 --> 00:17:38.111
They should look at it like a real business, like it will be deeper than not just on your surface, and then Bit all those challenges that you don't even know.
00:17:38.111 --> 00:17:39.453
What are you seeing at?
00:17:39.453 --> 00:17:43.412
You mentioned discord, all these chatters, but you don't know if it's real engagement or not.
00:17:43.412 --> 00:17:52.314
You mentioned 81% success rate, so I'm curious to understand how you define that and, yeah, what is success for you?
00:17:52.901 --> 00:18:12.140
Yeah, so 81% of the projects that came to our incubator sold out completely, meaning they sold all their supply, and then the rest of them there's some around they sold some around 40% to 60% and then they Either stopped marketing which is that's its own conversation like why would you do that?
00:18:12.140 --> 00:18:15.709
But some would do that, don't be like I didn't sell out, I'm done.
00:18:15.709 --> 00:18:22.685
I know they would leave, completely, leave the web three space, literally pack their bags, which is it's.
00:18:22.685 --> 00:18:25.799
If you from outside you're looking at that, you'd be like why would they do that?
00:18:25.799 --> 00:18:27.585
But that's they would do that.
00:18:27.585 --> 00:18:32.539
Some people will literally leave and then some of them they still working on it.
00:18:32.539 --> 00:18:36.573
They're still just trying to sell the last, maybe 10%, 20%.
00:18:36.573 --> 00:18:41.327
So obviously we don't count those as success, just based on how web three sees it.
00:18:41.327 --> 00:18:47.619
Yeah, they see, it's all that success and if you didn't sell out, you're like dead it's not success?
00:18:47.820 --> 00:18:50.720
Yeah, but even in the market today is not so easy.
00:18:50.720 --> 00:18:55.770
So I'm also wondering, because you mentioned is 81% as the bull market.
00:18:55.770 --> 00:18:56.953
Now it's difficult.
00:18:56.953 --> 00:18:58.685
So what is that?
00:18:58.685 --> 00:19:02.279
And still, the target to sell out you mentioned also.
00:19:02.279 --> 00:19:05.314
That's what you're about, your website about selling out.
00:19:05.314 --> 00:19:07.502
Is that still today Success?
00:19:07.502 --> 00:19:11.778
And what do you say to those projects that don't sell out what you advise them?
00:19:11.818 --> 00:19:15.851
Okay, good, that's actually good, really good, like digging into that analytics, right.
00:19:15.851 --> 00:19:21.576
So I said we had way more projects during the bull run that we had in the bear market to begin with.
00:19:21.576 --> 00:19:24.644
So that percentage, if you look at it that way, that's probably skewed.
00:19:24.644 --> 00:19:30.086
And then we've, even during the bear markets, certain projects they built but they don't launch.
00:19:30.086 --> 00:19:36.527
So we don't even have as many, many people going into launches during the bear market.
00:19:36.527 --> 00:19:40.480
It's not, it's not it like a clear cut line, right.
00:19:40.480 --> 00:19:41.583
So we just do a total.
00:19:41.583 --> 00:19:42.986
That 81% is a total.
00:19:42.986 --> 00:19:46.794
And then, but something happens recently where.
00:19:46.794 --> 00:19:59.741
So I actually want, I always wanted to do my own collection and Last year I came up with some idea two weeks before the FTX happened and for people, maybe less thing, they don't know what we're talking about.
00:19:59.782 --> 00:20:05.762
So just there was some exchange that just completely went like a wire and there was.
00:20:05.762 --> 00:20:22.354
So we were building on Solana and At that point, literally when About two weeks before if the X happened, we were building everything Websites, designs, and that's one of the mistakes also we made, because we built everything before, even like going to the market, and then.
00:20:22.354 --> 00:20:27.392
So, anyways, the if the X happened, solana went down and then we just ditched the project.
00:20:27.392 --> 00:20:30.460
We were just like, okay, fine, well, don't, we don't launch it yet.
00:20:30.460 --> 00:20:34.304
No, no one came into our community yet at that point, there was no one looking at it.
00:20:34.304 --> 00:20:38.163
But we just built all the art smart contract, which is a mistake, by the way.
