Journal #16: Mini Business Update

This is from a journal written on January 17, 2022, in Cartagena, Colombia.

Brett and I have been scheming on business ideas from NFT projects to digital nomad companies we could start one day.

When we arrived in Panama a few weeks back, I hit the ground running on drawing as many NFT variations as possible for our project.

At the same time, Brett had reached out to that friend of Michael’s, Gannon, to chat about our project and get advice. Like I mentioned in Journal #9, Gannon runs an NFT newsletter that highlights the latest drops and shares NFT news.

We were excited to talk to him because he is the only expert in the space that we know. And, of course, we believed in our idea.

In the first couple minutes of talking to him, he knocked us out of the clouds and back down to earth. He detailed the time, effort, financial commitment, and loyal audience it takes to launch a successful NFT project. Brett and I quickly realized that where we were at with little money to invest, a small team (he and I0 and an even smaller audience, the daunting journey ahead seemed too unreadable for us right now.

The piece that we were missing most (the most crucial aspect of launching a successful project) is that we don’t have an audience.

Yeah, I could create 10,000 NFTs. That part is easy. But do we know 10,000 people that will actually buy them and therefore join the community we are building around it and follow along to buy more in the future?

The answer is a simple, HELL no.

Gannon said the best thing either of us can do right now is to grow our audiences on social platforms. That way, we can gain a loyal audience. I might be able to start selling one-off digital art pieces, and then one day, we might be able to turn that into a full-blown project.

So that is what we’re going to focus on. We’ll keep sharing our journey and finding others who want to follow along. And I'll start creating more digital art. :)

Then came the idea…

Brett had a business idea on the short, hour-long flight from Panama City to Cartagena.

It is a service that helps college kids get remote jobs in the US or other countries, enabling them to dive into the digital nomad lifestyle right out of school.

We talked the next hour sporadically about ideas of how it could work and how it could be unique, and how it could change these students' lives and company culture on a global level.

He called a buddy as soon as we landed to pitch the idea and found an instant business partner. Now it’s time to validate the concept by doing market/user research and networking with leaders in the space.

And while Brett’s brain was exploding with this idea, mine was bubbling with one of my own — I want to start a blog.

Now I know this isn’t the most original idea ever. But I was thinking about my audience and how to connect with more people and share my journey as a digital nomad, especially since I’m full-sending it at this point.

So F it, I’m starting a blog. And I’m excited about it.

If I’m going to live this lifestyle, I might as well set myself up for the most opportunities by putting myself out there and sharing my story.

So anyway, arriving in Colombia has been exciting because of the place itself and our plans for the future.

That has honestly been one of the most remarkable things about this new lifestyle. It creates the environment of a constant think tank. Because we are alone most of the time, we can let ideas come into our minds and fully talk through them with little to no distractions.

I feel so much more productive than I did in Seattle when I worked full-time at my design job and part-time at F45 and balanced friend time, Brett and Sam time, and me time.

In Seattle, I was hyper-busy, but I wasn’t productive. Now I’m less busy and exponentially more productive.

Funny how that works!