#69-Beginners Guide: Navigating NFT Discord 101 With Artist & Mini Monkey Mafia Co-Founder Christine Gu

Show Notes

If you’ve been thinking about getting into the NFT space and investing in projects, Discord interactions are a must. In this episode Lori Vajda and Nola Boea sat down with Christine Gu, digital artist and co-founder of the NFT art project, Mini Monkey Mafia. As the former community manager, Christine shares her experience and knowledge so you can learn the basics of using Discord servers.
Come take a listen and find out how you can get started and navigate the NFT Discord community. Hint: it’s easier than you think.

Thanks for Listening!

Ready to start your business or grow your personal brand? Schedule a free 20 min. consultation call now. 

If you enjoyed this show, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you’ll never miss an episode. Want to get to know us more? Find out more about us and our services at Sticky Brand Lab

We love hearing from you! Leave or speak your message here

If you haven’t already, please connect with us on Facebook! 

Would you like to be a featured guest or have your question, comment or review mentioned? Ask Muse!

Business success strategies are in the works. Come have a listen!

In This Episode You’ll Learn 

• What Discord is and why it’s important for the NFT community.
• How project teams, moderators, buyers, collectors, and interested audiences come together for discussions, streaming events, promoting new launches, getting solutions to problems, sharing ideas, having fun, and a lot more.
• Tips to get started on the Discord platform. 
• How to navigate and use channels within an NFT community. 

Key points Nola and Lori are sharing in this episode:
(3:13:37) Christine explains what Discord is, how to get started, and what you need to know to join one within the NFT community.  
(8:29:70) Discord has challenges for building and maintaining communities making communication a problem, which is why the different channels are so important.
(14:21.98) Because you can be anonymous on Discord, people new to the space can feel the unpredictability of buying and selling NFTs. Here are the positives and negatives of using the platform. 
(17:07.30) Tips and recommendations for engaging and creating a positive experience on NFT Discords.

Resources 

You can subscribe to Lori and Nola's show, (we love you and want to make it easy) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Connect with Christine Gu: 
Christine's personal portfolio: https://christinegu.com/ 
Christine's Twitter: https://twitter.com/chr15tine_gu 
Mini Monkey Mafia OpenSea link: https://opensea.io/collection/minimonkeymafia 
Mini Monkey Mafia website: https://monkeymafia.co/ 

This episode was supported by: Be-YOU-nique

ConvertKit: Our #1 Favorite Email Marketing Platform 
(This is an affiliate link)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nola: If you're new to the NFT space with an interest in investing in a project, joining a Discord server is a must. Whether you're an aspiring NFT business owner, or you're just interested in learning more about the basics of a Discord community, this podcast is for you. Stick around listeners because we're breaking it down in our effort to make it easier for you to get started in the NFT space.

[00:00:22] Announcer: You're listening to the Sticky Brand Lab podcast, where time strapped professionals like you learn how to create a business you love in as little as three hours a week.

[00:00:34] Lori: Discord is a platform where NFT project teams, moderators, buyers, collectors, and interested audiences come together for discussions, streaming events, promoting new launches, getting solutions to problems, sharing ideas, having fun, and a lot more. In other words, it's a place where people with a similar passion and interests come together. So if you're interested in getting involved and not sure how or where to begin, don't worry. We've got you covered. But before we get started on the basics, welcome to Sticky Brand Lab, the podcast where we share essential business tools, shortcuts, and advice from leading entrepreneurs, industry experts and our own real-world experience. So you can launch your business quickly and without breaking the bank or feeling overwhelmed because the only thing more empowering than knowledge is being able to take confident, decisive action.

[00:01:27] Nola: We're here today with our returning guest, Christine Gu. Christine is an NFT entrepreneur, artist and co-founder of Mini Monkey Mafia, a successful NFT project. They got that way by actively engaging with their community. As an artist and co-team member, Christine wore many hats leading up to, during, and after the launch of Mini Monkey Mafia, including community manager on their Discord platform. She's here today to give us insights into how the Discord platform is used in the NFT space. Think of this episode as an informal learning opportunity for any novices wanting to engage in the space. A Navigating Discord 101, if you will. Welcome back, Christine.

