Podcasts about crowdfunding uncut

Transcript:  Hey everyone, welcome to the Launch and Scale podcast. This is episode five, and I'm Khierstyn Ross. This episode is brought to you by the Launch and Scale program, which if you are looking for a done with you program that is a proven step by step system and support that we have put together to get you the support that you need throughout your product launch, be sure to head over to khierstyn.com/schedule and book a strategy session with myself, or my team where we're going to be able to help you map out your roadmap for your campaign and ultimately see if the program is a right fit to get you the support you need to smash your product launch goals. Khierstyn Ross: In this episode, we are taking a look at ... Essentially this is really the first interview that we're doing for launch and scale, and I've been friends with Marcus for the last four years. Marcus Rader is the CEO and co-founder of Hostaway, which is an enterprise solution in the travel space. We'll get into that a little bit more. But really what this interview focuses on is how they were able to go into a market, property managers and assess where the solution is and ultimately create an MVP around customer needs and customer interviews. And so, we're going to talk about that process of how he went from the conception of an idea to an MVP and really how he was able to scale that very quickly over the last two years to a company that has raised multiple millions of dollars through VC and angel funding. But they're now, they work out of five different countries with over 38 employees and growing. Khierstyn Ross: Hostaway, is now one of the fastest growing enterprise tech solutions in the travel space, and really stoked to cover this interview because it does really cover that fast growth period and how he was able to iterate based on customer feedback in the field. And so we have a lot of juicy tidbits to go into it. So I'm really stoked to launch and kick off our official first interview of the podcast. Khierstyn Ross: If you've been a listener for a while, you will know that this show has evolved from Crowdfunding Uncut where that was primarily interview focused, and what I'm looking to do with this show is have a range of teach you the stuff, answer your questions, but also bringing on valuable guests from different niches that have either a great results or they're doing great things. And I have Marcus Rader from Hostaway, which I'll get into what Hostaway is in a second. But Marcus and I have known each other for about four years now, I think. And we met when mutual friends brought us to a baseball game, and ever since then, we've just been friends hanging out in the startup space. Khierstyn Ross: What's been really amazing about Marcus is I've seen him move to Toronto from Finland and start Hostaway from nothing to over a two year period, maybe two and a half, bring Hostaway from nothing to one of the fastest growing tech travel on enterprise solution software on the internet and in the world, which is just fascinating to see his journey. And I thought, what better way to kick off our first interview of this show than get into the mind of someone who has taken something from nothing to 38 employees in five different spots over the last two years. So, Marcus, I'm really stoked to have an officially recorded conversation with you and instead of just over beer. So welcome. Marcus Rader: Well, thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on the show. Khierstyn Ross: Yeah, we're still good. So, let's give some context, what is Hostaway? Marcus Rader: So, Hostaway is a software service platform for vacation rental property managers. So software as a service is a concept where you buy a piece of software as a subscription model. Typical examples include Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, even Stripe. What our software does, it allows vacation rental property managers to grow faster, so through our one in all solution that's completely cloud-based, we connect to their partners, Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway, VRBO, TripAdvisor, Expedia, and within our platform, they manage all their stakeholders. So they manage their guests, they manage their cleaners, they manage their real estate investors. They manage their staff, they make sure their response times and ratings are good. And they, of course, do financial reporting as well. So pretty much everything needed to run a vacation rental business can be done through our platform. Khierstyn Ross: So I used to host on Airbnb, but it was my living room. So I wouldn't be a prime customer for you, but just to do context, if I were someone that had multiple properties and multiple listings on Airbnb, I want to maximize my listings by posting on Expedia, a ton like Booking.com, a ton of other platforms. But imagine trying to manage five or six different booking platforms for five-plus listings, it gets to be a freaking nightmare. It's like managing multiple calendars. So your solution to be able to manage that all on one platform is phenomenal. So, I know when you first started with this, you weren't so heavy on the enterprise, but you were trying to do more like smaller property managers and that that evolved. Who would you say is your ideal customer now that uses Hostaway? Marcus Rader: So right now we only target what we consider professional property managers. But, like a lot of real estate business, the term professional is a bit vague. For example, there's a lot of real estate brokers who actually have another job on the side or maybe they're real estate brokers on weekends only. So, the way I define it is those who consider their time valuable. So let's say they spend an hour or 10 hours, they have an actual price on that because that's what businesses have. When you take in employees, and you ask them to spend 10 hours on something that's actual money away from your bank accounts. And if our software lowers that 10 hours into just 30 minutes, that's nine, and a half hours saved time. Marcus Rader: And that's why, you when you were renting out your spare room, probably the 15 minutes a week you spent on it, you didn't consider yourself losing a single dollar on that 15 minutes. But if you had to pay someone or even a team of 10 people their salaries for a full-time job, that would be a substantial amount of money. And if you can save them time and focus on growing your businesses then that's where the value of the software like ours really come in. Khierstyn Ross: So, taking this back, how did you get the idea for Hostaway to begin with? Marcus Rader: I'm not really a strong believer in business ideas. First of all, there are not many success stories of someone who had a great idea and then decided to implement it then it became a massive business. Usually, those ideas go through a lot of iterations. And on the other hand, some of the most brilliant ideas I've ever heard when it comes to business, they never become a success at all, or they don't even try. They're just an idea. Unfortunately, I knew that when I was starting out, I knew that ideas are worthless. I had a couple of different ideas, but what I really focused on before fully committing to this, what I considered a project back then was doing extensive research, checking overall business trends, macro trends, and then doing very in-depth interviews with actual property management companies in the industry. Asking them everything from, what do they first do when they wake up to what are their biggest challenges? Marcus Rader: And, it wasn't very solutions-oriented, it was more focused on what area do we want to be in, and then we started looking at the industry as a whole, what is Airbnb doing? What do we expect to happen? Can we find any proof on this? Can we find any scientific papers proving that our theory is right, and we had enough evidence, and we had enough research done, we decided to do an MVP. And eventually, that led us on to a couple of iterations and funding rounds, and to get where we are today. Khierstyn Ross: So, when you focused on interviewing property management companies, even taking it a step back, did it start with you deciding you wanted to start your own company and then looking for trends and then narrowing down on the property management company type, or did you just know that you wanted to go after property managers? Marcus Rader: I gave it a lot of thought. I think it was more about me wanting to start a company that actually finding an opportunity. So, I knew there were a million opportunities out there, I just wanted to choose the right one. So, it wasn't that an opportunity presented itself and then I evaluated whether I take it or not. No, I was actively looking for opportunities, and the markets that I found was big enough, growing fast enough, going through a lot of changes and consolidation, and that's why I decided to start the company and exactly this industry in this part. Khierstyn Ross: So how did you know that this was the right direction for you? Marcus Rader: It came actually from personal interest. A lot of the trends that we're seeing in the world are very similar to my own experience. For example, one of the trends is remote work. People like to work in different locations and if I'm not wrong Khierstyn you have also ... You don't spend all your days at the same office, you tend to work from different locations around the world. I have moved around, lived in many countries, and I know that you need flexible living solutions. If you go somewhere for a couple of months, you can't rent the place for a full year. Marcus Rader: Another major trend is travel. There's a massive middle class growing, even though people always say the middle class is dying out, but actually, globally it's growing at a massive pace. There's a huge amount of people, especially in populous countries like China and India that are traveling, and that is a trend that's not going anywhere anytime soon. And, back when we started out a couple of years ago, it was also not going anywhere, and it turns out that all the predictions are correct, people are traveling more and more. So, those were the trends that we found evidence off, and we believed in. But yeah, it came out of personal interest. I like to travel, I like living in different places. Khierstyn Ross: Honestly, I think that's so important because if you are going to devote so much of your time to build something, it has to be something you have a personal interest in or else you may not be driven as hard to do the thing. Marcus Rader: That's very true on one hand, and some of the most successful founders that I've met today always have a personal interest. If you can align that with somehow making the world a better place, that's usually really nice touch as well. Unfortunately, I haven't found that alignment. I don't know how making business operations more efficient will, for example, reduce child poverty. But, having somewhat of an interest, whether it's an interest in technology or finances, that definitely helps. So, if you don't care about money then just don't start an accounting software company. Khierstyn Ross: For sure. And there's something I want to clarify. I know you don't believe in business ideas, but when you narrowed it down to property management companies, something in flexible living space and solutions, did you have the idea for Hostaway, like you knew in your mind it was this hosting platform for property managers? Or did you just decide to go talk to property managers and figure out what was the one thing they really needed the most help with and then the solution was born out of their feedback? Which of those were you? Marcus Rader: Actually neither. We did want to do exactly what they were asking for, they had multiple problems, and we had a couple of different solutions for that. But, those solutions were pretty difficult to build and when we did more research and found out that every single company on earth that has tried, has failed in building those solutions. And by failed, meaning that they only had done a couple of iterations and maybe in a few years they'll have a good solution in place. So, we decided to simplify it as much as possible and go very heavy on marketing and sales first while building the MVP, because a lot of people think they need a product in order to sell it. But well as you know in our crowdfunding space, it can be the exact opposite. First, you sell it, then you see if we can make the product. And that's what we did, and we were actually quite successful with our first iteration. We got a bunch of customers. Marcus Rader: One of the common breaking points of young software startups is when you talk to customers, and they're willing to pay for a solution and then you provide the solution and suddenly they're not willing to give you any money. For us actually, we did not have that problem. Our first customer suggested to us, that how about they start paying us so that we can afford to improve the software. Which was a nice thing because we didn't plan at that point to charge money for it. When we did start charging money for it, we quickly got up to about a hundred customers and found out that the target audience that we have they're way too demanding, and they're not tech savvy enough to, for example, read the documentation for a fairly complex solution. And at the price that they're paying that we were charging, we just didn't see any way this business could scale. Marcus Rader: But, what we did find out is that there's a lot of companies out there with much higher demands, but they're also willing to pay for it. And that comes back to what I said earlier if you value one hour of your time as $0 probably any software is going to be expensive. But if you have to pay a $20 salary to someone else, suddenly one hour's worth exactly $20. And, that's when we started targeting those customers. Khierstyn Ross: Okay. I want to clarify something. Did you build an MVP and then focus on sales? Marcus Rader: Well, I think- Khierstyn Ross: Or sale and then MVP? Marcus Rader: I think a lot of companies say, well, Facebook is a good example, if you launch a product, and it doesn't work, just launch it again. And I think Facebook did seven launches and that's a fairly common story, but it's not actually the truth. The truth is that it's somewhere in between. There's not an exact launch. You constantly do sales, marketing, product development, market research, and at the pace that you're going where you basically reinvent the company every single day, you can't really define lines. Sometimes you find that you're pitching an idea that's already two days old and sometimes you find that you've sold a solution that's only going to be available tomorrow. But by doing quick iterations, you can't really draw any lines. But if you do enough of them eventually, you'll find a recipe that scales, which is all that matters when you're dealing with software. Khierstyn Ross: Because something that it's not very clear to me is that you mentioned before that most, actually every software solution in your space that has tried to do what you guys are doing has failed. So you focused on sales and marketing, but then you go on to say that you actually had to have a customer offer to pay you and then you got a hundred people. So, where's the line with that? Marcus Rader: That's what I was trying to say. The line is very, very thin, and I wouldn't say that our competitors have failed. It was more that we found one niche within niche markets that were completely uncatered to. And that's the first one we attacked, and then found out exactly the reason why it's uncatered to. A bit like you'll find a hundred dollar bill lying on the streets, and you wonder why nobody picked it up. Then you pick it up and find out it's fake. Khierstyn Ross: Yeah. I think what you're getting at is you focused on developing a very, very, very basic and simple MVP that did the job instead of focusing on building this amazing, beautiful product right away, you did bare minimum to do the job and then focused on sales and then used sales to gradually improve it as opposed to the bloat of having like product devs to design something amazing and not focus on sales right away. Marcus Rader: That's very, very true, and it's sometimes hard to ... I mean, if you want to build a very simple product, then you can take it quickly to market, and you can quickly sell it. But that also means that if it's like a fidget spinner, that's very simple to build. When it first came out, it was a big success, but suddenly you had a thousand other companies producing them, and the price plummeted and now they're worthless. If you want to build something very complex, there's a certain threshold, you need to invest a certain amount of time and money in order to make that complex solution work. But, what often happens is once you're ready with that complex solution, nobody wants it or they don't want it for the purpose you thought, or they don't want to pay what you thought. Khierstyn Ross: Or the other thing happens, which is exactly what happened to you is you found out very quickly that you are actually serving the wrong kind of ... Not the wrong kind of person but the person at a price point that wouldn't allow you to scale. So, the other point that I want you guys to take away from this listening is that you don't want to focus on creating this beautiful, amazing full solution product right off the bat. You need to focus on getting the job done and bringing an MVP to market because you're going to take real customer feedback, paying customer feedback, customers that are using your product, or the software that are going to help you create the iterations for that customer ahead of time. So, that you can really build onto the product as you grow as a company. Marcus Rader: Yeah. That's a great summary right there and something that I find a lot when I talk to people who actually want to become entrepreneurs, so have a good idea and have all the basic skills needed. They tend to do exactly the same thing that I did as well, which is set up these mental barriers. For example, if I just had $1 million or if I just had a development team or if I just had a co-founder, and they focus so much on that they bind themselves down. They can never get to the next stage, and that's actually what took us forward instead of looking at what do we want to become in the end and how do we get there? We were looking at, okay, what is the next step? Can we get a million? Can we hire 10 developers? No. Okay, well what can we do realistically? What can we do? And where would that take us? Marcus Rader: And that's exactly what we did. We found out that, okay, there's a hundred things that we should do, but if we just do three of