Podcasts about kickstarter indiegogo

Episode 3: Cleve Oines is the founder and CEO of MannKitchen, the creator of the Pepper Cannon which raised over $3M on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Cleve grew up on an Island in Alaska with mountains as his backyard and the Pacific Ocean just outside his front door. He is also a cook and nature lover.

Bryant Francisco is a Brand Production & Affiliate strategist with a distinctive familiarity with the Asian, North & South American markets. From co-founding/launching the Ayra wireless brand to guiding niche Kickstarter brands such as RokBlok & Fromaggio in the product development/strategic Business Development planning process, Bryant has been fortunate to collaborate with countless talented individuals in business development, design, engineering, branding, storytelling, and manufacturing. Through the use of his multilingual capacity in Mandarin/English/Spanish, Bryant helped 700+ brands develop a cookie-cutter manufacturing/sourcing process to scale up using a Kickstarter/Indiegogo manufacturing partner. Through them, Bryant learned to analyze challenges / problematic processes and worked together to discuss/implement effective & measurable solutions. In that journey, he had to negotiate with thousands of factories to source or create components in China and South East Asia. LinkedIn: /in/brand-srategist/

It doesn’t matter how great your product is if no one knows it exists. That’s why marketing matters. But not every company has the resources to go all out on a big-name CMO or to commit a large yearly budget to specific marketing efforts — especially when the digital world is changing so quickly. So what’s an ecommerce brand to do in order to get its message across to the right people?Erik Huberman founded Hawke Media to answer that question, and for more than seven years he and his team have been making marketing more accessible to businesses of all shapes, sizes and stages. On the episode of Up Next in Commerce, Erik explains how companies should be planning their marketing budgets and what the revenue threshold is that companies need to aim for before they can even think about scaling. Plus, he digs into his entrepreneurial and investor roots to give some advice to those out there who are just getting started, including the hard truth about what it means to be an entrepreneur, and some tips on new and emerging platforms where you can grow your personal and professional brands. (And yes, we are talking about Clubhouse!)Main Takeaways:Same Problems, Different Speeds: Even the biggest brands in the world face the same key struggles as the new start-up making waves: access to talent. The difference is the speed at which the companies at both ends of the spectrum can move. With more decision-makers involved and more stakeholders to answer to, bigger companies have to be more methodical and intentional about who they bring in to help, whereas smaller companies can make decisions fast, but there is more volatility with every choice. Join The Club: New platforms like Clubhouse are on the rise, and finding a way to capitalize on them is the biggest challenge currently facing businesses competing for market share. Listen in to hear Erik and Stephanie dive into the Clubhouse wormhole and the opportunities that await.I Get So Emotional: Marketing is about eliciting emotion from the person you’re selling to, whether it is B2B or B2C. By establishing an emotional connection and presenting a value proposition that a buyer can clearly see as a solution to a problem, a level of trust is created that will lead to a long-lasting relationship.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, Co-Founder at Mission.org. Today, on the show, we have Erik Huberman, the Founder and CEO at Hawke Media. Erik, welcome to the show.Erik:Thanks for having me.Stephanie:I am excited to have you on. I was just chatting up a bit before telling you how we are actually a client of Hawke Media, full disclosure to anyone listening. It's been amazing. But I would love it if you could go through what is Hawke Media for anyone who doesn't know?Erik:Yeah, sure. We're an outsourced CMO and marketing team to companies. So, what that means is we basically go into companies, identify what the holes are in their marketing, organization, or strategy. And then we can spin up different experts on an ala carte month-to-month basis, whether it's a Facebook marketer, an email marketer, a fractional CMO, et cetera. We've got about almost 200 full time people. We manage marketing for about 500 different companies from small startups to Fortune 100.Erik:Our mission, for lack of a better word, is to create accessibility to great marketing. So, the idea is we really saw that it was really hard to, for most companies, get access to great marketers. We wanted to make a place where we had amazing marketers, amazing talent, people that were top of their game, but it was super easy to work with them. That was a challenge we saw on the market that didn't exist, a solution didn't exist. That's how we got started.Stephanie:That's awesome. Yeah, it's been really fun. We did the CMO thing first. It was cool, because you do get access to people who have been CMOs at big companies before and they have all this expertise. But we had them for three months. And then they transitioned us on to the next stage of implementation of social and other things. It was just really fun to be able to have access to talent like that without actually having to hire them as an FTE or something.Erik:Yeah, that's exactly the model. I came from building and selling a couple ecommerce companies and just wish this existed. My last ecommerce company, we were heavily funded. So, I had a 10-person marketing team of talented people, but they all worked or they could have all worked half time or less and gotten what I needed to be done. So, we had toyed with the idea of, "Could we hire these guys out to other companies? Because they're a great team, but we don't need them all full time. But we need all their expertise." So, that's part of where it came from, the idea was born.Stephanie:Okay, cool. What ecommerce companies did you have before this?Erik:I had a company called Fame Wizard first, which was online music business coaching for musicians. Then a company called Swag of the Month. It was a T-shirt subscription company, long before Dollar Shave and all that. And then an activewear brand called Ellie that's still around, the E-L-L-I-E.Stephanie:That's awesome. So, what things did you learn at those companies that maybe you brought either to Hawke Media or to how you're maybe advising brands today?Erik:Yeah, really quick bullet points. Fame Wizard have a customer that has money. Having independent artists as your customer is really hard to build a business off of. Swag of the Month, the need for working capital and financing, which funny enough, we just launched our financing and working capital arm of Hawke Media a couple months ago. And then the third one, Ellie, don't overcomplicate it. If it's working, double down on it. Also, that I don't like having other people make decisions for me, because that's when I was working with a committee and I was not the main decision maker. They screwed up a lot.Stephanie:I like that you have bullet points. You're like, "I already got it covered. I already know."Erik:Yeah. I've definitely walked away with very specific, "Don't do that again."Stephanie:Yup. Yeah, that's great. So, are you able to share some brands that you work with? So, we can get the scope of who-Erik:Yeah.Stephanie:... that you guys are learning from and working with right now and teaching.Erik:Yeah, I mean, it's the full scale in terms of small startups, most people haven't heard of, and hopefully, we change that. Tamara Mellon, we started with it when they were a tiny business and skyrocketed them for a couple years. GREATS, the sneaker company, we built for three years with them and they sold to private equity. Incase, the phone case, until they sold to Incipio. It's ironic. We get a lot of companies to scale and then we get fired, but it's par for the course.Erik:And then we also work with big brands, Nike, Unilever, Estee Lauder, Red Bull, et cetera, as well. And then a lot of small brands that don't necessarily want to be the next big VC-backed company that are $3-, $4-, $5-, $10-million companies while we're working with them. That's what they want to be. They slowly grow and run a lifestyle business that pays them a couple million bucks a year and do great.Stephanie:Yup. Do you see the big brands having the same type of struggles as the smaller ones, or is it very separate where you have to put very different skill sets depending on the company size?Erik:No, the expertise are similar and the struggle is similar in the sense of access to talent is really one of the biggest... True knowledgeable, experienced talent is what everyone's struggling with. The way we have to operate is different, because when you're dealing with a small business, a lot of times you're dealing with the owner, CEO. They can do whatever they want. There's no one they're reporting to, even if they have investors who usually have control. When you're dealing with bigger companies, you're dealing with publicly traded companies, a lot more processes, a lot more checkboxes, a lot longer time to make decisions. So, it's a lot slower. So, that's why I look at our client base like a distributed portfolio.Erik:The startups are super fun, because you can do whatever you want, you can get going quickly, et cetera. But they're also super volatile on the other end, where they'll fire you overnight for one small thing. Whereas big companies, they take forever to sign, take forever to make changes, but they also stick with you forever. So, we've worked with a lot of these bigger companies for years and years and years, because they're used to signing three-, four-, five-year contracts, even if we are month to month.Stephanie:That's good. So, what are some challenges you're hearing right now around either marketing challenges or business challenges that you guys are tackling that's maybe different than what you were hearing in 2020 or 2019?Erik:Yeah, I mean, 2020 was all COVID, but the silver lining was the market share of spending online almost over doubled. So, our clients on average doubled their revenue on what we were operating for them. So, that was really good. What we saw what changed towards the later end of the year and now into this year, so, now that market share hasn't diminished that much. Instead of 13% of consumer spending, being online pre-COVID, it went up to 30. Now, I think it's at 27%. So, it's still massive increase.Erik:So, we are seeing that now, all the big CPG companies and all these bigger companies that back to the point can't make quick decisions, unless the world's falling apart, cut everything. They usually do that and then they slowly roll back. They're all really coming back strong into digital, because they're seeing so much more market share there. So, what happened was the cost to advertise on Facebook and Google during Q2 and part of Q3 dropped about 30%, because there was less competition on it. Q4, October and November were insane, October because of the election and then November, holidays hit. December, they carry over a little bit, but they do lessen.Erik:And then I think now, I am anticipating advertising continuing to get more costly, because now, again, 13% of these big companies marketing online is now 27, they're going to spend more to capture that market, which means you're going to compete with them. So, if you're a small or medium business competing, there's a good chance that cost to advertise online increases significantly. So, not necessary what companies are looking for but what they should be is ways to increase their ownership of their customers, because if it costs you more to get a customer, the way to combat that is to increase your lifetime value to a customer. It's a math equation. It's that simple.Erik:So, how do you do that? You find ways to increase your lifetime through merchandising, through retention, through customer experience. When I say merchandising, having other products and services you can sell to the same customer. There's just a lot of things you can do, and then just continuing the communication like email marketing, SMS, chatbots, ongoing content, just all the ways you can create a walled garden around your existing customer base for them to buy more from you. The companies are going to win, which is why you see Amazon just skyrocketing. They were a book company at one point. Now, they sell you anything.Stephanie:Yeah, I love The Everything Store talking about how he and his wife are going and dropping off books to try and ship them out. That was a good book for anyone who hasn't read it yet. So, I mean, I'm thinking about myself as a smaller company right now. We're talking about ad costs are going up. It's going to be harder to compete against bigger brands. If you haven't acquired those customers yet and you don't have anyone to talk to, it seems like there's definitely an opportunity to be more strategic of finding new channels, whether it's the TikToks of the world or the Clubhouse.Stephanie:Shout out to Hillary, you just got me onto Clubhouse. But it feels like there's a bunch of new channels popping up that could help democratize community building a bit more or yeah, finding your audience in different channels that bigger brands maybe won't hop on as quickly.Erik:That's funny. I just got accused of being addicted to Clubhouse. So, my wife has actually had to say, "When we're eating, put that thing away." It's just the past week, but that platform is taking off. Yeah, it's always about working for diversifying. The problem is Facebook and Google still perform so much better than these other platforms that they need to catch up. TikTok will absolutely compete as they build out their ad platform.Erik:I think it's a no brainer in the way that the platform's built, but they need to do a better job of their targeting and everything, which when I say that, no one's spamming. It's just too early. Snapchat seems to be getting their legs under on