How to Pivot Your Career into NFT the Space
Spotify Podcast Episode: How to Pivot Your Career into NFT the Space
In episode 17 of Freedom with NFT’s, our guest Justin Nolan shares with us on how to pivot your career into NFT the space.
Justin Nolan is the founder of just keep learning, which is a modern learning portal. JKL pushes against the status quo by creating learning opportunities that extend beyond the walls of a typical school. Their mission is to combine entertainment and education to help you doubt less and dream more.
Do you want to shift from your traditional career into NFT? Learn from it in our conversation with Justin Nolan.
[00:00:00] Lauren Turton: In this episode of freedom with NFTs, Justin Nolan shares with us, why he left his traditional career and pivoted into the NFT space. Justin is the founder of just keep learning, which is a modern learning portal. JKL pushes against the status quo by creating learning opportunities that extend beyond the walls of a typical school.
And their mission is to combine entertainment and education. To help you doubt less and dream more. Their focus is supporting individual paths. And they take requests from their students to find out what they would like to learn next and bring it to them with no further ado. I invite Justin to freedom with NFTs.
How are you?
[00:00:41] Justin Nolan: I’m pretty good. I’m excited to be here too. How are you?
[00:00:45] Lauren Turton: I’m doing well. Thank you. I’m so excited to get into today’s interview with you because I know you’re going to be sharing so much value and experience with our audience. Who’s newer to the NFT community they’re exploring. So the first thing I want to dive into is actually, who are you?
What do you do?
[00:01:08] Justin Nolan: And so by trade I’m a traditional educator, I suppose, high school teacher and a vice principal. And I work particularly with youth who struggle with mental health needs and what that looks like here in Ottawa Canada, is that they end up being in institutions like jails, addictions, facilities, hospitals, crisis units.
We have a school for teen moms. School that supports homeless so on and so forth. But what I’ve really developed throughout the last 10 years of my career is finding entrepreneurial ventures out there in the real world that connect to these youth who are really creative and entrepreneurial minded.
So I’ve really gotten heavy into social media and anything that’s come along with the modern workplace, which in 2021 is definitely NFT’s.
[00:01:57] Lauren Turton: Wow. The work that you do is so important. And I’m curious to know, how did you find out about NFTs?
[00:02:08] Justin Nolan: So specific to NFT’s, a lot of people on your show may end up dropping Gary Vee’s name.
I’ll try and do that once or twice because when the NFT conversation comes up, but dude knows how to grab attention. And he was right at one of the not necessarily the forefront, but one of the people who led a lot of social media consumers know about NFTs. And so the very first time, whenever that first tweet and video that he dropped was few years ago, I had heard the topic non fungible token.
I knew roughly what it was because of friends and colleagues in the crypto and d five space. But I didn’t really know what it was until I was able to consume that first post that Gary V made about them. And following that he was even teaching people like the Paul brothers and Mr. Beast and so many people who got into NFTs shortly after about it.
The other thing that was around the same time, was a couple of people that I know in the social media space, a Faruk and a Buster Shear are two people that I’ve been around because of podcasting and stuff like that. And as we do in social media, you often end up seeing what other people are up to. So I was really aware of the space from that as well.
[00:03:16] Lauren Turton: And give me some timeline on that. How long ago was that, that you first heard about NFT?
[00:03:23] Justin Nolan: What’s crazy about the NFT space is how fast it moves. And so it feels like 10 years ago, but I think it’s about two years. So around the beginning of when COVID sort of was starting to be a thing globally, just prior to that type of thing, and then getting even bigger into it’s about midway through COVID, but not really engaging with it myself, meaning not creating, not investing, not collecting, not creating content around it.
But just doing more research, being more aware and conscious of the space about halfway through COVID, which so in that case was about a year ago and then really diving more full in this past spring, which would be April of 2021.
[00:04:07] Lauren Turton: Thank you so much for sharing the timeline. I think that’s important for people to know as they enter the NFT space that time exists in a very unique way in this world. And I also love hearing your journey because you’ve pivoted from your traditional career and into the NFT space. Can you talk a little bit about pivoting into this space and what that felt like or looked like for you?
[00:04:37] Justin Nolan: Yeah. So for me, pivoting as a concept is some of that will always happen, if something really popular comes up next year.
