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The Future Of Amplifying Community: Exploring Web3 @Kreatorhood | Outer Edge LA Twitter Space
There are all sorts of different uses for Web3, but supporting independent creators is a really important one, yet it’s one that doesn’t always get enough conversation. We are doing that conversation now in this Outer Edge LA Twitter Space with the founders of Kreatorhood, Ayesha Kanji and Maani Hariri. Ayesha and Maani share the vision behind their innovative project and how it helps independent creators thrive amid the ups and downs of the Web3 economy. Also joining the conversation to share their thoughts are Josh Ong of Bored Room Ventures, Kristina Flynn of INTENTIONAL, artist and musician Ed Balloon, and musician and futurist Scott Page. There is a whole lot to unpack from this conversation. Make sure to tune in!
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We want to thank Kreatorhood for sponsoring the special thought leadership conversation on taking stock of what we’ve learned about the possibility of moving forward to amplify fan connectedness for both visual and non-visual creators of all types. Kreatorhood is a creator-first marketplace revolutionizing the NFT space with over eleven embedded utility protections for creator royalties, easy onboarding, and sustainable NFT minting. In this episode, we’ll delve into the challenges of sustaining creator communities, the importance of transparency in the creator-fan relationship, and the transformative role of utility NFTs in bridging Web2 and Web3. Before we get started, first let’s do some introductions for everyone joining the show to speak.
We have Sean, our trustworthy producer, and Richard. Richard, how are you doing?
Doing great. I’m happy to be here. We also will potentially have someone coming from our Edge of AI Twitter account a little bit later. For those who don’t know, we have a show called The Edge of AI. We’ll talk about that a little bit later. It is brought to you by The Edge of Company, launching this August 2, 2023, in Venice, Los Angeles.
We have two exciting giveaways for folks who are part of this Twitter Space. You’ll stay until the end of the show to learn how you can get a chance to win two tickets to our launch party or $200 as well as five other readers getting a cool ticket getaway as well, then we have a giveaway, brought to us by Kristina around Kreatorhood as well that we’ll chat about later as well. I’m excited about all this but let me introduce our guests. First up, we have Ayesha Kanji and Maani Hariri, the dynamic Cofounders of Kreatorhood. Their innovative vision and dedication toward empowering creators have helped shape the creator industry, providing a platform for artists to thrive and ensure their talents with the world. Guys, how is it going?
It’s going great. I’m happy to be here.
We love having you and appreciate what you guys are building for the space. We are excited to unpack that a little bit more. We also have the one and only Josh Ong, the Cofounder of Board Room Ventures. With a keen entrepreneurial spirit, Josh has been at the forefront of investing in promising startups and fostering a culture of innovation. I feel like I see Josh everywhere there’s a Web3 event and Boardroom Ventures as a consulting agency and NFT Fund, which partners with brands to strategize, build community, and create impactful moments in Web3. What’s going on, Josh?
I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
I’m glad to have you. I’m glad you’re a part of Josh DAO. It wouldn’t be the same without you. There are 63 Joshes in Web3 that we’ve counted, but there’s probably more in the shadows so we need to get into the mix for Josh. We also have, Dominick Adams known as Gentle Tornado, the same CEO of The HIPED Foundation. Dominick’s commitment to making a positive impact on education and personal development has touched countless lives, inspiring a generation to achieve their full potential. His foundation is revolutionizing the way mental health is approached and addressing that among teens and young adults. I love what you guys are doing. It sounds like a critical mission that you’re at. How’s it going?
It’s going amazingly. I’m grateful to be here and to be alive.
Next up, we have Kristina Flynn, who’s the visionary CEO and Founder of Intentional. Its groundbreaking work in the tech industry has paved the way for cutting-edge advancements and revolutionary solutions to real-world challenges. Intentional is a digital marketing and communications agency with its finger on the pulse of Web3 and proven systems that are building powerful brands through content, community, and consistency. Kristina, it’s great to have you. How’s it going?
Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.
