Feelings Check-in: We launched a Zine

[00:01] We're recording. [00:03] Camera off. [00:06] Okay, let's try and do a no-edit podcast. [00:09] Holy shit. [00:11] I don't know. This is the week to try to do no edits. Um... [00:17] Hi, Dina. [00:19] Hey, [00:19] How's it going? [00:21] Uh, it's going... [00:24] No, no. What's Boys Club? Oh, okay. [00:39] Do you know what's boys club is a social collective that's working to bring new voices to the new internet. [00:44] Mm-hmm. [00:45] We do that through... [00:48] a newsletter, podcasts, events, events, [00:51] And a zine. A zine. Zine. [00:56] And we hang out together online and in real life. And you should go to boysclub.vip. [01:05] to apply to join us. [01:06] That is... [01:08] What it is. It's free. It's all free. [01:14] Come on down. Give this podcast a listen. Please don't bail now that you're here. Oh, that's weird. [01:23] Well, I was like... [01:25] Thinking that it's so weird to say that when somebody's listening to it. It's so weird. Anyway, give this podcast a listen to learn about what we're up to. Subscribe to our newsletter. Check out our zine that we're going to talk about today. Zine.boysclub.vip.

[01:42] Um, [01:43] This is going to be a feelings check-in on the last week of our lives. Dare I say the busiest week of our lives thus far and give it a listen. Yeah. Full court press on feelings. So that's what you're in for. Pedal F1 driving level feelings happening today on the pod. [02:06] Okay. So we're just going to share some context for the listener who isn't in our world every day. [02:12] I went for a walk yesterday. [02:14] And I tuned out of Boys Club for an hour and I was like, oh my God, there's a whole world. She touched grass. I touched grass. And by that, I mean, I went and got a sweet green salad. [02:24] Okay. So we have been on a tier two city tour with Boys Club. We started in Denver. No, we started in... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We started in Denver at a conference called ETH Denver, which is an Ethereum... [02:41] conference. And we launched an apparel line there. We took over a booth at the conference and made it a shop. And we'll talk about that. Then we flew to Nashville, where Dina lives, where we were met with our zines, IRL. There's a digital zine and a physical zine. [03:01] A zine is just a low-key magazine. Yeah. I'm finding that the Gen Zers don't know what a zine is. Yeah. We're old. Yes. There was a cute girl at this event that I went to drop off some zines to yesterday. And she was like, so what's a zine? And I was like, oh, great. This is a learning opportunity. Zine is just the second half of magazine. Just a little tiny magazine. It's a small magazine. Yeah. It's a petite magazine. Nice. Yeah.

[03:29] So... [03:31] Yes, that we went to Nashville next. And Nashville was where we were met with zines and we were shipping out zines to friends, [03:42] colleagues, [03:43] people we pitched all over the globe. And then we shipped... [03:48] the other half of the zines to [03:51] a lovely woman's home here in Austin. Shout out to Porter. Porter. Thank you. And then we arrived in Austin, uh, [03:58] For South by Southwest for the physical launch of the zine. I think Porter accepted like 350 pound delivery of zines. She moved them from the sidewalk into her home. Yeah. Like a queen that she is. Porter works for Dispatch. Dispatch. Shout out. She's partnerships at Dispatch. So go hit her up. Porter at dispatch.xyc. Give her everything this woman needs. [04:22] So that's been our life for the last few days. [04:28] It's been so much fun. We are so ill. We're ill. We're fat. We're tired. We're having a good time. [04:38] We're having every imaginable emotion you can think of. I also, while in Nashville, got a lip flip. So my diction is struggling. And this is where we're at. What do you have to add, do you know? In and amongst all of that. Mm-hmm. [04:53] A catastrophic bank failure. Colossal... [04:56] Just implosion. Of the industry that we're building in and around. Uh-huh. So it's been a week. It really has.