I will be in that space too, not just because I’m out trying to seek attention or to get super wealthy, but I feel like it’s really important for me with the work that I want to do and how I want to show up in the world. To always understand what’s coming in terms of new technology and to just read an article on it, isn’t enough.
You have to put yourself in the actual position to take action, to learn things very intrinsically. I will do that no matter what comes up, like if Tesla and Space X launched something, where we can like fly our own hovercrafts or something, I will go try it. And so at the heart of what I do is always pivoting and being as ahead of the curve, as I can be a specific to NFTs getting into it.
I think it was just something that I knew was very important to me, as far as the other elements that I’m sure we’ll talk about that exists with NFT versus any technology in general. Right? So specific to NFTs when you have the artwork, you have the community and you have the bigger values and conversations that go into it.
I think that’s huge. The other part that I feel is a reason why I knew sort of pivoting to it, is valuable is that it’s going to disrupt every industry. So the way that I like to equate it, is not that it’s like this cool collectible and a lot of people still see it that way. It’s going to disrupt industries, not like Facebook did, but like social media did.
And like the internet did, to go from not having the internet, to go from not having social media, to having social media. It’s going to be that level of impact. And I still think people, even in the NFT space underestimate that.
[00:06:26] Lauren Turton: Thank you so much for that reflection. I know for me, the catalyst for taking action in the NFT space, after a few months of research and kind of testing the waters with it was when I heard that medical records, we’re already being turned into NFTs. That shook me to the core. I thought medical records, that’s mind blowing. And that for me was okay, you have to take action in this space. And at the time I was still new to it. I didn’t know really what it was, but that again, it shook ,me to the core and I said, I’ve got to take action.
I’ve got to get involved in the NFT community and figure out what this is, because if that’s happening now, that just means a few years out from now. Everything is going to be going in that direction. So get involved now while it’s still at this infancy phase. So I’m curious to know. What would be the actual purpose of getting into the NFT community?
Why would anyone want to take action in this space?
[00:07:34] Justin Nolan: Overarching helicopter view to me is similar to what you were just saying. It’s going to exist for all of us. Why not know about it more ahead of time? Right. Another example that I didn’t mention is like cell phones, when we went from not having them to having them.
That was a big transition period. I’m sure it was painful to use a word for a lot of things. If you knew that cell phones were going to become as commonplace as they did become, then would you not have engaged with it earlier? And so I think as a general concept and electric cars, that’s another one, right.
That’s coming. So you want to be the laggard that goes last, or do you want to put yourself in a position to be more capable of making that change quicker to electric vehicles. So to me, that’s the kind of like generic answer that I think everybody should be looking into. I was mentioning this to my parents recently, because I said, for example, you have season tickets to an NHL venue eventually they’re going to switch those NFT’s and I think that didn’t quite hit home until the next day my dad received an email saying they’re not going to have paper tickets anymore. And so I was like, there you go. I said it might happen in a year and half. It might happen in two years in a half and like it happened in 24.
So I think it’s that big of, again, a disrupting thing that stems across all people, as opposed to just this cool cliche thing that people do when it comes to the internet, like maybe defy or crypto was right. Like for a lot of people in the last six years, just bitcoin. It doesn’t necessarily impact everyone’s lives, but NFT will, for sure.
And then what, like, in terms of more specifically use cases, I think that when you’re able to market or build any sort of business around NFTs, and for me personally, that’s one of the things that I’m really excited about. It gives back to your community and gives back to the people that you want to support who supported you. I think that is such a really valuable. But anybody who runs any business tied to community should look into.
[00:09:35] Lauren Turton: Thank you so much for that. I’m curious to know from you. Your perspective on the different types of people that can get involved in NFTs. Is it just for artist?
[00:09:49] Justin Nolan: Yeah. So there’s the short answer is no and certainly just referencing this idea that it’s going to disrupt every industry is again, not something that we can underestimate and in fact the arts can easily be outsourced, right? So just to kind of rewind a lot and speak to non fungible tokens in general, as to what they are as a concept. I think that’s important because a lot of people see the arts, but I’ve used this example to explain it to people, is that you could come out with an NFT project that’s got 30,000 pieces to it. So 30,000 NFTs that people could buy 30,000 items and they could all be just blank, white, that’s it, or blank black and that’s it. And those could sell really well and be super successful because there are so many other pillars to what that represents because the artwork is or could be an element of that NFT.