Twitter. Hopefully, we'll figure it out. Stephanie:Yup, yup. I agree. Are there any new places that maybe are lesser known, where you're like, "We're trying out this one little thing in the back alley here that no one else knows about"?Erik:I mean, your know about Clubhouse. Clubhouse doesn't plan on monetizing through advertising, but as a community builder, it's crazy. I've been on it one week. I've 11,000 followers. I'm not an influencer. Twitter, I have a bunch of followers, but that's unusual for me.Stephanie:What are you doing on Clubhouse then? Because I get on there, and I'm like, "Hi." For anyone who can't see this, my awkward waving in Zoom. I don't know what I'm doing on there.Erik:Yeah, I've been fortunate enough to spend the past decade building a pretty solid network. So, when I got on there, a bunch of my friends were the people on stage that people want to hear from. So, guys like Daymond John and Lewis Howes and [inaudible] were all pulling me up to talk with them. And then other guys, like Grant Cardone, who I never knew before this now, start pulling me around with them. So, it's been a week, but all of a sudden, I've connected with a bunch of these heavy hitters that I've never knew before, that now we're also jumping on calls offline and connecting. So, for me, basically, I was on two flights a week almost in 2019. So, I spent most of my time traveling to shows and conferences and meeting people. This is scratching that itch.Erik:So, for the people that really want to network and build that network and learn from other people, this is the perfect platform for someone like me. It's not for everyone. So, I've gotten on stage. I've talked a lot. I mean, there's millions of people on it. Thankfully, I've been very lucky to build what I've built. A lot of them are looking for advice on how to build their businesses. So, now at this point, this is my fifth business I built. We've bootstrapped it. I've invested in, I think, 30 other companies. I've had a few exits, had some successes there. So, a lot of times, I can give some quick guidance to someone on there. So, I've done a lot of that, which has been fun.Stephanie:Yeah. So, since no one else has talked about this, this is why I'm diving even deeper into this. So, someone that can listen and be like, "Okay, I'm going to try that out too," are you speaking on there when you're saying you're on stage? Are you getting invited from someone? Are you just creating a room yourself? Tell me a bit about how that's working.Erik:Yeah. So, I mean, just to recap the platform, basically, it's super simple. All you see is a person's headshot, their little icon. It's all voice. So, you just talk. So, there's the stage and then there's the audience. Whoever's on stage can talk and you can mute your mic and talk. You got as many people on stage as you want, like a panel, and then anyone can come in and listen. So, as mentioned before we started this, I like to talk. So, me sitting in a room and talking and I've been in rooms with 20 people on stage, 30 people on stage, where I chime in once every 30 minutes.Erik:A lot of the habits that are starting to come on there are just people rotating on the stage asking questions of the panelists and just doing Q&A for hours, but it's people asking about, "How do I build my business? I'm struggling with this. What do I do here?" And then what I've seen is a lot of altruism, which has been fun. I've opened up my direct messages on Instagram through that. So, it's like, "If anyone needs help, just hit me up." So, making connections to VCs, to funding, to whoever could be a good distributor or a partner, give them advice, trying to help people.Erik:What I've seen also is a lot of people that aren't in L.A., New York, Austin, or Silicon Valley, that don't have access to these networks are all of a sudden... There was a whole world of amazing entrepreneurs I didn't even know until I got on this thing. It's a lot of the BIPOC community is getting on there and really helping each other. Not that I am one of them, I tried to help and very passionate about diversity and inclusion. So, we do a lot of charity work around bridging the opportunity gap. So, I've seen this as an amazing tool for that, because there's so many people that don't have access to... I've grown up around entrepreneurs. My dad's successful frankly. I grew up around people that have started businesses. I had a pretty easy path of role models.Erik:Most of these people don't or a lot of these people don't and that are coming from inner cities, et cetera. They are now on this. I do get pinged maybe 100 times a day actually on that thing, asking to be their mentor. I'm like, "You don't have to make anything official here. What can I help with? Let me answer your questions," that kind of stuff. So, that's been super rewarding, but I do see this as we're all stuck at home right now, where you are means nothing.Erik:So, this is a way for everyone to be connecting. But without having to be on video, it also makes a lot more people comfortable having a conversation. With voice, people are not as rude, demeaning. Social media has a problem on the tech side. We all know it, where it's like when you can just text whatever you want... We deal with it all the time with clients. If we have an angry client and we're on email, we'll get hate mail. Then I pick up the phone and call them and they're like, "Hey, how are you?" It's like, "What?" Same thing, I really think there's something there.Erik:The curiosity I have is as a social media platform... I'm sorry, this is all going to Clubhouse. But just as a social media platform, on Facebook, you might spend 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes at a time scrolling through Facebook. Clubhouse, I'm watching people spend 12 straight hours in a day. I've never seen a social platform that people just zoom in and go. So, I'm really curious what that turns into. I think they'll end up monetizing by adding tips to panels, so you can actually tip the panelists or paid speakers, I think that's what we're going to see. Because they said they want to make money for their content creators, and they don't plan on adding ads.Erik:So, I think that's going to be interesting. But for brands to answer your question, I think for personal brands, it's massive. You're a CEO or whoever you are, building your brand on there and starting to talk. I mean, we had a channel the other day, where it was a bunch of beauty entrepreneurs from the south, bunch of women that had built beauty brands bringing up young beauty brands to talk to them. There were women coming on stage to talk about their brand and then going, "I've made $300 in the past two months on my website. The audience just bought $7,000 worth of items."Stephanie:Wow.Erik:That's happening. It's an eight-month old platform, but really got popularity two weeks ago. So, it's interesting to see where that can go.Stephanie:Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, especially around the theme too of, I mean, bigger brands too leaning into becoming their own media companies and getting on there and leading not just from their brand perspective but being thought leaders. Their brand is behind the scenes. If you offer value, someone won't mind if it's coming from someone at a large company that's like, "Well, sounds so smart. So, I'm sure they work at whatever big company that is," but they're the one on there offering the best tips.Erik:Yup. That's the other thing is there's no BS-ing it. When you talk enough, people are going to know whether you know what you're talking about or not. I've seen it. The rest of the two people on the stage are like, "Wait, what?" People call each other out, because I think people feel responsible, including myself. The audience is taking this advice. I jumped into a panel yesterday that was talking about Bitcoin. Some guys said, "There's absolutely no risk in investing in Bitcoin. You just put as much money as you can." I was like, "Hold on for a fucking second. Excuse me." Yeah, so there's that too.Erik:And then I do think there's a whole community and personal aspects that were like 21 Savage is one of the biggest followed people on. He does DJ sets every night with Sir Mix-a-Lot and all sorts of other people. It's not just business. There is a lot of other fun conversations. Overheard LA did a whole thing where they were saying, "What's the weirdest story you've had in COVID around dating?" There's comedy shows. There's all sorts of fun stuff.Stephanie:Yeah, that's awesome. So, when you're on there giving tips to businesses and people who are trying to learn, what are the top questions that you're asked or what things do you talk about that resonate most with business owners?Erik:So everybody wants funding. These are all early, early businesses. Everybody goes, "How do I get funding? How do I get a grant or a loan or funding?" If you need money to get started, that's a bad sign. Don't get me wrong. There's high tech companies and certain companies that you can't get around it. But most of the initial funding for businesses comes from friends and family if you need it. If you need a heavy amount of funding and it's not something high tech, you have to be real if you're the right person to start that business. That's one. There's a lot of people that pitch for that while starting with the hardships story, something that's like, "This is what I'm struggling with." I've noticed that it doesn't get the reaction you'd hoped for.Erik:Compassion is a big thing. I think for help, people do, but if you lead with that to try to get someone to be part of you in business, it shows the wrong focus. It's not to diminish what people are going through. A lot of people have had a really hard time recently and in general, but I do notice that when you lead with that versus excitement and optimism, you're going to attract a lot more people with optimism.Stephanie:That's a good one. Yeah, I've definitely seen a lot of people who come with the story where you're like, "I should feel bad, but also as a businessperson who maybe is either going to invest or partner with you, we'd be in this together. I need to know that you have another reason to want to push this forward. It's not just this." So, that's a good point. All right, give me more.Erik:The COVID excuse, I'm not very nice about this one, but I have too many friends that have done well in spite of COVID. Not because they got lucky. Someone came on the other night as like, "I've launched my ecommerce company last a year ago, but because of COVID, we've had a really hard time." It was like, "Take a beat. Because of COVID, your ecommerce company has had a tough time." We just went over the stats of ecommerce. I was like, "Explain that." It wasn't ecommerce. It was the person couldn't get out of their way. So, that's generally the advice I end up giving to, because again, there's a lot of people trying to get started. It's just go.Erik:My biggest learning in entrepreneurship in general is no one's that smart. It's just people that went for it and got lucky. I really believe that, including myself. I don't think that I'm not impressive. I think I went for it. I timed it right, meaning I got lucky. Meaning, because of the way the world worked, I knew about ecommerce right when the world wanted to build all the ecommerce and I was one of the only free agents in LA with a reputation of being successful. So, that's a big one.Erik:So, with COVID, I have a friend that owns 20 gyms across Canada that got shut down overnight, done. He's been doing it for 20 years. He three days later decided to launch a virtual training platform and has done millions in revenue in 2020 as a gym owner and was able to keep his entire staff, pivot, not lose money, and now have a whole new revenue stream that when things do reopen, he's got both.Erik:So, I have a friend that owns a chain of restaurants in L.A. He's not thriving, but his businesses are all still open. He's making money. He's made a living. There's ways to operate that you can actually get through this. I watch some of our clients, ecommerce brands. They're like, "Cut everything." I'm like, "What do you mean cut everything? The numbers are good. I get that the news is scary, but you're doing well. Do not cut." The companies that cut, I don't know if any of them recovered, the companies that I know that cut with us. And then we had a whole bunch of other companies that stuck with us, our average client in Q2 doubled their revenue.Erik:So, interesting if you think about what happened in Q2 of 2020. So, yeah, getting back to it, the biggest one is like don't give yourself excuses, go for it. That's a lot of what we're talking about. And then we get into sometimes deeper marketing conversations like, "What do I do to get started in marketing? If I don't have a budget yet, where should I spend my money? Should I run Facebook ads right away?", those kind of questions.Stephanie:Yeah, I love that. It reminds me too of doing things in haste, there's a good quote. That was around investing, but it's like the person who's scrambling to themselves when the news sounds bad or something, they're never the ones who do well or find a good ROI. I thought I'd be the person sitting and waiting most times and play the long game, instead of reacting to the news or quickly stopping or starting something really quickly. It's probably never that necessary to jump on something.Erik:Correct. You have to give yourself that luxury, so to speak. So, what I learned myself out of this was I'm keeping more money in the bank going forward, so that I can take a beat. Even if I see my business losing money, I can go, "Deep breath. What's the right long term plan here?" Not just react because I got to stay in business tomorrow. That's where a lot of businesses got stuck is we're in such a great economy. People are just spending all their money on growth. All of a sudden, it cut off. So, you have no money in the bank, that can be a bad situation.Stephanie:Yeah, I agree. So, you're talking about many of them don't have budgets and they're trying to start marketing or launched an ecommerce shop or something. How would you go about that? Because I used to read quite a few books that