them, we'll not get to the next stage. And if all three of those work out fine, then we can get enough resources to do 10 more. And if those workout fine, then we can do to 90 others. And that's a much nicer approach because that's where you actually can move forward with something more tangible and realistic. Khierstyn Ross: No, that makes so much sense. How did you find ... If you have a hundred things, how do you decide what those three are? Marcus Rader: In reality, in hindsight it's always going to be those three. But in practice you have to try 20 of them. If you're successful at the end, you can go back and say, oh, I was so good. I looked at the list of a hundred things, and I managed to pick the three that really mattered. In reality, I haven't really seen that with anyone. You have to try a little bit, and I think luck is a big factor there. Trying to do as much as possible, as many different things as possible and dismiss the opportunities, try to get any proof or this proof of concept as fast as possible so that you can move on to the next thing and constantly hope that you happen to stumble upon the right one, and that will bring you to the next stage. Khierstyn Ross: It sounds like when you started, you were bootstrapping to an extent, but at what point did you decide that you needed to go after investment? Marcus Rader: I think it was at the point when I wanted to pay for nice things in life, like rent and food, electricity and heating, they are perhaps luxuries, but especially rent and food is something that's really nice to have. Something that I definitely knew I did not want to do is have a job and then try to set up a business on the side, because I felt that then I wouldn't be committed to the job, and I wouldn't be committed to my business. I wanted to make sure I put myself in a position where I'm 100% committed because I have not seen successful side projects. I have seen people who are very determined to create a business and have managed to create it and are fully committed and people who have been determined and failed. That's a more common story, but I haven't met many people who have done a side project that turned into a massive success. Khierstyn Ross: So you go full time with Hostaway, did you quit your job to go full time? Did you have investment going into Hostaway? Marcus Rader: No, I quit my job and moved to a new country with a lot of expenses and no job. So it was very easy for me to start a company because I didn't have to give anything up because when I arrived in Canada I didn't have anything to give up. Khierstyn Ross: So it was just saving for a little bit, and then you looked for investment essentially, and then it worked out. Marcus Rader: Yes, it did work out. Khierstyn Ross: So coming from Finland to Toronto, Canada, where do your investors come from, is it primarily Finish investors or have you been able to tap into North American market too? Marcus Rader: I haven't spoken to many US investors yet, I have a fair bit of experience in the Canadian investor landscape. It's worth noting that I moved here four years ago and most of the VC's in Toronto are only two or three years old. So, there wasn't a lot of investors living around here. But based on the conversations I had back then, I found a lot of them really want stable businesses, which I didn't want to build a stable business. I wanted to build a fast growth business, which is the opposite of stable. And it turns out that I managed at least so far to do a fairly good job at it, but it's very risky route for investors. And so far we've been relying on Finish investors through most literal networks and cold calling as well. But, they have a lot of success. Marcus Rader: I mean, Toronto unfortunately doesn't have a single company worth more than a billion, and that's younger than 10 years, which is a shame compared to Finland or Helsinki that's only 1 million people, and they have, what is it? Four or $5 billion companies that this VCs have managed to even cash out on. Khierstyn Ross: So in Finland, I know that, what I've learned from your tech tio talk that Angry Birds came from Finland. What are some other heavy hitters that have come from Finland? Marcus Rader: There's lots of let's say mid sized, but I think, was it three years ago? The Super Bowl, the most expensive ad was a Finnish tech startup. Unfortunately it was also in the same space as Angry Birds, it was a mobile games. It was Clash of Clans. There's many others, one of my favorite is the biggest music educator in the world, Yousician. I think they have 100 million users now. It's basically a mobile app that allows you to learn how to have to play any instrument as a game. Khierstyn Ross: It's awesome, I use it. Marcus Rader: Really? Khierstyn Ross: I now play guitar very badly, but I play guitar. Marcus Rader: That's nice. Is Yousician good to you? Khierstyn Ross: They are very good. Yes. I'm like, oh, I can do this. Marcus Rader: That's good to hear. Yeah. And, there's a lot also in the region, not specifically Finland, but for example, in Sweden and Estonia there's a couple of pretty heavy hitters like Skype and Spotify. Khierstyn Ross: So knowing that Canada VC is a little, they're risk adverse a little bit. They want more established companies, but Finland, because so many fast growth massive companies have come out of it, do you see a cultural difference in how investors treat your company between Finland and Canada? Marcus Rader: I think for most VCs, they don't really have the luxury to choose their investments. They have certain criteria they need to meet, and if they try to go with what they think is good based on numbers or something, they later on re iterate, then come up with more strict profiles. So for example, if they only invest in technology related to health, then it doesn't matter if we're the best company in the world, they can't invest in us because we're not into health. And if they only invest in US based companies, then they can't invest in us because we're based in Finland. But outside of that, I think definitely the VC landscape in Toronto has moved massively forward. I was just that coalition and all my days were filled with VC meetings most from Toronto, and the feedback was good and they also seemed to have caught up. They were very professional, asking the right questions. It felt like they were trying to sell themselves as an investor, just like it should be. Khierstyn Ross: Excellent. Can you tell me about how you got your first investor? It doesn't have to be VC, just first investor. Marcus Rader: Definitely it wasn't the VC, it was ... I remember once I asked my father ... I felt really good, and I asked my father, hey, why am I so lucky? Why does everything go right for me? And he said, "You know what? You're just fooling yourself. You're not lucky, you've been planting these seeds for so many years. And most of them died, but now some of them are giving fruit and that's not luck. That's just planting enough seeds." So, when I lived in Amsterdam, I went to online marketing conference in Germany. There I happened to see a guy, and when I saw him I thought, well, he doesn't look German or British. He looks very Finish. So I went up to him, I said, in Finnish, sorry, are you from Finland? And he said, yes, I am. Marcus Rader: And that's how I met one guy who later on turned out to introduce me to our angel investor who got so excited about the project that he gave us that sweet salary for paying rent and food, but more importantly he's actively working in the company and he's helping us a lot in strategic things in finances and has helped us find other investors as well. Khierstyn Ross: So how did that conversation happen? You meet the Finnish guy at a conference and then how does he suddenly, not suddenly, but he introduced you to someone. So tell me about that. Did you ask, were you going around your network looking for connections? Did he just know what you worked on and said it just happened organically or what? Marcus Rader: That's a really good question. I think if I would have to reproduce that now, I don't know if that even would be possible, and I don't think I can give any advice. It's exactly like you said. I think he asked me what I'm doing or maybe I posted something on Facebook, and he reached out and said, hey, this sounds interesting. I could talk to you. And then, he said, hey, I actually know someone who wants to buy the product. And, I think our meeting was even set up, so then I was supposed to sell the product, but I happen to sell the idea of the company instead. And that's what led to it. Marcus Rader: But how to find an angel investor, I think that's going to be very hard. I think if you go out to your network and ask, that's probably the wrong question. A bit like asking your parents if you can move back in with them. It's something that they don't want, and you don't want to do that, and it's, yeah, usually not a good outcome. Khierstyn Ross: So what is the right question then if you're looking for an angel investor? Marcus Rader: Oh, I wish I knew how to find an angel ... Actually, yeah, there's a network in Toronto, I think it's called Maple Leafs Angels. Khierstyn Ross: Yup Maple Leaf Angels. Yup. Marcus Rader: Yeah. So, there's a lot of those and of course there's things like Dragon's Den as well, but that's- Khierstyn Ross: Shark Tank. Marcus Rader: Yeah, Shark Tank. But those are more for companies, well they want to put on a good show. So usually the companies that end up there are actually not just starting out, they are, for example, seasoned entrepreneurs who have done this many times before. Khierstyn Ross: So maybe the question is more, if you had to go out and find an investor tomorrow, which this is your job now, how would you go and find a new investor? Marcus Rader: For a new company, I would definitely not go out and find an investor. I would do everything I can to set up the company for growth, and by taking the smallest steps possible. For example, if I speak to 100 people, how many have the problem that I'm trying to solve? Then let's say it's 40 out of them, how many of them would be interested in hearing and talking about my solution? And then how many of those would be in theory willing to pay something. You can find yourself 10 then see what would be the shortest way to build that solution and then test them on whether they're able to buy and pay for that. And if you're able to do those steps, you're able to move forward, and it's, yeah, I think we could have done a lot of things differently and faster and better. But on the other hand, we invested heavily into technology and into the research part, which is now paying off. Marcus Rader: So, it's very hard to go and say that we could have done things better, there's a million things we could have done better, but then maybe if we hadn't done those things, other things would have failed. Khierstyn Ross: Makes sense. My last topic I want to talk about is the pivot from, I think it was the $9 a month solo person you were going after to now enterprise solution. When you realized that your pricing structure didn't make sense for where you wanted to take this, how did you start to pivot toward the higher end solutions? Marcus Rader: Very good, good question. I remember we had a long hard meeting I think three or four days where we really evaluated the market size and the options. We tried to figure out can we automate certain parts of the process, what are the challenges? And eventually we decided that I think even at that stage we realized that we don't have enough time or money. We have one shot at making this happen, but if don't do it, we're probably going to fail anyway. And we made that decision, it was one of the most stressful summers, especially for the development team, which back then was three people to build all the features. And yeah, we did the decision in May and we could confirm that things looked good by September, November. But when things look good, that usually means that it feels good. It doesn't show up on the bank account yet. Marcus Rader: Now, feeling good doesn't pay anyone's salary either, which is a problem when people want the salary. It doesn't matter how good it feels, but sometimes that's what you have to go with. And to us it felt good and we just had to sell the idea that it feels so good that in a couple of months we'll see some money on the bank accounts and that's exactly what happened. So, we were able to scale up our product or change it in a way so that bigger companies were able to utilize it and pay more for it. Khierstyn Ross: Because I can't imagine that being easy conversation where you decide internally to pivot away from something that's already proven to make revenue, have to go to your VCs, or your board of directors and say this is the move we want to make. I can't imagine that was an easy conversation. Marcus Rader: Yeah. Fortunately we didn't have to do that at that stage. We were so early on, that there wasn't really pressure. But of course for us it was massive pressure because we knew that our current business is not going to take us to the next stage and we have to make this change, but it's going to destroy a lot of what we built. And what nobody told us at that point is that the experience that we gained in the first couple of tries is going to make everything so much easier. So we actually thought it was going to be harder than it eventually was, but it would've been nice to have an outsider to come and say, look, you built this business already a couple of times and I need to rebuild it from scratch. It's going to be much easier. But it sure didn't feel like that when we made the decision. Khierstyn Ross: When did you know ... Can you go back to the moment when you realized, I think we made the right decision. When did that happen? Marcus Rader: I think, for me it was when ... I don't know, I had a realization one day, I don't even remember when it was at what stage, when I realized that we have gone from being an idea to being a startup, to struggling to survive, to be a company where we are in charge. We are not going to go bankrupt because we have the flexibility to make changes necessary, whatever happens. And that was one of the happiest days in my life because before that I had been constantly focusing on when are we running out of money. And the funny thing with a runway and with fast growing revenues is that things change every day, but you can also make future plans and then change them later on based on what happened yesterday when you have the actual information and that way you can adjust your own runway depending on how things are going. Khierstyn Ross: So, you would say this pivot gave you confidence to make massive business changes in the future where necessary. Marcus Rader: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. But, I would not look forward to doing a pivot any time soon because it's a lot easier when you don't have employees, when you don't have customers who rely on your product, you can make a lot of changes, and more importantly you can make mistakes. But once you have customers who rely on your product, and once you have employees who rely on either your leadership or in some cases maybe rely on getting a paycheck or I don't know what the employees appreciate more, then you can't just go around making a bunch of mistakes all the time and testing things out because it can upset a lot of people. So the changes have to be better planned and they have to be executed way better as you grow. Khierstyn Ross: Yeah. Well said. What's next for Hostaway then? Marcus Rader: Oh, that's exciting. I wish I could tell you, but we have a couple of exciting announcements coming up and you can see them on our social media on the upcoming months. Khierstyn Ross: Excellent. It's funny because when it's not a recorded conversation, maybe we'd go for beer, maybe over the raptors game on Friday, maybe I can find out from you. But anyway, I'll leave that for another conversation. So this has been awesome. I think I like to end this off with, do you have any famous last words or a piece of advice for your younger self? Marcus Rader: I've been Googling a lot on how to hire and recruit the right people and apparently that's something you're supposed to ask at a job interview. And I always thought that it's funny because nobody's asked me that question. No, I really don't have any advice for my younger self, I wish I could say be more confident or take charge and move forward at full speed, But that's pretty much what I've been doing anyway. Khierstyn Ross: Yeah, but still, what people need to hear. Marcus Rader: Yeah. I mean, I would like to give myself the advice to be more mature, but I also know that if someone from the future would come and tell me now, hey, you need to be more mature or do things in a more effective way then I wouldn't really believe them. And even if I did, I wouldn't know what that means or what to do. So, hopefully one day I'll be able to say that I can give advice to my 10 year younger self. Khierstyn Ross: Well, we all have lots to learn, right? So, well I'm going to wrap this here. If anyone listening wants to learn a bit more about what you guys are doing, what is a good spot to send them? Marcus Rader: The best spot and the best approach here, if you want to learn how to be amazing at life is to go to hostaway.com and look at the open jobs positions. Find the one you like and I guarantee you will find satisfaction. Khierstyn Ross: I agree. It's a fantastic company to work for and you guys are hiring for virtually every position right now. Marcus Rader: Yes, so every position, everywhere. Khierstyn Ross: That wraps up another interview. Thank you so much for listening. If you are planning a product launch on Kickstarter, I want to know if that platform is right for you for your product launch goals, whether you are just starting and this is your first product or you are a current brand and want to see how Kickstarter can help you build your audience and get your brand in front of more customers to really give you more street cred and momentum, really help you build as a brand. Then, you should head over to khierstyn.com/schedule and book a free strategy session with myself and my team to really look at what your product launch goals are and your branding needs essentially to see what we can do to help you build your audience. Khierstyn Ross: Apart from that, this wraps up another episode and because my name is so hard to spell, you should grab a pen and paper because how you spell it is K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N. So again, to schedule a free consult with our team, please go to khierstyn.com/schedule, and there will be a link in the description in the show notes, which you can get at khierstyn.com/LS05.