00:20:38.163 --> 00:20:41.511
We built all those things before even building a community and then.
00:20:42.721 --> 00:20:47.880
But then what happened was I noticed a lot of people were scared in the bear market, a lot of people.
00:20:47.880 --> 00:20:50.189
It's just actually more comfortable to just be like you know what?
00:20:50.189 --> 00:21:15.584
I wait for the better time, and so then I was like okay, if you guys all gonna wait, I'll do it, and so that's why I launched mine and in 28 days, I brought this new brand completely new brand from zero to about ten thousand on discord, 11,000 on Twitter and Good-sized community and also a lot of people talking, a lot of people Engaging with everything.
00:21:15.584 --> 00:21:16.226
We do that.
00:21:16.226 --> 00:21:27.794
In fact, some of our posts, even though we had 11,000 on Twitter, some of our posts had 200 300,000 views, and that specific one was because we're talking about who's behind Bitcoin.
00:21:27.794 --> 00:21:36.047
We collected evidence with AI and machine learning who we think is behind Bitcoin, so it just went viral and things like that.
00:21:36.047 --> 00:21:36.950
But, yes, been good.
00:21:36.950 --> 00:21:37.912
It's actually been good.
00:21:37.912 --> 00:21:43.011
But one of the reasons I started mine this time is because I just seen a lot of projects.
00:21:43.011 --> 00:21:45.000
They were just very scared, very shy to.
00:21:46.182 --> 00:21:51.594
Exactly that's what I'm seeing and told you just before we started a lot of they just don't continue or they just go.
00:21:51.594 --> 00:21:53.246
They just don't want to take risk that.
00:21:53.246 --> 00:21:55.092
They feel bad, it's scary for them.
00:21:55.092 --> 00:21:57.539
Yeah, and then, of course, I'm wondering for your project.
00:21:57.539 --> 00:21:59.125
So what is it about?
00:21:59.125 --> 00:21:59.627
Is there?
00:21:59.627 --> 00:22:00.892
What is the utility behind?
00:22:00.892 --> 00:22:07.596
Because I'm seeing talking to businesses it's more about utility and less about the art, but maybe you have another vision about that.
00:22:07.615 --> 00:22:10.500
Yeah, I, yeah, I would the context for that.
00:22:10.500 --> 00:22:23.240
I will preface that we're just saying not every you, not every collection needs to have a utility, and then not every collection needs to have a great art, and then some collections are just purely, I would say, nfts.
00:22:23.240 --> 00:22:30.430
It's just sometimes purely just used as a, as a, essentially a sort of self certifying of ownership.
00:22:30.430 --> 00:22:33.398
Sometimes it's just used for tokenizing, doesn't ?
00:22:33.980 --> 00:22:51.480
So you can't just pull everything into one category, every product, because it did happen like after we just went through a rough time of bull market people promising things and never delivering on them, and then we went the other side of this spectrum where we're like no, everyone now has to come up with something of value and then everyone has to deliver on them right away as well.
00:22:51.480 --> 00:22:56.988
So I think that was a bit of needed some correction and I think it's the market has corrected itself.
00:22:56.988 --> 00:22:59.920
So now it's like clear, some people have retailed this, I'm done.
00:22:59.920 --> 00:23:02.362
So your question was what's my collections utility?
00:23:02.362 --> 00:23:12.424
So one of the things I noticed for myself During the bull market was I was seeing a lot of coins, I was seeing a lot of NFTs.
00:23:13.148 --> 00:23:20.444
I didn't know how to read charts, I didn't know how to analyze the market, and my knowledge was coming from, like business and marketing.
00:23:20.444 --> 00:23:31.696
I didn't have a crypto knowledge per se and I saw a lot of opportunities that just passed me by, essentially, and I wanted to be more involved in certain projects.
00:23:31.696 --> 00:23:54.054
That was maybe new or maybe start-ups, or maybe they were at the very beginning, but I just didn't know which project, because there's so many of them and I didn't know how to, with confidence, to just say, hey, I can understand, look at this chart of this coin and say, hey, this has this potential, or maybe this coin doesn't have any potential, or this is what they've done, or they just did market making at this.
00:23:54.054 --> 00:23:57.444
That's why the price just went up like that or whatever.