talked about scrappy ways to do it, whether it was just putting up a landing page and then maybe linking to products, reselling them. There's so many things that we've been taught when it comes to being scrappy and starting something without having to invest money, but how would you do it now in 2021?Erik:Yeah. Everybody loves to throw around the MVP model, minimum viable product. The problem with it is people go to minimal and not viable. Meaning, you make a product that gets out there, but it's not really viable. It's not really what somebody's going to buy from. It's a landing page that sends you to a site that says you can check out but you can't or whatever it is. People think that just getting up and running is good. You got to commit.Erik:If you're just getting started, keep the day job, make money along the way. If you can't work a day job, then you get started on midnights and weekends, you're not going to be a good entrepreneur, because welcome to entrepreneurial life. So, that's actually a good way to get used to it in my opinion.Erik:Also, it never happens as fast as you want it to or almost never. So, it buys you time. You're not under some ultimatum that if this doesn't work in six months, I can go back to work. It's like well, just give yourself as much time as you need. Switch over when it can support your lifestyle. So, to get started, I mean, there's a few ways. If you're trying to launch a new product, you might need to put in 10, 20, 30, 50 grand to get started. That's actually a thing. That's where the friends and family come in if you're launching a new shoe line or something, but start small. Sell out. It's okay. Meaning, sell your product, not sell out as a jab or anything. It's okay to have a small run in the beginning.Erik:And then in terms of marketing, I've really honed in on this focus, actually, through a lot of answering these questions on Clubhouse is where we invest our investment threshold and where we like to look at companies is 20 grand a month in revenue. Because honestly, that's when you've been able to get over the scrappy period and you started to build a sustainable business. Still small, but there's something there. That's traction to us. To me, it's like get to that point without spending too much money.Erik:Partnerships, get someone that has your audience that you're trying to reach and find a way to make them talk about you to their audience. That could be press. That could be influencers. That could be other brands that collaborate with you. That could be many different ways. But start there, start building that organic reach groups. If you're selling shoes, not in COVID, but in general, sell them out of your trunk. Don't make it so it just has to be through your website either.Erik:My view is focus on one thing, and don't narrow yourself in other ways. The idea of being direct consumer and not opening up every other distribution channel for your brand is crazy to me. Go omni-channel, open up retail, open up everything else, and build a model that makes sense for all of those, and then see where the least path of resistance is. Maybe Nordstrom decides you got the coolest sneaker ever and you get a $5-million order. You're able to ask the right people, so you can protect yourself, because a lot of those big box will return the entire order when they don't put it on the shelves.Stephanie:Oh, wow.Erik:So, there's ways of that-Stephanie:[inaudible 00:25:50].Erik:That's why retail is hard. Walmart, they charge you for the products that don't sell and send it back to you. So, you got to be careful on those agreements and what you take on, but listen, it can also set you up for the rest of your life getting a deal like that. So, open it up to do all those things and be scrappy about it. Instead of throwing other people's money and trying to grow and hoping it works, find ways to make money right away. As someone that has bootstrapped a business and owns it with my partner, but the two of us, it's awesome. We tell our team all the time, "Anything you want to do, we can do it. Just ask." We're not reporting to anyone. We don't have people on our board or investors that we have to report to that are going, "I don't agree. I'm worried about the risk of my money." Not all investors do that, but some do. So, yeah, if you can keep ownership, it's a lot of fun. It's stressful at times too, because there's no one else backing me up. It all falls on you. But once you get through those hardships and get used to that challenge, because it never ends, it actually becomes pretty fun.Stephanie:Yeah, yeah, that's definitely my viewpoint on investors too. Unless they're very strategic, they're going to open up a network for you. They're going to give you something that you can't get otherwise. If you're just going after money, you probably needed to look elsewhere. I mean, my friends and family, not so much. I would have never been able to raise any money from them properly. But, thinking about it more strategically, instead of just, "Here's some dollars," because we had a guest on the show, who I forget who they were.Stephanie:Maybe Hillary can remind me in our prep doc here, but they're talking about how they built their company based off a Kickstarter Indiegogo type of thing, because they had this whole quote that was, "Don't rely on friends and family." Because if that's how you think you're going to fund your product, you're already going to fail. Account for them to maybe only be 3% of what you need or something like that. Only 3% of your product will be bought from them. The rest, you need to go out and form those email newsletters. Find your audience elsewhere, or else, there's no point in you trying if that's your only goal.Erik:Yeah, I would say that with smart money, which I agree with, if you're going to take money, take smart money that knows what they're doing and can help you. But a lot of times you can get that help without even taking their money. That's the other part. There's an anecdote about call someone for advice and they'll give you money. Call someone for money and they'll give you advice. So, if you want connections, most people that have been successful, most not all, but most are really willing to pay it forward, I've noticed. They want to help. They can't help everyone, but when you catch them at the right time... And then for anybody, it's a game of numbers. If you're looking for help, reach out to as many people as possible. Someone's going to say yes.Stephanie:Yup, I agree. So, the one area that we sometimes neglect on this show is B2B commerce, because of course, everyone's focused on B2C. But I saw that you put out a list of tips for B2B ecommerce companies. I was hoping you could walk through, what are you guys seeing for B2B companies? Do you work with B2B companies? How are you advising and marketing for them right now?Erik:Yeah, I mean, in the nutshell, B2B marketing is actually very similar to B2C, except for the end goal with B2C is a transaction. B2B generally is to drive a qualified lead, but you're still marketing to an individual. That's the part that I think people really forget. When I'm marketing to B2B, I'm not marketing to a business. I'm marketing to the decision maker at that business. So, it's still a person. So, instead of marketing to someone that likes dogs and biking, I'm marketing to someone that has this title at this type of company, who's a marketing manager at a Fortune 500, whatever it is. So, it's just a different targeting methodology.Erik:And then the way you position the company is still value proposition. You still want to get an emotional reaction. That doesn't mean like go crazy with it. So, don't take that too verbatim, but people justify emotion with logic. So, if you can hit the emotional reptilian side of the brain and get with any type of marketing and get them to feel like you're going to do something for them, that's the best way to get someone. So, Hawke Media is all B2B obviously. We don't use it that much now, but we're about to ramp it back up. Have you seen our commercial with the lemonade stand?Stephanie:No.Erik:Super fun. We filmed this less than a year into business, I think. I sat with my business partner. Again, we're marketing to business owners. That was our main target. They were like, "What do people like?" I'm like, "Puppies and kids." It was just when GoDaddy got banned from the Super Bowl for putting a puppy mill as a joke commercial. I was like, "No, let's not do that. So, let's go with kids." So, we basically created the commercial about a bunch of kids in a really corporate office.Erik:But when I say kids, eight, nine year old's running around, skateboarding, throwing paper airplanes, freaking out. The owner, this little blonde girl going like, "I can't take this. Who's handling our Facebook ads? Who's doing this?", and just freaking out. And then we come in and we got you. I was in the commercial too. We explained that. It shows them at the end, a bunch of kids making it rain with cash and dancing and having fun.Stephanie:That's cute.Erik:It was fun. It got people's attention, but the whole point was, "We got you. I know you're freaking out, but we're not and we got you." That's how it came off. That emotional connection, even though we're talking about B2B, which you'd think is super logical. How much do you cost? How much money you're going to make me? No. Why people hire us, the logic reason is bandwidth's our expertise. The emotional reason is, "Please someone just handle this. I don't know what's going on here. I just want to grow and I need someone to take it off my plate," or "I don't know what I'm doing." We need someone to just come in calmly and help us.Erik:Understanding that in B2B is super important, because then everything you do with positioning yourself is like, "We're here. We got you. We know what we're doing." You can sleep easy at night is our positioning. Now, you change that. And then how you execute on that, same channels, Facebook, search, email marketing, press, all the things we use for our clients, creating your own content is the stuff we use for ourselves.Erik:I'd say any marketing is aspirational. Not meaning I aspire to be like something great, but more like, "I'm currently at this state, and I want to be here." It's as simple as my socks have holes in them. I want comfortable socks and you go buy socks. This aspiration doesn't have to be something groundbreaking. So, understanding that you need to position yourself as that aspiration, the solution to getting the person from where they are to where they want to be, no matter what you're selling, B2C, B2B, is the most important part.Stephanie:That's really good. Yeah, I mean, I think about the ads to B2B and they're so lame. A lot of times, they make things so corporate. It's like, "I'm pretty sure any corporate citizen will not want to watch another corporate style ad." They want something new and different and love to just connect with the person. Even if it's a title that you're connecting with, there's someone behind that title. If you wouldn't like it, they probably won't either.Erik:Yes, exactly. That's been the awesome thing about Hawke and its marketing specifically is I'm the customer, literally, who would be buying from us. That's why I created it. So, I get to make things that I didn't want to see. You just nailed it. I hate the boring, stodgy, men and women in suits. We've been trusted for 25 years. Who cares? That's not why I'm hiring you.Stephanie:It's like the stock photography, where you go on there. It's like all these people in offices and business suits. I'm like, "Who's buying this stock photography? This is horrible."Erik:My favorite, I used it again recently. So, that's why it reminded me. Remember that photo shoot they did with the baboon doing stock photos in an office. I just found it. My brother-in-law asked me what I was up to this weekend, I sent him the baboon banging on the keyboard. I'm like, "Just working." That was a great shoot. That was so perfect. Yet so many people did not get the point of that, which is this is ridiculous. Why are we taking office stock photos?Stephanie:Yeah, yeah, that's funny, but I mean, a lot of people use them for a while. I guess it worked for probably a solid week, and then everyone realized it's not working anymore.Erik:No, no, a lot of people still use the office photos. Listen, that's not going to be the only driver of your business. You don't have to be perfect in marketing. If you have a good product or service, marketing helps, but it's not critical. So, a lot of people get away with really bad marketing and still have a really good business.Stephanie:Yeah, the one theme that I've heard from quite a few people on the show is that the organic videos and natural things are all performing way better than stock photography or anything that seems like it was built out of the box. Are you seeing that as well?Erik:It depends. It depends on what type of product it is. If it's a product that needs a lot of trust, you need production value. Meaning, a supplement or something that people are looking to solve a problem. They don't want to see that you threw something together. If it's like fashion or lifestyle products that people aren't really worried, you can get away with that a lot more.Stephanie:Yeah, I like that. So, one other thing, I don't know how much do you guys experiment with TV, because I was listening to a good episode. I forgot what podcast it was, but I think it was Gary Vaynerchuk, where he was essentially saying, "All TV is dead except for Super Bowl ads." That's the only ads that actually work. Every other TV commercial, they don't work anymore. They're dead.Erik:Gary's a friend and I think he has nailed what he's doing. He's a super bright guy, but I think a lot of times, he speaks in hyperbola. Nobody ever gets held to these big grandiose claims. I called a friend out for claiming that Bitcoin will be at 50 grand by Sunday. And then Sunday came around, I screenshot it and I sent it back. I'm like, "What the hell, man?" He's like, "Whatever, it'll happen in the next month." It's a habit that a lot of people got into, making these giant claims. I'll be real, TV does work. You got to buy it, right? Yeah, we