In this final episode of the Crowdfunding Uncut podcast, we explore what's next and how you can keep us in your earballs. Visit launchandscale.crowdfundinguncut.com to learn more.

Hey everyone, welcome to the overview episode of the Launch and Scale Podcast. I'm Khierstyn Ross, and I am so excited to be officially kicking this off. For those that have been following the Crowdfunding Uncut podcast for a while, you know that I did that for the last three years where that podcast focused really heavily on how to bring physical products to market through the Kickstarter route. Over my last four years being in the trenches with creators, really bringing products to market, managing very large crowdfunding campaigns of multiple six-figures, and advising E-commerce brands on how to bring new products to market, I felt that it was time to evolve the brand. And really evolve the conversation to taking everything I've learned from the Kickstarter route, and bringing products to market successfully, and really applying that to any product launch online. Because what I've noticed is with Kickstarter launches you have one chance, really, to make a great first impression. You have one chance to position your product properly, one chance to make sure that your message is right, the pricing is right, and not only that, but that you have an intimate understanding of why your customer is going to buy this product so that you can have a great sales message, a great video and all that. What I've found is that with Kickstarter campaigns, because it is, traditionally, people have a very high failure rate on Kickstarter whereas the success rate on Kickstarter's about 37%. The big factor with that is to make sure that you not only have an audience of people ready to buy your product when you're live but the other side is making sure you have the right audience because you want to make sure you're building up the right audience of people that are actually going to resonate with your product and love your products so that they buy it on your Crowdfunding campaign when it goes live. And so because of that and because of the whole getting to know your customer and how much it builds into positioning your product properly, I find that the work that we've done and why I have such a high success rate of campaign success on Kickstarter is because we do a lot of due diligence leading up to a launch of who is your customer. Let's prove that hypothesis through Facebook marketing, let's prove that hypothesis through customer interviews through a structured beta test, which we talk about in episode two, and through different things like that to really make sure that the assumptions we make about our product and who is going to buy and why people love it, we make sure that that is market tested and proven so that when we go to spend so much time and resources launching this product that we get it right the first time. So, I've found that after working with beginner brands who were using Kickstarter for launch that first product versus an eCommerce client that maybe selling a dozen or so products on Amazon and they know want to build up their audience using Kickstarter as an addition platform, I noticed a trend in that the things we do so early stage with beginner brands to really scope who the customer is, market test demographics and make sure that they are predictably setting up the way we position our product. I realized that that in a lot of the eCommerce brands like the current ones that we approaching me didn't have that locked in. So, I thought, okay, well, I want to take this conversation more mainstream and everything that we have done with Kickstarter campaigns to make sure that we have a six-figure launch, to make sure we are positioning the product and the message we have really resonates with the person we put it in front of. I wanted to take that conversation more so that people who are looking at taking their product off of Amazon and selling on their Shopify site or building a physical product or even looking to create that round two of a product for a launch, if you're on the Kickstarter side of things, you can use this information to make sure that you are going to have an even more successful product launch. So, what we're covering in Launch and Scale Podcast is, really, how to build a strong foundation for your eCommerce physical product even if you're using Kickstarter, you're using Amazon or whatnot because ultimately there is a reason why I've had such a strong track record bringing products to market and I want to make sure that information is available to more of you guys. So, what you can expect of this podcast where Crowdfunding Uncut was heavily focused on the interview side of things, this time around it's going to be a less formal approach. So I'm looking to doing a mix of shorter episodes where it will be led by questions submitted by the audience or I'll do a 10 to 15-minute segment on answering that question. We'll be doing behind the scenes experiments. If there is a topic through an expert that I want to bring on then we will do a more long-form interview. So, the format is going to be loose, it's going to evolve with the show and evolve with feedback. What I've done is I've created the first few episodes off of questions that were emailed in from the Crowdfunding Uncut family. So we're in for a really juicy start. Thank you so much for your support. If this is the first time listening to the Launch and Scale Podcast, please be sure to head over to khierstyn.com/podcast and in there you will be able to select iTunes or Stitcher and go in and subscribe to the show. And if you love the content, please do leave an honest review of the show. It does help other people think the content that is helpful for them and their unique situation. My name is also impossible to spell so it's K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N.com/podcast. Apart from that, if you are not familiar with my story and how the heck I got into product launches, this is where I'm going to talk about that. So, about four and a half years ago, I went to a networking event and I had a little bit of experience online and I ran into this founder of this quirky product that he eventually sold me on it and he got the idea, because we were talking about Matt Ward from Art of the Kickstart before he sold it to Aventis with Roy [Morjan 00:06:47], and a few days later, Adam came back to me and he's like, "Hey, so this product, I've been thinking more about it and I want to bring it to Kickstarter." And I was like, "Huh, interesting. I don't know anything about Kickstarter." And so the conversation goes back and forth, he's like, "No, no, no, I think it could be really good if we partnered up on this. You know the marketing side of things and I'm the product creator. A perfect world." I was like, "Okay, cool." So, eventually, a few weeks go by and I commit to helping him market this product. And we go and we spend about three months preparing for it, really not knowing anything of what we were doing and if what we were doing was right and we went up to this launch. And that very first launch we did on Indiegogo and it was an absolute disaster. We made every mistake in the book but at the time we didn't know that. So we pressed the launch and then nothing happened. So, over I think it was a 34-day campaign we ended up failing horribly so we set our goal at $50,000 and by the end, we only raised about $17,000. It was a disaster, to say the least. After that campaign failed we had two options. We could quit and pack up shop or we could really explore and see what we did wrong. After feedback from a few marketing professionals, we realized that it actually wasn't the product. The product was pretty good and it was most likely to sell. What was wrong was how we approached the campaign. So we used that time, about four months, to readjust and redo our marketing plan. So we realized where we went wrong was a classic mistake. On Kickstarter, you have to go in with an audience of people ready to buy so that the algorithm picks you up and shows you to more people and creates a snowball effect. So there's that. But the other thing is we completely butchered the product positioning. Here we were, two skinny people, trying to sell a weight loss product in an industry that neither of us really understood and we didn't take the time to really talk to our customer and get to make sure that the product positioning and I guess the sales pitch and the video we'd put together to make sure that it was actually in alignment with what would get people to buy and it really wasn't. So we took this feedback and we ended up going to our market, getting feedback to completely change our product positioning and building up an audience. So we did those two things really differently, really focused on that for the next three to four months and then we relaunched that product. And when we launched it, that time, the thing explodes. We end up raising just shy of $600,000 on Indiegogo for this product. And that really launched my career. I was in denial at the time because I was like, "I hate Kickstarter. I don't want to do it." But it's funny because a couple of months after that point, I was forced to do a talk in Toronto because the founder didn't want to do it and so I did the talk on the transition between how we went from a $17,000 failure to a $600,000 success. And there was the founder of my second official campaign or client in the audience, David from Tapplock. And he's like, "I really like what you did with this product. Can we talk?" And so I ended up working with Tapplock and that was my second big win where Tapplock went and raised $342,000 on Indiegogo. And then from that, I got partnered up with Maneesh Sethi of Pavlok where we launched the Shock Clock 2 and that ended up doing another $350,000. And then I eventually met Chris from Jam Stack. Again, he's one of my most talked about case studies. We did an $82,000 launch and then a $362,000 launch and it just kind of went from there. So, that's when, about three years ago, I committed to niching completely into Kickstarter Indiegogo launches and built the podcast and really here we are today. So, over the time that I've spent in the trenches in the last four years, I've had some major wins bringing physical products to market. I've been in the trenches with people and success speaks for itself and that's really my backstory. If we ever get on a call, if you're listening to this, if you want to find a little more information, happy to share but that's kind of like the Cliff Coles Notes version of what the brand was with Crowdfunding Uncut and the reason I've decided to really create this new brand Launch and Scale is because I absolutely love products that are different and unique and serve a specific purpose in the market. And I've noticed that Kickstarter is an amazing platform to give your brand momentum. So, it's been a great way to literally kickstart a couple of seven-figure brands that I've worked with and multiple other people. And so I thought my sweet spot is not only in product launches but is really helping with that early stage development of fast scale, fast growth, from zero to $5 million points of strong foundations and building an amazing product off of customer feedback, really that is what I've been doing in the field. And so I felt that in keeping the Crowdfunding Uncut podcast to be specific to Kickstarter but now we're really talking about launching and scaling profitable, eCommerce physical brands with predictably and success. So really excited. As mentioned before, episodes are crafted off of your feedback so if you have a question, a topic or you just want to say hi, the best thing to do is to send our team an email at support@khierstyn.com. So again, it's K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N.com. And if you actually schedule a call with me to talk about your product, please head over to khierstyn.com/schedule. Apart from that, I am going to wrap up this intro episode and jump into the first official episode where we are handling the debate between brands or me too products.

