How Brett Malinowski Sold Out His NFTs Easily

Most people are here for the content. Like, you don't need any real fancy editing or fancy visual effects. If what you're saying is helpful and valuable to people, they'll listen. And so, yeah, that's kind of been my philosophy. I try to go for that 15-minute range just for the YouTube algorithm. They can put more ads in your videos. I think they like that.

All right, everyone. Today we've got Brett Malinowski, who is the co-founder of NFT Academy. We're gonna make it Studios. I'm just gonna call it We Gon' Make It Studios. And then Pop In, and then also Magic Mushroom Clubhouse. So he's got a lot of different things going on. I really enjoy his YouTube channel. He's got like 120K+ subs right now talking about NFT stuff, and he's genuinely trying to educate the audience. And what I'm trying to do here on Marketing School is to really— I mean, I think there's still like a negative stigma against NFTs. And look, this stuff's just gonna fall into marketing long-term, so I want to drill it into everyone's head. But Brett, first and foremost, welcome to the show. How are you?

Eric, I'm great. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to kind of break that barrier in people's minds with NFTs because NFTs are actually great for the consumer. That's the whole point of Web3 is to actually level the playing field. So I think we can put some work in now.

Cool. Yeah, a lot of stuff to talk about. There's a couple of tweets I've noted of interest as well. But yeah, so maybe starting with your background first because you look really young to me. So I'm just wondering, what is your background leading up to To now, and like you work on a lot of different things, right? So feel free to take that however you want.

Yeah, so basically when I was in college— I'm 25 now— when I was in college, I would shoot music videos, and that was kind of just my passion. I had a little business out of that. Then when I graduated, I took it a little more seriously to make a little more money, and so I transitioned into making commercials. And then I got a job offer, or I guess I should say equity offer, from a company, and I actually ran their whole marketing. So I'd shoot all the content, and I'd run the Facebook ads, do a VSL. to a call funnel. And that was like what I did for the last year and a half. And then we started this software company called Poppin, which is basically like a fast pass for bar owners, like to help people skip the line. And like 3 months into that, it was really promising. But then I got absolutely addicted to NFTs and then I guess the rest is history. Then I started my channel and now here we are, 3 different projects deep.

Love it. Let's talk about the channel real quick because it's a lot of these NFT channels because it's such a trend right now, they just kind of went from 0 to like, you know, 100K+ quickly, right? Like how long did it really take for you to get to the 100K+?

I went from 0 to $10K in 2 weeks. I was probably one of the first people in the NFT space making YouTube channels about— or YouTube videos about flipping NFTs. And then I think I hit $100K within 3 months total.

Wow. Okay, that's crazy because I've been doing my YouTube for like 4 years. I'm at $65K.

So yeah, I think it was definitely a timing thing. And I also had like video experience, so I kind of had good lighting, good equipment. I think it's like a perfect storm. I really— I've been in crypto since like 2014, so I have like a deep understanding of the technology of blockchain and everything around NFTs. And I'd seen NFTs for 4 years. So when I decided to make the videos, I just had an immediate great response. I mean, that obviously helps. I was in these NFT communities that are really strong. I had a lot of supporters from there as well. So I think it was a compound effect.

Got it. And not only that too, what I want to call out— and by the way, you started in crypto when you were 17. That's crazy. For you, like I've noticed on your YouTube videos, like one big thing is your videos are really long. Like MrBeast talks about making the best video that he can possibly make. And you actually do that, right? So Because it's a marketing podcast, I think we can start there. We can nerd out a little bit of marketing there. So, you know, what does your process and framework look like for like from ideation all the way to creating like a really good video? Because it's not easy to make a 25-minute video.

Yeah. So mine are actually really just off the top of my head. Like I'll just get an idea in the morning when I drink a cup of coffee. I'm like, all right, I'm just going to go. And then I just start talking. I might have like a few points that I want to go off with a tab on my screen and then I'll kind of like segue into it. But for the most part, it's just like, Whatever I'm feeling that day, I kind of go on rants. And I really believe that, like, most people are here for the content. Like, you don't need any real fancy editing or fancy visual effects. If what you're saying is helpful and valuable to people, they'll listen. And so, yeah, that's kind of been my philosophy. I try to go for that 15-minute range just for the YouTube algorithm. They can put more ads in your videos. I think they like that. So I always try to go for viewer retention and that's kind of my thought process behind it.

