This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey, Sidal School listeners. Thanks so much for joining me throughout this year. I hope you have enjoyed the stories, the case studies, the tips and such. I just so look forward to this daily short conversation that we have every episode less than 10 minutes long. So if you've been part of Sidal School from the beginning or you just joined recently, however you got here, I'm so happy to have you along for the ride.
And of course, today's episode, because we do have an episode, today's episode is in the failure Friday segment. Failure Friday, failure Friday. The principle is we can learn as much from failure as we can from success, sometimes in fact more. If I think about all the different things that I've done wrong or that have gone wrong, both in the business part of my life and even just my other part of my life, it's easy for me to see, okay, the most personal growth I've ever had comes from these times of challenge in essence. So just like our throwback Thursday segment, you get to hear directly from a Sidal slur who has struggled in some way, often struggled to get something off the ground.
And so they tell you this quick story of something that went very wrong, all right? Now today's short story features Daniel. He's an artist from the UK and Daniel learned about digital art and NFTs. Then he spent three months making his own collection. He was really excited.
He wanted to sell his digital art through a mint, which if you're not familiar with how NFT projects are often launched, someone will say, okay, we put together a thousand pieces or whatever the number is of this new collection. And it's available for minting starting at this time on this day and such. So it's meant to be a bit of an event. So, you know, Daniel's collection was gonna be 5,000 pieces as part of a mint. And that's the setup.
As you might guess, it did not go incredibly well. In fact, it did not go according to plan. He did not sell all 5,000 pieces in an hour. Well, I should let you hear it from him. So I'm gonna pass the mic virtually to Daniel.
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I got into crypto and NFTs last year. I spent several months going down the rabbit hole. I'm an artist and I was curious about the process and you know, its potential. At first, I was worried about the environmental impacts of NFTs, but then I learned about the upcoming merge, which would dramatically reduce the energy costs of building on the Ethereum network. So I jumped in.
For more than three months, I worked long and hard on my projects. I made about 5,000 unique images, which isn't as difficult as it might seem. Since it's only about 200 base images, but it's also not as easy as clicking a few buttons. I'm not really sure how many hours I put into it in total, but it was easily a project of a couple of weeks of full-time works, spread out over those three months. So far so good, but then there was this disappointment.
I had a partner who was gonna help me promote it, but he got busy and I had to do it on my own. That was a big problem. I'd spent all my time working on the art and I hadn't really built up a lot of connections. It really helps a lot to know people in the space who can get the word out about a new mint. Lots of buyers are only interested if there seems to be a real momentum behind something.
That is hard to manufacture. And of course, without anyone to shout from the rooftops, momentum was a problem. Anyway, the big day came and we minted 50 immediately, which was cool. But then over the next hour, we only minted 50 more. That was like a hundred out of 5,000, which it was a bit of a bummer.
Unfortunately, things stalled out from there. I got to 500 total in a month, which of course was just 10% of what I hoped for. Then because there were still so many left for minting, the resale market just never took off. That's how a lot of NFT artists make most of their money from commissions on future sales. To be honest, I got pretty discouraged at this point and just stopped engaging with a project, which was another problem, I know, but it was hard to pretend.
With some hindsight, I know that it was a critical failure to expect the art to carry the day without any real marketing. On the bright side though, I'm now proud of the fact that I actually sold 50 pieces of my original work. I think I just had some unrealistic expectations. And instead of being discouraged, I should use this as a chance to regroup. That's what I'm working on now, preparing a new idea for next year.
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat, right? [Music]
Indeed, Daniel's advice there, never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. In fact, that is our theme of failure Friday. So I'm glad to hear it's kind of being embedded, integrated into these reports. I have had, as I said in the beginning, lots of things that have gone wrong in my life.
And I look back and I'm like, okay, that was a single defeat. It's not the final defeat. I'm gonna keep going and keep making stuff. So, Daniel, I hope you do the same. And listeners as well, I hope you take your setbacks.
And if anything has gone wrong this year, well, we're gonna move into a brand new year very, very soon. Okay. And if it's been an amazing year, that's great. I mean, that's awesome. Like, might as well have another amazing year coming up, but just in case something's gone wrong, we can turn the corner very soon here.
So thank you once again for being part of Side Hustle School this year. Our notes, sidehustleschool.com/2190, 2,190. All right, that's it for today. Take care of yourself over there. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