00:23:57.444 --> 00:23:58.892
And so there was that.
00:23:58.892 --> 00:24:10.444
And then there was also a lot of alpha groups where I was part of, and then I was like watching a lot of people making money on shit coins or top 100 coins and I was like, okay, wow, like I don't have the time to understand it, but I wish I did.
00:24:10.444 --> 00:24:20.432
With that and also my co-founder, we sold out a collection together in the bull run and then we realized we were like, okay, this is a big deal, it's a big deal.
00:24:20.451 --> 00:24:43.215
People don't know anything about trading essentially, and so the utility we created was we said, hey, what if we create a community that has not only just one trader expert, but lots of them, and then teaches people how to trade, read the charts and analysis everything, all from different styles, because people have different styles in trading.
00:24:43.215 --> 00:24:47.404
And then not only that, we also sometimes people don't want to learn.
00:24:47.404 --> 00:24:52.444
Okay, that's fine, but how can they use the opportunities in the bull market?
00:24:52.444 --> 00:24:55.355
Because it's fast, like it happens, and then it's gone.
00:24:55.355 --> 00:24:56.851
If you don't take advantage of it, it's gone.
00:24:57.444 --> 00:24:59.211
We say, okay, we'll give them signals.
00:24:59.211 --> 00:25:02.384
We'll give them signals and we say, hey, here are the signals, go use it.
00:25:02.384 --> 00:25:04.914
And we show them how to use it.
00:25:04.914 --> 00:25:07.424
And then so just give you an example of what that's on.
00:25:07.424 --> 00:25:18.444
That's the other thing I've done is I've started actually delivering that utility before even we start selling one NFT, because, a we wanted to know how good we are in delivering it.
00:25:18.444 --> 00:25:21.480
B we wanted people to test it to understand.
00:25:21.480 --> 00:25:22.444
Okay, here's what they're going to get.
00:25:22.444 --> 00:25:24.570
That's the taste of their.
00:25:24.570 --> 00:25:25.954
I suppose that's the utility.
00:25:26.585 --> 00:25:37.368
And then so we started delivering it and what we found is, for the one case study, someone we just recently had and this is all in the first four weeks, by the way of doing this, okay, we had this painter.
00:25:37.368 --> 00:25:39.115
This lady is 35 year old.
00:25:39.115 --> 00:25:41.444
She doesn't know anything about crypto.
00:25:41.444 --> 00:25:48.398
She comes into this community, she attends three workshops and then learns how to use signals.
00:25:48.398 --> 00:25:49.307
So we have videos for her.
00:25:49.307 --> 00:25:55.117
And then she was, and then so she doesn't want to, she doesn't want to come into this market.
00:25:55.117 --> 00:25:57.328
She also on market with, like, lots of investment.
00:25:57.328 --> 00:25:58.471
She wanted to try it out.
00:25:58.471 --> 00:26:00.817
See, with $44, what can she do?
00:26:00.817 --> 00:26:05.236
So she turned that $44 to about $300 in three weeks.
00:26:05.685 --> 00:26:16.837
Now, for her, that is and it's nine signals, by the way and for her, that's what that opened up is, first of all, now I'm in this market that I didn't know about.
00:26:16.837 --> 00:26:18.911
I'm a painter, I didn't know anything about crypto.
00:26:18.911 --> 00:26:19.806
Now I know.
00:26:19.806 --> 00:26:23.875
What also opened up is the potential for making an income.
00:26:23.875 --> 00:26:25.932
Not saying she will be able to.
00:26:25.932 --> 00:26:44.233
Maybe she will never be a trader, maybe she even quits we don't know that but it's a potential for her to just say, okay, if I want to, I can spend time on my own reading books, coming to these workshops, using these guys' signals, and then make an extra income, maybe just pay my bills or go with travels, so on and so forth.
00:26:44.233 --> 00:26:46.377
So that is the.
00:26:46.377 --> 00:26:47.444
That's literally the promise.
00:26:47.846 --> 00:26:54.827
And the reason we also came up with that as a utility is also because it's a bear market and we wanted to.
00:26:54.827 --> 00:27:00.278
People we know, people like right now, if I just say, hey, here's another game, for example.