However, it’s the actual smart contract that ties the human being in this case to that item, that is truly where the value comes in. And so whether it’s the arts, whatever it is that it gets you to have that smart contract is what actually matters.
[00:11:01] Lauren Turton: Can you explain a little bit more about smart contract?
[00:11:05] Justin Nolan: Yeah. So essentially the easiest way to explain what the smart contract is, that it directly links to the ownership of who owns the representation or the physical goods on the Ethereum blockchain in this case, and without getting too kind of convoluted and confusing around internet technology. And even when it comes to looking at other chains inside chains and things, I would have to forward you to somebody else that I know in this space cause that’s not what my background by nature is the tech side of things. However, just to explain it. Is that contract is completely traceable back to that wallet who owns it. And it’s a way of defining proof of ownership, where it all happens on that public ledger. Everything is completely visible so that we know that one person owns that right now and gets whatever comes from owning that. To just give a quick example, I’m sure it already is becoming something that’s happening in the real estate space. Right? So right now, how do we know somebody owns a house? The piece of paper says who owns the house, and so who owns the house? It could be a smart contract, right. I have that home in my wallet.
So right now, in terms of wallets and something like Metamask is what I personally is something that can hold things that you currently own, and nobody else owns them in that smart contract tells us.
[00:12:34] Lauren Turton: Thank you so much for that very insightful. A topic that I want to switch over to is safety in the NFT space. You hear when you’re first entering it, don’t click any links. There are so many scams stay safe. Can you share with us how someone can actually stay safe when they’re entering the NFT space?
[00:12:57] Justin Nolan: One of the most important things when it comes to safety and we go back to social media, we go back to the internet and we look the situations where people really had a lot of harm done to them or did harm to others around being out there on the internet, our digital footprint.
Right? I think one of the most underrated things, when it comes to safety NFT space is understanding like, why are you doing. What are you doing? In other words, is it to invest in things? Is it to be part of a community so on and so forth, but we put our emotions out there when we engage in something, especially when there’s a big price, right.
And one way that NFTs have been compared to for a lot of people is like collecting cards or collecting Pokemon or collecting pods, whatever. Right? When you’re a kid, if you go gamble with those things and you lose them, that’s devastating. Right now, that’s the same thing for adults, right? So when you go out there and you’re just treating it like a gambling machine or this sort of thing, then you can really get yourself in a lot of trouble emotionally, psychologically.
So I think that’s an important thing that is more rare for people to talk about in this space when it comes to overall security. Typically we hear security and think of more like the tech side of things, making sure that when you get a seed phrase, which is essentially the series of words that you can recover your wallet from.
Should you be disconnected from your wallet? And so making sure that you have those recorded, ideally not even on paper per se, cause paper can get ruined. So to go like crazy extreme, you could have them imprinted onto some form of like cheaper metal. And then you could store that in a locked. The next version I’ve heard of that is splitting that seed phrase in half and storing it in two separate block boxes so that nobody can ever get that one seed phrase at the same time, but not storing your passwords digitally would definitely be one of the most important things.
When it comes to keeping your assets safe in this space, you mentioned clicking on links and the reason from what I understand why people are able to get scammed with that is because, with some sophisticated scammers they’re able to interact with your wallet. If you interact with their contract that they have in a fake link or a fake airdrop that they provided you, or some type of NFT, that’s pretending to be something else, you click on it, try and sell it.
And then that interaction you’re giving it permission to interact with your wallet. Yeah, at that point and then people have had their wallets drained. And for people who have been in the space for even just a little while, sometimes you can really build up assets quickly. And so we’re not talking about $200, we’re talking about $200,000 or $2 million.
There are all these crazy numbers for some people to lose that it could be devastating.
[00:15:52] Lauren Turton: Absolutely. Awesome safety tips. Thank you so much for sharing that. I’m curious to know, what are some of your favorite projects that you’re involved in right now?
[00:16:05] Justin Nolan: In terms of the first project that I bought into off the bat and purchased an NFT from that was Veefriends.