[05:05] But so that's some context sharing on where we're at and what we're doing. [05:10] We're... [05:11] Having a lot of feelings. [05:13] about [05:14] launching a media property. [05:16] This week about hosting many. Oh, we're posting parties all along the way as well. Just little get togethers and big get togethers. [05:25] um which have been a blast and we have one tomorrow night so that'll be interesting so [05:30] How are you feeling? [05:31] I'm feeling good. [05:33] Someone made the comment to me, for a Web3 company, you guys sure are like – [05:38] dealing with a lot of physical matter. Yeah. Yes. [05:43] Body. [05:45] volume of carbon that we're... [05:49] between the boxes of [05:51] apparel [05:53] to the boxes of zines. There's just a lot of physical goods. We're an IRL. We're a... [05:59] We prioritize... [06:01] how crypto meets culture in the real world. Yeah, and it's showing up in the real world. [06:07] I'm feeling good. I mean, really actually mixed feelings. So it just, I kind of feel... [06:14] Like we need to set aside... [06:17] the SVB stuff and Silvergate stuff for another pod. Yeah. [06:22] Because... [06:24] It's too much. Yeah. [06:26] It is honestly tipping me over the edge of... [06:30] sanity. [06:31] And... [06:33] I kind of need to just compartmentalize it. Mm-hmm.

[06:37] permanent, [06:38] So if that's okay, dear listener... [06:41] That's the plan. I'm asking for your compassion and understanding in doing so. It's not us minimizing the situation at all. Not at all. It's a coping strategy. Yeah. Yeah. [06:51] And... [06:52] Um, [06:53] We hope that in listening to... [06:57] our feelings and thoughts totally outside of what's happening that you might also be able to escape the [07:04] what's happening right now. [07:06] in the tech world and in the world at large and hear about our little zine. And maybe that will make you feel happy. So how I'm feeling about, so that said, how I'm feeling about the zine [07:17] is... [07:19] Really great. [07:20] Really great. I'm feeling really great. I'm feeling really, really great about it. I think that it has been a tremendous amount of work. [07:27] And... [07:29] It's... [07:30] It's incredible to see it. [07:33] show up in the real world finally. And I'm really proud of everyone that's been working on it, everyone that's in the wider orbit, the contributors, [07:42] the writers, [07:44] the models, the like... [07:47] copy editor, like every single person that's been involved, it's been a Herculean effort to get it out. [07:53] And we're all... [07:54] None of us. [07:56] have ever... [07:57] done this before. [08:00] No idea how to do it. And we figured it out together. And we've had a ton of fun along the way. So I feel...

[08:07] I feel really, really good about it. And... [08:11] That's generally my over... [08:13] overarching feeling how about you [08:15] Yeah. [08:16] Um... [08:18] Yeah, I feel really proud of the work. Yeah, really, really proud of the work, which is a [08:22] Great feeling. [08:24] And... [08:25] I... [08:27] I'm looking at it and it... [08:30] It feels very Boys Club. It feels very... [08:35] fun and funny and relevant and smart and interesting and like all these things that I want [08:43] to see... [08:45] in the world. And that is very exciting. [08:48] I think like looking at the last... [08:52] few weeks or days. [08:56] It's been interesting because we like... [08:58] get into East Denver and, [09:00] And totally a lot of people that don't know us, of course, a lot of people that don't understand us, of course, but like, [09:08] we got an email from someone that was like, congrats on winning East Denver. And like, Oh, [09:12] What a nice thing to say. Huge. [09:14] What a huge accomplishment. And when you work really hard and you get that email, it feels really good because it feels... [09:20] Like, earned. [09:22] too. Like it wasn't like, oh, accidentally it happened. Hard earned. Hard earned. Yeah. And so that felt really good. [09:27] So I had this feeling of like, wow, okay, if that was the perception, which I feel like it was, maybe not, but that was my perception of it, that we really made a splash. Yeah. [09:36] there was still this feeling there of...