Cool. And so let's start off with your NFT project, Magic Mushroom Clubhouse. So sold out in 17 minutes. 9,200 pieces and you donated about $50 grand or so, or maybe more to psychedelic studies. Um, do you want to talk about that, what that project is first, and then kind of, um, we could start there?

Yeah, so that's my pride and joy. That's the base. Everything I do will always return back to the Magical Mushroom Clubhouse with all the other projects I work on. They all tie together in a sense. But yeah, that was when profile picture movement was at its prime, and it was something that I was really passionate about. I'm still very passionate about like pushing medicinal mushroom research further. But on top of that, it's just a really great way to build a community of really, really smart people. Like, I was amazed by the people that I was attracting, and it was all organic, which I'm really proud about. Most of it came from my channel. I took the philosophy of giving value as much as possible up front. And basically what was going on was I was flipping NFTs early this summer and I was doing really well with it. I was really addicted to the Dogepound NFT community. And so I literally just trying to be like a good community member for the Dogepound. And I made a video trying to teach people like, hey, this is how you buy a Dogepound NFT. You got to join this community. It's so much fun. And that got a great response. So I was like, hey, I guess since I'm able to do this full-time, I'm doing pretty well flipping. Maybe I'll save some people some time and just give them like the bullet points of what projects I'm looking at today to flip and make money so they can come after their 9-to-5 job and kind of have a head start. And so I uploaded every single day, and that's how my channel grew so quickly. And so the natural next step after that was to make a project. My girlfriend is a graphic designer. She did the art. We pretty much— I think we spent less than $10,000 total and did over $1.7 million in Profit in 17 minutes. It was unbelievable.

Wow. So how does that feel to you right now? Like, how do you look at the, the $1.7 million? Um, we'll just start there. Like, what is your psyche going through right now? Like, what do you plan to do with that? Like, you pocket it? Like, what's the move here?

Oh yeah. So for the Magic Mushroom Clubhouse, we reinvested that quite heavily. Um, we did this whole event called Shroom Scouts because I understood, like, with marketing, you have to understand your audience. Pretty much anyone watching my channel was new to NFTs because I made educational videos and flipping. And so going into that, I knew that anyone watching my channel that got into my project was going to be relatively new. And so I needed to teach them like what it's like to be a part of a decentralized community and actually participate in this Web3 world. And so we did this big old event called Shroom Scouts. And because like a group of mushrooms is called a troop, so we leaned into the Boy Scouts method and every badge is like teaching you like a principle in a Web3 decentralized community. And basically the first person to collect all 5 badges was going to win $50,000. And on top of that, the first 150 would actually get like an Ancient Shroom, which is basically a token to vote in our DAO for governance. And so the whole point of that was just to teach people that they could participate and add to this community, just like me, a project founder. And I think it was a huge success. We've had probably dozens of businesses come out of that, and many, many other notable people in the space all came from the Magic Mushroom Clubhouse.

Yeah, I think it's important for people to understand, like, the way you're talking about this, Brett, it's not like a bunch of like— it's not a cash grab, which is why I asked what you plan to do with the $1.7 million, right? Like, to be like at a young age and be like, you know what, like, I'm gonna reinvest it. Like, it's not the ones— the projects that are gonna win for the long term. It's just the same thing as business. It's very long-term focused, right? And you're like trying to layer on like, hey, I'm gonna educate people, I'm gonna help people. And it's not just about the pictures themselves, right? And you actually wrote a tweet here, any company not considering an NFT strategy is at risk of losing market dominance. Do you want to expand on that?