So, I am a, you know, lifelong Veefriends supporter. And I said that I would only mention Gary twice on his episode. So there’s the second time, because that project was definitely the closest to my heart because anybody who gets into NFT will know whatever they meant or whatever they purchase the first time around, whatever community they joined first, they’re never going to forget.
Right. And so definitely Veefriends and I could go more into depth on that afterwards, but there are a couple other for sure, that I am really big supporters of, and that I’m proud of the community with and the Deadheads, which is the second thing that I ever got into. It was the first time I experienced an NFT project starting from the ground up, even with Gary Vee’s Veefriends, it was more like we have the business established. We know we want to do, so here are our NFTs. You may come purchase and we’ll build all these perks and utility and lifelong value into it, while Deadheads. It was like, all right, we have this idea. There’s four of us doing it. Who wants to come join us? And so I said, I’ll come run the YouTube channel.
So that was the first one that I was kind of like understanding what it’s like to be part of an ecosystem where it’s about community and everybody just kind of sharing tasks and doing things to support it. And then the third, one of it’s a good example, I think is a Fame Lady Squad. The reason why I was so excited to invest in Fame Lady Squad was because I got duped a little bit like the rest of the NFT space did at the time. And thought that I was supporting one of the first women owned and NFT projects and so it was really tied to this idea of safety and security. Because you need to do your research a little bit. Right. And what happened to tell the story was the short version is they posed as an all women NFT PFP project run by women creators and the first of its kind.
And so a lot of people jumped on board that very quickly without thinking, because it wasn’t expensive, spent a few hundred dollars. And became part of that community, didn’t pay much attention. And a few days later I had actually asked them to come on my podcast and talk all about being women in the NFT space.
And that’s a pretty cool DM that I have. I’m going to maybe mint that someday because they were getting really weird answers. Right. And so what ended up being uncovered shortly thereafter was that they were like just a few male, Russian teenagers who had built that project. And so that project went from being relatively valuable to near bottom.
And I’m just going to zero and a couple of PM’s that night. I had sent a message to a couple of people who are newer, really big into the community. And said, we only have one chance to write this story, like a Hollywood movie or sports. You don’t get to write these scripts right. In business and just fake that happen, but it did happen.
So now you have a chance to be the sort of Phoenix rising. And we had an amazing conversation and things went crazy for about 48 hours. And as it turned out, the original developers transferred the entire project contract to her handle. As I am Bored Becky and an entire new website was built. A new discord was built, a new Twitter was built and that entire community kind of rebuilt the only issue being they didn’t have that original seed money that came from the initial fundraising of that first drop for Fame Lady Squad.
So it’s been a grind up and down, but seeing them really start to succeed. Has been pretty special as well.
[00:19:46] Lauren Turton: That’s so special. And there are so many lessons within that story. The biggest takeaway that I had from it is for anyone who’s curious about investing in a project is to make sure that you do your homework and research.
Who’s behind the project. I love that there is the Phoenix rising of this story. It’s an incredible story. But if that hadn’t had happened, that would have been a project that you invested in, bottomed out and you wouldn’t have seen a return on your investment. So thank you for sharing that and going into the intimate details of what happened in that story.
And I love that you were involved so deeply in that, and absolutely you need to meant that screenshot of that conversation. That’s a piece of NFT history. So I’m curious to know Justin, what projects are you working on right now?
[00:20:37] Justin Nolan: One that I didn’t mention that I’m not directly involved in, but as up and coming is a Yonda Mondo NFT.
I’m really excited about that because a friend of mine, Kelsey Cole is building that project there with a really interesting team of nine other people. Like they have a massive team with lots of big plans, visions, and goals. And so that one, as well as many others I’ve been on like sort of the DM, like group chat conversations here and there supporting people level of being involved in, but not really involved. They might get a free NFT or two, one to share with someone and want to keep myself in that kind of thing. So I have a lot of those types of projects that I just support a little bit from the sidelines. For me personally, I wanted to make sure as early as possible that I jumped into the deep end, as far as trying something, right.
My birthday is October 20th. So I just started creating a little bit of a brand around doing birthday drops. So I created the #1024. And my idea with that is that, it will be semi one of one art this year, but next year I can change it. It might be physical paintings that I’ve turned digital.