Hey, guys. Welcome to episode one of the Launch and Scale podcast. If you are confused and wondering why there is an episode before this, that is the overview episode. That is a way to give you a flavor of the show and see if this is something that you want to give a shot and listen to. If this is your first time listening to the show, be sure to head over to khierstyn.com/podcast and subscribe to the show, and if you like what you hear, please do leave a review, as it helps other people find the show. If you cannot find my name, it's probably because you can't spell it. No one can spell my name properly, but that's the fun in this. My name is spelled K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N.com. I'm just stoked about this episode. Last week, I emailed the Crowdfunding Uncut family, which is the name of the old brand. That launch and scale evolved too. I asked them what do you want to learn in e-commerce? Here are the name and the topic of the new show Launch and Scale. What is a question you'd like me to cover? Brett Buxton is one of the people that emailed in a question, and actually, his evolved into a two-parter. The meat of his question is covered in episode two, so the next one, which is how to make sure people actually want your product before you sink thousands of dollars into it. Brett, where he's at in his product cycle is he is an Amazon seller that is now creating a proprietary product, so a product that is his own. It's not necessarily a white label product or a commoditized product like on Amazon because he wants to actually build a brand around a product that he owns the IP for. His question had that in there, so I was like that would actually also make a good branch of an episode. I'm going to read his question in episode two because his question is heavily related to product validation and being sure that someone wants your product before you actually go and sink money into it. For this episode though, the question really is do you have a me-too product or do you have a brand? Because frankly, in my mind, I think that you cannot have both at the same time. I think that one should evolve into the other or you make the conscious decision to go with one and grow into it as you go. Let's start by looking at what a me-too product is. A me-too product is as it sounds. It's like a knockoff or it is a white label version of something that's already selling. If you are someone that wants a me-too product, you would generally go to Alibaba, look for the manufacturer of that product, and then slap your brand name on it and then start to sell that product. With me too products, typically you'll find them on ... in my world, it's Amazon sellers that start off with the me-too products. There's nothing wrong with me too. I think it's an excellent gateway plan to learn the ins and outs of manufacturing and bringing a product to market. It does have its downsides, which we'll talk about with the what is a brand in a second, but me too products have one thing that I don't like, and it is a race to the bottom. In my mind, you sell a product or a service based on price or quality. With Amazon, with me too products, unfortunately, it is just so easy to sell based on the price that you, by actually being a best seller in a product, may have another seller come in and undercut your prices because they've found a way to manufacture and create your product better and faster. So, it's a quick race to the bottom of the price war, which actually is a detrimental long term strategy because if you have a product that's selling really well and you have healthy margins and everything is great, any day some other seller can come in and undercut your prices in half. Suddenly, they start to take all the traffic that you got, and it's dangerous because at that point you're going to be ending up slashing your prices if you are only selling to people that value price over value. With that quick race to the bottom, unfortunately, your prices, you keep slashing them and slashing them and slashing them to a point where you actually barely make any margin or profit off of that product anymore, and suddenly you don't have a sustainable business because you need margin in the product to be able to actually grow this company. While me too products are, I think, a really great gateway to getting into e-commerce, it's dangerous in my opinion to stake your whole livelihood and build a business off of me too products because there is the risk of other people undercutting you on price, which is why I'm in the brand category. Well, a brand in the traditional sense is any product that is manufactured under a specific name. Technically speaking, you could say that me too products, if you have a product with your logo on it, that is also a brand. But, that's not what I mean when I say that I'm in the brand category. Brand and building a brand is by building a product with an associated name, where that name has quality and a perception of value behind it. A name brand, for example, can be both. A name brand could be Mercedes. A name brand could be McDonald's, where those names inspire certain feelings inside of you. They inspire a certain image of quality behind it. Whereas your perception of McDonald's may be crappy food, it could also be a great hangover cure. Whereas if you're looking for someone who values quality and workmanship in a vehicle, you may not buy the Ford or the Toyota, you may go and buy the BMW, the Mercedes. So, there is a different element of perception of value when you're actually looking at designing a brand for yourself. The brand is something where the main objective for the buyer when they buy your product is they are purchasing your product because of the perception of value, which is very different from selling based on price alone, which is when you are focusing on getting into certain product niches on Amazon that sell just because they're hot markets right now. That's dangerous because you're selling based on price versus a brand. When you have a brand, I associate this with having your own website, your own name, your own customer service ethos, and you're really looking to have a premium product where you stand behind the workmanship, that's what I mean by brand. To take this a step further, brands focus on the person they are selling to. Let's look at the difference between that and the product focused. Whereas with me too products, if you are looking at white labeling something, typically the reason you're doing that is that you're looking for an opening in the market where there's a healthy amount of people buying but a low amount of competition, so it's a profitable niche for you. At that point, you're making your decisions on the product purely from this thing is going to sell standpoint. That's really where a lot of sellers get their start online. While you may have a successful business off of that, if you're looking at building something more fast growth, long term sustainable, the way to do that is by selling to the person. Let's look at why that is. Let's use the example of yoga. If I decide to go into me-too product space online and I've identified that thin, lightweight yoga mats are hot sellers right now and there isn't a lot of competition, I might decide to slap my label, Khierstyn's Yoga Mats, onto an Amazon product and sell it. However, the downside to that is that when I start to become a best seller in that category, someone else can come in and undercut my prices and sell the same thing for half the price. That is just how it goes. Then, I'll be constantly competing on price as opposed to perceived value. Let's say I then, after that failure, I decide to go and launch khierstynsyogamats.com and this time I choose to not stake my success in all one product, but I decide to use a rebrand as a premium yoga mat where the name Khierstyn has this perception of value. I now can sell my product at a premium price, I can have product guarantees, and then I can now interact with my customers because I decide to do cool health tips via email marketing and choose to really build a relationship with people and use khierstynsyogamats.com to eventually build out a suite of products. The difference with that versus a me-too product is the me-too product really focuses on that one product that can get bombed really quickly on Amazon versus by you looking long term with your product, by associating it with a brand and a website that you own, you can actually do a lot more for the customer and focus on creating products that serve their needs and also being a resource online for them in that space. When I say an online brand, that is the route I mean. Again, downsides with the brand are that it takes some time to build up that trust and credibility. However, you are building your house, essentially, because you're building something that has longevity, something you own. You own your customer list and you are not at risk of say, Amazon shutting down your account or getting involved in that price war on Amazon. I wanted to use this episode to really define the difference between me too white label commoditized products versus a brand because ultimately Launch and Scale is about how to brandify your products, essentially, to give you longevity to create something that you can sell, something you own, and something that truly serves the person that you are going after. It really takes your product to a different dimension, depending on really what you're looking to build with this thing and to see what the right method is for you. Hey, if you aren't sure what the right approach for you is or if you want to talk about brand strategy and go to market, head over to khierstyn.com/schedule and you can schedule a strategy session with myself or my team. Again, to spell my name, it's K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N.com/schedule. Apart from that, that wraps up this episode. If you like what you hear, please do subscribe. Email into the show if you have a question that you want covered on a future podcast. We do give shout-outs, as you know. Again, to reach me or our team will be support@khierstyn.com. Apart from that, that wraps up this Launch and Scale episode one, and we'll see you next time.

So great to have Khierstyn Ross in the show today. Khierstyn is the Managing Director of her own business, the Crowdfunding Uncut, based in Toronto, Canada. She helps business owners who are looking to gain international exposure for their physical product and build long-term and sustainable business. She used to be a Senior General Manager at Student Works Painting. Her task was mainly as a consultant who streamlines company operations for strategic growth targets. One of her excellent achievements during her stint there was the implementation of the required changes for Student Works to do $6M in revenue for 2013. Today she shared how joining Student Works made her get out of commoditized space and how she was able to create something new. Not only that, but she also talked about her way of networking, what she does and where she goes to find a different set of eyes. That’s not all; you will also her talk about what she does to keep her on track of her habits, what are the tools she used to do that. Khierstyn did not hold any details that will not help you in your journey as an emerging leader. Sit back and enjoy! Learn More: https://studentworks.com

Check out Crowdinsight by Gadget Flow today! https://thegadgetflow.com/crowdinsight/ On this week's podcast we sat down with Khierstyn Ross of Crowdfunding Uncut to discuss the secrets of launching an explosive Crowdfunding campaign Useful Links: Crowdfunding Uncut Podcast Crowdfunding Uncut Website Subscribe to our podcast newsletter - http://gdfl.us/podcastnewsletter