Yeah, so it's basically like, this is a huge paradigm shift. Like, it's like imagine being one of the first companies with a website. It's simply like if you're a wine company, is the example I always use. Like if you start selling your wine and every bottle of wine comes with an NFT, you're going to start really attracting Web3 people that are also interested in wine. And you're building this foundation as a brand that sells your wine as NFTs. People that have high net worth all try to make, like, collect hundreds of bottles of wines. And whenever people come to their house, they show them off. Well, that's only a few people that you can show those bottles of wine off to in the world. And so with Web3, it actually creates an online universal digital profile. So instead of having a Twitter and an Instagram, you're actually just going to have one wallet where you can connect to every single website. And this is going to be a place where if you're online interacting with people, they can actually look at your profile and they're actually going to be able to see what assets that you own because you own the NFT. That's where the value transfer is going to be. So if every bottle of wine that you have, you get an NFT with it, people see you, Eric, online, they'll click on your profile, be like, wow, he has like some of the most rare wine collection. He actually owns them because that's what NFTs do. It's online digital verifiable ownership through the blockchain. So that's the beautiful idea. It's very simple. And any company right now that's capitalizing on that is going to be building years of a foundation over some of these big brands like Barefoot. And when Barefoot decides to make NFTs in 2 or 3 years, well, you're already the NFT Web3 wine company. So they have to kind of come into you. And then once they actually come into the NFT space, all of their audience is going to be like, oh wow, this is a really cool idea. They're going to start looking for other Web3 wine companies and you're going to be the first one they go to because you've been working for the last 2 or 3 years. So that's what I meant by that tweet.

Got it. I love that. And similarly, I appreciate you were talking about education through NFTs, right? So owning knowledge, you kind of alluded to it, but maybe you can expand on that a little bit more.

Yeah. So this is what I'm most passionate about, and that's what NFT Academy is all about. It's our program where we teach people A to Z everything you need to do to implement NFTs into your business. And basically it allows consumers— I think every course, every program, every online education should be sold as NFTs because it allows you as the consumer to actually own the content that you're buying. Right now, if you buy an online course from any of these online marketers, you pay $2,000 or $3,000 and it's a blind shot whether it's actually going to be valuable. Are they just good marketers putting a lot of fluff or do they actually have valuable content? And so what's beautiful about making an NFT is that you'd buy the NFT, you'd connect your wallet to the website that will give you access to the videos in the course. Now you physically own it. And so the actual floor price of the NFT will reflect the true value of the knowledge, because if everyone that buys them— you sell 1,000 of them— if it's good value, they're not going to sell. And so, like, naturally the floor price is going to rise. And so that actually is a better reflection of the content than, like, a review system, because you can buy reviews, you can fake reviews. We all see that on Amazon on a regular basis. So this is a way where it's truly the people that are buying your course really have control over what value they see in it and what the floor price is. And so if you can actually buy the course, get the information, learn it all, and once you're good, you can actually sell the course to the next oncoming student. And so I think that's the future of education, 100%.

You know what's crazy? Similar to this. So I bought Proof Collective. I bought it for 2 ETH. It's at 42 ETH now. I sold a little earlier. But like to your point, like the reason it keeps going up is really because of the community, right? I think there's one piece of like the course, there's the knowledge and like the knowledge will stick with you. But I think if people are going to keep an NFT, it's going to be tied to some element of community. Do you agree with that or disagree?

100%. That's what our Discord is all about. The NFT Academy, it's a networking Discord. And so, you know, anyone in there, if you have a pass to connect your wallet to Discord, you get access to private channels with other people building projects in the space. So you're just around a lot of other people's growth mindsets on a similar mission as you. So that is probably the most important aspect and the reason people don't sell In the long term, even if they got the information from the course.

Got it. I love that. Yeah. I mean, you know, you have authors doing this stuff. I mean, Gary Vee did it with his book, right? I think we're just— everything's going to be NFT'd. I think my question right now, too, like the thing that just popped in my head is from a conversion aspect, because it's so— it's a little difficult, we'll put it that way, to onboard to crypto. And so, you know, you could make everything an NFT, but does that kill conversion rates? And does that even matter to you?

Yeah, right now we're ahead of our time. There's no question about it. People aren't necessarily ready. I can't go in the real world and explain this to anybody. Not many people get it, and most of them think that they're just like a right-click save a JPEG. And the whole profile picture thing is very, very silly. I'll be the first one to admit that. But yeah, it's going to be harder to actually convince people. That's why I made the channel, because I was trying to get all my friends in in the first place. So anyone building right now is ahead of their time. They have to understand it's not going to maximize your sales. And also understand it's more consumer-friendly. You're going to— you have to cap how many you actually sell. But I think it makes business owners have to be more honest. And that's the whole point of Web3, is to actually put power back into the consumer's hands instead of making everything free. And then everyone just rips their data and sells it to every advertiser on the block. So that is a sacrifice that business owners are going to make. But I do think it'll make our world better.