I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see, but every birthday for the next, until I get sick of NFTs, I’m going to do that drop. And there’s only 24 pieces a year. So that part is going to be fun this year, specifically with that, what I’m doing. It’s kind of like a scene, a bedroom scene. And within a bedroom, you often have things that you can create themes around.
The bedspread might be like a sad girls bar are themed bed spread. The wall might have followed fame ladies in the pictures that are hanging on the wall. I can put things with like, I’m going to pay tribute one per 24 to influencers who are positive in the space, on the computer screen, that’s on the desk.
And so it’s like the same. But in all 24, there’ll be unique to paying tribute to a project or different influencers. So on his hand, across the wallpaper at the top, I’ve been working on a poem slash hip hop record, some kind of lyrics. And in the future, I’ll create something around that actual poem or hip hop piece could be two years down the road, but then whoever’s holding that time will be fortunate because I’ll do some kind of giveaway.
I’m a huge fan of being able to give back to people who supported you early on. And with a lot of these creative ventures, like my podcast right now make $0. It had doesn’t have ads on. Right now, I don’t want them, but we’ll find the right time and place, but that’s just an example of like being able to pay for the a lot of the things we do as creators need to find ways to do it, but also be able to give back.
And that’s, what’s so cool about the smart contract, right? I could launch a Kickstarter. I could do Patreon, but as soon as I saw NFTs back to use cases. I was like, no, this is it. Because if somebody buys that bedroom scene for whatever, a couple of hundred dollars, they support the podcast right from day one and my old personal brand.
A, that could blow up and they hold that and they’re very successful financially, or I’ll always be able to give back to the holders of that. And I have another example of that, but a friend did that. I really loved, I could get into if you wanted, but the other one that I.
[00:23:46] Lauren Turton: Absolutely share with us.
[00:23:47] Justin Nolan: Yeah. So that one, okay. I’ll do that quickly. So BusterScher started it’s called the Buster Show Mic. And what he did was he created a, he minted art for each podcast episode he’s ever had, which is a hundred so far. And he gave one to his guests and he sold one for 0.05. So not like a crazy number of Es, but you know, a number that if you sell all hundred it’s going to do pretty good. And his whole plan is it’ll always stay in the ecosystem and making his podcast better. And so that’s kind of the same vibe, right? Like in his case, he sold a hundred, gave a hundred to the guests that he had. And his plan is to build utility over the years in some way, shape or form within his discord again, those people who bought those last week and are kind of holding them over the years. Right? And so that I think was something that was inspiring to me in terms of doing something similar. It’s very aligned to that way. The other bigger project thing that I think a lot of people get involved in and want to do is like creating the traditional 10K PFP, cool looking characters, community building long-term utility. You have a full team of founders I had two. And one, I just felt it wasn’t aligned with my personal values. And so now I only have one. I want to really focus on this one because for both Atlanta and I, who is the co-founder. We know that we want this to be as close to a full time thing as it could be.
Right. For a lot of people, we never go full time. Like I’m not giving up my podcast. I’m going to make YouTube videos and going to do these other things. However, as far as work goes and creating a lasting impact on this world. We want this to be a big enough project that it’s basically our full-time focus. And so with that, it’s very much in the early stages.
We do have a developer, but then we just right now, meet weekly to plan that out for the last few weeks. What we know is that we’re going to do some form of like, oh gee, similar to what grill’s gang did. And for people listening, what that can be is just creating like a very small, initial NFT drop to kind of get the ball rolling and start building the community.
So you might do 25, you could do a hundred, but you know that you already have a hundred people who want to invest in that project and you can discuss and start building community around that and then build towards the bigger drop. The other thing that we know will be involved is some form of fiction storytelling, Deadheads, which is one of the products I mentioned earlier.
It’s really cool because they were the first ones to create a animated series where the community builds it. So it’s community, voice is community scripted. The characters are community owned and they have their YouTube videos, which are going to become Hollywood movies, which is the crazy concept. Yonda Mondo is another one that I referenced.