Khierstyn’s guest for this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut is Paul Nadeau, skilled hostage negotiator and the person who is going to revolutionize how you think about stopping self-sabotage. He takes his knowledge of negotiating with people in crises and applies it to personal and professional situations, giving you the best chance at finding success and happiness in your own life. It’s an episode that is going to help you advance your career, find fulfillment, and learn how to prevent your subconscious from sabotaging your success. Don’t miss this insightful and inspirational episode. How are hostage negotiations and business transactions connected? Paul transitioned from his background in traditional police force work into hostage negotiations because he learned how to communicate persuasively with people - a skill that is necessary for any business environment. He frequently takes people who have reached the end of their rope and renegotiates a situation into one where everyone is given the best chance to succeed and find peace. These scenarios were not approached with an inflated sense of bravado and an abundance of pre-formed answers to the problems at hand. Rather, he followed a refined process that always kept the human factors in mind. On this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut Paul explains to Khierstyn that you can’t judge a person before you get into the situation and identify all the details. You must then ask them, "What is it you want? What is going on with you right now?" Making that personal connection with an individual (hostage or potential client) is key for the interaction to be successful. They must know you, like you, and trust you in order for any solution to succeed. Taking your time, having empathy for the individual, and working together towards a solution works for hostage crises and business interactions. Paul draws on his extensive experiences to offer you a great explanation as to why these two seemingly separate scenarios are linked, and it’s something you don’t want to miss. The first step in stopping self-sabotage is learning how to recognize your own self-worth Paul and Khierstyn are adamant on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut that every individual is worthy of success, happiness, and fulfillment. These wonderful things only come after recognizing your own self-worth. In order to stop self-sabotage, you must take the time to recognize the areas of life that you are struggling in, identify the conscious and subconscious thoughts that are holding you back from succeeding, and eliminate those thought patterns. Khierstyn explains that reality is often 100% contradictory to what your subconscious is telling you. If you take away the bars that are caging you in, nothing can hold you back. For more great advice on learning how to recognize your self-worth, be sure to listen to this podcast episode. Don’t let the negative defining moments in your life create a belief system that dictates your future Everyone has those moments in our pasts that resurface and tell us we’re not worthy of happiness or success. Paul explains to Khierstyn that there are two ways of handling these moments in retrospect. You can choose to believe that the terrible thing that occurred was your fault, and because of that, you are not worthy. Or you can choose to understand that terrible things happen, it was not your fault, and that you don’t have to internalize it and let it define your future. Essentially, you can choose to be a victim or a survivor. The most important moments in your life are the ones that are happening right now, and Paul and Khierstyn want you to recognize you are worthy of enjoying these moments. Don’t miss the rest of their conversation on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. Your past does not define you, your future has not yet been written, and you are worthy of success and happiness Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut is the fact that there is nothing separating you from success. The other people that you admire and view as successful are no more worthy of that success than you are. Paul explains that your past does not have to define you, you can learn how to renegotiate situations to your benefit, and that your future has not yet been written. You CAN stop self-sabotage, you CAN pursue personal and professional success, and no one can dictate how you choose to feel or react to situations in your life. This podcast episode is sure to make you rethink how you approach your past, present, and future, and it’s one not to be missed. Outline of This Episode [0:53] Khierstyn introduces her guest for this episode, Paul Nadeau, skilled hostage negotiator and believer in self-worth [4:49] Paul’s journey from police work into a hostage negotiation specialist [10:04] Scenarios where Paul’s negotiation and persuasion skills become essential [14:15] The predictable selling environment vs. working within hostage situations [19:00] The challenge of getting people to open up [24:06] The first step in stopping self-sabotage, utilizing hostage situation skills [31:38] There is nothing separating you from success! [35:12] Don’t let the negative defining moments in your life create a belief system that dictates your future [40:50] Life is about the process, not the outcome [43:54] Paul shares how you can get a copy of his new book [46:18] Paul’s famous last words for "unhostaging" yourself Resources & People Mentioned SPONSOR: Gadget Flow - get your project in front of over 25 million people per month and receive 10% off your service with code “Uncut10” Paul’s soon-to-be-released book “Take Control of Your Life: Rescue Yourself and Live the Life You Deserve” The Landmark Forum Connect with Paul Nadeau Paul’s website Connect with Paul on LinkedIn Follow Paul on Twitter Follow Paul on Facebook Connect With Khierstyn www.CrowdfundingUncut.com On Twitter: @KhierstynRoss On Facebook On LinkedIn

Leadership, motivation, and entrepreneur are three of the biggest buzzwords in today’s business environment. Chris Thomson, business owner and partner for Canada’s Student Works Painting, has built a company that brings in over $17 million in annual revenue, has raised over $1.3 million for various charities, and plugs highly-skilled undergraduate students into a working business model. Khierstyn herself is an alumnus of the program and on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut she and Chris discuss the most important leadership strategies for young entrepreneurs and why identifying your “why” is so critical. You don’t want to miss this inspiring episode, so be sure to give it your full attention. How Student Works Painting creates future business leaders Student Works Painting operates by giving undergraduate college students the opportunity to create a business plan, market, and sell a company. Participants can elect to work as a minimum wage painter for a single academic year or apply to be a part of the prestigious Summer Management Program. The summer program teaches students leadership and business skills that are transferable to any career path. By focusing on the mentorship and student development portions of the business model, not just the final painted product, Chris and his team are able to enable promising students to flourish in their personal development. Chris is “developing the next great generation of Canadian business leaders” and his insights are sure to inspire, be sure to check out this episode. Identifying the “why” behind your work will motivate you to create more and take more action Just as Student Works Painting is so much more than a house painting business, your business needs to be about more than just the final product. Identifying the true reasons behind why you’re doing the work you’re doing will pay off in dividends. Chris stays motivated and passionate about his work because it’s really about impacting young people and giving them the tools to succeed later in life. He explains to Khierstyn on this episode that you have to connect your business idea, your future life goals, and the needs/wants of your employees and customers for your entrepreneurial venture to really succeed. Identifying the “why” will motivate you to complete the business tasks that are necessary but aren’t that exciting. To hear how Chris discovered his “why” be sure to listen to this podcast. The top essentials for good leadership and why you should apply the pay it forward technique in life and business Servant leadership is a huge part of what Chris does at Student Works Painting, and he encourages listeners of this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut to always take care of people first - tasks and objectives can wait. If your employees aren’t being taken care of and don’t feel valued the important work won’t be done at a high-caliber level. Your conversations shouldn’t revolve around money. Focusing solely on the transactions of business cheapens the relationships you should be trying to develop. When there’s real alignment between vision, value, employees, and customers, that’s when your company and brand are going to be launched into success. Chris also mentions that you can attract high-quality people with a vision, but you have to keep them through mentoring. The most important part of being an entrepreneur and Chris’ famous last words of motivation The first step in becoming a successful entrepreneur is passionately seeking out your own strengths, weaknesses, and communication styles. After you determine your authentic self, fill your team with people who will encourage your strengths and support your weaknesses. Chris explains to Khierstyn that people work better in teams because no one is great at every task or leadership style. However, incredible things can happen when passionate, dynamic people tackle a common goal. By always learning and being willing to take the first step into a new project, you’ll be surprised at how much you can accomplish. “The world bends to those who are in action,” exclaims Chris, and you definitely need to hear the rest of his advice for aspiring business leaders. Don’t let this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut go unlistened. Outline of This Episode [0:53] Khierstyn introduces her guest for this episode, Chris Thomson, business partner for Student works [3:27] How did Khierstyn go from a biochemistry major in college to working with Chris at Student Works Painting? [5:38] What exactly is Student Works Painting? [7:14] Chris’ journey from individual to business partner and owner over 30 years of working in Student Works [10:34] Developing future business leaders through Student Works [14:00] How can you realize what your passion is, even while working on your business? [19:04] The magic behind why Student Works has returning participants year after year [21:46] The essentials for good leadership and applying the pay it forward technique [27:25] We work better in teams because no one is great at every task or leadership technique [34:53] Creating a network is so critical because you become like the 5 people you spend the most time with [36:21] Chris’ famous last words for entrepreneurs Resources & People Mentioned SPONSOR: Gadget Flow - get your project in front of over 25 million people per month and receive 10% off your service with code “Uncut10” Student Works website Landmark Forum for personal growth and development Tony Robbins’ books Dan Sullivan’s Strategic Coaching BOOK: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change Connect with Chris Thomson Student Works Painting website Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Follow Chris on Twitter Like Student Works Painting on Facebook Connect With Khierstyn www.CrowdfundingUncut.com On Twitter: @KhierstynRoss On Facebook On LinkedIn

With nearly 50% of all e-commerce sales occurring on Amazon, many crowdfunders are asking the question, “how can I take my product and sell on Amazon?” On this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut, Khierstyn has a conversation with Ben Arneberg, founder of Product Fuel and creator of crowdfunding giants Willow & Everett and Terra Mat. Ben shares his top tips for crowdfunders looking to move into the e-commerce space after a successful campaign, how to rank highly within Amazon’s categories, and many more trade secrets that you don’t want to miss. Be sure to listen to this episode - your product will thank you. Crowdfunding platforms and Amazon are delicate partners - here’s how Product Fuel makes it work Turning a successful crowdfunding campaign into an equally successful brand online is hard work. That’s why Ben created Product Fuel - to help entrepreneurs move their products from crowdsourcing platforms into digital marketplaces. While it may be easy to list products on Amazon, it’s extremely difficult to allow that product hit its full potential. Product Fuel has successfully taken campaigns such as Wilcox Boots that earned over $140,000 through Kickstarter and helped them bring in over $80,000 monthly Amazon sales. When a campaign is nearly complete, Ben and his team will begin conversations with the client to determine product flows and shipping methods. This allows both parties to fully understand the desired outcome for the product and make a game plan that is tailored to each product, target audience, and sales goals. To hear how to get your product on Ben and Product Fuel’s radar, be sure to listen to this episode. The art of combining a crowdfunding campaign, a stellar website, and selling on Amazon Product Fuel attracts clients who already have a successful crowdfunding campaign in progress. Ben encourages aspiring creators to go to a crowdsourcing platform first, rather than trying to launch solely on a website or directly to Amazon. There’s a trifecta that leads to the most success: a successful crowdfunding campaign, an interactive website, and ranking highly on Amazon (leading to more sales.) The campaign is the first integral piece in the process - aside from having an innovative product that fills a market gap. Campaigns create “an amazing halo effect” as Ben explained, and when harnessed properly the momentum drives organic traffic to Amazon and pushes your rankings higher. Without all three of these pieces, your efforts will be much more difficult. For Ben’s full explanation on this cohesive approach, be sure to listen to this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. Why accurate keywords and appropriate pricing is key for Amazon success To explain the importance of great keywords and appropriate pricing, Ben uses a hypothetical coffee mug scenario. Even if you have a stellar coffee mug that sells well for $50 on your website, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will sell well on Amazon. When compared to $7 competitor mugs, if your $50 mug only has a 5% conversion rate on Amazon, it will be pushed down in the rankings and be seen by very few customers. This is the point of critical balance - your product needs to be priced accordingly to not be immediately written off by the client, and it needs to be matched with the right keywords and categories. Product Fuel can help you with this process. For all of the insights on Amazon success, don’t miss this conversation with Khierstyn and Ben. Ben’s best advice for achieving success selling crowdfunding products on Amazon In addition to all of the selling strategies Ben discusses on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut, he encourages crowdfunders to always communicate with a campaign’s backers. You want to avoid launching on your website or on Amazon before your most loyal supporters receive their product. You can also use this window of time for feedback - see what your backers like and dislike about the physical product and then make slight adjustments before releasing it to the general public. He and Khierstyn also discuss the importance of always fulfilling sales through Amazon and why you should stay away from Amazon Launchpad. To hear more of Ben’s expert advice don’t miss this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. Outline of This Episode [0:53] Khierstyn introduces her guest for this episode, Ben Arneberg, founder of Product Fuel and Amazon seller guru [3:59] Why Amazon and crowdsourcing are delicate partners [7:17] Why Ben was hesitant to use Kickstarter for Terra Mat, and what changed his mind [8:38] The difference between product selection for Kickstarter and Amazon [12:20] Pros of putting an established brand on Amazon [17:45] Ben’s best tips for future Amazon e-commerce sellers and why you should stay away from Amazon Launchpad [20:44] Ben’s suggestions for organizing product fulfillment [22:57] The timeline for creating your e-commerce process [31:21] How to get connected with Ben and Product Fuel Resources & People Mentioned SPONSOR: Gadget Flow - get your project in front of over 25 million people per month and receive 10% off your service with code “Uncut10” Ben’s company - Product Fuel Willow & Everett Cube Fit Terra Mat Wilcox Boots Jamstack guitar amplifier Connect with Ben Arneberg Ben’s email Product Fuel’s website Product Fuel and Amazon e-commerce Connect With Khierstyn www.CrowdfundingUncut.com On Twitter: @KhierstynRoss On Facebook On LinkedIn