[00:02:10] Christine: Hello. I'm excited to be back.

[00:02:14] Lori: We're so excited to have you. It's always great to have you back because you share so much helpful information and our listeners really relate to your personal experiences and professional insights. So for those who don't know, Discord is a voice, video and text chat platform that had been very popular in the gaming community. It's equally important in the NFT community. But it can be a bit intimidating for anyone just entering the NFT space. We thought it would be helpful if you could share your knowledge, personal, as well as your professional experience with NFT Discords making them less intimidating and overwhelming to anyone just getting started. So, for someone new to the NFT space, a Discord community is pretty imperative. So let's start at the beginning. Christine, what exactly is Discord and how does one get started on it?

[00:03:09] Christine: So Discord was originally a platform where a lot of gamers and streamers could come on and they could connect with their favorite streamers or content, creators, and so forth. And essentially what it is. Most of it relies in chats. And so text chat, you send messages, you connect with a community of like-minded individuals who probably share the same interests and gaming as you do. It was mainly saturated by a lot of like tech pros and people that were really into games. As we moved into the NFT space, we still use the same platform for the majority of NFT projects. And this is where a lot of creators, founders, designers, developers, and so forth can all come together to connect to their community.

[00:03:53] Lori: Well, that's really helpful information. But just to step back, even further, if somebody is new to the NFT space. Is Discord an app that they can put on their phone? Can you explain how one actually even gets started earlier than that?

[00:04:10] Christine: Discord is an app and it's responsive to both mobile and desktop. So you can download it either on your computer or you can download it on your phone and the features are the same. So essentially what you have are different servers, which are like the different rooms and what you can interact with different communities. Basically, every single server has their own culture and their own people. You jump into the server and then there's different channels within the server. Usually for the channels, you have the public channels, which are open to everyone that comes in. You have the private channels, which are usually for members. For us, if you hold one of our Mini Monkeys, you get asked to the private channels. And then there's also just a bunch of logistics. So like the welcomes, the tickets, which are just things for the devs to do. And a lot of the bots can also be recorded in like a bot commands channel. So you know how to kind of use all the tools within the Discord, but that's a little bit insight into the basic setup of Discord.

[00:05:03] Nola: Is it invitation only? Or can you go in there and browse for communities to join?

[00:05:09] Christine: It depends. I think the majority of it is, the clinical invitation would just be a link. So, a lot of times for NFTs, the link is public and you can basically just pop into the Discord. It kind of interact with the community there. And then for some of the links that are a bit more exclusive, for example, if it's like a members-only link, then that is more like an invitation, as opposed to just like a public link that you just click on.

[00:05:30] Lori: So, after a person sets up their account, they set up a profile. Now, when you're on Facebook, it's traditionally who you are, but in a Discord, you can have an avatar.

[00:05:41] Christine: Yes. So I think as NFTs become more and more popular, I think this idea of an avatar is becoming more prevalent on all social platforms. But I think what makes Discord really exclusive is, there's no such thing as mutual friends. At least from what I know on Discord. So when people send you a friend request, it'll say you guys are in the same servers. They won't say you are friends with this person and they're also mutual friends of XYZ person. I think that's what makes the Discord platform so unique, because on Facebook, even if I have an inkling that might be you, I could check your friends. If I know your mutuals, it's probably going to be you. On Twitter, if we're following the same groups of people, and I'm trying to find you on Twitter, I probably know it's you, once I check up some of our mutuals. Discord, we don't have that. So there's another layer of staying anonymous because you can't really check who they are by their proximity to other people. It's just what servers are they in. And so, I think while this idea of a profile picture covering your identity is pretty more prevalent on other platforms as NFTs and Web 3 becomes a lot more popular and mainstream, I think Discord is one of the only places where, there is added layers of staying anonymous to the individual, that allows these NFT communities kind of come to life. Because then one of the main ways you can recognize other people, is just by the profile picture.

[00:07:00] Lori: That's helpful.

[00:07:01] Nola: So, people come together on Discord to join a community, and you just described the difference between Discord and social media, but why do people actually meet on Discord as opposed to, like, Zoom?