do some TV, some radio. It's not a big part of our business. I'm not trying to hype it up.Erik:But once you have an amazing funnel and you really know who your customer is and you're really good at nurturing leads... Meaning, not just letting them come to your site and hopefully, they buy, but capturing email, capturing their phone number to text them and follow up and really nursing them. Again, you know your audience and you know your messaging. So, you know how to attract your audience and get them to buy. TV is still one of the cheapest places to get a 30-second impression from a massive audience. So, both TV and radio are still very viable options as you scale, but you can do a lot of digital before you have to go there.Stephanie:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I agree. We had one of our podcasts aired on radio. They took it and turned into a one-hour special for Veterans Day. It's called The Story. Some people were like, "Radio is dead. Why would you want radio?" I'm like, "Do you know how many people still listen to radio?" Actually, it's still very legit if you can get on radio. I mean, it's huge.Erik:Most people are sitting in their car. They're not going anywhere. They're not changing the station either, because, frankly, there's not that many options. You can get a lot of people that are doing nothing. The hard part is to get them to remember things, but it works. We've had a lot of luck, especially event sales. When we're doing big events like TED and stuff like that and trying to sell tickets, DutyCon was a good one, radio works really well.Stephanie:Yup. Yeah, like you said, getting that CTA, where it's not something that's distracting or they crash, but seriously, going by what I just talked about.Erik:Yeah, exactly.Stephanie:All right, only couple minutes left. Let's move over to the lightning round. The lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready?Erik:I'm ready.Stephanie:All right. What's up next on your podcast list?Erik:Who is or what?Stephanie:Either, who or what? What are you listening to?Erik:Oh, well, we have our own. So, who would be Rachel Zoe.Stephanie:You have her coming up?Erik:Yeah, we've worked with her for years. She's awesome. Yeah, so that's the next one. And then after that is Rob Dyrdek, I think. I want to get more into How I Built This. He's awesome. I just think that that's always an interesting story. My podcast is more about their life story. His is really about how they built their company. So, I like the life story too. My podcast was I wish someone did this. So, I'm just going to do it and hit up cool people and find out how they got where they are. Yeah, so my podcast is Hawke Talk.Stephanie:Awesome. Yeah, I will be checking it out. What's up next on your reading list?Erik:Whatever my business partner assigns me. I am not a voracious reader, and my partner is. So, he's decided-Stephanie:He assigns it to you?Erik:He's decided as of last month that he's going to give the executive team including me a book a month that he wants us to read and be on the same page on. I'm all about it, because I don't have any motivation on my own to really do it. I'll pick up a book now and then probably a couple a year. Most of the time, I end up listening to it on Audible. I'll buy the book. I buy all my friends' books. My wife rolls her eyes every time. I got to support, but I don't read any of them. Sorry, guys. We're coming out with our own book towards the end of the year called The Hawke Method. It's how we grow companies, basically.Stephanie:That's awesome. I love that. What one thing do you not understand today that you wish you did?Erik:I wish I understood the public markets more. I've put money in it now and started to try to learn it, but I've surface level things I understand. But when we started getting into derivatives and the complicated side of finance, I'm still not completely clear. I've also shied away in some ways, but I think when you overcomplicate it, it's too complicated for everyone. That's when we get into the housing crisis and things like that, but I also would love to understand it so that I can call bullshit on it sometimes, because I realized in my entire career, no one's that smart. If it's complicated, it's probably a problem.Stephanie:Yup, that's a good one. What favorite piece of tech are you enjoying right now? It can be new or something you've used for a long time. It can be an app or anything.Erik:Yeah, I will say the one that surprised me the most is the Oculus, because I've been a naysayer of VR. I'm like, "VR is too isolating. It's stupid, blah, blah, blah." But once I got one and I ended up helping an organization called YPO do an event with Oculus and got one, and I'm like, "Oh, wow, no, this is interesting." There's actually something to VR and the experience you can have. Most people can only use it for 45 minutes at a time, but I think it's really cool. I think there's something coming down the pike with that that I think will be really cool.Stephanie:Yup, yeah, we wrote a 2021 Trends Report. That was something I'm keeping an eye on is how to use that when it comes to not only following influencers, but shopping from feeds and watching live events, but also being able to get it while watching it and stuff. I think there's a little work to be done, like you said. I know a lot of people especially myself still get dizzy and not feeling very good after, for me, 10 minutes, but it seems like once that gets a bit better, there's a lot of opportunity, especially for ecommerce companies if they can figure out how to make it an event and something fun that people want to attend.Stephanie:Plus, also, it's like The Container Store in Netflix series. You want to buy with the Netflix series ad, even though they don't really slap you over the head with Container Store stuff, but you're like, "But I need that specific box to put my scarves in."Erik:Yes, exactly. No, I think that's exactly it is. The business model needs to be fixed around the content for VR, because it's just not good enough yet to track enough content and things to do. But once that turns into a much more prolific platform, I think that you'll see it hockey stick quick.Stephanie:Yup. All right, last one, what is the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?Erik:Oh, I have to think of a nice thing, because I feel like if I'm going to say the nicest, it's going to be...Stephanie:Or you can say the meanest too. You're like, "Oh, this person was really mean to me."Erik:I had a business partner that really screwed me up, but I don't need to give it any credence. Not my term.Stephanie:Nicest then.Erik:I'm trying to think of nicest. I mean, the fortunate thing is many, many people have done a lot of nice things for me. A lot of people taking bets on me before I had any reason to deserve them. My parents were always great to me. My wife's great to me. I'm surrounded by people that do nice things for me. So, I will say a nice thing that stands out that I never give enough credence to is when I graduated college, I went into real estate a week before the whole banking industry collapsed. I made $350 that year.Erik:Six months in, a friend of mine's dad called me. I was a guitarist growing up. My drummer in my band's dad called me and said, "Hey, I've been watching you. You seem to be like a young, aspiring entrepreneur. I like your grind and your spirit here. I want to help people like my son, who is still pursuing music, figure out how to do the business side of things. So, they can actually at least make a living being a musician. I think there's a thing we could do here." I spent a couple months putting a business plan together, showed it to him. He not quite disappeared but went MIA for three months.Erik:Called me July of 2009 and said, "Hey, I'm putting in a quarter million dollars. I think I can raise this another $750,000. You're going to run it. Let's go." That became my first online company. So, that guy put in his own quarter million dollars, got his friends to put in $750,000 million invested in an online music company in 2009. And then put me in charge of it, gave me 5% of the company and paid me minimum wage, which I was grinding.Erik:It was a bet. Don't be wrong. It could have really worked out for him, but I also think of that as that guy set me up as an entrepreneur in a lot of ways too. I don't know what I would have been doing without that opportunity. I'd probably still have grinded through real estate unless something else popped up for something. That put me into digital. That did a lot of things for me. I'm still in touch with them, but that was a big one.Stephanie:That's a good story. I'm glad I asked. Yeah, that's really good. Cool. Well, Erik, this has been a very fun interview. I want to bring you back for another round in the future to hear how 2021 is going. Where can people find out more about you and Hawke Media?Erik:Definitely, Clubhouse.Stephanie:I'll see you there.Erik:Yeah, [erikhuberman on any social platform's fine. And then Hawke Media, if you ever want to reach out, is just hawkemedia.com. We do free consultations. Always happy to help.Stephanie:Cool. All right. Thanks so much for joining us.Erik:Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Darren Wong, a member of the famous dance group the Kinjas, discusses his beginnings in dance and business, and goofs around with some dude.Follow @Instagram: noiseofthebrokeboysTwitter: BrokeBoysNoiseListen to the Audio on all Podcast platforms. All The Links Here: https://linktr.ee/NoiseOfTheBrokeBoysA broke degenerate hooligan documents conversations about being a Bboy, Breakin', Hip Hop, Dance, Art, Music, Creativity, Innovation, and the slow subtle crumble of society in audio form.----more----[Music]this episode of noise of the broke boysis brought to you by cardboard yesthat's right I'm talking about the samecardboard that is used to protect youryear's supply of preparation-h as it isshipped from the warehouse to yourresidence same cardboard that used tospin on your back because you were toobroke and lazy to walk to that freepractice session that your local hip-hopscene provides and yes that samecardboard that was used to make theposter of Justin Bieber that you hide inyour closet don't worry as a truebeliever myself I will not let yoursecret out have you ever wondered whatthat be and cardi B's name stands forwell its board this is car D boardsupplying your local strip club with thefreshest tunes cardboard is smoothstrong and stylish it's the perfectreplacement for all your card stockneeds head down to your local dumpsterand dive right in to pick up the latestshipment of cardboard and have yourselfa cardi board e time and now onto theshow[Music]in this episode I bring in a good dancebuddy I've had since high school webasically came up together as b-boys inthe early 2000s and grew to love hip hopculture together he is a member of theworld famous dance group the kynges andcurrently lives in the SouthernCalifornia area teaching and managingthe various dance schools that thekynges have built from the ground upplease enjoy this episode with my goodfriend Darren Wong hello everybodywelcome to the diarrhea doodoo show thisis noise of the broke boys I am yourhost Kurt rocks key and today I have oneof my oldest dance friends he is amember of the kynges or if you don'tknow they are ninja cosplayers that alsodo dance they do not root Oh cosplay andthen they're also good dancers as wellright I've known this guy for quite awhile I went to high school with him Ihad a crush on his mother yeah she wasmy math teacher and yeah what's up manthis is d-money mr. Darren Wong what'sup yeah so dude I haven't talked to youin a minute when did I last see youprobably my wedding huh yeah becauseyou've been living out in LA for aminute huhyeah probably since 2007yeah and we went to school like irvineright you went to UC irvine you movedout here and have been out here sincethen Yeah right cool um cool so likewhen I first met you um you were alreadylike you already knew what's up withdance I mean you were already kind ofdancing and this was you were a freshmanin high school and I wasJr probably yeah thank Junior so I don'tknow what I was doing hanging out withjuniors I mean hanging out with freshmenwhen I was a junior oh yeah I guess soyeah yeah you were cool and I was uncoolso we like met in the middle a littlebit yes we were about both sophomoresyeah I guess soso when I met you yeah you were alreadyinto dance so like what got you intodance I think like most guys who want todance a girl of course I wanted toimpress a particular girl maybe wiseI think particular girl in like middleschool so I wanted to do breaking cuz Ithought that was like the closest thingI could do since I did martial arts umso then I basically just tried to findany video I could through like illegalway times before YouTube and just learnfrom that just practice in a garage withmy homieand then yeah so did you get the girlnow got different go there oh it allworked outsweet yeah no uh back then that was like2001 Pro yeahdude did the internet yet exist yeahyeah I just remember like going to whatwas it b-boy calm or org or somethingyeah yeah yeah yeah and they had thoselike they had gifts but they're not likethe gifts you see now they were likeyeah it'd be a 10-second thing butthere's only five frames in it so you'relike oh what is he a bad call yeahbecause I remember letti trying to getthat stupid page to load that taught youhow to doturtles yeah and it was a it was a gifof I think Cujo doing him and like I youknow you wait ten minutes for it to loadyeah and then it finally loads and it'sjust like dude and I was like how thehell did he do that like the wholereason I waited so long for this to loadwas to see how to do that in slow motionbut no it skipped like 15 frames so Imissed it allyes yeah stupid b-boy org I hope youdon't exist anymore no actually I hopeyou do but I hope you're listening tothis instead I'm sorry I love your giftsice yeah I downloaded them that's that'sall bad when you're like downloadinggifts you downloaded gifts to like learnhow to break yeah it's the animatedpicture it's yeah that's terriblebut anyways somehow we got to wearanimated gifts to a finalist on world ofdance Thank