Yeah, I love that. I agree with you. I think it's just a timing thing right now. And like, 100%, you really caught on with the I'm curious about the timing piece because not only is your YouTube 122K, but I'm looking at your Twitter right now too, 176K. So do you think that was a matter of catching on with the timing quickly as well?

Yeah, I mean, I've been in the space for like 7 months. And so to see those numbers that quickly is not conventional. And so I do think that it was like right time, right age, right knowledge compounding before this, right marketing skills and good video production. I think it was like a perfect storm for me.

Consistency is a big piece, right? So you mentioned with YouTube, when you're really going hard at it, it was one video a day for at least 15 Yeah, that's what I was doing all day, every day, flipping NFTs and then sharing it on my channel. Yes, every day. And then your Twitter, is it just like how often are you tweeting per day? Like, I'm just, I'm really getting at consistency here for everybody.

So the top, YouTube is the top of funnel. YouTube's algorithm blessed me from the start. Like I hit $10K in 2 days with zero social media before that. And so I think it just spread. My metrics were well, so YouTube put it on the homepage and then I just always had a call to action. Hey, if you want this information quicker, follow me on Twitter. But YouTube was the core of it all.

Got it. Okay, so YouTube's algorithm really gave you a push and then you had the CTA at the end and then that drove a ton of Twitter followers. And so for Twitter, I mean, again, are you tweeting like a couple of times per day? Like, what does that look like?

Right now, I didn't tweet for like 4 days. Last night I was just inspired and popped off like 5. But yeah, I'm pretty sporadic on Twitter. It's like if I'm in the moment, I feel inspired to say something. Yeah, but it's not really a focus of mine necessarily. More so Discord. Discord is where communities live. That's like your people. It's like the new email list, but on steroids.

I mean, I do want to talk about that because it's— that's like an ongoing thing. You can't just quite turn that off. Like once you turn a community on, like it's either it dies or—

It's a living organism. Absolutely.

Yeah. So I want to come to that in a second. But I had a question actually from someone on my team. So she had a question around influencer and PR marketing. So really promoting this stuff. Right. And I know you had a video on what it takes to sell an NFT project. So what is the best way projects can get the attention of influencers? What's the best PR strategy for brand new projects? So it's kind of tied to your original—

Yeah, this is something that I learned the hard way. So hopefully I can save you guys a few hundred thousand dollars. I'm a Web2 marketer, so I thought influencer marketing was going to be the way that we'd come in, we'd sell out the Magic Mushroom Clubhouse 100% organic, and then the marketing would start and we'd pay like all these big celebrities to talk about the project. Well, to your point earlier, it's extremely Extremely hard to onboard someone to the NFT space if they've never bought crypto. They have all these objections; they think it's a scam, whatever it is. But even that buying Bitcoin on Coinbase and then having to figure out and understand the concept of an Ethereum wallet on top of that, and sometimes they put a hold on your account for 72 hours to protect you. It's painful, and so you have to be very passionate to actually take that leap and stick with it to actually follow through. And so marketing to a Web two audience selling a Web three product was. Pretty much just a money drain, an absolute black hole. We saw absolutely zero return. It's kind of shifting slightly, but even then it's much different. And so we always tell people to focus on Web3 influencers if you're going to go that route. But the paradigm shift here is that Web3 influencers' reputation is more important than anything. And if anyone finds out that you're taking money to promote a project, people are going to see through that immediately and no one's going to ever trust your word. And so it's a very big theme for any of my friends that have hundreds of thousands of followers in the space. that we very specifically say no paid promo. And so good luck reaching out to Web3 influencers. It's probably not the best way. I think the best thing you can do is have a community yourself that you can leverage and then do cross-collaboration with other NFT projects. And you guys can come on their platform and share your thoughts and see if people actually believe in what you're doing.

So that's really like— and I'll kind of speak from experience. Like for us, our project for Leveling Up Heroes, we the last week we pushed freaking hard with a lot of allowlist collaborations with other communities and we did spaces and all that. That was cool because there's good vibes, right? But we wish we did that for like 4 weeks straight. Like, is that something you did?