We are looking forward to diving some conversations with you. Finally, we are excited to have Ed Balloon who is on the space. Ed is an artist, musician, and creator of the Run Ed Collection and Beauty Supply Is Out Of Du-Rags. We are glad you’re able to make it with us. How are you doing?
I’m okay. I’m glad to try to get in here. It’s a busy day, but glad for the conversation.
Thank you so much for taking some time to hang with us during a busy time for your own drop and what you’re up to in the space. We appreciate that. I am certainly pumped about our launch of the Edge of AI podcast coming up. I know we started to give folks a sneak peek there, but maybe you can dive a little bit deeper and then we’ll get started.
We’re inviting everyone to join us at Venice Beach on Wednesday, August 2, 2023, for a live recording, expert talks, great music, tasty treats, cold drinks, and insider networking. Snap into your safety belt and prepare to explore the depths of the rapidly expanding AI universe. Each of our episodes is a dispatch featuring hyper-relevant reports from pilots, pioneers, and passengers aboard the AI rocket ship.
We explore the latest use cases and developments in AI where you can hear from experts building the tech and how this disruptive force is transforming industries and society. We’re doing a giveaway during this Twitter space to “enter” and retweet this room with something you are enjoying about the space or “from a guest that you loved and you enjoyed hearing from.” You’ll be entered for a chance to win two of the Edge of AI launch party tickets. The contest will go on for 24 hours. Even if you’re reading this after it goes live, you might still have a chance to win.
In partnership with Kreatorhood, Kristina has been gracious enough to do a giveaway of her own, which will be a piece of art, only their second piece ever to be listed in a 30-minute coaching session, How To Build Your Personal Brand. These are special opportunities. Sean will tally up all the entries and get Kristina’s help picking a winner by the end of the show. To start off this conversation, we want to dive into the Web3 fan experience, how that impacts the world of independent creators, and how they can use Web3 to enhance their trade. There are all sorts of different uses for Web3, but this area of supporting independent creators is an important one.
It’s one that doesn’t always get enough conversation. We talk about the bigger creators, brands, and whatnot that have agencies to refer them, but there are a lot more independents out there. I’d like to start this conversation by reflecting on what has worked and hasn’t worked for independent creators when it comes to applying Web3 to their trade. I was hoping Kristina, you could kick us off there as someone who’s built a personal brand guide for independent creators and worked with so many. You have a nice lens on all this. What do you see working and not working in this regard?
Thanks for having me. It’s fun because one of the first artists that I ever worked with was Ed Balloon. Ed has been a big part of the story framework that we’ve developed. Some of the successful and proven strategies we’ve been able to develop for creators to help them with this exact thing. The way that we look at it is from a framework approach. When you think about an independent creator, it’s overwhelming to build your brand. It’s overwhelming to even get started.
How do you balance creating and building your work as well as marketing yourself and selling your work? From our perspective, we look at what has worked in the past. The first of which is building through a story. By story, we mean values, points of human connections, who are you raised by, how you were raised, and what they instilled in you over instead of trauma, which can be very difficult for a lot of creators. Sometimes we think of storytelling as showing up as your most vulnerable self, but you can do that in other ways.
The next part is once you’ve got that story, those values and human connections, you can figure out how you articulate that and how you do that through content that is relevant to the people that you’re trying to target, potential collectors and folks you’re looking to partner with. It becomes a matter of how you do that in a consistent manner. It is using systems and tools that we have available to us now to help limit some of the time that you have to spend doing this work and maximize the output of that time.
That’s what we’ve been seeing work a lot. We talk about all the time in this space the importance of authenticity and showing up as yourself. Most creators, especially independent creators that I know, aren’t necessarily challenged by doing that. The challenge comes from the ability to manage it all and your time. Why I love working with Kreatorhood is it allows folks to be able to do that to communicate their message clearly, but also to be able to sell and monetize themselves beyond art into their skills and their expertise. It creates big opportunities for folks. Those are some of the strategies that we’re seeing and examples we’ve seen of that are folks like Ed Balloon, who has depended on storytelling, who has been able to innovate in a way that other folks haven’t been able to, and build strong connections and relationships within this community as a result of that.