You b-boy da or you are andyou are the people the People's Choiceforgives so do you still rep PandaExpress so we back when we went to highschool together we went to El Caminohigh school we made this crew togetheras like kind of a joke and we called itPanda Express cute cuz all of us werejust the only Asian kids there and yeahall of us just decided to break is thatAsian Club or is that like breaking ClubI don't know it could be both breakingClub and Asian Club had the same membersso anyways yeah we made it and we calledit Panda Express crew cuz I'm tired youknow we actually yeah we didthat's even funnier that wewe battled people as panda that's thebest part but anyways so since highschool you've like you've had a prettydecorated list of like groups you'vebeen a part ofof course like legendary steps flexibleFlav you were in Cabo modern right youwere leading that crew right yeah yesyears table modern the what would youcall them the hip hop dance choreo danceyeah I feel like there's like multipleteams that you see I cop modern isprobably like one of them one of the topwomen's tops and then the other onewould be CADC which is where mm-hmm Mikeand Anthony the two creators of Kim justcame from actually okay yeah so thenyeah obviously kynges and now you're inunderground flow it is also a Sacramentooh yeah uh so how did you get involvedwith kynges I mean I guess he kind ofalluded to it but yeah so when I was afreshman in college there's this thingcalled Casa dance-off which is like aKorean club basically it's like thisKorean club they put together it's onlyfreshmen so if you're a freshman you'reallowed to compete in like thischoreography showcase basically sobasically every school has their ownteam in their own choreographers sothat's kind of where I met Mike andAnthony at the same time and then at thesame time Victor Kim who used to likemmm yep I know you're trying to elude mebut him yo Victor was telling me like ohyou should go for like either one ofthese cuz he's like you know the topcrews so that I never go in with tabajust cuz they did more breaking piecesand I didn't know like choreo choreo soI went with that and then that's likekind of how I met both of them thoughthrough Casa dance-off cos mm-hmm werethere choreographing mmm and so then youguys they formed they they formed thecrew or conceptualized it or whateverand then they reached out to youyeah so basically the way King justformed was Anthony was going away towork somewhere else so they wanted to doone last showcase together and bringingall the homies that they've alwayswanted to dance with so they just likehand-picked like pretty much the toppeople from each crew that they don'tknew and like we're still friends withand then they don't know case and thenall of a sudden people really liked itand they're like oh shoot this is likesomething we might be able to do it'slike some seven cent money yeah that'sthat's a that's a very normal or like amuch toned down version that I wasthinking it was I thought you guys maybelike went to like a comic-con you're alllike dressed as ninjas and then justlike and then just all of a suddenstarted like dancing and then you'relike oh he's a dancing ninjaoh you're dancing ninja and you're alljust like oh we should join a PowerRangers ninja force oh no wait nevermindlet's uh let's just join it let's make acrew together yeah that would have beenthe cooler origins I guess that that onewas too normal for me so that's what I'mgonna I'm gonna cut out what you justsaid and just say that's whatbut yeah so then okay so then you jointogether and then the underground flowtwins Steven and Michael they joined -they got reached out to and who else doyou have in that crew good it's got alot of yeah you boys I mean it's Victorused to do it in the very beginning okaywhen they were on boob black ops yet sowhat is it ANBU black opsthat's literally from the ANBU black opsyeah so then that was Lin like for surewe were doing a lot of it never you tostuff what the hell and we changed it tojust be you know dancing I don't knowNaruto but that sounds like a reallyterrible BG show ANBU black hot we'relike I don't know some care right wechanged it yeah okay was it roll out thetalkiesno not at all oh yeah you guys wouldhave definitely lost forever we got suedto you you got sued and lost ANBU blackops is off the show okay so that'sthat's dope um so you guys wrapped asthat name eventually came up with kyngeswhat like what is what does kynges meanI guess like I just assumed as ninjasthat are Korean or not a lot of peoplealways guess that it's not the only onekin means family mm-hmm and then I gotdances ninjas so keeping up with thekynges that's what's upso um if people don't know this kyngeseventually went to world of dance whichwas like a TV dance competition showthat had tons of different dancers onthere and like a million-dollar prizeright and so you guys were competing init and you guys were the finalists of itand you lost to got out too late twinsbut should have been these dudes no I'mkidding they're good yeah actually wegot to the finalists for our group soit's like finalists for like soloistsand duo's and then there's finalists forgroups and then there's finalists for itwas like called kids or whatever thatwas yeah so we lost - JLo salsa team JLosalsa team yeahoh they're dope they're dope they'relike definitely high energy I feel okaymaybe I missed I didn't watch the wholeseason I watched like the ending ya knowwhat's confusing different groups it waslike yeah there was a lot and there wasso many different stylesthe other thing well anyway so that'slike that got you guys a lot of Fame andstuff so you guys now are like you knowteaching and then doing shows and stuffso like I guess what what where has thatgotten you now and like what are whatare you guys planning to do in thefuture so actually today we're opening anew studio in downtown LA it's calledthe complex so we have that we have wedid like a Kickstarter IndieGoGo typething for our first studio in MontereyParkmmm called kynges dojo we currently havethree studios I believe in China overall over these Chinamen China a lot nowcuz you got you just got back from Chinalike a couple weeks ago dang so youworried that what's I figured you werethere doing like shows or something yeahyeah so we have a lot of work in Chinanow too so all over the place other thanthat just teaching with around the worldworkshops normal stuff some of the guyschoreographed for like kpop stuff wellthat's that yeah so pretty much anythingto do it dance and music we're trying tobe have our little hands in I guess andthen yeah your your little hands youhave like your little swords yeah how doyou guys actually dance with foot I justknow you walked around like one day someweapons throwing some like yeah you knowuh so okay so in China I wouldn'timagine hip-hop dance is popular inChina but apparently it is now it is itis they started making it mean well youknow how like China's government is theylike time control what people see so nowthey're living like dance be a big thingoh that's so that's why I think it'skind of blowing up a lot more nowthere's a political reason for thatwhy would I don't know money has lessmoney yeah they don't I don't know Idon't know how a China works actuallycuz they're communist country yeah Idon't know how their money works so Igot a lot of it got a lot of it andthey're giving it all to you guys teachthem dance and do shows for that so coolyou're like a that's the most Americanthing you can do dude you're a patriotlet's dump so so like what is the dancescene like in China like I've been toChina because I used to do shows withNBA dance shows and so I went to inChina probably like two or three yearsago and so there was like a huge youknow huge NBA crowd there the and they'dfreaking love basketball and but we werethere and it seemed like they reallyenjoyed what we were doing too but theymaybe weren't too familiar with it Iguessbut it seemed like a cool place to likefor it to blow up someday and I knowthat the breaking song is starting togrow a little bit sorry my dog isbarking H so I so another breaking sceneis starting to blow up a little bit moreand you're seeing more cruising stuffcome from there I don't know if otherhip-hop styles are like you know there'screws in those Styles coming from Chinabut seems like it's a growing place yeahfor sureI think the dancers over there likethey're hungry to like learn so likethey're leveling up pretty quickly sothey're coming coming from the lead foreverybody are they dressed as ninjasno they got them like Crouching TigerHidden Dragon outfit you know what I'mtalking aboutthe kung-fu outfit they dress likenormal hip-hop what if they made a movielike Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon butit was just dancing maybe and they juststart flying yeah it would like fly ohyeah it's heavy dope we could just makeit I would watch it but I'm not Chineseit needs to be in Chinese and then likehave subtitles or whatever like dub overit I guess you could do that just justsay something else and then your mouthis moving differently oh man yeah that'sa I think it's ideas are yeah yeah thatsounds like a quick way to get introuble so um yeah so that's that'stight that you guys are in China doinglike a lot of them cool things umso aside from teaching and stuff arethere any big shows that you guys areworking on like I'm comparing you tolike maybe Jabbawockeez who lives whohave a show out in Vegas that theyperform and then they also had starteddoing some traveling thing or whateverbut yeah they do they're doing showslike all over the place is that like inthe cards for you guys to I think we'vealways talked about doing like our owntheater show I think there's just somuch going on right now that there'salways something in the background thatis happening as far as I know I thinkwe're just more focused right now onjust one this complex opening and thenyeah from there we'll see where thatleads I guess mm-hmmbut I'm pretty sure in the future wewould love to do it like a theater showyeah you know it's just funya know I think that that's that's acool way to like let to like let yourstuff shine and you get full control oflike what yeah well assuming you getfull control I mean probably you got towork with a lot of the other theaterpeople to make sure that they're gettingwhat they need out of it but but yeahyou got a lot more control of like whatyou can do you could say I want thisexact music I want to extend this partso long you know compared I'm comparingit to like something like what you didon world of danceyou would do a set that's like a minutelong or whatever um have to getcopyrights versus music yeah oh yeahthere's a lot of stuff you got to do thered tape there's a lot of red tape yeahthat and so many hoops to jump throughand then there's a lot of productionstaff that are like giving you ordersdifferent so I imagine that that kind oflike I don't know it lets you notcontrol it as much as you probably wantyou know like because I imagine when Ido stuff I go oh I have this vision forand then someone goes oh well that songdoesn't work yeah oh well actuallysuccessful what the heck was I gonna sayI was gonna ask you something I forgotoh so at your studio at your dancestudio like you have now you have threeyou said three Studios in China and youhave two in LA and are you planning togo anywhere else like he's always likean option I mean people always ask us toopen studios you know near them so EastCoast yeah maybeokay like pretty much anywhere is anoption I think I guess it probablydepends on where you're people areplanning to go cuz you obviously need tohave some of your people there mhm allof them are here right yeah I would saymost of us are here and then we havepartners called sino stage those are ourpartners in China okay I run that overtherenow do the students that go there dothey have to wear ninja outfits no Imean if you want you can what if Idislike you know we go to Disneylandit's like okay to dress up I feel likeif you're walking it's like mashed upyou're like cool you're like no one'sgonna look at you what would I have towear it for them to like kick me outit's like what's the limit here what ifI was with a ninja next question alrightthat's that's the end of that so I withwith all your successI imagine you've you've seen a lot oflike cool things in your life so can youtell me maybe about like the coolestthing you've seen like that dance hasbrought you to or like the mostinspirational or even the funniest orall three as a good question I guess thecoolest would have to be world of dancethat was like just being surrounded bypretty much everybody's like a master intheir craft you're basically like in aroom with like a bunch of masters andthey're just like vibing out togethereveryone's like friendly so there waslike no hate or beef so that was coolfor sure I think that was like thenumber one memory traveling wise I wouldsay maybe going to like the Philippineslike seeing like there's like a dota 2championship or something like that ohthe video game yeah so is like a Oh achampionship and then like the GreenRanger was there and the Green Rangerwas he actually dressed up as the greenI don't know does he wear like regularclothes cuz that's what they wouldalways do right I don't know if I wasthe green I would do that all except Iwouldn't want to be the Green Ranger I'dprobably be the what I hate the blackRanger well you know because cuz Zakfrom the original one would be likelet's go he'd like strike he'd be he'ddo a body roll into a fighting stanceand it was like the dough fish at leastwhen I was ten years old or wheneverwhatever I was when I watched that I waslike that's how you fight then I gotbeat up your sets man bring it backno I just want to getstreet fights like that just like a whatdid you say to me let's goit's morphin time then like as I'm doingthat they're like beating me up I knowyeah my yeah that sounds like a bad ideadon't do that but it was cool to watchyeah cuz he was just they were justfighting do you know the little likepudding whatever I never understood thatactually I don't understand cuz it justwas like clay and then they all of asudden we're like things and you justkicked them once again dead and I'm likeman you guys screwed up a little