The Gift of Failure

PLUS: First NFT Collection ANNOUNCEMENT

Jan 18, 2023

Happy Thursday, everyone! I hope you’re having a great start to your new year!

I’m keeping this week’s newsletter simple. 2 main parts. Part 1 is an announcement about my first-ever NFT collection that I’m releasing in 2 weeks. I’m really excited about this announcement. I don’t think a project like this has ever been done before in the history of this space.

The second part is a deeply personal piece I wrote on failure. I wanted to challenge myself creatively this week, so I hope you enjoy it and are able to learn something from it.

Let’s get to it…

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NFT God @NFT_GOD

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ANNOUNCEMENT: My First NFT Collection Is About to Mint

TLDR: I’m launching my first NFT collection in two weeks. It is a rewards collection for content creators. Every week in 2023 I will mint 1 community-created NFT and reward it for free to someone in the 1% Club who has created a quality piece of content. It is create-to-earn. You create content, you win a super limited NFT. This is available just to the 1% Club.

Four weeks ago I launched the 1% Club, an online community for learners who want to support each other’s growth. It’s been wildly successful since, with 300+ content creators, founders, and overall curious people striving to get 1% better every day. This week I’m announcing my first-ever NFT collection. A first-of-its-kind collection built to reward community participation and learning.

This collection is not like your typical NFT collection. This isn’t a profile picture or access pass. This is a community-driven rewards collection called 1% Club: Rewards.

Starting at the end of January, I’ll be minting 1 NFT weekly. I’ll create a content challenge for the 1% Club Discord every Sunday. This could be a thread, tweet, or video challenge. At the end of the week, the community will vote on which piece of content was the best. The winner will be sent a Rewards NFT completely for free. This will happen every single week for the rest of the year and into 2024.

This is a reward for creating, learning, growing, and sharing with others. This is an NFT to become 1% better.

I want this rewards collection to be completely community-driven. The community will make all the artwork. Anyone can submit their own piece of art, and every Monday I’ll choose a piece to be used for that week’s Rewards NFT. The NFT will be community-created and community rewarded.

Bonus NFTs can be minted and rewarded for strong community participation. I’d expect the supply by the end of the year to be ultra-limited, roughly 75 NFTs.

This is an NFT to strengthen the community, not make the community exclusive. I don’t believe token-gating communities is the right business model for most brands. This NFT will be purely for encouraging the growth and learning of everyone in the community.

To participate in the weekly competition for the NFT, you need to be a 1% Club member. This is my premium tier of the newsletter and costs 5 bucks. Typically the barrier of entry to a community is a $5,000 NFT, but I found that route excludes most people. You shouldn’t have to pay a tenth of an average salary to join a community.

The 1% Club is made for people building a growth mindset. If you strive to build a growth mindset but can’t afford the $5 entry, please contact me. I will find a way for you to enter the club anyway. I believe education should be democratized, not token gated.

As for utility: the NFT is a badge that signifies your growth and learning. When I build out the 1% Better NFT ecosystem in the future, these Reward NFTs will be the main component. Being a Founding Member of the 1% Club will also make you eligible for more special Reward NFTs.

This NFT will take an already strong community, and only strengthen it further.

If you’re interested in joining a community of like-minded individuals striving to improve daily, I’d highly encourage you to join the 1% Club below. We launched about a month ago and are now a group of 331 individuals learning from each other daily.

Between content reviews, weekly calls where we discuss our goals, and collaboration on our growth, I firmly believe this is becoming the single best education-focused community anywhere.

We look forward to seeing you in the club!

To be eligible for the weekly Rewards NFT you need to be a 1% Club member. Join below to enter a community of growth-minded individuals looking to improve every single day.

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The Gift of Failure

For the 30th year in a row, failure zapped all of my motivation. COVID just landed in the states, and I was stuck in my tiny Brooklyn, NY apartment with nothing but time and my thoughts. I was in a job I hated, working on a dropshipping ecommerce store (yeah I fell for it) on the side with 0 customers.

A lot has changed since then. I’m 32 now, the happiest I’ve ever been. I have a job I love and also running a brand and newsletter I’ve dreamt about my entire life. None of this happens without a subtle shift in mindset about failure. Here’s how my opinion of failure pivoted from hate to love, and why it’s the most critical mindset shift you can possibly make.

I was a TERRIBLE student. In high school I had a 2.6 GPA, and in college a 2.4 GPA. I had no passion or purpose. I was living to get to the next day.

Flash forward to 2012 and I graduate and head off to work. I landed a job as a junior software engineer at an energy company. About 1 day in I knew the job wasn’t for me. Not the best feeling looking at that $160,000 loan balance, knowing it bought me a job I didn’t enjoy.

I was learning what I DIDN’T like, which it turns out is just as important as learning what I DO like.

Knowing my career at the time wasn’t satisfying me, I start some side projects. After work one day I start a sports blog and Twitter account. My first foray into content. I love every moment of it. Creating and sending content out for the world to read was a feeling I’d never felt before.

There was one issue, nobody was reading it. About six months into blogging and tweeting every day, I quit. The blog’s failure was zapping my motivation until I had none left.

Now we’re back to where the story began. COVID hits and I’m at my lowest. With unlimited time on my hands, it’s time to reflect. I have a long list of failures from my past 30 years. I have a long list of professions, hobbies, and side projects I didn’t enjoy.

Fast forward a few months and I discover NFTs, my newest passion. I start a Twitter account. As I sit there staring at the Twitter registration page, I think to myself “What is the most obnoxious, head-turning name I possibly can think of?” And at that moment, NFT God was born.

I get to writing. Every day after my new job (which I was totally in love with), I’d write tweets and draft newsletters. I had 0 followers and 0 subscribers, but I had 30 years of trying and failing in me. As I wrote tweets, I thought back to my sports account.

I tweeted on those accounts in long text blocks about whatever I was thinking. Not this time. This time I was going to get straight to the point and give value instead. 0 followers turned into 100 a month later. Which turned into 1000 three months later. Which turned into 86,000 a year later.

I learned what didn’t work before; now I had a better idea of what did work. My self-growth newsletter and Twitter account was born. After 30 years of experiencing failure and feeling bad for myself, I finally decided to weaponize that failure. Every stage of growth for NFT God and 1% Better was a reflection of some heartbreaking failure from the past.

Not only did I discover what I loved, I discovered that failure was my greatest asset. Without screwing up nonstop up until that point, I would be completely ignorant. The failures weren’t a curse. They were a blessing. This mindset shift changed everything.

I’m 32 now. That’s young to some and old to others. Either way, 95% of those 32 years was failure. 85,000 followers and 16,000 subscribers don’t happen without that past pain.

If I had known in the past that this failure would eventually be my success, I wouldn’t have been near as miserable.

Change the way you operate. Seek failure every chance you get. Constantly stub your toe. Figure out what you hate so that you can learn what you love. If you find a lesson in every screw-up, you’ll soon have no choice BUT to succeed.