Yeah. So for— it was a different time when I was doing Matcha Mushroom Clubhouse in September, 100%. And most of it was from my channel. I'll be straight up about that. I was very conscious with like our brand association. I didn't want to dilute that because if you're partnering with everybody, then it's like a partnership with you means nothing. And so I was really, really— I still am very specific on only partnering with some of the best brands. But if you're an up-and-coming project, absolutely. Like, collaboration is the best way. Twitter Spaces are great. Twitter is the best way to like go viral. And so really is like the only way to do it, in my opinion.

Got it. I love that. So let's go back to the living organism. I love it. I love your pacing. It gives me energy. So the community piece, like, how is the team structured there? And like, what do you think it takes to kind of keep that organism moving?

Yeah. So this is probably my specialty. I'd say community building is my favorite thing to do. And it all comes down to Discord. And so if you're new to Discord, it's quite a bit to understand. But luckily I was a gamer and I've been using Discord for 5 years, so I have a good idea. But there's all these bots and basically the whole idea of Discord, what you really want to focus on is like these hierarchy of roles and they have colors. And so the whole point of these communities is that you have really high-level people like we have hedge fund managers, like aerospace engineers coming in and spending like 6 hours a night just trying to contribute to the community just because they want to. It's like a fulfillment thing. And so it's really important that you give this hierarchy in your Discord of like, all right, you have the admins, like the founding team, and you have mods, which are just people in the community, but they just make sure people aren't cussing at each other. And if they are, they can ban them. And then from there, you can do cool things like if you own 50 NFTs, you're a whale and so your name is blue. And so anytime you're talking, people are like, oh my God, this guy's rich. And so you can kind of implement status in a hierarchy through Discord. And so whenever you're doing AMAs in a Discord, which is an ask me anything on a Discord A Discord stage is literally just like a stage at a theater where I'd go up there as a project founder, say, hey everybody, I'm speaking at 8. There's everyone in the audience, and if someone has a question, they'll come up and ask me a question in front of everybody. And so when you're on an AMA and you have someone come up there and they have an idea and they want to contribute to the community, it's really important that you like capitalize on that and empower them and say, yes, we would love that. Make them feel like they're important and a part of the community and actually give them the pieces to actually implement that. So my favorite example is on NFT Doudette. That's her, that's her screen name. And she's actually like our life coach for our servers. So anyone that owns a Magic Mushroom Clubhouse NFT can schedule a 30-minute call completely for free to talk about mental health and make sure they're doing okay. Because there's a lot of rug pulls, there's a lot of FOMO, a lot of people get hurt, and that's when FUD starts. And so we have this place where anyone that's going through something like that completely for free can book it, and then we pay her through with the mint money. And so it's a very cool system, but she just had this idea, totally took it on herself, came Came on the AMA, said, "Hey, I was thinking about maybe creating like the Zen Den, this Discord channel where people can come focus on mindfulness and be grateful for what they're doing." Every day she'll ask a question. People can just go in there and reflect on their life, which I think is very important. And now it's like a full-on business that we're implementing in other Discords B to B. And so that all started with her just coming up to the AMA stage, and then we listened, we capitalized, empowered her, gave her her own role, her own color, and now she's like everyone knows her. So that's like the key to community is getting people involved.

And so when you think about compensating people, because I know like a lot of the mods and people that we work with, like oftentimes they're like, they're not getting paid by other projects, right? And we're like, no, like you need to get paid, right? So how do you think about compensation in this space, if at all?

This is a very tricky one because a lot of people, like I said, are high-level people and they don't need money. They're there just for the fulfillment to feel like they're a part of something. So almost giving them that extrinsic reward takes the fulfillment out of it and delays them. But then a lot of people are here because they're trying to educate themselves and make a better life. So for the first 3 months of the Magic Mushroom Clubhouse, no one asked for money. We didn't pay a single person. It was fully community-focused. But after that 3-month period, after that whole Shroom Scouts, a lot of people would put in a lot of effort and time and wanted to stick around. We start paying them. So like low-level mods, we'll pay them like 0.25 ETH a month. And from now, like since then, we started paying people a lot more consistently, but the good ones, because they float to the top and really said they want to be here for the long run. So our team's grown vastly. I think we have 32 people on payroll now. But by no means, I think most people when they first start as a mod, there should be like a week or two, like trial period before they even talk about like pay.