[09:40] The people who get it totally get it. There's a lot of new eyeballs. There's a lot of new people getting it. There's our community, which are like obsessed with them and they're amazing. [09:49] And then... [09:50] There's a lot of people that don't get it in the crypto Ethereum community. They don't. [09:56] show up to us and our work and the stuff we're doing. And it's like, [10:00] "You're not a protocol, you're not a dApp, like, what are you?" And they're not interested. [10:07] Totally fine. 100% fine. 100% fine. However... [10:12] For me, the feeling is, okay, we've got to expand, and we've had this feeling for the past few months, got to expand outside of this ecosystem. We've got to like get into different places, different spaces, different communities to grow what we're doing here. [10:28] And that was really validated. [10:31] at [10:32] East Denver. Do you agree? Yes. [10:35] So that was a feeling leaving in Denver. [10:37] Wow. [10:38] Amazing. [10:40] Tam is limited if we stay in this world. [10:44] Then... [10:45] We... [10:46] have been, and that was a whole strategy actually with the zine and with launching it at South by is, [10:52] Like, [10:53] penetration into new people and places. Yeah. For the record, the zine was ready before eThenver. We had accepted delivery of the physical zine and the digital mic. We could have done it. We could have launched the zine at eThenver. It was a very deliberate decision for us to, [11:07] push it to, for us to launch it at South by Southwest because it's,

[11:12] if we're not doing the work to get into new... [11:15] communities and new areas and new audiences than... [11:19] we're just talking to ourselves and we're not really interested in that. We need to get out of this like crypto and web three bubble and South by Southwest and, [11:27] was a way to do that. It's 10 times harder. It's 10 times harder. So that's the feeling. That's the feeling in this very moment is, uh, [11:36] We are working... [11:38] We're really working the soil. Yeah. And we're, we're texting old friends and we're showing up on South Conquer Street with some zines. And like, we are... [11:49] Getting in front of people who don't know what the fuck boys club is at all. [11:53] Don't care about Web3. Might also have actually a negative association with Web3 and crypto. A hundred percent. [12:02] And... [12:03] We are... [12:04] Brand building and like context building. One on one. One to one. One to one. Literally one to one. One to one conversations. Handing someone a zine, explaining to them what this is and... [12:14] Why they should give a fuck. [12:16] Because most people are like, I don't care about that. So we could have... [12:19] In a day, Eddie's Denver moved 3,000 zines. Like that. [12:25] Easily. [12:27] But it does feel like the work that is worth doing is coming here and having [12:33] I don't, it's just amazing how different the energy is. Yes. It's exciting. It's very exciting because it's, it's totally fresh, fresh.

[12:42] with land to be like, [12:46] Talking... [12:47] people are talking to. Oh my God. There she is. She's a poet. No, no. [12:57] Oh my God. Um, yeah, it's, it's exciting. Um, [13:00] And it's hard. It's hard work. And so... Hanging outside the Amazon Prime activation on South Congress. Yeah. Hello! Hanging outside the Doritos concert. Uh-huh. Exactly. And being like, Zine's here. [13:17] So, yeah, it's interesting to go from... [13:21] Um... [13:22] Like hero to zero real quick. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's good though. It's that's what we want to be doing. So I'm feeling a lot of... [13:32] Yeah, a lot of things around that. It's nice to feel like [13:37] You're doing that work. [13:39] with something you feel really proud of. Like, I can confidently give someone the zine or lead them to the website and be like, this is interesting. And like, you will find something intriguing here for you. Like, I have... [13:54] I can stand on two feet and say that to somebody. Yes. And that feels really, really good. But we are putting ourselves out there a tremendous amount. And it's been... [14:06] the work that we're supposed to be doing, I think. [14:08] Yes. So, uh, the, the 95% of the zine core team is arriving in Austin today. So Alana just arrived in the cutest fit you've ever seen. The best fit. Just head to toe adorable. The best. So Alana,