00:27:00.278 --> 00:27:07.897
So okay, that's cool, I get to play a game, but why would I need to invest so much money, so much time to play some game?
00:27:07.897 --> 00:27:15.270
Okay, and so, just being very realistic, like what is it people really want right now if they want to invest and they want to make their money back?
00:27:15.270 --> 00:27:20.384
They want to learn their skill, they want to have a new opportunity to make money and other stream of income, so on and so forth.
00:27:20.384 --> 00:27:32.994
So that's why we created it to be that way, and I see the future of NFTs is just being more like business thinking in that sense, where it's okay, like, just be real.
00:27:32.994 --> 00:27:35.444
People want to make money, like how can we make it happen for them?
00:27:35.444 --> 00:27:38.444
And NFT just being a vehicle, just like a technology.
00:27:39.407 --> 00:27:42.880
Yeah, I like the fact you know about the markets.
00:27:42.880 --> 00:27:44.444
You mentioned about the signals.
00:27:44.444 --> 00:27:54.444
This is a really good thing to do in the bear market, of course, to be in the market to buy, so then it makes sense to do this, so you really offer something to offer you instead of playing a game.
00:27:54.444 --> 00:28:01.047
It's a good moment now to be in there, because if you enter in the ball run, then it's like in the stock market Now.
00:28:01.047 --> 00:28:04.095
It's always better to be in the market when it's a low.
00:28:04.095 --> 00:28:13.404
You also mentioned yeah, it's, it went fast to Salat and to find all these people buying your tokens.
00:28:13.404 --> 00:28:15.790
But, of course, you need to have the audience.
00:28:15.790 --> 00:28:17.054
You need to be able to reach them.
00:28:17.054 --> 00:28:22.695
You mentioned a lot of, I would say, reach on Twitter, on X.
00:28:22.695 --> 00:28:26.371
Yeah, what were the strategies behind that?
00:28:26.371 --> 00:28:34.836
Did you already have a large following to be able because you had already built trust with them to be able to get them on, or how did you guys do that?
00:28:35.484 --> 00:28:37.789
Yeah, I didn't use my following.
00:28:37.789 --> 00:28:52.444
In fact, I didn't tell anyone from my communities that I'm building a collection, partly because I wanted to later on show it to my people in my incubator, say, look, because if I did that then everyone would be like, oh see, like this guy already had a list, already had this, had that.
00:28:52.444 --> 00:28:54.049
I'm not the same.
00:28:54.049 --> 00:29:00.814
So, partly because of that, partly because I was also just like, okay, I want to make sure, like this is actually going to go up, this is going to work.
00:29:00.814 --> 00:29:01.598
This is crazy.
00:29:01.598 --> 00:29:08.444
At this time we're doing this and I didn't say anything to our people until we actually built the whole community and everything.
00:29:08.444 --> 00:29:09.974
Then I told some people.
00:29:09.974 --> 00:29:16.269
I said, hey, by the way, this is what we do, and plus, also, I didn't even have time to talk to our people, like we already had a community to talk to.
00:29:16.269 --> 00:29:18.134
So that's what it was.
00:29:18.134 --> 00:29:22.444
And strategy-wise, I think we're really simple things.
00:29:22.444 --> 00:29:42.202
We focused on just being real with ourselves, just asking critical questions and just say, hey, if we actually want to deliver something that people are thinking about, okay, they will probably care about that, and then so we would make threads about that and then we would ask, and then those threads were original this is on X, by the way, I'm talking about.
00:29:42.202 --> 00:29:47.444
They were original and some influences would literally just reach out to us, be like hey, can we post it?
00:29:47.444 --> 00:29:50.324
And I'm like, yeah, of course you can post it on your page for free.
00:29:50.324 --> 00:29:52.271
We didn't ask them to do it.
00:29:52.271 --> 00:29:55.444
They would do that and then it would get us like more and more people.
00:29:55.444 --> 00:30:04.090
I think the Just having these quests and kind of entertainment, like, for example, who's behind Bitcoin, I think that was a good angle.
00:30:04.090 --> 00:30:15.663
And If it's just all about hey, I'm gonna solve this problem and I'm sick, so logical and just so it all makes sense, it's boring and then, but if it's all this is weird.