bitlike if you put all your faith in liketaking over the world with those littlethings like dude you guys or why didn'tyou just form one giant putty baby yeahseriously like why did you pick thatlittle that little guy why didn't youjust make a Godzillayeah and just say hey you don't need tofight nobody just walk around this cityand you know by the time the PowerRangers like get there like thingtogether and kick you like half the cityalready destroyed man I should have beenRita Rapunzel it's time to conquer earthlet's make look like monsters to getbeat up High School is basically righthigh schoolers led by a giant head ledby a giant head who's never fought a dayin his lifecome on dude Power Rangers jeez I don'tknow shout out the Power Rangers don'tsponsor this show Oh God look at me ohdamn um so like what about what is thereany like movie opportunities like in theworks for you guys mm good question Idon't know I mean I feel like most dancemovies don't go as far as like theydon't you would want them to go yeah Imean but yes oviedo yes I actuallyalways thought about writing a scriptfor a movie that had to do withhip-hop and breaking mmmthat would show more of like the therawness behind it because every dancemovie I've seen has always beencheesiest yeah yeah yeah sure it's likeyou know I'll watch beach street orwhatever just to see the dancing andthen as soon as they start talkingoh you biters you ain't worth the beatthat's what's the point I turned it offyou know I mean but so I've alwayswanted to see a movie like that and Icompare it to eight milelike with mmm where he you know he'sjust like it's almost just a story of emand em really but like there's I feellike they just put like a really grittylike you know veil over it to show themore raw side of like anti popping andyou know battle rapping and stuff and soI always thought that that'd be dope totake that on with with breaking yeah letme double its um yeah I don't know thattelling the real story of like someone'slife versus a little bit cuz like thisis dance somebody yeah the things thathave always bothered me and it kind ofwhy I started this podcast was because Iwould always see like Hollywoodportrayal of breaking and hip-hop danceand it's always like let's do hit hayeah and I'm like alright yeah maybe Imean if you're you know I'm not tryingto like shame that but there's more toit than then hip-hop there's uh you knowlike what I mean I saw some stupid videoof like there's a girl going like andyou know like it was some weird dantlike teaching how to do some stupiddance in a music video and I was likethat's where we he was so it was funnybut uh it might have been a jokeactually um but it was just like yeahthat's not the hip-hop Ino so I wantedto like show the other side of it andtalk to people who've like you knowlived through it and are still livingthrough it to put that on there so thatyou know people who don't know hip-hopdon't just get the one-sided view fromthe Hollywood perspective because reallyHollywoodI think the way Hollywood looks at isthey go okay what is cool looking mm-hmmthis isn't the highlight of our movie ora commercial or whatever we just want tosee some cool moves and look and peoplesmiling it's donewhich is fine like I think that's cooltoo cuz you know any exposure is goodexposure but if that's all you ever seeyou go all like what is breaking what iship-hop what is this it's people smilingand doing backflips and second there's alot more to it than that there's like ahuge hustle behind it there's you knowlong hours at a studio or you know onthe concrete if you like that I meanthere's long there's long hours justlike putting into your craft and stuffthat I think you miss if you only see itso but yeah so that's why I wanted tobring you on because you obviously havegone through the hustle and a struggleto get to where you are and that's whyI've brought on a lot of other peopleand yeah yeah maybe someday I'll write amovie huh sounds dope I think it's justlike if you really understood like howmuch even like physically we go throughthe risk we're putting our bodiesthrough even not just for like now butin the future like it's kind of it'skind of crazythat's great because it's like it's likegetting beat up every day you're notlike you're not getting black eyesyou're definitely doing stuff that Imean I guess as an example like when Iwas learning windmills I would go homeevery day with like a bruise on myshoulder a bruise on my hip and then Icome back the next day and do it againand then the bruza just get bigger andbigger and bigger and then you know andthen tons of scars and then eventually Ithink my body just got used to and waslike alright you win no more no morebruises and then it stopped bruising andit stopped hurting but I'm pretty surethat's gonna correct it for sure forsure so I take care of our bodies gottatake care you're younger you know wedidn't stretch we do just like jump inand just go for ityeah that was I do that all the timeand it wasn't until I tore my meniscusmy right knee and like the doctor waslike you're gonna need surgery you'renever gonna break again and I like it'sover for meand then yes I was just like tripping atthat point and trying to figure out youknow how to how to how to get throughthat and so then I put I just took likea whole year off from dance and just letit heal I was like really scared ofgetting surgery because I had a bunch offriends that got the surgery yeah and sothen um they they think they couldn'tlike dance so as much as they couldafter the surgery saw a super scared ofit and so I just said what do I have tolose let me just quit like a year andsee what happens and if I really can'tmove then I'll go and get a surgery andthat's it the doctor told me that thatwouldn't be a big deal so to wait for itas long as I'm not like did you getsurgery no I didn't get surgery right soI took the whole healed by cell took theyeah and I went to a physical therapistworked out my knee got a lot of like youknow work done on it and and you knowand I just rested a long time cuz I toremy meniscus in high school remember yeahand then you got like hand hopsyeah you got crazy hand offs hey Ididn't know you like tort and dude nosurgery that's crazyyeah cuz I was scared I probably I meanat that moment if I was in a differentmysaid I probably would have got it but Iwas like dude if I get a surgery and Idon't need it and or and like messes itup because the surgery basically youhave a flap of your meniscus which is abunch of cartilage between your knees isit's like torn and doing all sorts ofwaving in the wind and stuff and itfirst of all cartilage takes a long timeto heal so it's it's gonna it's gonnahave problems and then the surgery isthey like they cut it off yeah yeahright move it clean it so then if it'snot perfect like now there's rubbingthere so then they say what happens islike you can get arthritis and lots ofproblems later on in your life too andthen your knee is gonna functiondifferently now that that's not therecuz you you essentially do need thatthere but yeah because it's it's causingmore problems it's causing pain they'llcut it off yeah yeah and so I guess minehealed was kind of healing weird and soI just went to the physical therapistand they would just break down scartissue until it eventually got into agood place where it doesn't bother meand so it really doesn't bother meeither I mean it's good like once in awhile like if it's cold or somethingI'll feel like a little bit of pain orold man like that so that there's thatand then I man I injured my shouldersboth of my shoulders this one was frommy right shoulder was on a I waspracticing do you know what a Arabiantwist flip is it's like you it's likeyou kind of jump like you're gonnabackflip and then you twist 180 and thenfront flip so I was doing that so like Ihave to throw you have to throw your armkind of like this and I threw it way toohard enough effed up my rotator cuff andat that time I was learning air flaresand I had probably like two or three atthat time and so I had a quit Air flightso I lost my air flares and then I coulddude I had to quit breaking for a longtime because of that came back zero airflares zero Arabian twist and a lot ofother moves that I lost yeah okay then Istarted working again getting all thesethings backand then I was working with the warriorsat the time and we were doing theseshows and there was this crazy trickthat we were trying to figure out how todo where I don't you actually me and youmade this trick with Vince the one youknow the one where Vince what's do thesplits on the ground and then I wouldjump and then you jump in here maybe Iwas jumping over you I don't rememberbut we would do that so we were doingthat except our friend Quang who's likethe buffest guy I know he's doing likehis planche like push-ups down whereVince would have been and then one guyjumps over him and then I was jumpingover that guy and then we got anotherguy who gets thrown over here so it waslike it all happens at the same time soit goes boom yeah and so while we werepracticing this he missed oh and landedstraight on me so I went headfirst intothe ground hit my shoulders super hardand it just like effed on my shoulderand so I went to the doctor they're likeoh yeah this is like a common linebackerinjury and I was like yeah cuz I'm afreak yeah look at me and yeah just likedon't don't do whatever you're doing andI'm like okay what do I do and they'relike that's all you can do all right sothen then I lost air flares again andnow my now both shoulders are messed upand this is my catching shoulder soundslike it's hard to get yeah I always likenot to not too happy with that so I haveair flares a long time ago man I can hittwo once in a while if I can deal withthe pain in the shoulder but if I'm notdown to do that and usually I'm not it'slike yeah it's kind of like oh yeah yeahthat's an airflow I guess so yeah that'sthat's the pains of life of a b-boyyeah yeah so do you have any um chronicinjuries from dancing hmm I'm stilldealing with the torn back even to thecorner back yeahso I think I like twisted wrong I feellike I tore a muscle in it hasn't beenconfirmed yet but when was that that'sbeen like two years I've been every nowand then my back will pull so I can'teven like bend over to get my caroh that's been fun sometimes I get likea weird back pain it's not like nearlyas bad but sometimes it'll be like oohwhat's going on like it makes it so ifyou're like in a weird position it likehurts a lot soon I don't know yeah forsure that the meniscus tear sucked forsure when I try to learn air flares backin the day my shoulder went out of placeI stopped doing that oh yeah I was thereI don't know if you're doing air flarebut I remember you did pop your shoulderat once yeah doing a hand holding fundid yeah I'm lucky I didn't and thatnever happened to me because that wouldbe and we were yelling back then too solike yeah you pop it probably whenyou're a sophomore dude that sucksyeah and then you just started learninghand hops on the other hand yeah andlike you know now you can hand off for ayear yeah it's like riding a bike Inever practice them anymoreright and you could just do it yeah heyno weird I get to hand hops threehandouts maybe so you know yeah yeah Ineed a break my soul no - well actuallyI guess that's a good thing for you likeif you ever lost your legs just be likei'm handi-capable hop around dude thatis sickbut yeah injuries for sure suck yeahit's like you know it was like in theend it's my job so like if somethinggoes wrong mm-hmm game overoh I want to see if like dance startsblowing up to the point where it's likea sport and stuff like you know I get Iguess with the Olympics and stuff I wantto see you know if it was at the NBAlevel and they had all these likeyou know good doctors and stuff likeworking with these athletes to keeptheir bodies like perfectly how goodpeople would get yeah for sure becauseI'm 100% with that yeah I mean Artie Ithink already you're seeing like it's alot of now little kids who probablytheir parents were b-boys or B girlsback in the day are now like ten yearsold and you know double flipping overyeah each other kids are crazy now yeahthey do stuff that I'm like I'm nevergonna try that in my yeah well so it'slike I think you see that now and thenso you're seeing kids that are good fromlike birth essentially and you know Ithink once it becomes like a biggersport and maybe there's more researchinto like how to keep people in physicalgood physical shape for itI think melding those two thingstogether dude you're gonna see somecrazy like 20 year olds like literallyflying just I don't know yeah they'relike it's triple air flares yeah likeit's nothing yeah you like the futurefor like at least our generations likemore coaching them I feel like if itdoes become a sport it's like oh yeahfor sure there's no y generation becomecoaches where the teams which would becreated there the era of like gettingbroke off figuring out how to do it intheir the era of like oh you got brokeoff and can teach me how to be a pro capso now I can do it when I'm 10 a dude ohyeah and then when they have kids whoknowsbe crazy or I don't know maybe breakingdoesn't exist at that time I know manOlympics oh yeah I know where hopefullyit goes through you yeah is it throughor no I think it's like 90% sure I don'tknow I'm pretty sure it's going throughI don't want to say 100 because I don'tknowyeah what are your thoughts on thatthings though I think as long as theyfind like a fair judging system likeeven like it like you have to becertified to judge you knowthere's like you do understand thecriteria so it's not so like biased oranything I think that's what will makeit legit versus people seeing it once inthe Olympics and then all of a suddenthey're like oh no you just can't do itbecause you know just because it wasmessed up the first time so mm-hmm aslong as they get it right the first timeit'll last possible yeah I think I thinkso too i think it's it's tight that it'sin the Olympics and I'm really excitedto see it there and I think we've as ascene come very far to get it here but Ialso am worried that the scene is notready for it because for one there's alot of pushback against it which that'sgonna be problems and then yeah thejudging I think there's a