[00:07:15] Christine: I think when it comes to the culture of how Web 3 started, I think a lot of it started with like anonymous profile pictures. And I think one of the main aspects of that was based off of what profile picture you had, it was kind of like a token or show what kind of community you were part of. So I think if you're weighing all the different types of communities, Discord was the one that really, really put that profile picture at the center of your identity. As opposed to Twitter, you can see all my old tweets, you can see my friends, you can see quite a following, so forth. Facebook you see all my mutuals, you see my family. You see everything else. Discord, it was mainly just that profile picture. And sometimes your roles in the Discord server. I think another aspect of it was web 3's at the forefront of what a lot of tech development is going towards. So, with the types of users that are building the space, it's a lot of tech pros, it's a lot of maybe finance pros and so forth. And they all use Discord as their default platform. So I think for them, it was mainly just like, what is convenient and that's what everyone has defaulted to.

[00:08:17] Lori: That makes sense. But from a business standpoint, especially in an NFT business standpoint, what is it about Discord that enables people to actually build an online community for their project?

[00:08:29] Christine: I do want to preface this by saying, I think just coming from a design perspective, the design of Discord as it is now is actually not the best for maintaining a community. I think that's where a lot of the stress comes from, between the community manager and also just the Discord community as a whole. The design of the platform in which we all are operating on, just isn't that sustainable for communities this large and communities that are scaling to even larger. I think what Discord does pretty well is the sorting out of different channels of communication. It separates different servers and then you also have different channels. So like, if you're on Facebook, what you post, you just see between your friends and family. If it's on Twitter, what you post is there, but you can't really sort it out. It's mainly just the text and then like the media, which is like the photos, the gifs and so forth. So, for a lot of NFTs, you have the overall server, which was like the umbrella. This is where you go, this is the location to find the NFT community. And within that community, you have different channels. So you have maybe the members chat, which is if you bought the NFT, you can go into this chat. You have different channels to talk about prices. You have different channels to talk about different interests within the community. So for us, we have like a gaming channel, we have a coding channel, and then we have other stuff like the Mafia Families, which we started a while back. But it's fairly tailored to the types of discussions that are going to be occurred within these communities, that a lot of different other social media platforms I don't have, or at least they don't have a design that's strong enough to sustain that.

[00:10:02] Lori: You know, this kind of reminds me of Slack.

[00:10:05] Christine: Yes. It's very much like Slack. But I think the thing about Slack is it's branded more towards work and like work and meetings. And I don't think that's the vibe that Web 3 and NFT scares people.

[00:10:22] Lori: Good point. Good point.

[00:10:22] Nola: Well, you had mentioned that Discord was originally used with the gaming community. And I will say that my husband has been a gamer for the decades that I've known him. And he's been on Discord for probably that long. And you had mentioned different channels. And I think he was in one game where he would say, he said they had a basement and that's probably the other channels. Like somebody wants to get down and dirty and vulgar at each other, they'd go to the basement and duke it out. And then they come back into the regular channel. So, that's probably polite, cause I don't think all of the gaming Discord spaces do that. And so my question is, how have the behaviors from the gaming community transferred over to the NFT space?

[00:11:04] Christine: It's hard to say, because I think we have like a good split of gamers and non-gamers within our NFT Discord. So I can't say for sure that like a lot of the behaviors are a direct translation from gaming to an NFTs. I think there's a very strong link between the two, because I think there is like a gamification of how your purchase NFTs and so forth. But I think there is that sense of, one, it somehow creates a pretty strong community, because I think like when we set up our gaming channel and change the wallet like game nights or add in certain games, people really flock in. And so they're really trying to get together and talk together. I think when it comes to overall communication, there might be a bit more aggression, but I don't necessarily think that actually comes from the game. I think that comes from a lot of financial stress because I was talking about this with our team, like my co-founder, our devs, and then some other people in the NFT space as well. And a lot of them also come from a gaming background, but they say the amount of stress. and the amount of, like aggression that they face between like maybe getting that game versus how much they faced from a lot of people in the communities now is like a whole different level. So I don't think that aggression translates because of the gaming factor but I think it's more like a financial stress that people have.

[00:12:23] Nola: A financial stress as being an NFT developer or owner?