00:30:15.663 --> 00:30:34.448
These guys went on and just figured out, for example, the person who's behind Bitcoin talks or writes in a specific way, and then they've collected all these data points and that shows like this specific person on these forums could be behind Bitcoin, because he also writes in that specific way with like evidence and screenshots and stuff like that.
00:30:34.448 --> 00:30:35.618
So it's just fun.
00:30:35.618 --> 00:30:37.545
Hey, honestly, we don't know, obviously, who's behind.
00:30:37.545 --> 00:30:46.515
We had some evidence and we've done the work to just create that content that's interesting for people and and so I think that has something to do with it.
00:30:46.515 --> 00:30:47.857
And then the other side.
00:30:48.199 --> 00:30:54.278
I would say we also really focused on which countries they're still Interested in NFTs.
00:30:54.278 --> 00:31:02.167
So, for example, in us, or maybe even, let's say I would venture to guess to say English is speaking countries.
00:31:02.167 --> 00:31:08.576
They, literally, right before I actually started my collection, bloomberg, someone from Bloomberg Message me on what.
00:31:08.576 --> 00:31:11.183
I was like hey, do you want to talk about why NFTs are dead?
00:31:11.183 --> 00:31:13.941
I'm like, oh, thanks, you want me to talk about that.
00:31:13.941 --> 00:31:16.994
And so that was that's what's media pushing right.
00:31:16.994 --> 00:31:19.340
So it's like hard to fight against that, like we.
00:31:19.340 --> 00:31:29.960
If you come out and just tweet and be like this is so exciting to, let's say, us country, everyone's gonna be like, no, it's not, because that's what media tells them Right, so that's what they're thinking.
00:31:29.960 --> 00:31:32.507
And so we also went into specific kind.
00:31:32.507 --> 00:31:47.969
We picked some countries and we're like, okay, these countries looks like they now recently figured out what NFTs are, or maybe they're just like a little bit late to the game, but they're, they could be more excited right now than, let's say, the typical like us, uk, canada.
00:31:47.969 --> 00:31:51.300
So that was another big thing, big thing for us.
00:31:51.362 --> 00:31:53.788
And then what we also use was crowd marketing.
00:31:53.788 --> 00:31:55.897
Now, crowd marketing was.
00:31:55.897 --> 00:32:00.288
It's not anything new, but we just use it, I think, in a really good way.
00:32:00.288 --> 00:32:03.304
We would have our community to.
00:32:03.304 --> 00:32:14.717
We will have them actually engage on every single post and they would get the algorithm work for us and, because they were the first one, quickly come in after every post we would do.
00:32:14.717 --> 00:32:29.912
They would just write and say something tweet about us, write about us, but what we tweet comments, all that then that was also just making other people feel like, okay, we can do the same and then also other people also find us and so I would say those are.
00:32:30.011 --> 00:32:35.967
If I were to say what actually Worked out really well, I would say that's it and it's very different to how I was previously doing it.
00:32:35.967 --> 00:32:41.176
Previously, I used to do paid ads with promote tweets and People.
00:32:41.176 --> 00:32:43.884
By the way, no one in the audience has done it before.
00:32:43.884 --> 00:32:54.845
You would need to have a Certification to be able to do that, to be able to run ads on Twitter for crypto or, let's say, casino or specific, but they're like restricted financial categories essentially.
00:32:54.845 --> 00:32:56.019
But I used to do that.
00:32:56.019 --> 00:33:03.406
I used to do a lot of ads and for 20 cents per person, I would get a new targeted follower, specific countries, specific type of person.
00:33:04.497 --> 00:33:08.060
But then One day, elon just decided to take that off.
00:33:08.060 --> 00:33:15.707
Twitter, like, that option of getting followers Specifically as a follower as an objective on Twitter just just disappeared.
00:33:15.707 --> 00:33:18.259
So then we had to come up with this new one, right?
00:33:18.259 --> 00:33:19.983
So this crowd marketing actually came from that.
00:33:19.983 --> 00:33:21.698
I just like, okay, I need something new.
00:33:21.698 --> 00:33:28.422
And then that's why we did that and it's very scary, by the way, just so someone may be one of venture into Web 3.
