Awhile back I posted an article on the biggest thing keeping you back from building a sustainable business from your knowledge & experience. It’s essential for identifying this massive roadblock that you may not even know about.
This video is step two: how do I get around it?
Turns out that ChatGPT is a fantastic tool for people who are too smart for their own good.
Twitter loves posts with images. Whenever I’m sharing a random quip, insight, or quote that comes to mind, I always head over to Unsplash to find a photo that has the right vibe for the tweet.
But what happens when I want an illustration? Or a Japanese wood block cut style image of Metroid Prime?
Not too long ago I heard about this project on Twitter when people started sharing all sorts of weird genre mashups & strange images that were clearly not man-made, but way too cool to be some kind of crappy computer generated thing.
Turns out it’s a badass computer-generated thing.
After hours of going down the rabbit hole I learned that I could try it out if I joined the MidJourney Discord.
(Easy. I already have a Discord account for my private “ZAVANT Squad” community that’s NFT-gated. If you’re interested, go here to learn more.)
The researchers plugged their badass image-making thingy into their Discord server so that anybody can interact with whatever demon lives in their computers, and ask it to give you any kind of image you want.
In fact, the featured image for this article is from MidJourney.
Pretty cool.
You get 25 requests and then you’re out. Pay up.
I blew through my freebies pretty quickly asking it to give me random nostalgia images like Snake-Eyes & Storm Shadow high fiving, spaceships, new year’s wizards. Medieval Batman. The usual.
I even asked it to “/imagine logo letter z corporate 8k wealthy trustworthy black white” and this is what it gave me:
That instantly became the server image on my private Discord.
Once I realized it can do anything I wanted it to do everything.
So I bought an annual subscription right there.
This is about the same time that I’m figuring out how to NFT-gate everything under the sun (read this for some background & to see another MidJourney featured image.) so I ask it to give me a portal to represent my hyper-dimensional art project “Dimension Z.” Boom. Done.
Then I asked it to give me a shard of black glass to use as the featured image for a magician-only project I’m releasing soon. Boom. Double done.
I’m using both as the images tied to the membership NFTs that I created.
With MidJourney I have instant access to any kind of image I need for my social media, articles, NFTs, and whatever else I can imagine up.
And that’s the secret: the results are limited only by the imagination of the person asking for the images.
Pretty cool.
Combine this image-making capacity with the word-writing capacity of ChatGPT (article coming soon about that, too), and one person (me) can realize their vision more quickly & more completely than ever before.
Want to try it out? I’ve integrated the MidJourney demon bot into my private Discord. All you have to do is pick up a ZAVANT Squad membership, and then you can join up & try out your 25 free generations.
See you on the inside!
In 2009 I was invited by the U.S. military to perform my mind reading show at 12 bases in South Korea.
I jumped at the opportunity.
It was a fantastic experience, and I even made a travel vlog DVD (back when those were still a thing).
During my tour I had two quick interactions that have quietly been working their way into the core of my personal mission in the years after.
After wrapping up one of my shows, the commander of the base came up to me and shook my hand while telling me how much he enjoyed the show.
He had something in his palm that he was giving to me while shaking my hand.
I accepted whatever it was while showing no outward signs of acknowledgement (play it cool, man!), and slipped my hand into my pocket to ditch it where I could look at it later.
A couple hours go by as I’m talking with soldiers, their families, signing autographs, taking photos, and doing all the things I normally do after shows.
And I can’t stop thinking about the weight in my pocket.
What a delightful & tantalizing secret.
At the end of the night I get to my hotel room where I can finally see what I’ve been carrying with me.
It’s a medallion. About two inches in diameter. Painted in several colors with shiny enamel.
It’s a challenge coin.
They’re given to members of a unit who display extraordinary achievement or demonstration of purpose.
It’s an authentication token that verifies the identity or membership status of the holder.
If someone claimed to be a member of a certain group, like the NAVY Seals, a real member knows what the NAVY Seal coin looks like so he could challenge that person’s claim by demanding to see their coin. No coin? That’s a no-go.
By the end of the tour I had another.
The second time I knew what was happening and still played it cool.
These coins are two of my most prized possessions.
Over the years I got to thinking: what would it look like if I had my own challenge coin for people who saw me at shows, bought my books, attended my lectures, and wanted to be part of the movement?