there's a lotof hump to get over to make that rightbecause I think basically judging now iskind of like you winno you just point to the dude that youthink wins that ain't gonna cut it forthe Olympics I mean because they're usedto points and whatever and like oh yeahhe wins he got ten points and I give himzero like that doesn't that ain't gonnawork dude okay so I think yeah everybodyeverybody in the scene really needs tocome together think about how to do thisand I'm not just talking about like theoh Jesus I'm talking about anybody hasseen who has a good idea to like try tofigure it out because I think ifanything has been proven is that wedon't have a good judging system otherthan I mean I think one two three pointto who you think wins is fine with meat from like an artistic perspectivebecause I look at it is like there'sthese judges here and they have theirown artistic perspective on what theythink is good and then pointing at it isjust saying my opinion is this that Ilike this more and if the Olympics isokay with that that's cool but the in inand simply because that kind of goeswell with the way breaking was formedand how we've always done it so it staystrue to how we do itI think there's holes in that for surebut I don't think that's gonna fly withthe Olympics because it's kind of like Ithink what they're gonna say is well ifsomebody who's watching says well whydid that guy win and then they go ohbecause Darren from kin just said sobecause he wore a ninja costume and theother guy didn't okay well alrightthat's how you get an Olympic medal thenyeah yes so that's not gonna fly youknow what I mean so but then again Ithink giving points to specific criteriaI have some reservations on that becauseI think it breaks down a little bit whenyou go okay if you imagine a guy who'sreally well-rounded going against a guywho's really good at maybe a few thingsI can still see either of those guyswinning but a judging system thattailors more to all-around person thatguy is always gonna win in that batterso I have some problems with that it'sit's I like to always compare it topainting you know where you're judgingan art piece so say you had like theMona Lisa and you're looking at I forgetthe name of the painting but like it'sPicasso's painting of the war where it'slike all this cubism kind of thingthere's like a lot of like chaos goingon there's a lot of argue if you werecomparing those and they were back likesay those paintings are battling righthow do you judge that yeah because inone way you could say oh the realism onthis one is much better than that sothey win but then you could say but thisemotion hereI see more emotion in it I want that onebut then you go oh but the Mona Lisasmile has this slight little like thingto it so maybe it's like inner pain orwhatever so there's an emotion in thattoo I so there's like a huge failure ahuge debate that gets involved with itand so how do you put criteria to thatand it could like ruin the art form witha really coolbe like okay I'm just gonna do for workjust to get the points you know yeahversus like if that's not what youfeeling then fucking don't which is sowhich is why I really think the pointand point to who you think wins is agood system because it's at least goingokay it's being true to your impressinglike an audience right and showing yourart form to that audience and theaudience is saying okay I want over thatand the audience being the judge so Ithink it's good that it stays true tothat and they're they they're able toput their own creative opinion into intothe choice of the winner so I thinkthat's good but I do think that itbreaks down a little bit so I was I'vebeen playing with the idea of like ifthere was just like 20 judges andthey're all from different areas of theworld they've all you know maybe hadso-and-so amount of experience 20 yearsor whatever renowned or whatever youknow dancers and they're set in in theroom as like the crowd and they're justjudging and so you get 20 differentpoints of people so basically yoursystem is a point system of 20 totalpoints yeah and and your score is justbased on who that got that particularaudience member points to I think that'sfine like I think this is as long as thejudges are like credentialed whateverthey need to do to get to that spot likethen it's like I feel like that is thefairest way first is doing like you getpoints for footwork or top rocks styleand power you know I mean yeah becausethat's so subjective and yeah I mean Ithere you can get in long debates aboutpeople going like that's not to me I godude who cares yeah like you're sayingthat's footwork and that's not for itit's something cares like you knowI mean that guy's expression of a girl'sexpression or whatever they think it issoon it's just dancing it's just amovement it's either cool or it's notdope or it's not so why don't you justjudge on that rather his a pinkietouched the ground like what the hellare you even talking about do yaunless the footwork competition dudeyeah dude I think footwork competitionsare the stupidest thing and this is yeahthis is a hot take and probably a yeah Iwould imagine a lot of people would bemad at this but I think footworkcompetitions are the stupidest shit everbecause it's like it's just a way forpeople to like go in and go hey look atme I I did footwork based on this modelof what everyone thinks footwork is andI win cool like not to diss anybodywho's done thatyou know usually the person who wins isvery good at what they do but I've seenpeople that have very good what I wouldconsider footwork and they lose and it'sbecause what they're doing is maybe notmainstream footwork you know I think themainstream footwork is probably thatkind of like Rocksteady style a littlebit where it's like very step II a lotof pauses and stuff little littlefreezes in their footwork but I've seenlike more flowy styles where they'redoing sweeps and they go on to theground and like kind of rolled aroundand stuff I'm like they're still usingtheir feet so it's hard to say that it'snot footwork in my opinion like evolvingwith yeah when when I look at thefootwork competition the way I break itdown is there it's it's a way of sayingyou're not allowed to do all this otherstuff and if you do it in this littlebubble then you win and if you touch anyof this stuff out here you lose which Imean I guess that's kind of cool but atthe end of the day it's kind of like alet's tie our one hand behind our backand let's box that's what it is to meit's not like a real boxing match ittie both of your hands together and liketry to bite each other you know what Imeanwhich that's probably fun to watch andI'm not gonna lieforward battles are fun to watch but Idon't know if you're talking aboutstraight up breaking dude I don't know Ithink it's stupid yeah that's my hottake don't hate me for it so we'recoming up on 50 minutes or so yeah yeahdude so I know recently you got engagedright so how's it yeah how's that goinglike are you guys planning your weddingand everything yeah already got thevenue Oh dope next year already gotphotographer videographer got the foodyou know Nate course ten course dangdude what happened then got theguestlist going hmm you're invited ofcourse oh the wife right now ready Ionly get me in February yeah Februarynext year not oh dude did you already ohyeah okay well okay so you guys aretaking that's good me and Keiko took ourtime too we heard we were engaged forlike two yearsoh yeah yeah we were engaged for liketwo years I think and then we um cuz shewas in nursing school at the time andthen I was I don't think I was doinganything but I wasn't gonna plan thewedding I mean that's real how much howmuch of your opinion is going into thewebsite I'll try the food with you youdude yeah every single one of my ideasout the door I mean you got to wear thesocks though he pulled it offdo you yeah so he's talking aboutI goofed on everyone at my wedding yeahcuz I like to make jokes I think I madethe joke too Caicos mother because shewas like you know really involved liketrying to like have us do all thesethings and I was like I think we'regonna have a ninja turtle themed weddingand she's just like shocked went throughher face like are you serious like ifshe she takes everything really seriousso that's why I said it she freaked outfor a second and then um I was justsaying oh I'm just messing aroundoh and I remember she asked me like whatis what kind of food are you gonna getI'm just getting a taco truck yeah somesome fear in her face ya know hey I'llstill stick by this opinion I think thatif you did your wedding at like a nicepark and you got a taco truck to comethrough and you know you Davi say haveto get it on a good day for weather butyou get a taco truck and you just invitelots of people you get a really dope DJand then make sure you know the city'snot trippin out about sound and stuffand just did your wedding just like as aalmost like a barbecue you know I thinkthat would be the funnest thing ever beso like less formal yeahtakes out the you need to sit by thisperson it's like yeah like cuz I I'vealways hated like the formality ofthings and so when we started planningour wedding I was like dude this is notfor me man okay let's just like cuz Iwas seriously saying let's just go tothe the courthouse and sign papers inwhatever and then just do it like thatbut I knew that wasn't gonna fly so wehad to dothing and I thought it was a good wayyeah I mean Keiko did a good jobfiguring out what to do and I helped alot with like decorations I guessbecause she would say pay build this andbecause I know how to build so I wouldgo and build it for her so I built awhole bunch of stuff for her or for usand over here come on yeah so yeah itturned out and you know we were lookingfor a good venue so we went to a lot ofdifferent ones and we went to that oneit was about the flower farm in Loomisnear Sacramento so I really liked it shereally liked it because there was likethese chickens they wander around and wethought it was like the funniest thingever because I grew up near Fair Oakswhich there's chickens wandering aroundall the time so it was like something Iwas used to a little bit and I used tohave chickens as a kid tooand so I was like oh this is fun shethought it was funny too so we're likeyeah let's do that's why we chose thatplace they don't spot for sure and soyeah we I mean we made it we took thatand I guess the reason we chose it wasbecause having it on like a somewhatfarm setting like a nice farm settingtook away a little bit of the formalityso I was happy with that so I think itturned out well I need super dope to seeold friends and stuff too yeah that wascool yeah and then yeah during theceremony I got to goof on everybodybecause I said hey well my vows you knowI said all my vows and ice and then atthe end I said Sancta cake oh I wish Ihad because I basically said I'm gladthat you let me do a surprise TeenageMutant Ninja Turtle themed wedding andshe was like oh what and then I likelift up my pants and I had a NinjaTurtles sock on to get clothes thereyeah so I like to it was a good I thinkthat was good yeahyeah yeah cuz I was just I was reallytrying to not make it so forth like Idon't know it when I lost it even likewhat the new job is playing like thatwas just oh yeah yeah I'd already setthe tone like it was gonna formal youknow I was yeah yeah exactly like weyeah we played new jobbies it wasanother reflection no reflection eternaland that's mainly because I think whenme and Keiko first started dating I usedto play that song a lot of snot way Idon't know I can't remember but yeah shereally likes that song tooso anyway so yeah we played that becauseit was like we're trying to set the toneas like this is like have some fun andyou know chill yeah relax have a goodpeople going yeah y'all formalin shityeah you mean like the adults they'relike somewhere dressed in suits they'rejust like hanging do my dad was anotherthing cuz I knew for sure my dad wasgonna wear and so everyone was likeasking me like what's the attire and Iwas like well I don't care what you wearI'll probably be wearing a suit causeit's my wedding day but like you're notgonna offend me if you wear freakingboard shorts yeah in fact I wouldprobably think that's really funny and agood idea cuz it would probably be hotthat day but and then I would say butfor sure I know my dad is not wearing asuit so he kind of just already set thedress code yeah cuz I could tell him towear a suit and he ain't gonna wear sothat's already that's a dress code rightthereso like Caicos doubt of saying oh shemight wear aa tux or whatever I was like you knowyou wear whatever you want to wear butfor sure my dad is not gonna wear a suitso if you're trying to match him likeyou're gonna be looking a lot flier thanhis you know he's gonna come in with hiswork boots is like new pair of jeansthat and I'm talking like he'll havethese black jeans and what he does iswhen he works he has the black jeansthey get holes in them so then like ayear later he buys a new pair so he justbought his new pair without wedding andthen but he's probably still wearingthem working now you know what I mean sohe just you know was smart about what orI don't know I don't know yes so that'sthat's my dad so yeah dude so is likeyour wedding planning like is that goingpretty good like our young Jen's in theindustry you know oh really okay doesn'tmake up artists for wedding so she knowsa lot of people just makes it easier soshe she's not stressing I guess yougotta you're more than a year out yeahyou guys probably aren't stress in themyeah her friends a wedding planner - soodo hired her so just take all thestress away you know he did most of theplanning I think you did most of theplanning paid for everything and we hada day of coordinator though so we workedwith them and then I had a friend whowas a deejay so he did all that and hedid all the lighting and stuff yeahRJ shoutout to him a supreme soul he wasalso on TV don't music to you yeah yeahI saw well yeah I really wanted goodthat was the one thing about the weddingthat I really wanted was good mean Ithink so I was like sure like cuz Ithought of it like this if the weddingsucks it's probably because of a DJ -yeah or if you didn't like really enjoyit and also I also thought is like ifthe wedding really sucks