[14:23] everyone that's been working on zines coming into town and we're newspaper boys [14:29] We're extra, extra read all about it. On the corner of South Congress. Yes, yes, yes. We're putting on some cute fits and we're going out and we're bringing some boxes of zines and we're handing them out. [14:41] Um, so... [14:44] Yeah, I also, I do have a little bit of a feeling of like, I'm really excited the rest of the team is getting here. Because they're going to bring some fresh energy and fresh energy. [14:54] Blood. What are you talking about? What do you mean? Well, I'm not fresh enough for you. The scene. Because you and I are disgusting at this point. Yeah, we really are. We're a bag of garbage and we need... [15:04] We need some... [15:06] And I... [15:08] I'm cognizant of as the group chat is blowing up about like, so excited. Gonna be so fun. Can't wait to see everybody. Of like, [15:16] Get your attitude together, Natasha, and be fun and be excited about... Be fun. Be fun and... [15:22] Be excited about the work. [15:24] Because... [15:25] It's easy to get into the like, just... [15:27] were... [15:28] checking off things on the to-do list and we're moving through something. But like, this is, [15:32] A really exciting moment. Yeah. And it's good to, like, have... [15:37] some context, uh, [15:39] for that when new people are coming in and they're like excited about it. Yeah. Let them be excited. Let them have their joy. Let them have their joy. I also want to give a quick shout out to the sponsors of the zine. [15:50] Oh, who took... [15:52] Experiment. Yeah. They were like –

[15:55] Oh, a take in a swing on a complete unknown entity. Yeah. They're like, what is it going to look like? Don't know. Have no idea. I feel like, I don't know what's going to be in it. I have no, literally no idea. And they're like, okay. We're like, I think it's Donnie. They're like, what? It was a me and Google slides putting some things together. So lens protocol ledger. [16:18] Open CE. [16:19] Cello. Cello. And... [16:22] It's just like the amount that... [16:25] Actions speak louder than words. Yeah. And there's a lot of noise in this industry where they're like, oh, we want to support new voices coming to the space and like whatever. Multiplayer mode, creativity. All this stuff. Yeah. And those four... [16:39] Organizations. [16:40] really are walking the walk. [16:42] Yeah. And it speaks volumes. And I, I, it's just, it's really not, I know I said this yesterday on Twitter, but like, it's really not lost on us how much was unknown and how much they were just like, okay, let's, we, we believe in you. We believe in this vision. Like LFG. Yeah. [16:55] And that's huge. [16:56] Yeah, it's huge. Really big thank you to all of them. And I hope that they feel proud of how they show up. I really like how they're all showing up. And the response on Twitter has been similarly. [17:08] You know you're doing a good job when people are liking your ads on this website. Yeah. That feels like... [17:12] Someone... [17:14] who has always been a consumer of ads and never a seller of the ad, I'm like, thank fucking God these people are liking the ads. [17:21] And I've never felt that way, but that's a good feeling. So thank you to our sponsors. [17:25] of this magazine.

[17:27] I kind of want to talk about the dollars and cents of this project. Great. To give people... [17:33] Just a BTS. [17:35] on... [17:36] The project. Let's do it. [17:38] Um, no money was made. [17:41] As we love to do. Break, fully break even. Fully break even. If not a little in the red, I think, with this trip. Yes. Big. [17:49] Totally. Um, [17:51] So... [17:53] There's two sources of income. [17:55] on the whole project. [17:58] I guess three. [17:59] There was an investment made by the Treasury. [18:03] - Yes. - Of Boys Club. [18:04] to... [18:06] Um... [18:07] - Make this experiment happen? [18:09] a proposal was... [18:10] Proposed. It was passed. [18:12] Then there was some money from the treasury to like get the project off the ground. And honestly, like float some cash. [18:17] Cash. Yes, exactly. There's some, there was some hard costs up front that we needed to deal with. Hard costs up front and cashflow issues because we didn't have any sponsors yet. Yeah. So we don't have any cash. Yeah. Yeah. So problems. Yeah. So that came through. [18:31] Then... [18:32] We... [18:33] Everybody who's working on this project essentially is not getting paid besides like hard production costs. [18:39] So the personnel of it is passion project. Everybody's working on it because they believe in it and they want to see this come together. [18:45] So setting that entirely aside as a line item. [18:49] Which would have been, I don't know. [18:51] $200,000. $200,000. Easy. Yeah, easy. [18:54] So that's completely an aside. Then there's the sponsors who each came in and...