Even though the memory of the tour slowly faded to background noise, the thought has quietly been simmering in the back of my mind. Mostly quiet. But it’s there.
Since we live in the future and we have something called the internet, I think it’s possible to have completely new ways of finding your tribe.
I’d love to empower my community members to access hidden posts, articles, videos, and training courses that I’ve spread across the many websites that I’ve built without having to set up the same profile on 10+ different sites.
I’d also like members to always have VIP access to any/all public shows that I do across the country. I’m performing in your area? Your name is always on the list! Come early, hang out in the green room. Stay late and we’ll get dinner at that dive bar since it’s the only place that’s still open at this time of night.
I’d also like them to have a place where we can all hang out, chat, make big plans, and encourage each other.
I’ve been building an email list for quite some time now. That works well in order to stay in touch with people, and to share updates of what’s going on, but it’s not suited for showcasing membership. Hard to show off “Hey, look! I have an email from Jonathan!”
Neat. Cool. So what?
Back in 2018/2019 I heard about NFTs and they sounded like the perfect 21st century solution for me. Digital playing cards? Digital membership badges? Awesome! Sign me up!
The first project that caught my attention was RavenCoin. Without getting too technical about it, the RavenCoin project makes it easy for someone like me to create a unique “coin,” connect a picture (maybe something like a biker gang patch), and set the limit on how many there can be. 10? 100? 1,000,000?
Cool, we can make limited membership. Very exclusive.
I made several versions of ZAVANT squad NFTs, paintings, and other experiments. Some I made a few (paintings). Some I made a lot (THEZAVANT). Some I only made one (MENTALIST).
I also saw that messaging was on the roadmap.
That means that anyone holding one of the coins that I made can receive messages from me. Cool! It’s like a secret radio that receives messages from me.
The dreams of global domination were closer than ever.
But there were several drawbacks:
After my exploration with RavenCoin, I found Urbit.
This is its own rabbit hole, and I have written about it at length already and I even wrote the script to a well-received project that you can watch here:
It will be the best solution.
In the future.
It is the best project that checks all the right boxes (privacy, data ownership, peer to peer networking, etc) & it will eventually eat the world.
Eventually.
There are lots of positives, and I’m currently building a community on Urbit. If you’re on the network you can come join the party here: ~minder-folden/antechamber
But it has some drawbacks:
It’s January 2023 as I write this, and I’ve found a fantastic solution that fits my current setup & situation.
As of right now I have set up a couple flavors of NFTs that I can send someone. The challenge of getting someone used to using a crypto wallet like MetaMask is still there, but the hurdle is smaller because they will only be receiving the asset (which doesn’t use gas) and signing transactions (which also does not use gas).
Since it’s a relatively passive requirement (that doesn’t need them to go through the process of getting a particular flavor of crypto), I feel better about getting my Mom to use a wallet to receive an asset.
(“Can my Mom do this?” is a common metric I use to evaluate whether or not I can get buy-in on a technologically challenging project.)
Once they have the “ZAVANT Squad” asset in their wallet, they can then see secret posts on this site, watch exclusive courses on ZAVANT University, get access to a secret Discord server that only allows holders of “ZAVANT Squad” to join, and they can even hear extra “behind the scenes” podcast episodes on a completely different website.
All because they own one asset.
It’s great to hand out lifetime memberships for people who are diehard supporters.
But what about all those people who might not be all in?
That’s cool. I can even make temporary memberships that expire in 5 minutes, 5 days, or 5 years.
What about if I were in this for the money?
Yeah, we can do that, too.
Since I have a Stripe account for my businesses, I can sell these membership NFTs with credit cards and send them to their wallet without having to touch anything after it’s all set up.
This means I can sell books, e-books, show tickets, videos, courses, and more all through NFT-gated information on websites that I already own.
This solution has unlocked a ton of functionality around a wealth of information that I’ve already built on websites (sunk cost fallacy, anyone?).
The hub of all the activity will be located at ZAVANT.xyz and Portal Key holders will always have the highest level access to any/all projects.
As of now, the best way to let me know you’d like to be a part of this wild ride is to send me a DM on Twitter. Get me an ETH (polygon specifically) asset-aware address, and I’ll get you something cool.
Now that you have the ZAVANT Squad NFT, you can join the private Discord here: https://www.guild.xyz/zavant and you can think about joining Urbit down the line, too.