That’s very similar. They’re trying to build it like the Pokemon of the metaverse and the Pokemon of web 3.0. So with ours, the thing that I feel is missing in the marketplace, and this is where I need to be quiet because I just love the idea is that it’s more around those same concepts, community-driven storytelling through podcast form, fictional podcast, audio based stories, much like you see with sleep stories and like the Calm app or Headspace and stuff like that. Telling stories that are built within our community and the last kind of thing that we, I mean, I could go on for days about it, cause we’ve worked for hours and hours already, but the other element for sure, that will be part of it is doing some form of three drop in that it obviously wouldn’t have as much value likely, but it will allow people in the educational space, high school, college to learn how to mint something, learn about NFT’s safety a little bit, and engage in this community as part of the initiative that we want to be somewhat charitable, but more educational focused. And finally, a portion of all of our project will always go to mental health based charities and we’ll have to fine tune what that means, but we’re both very big believers that putting social entrepreneurship at the heart of your project is really important.
[00:28:08] Lauren Turton: These projects sound absolutely incredible.
And I love what you shared about your birthday project. I think that’s so special and exciting to look forward to your birthday every year. What a great way to celebrate another orbit around the sun. As we wrap this episode of freedom with NFTs up Justin, is there anything that you’d like to share with our audience?
[00:28:37] Justin Nolan: I feel that one of the things that I definitely would like to share her is just reiterating something. I already mentioned a few times. There’s not even a remote chance of NFTs being a fad or something small will never look back on me saying this oh look you were wrong. What it looks like can evolve and change, but it’s not going away, it’s very early days. And if you had the fortunate opportunity of listening to your show today, and aren’t yet really engaging in it as much as possible, then I think you will feel at a point, some little pieces of, I don’t want to use regret. That’s too harsh word. You will wish that you had engaged or figured it out a little bit sooner.
I also think that one of the worst things that exist in this space right now, aside from scammers. And that is the idea that what brings value to a project has anything to do with influencers. Right? So if we looked at the stock market, you know, 150 years ago, you’re going to see a lot of like nefarious, insider trading that couldn’t really be tracked with the internet.
Now we can track it and you can be like, yo, that’s illegal. You’re going to jail in the NFT space right now. It’s like the wild west, none of that regulation really exists. And so it’s somewhat scary time right now to be an influencer because who knows what legally retro people will end up talking about.
But there are a lot of influencers who will pump projects and say like, oh, I’m buying this and make it their profile picture so that other people buy it. And I think just being aware of not necessarily following the hype, but understanding. The value that can exist in a project beyond just the money is such an important thing to really hit home.
That I feel like I could say it 10 times fast to make sure that I bring that point home, but that’s probably the main things to realize it goes way beyond money and that you should be a part of it.
[00:30:35] Lauren Turton: I appreciate that as we wrap this episode up, but before we do, how can we get ahold of you?
[00:30:42] Justin Nolan: So the fun thing is, I use justtries on pretty much every social, the brand that I use is just keep learning, either of those things. You’ll find me on any of the socials, pretty much on them across there. And if people, DM me, DMS are always open, I like to have as much patience as possible to just help people out and just be a part of any community, whether it’s podcasting, YouTube or NFT’s.
[00:31:07] Lauren Turton: We will link these in the show notes, but for someone who might be listening on their way to work right now in the car, how do you spell your Twitter handle?
[00:31:15] Justin Nolan: So it’s just as in like the beginning of Justin, J U S T and then tries as in like Justin tries things. So J U S T R I E S. And a quick reason as to why that is the biggest part of all of my work is promoting growth mindset. And Brenew Brown’s work on vulnerability. Seth Godin’s work on not crushing dreams.
Like we need to really show growth mindset at the heart of what we do in social media and content creation. And we don’t know what we want to do in this world unless we try. And so that’s why the handle justtries was born.
[00:31:54] Lauren Turton: I love it. Thank you so much for sharing not only that, but everything else that you did today, Justin, it’s been an honor to have you on this episode of freedom with NFTs that’s all for today episodes.
Connect with Justin Nolan:
Website: https://www.justtries.ca/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justtries/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/justtries_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justkeeplearning
Connect with your host, Lauren Turton:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LaurenTurton_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelaurenturton
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurenturton/
Website: https://freedomwithnfts.com/