I’ll speak as a creator and a podcaster about how you naturally are on a quest for tools and technology that enable you to focus on what you do the most. We’ve been on that quest since we started the show in March 2021. We’ve done over 250 plus episodes. There’s usually not one tool that’s comprehensive that makes all this come together, but it’s something we should shoot for. I appreciate Kreatorhood trying to put that on the map. Let’s talk about some mistakes because there are plenty of them and I have lots of war stories on my end. Ed, when did you trip up on your Web3 journey and what did you learn from that?
What do you mean by trip-up?
Make a mistake or go down a path where you realize you have to take another turn. Different people have different perspectives on mistakes and how they embrace them. Some people say, “There are no mistakes at all in life. It’s all good.” I’m looking for some lessons learned here.
In regards to a trip-up, I would say someone would say, “Your run Ed Collection was possibly a trip up,” and it wasn’t a trip-up, but it was something where you’re like, “Next time, you should not drop when the Apes are dropping,” or taking consideration like who your audience is more and what they will be inclined to and those things. I feel like that was necessary in a way for me to be able to understand the space a little bit more and what it means to do drops, rollouts, and those things. I guess it was a trip-up. You may see it that way. I take those things as things that I need to use to continue learning experiences, “Is there anything else?”
I also don’t want it to be like that because that work can sound a little bit discouraging for people coming out here who are trying to figure out, “How do I do things, what do I drop, and why should I drop?” Sometimes you should just drop. A lot of times, the trip-up isn’t your fault. Timing is important in this space and the space moves by quickly. You may think it’s the right time but it’s not.
@Kreatoorhood: Timing is so important in this spaceand the space moves by so quickly you may think it’s the right time and it’snot.
When I did my drop, the day was great. The rollout was pretty much everyone knew about it. All it took was a big project to say, “We’re going to do a drop in a week,” which was the same day. It’s like, “Do you move your projects to another date?” If we were to move it to another date because if you guys are familiar with the other side drop, the next day was like the bear market or the beginning of it. You also have to take into consideration what that means and stuff.
I don’t know if you want to say much about trip-ups. If anything like a lot of the trip-ups, you want to make sure that you don’t have is make sure that you’re not a rug, make sure that the people on your team are going to be consistent, and making sure that you are going to be consistent in this space. Those things are trip-ups that you don’t want to have. Other things that are out of your control when it comes to a drop, not selling out the way you want it to, or things like the bear market, are out of your control. You have to figure out how you can navigate that. I don’t know if it’s much of a trip-up versus a learning experience.
That’s what I was going for. I appreciate the importance of the vocabulary that we used to talk about this process. What I gathered from you is, at the heart of it, you got to make an intentional decision to commit to whatever you do in Web3. At the same time, don’t overanalyze it. Don’t be too precious about it because inertia is a bigger enemy than making mistakes. Mistakes are part of that evolutionary journey. You want to embrace the opportunity to learn because that’s what Web3 is all about.
You had some great points in there. To build off of that, you have to be able to change and adapt to what’s going on. Most people had no idea that the bear would be as sustained and amplified as it has been in the NFT space. With that, we have to adjust. It is a life of adjustment. Going into one of our next questions is about cracking the code of what’s captivated Web3 audiences, especially at this moment. This is the hardest time to be building. We live to see another day on the other side of this. I think things are going to be incredible, but now it’s about how we continue to grow in this moment. Now we’re going to talk about what hasn’t worked and what is working with engaging and captivating fans in this new landscape. Josh, I’ll pass it over to you to ask your first question.
I was curious, Gentle Tornado, about your perspective on this. You have a great nonprofit initiative. I’m sure there are some native folk who embrace your initiative that may not have known anything about Web3 and then some Web3 folks that have come into the fold as well. What techniques have you found successful in terms of captivating your audience and engaging them around Web3 projects?