[19:02] covered, [19:03] the cost of printing [19:06] The zine? [19:07] The digital site. [19:09] And... [19:10] design of the physical copy. [19:12] Those were the things that needed to be paid for. Those were the big hard costs. Just to reiterate. The big hard costs were the printed... [19:19] Copies. [19:21] significant cost. [19:23] Yeah. [19:25] The agency that designed the physical copy. The design of the physical copy. Because again, none of us have any media experience. Yeah. So there were some things that were like, not a time to experiment is to like learn how to lay out a magazine. Yeah. Not it. So the agency that helped us with that, New Archive, shout out their incredible... [19:43] if you are looking for any sort of, [19:45] anything hit them up new archive. Um, [19:49] The, um, and then the design and build of the microsite. Design and build of the microsite. Yeah. [19:55] Which was incredible. It looks incredible. Alana did an amazing job. She is a genius. She's a genius. A genius. I don't know how else to say it. I don't know how else to say it either. And I will never stop talking about it. I know. People might be like, we get it, but you don't. Unless you pay her to work on something for you. And then you'll get it. She is... [20:14] I don't know. So those are the hard costs associated. [20:17] So... [20:18] float from the treasury and sponsors covered the hard costs. [20:22] Then we were having a launch party for the zine. Launch party is tomorrow on Monday. [20:27] There are... [20:29] significant hard costs, [20:30] to [20:31] That as well. There's the venue, printed materials, there's travel. We really wanted to bring the team together and have a celebratory moment.

[20:40] DJ. Mija. Mija. The best. This is incredible. Um, DJs. There's another DJ too. Open scene. [20:47] Big shout out as a sponsor and co-create big shout out as a sponsor are making that party happen. That is covering the cost of travel. [20:56] And when I say travel, I mean, we're in an Airbnb. We're in a budget spreadsheet right now. I'm just saying, like, totally. If you're a builder, you're thinking about, like, how did this all come together? [21:05] And I think [21:06] I'm so grateful because this is what I want, how I want it to be. But we show up incredibly polished and people might think we have a lot of capital and we do not. And it's important to me as someone who's building something and reflecting on what it's like to do that. [21:24] for people to have some transparency... [21:26] And... [21:26] Here, like, it's hard. And, like, the realities of the cash flow are so real and present to the day-to-day of voice club. Yeah. And so, anyway, the project is break-even. Probably, actually, not exactly. Like, we're, like, a few thousand dollars in the hole. Mm-hmm. [21:42] that we're covering from other media deals. But like... [21:48] I... [21:49] Do think... [21:51] you could have done this project a different way and made a little bit of money, but we... [21:55] were very focused on reach. [21:58] And getting... [22:00] Brand building. Yeah. One way could have been to sell the NFT. Yeah. [22:05] Right. We could have chosen to sell the NFT. Yeah. We did not make... We made...

[22:12] We did not make that decision. We made a very clear decision not to. That was... [22:18] We didn't really waver on that, actually. We actually didn't. Because we... [22:22] We're like, look, we want to... [22:25] As like a new... [22:28] like next gen web three native media company, it feels important to, [22:33] have a significant [22:35] on-chain footprint. And this felt like a moment where we could really meaningfully start that. And... [22:42] I think we did. Yeah, I think we did. I mean, we definitely did. Over 50,000 people have minted it right now. That would not be the case if people were paying for it. Yeah. [22:51] So, um... [22:54] Yeah, that's a little bit about the hard costs associated. I mean, the dollars and cents of the project. And I feel really good about the decisions we've made because so far it's been a huge success. And the distribution strategy is working and we... [23:13] can look at this objectively, even if everything stopped right now in this moment and say, this is a huge win for boys club. It's, [23:20] has, I think, established us as... [23:23] a [23:24] real leader in like web three media and what it looks like and feels like. And, [23:29] It feels really great to reflect on that and be like, okay, the hard work is, [23:34] is being rewarded in front of us. [23:38] Um, also, I want to say that we are, uh, [23:41] Dimes is next. So the next big