If there’s one area of business all entrepreneurs and crowdfunders need to understand, it’s the art and science of investing in relationships. On this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut, Khierstyn interviews Jayson Gaignard, founder of Mastermind Talks, about the story behind the Talks, how he maintains influential relationships with his network, and the best questions to ask to spark great conversations. You don’t want to miss Jayson’s passionate insights, and your network will greatly benefit from hearing his advice. The fascinating story behind how Jayson overcame threats of bankruptcy and founded Mastermind Talks After spending the early part of his career building Tickets Canada, traveling the world, and netting $6-7 million per year, Jayson realized that he wasn’t happy with the direction his career was headed. He avoided talking to his clients, started having stress-induced health issues, and wanted to start over and go in a new direction. Rather than sell the company, he decided to downsized and unfortunately was met with debt upwards of a quarter million dollars. That’s when the idea for Mastermind Talks was born. He tapped into a niche market for high-ticket networking and entrepreneur launch events and began working within his passion for connecting people. Mastermind Talks was immediately thrust into success when Jayson purchased a book and speaking engagement package from Tim Ferriss, and Ferriss was in the audience for the first Mastermind Talks event. But how did Jayson manage to purchase this package? He simply made three phone calls. The first two looked promising, but it was the third call to a personal contact that changed the game for Jayson. To hear about how this phone call turned out, and why this contact “invested in Jayson, not the business idea,” be sure to listen to this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. How Jayson selects the participants for Mastermind Talks events and why he refunded over $40,000 in ticket sales for his first event When Jayson switched gears from e-commerce into the art of connecting people, he knew he wanted to be selective in deciding who would be invited to the Mastermind Talks events. The invite-only events that cost upwards of $10,000 per ticket allow Jayson to personally screen interested parties. He explains to Khierstyn that he wants to surround himself with people of integrity that he would personally be friends with - not just any business person who can afford the ticket price. Jayson is so committed to these high standards that for the first event, Mastermind Talks refunded over $40,000 in ticket sales because the fit between the event and the participant just wasn’t right. Mastermind Talks isn’t about event size or revenue, it’s about creating a space where stellar people can share great ideas and make connections that could change the course of their careers. Jayson is passionate about his story, and you don’t want to miss hearing him tell it on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. The importance of investing in relationships and the art of connecting people together Jayson tells Khierstyn that “it’s noisy at the top, and amazing people become increasingly amazing over time.” This is why he stresses the importance of connecting with people as they’re rising in their careers. You never know when someone might need a connection that you can make for them. Crowdfunding and relationships are deeply intertwined, and even the most successful Kickstarter campaigns with 60,000-70,000 backers only have around 100 exceptionally influential backers. This Kickstarter data proves the mantra Jayson lives by, which is “It doesn’t matter how many friends you can count, it matters how many friends you can count on.” The most influential and memorable moments in your life occur because of other people. You can’t afford to miss Jayson’s lessons on the art of investing in relationships, so be sure to listen to this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. Khierstyn and Jayson share the best action steps for strengthening your personal relationships and why we’re all in the relationship business There are a few key pieces of advice that Jayson shares in this conversation with Khierstyn. He explains that “You never know the value of your network until you need it,” and “You’re only ever left with two things, the integrity of your word and your relationships.” To continue to invest in your relationships after the initial meeting, Khierstyn and Jayson explain that connecting with them in unexpected ways is key. For example, how many times do people receive a video update email rather than the standard email asking “what’s new with you and how can I help?” You can’t be afraid to be the one initiating contact, and you also have to ask the right questions in order to draw out the right responses from your network. They list many great conversation starters on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut that will dramatically improve your ability to connect to your network, and you don’t want to miss it. Outline of This Episode [0:55] Khierstyn introduces her guest for this episode, Jayson Gaignard, founder of Mastermind Talks [5:20] Jayson tells the story of how he worked with UJ Ramdas to launch the Five Minute Journal [9:13] How Jayson selects the entrepreneurs that are invited to Mastermind Talks events [12:07] Khierstyn shares why “clicking” with clients is one of the best motivating factors [14:23] The story behind Jayson’s businesses prior to Mastermind Talks [19:25] How Jayson got connected with Tim Ferriss and the importance of connecting with others [24:40] How do you stay in contact with valuable relationships? [30:00] Jayson shares the best action steps for maintaining your influential connections [34:39] The best questions to ask to build connections within your relationships [39:49] Why we’re all in the relationship business and the slogan Jayson lives by Resources & People Mentioned SPONSOR: Gadget Flow - get your project in front of over 25 million people per month and receive 10% off your service with code “Uncut10” Ep. 112 TITLE HERE AND LINK TO UJ’S EPISODE Entrepreneurs’ Organization peer network BOOK: The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life BOOK: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! Ep. 110 Developing Creative Networking, Being a Unique Entrepreneur, and Making Impactful Friends Feat. Sol Orwell ARTICLE: 1,000 True Fans theory Kickstarter statistics Connect with Jayson Jayson’s website Jayson’s podcast website - CommunityMade Connect with Jayson on LinkedIn Follow Jayson on Twitter Follow Jayson on Facebook Connect With Khierstyn www.CrowdfundingUncut.com On Twitter: @KhierstynRoss On Facebook On LinkedIn

Many entrepreneurs start their company and launch their products because they want to implement healthy change in the world. Khierstyn’s guest for this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut, UJ Ramdas, and his company Intelligent Change is doing just that - encouraging people to embrace healthy change and document positive growth through beautiful personal journals. Their conversation takes you through the company idea formation process, product launch, endorsements, and the importance of infusing excellence into every aspect of doing business. It’s a conversation that you don’t want to miss. The story behind Intelligent Change and the idea of encouraging healthy change through beautiful products UJ recognized the fact that change is inevitable, and he was passionate about wanting to help people make it productive and enjoyable. He created Intelligent Change to make beautiful things that directly guide people through the change process in practical ways. The Five Minute Journal was born out of these core ideas. The six-month journal is based on leading psychology research that discovered expressing daily gratitude leads to a better overall quality of life and higher levels of positive emotions. UJ is passionate about his company and its products, and he tells his story in this interview in such a way that’ll leave you inspired and wanting more. How The Five Minute Journal progressed from a lackluster Kickstarter campaign to an endorsement from Tim Ferriss The Five Minute Journal began as a Kickstarter campaign but unfortunately, funding fell flat. Although their first crowdfunding attempt didn't succeed, UJ and his team successfully launched at Mastermind Talks in front of just 120 people. One of the guests in attendance was famed entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss. UJ explains to Khierstyn that in a stroke of “unbelievable awesomeness” Ferriss loved the idea of the journal and within just a few months ordered over 3,000 copies to be shared with his own followers. UJ exclaims that it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time and a perfect testimony to the power of networking. Ferriss is now one of Intelligent Change’s biggest advocates. For more, be sure to listen to the full episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. UJ shares how his Intelligent Change team balances an external launch with daily operation obligations and combating the #1 problem in business Since The Five Minute Journal was launched, Intelligent Change is now working on a number of different products that continue to encourage healthy change in people’s lives. Khierstyn and UJ spend some time on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut discussing the #1 problem in business - finding good employees. UJ could have never balanced external product launches and daily business operations without solid teammates by his side. But finding quality employees is the hardest struggle. He encourages entrepreneurs to prioritize their needs, seek out and hire the best people you can find, and move forward from there. For more of his advice, be sure to catch this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. Why building a great business is all about systematizing excellence and gathering 1,000 true fans Intelligent Change has been met with such great success because of their stellar ways of doing business. Wowing your customers repeatedly within the first 100 days of a launch, gathering and maintaining 1,000 true fans, and systematizing excellence are all methods that UJ lives by. Without these strategies in place, it’s much harder to have a successful product launch. If you’re struggling with your crowdfunding ideas, or just want to hear a great success story, be sure to listen to UJ Ramdas on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. Outline of This Episode [0:53] Khierstyn introduces her guest for this episode, UJ Ramdas, founder of Intelligent Change [3:45] UJ shares the Intelligent Change story and how The Five Minute Journal was launched [8:29] How UJ took his personal system for positivity and healthy change and turned it into a successful product [11:29] The Five Minute Journal’s progress from Mastermind talks to a Tim Ferriss endorsement [13:30] What UJ attributes his Intelligent Change’s growth to and how to wow your customers within the first 100 days [16:50] How the idea behind Productivity Planner got started and the growth of marketing videos for Intelligent Change [21:36] Why UJ and his team chose Kickstarter for the Productivity Planner launch [23:11] The art of balancing an external launch with daily operation obligations [24:42] Why UJ wasn’t 100% pleased with Intelligent Change’s recent Kickstarter project and how they’re troubleshooting the issues for a successful relaunch [32:01] How UJ secured Intelligent Change’s first 1,000 true fans [37:53] Final thoughts on Intelligent Change and the importance of “scratching your own itch” Resources & People Mentioned SPONSOR: Gadget Flow - get your project in front of over 25 million people per month and receive 10% off your service with code “Uncut10” BOOK: The Five Minute Journal: A Happier You in 5 Minutes a Day Mastermind Talks - launching ground for The Five Minute Journal ARTICLE: '4-Hour Workweek' author Tim Ferriss says this 5-minute daily exercise revolutionized his morning routine VIDEO: Joey Coleman’s First 100 Days Intelligent Change’s Productivity Planner ARTICLE: Productivity 101: A Primer to The Pomodoro Technique ARTICLE: 1,000 True Fans theory Connect with UJ Intelligent Change website Connect with UJ on LinkedIn Follow UJ on Twitter Follow UJ on Facebook Connect With Khierstyn www.CrowdfundingUncut.com On Twitter: @KhierstynRoss On Facebook On LinkedIn

On this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut, Khierstyn interviews crowdfunding success mogul Evan Varsamis, founder and CEO of Gadget Flow. He has built a platform that puts innovative products in front of over 25 million people per month, runs an international team remotely, and has some great advice for aspiring crowdfunding professionals. You don’t want to miss their energetic and informative conversation, so be sure to catch this episode. The story behind crowdfunding platform giant - Gadget Flow What started in 2012 as a part-time project quickly grew into a crowdfunding giant that now hosts over 10,000 products across 140 categories. Gadget Flow is the third largest Indiegogo partner and they have successfully worked with over 6,000 customers thus far. Evan and his team recognized a niche market need for technology and design products that may not get picked up by large platforms such as Amazon and Etsy. They are able to host a wide spectrum of products and give backers exactly what they need to know (tech specs, images, brief descriptions, etc.) in a beautifully simple way. To hear Evan tell his engaging story, be sure to listen to this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. How Evan’s Gadget Flow team gauges the potential crowdfunding success of a campaign Not every campaign or product idea that comes across Evan’s desk will be successful. Gadget Flow currently has an acceptance rate of 78-80%, and the team is highly trained to differentiate the gems from the duds. By using an internal evaluation process they look at the top campaign specs: funding time remaining, the quality of the presentation, and if the product’s team has been following established steps for crowdfunding success. Evan’s employees look for those unique teams that aren’t just shooting in the dark when it comes to marketing and campaign efforts. Their #1 red flag? If a campaign has less than 10% of their goal raised after five days of campaigning. Be sure to hear the full story behind the evaluation process by listening to this episode - your campaign can’t afford to miss it.   How Evan built a global remote team for Gadget Flow and his strategies for overcoming telework challenges The current Gadget Flow team is comprised of 25 people in 8 countries. How does Evan manage to lead such a diverse team? And why did he choose to pursue remote teamwork rather than a traditional office setting? The answer is found in commute time - he was tired of wasting precious productive hours commuting to and from a physical workspace. He found that highly skilled employees and contractors often do their best work in their own environments. By allowing (and even encouraging) his team to remain in their hometowns and countries, and utilizing remote work tools such as Slack, Evan created a global team that is passionate about Gadget Flow. He tackled the issue of creating a strong company culture by implementing weekly video calls with each one of his team members. Evan’s desire was to encourage personal connections, even though miles and time zones separated each individual. It’s such a great story and a testimony to dedicated team members, you don’t want to miss it. Outline of This Episode [0:53] Khierstyn introduces her guest for this episode, Evan Varsamis, founder and CEO of Gadget Flow [2:29] Evan describes his professional background and the idea behind Gadget Flow [5:10] Gadget Flow’s ideal customer, and how Evan’s team gauges potential campaign success [8:59] The ideal timeframe for submitting a product to Gadget Flow and the biggest red flags Evan’s team looks for [11:24] The 5% and 3-5 day timeline Gadget Flow follows [13:43] The balance between internal and external funding goals [15:31] Khierstyn asks Evan what he would do if a campaign failed to meet its internal goal, but met its external goal [17:31] Khierstyn shares her thoughts on digital marketing for crowdfunding success [20:49] Evan shares his best piece of advice for creators [21:14] How Evan built a successful remote team, and why he chose to go virtual [30:09] The one area in which Evan has seen remote work go wrong Resources & People Mentioned SPONSOR: Gadget Flow - get your project in front of over 25 million people per month and receive 10% off your service with code “Uncut10” Remote work tool Slack Connect with Evan Gadget Flow’s About Us website page Evan’s personal website Evan’s portfolio on Huff Post Connect with Evan on LinkedIn Follow Evan on Twitter Follow Evan on Facebook Connect With Khierstyn www.CrowdfundingUncut.com On Twitter: @KhierstynRoss On Facebook On LinkedIn