00:33:28.422 --> 00:33:29.806
Maybe there was already in web 2.
00:33:30.655 --> 00:33:48.137
Imagine, like you have people, you advising clients, everyone, and you tell them, hey, all you have to do is just run some Twitter ads, pick the objective of the follower campaign and this is the sitting, this is the targeting, this is the, the type of fat copy graphics, blah, blah, blah.
00:33:48.137 --> 00:33:55.260
And then so you think this is the value, right, and then you give it to them and then they all using, and then it just stops With.
00:33:55.260 --> 00:33:58.981
No one gives you any notifications, no one gives you anything.
00:33:58.981 --> 00:34:00.025
And now you have to.
00:34:00.025 --> 00:34:07.906
You just left with people that they just thought they can grow following and Then now they cannot because that method is out of the out of the question.
00:34:07.906 --> 00:34:16.847
So, yeah, but we did come up with something and works and Still works, and I've been telling people I'm like it's probably gonna work for about two months and then something new.
00:34:17.994 --> 00:34:18.536
Exciting.
00:34:18.536 --> 00:34:23.289
I mean, it was so good, so exciting, so inspiring to talk to you.
00:34:23.289 --> 00:34:27.639
I understand you are a lot Active on Twitter, on X.
00:34:27.639 --> 00:34:30.686
I think you're also only teen, but I'm not sure.
00:34:30.686 --> 00:34:42.016
If you're active there, where can people what would you, yeah, love where people go and find you and maybe learn more about everything you're doing, your collection and so on feel yeah?
00:34:42.135 --> 00:34:55.032
if they want to just chat with me on my team, just on telegram, just send us a DM Arvin K NFT, so ARVIN K NFT, and then that's true for telegram, same thing on Twitter as well.
00:34:55.032 --> 00:34:55.775
So that's a DM.
00:34:55.775 --> 00:34:57.324
We're always respond.
00:34:57.324 --> 00:35:00.818
We may not be like too quick, but he always responds.
00:35:00.818 --> 00:35:06.331
And then websites of, obviously, so that NFTs, dot, io we have for free.
00:35:06.331 --> 00:35:08.519
We do a lot of research.
00:35:08.559 --> 00:35:19.126
I spent a lot of time just writing what works for Someone and sometimes also what doesn't work inside this, so that case study, we write it and so people can just read it.
00:35:19.126 --> 00:35:20.994
They don't even need to talk to us if they don't want to.
00:35:20.994 --> 00:35:25.135
You can read it and then just say, oh cool, this is what worked, what did them work?
00:35:25.135 --> 00:35:39.394
And then on YouTube I go through those case studies in, I suppose, in a more of a visual way, and then Also post some of the, let's say, the speaking I do, maybe events or different places or some content that we create ourselves as well.
00:35:39.394 --> 00:35:42.005
So they can go on YouTube and that's NFT.
00:35:42.005 --> 00:35:44.594
At NFT marketing, they can find that as well.
00:35:45.818 --> 00:35:46.260
Amazing.
00:35:46.260 --> 00:35:49.530
I will put all of those things, like we always do.
00:35:49.530 --> 00:35:50.635
We put them in the show notes.
00:35:50.635 --> 00:35:53.221
There is a blog article also about the zebra dots.
00:35:53.221 --> 00:35:59.523
If you're not listening in the car and you want to check out all the links, we show to check out the show notes on webdrie.
00:35:59.523 --> 00:36:03.641
net, which is actually Web3, but then in Dutch, but the website is in English.
00:36:03.641 --> 00:36:06.728
So thanks, arvin, it was really a pleasure to have you.
00:36:06.728 --> 00:36:08.219
Thank you so much.
00:36:08.219 --> 00:36:09.021
Thank you for having me.
00:36:09.021 --> 00:36:16.034
So, guys, again, an amazing episode with a lot of knowledge bombs, a lot of value in this episode.
00:36:16.034 --> 00:36:22.681
So if you think this is really useful for people around you, be sure to share this episode with them.
00:36:22.681 --> 00:36:29.925
If you're not yet following the show, this is a really good moment to do and, of course, I would like to see you back next time.
00:36:29.925 --> 00:36:30.626
Take care.