It sounds like it'd probably be anywhere from 0.25 to 1 ETH, right?

Exactly. That's just like starting, like when they first start out, 0.25. And if they're committed, they take on more responsibilities. We have a lot of things going on. So we have people that make 6 figures a year through our project. So, wow, they're doing pretty well. The one thing I will say on that is that a lot of people have different motives. And since I had a large following from the start, that's probably why a lot of them did it for free, because I have the ability to give them a platform if they do create a business. I don't do paid promo, but I talk about all my people's projects. We've probably created, I think, 7 other million-dollar businesses from just other people in our community through our platform.

I just want everyone to know too, so $0.25 to $1.80, that's about $750 to about $3,000 as of this recording. So I think that's pretty fair. And by the way, like, I'm looking at Twitter again. So you posted, I have never seen more opportunity in NFT space more than I see right now. And that's about 1,500 likes. So can you elaborate on that?

Yeah. So I think there's 2 big things. Like I said, verifiable digital ownership is the biggest one because, I mean, let's be honest, why do people buy Lamborghinis? They're trying to show people that they're the man, they got it going on, or they're the woman, whatever. They're very successful. They're trying to flex. And so when they drive that Lamborghini, only like 10, 20, 30 people are going to see them on the street. And right now we see all these people posting pictures with their Lamborghini on Instagram, but we have no idea if it's actually theirs. And so what NFTs are going to allow, if you make car titles NFTs, it's going to have your wallet. You're going to be able to display your assets digitally. So just like that wine example where you can show your whole wine collection, you can show your car, you can show your house. People are even going to be able to tour your house virtually if you have that set up. And so it's literally just a way for you to flex digitally. And so it's like flexing at scale. And I think that's going to be one of the biggest revolutions in our time. Like superficial as it is, let's just be real. Like, that's how people work and that's what Instagram is. But this is taking that on steroids.

Humans love to flex. I love that. I'm just curious, right? So like, it's how do you, how are you balancing everything right now? Because you got POPN, NFT Academy. Like, so how do you think about like, what is the main, I guess, what's the main business right now?

So opportunity cost, POPN's totally on the side. Like NFTs, it's just the margins are ridiculous and it's the future of our world. So I think it's a much better investment. Of my time, so basically they all tie in together. So Magic Mushroom Clubhouse—that's my first project, pride and joy—and that was like I feel like I'm kind of a step ahead of a lot of people in the NFT space. I was flipping NFTs profitably very early, and then from there I transitioned into making a project. And so the whole point of that project was to teach people what I was doing before how to flip NFTs. But now I have all these people that went through Shroom Scouts; they're in our community. Now they're starting to think about the projects that they could create, and so we helped multiple people create their projects. Like I said, those are the 7 people that have done over $1 million. So now we're like, okay, next step, how do we teach people to make a project and build a community like we did? And so that was what NFT Academy is all about. And then that's only going to grow because more and more people are going to implement NFTs into their, their businesses. And then from there, it's like, okay, we have this pipeline down from whether you're completely a beginner or whether you're ready to build in the space. Now let's spread our reach. So I wanted to make a media company called WGMI Studios, and that's where we do private podcasts. We have a website where you have to have the NFT to access it. And again, I just think that's the most beautiful thing because people can buy the NFT and if we deliver, the NFT could go up in price. On top of that, they get access to the information. And so that's going to be our Web3 media company. We have a website, private podcasts, newsletters, and we're staffing very, very heavily. So I'm very excited about that. And that just helps us broaden our reach, get more people in our pipeline.

Got it. So going to NFT Academy real quick, it sounds like it first started as like a, like a course. Right, to teach people potentially how to flip. And then it's like how to build a project. And then it's like, it sounds like maybe the higher tier, if you go up the funnel, is, uh, we're up the, up the, up, up the ladder, we'll call it that, um, is you guys are building the NFT for them, like a done-for-you, correct?