Few entrepreneurs are as unique, engaging, and great at creative networking as Sol Orwell, founder of nutrition advice empire Examine.com. He is also the creator of websites garnering over 200,000 visitors per day and a fanatic chocolate chip cookie enthusiast. On the first official Crowdfunding Uncut episode for 2018, Khierstyn interviews Sol and asks him key questions about his successful empire, why he thought to connect his love of cookies with creative networking events, and his top advice for entrepreneurs who want to do things a little differently. Their conversation will leave you intrigued, laughing, and wanting more so don’t miss this episode. The success story behind Sol’s Examine.com nutrition advice empire What started with a desire to know the facts behind nutrition supplements morphed into an independent analysis company with the sole goal of “reading the research, making sense of it, and putting it online.” From being the sole creator of the company to now being a consensus-building leader and visionary, Sol has built the most trustworthy source for accurate information on supplements - minus any hype, agenda, or ulterior motives. Khierstyn uncovers the human story behind a website giant, and it’s a story sure to inspire. You don’t want to miss it. How Sol’s Examine.com team thoughtfully engages with their market and the most underrated feedback tool on the market Sol’s current position as a leader of Examine.com allows him to have a clear picture of what works (and what doesn’t) when his team connects with their audience. By empowering his employees to do what needs to be done, he can watch them successfully interact with visitors via email and actual phone conversations - a rare phenomenon in today’s digital world. By trusting their niche market and the quality feedback they received over the years, they were able to organically grow into new market segments. They utilized Google Surveys, one of the most versatile and user-friendly tools on the market, to connect with what their audience was actually looking for. He found that if you expose your company’s personality more, people are more likely to engage with your content and communication. Be sure to listen to this episode for more of his stellar advice. What do cookies, creative networking, and ridiculous amounts of fun all have in common? When Sol grew tired of predictable coffee networking meetups, he wanted to create an exciting new way to bring people together. That’s when #CookieLife was born. Rather than buying someone a simple cup of coffee, Sol started inviting people to try the "world's best chocolate chip cookie" with him. In just two years the idea moved from a small Toronto chocolate chip cookie shop to $30,000 fundraising and networking events. Khierstyn talks with Sol about how he discovered that people will come together for any reason that’s new and engaging. By simply encouraging people to follow their own unique passions, he has set a new standard for how people develop a comprehensive personal brand - rather than focusing only on one aspect of themselves. To hear more about #CookieLife, how it gives back to communities, and its expansive reach, give this episode a listen. Sol’s best advice for having clear career end-goals, making influential friends, and living the lifestyle YOU want Being an entrepreneur should be about a few key ideas: intentionally create lifestyle freedom, give back while creating an impact, and pair fun with passionate hard work. In his interview with Khierstyn, Sol explains that there’s no single “right way” to build your career and that you shouldn’t forget to enjoy the steps along the way. When trying to create a network of influential friends, Sol recommends “Actually do something interesting - you don’t connect over business strategies you connect over personal interests.” One of his best pieces of advice is, “Do things that personally drive you forward, and don’t be afraid to let go of a project once it solves the problem you set out to eliminate.” To hear about Sol’s top 3 career tips, you’ll have to check out this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. Outline of This Episode [0:53] Khierstyn introduces her guest for this episode, Sol Orwell [4:00] Sol tells his story of he got started as an entrepreneur [8:11] Sol’s current role in Examine.com, and how he empowers his employees [10:30] How Sol expanded Examine beyond one supplement line, and how his team engages with their customers [17:52] The number one thing Sol did with Examine.com that led to its success [19:32] How Sol connected ridiculous fun, chocolate chip cookies, and networking [26:07] The place that #CookieLife has in Sol’s personal and professional universe [28:49] Going beyond the product launch for your company and why planning 3 years in advance is insane [32:02] Khierstyn asks Sol how he illuminated his career end-goals [34:58] Sol’s 3 best habits for making influential friends and a solid network [43:23] The best notebook Sol relies on to capture his ideas Resources & People Mentioned SPONSOR: Gadget Flow - get your project in front of over 25 million people per month and receive 10% off your service with code “Uncut10” Sol’s #CookieLife networking movement ARTICLE: “A Young Entrepreneur's Passion For Hacking His Diet Sparks A Seven-Figure Business” by Elaine Pofeldt, Forbes ARTICLE: “How to Build a Million-Dollar, One-Person Business – Case Studies from The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferris, featuring Sol Orwell Sol’s go-to notebooks Connect with Sol Visit Sol’s website and join his email list Connect with Sol on LinkedIn Follow Sol on Twitter Follow Sol on Facebook Connect With Khierstyn www.CrowdfundingUncut.com On Twitter: @KhierstynRoss On Facebook On LinkedIn

Do you have a great Kickstarter product and a small budget? Many people don’t realize that you can be successful on Kickstarter even if your project isn’t huge. It is like a video game, and you get to set the difficulty level based on your goals. Tyler James, of ComixLaunch, has worked with projects of many sizes. On this episode, he provides insights into how to build your Kickstarter audience, regardless of the size of your budget. Listen in to learn how to activate your existing power base, effectively use giveaways, and use storytelling to keep people engaged in your project. Why you should become a part of the Kickstarter community before attempting a product launch If you want to be successful on Kickstarter, it is important to become part of the community first. On this episode, Tyler James explains why backing other projects is essential to launching your own, and how other projects can be your best assets instead of your competition. Listen to this podcast episode to find out how to build your credibility on Kickstarter so that your launch has a better chance of being successful. Activate your existing power base to begin building your Kickstarter audience Your existing power base is the people already in your world who know, like, and trust you. These people provide the foundation for building your Kickstarter audience. On this episode, Tyler James describes how to activate your existing power base so that you can build an audience of people who want you to succeed and who want the product you are offering. Listen in to learn how the people you already know are some of your best assets for your Kickstarter launch. Provide value in advance of your Kickstarter to grow your audience and create excitement A pre-launch that gets people excited about your product is just as important as the launch itself. The bigger your pre-launch, the bigger your launch will be. On this episode, Tyler James explains how you can effectively use a giveaway to build your Kickstarter audience during your pre-launch, even on a limited budget. Listen to learn about starting early, how the giveaway works to create energy and excitement, and the crucial role of storytelling in this stage of your project. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. The value of interacting with others and getting coaching cannot be underestimated. On this episode, Tyler James provides a bit of live coaching for a specific project, and the result is a great example of how working together with others is a great benefit to creators. Listen in as Tyler gives Khierstyn some great insights on a specific project, and discover how the principles he employs can give you insights into how to build an energized and excited Kickstarter audience for your own project. Outline of This Episode [2:03] Welcome to the Crowdfunding Uncut podcast!  Intro to Tyler James and this episode. [8:20] Kickstarter is like a video game. [9:16] How you can be successful on Kickstarter even if your project isn’t huge. [15:04] How sharing other people’s projects can help build your audience. [19:55] Thank you to our sponsor: BackerKit [20:59] Start by activating your existing power base. [25:18] Pre-launch viral giveaway contest.Why you should become a part of the Kickstarter community before attempting a product launch [27:07] Understand the power of storytelling in communicating with your audience. [30:34] Live coaching: How to get people to engage with your product and offer. [42:25] Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. Resources Mentioned ComixLaunch.com ComixTribe King Sumo Khierstyn’s Physical Product Checklist Crowdfunding Product Launch Academy Leave a review on iTunes Sponsor: BackerKit - use the code “uncut” to get 50% off of set-up services

This week I'm speaking with crowdfunding expert Khierstyn Ross from Crowdfunding Uncut about how to launch your new product using Kickstarter or Indiegogo. You might think crowdfunding is just for physical products, but in today's conversation you'll discover how you can use crowdfunding to launch almost anything – from digital products, to films, to books, to apps. Khierstyn also shares her favorite ways to build an audience quickly, crowdfunding pitfalls, and key marketing steps that will work for launching anything, not just a crowdfunding campaign!This episode originally aired on The Wellpreneur Podcast.Get the full show notes with links: https://wellpreneur.com/crowdfunding-in-wellness-business-with-khierstyn-ross/Copyright 2012-2020 Wellpreneur Ltd. All Rights Reserved.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

This week I m speaking with crowdfunding expert Khierstyn Ross from Crowdfunding Uncut about how to launch your new product using Kickstarter or Indiegogo. You might think crowdfunding is just for physical products, but in today s conversation you ll discover how you can use crowdfunding to launch almost anything from digital products, to films, to books, [...]

Tyler picks the brain of Khierstyn Ross, host of the top podcast Crowdfunding Uncut, who shares lessons learned about building a winning Kickstarter launch team from successful projects that have raised over 2 million dollars in funding.

Tyler picks the brain of Khierstyn Ross, host of the top podcast Crowdfunding Uncut, who shares lessons learned about building a winning Kickstarter launch team from successful projects that have raised over 2 million dollars in funding.

Catherine Plano is here today with Khierstyn Ross, she is a crowdfunding product launch specialists that's helped creators and entrepreneurs raise more than $1.1M through Indiegogo and Kickstarter. She is also the host and founder of the Crowdfunding Uncut podcast where she deconstructs what it takes to successfully launch a product online. Find Out More About Khierstyn Ross Crowdfunding Uncut - Website Crowdfunding Uncut on Facebook Crowdfunding Uncut on Twitter @KhierstynRoss Ready to be inspired? Then tune in and be ready to take some notes! Interviewed by: Catherine Plano Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher | RSS

Catherine Plano is here today with Khierstyn Ross, she is a crowdfunding product launch specialists that's helped creators and entrepreneurs raise more than $1.1M through Indiegogo and Kickstarter. She is also the host and founder of the Crowdfunding...

I love being able to help people bring their dreams to reality so they can create that lifestyle.