[00:12:27] Christine: I think as an NFT holder. So the thing is like a lot of people, because NFTs are so new and unfortunately, a lot of people that are shilling NFTs as something that people should get into are like, oh, you can make a ton of money from doing this and that. And like, your life is going to change, which is like very unreasonable for me, be like 1% at most of the population that gets into NFTs. But there's so many factors within the business, like Ethereum gas prices per se, which is like the extra you have to pay in order for a transaction to go through. I can't control that. There's no way anyone on the blockchain can control that. There's so many elements that you can't control and on the other hand, like people choose to invest in you. And that's their own financial decision. It's not your job to make sure that the money grows. It's just your job to make sure that you did the most that you could. And you tried your best as a business owner. Like, ideally you want that money to grow, so all your investors can enjoy the fruits of their labor, the founding team has more assets and equity to work with and so forth, but there's only so much that you can control. As the development team and as the founding team, we can do our best to move the project forward, but we physically just cannot make your money go up if we're at a downturn. And that's something that a lot of people have a hard time coming to terms with. The fact that even if you put money down on something, doesn't mean it's going to grow for sure. And when people don't have that mindset of, I can lose this amount of money in case something happens, they get really stressed. And we don't know where that money comes from. Because, for some people it's like, I have a business on the side. I have my life together. I can lose a couple of hundred dollars if I need to. For other people, this is like their savings. So they start freaking out when we don't make the money for them. And I think when there's a lack of understanding of the space, and this is still an investment, it's just a very new type of investment. When there's this misalignment of incentives and expectations, that's when things get really messy.

[00:14:21] Lori: You bring up a really good and I think important topic. When people are new to the space, and right now that newness is a lot of buyers, and sellers, collectors, there's a lot in the financial aspect of it and it's all happening in real time at lightning speed. There are definitely behaviors that happen that from participating, if you're a seasoned person, if you understand all the different prices that go into acquiring an NFT, then you ride that wave appropriately. But if you're new and you're learning and all of a sudden you realize maybe the floor happens or the minting changes something or whatever gets in the way, there's a lot that's happening, I think, regarding positive and negative behavior. So, what would you say are both the positives and the negatives of participating in an NFT Discord?

[00:15:18] Christine: I think a positive of an NFT Discord, any Discord in general that like can really connect you with your community, is the feedback loop is very quick. So for example, when it comes to product and as someone that has worked on product, a lot of times when you're reaching out to your community, it's very hard to get feedback because you need to set up like a research or like an interview time. You need to set up a time to meet with the people. You need to know, like what they're doing and so forth. And Discord is a lot more passive, which means if someone has an idea about their product, they can easily just tell you, put it in the chat, tag the founders, and then we get the message. So it's the speed in which that happens is really useful and really helpful.

But I think the negative aspect of it is where you get so many people coming together and be like, we want this, we want that, we want this. A lot of ideas can get very easily convoluted. It becomes hard to sort through what works for you and what doesn't. Not only as a founder, but as a brand as a whole. Because some people have been with you since day one. We have some people that are super helpful. This one person in our Discord, I don't know if he wants me to shout him out but he literally started the entire app, helping out with community, like a ton, super, super helpful. Shares a ton about his wife and kids. It's a really lovely persona. And I think with that type of personality, we're always really grateful to see him in. But then there's other times where it's just like, you get a flood of people that are freaking out about the floor price, the marketing, the growth, and then they're just spewing a lot of negativity. So on one hand you get a lot of very positive people and people see them in a Discord, their like, yo, I want to hang out with that person. But then on the other hand, you see people that are just stressed all the time. And just in general, when you are around like stress and negativity, it's not an environment that you want to be in.