No, not really, actually. So Magic Mushroom Clubhouse is like the best first NFT to learn how to trade, to learn how to like get involved, find your place in the NFT space is what we say. And then if you're ready to take it to the next level and you actually want to build a project, You go to the NFT Academy. And so we teach you, like, we teach you how to write a smart contract, we give you templates, but we're not doing anything for them, if that makes sense. We're basically just showing them everything they need to know to implement NFTs into their business, create community, and actually do things the right way that is like, uh, accepted with NFT Web3 culture.

Got it. So really, I mean, when you said the 7 projects that did over a million, that's really your students where it's, it's still a do-it-yourself, it's a DIY type of thing, right?

Exactly. So like 3 of them have like these alpha groups where they're like fully focused on buying and selling NFTs profitably. So it's like you see that within the stock market all the time. People have these stock trading groups where you talk about technical analysis and you share your tips. And so that's a similar thing. We did 3 of those and then we have a few other people that did profile picture projects. Then we have a few other people that are doing like Discord service B2B businesses. And so those are just directly before NFT Academy. And now we have the Million Dollar Mint Club in the NFT Academy. If you go through the whole program and then you successfully sell out your mint over $1 million, We give you like a plaque, we give you an NFT. Really, really cool. I think you know what that's similar to, where that was inspired from.

That's smart. We've had him on the show before.

Yeah. So that's called the Million Dollar Mint Club. And so we're really excited about that. We've had 3 people already in that in the 6 weeks that we've been launched. So we're really excited to grow this and continue building.

You don't want to call it the 2 Comma Mint Club?

We had a little bit of creative thought there, believe it or not.

No, I like that. That's super smart because it does get people to rally around and say, oh, I need that plaque, right? And then it's a whole collection in and of itself.

So people go to that collection, they'll be able to see the person's name. They all get their own, and they can see it digitally who's all in the club officially.

Super smart. I love that. I mean, Brett, I feel like there's a lot more we can talk about. We'll probably have to do a round 2, but is there anything you think I should have asked you but I didn't?

I think we covered all the bases. I'm not gonna lie. I think verifiable digital ownership and then actually owning digital content is what NFTs are all about. It's not these silly JPEGs. Those are brands at the end of the day. But there's much more. Every business can implement an NFT strategy into theirs. So I think if you start thinking forward, the more advantage you're going to have.

Got it. Now, from a learning perspective, 2 more questions from my side. From a learning perspective, where can people, besides your stuff, where can people go? What are your go-to resources to just keep up to date on all this stuff happening in the NFT world?

Whiteboard Crypto is a great YouTube channel if you're completely new to crypto, where they really break things down with like analogies and visualizations. YouTube, I've learned everything in my life from YouTube. YouTube University, I've had to be I've been on the internet my whole life. I think if you're curious and you're motivated, you're going to find it. But participating in a Discord community, anyone in the profile picture project world, is the best way to learn. You really are just going to be around people. You can ask questions, you can hang out in voice chat, 20 people just talking. You're going to pick up on a lot and gain a lot of context. So I think getting really involved in one specific community is the best way to learn.

And favorite NFT tool? So I noticed the one that you tweeted about, it shows kind of the unique addresses for your project. So what's that tool first?

I don't know what you're referring to, but I love nansen.ai.

I think it's Nansen.

Yeah, yeah. So it's basically just like you literally get to see like what's actually happening. So you see on Twitter, you hear people talking about it, but then even you go into the data— I have a data analytics degree, so it's kind of my thing— and so you basically want to actually interpret like when something happens, if there's like insider trading, like if there's something popping off for no reason, you're like, okay, people know something, I'm gonna get in. Since it's such like— it's definitely a, uh, unregulated industry. There's a lot of things like that that you can pick up on. So data tools are absolute key. They just give you an edge. So MobyGG, IC.tools is probably the best one, IC.tools. And then if you want a free one, Dune.xyz.

Got it. I love this. I'm sharing— well, we'll be sharing this in the show notes. But Brett, this has been great. What's the best way for people to find you online?

YouTube, Brett Malinowski. Just type in Brett NFT is probably the easiest way for SEO. @TheBrettWay on Twitter. Those are my main 2. Or join the Magic Mushroom Clubhouse Discord. I like to hang out there a lot.

All right, awesome, Brett. Uh, we're gonna do this again. Uh, thanks so much for doing this, man.

Eric, I appreciate you so much. It was fun. Thank you.