Making your community care about what you’re doing is important. The way that I’ve always gone after content is to document and be myself. I don’t care how many likes or followers I have. I put out what I’m putting out. I embarked on this journey to preach positivity and gratitude. It’s easily one of the hardest things. Drama sells, not positivity. The way that I had to get after content was to be in people’s faces. I’m going to be relentless. I’m going to be in people’s faces about gratitude and positivity, and relationships and the community will come. My consistency is easily what has been the number one thing.
From there, I’ve doubled down on everything else. Being consistent translates to many other things. When I came into the content space for myself, I wanted to be undeniable. That can mean a lot of things to different people, but the fact that I have 525 gratitude day videos in a row, no one can take that away from me, and the fact that I’ve done other things too in my life. Those are statistics that nobody can take away. When I tell people outside of Web3, they are even more shocked than the people who are seeing it daily. How I’ve always built my brand is, “I want to build this brand that’s going to be undeniable. In 1 or 2 years, I’m going to have 1,500,” or how many gratitude day videos. That has formed a community that I believe I could do whatever I want with as long as I’m honest and ethical.
@Kreatoorhood: Beingconsistent translates to so many other things.
A mission that we should all aim for in life is to be undeniable at whatever it is that we’re doing in the world. Life is too short to be ordinary, in my humble opinion. Josh, what about your thoughts here? How do you find a win-win between creators, fans, and marketplaces?
Win-win is aligning everybody in terms of incentives but also in terms of mission. If you can match up creators and fans to have some of their collectibles in their work to some of that early support to be a win-win for that relationship, Kreatorhood as a marketplace can come in and also help to triangulate that. We’re hoping to see a real-life cycle there for helping creators and fans together.
Even adding to that, creators are continuing to have to navigate this dynamic landscape. I’m sure there are several lessons learned from the roadmaps that might have not panned out. A lot of people created these big visions and dreams at the height of everything. Not necessarily everyone playing for a sustained bear, what are some of those core lessons that you were able to learn? I’m open this up to the floor if anyone would like to share about all means.
I’m happy to jump in on this. As a creator myself and also as a builder, watching the space over the last few years there’s been a lot of hype around a lot of projects in what they’re going to deliver then seeing when things aren’t delivered and the fallout of that, which is not always great. A lot of the time, folks do have the true intention to deliver, but that’s overpromising. From our perspective, it’s important to have that transparency upfront and be quite balanced and circumspect about what you’re offering and what you think you can do putting that on a chain.
That’s what we’re trying to strive to do at Kreatorhood so that it’s a balanced equation for both the collections and creators and the buyers to say, “This is what I want to give. It’s a two-way. I want to benefit alongside my community. Equally, I’m allowing my community to have transparency into that and to keep me honest on that.”
Gentle Tornado, do you have some thoughts there?
One of the most important things is honesty as AK said about not delivering on things that people promised. That’s okay if you come out and say, “We messed up. We weren’t able to do this,” and taking that accountability because that could gain you 10X the amount of fans or community members. That’s something that people don’t do in Web3 that it’s done commonly in the Web2 world as how you build a successful Web2 company is being honest, building a reputation, and doing these things and your word is everything where in this space, people come out with a project, say they’re going to do these things, not do them, and then maybe cry a river, but it’s like, “Come out, say that you messed up. Say that you’re doing this.” It’s okay to mess up. It’s amplified in this space because it’s pretty emotional here, but at the same time, you can be accountable and that will gain much more traction and build your word.
There is a lot of merit in terms of what blockchain and Web3 offer in terms of balancing transparency with privacy. At the same time, you can’t take advantage of that privacy to think that there’s a force field between you and your community. In fact, that level of transparency and over-communication is that much more important because of Web3 because you’re not talking to people in person as often. You’re not video chatting even. It’s all through written and visual communication. It becomes that much more important to communicate because you have less senses to work with at any given moment. Any other thoughts on this?
Manny, anything to add there?
Richard, wrap us up.
See you soon, everyone.
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