[00:16:55] Lori: So based on that, if you're new to the experience of getting on a Discord for an NFT, what is a good way to engage if you're new to it?
​
[00:17:05] Christine: Yeah. there's one person in our Discord that basically said, I want to know the Mini Monkey Mafia community a lot more. And instead of saying, like, I need you to like, hold my hand through their entire process and integrate me into the community, and I expect you to do it, literally reached out and was like, you know what? I don't have to talk to 300 people every single day. And I was like, that's reasonable because I don't talk to 300 people a day. He was like, I'm going to try to go in when I have time or at least every single day for a couple of minutes and just talk to people. And then if there's someone that I think is really cool, I'll reach out to them personally, and then maybe we can start a on one conversation. And that's actually how he started integrating himself a lot more into our community. It wasn't like I need to be the top dog, number one, making all these big announcements, everyone has to follow me. It was more like, let me see how I can integrate into the community by making connections with a lot of the people that are really active. I think that was one of the best approaches because even as like an introvert, if you told me, I need to get in front of like a hundred, 200 people to all these talks all the time, I'm freaking out. And I think that's what ended up leading to my eventual burnout. But if you told me like, Hey, if I just want to talk to like maybe one or two people a day, get to know them, maybe send them like a friend request, talk about things that we're both interested in, that works. And it's very, very possible. And even if like, you don't want to personally reach out to them, just being in the Discord and building out the time that you have there, maybe start one day with like five minutes. Next you have a bit more time, 10 minutes. And then like people start to notice the consistency of your presence. That's when you start to have more something going for you in each Discord.

[00:18:38] Lori: It reminds me a lot of networking in the physical space. Where you're meeting people and you're new to a group, a club or an organization and it's your first time showing up, you're not going to make all of these friends right from the beginning. You have to show up and show up and show up and have a one-on-one conversation. And then pretty soon you're having group conversations.

[00:19:01] Christine: Absolutely.

[00:19:02] Nola: What recommendations, tips, tools would you suggest for anyone who's just starting on an NFT Discord community?

[00:19:10] Christine: I think honestly what taught me the most would be kind of just jumping in and like clicking around and trying to navigate this space as a whole. Every single NFT Discord is going to be set up pretty differently. But I feel like if the founders or the developers set it up clearly, you should be able to navigate it pretty quickly. But the basic breakdown of it is there's going to be a welcome channel that you first go into. They might give you some Captia or something to confirm that you are a member or to verify that you're human. And then there's other channels. I think honestly, just clicking and exploring through all the different channels is what's going to help in navigation the most. As long as you're able to kind of navigate through, just explore a channel, see what kind of conversations are going in and take a time to understand what's going on, as opposed to just jumping in and like sharing your opinion. Understand what people are talking about, see what kinds of people this community are like, I think that's going to make the biggest difference on how do you navigate the Discord well.

[00:20:09] Lori: Yeah, so that we can learn a little bit more about you, Christine, tell us what's the best either username or profile image you've ever used on a platform? And it could be Discord, it could be outside of Discord. We'll give you that.

[00:20:26] Christine: Oh man, for Mini Monkey Mafia, I have this pink monkey, the entire monkey, I think, is pink, and has like a red crown, pink dress, pink background and whatnot. Clearly, we all know what my favorite color is.

[00:20:41] Lori: Very cool. If someone wants to learn more about you or learn more about your experience, as well as your artwork or Mini Monkey Mafia, where should listeners go and how can they connect with you?

[00:20:54] Christine: Yes. The Mini Monkeys are linked to my portfolio, which you can see ChristineGu.com, C H R I S T I N E G U.com. In terms of social media, I connect with a lot of people on Twitter, so you can follow me at CHR 1 5 T I N E underscore G U. I replaced the I S in my name with a 15. So that's chr15tine_gu and that's the main place where I can connect with people. Other than that, everything else and all my past work is all my portfolio, so you want to check out my previous work as a product designer or as an NFT artist, it's all there as well.

[00:21:32] Lori: That's great. And thank you so much listeners, for listening to this episode. We hope it makes all the difference in you getting started on your side business so you can create your best and most exciting life. If you found the information shared here today helpful, let us know by posting here where you're listening or on our Facebook page.

[00:21:51] Nola: Not sure how to turn your idea into a profitable side business? Contact us at stickybrandlab.com/contact. We'd be happy to help you.

[00:21:59] Lori: Be sure to come back next Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring and motivating episode. And remember. Actions create results. So tap into your desire to create a business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day. Small steps, big effects.

[OUT-TAKE]
 
Lori: ​Yes. Thank you. My brain was having a fart. I was like, the word. I can feel it in the file cabinet. Come, come!