But before we go into that story, let me (General Toulouse) tell the story of us. To begin, there's three of us. We all met in 2016 at work. Where did we work? In the most storied and unique city of America... New Orleans. We were pedicab drivers in the French Quarter. A job that requires so many skills - the ability to pedal heavy weight, talking to people while trying to sound like you're not dying, being in the sun for 8 hours of day, and knowing (within seconds) the exact route you'll be taking to charge the customers accordingly. We were the jack of all trades. Amongst all the skills, being sociable was what made you stick out amongst the other pedicab drivers. Now back to the main story...

We started the idea for our project in late 2020, and during that time Crypto Kitties were making somewhat of another buzz in the NFT market which had me (General Toulouse) thinking... why don't we do that? The pandemic was in full swing, and people were stuck at home so why not get back into cryptocurrency related (aside from being hodlers in general) and do something creative.

That something didn't happen until the next year during winter 2021 when we witnessed a small project from Australia called "Gunslingers NFT" go from barely 1,000 of their NFTs being minted, to the full 7,777 total getting minted in one night. We were in shock!

And everyone knows that in the NFT space 1 day equals roughly 30 days in the real world... so every second from that point the crowd of people grew and grew. Our project was official erected in January 2022 with the securing of our website, social media accounts, and other things. We knew we were behind during that time, but had no idea just how much the wave would move.

Ourselves being a team of three with backgrounds in crypto, finance, copywriting, web development, and programming were able to knock out the development and creation phrase in just two and half months. Only taking that long because we all had full time jobs, so the zoom meetings were always held very late or very early.

One thing you might notice missing from that list of qualifications is... marketing. Probably the second most important part of any NFT project aside from the art and community built around it. We were shocked. We thought, we'd be able to get into a few NFT calendars and that would solve the marketing issue. WRONG.

So, okay, we looked at other methods like advertising on Twitter. You need permission to do that, and we'd sent well over 20 tickets to the advertising department section on Twitter and the responses were pitiful. Next, we tried influencers, we went through many YouTube channels looking for honest people who we thought were respectable in the scene and thoughtful in their approach to promoting. We didn't want someone to read off a script, instead we wanted someone who genuinely liked our project and would talk about it. No luck. We sent many, many e-mails and DMs only to have one respond back and try to overcharge us for measly views and low-quality engagement.

Next came something we didn't know was as bad as it was until now... when you tweet, sometimes a checkmark account will like your post and you're thinking, "oh wow, this person noticed my account". You go to their profile and it says "DM for promos". We were thinking, "this is great! a checkmark Twitter account is accessible and will promote us". BAD IDEA. Luckily, we never did it, since we were able to see what a waste that route can be. You spend over $150 just for them to retweet you and that tweet, not your follower count, would grow.

Lastly, we tried the standard approach of joining a Discord server that was supposedly a support server for people to talk ideas, and collaborate. What a waste of time that was! Everybody in those servers are people just like us, except they're brilliant enough to think that shilling their project to other people who also want exposure to their unknown project is going to help. IT WON'T. It's like going to a hospital and instead of asking the doctor for help, you turn around and ask the dude wrapped in gauze like a mummy to help you fix your broken toe. What are these "projects" thinking to shill in those kinds of servers.

We said lastly in the previous paragraph, but in reality, there was definitely more to include. From tweeting out consistently just for no one to see it, to running small ads on Instagram to get some action (no action, just a lot of likes).

We don't claim to know marketing (it's evident as it'll ever be at this point), but we do know as humans how it feels to work for something so hard, just to get no attention. It hurts. And some lucky people do all the right steps from the beginning and get lucky, or just get lucky in general because an influencer saw their project. We're not advocators of "hope". We know hard work is needed to make it in this space (or being genuine and hoping people would notice it... what we're trying to do), but just like how digging a hole FASTER is technically hard work, it won't get you anywhere and you just waste energy (as opposed to just digging the hole at normal speed). What we realized we needed is a backhoe to do the digging... sticking to our bad analogy. Instead of tweeting to no one, going onto Discord servers full of people who don't have interest in project, we needed to build connections so the power of that can leverage some of the ground work for us... i.e., the backhoe as compared to the shovel. It sounds mischievous, but what we're trying to say is... connection. Whether in the abstract human way, or the literal way of someone who has an audience bigger than ours and ready to listen to whatever is shared out.

Although, just like it's hard for some people to make friends in school on the first day, we're in the same situation, but the situation (regardless of how good you are at socializing, or spending money to get you name in from of people), it's futile if you don't have a big name or someone of trust and value to push your project ahead (or just get lucky). The problem is, getting in touch with these types of people. We thought airdropping NFTs to a select amount of people would at least open the door for a conversation or attempting to interact would them would work. MAYBE.

So, in general, the NFT space is hard(er) than it was even 3 months ago! If you are sociable and tell a good story - that's great! The truth is no one will see it because of the pure number of people trying to do the same. The market is flooded. And in times like these, you need the power of leverage to get ahead. Leverage either being a larger pocket full of money, or a connection to the NFT space through an influencer (or just people who are popular within their circle).

If small and new NFT projects can only understand this, maybe the market or buyers in general would be more receptive. We're not experts in marketing, but we know what's definitely hurting it for the rest of us good people... the shilling, overpromoting, and junk NFT projects out there with nothing but money on their minds. The ones who make a bland landing page, and push the same Fiverr artist created art day in and day out. The ones who make whitelist spots that are essentially worthless since the project itself is run by people with no passion, or the requirements are so whack, that you'd be better off just buying the NFT on mint day and incurring the gas fee. NO ONE wants to run a marathon, find doubloons on the bottom of the ocean, jump through a ring of fire, and find Waldo just to get a whitelist spot for a project ran by people with no passion whatsoever.

We understand people think the space is easy, and that riches are made over night, but what they're aren't doing (and what we're trying to do) is something deeper than making a landing page, selling generative art, and building hype on a non-essential third-party website to build a community. The community exists, and will always exist in people's minds and hearts. We want to create memories and be there 2, 3, 5, even 10 years down the line to see how the community is doing.

Your hype may outvoice the meaningful projects in the short term, but the projects made with passion will be around much longer and mean something to people in the future.

With all that said... everyone has a story to tell, we just want to help you create the next chapter.