[23:45] thing [23:47] is we're trailing the zine with the dimes launch because Dina and I love to stack work, stack work and never stop. [23:58] Yeah, Dimes Launch... [24:00] We're launching a rewards program with co-create. I'm really excited about it. Yeah. Um, more on that soon. But if you're thinking about, okay, I'm obsessed with the zine. Thank you. We are obsessed with you. And I really want a physical copy. Um, [24:12] The way to do it at this point is menthazine. [24:18] And you will get more info on how to redeem for dimes points, rewards points next week. And 100 people are going to get the zine IRL. [24:27] Keep an eye out for more info there. I'm really excited about it. How do you feel about it? Excited. Excited. She's excited. Can't wait for that and for... [24:37] Figuring out how we... [24:39] do all this work. [24:41] Not insignificant. [24:44] She's wilting. She's wilting right before your eyes. [24:48] Thank you all who have supported us. [24:50] in the various tier two cities that we've been in. And online. The tweets have been so kind. Generous. [24:58] And in the Discord. The Discord. And the community hang that we did on Friday. Oh, my God. Everyone has been so supportive and so kind. And honestly, we see every single word. Every single one. Dina and I turn our phones to each other and go, oh, my God. It's really nice. And... [25:12] It's really appreciated and just thank you so much.

[25:17] Everything feels like it's kind of burning around us, but we're just going to continue to show up and do the work. One foot in front of the other. Yeah. And hopefully, you know, laughing a little bit while we're doing it. [25:27] Okay. Bye. [25:34] derived tweets you ready i have a great one great [25:39] Wow, she's... Let's go. She's really enthusiastic. I'm sorry. Enthusiastic. I was reading my own. I'm sorry. Okay. So it's a screenshot. Uh-huh. [25:50] Actually, it's Boomer. It's a picture of the computer. Oh, nice. Like right up to the laptop screen? Right up to the laptop screen. Just couldn't use my brain. Nice. Right at the moment of our OpenSea. [26:03] Drop page. [26:04] And this was a few days ago. And it says 26. It's a screenshot that says 26, 5, 6. [26:11] 26,454 minted. It's the Boys Club zine. [26:15] Edition one drop. [26:16] And right above it, it says zero ETH. And my caption is 26... [26:21] Thousand plus mints. Zero ETH. A boys club story. Nice. Thank you. [26:29] I'm torn on whether or not to that you press N on that one. Okay. [26:33] Because... [26:35] I need to do a little bit more of a more recent one because we're up so much, you know, higher impact. Yeah. And I also I have to screenshot it from I can't have a picture. I kind of like that, though. I kind of like it. I kind of like the chaos of it. OK.

[26:47] What's yours? [26:49] I can't wait to find all the typos and the zines we printed. [26:55] Oh, it's too, it's too cutting. [26:59] It's too soon. [27:03] I also just want to say, so Monty Preston is the editor of the zine. And I feel her taking on the emotional labor of... Oh, my God. She's taking it so... She's taking on the emotional labor of any potential typo. Yeah. And I would just want to say, Monty... [27:20] Monty, it's on all of us. Yeah. And it's going to happen. And to... [27:27] She's like, I just see on all the calls, on all the correspondence, she's like, have you seen any typos, please let me know. And I'm like, Monty, it's okay. It's totally fine. I just want to say for people who... [27:40] I just need some inspiration today. I have never sent an email without a typo, not once. And I am responsible for... [27:48] for publishing a magazine. So anything is possible. Literally anything is possible. [27:55] That's that. Okay. Bye.