On this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut, Khierstyn chats with the co-founders of Funded Today, one of the most successful crowdfunding consultancies in existence. The Funded Today guys believe smart entrepreneurs and business owners who want to raise LOTS of money on Kickstarter or Indiegogo must become master marketers, sales experts, and direct response gurus. But the reality is that most of them are so busy building a world-class product that they can’t do any of those things, which are full-time jobs in their own right. That’s why Funded Today exists. They’ve built a company that specializes in those things so you don’t have to. On this episode, you’ll hear from Josh and Thomas, the co-founders of Funded Today. When you don’t need a marketing budget.   One of the things Josh and Thomas from Funded Today have discovered is that when you are using paid advertising - whether on the Google ads platform, Facebook ads, or even direct mail - there can often come a time when you don’t have to worry about your marketing budget and can freely keep on spending money. What’s the scenario where that can happen? It’s when your ad-spend is less than the revenue you’re making minus all your expenses. In that case, you’ve got the green light to keep advertising because your net gain is going up as long as you do. It’s an obvious mindset to some people and a mindset shift for others. You can hear how it works in this situation, on this episode.   How the Funded Today team validates products before moving forward with them.   If you were to reach out to the Funded Today team to find out what it would take for them to come alongside your product to make it a crowdfunding success, what you’d find is a process that takes you through a handful of phases. At the front end, you’ll be required to go through a validation process where your product idea and current resources will be analyzed and evaluated for both potential and ability to succeed. It’s one of the ways the Funded Today guys have found that they are able to increase the success of those who partner with them - by only moving forward with those who have the greatest chance of success. It’s an intriguing idea that will give you lots ideas for how you can increase YOUR product's chances of success, so don't miss it!   Crowdfunding is really about two things: Funding and validation.   Though the word “funding” is a part of the name and the fundraising aspect is what most of us think of, Crowdfunding is about more than raising money. The crowdfunding model also enables you to validate a product idea. Is it truly driven by market demands? Is there enough interest by a large enough demographic to warrant a reasonable expectation of success? Is your marketing message dialed-in and effective? These and other questions are answered by the crowdfunding process. Through the many crowdfunding campaigns the team at Funded Today has managed, they’ve taken the time to analyze and understand the data so that they can best advise their clients and make every campaign a success. Thomas and Zach share a ton of great information on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut, so be sure you make the time to listen.   There’s a lot of value in telling someone their crowdfunding baby isn’t as cute as they think.   The main reason the Funded Today crowdfunding management process has been so successful is that they validate every potential client at the front end of their relationship. It’s a lengthy, in-depth assessment of the probability of success the product might enjoy. Sometimes the numbers and facts don’t come out looking very hopeful. That’s when Thomas and Zach of the Funded Today team say that it’s better to tell the product developer that their dream product - their baby - is not as beautiful as they think it is. The way Zach says it is this: If they can’t raise the funds for your product, nobody can. That means you probably need to rethink your product. Get insights from these two guys on this episode. They know the crowdfunding business.   Outline of This Episode   [2:25] How the Funded Today company came about. [7:25] When do you need a marketing budget, and when do you not? [11:44] The services Funded Today offers to crowdfunding campaigns. [14:00] How the team uses their email list for clients. [16:29] The product validation and due diligence phase for every client. [19:01] How the team handles a product/company that fails due diligence. [29:55] Why the Funded Today team says projections are impossible to make. [34:00] What is different in how Funded Today markets a campaign? [46:03] The variety of things that go into a crowdfunding marketing success. [50:25] The Funded Today founders offer advice to serial creators. [53:03] At what point should creators reach out to the Funded Today team? [1:00:10] The “7 Ps” the Funded Today team analyzes to gauge potential success. [1:08:29] Why it all comes down to belief and desire: don’t give up! Resources Mentioned   https://www.funded.today/ BOOK: Scientific Advertising   Sponsors   BackerKit - use the code “uncut” to get your discount Gadget Flow

Our brains are wired for story. That's the reason you, a founder who is doing a crowdfunding campaign - have got to learn how to sell your story, not your product. On this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut, Khierstyn chats with Mark Evans, a brand storyteller who helps startups craft and distribute their company stories to great effect. You’ll learn a lot about what a brand story is, how to craft one, and how to get the story out in a way that others will share it. What does it mean to “sell your story?” Every company, every product has a story. It’s the story behind what you’re doing that people will engage with. You can’t just talk about the great features your product has, you’ve got to let people know the reason behind it and how it will benefit them in the day to day life they lead. Mark Evans is on this episode of the podcast to share how you can learn to sell your story rather than selling the product. He’s got great insight from his career as a writer and startup advisor. You’d pay a lot of money to get this kind of advice one-on-one, so take advantage of this opportunity to hear Khierstyn pick Mark’s brain. Having a great product is not the key to success. The product experience is what matters. There are many incredibly useful and innovative products that never make it in the marketplace. In many cases, the lack of success is because the ones running the marketing campaign didn’t understand that the great features of the product are NOTt what sell products. Potential buyers are looking for what the product will DO for them. In other words, how will buying the product enrich their experience? If you want to learn how to amplify the product experience so that your product launch or crowdfunding campaign doesn’t fail, you need to hear this conversation with Mark Evans, brand storyteller. Your brand story will morph over time, and that’s a good thing. Nobody creates an amazing product with their product or brand story fully formed. It’s an iterative process that grows over time. That’s because you, the founder will grow in your own understanding of what the product is, what it does, and how it helps people. And... the testimonials you receive from buyers along the way will help you see the benefits of your product in ways you haven’t seen before. So keep at it, notice what people are saying, and recraft your story every chance you get in order to connect with more and more people. This episode with Mark Evans gives you more suggestions like that, so be sure you listen. Use your brand story to attract influencers and media for greater exposure. Every founder who starts a crowdfunding campaign wants to get as many eyes on their launch as possible. One of the ways that has proven effective for many successful campaigns is to get the attention of media figures and other influencers who could help you promote the launch. But it’s not so easy to do so if you’ve never done it before. That’s why Mark Evans is Khierstyn’s guest on this episode of the podcast. He’s got lots of tips for how you can genuinely connect with bloggers, media outlets, and podcasters about your product - and to do so in a way that gets responses. You’ll want to hear this! Outline of This Episode [1:41] Who IS Mark Evans? [3:53] How Mark got interested in startups and VC funding. [7:51] The first startup Mark was involved in: Right product, wrong time. [9:53] How a company can be too product focused and not enough customer focused. [11:50] Does your product or company have a story? [17:15] The differences Mark sees between the stories of early stage startups and older companies. [19:02] Tips for founders about building their story. [25:19] How stories are used to attract people who will spread the story. [27:55] Suggestions for how you can make your story appealing to an influencer. [33:00] Know the kind of marketing you want to do. Resources & People Mentioned www.MarkEvans.ca BOOK: Storytelling for Startups www.BackerKit.com - use “uncut” at checkout GadgetFlow

Raising money for building a prototype vs raising money for the full production run. An early crowdfunding failure - getting the positioning wrong, and how Khierstyn corrected this to have a $600k funding success.

For this episode of Art of the Kickstart, we spoke with crowdfunding advisor and host of the Crowdfunding Uncut podcast, Khierstyn Ross! Tune in to hear from her about how she got involved in crowdfunding, why she thinks it’s a great option for many hoping to launch a new business and how to launch a successful campaign. Key Crowdfunding Takeaways How to learn from a failed crowdfunding campaign and go on to a successful one The benefits crowdfunding offers to creators What makes a product a good fit for crowdfunding How to choose whether to launch on Kickstarter or Indiegogo Why it’s important to have an audience before launching a crowdfunding campaign How to increase customer interaction using Facebook groups How to market your crowdfunding campaign on a smaller budget How to use Kickstarter’s algorithm to get more views for your campaign Links Crowdfunding Uncut Foundr Magazine Jam Stak 4 Hour Workweek Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Timothy Ferriss Purple Pillow Interview Connect with Khierstyn Crowdfunding Uncut on Facebook @khierstynross on Twitter Sponsors Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer's guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Click here to learn more and list your product - use coupon code ATOKK16 for 25% off! Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by BackerKit. BackerKit makes software that crowdfunding project creators use to survey backers, organize data, raise additional funds with add-ons and manage orders for fulfillment, saving creators hundreds of hours. To learn more and get started, click here. Transcript

Khierstyn Ross, of Crowdfunding Uncut, is a crowdfunding strategist, working on campaigns that raise hundreds of thousands of dollars on Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Khierstyn didn’t start there of course, but discovered what she was best at and most enjoyed while working through client projects. Once she decided to niche down, she became one of the highest in-demand crowdfunding experts. Khierstyn shares how she went from a generalist to a specialist, what that did for her business, how she built authority in this space, how she finds clients, and how she prices herself for a service where the results are so uncertain. http://freelancetransformation.com/episode94

Today’s guest, Nathan Chan, is wired to be an entrepreneur. He’s built a 6 figure digital publishing empire from scratch, and admits that in the beginning he knew exactly nothing about how to do it. Foundr magazine is a huge entrepreneurial success and there are tons of lessons to be learned from Nathan’s story and he shares them generously in this episode. If you’re an entrepreneur who’s just starting up your business endeavors, Nathan’s story should be very encouraging to you, so stick around! “I don’t work. I build businesses for fun.” That’s the first line you’ll see on Nathan Chan’s LinkedIn profile and it’s true. You can tell from the energy and enthusiasm that he exudes on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut that it’s true. Nathan started building his online media empire before he really know what he was doing. Now his online magazine, Foundr, is one of the top 10 digital magazines on the iTunes store and he’s very pleased with how things have turned out (naturally). In this episode we find out how Nathan got started, the first steps he took, and how he landed some of his biggest interviews, including the cover story on Richard Branson that he used to put his magazine on the radar of many other high profile people who would one day be a part of his media publication. You won’t want to miss this episode. Cheat Sheet (What you can learn) How Nathan began his podcast as a part of building his media empire. The signs of success and the strategies that helped Nathan move his magazine forward. Ways Nathan has leveraged his marketing for more subscriptions. Tools that can be used to optimize listings in the app store. The importance of finding the right person to pitch with your interview request and how to make their involvement a “no brainer.” Offering a “feature” position to interviewees early on to get momentum going. Ask to Subscribe on iTunes/Stitcher Crowdfunding Uncut is the place where incredible project creators show you how they launched their products online using the world’s largest crowdfunding sites such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Subscribe to iTunes or to Stitcher for more episodes of Crowdfunding Uncut. Smart Player (for that episode) Why the content of the episode is important Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, but for those who have it in their blood to start and grow their own business Nathan Chan has two words of advice: Extreme focus. In his words, “You have to be hungry if you want to build a successful business.” There can’t be any part of the process that you allow to intimidate you or hold you back. You have to be constantly learning, constantly growing, and constantly pushing past the barriers to your next step so that you can eventually reach the pinnacle you’re shooting for. It takes that kind of relentless effort to make your business the success you want it to be. You can hear Nathan unpack those concepts as he discussed the issue of extreme focus, on this episode of Crowdfunding Uncut. More about the show As he began his digital magazine, Nathan wanted to get an interview with Richard Branson. He figured that Richard was the epitome of an entrepreneur and that he’d be a perfect fit for his niche audience. But it wasn’t easy to get the interview. He worked tirelessly to find just the right person, the “gatekeeper” he could speak to in order to make a good connection with Richard. When he finally did, he worked very carefully and consistently to make sure he was able to land the interview. Though he originally lobbied for a Skype interview, it wasn’t possible given Richard’s schedule so he opted for an email exchange. That interview and the cover article he published were the catalyst for the future success of Foundr magazine. In this conversation with Khierstyn Ross, Nathan shares how he went about getting that connection, step by step – and how the results were more than he hoped for. Quotes "I don’t feel like I’ve attained success" "If things don’t work, you just keep moving and keep building" "Being so extremely focused provides an extreme amount of hustle" "You have to be hungry if you want to build a successful business" Nathan Chan's Story Most online enterprises today are launched with a very carefully thought out strategy for getting the most eyes on it as possible, right away. But back when Nathan Chan began his online magazine (it wasn’t called Foundr then) he didn’t have any launch plan. He just build a website, began designing his magazine, and started contacting people he wanted to have featured in its pages. That was it. Through a lot of trial and error he was able to land some “big fish” who he then used as leverage to attract more big fish. Richard Branson was the first and many others followed. In this episode you can hear the details of what Nathan did to track down Richard Branson, get an interview with him, and use that connection to get more high profile interviews to move the Foundr brand forward. Thanks, Nathan! (Click here to thank Nathan on twitter!) Resources from Website Foundr Magazine – Nathan’s flagship publication https://sensortower.com/ – App store optimization tool This episode is brought to you by BackerKit On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!

**Update, the Pozible campaign is live here!** Next week we will be launching our crowdfunding campaign via Pozible. We’ll be aiming to be the first Aussie brewery to launch via crowd funding. This week on the podcast we chat with Alan from Pozible, Khierstyn from Crowdfunding Uncut and we make final preparations for launch. Access the campaign Click here to access ... Read More The post OPERATION BREWERY EP7 – Crowdfunding Black Hops (part 1 of 2) appeared first on Black Hops Brewing.