how to save itso it all hinges on a good DJcrazy cuz I it's like yep if somethinggoes bad and the DJ just goes you knowhe plays some sound and in society youknow and then place you know some dopetrack and then people just are like youknow getting down to itdude you save the wedding's like justimagine it you know oh no the weddingthere the the bride spilled wine allover her white dress and the DJ goes ohno yo dude drop that beat son wedding issaved right I don't know I'm not a wayand I'd probably get a divorce yeah wellI would say just enjoy the weddingplanning time try to like have fun withthem for sure don't let it stress youout yeah cuz anything is just likesigning checks like yeah ya know a lotof money like sign checks for sure onetime in your life oh yeah one time inyour life yeah just I think I have astory that like puts it into perspectivewe were like this was like paid probablylike a month or two out from the weddingcake I was like looking at the differentdesserts to have so she wanted all theselike cookies and she like startedbreaking down and crying and stuff whatare you crying aboutshe's like oh my god everything's goingwrong these cookies they're they theydon't have like chocolate cookies theyhave chocolate chip cookie you know itwas like well so they don't havechocolate cookies they got chocolatechip oh oh no I don't have the secondbest cookie they have the first bestcookwhy are you crying and I was like heyjust I started laughing and she's likegetting mad at me and I'm like but heretake a step back and think about whatyou're saying you're like crying aboutcookies like let's just be happy we canhave cookies yeah everybody lovescookies and if you don't love a cookielike fuck you don't you know so yeah andthen I think she she like kind ofstarted laughing too and then she's likeoh yeah it's just the stress yeah solet's just laugh at this how does thecookie and then realize that cookies aregood and everybody loves cookies so ifyou don't like this particular cookieyou can go to cookie hell any cookiesponsors out there yeah mrs. field I'mtrying to remember the other one ChipsAhoywhere you at abisco hey Nabisco I needsome cookies dude you can pay me oh damnso okay so let's like try to wrap theshow up all right so what's in thefuture for you got for you and now thatyou're getting married like starting upthese studios like obviously stilldancing like where do you see this goinglike you're gonna keep teaching you'regonna like do more shows or kind of getaway from there and start coaching orwhatever I don't know yeah I feel likemy body is starting to tell me dude youneed to slow down so I think well rightnow I'm working on a program to helptheir dance teachers or upcoming danceteachers like make money withoutdepending on like you know likeauditions or even a dance studio likejust make it on your own just hustle onyour own and just understand how to uselike marketing and you know salesmanshipandstuff to do it all on your own so youcan just make a living off of that andteach the students that you want toteach me a life can you teach me how tomake a good podcast can you got it dudeI'll do the marketing for you I do thisbut this my guess is already good manI'm killing it I'm terrible at marketingdude I don't even use social media likemuch I mean I use Facebook but it'susually to talk to my mom mm-hmm or whoyou know someone in my family yeah anduh yeah so like a marketing on socialmedia is a nightmare for me yeah likejust thinking about it I'm like dude Idon't want to do that yeah yeah no Ifeel you I feel like especially ourgeneration and so one was like you feellike you have to post a bunch of stuff Idon't like post yeah I feel like it'snot about that it's more about like ifyou understand like how you know likewhen we buy stuff it's usually throughsomebody paying for an ad to show ohyeah yeah I mean so I feel like if youunderstand that like yes you're payingmoney to get your stuff out there but itwill come back to you but a lot of ourgeneration they just want to do it forfreeso that's why they just post a bunch ofstuff but it's not doing anything yeahthere's a lot of tools out there thatlike use the data that it tracks to likesell you stuff seems kind of like theysee like once they see your ad and youcan talk and they click you can targetthem to like you know show up later inthe Blake whoa yeah we've seen thatDarrin has looked up big black manytimes follow me around many likes to doit late at night so next time he'sscrolling through Instagram let's givehim oh hey Kurt you sell big black allthose we got the guy exactly so subduedI have the sides calm like how many canI put you down for a whole bag a bushelthe pockets is led up to that one ohyeah yeahyeah here's an announcement I'm startingmy business a big black bill does calmand check it Darren is my first and onlycustomer thank you you know buying myhost star is somebody owns that domainyeah probably somebody does hey pleasesponsor this I don't care see that'd befunny if like a hundred episodes in I[Laughter]was gonna ask you something again um yesokay so you're um yeah so you're gettingyou're like teaching people how to likemarket themselves and stuff and okay sothat's like you're building like kind ofa business around it yeah okay yeahthat's definitely something that isuseful to a lot of people mainly to mefreelancers you know it's hard out thereyeah it's it's hardwell yeah cuz we I think we live in aworld of freelancing now cuz I've justbeen noticing that a lot of like typicaljobs careers are like getting outsourcednow to freelancers because the overheadfor them is a lot lower they can droptheir costs a little bit then thecompany also doesn't need to pay forlike and health benefits and whateverother benefits they use so it's kind oflike in their best interest to do thatand you know sometimes you know they'repaying more maybe like per hour for afreelancer but saving a lot of moneybecause they don't need to do deal withany of the stuff that they deal with andthey just go okay here's the here's theproject here's the scope and you'regonna do it for this feed I am and thenit's like easier for them to do dobusiness that wayI've noticed that that's been happeninga lot and there's a lot ofresources out there for freelancers tolike be able to do that so yeah I see inlike 10 years it's probably gonna be alot of that yeah sure you know and Iwork so I work as an engineer and Icould see that easily happening yeah Imean it already does happen to us but Ican easily see a lot of companiesstepping back from having full-timeemployees to maybe only like a couple ofthem and then they outsource everythingright sure um cuz yeah I already know ofcompanies that do that right now so sothat's cool so that's your you'reworking on that kind of stuff so beforewe close the show is there any likeshout outs or any kind of plugs you wantto give mmmjust follow me at at Darren our Wang andcheck out my website Darren are wongkomand dude thanks for having me I feellike I haven't seen you in so longyeah nobody even before the wedding Ihaven't seen you in a while yeah causeright after the wedding I moved out hereno I moved down here before the weddingand then during the wedding we were justplanning so we were just locked up inhere and then after the wedding yeah andthen after the wedding we were like justwe didn't want to go anywhere you'relike I'm sick of the world yeah yeahjust you know yeah so we were justchilling and then yeah we moved here andoh no so now I'm closer to you and mankick it more yeah so okay cool oh don'tyou have a YouTube channel you teachyour son or something I do if you wantto check that out it's also Darren ourWang so pretty much give you time andDarren are Wong I'm all over the placeso pornhub yeah Darren our Wang you'llsee some wild stuff sponsored by likedildos comm dope dude so yeah shout outto your pornhub account shout out toyour YouTube shout out to your Instagramyour Facebook your big black dildoaccount tight man well it's been greathaving you I'd love to have you back Ifeel like I could talk to you foreverum there's tons of other stuff I cantalk to you about good luck to you goodluck to kynges man I'd love to have aninja outfit if you got any of them hiI'm Jim asked I need I need a Halloweencostume so I was thinking about wearingthis for Halloween and then changing theway that I normally dress to just beninja so if you got spare ninja costumesI'm not picky just or if there's asponsor ninja costumes calm what's upwhere you atI need some sponsors oh please you knowI'll get paid in ninja cough okay youcan pay me and ninja stars dude orwhatever and into whatever else and thenjust have smoke bombs you pay me insmoke bombplease oh god okay thanks thankseverybody for listening sorry this showsucks[Music][Music]you[Music]  

Welcome to SHRIEK PANTS for the week of March 8th, 2020. Shriek Pants is the horror podcast hosted by Ken Livitski that concentrates on the PHYSICAL media that you love and crave! ***** Logo & design created by Snollygoster Productions ***** Music: Blacklight by Ross Bugden https://soundcloud.com/rossbugden ***** This episode's titles available from: shoutfactory.com/shop amazon.com amazon.ca amazon.fr amazon.de fnac.com zavvi.com hmv.co.uk ***** Kickstarter/Indiegogo campaigns mentioned: NEVER HIKE IN THE SNOW https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/never-hike-alone-never-hike-in-the-snow#/

Welcome to SHRIEK PANTS for the week of March 1st, 2020. Shriek Pants is the horror podcast hosted by Ken Livitski that concentrates on the PHYSICAL media that you love and crave! ***** Logo & design created by Snollygoster Productions ***** Music: Blacklight by Ross Bugden https://soundcloud.com/rossbugden ***** This episode's titles available from: shoutfactory.com/shop amazon.com amazon.ca amazon.fr amazon.de ***** Kickstarter/Indiegogo campaigns mentioned: PARALLELS https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/parallels--13#/ RED SUMMER MASSACRE https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/red-summer-massacre#/  THE FALL OF CAMP BLOOD https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-fall-of-camp-blood-friday-the-13th-fan-film#/ Small Town Monsters Trilogy https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/minervamonster/ufos-the-mothman-legacy-and-bell-witch-small-town-monsters?ref=discovery_category HALLOWEEN: REVELATION https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/leponicstudios/halloween-revelation-feature-length-fan-film?ref=discovery_category

On today's episode we take a look at my upcoming travels to San Antonio, TX for PAX, along with what I will be carrying with me. Second, we take a quick look at a couple of Kickstarter/Indiegogo items that could peak your interest to back the campaign. Then, I will give you 5 YouTube channels that you might want to check out if you aren't already subscribe, and lastly I give a final review on DC's latest crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earth's” remember spoiler alert “you have been warned”. Episodes are recorded weekly and released on Thursday mornings. Subscribe to my podcast on Anchor.fm, Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, Spotify, or any of your favorite podcast players to guarantee new episodes are delivered as soon as they go live. Host: Jeff B Follow me @ Anchor.FM Become a Patreon member here Episode Links: --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/themanestreampodcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/themanestreampodcast/support

Mark Pecota is the CEO and co-founder of LaunchBoom - the most effective product launch system. LaunchBoom consists of a three phase process where they (1) test new product ideas and validate demand, (2) launch the most sought after products using Kickstarter & Indiegogo, and (3) scale brands using ecommerce. Since 2015, LaunchBoom has worked with over 400 entrepreneurs and raised over $30M to date. In this episode Mark discusses - The decision to niche the business into product launching using crowdfunding.   - Operating a completely remote team with 25 employees - How the LaunchBoom formula works. - His approach to being a healthy, productive businessman including his best tip, his current morning journalling technique.

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.

EPISODE SUMMARY This week we chat with woodworker and inventor Andy Klein. We get into his recent twin screw turbo vise Kickstarter as well as his new jig to create pencils with a hand plane. TOPICS 00:04:36 - Andy's Background 00:07:28 - Chemical engineering 00:10:48 - Side Projects 00:17:56 - Quick Release Twin Screw Vise 00:18:41 - Fossil Table 00:22:14 - Folding Dado Miter Set 00:27:33 - Partnering with Rockler for sales 00:29:38 - The hardest part of product development 00:31:16 - Partnering with the Wood Whisperer 00:32:12 - Wood screw taps 00:34:40 - Twin turbo vise on Kickstarter 00:47:48 - Next steps for the vise production 00:52:17 - Pencil making jig 00:55:28 - Shop Update LETS CONNECT Subscribe Support on Patreon Instagram YouTube Website★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Its Sunday so that means it's time for more nerdy goodness from the ATGN Crew.  This week Willie has the latest on the new free titles on PS+ that has him tempted, Anthony shares some of the goodies he’s received from this Kickstarter/Indiegogo projects, and Chris admits defeat and will now subscribe to CBS All Access with the new that Sir Patrick Stewart is returning to the role of Captain Picard.   For a full rundown of the show check out our shownotes: http://bit.ly/ATGN323   Look for us LIVE Sunday mornings (11 AM EST) by checking out http://www.geeks.live or http://live.atgnpodcast.com, where you will be either to participate via our chat room. We are also available via Twitter (@ATGNPodcast) Facebook (facebook.com/ATGNPodcast) e-mail (atgnpodcast(at)gonnageek.com) or our ATGN Hotline at 304-806-ATGN.     All Things Good And Nerdy is a proud member of the Gonna Geek Network.

Nick is developing a smart asthma management patent pending technology.  He currently is getting a Masters of Business Administration in Healthcare at the Fox School of Business and Management Temple University. What we will discuss on today’s show:   Nick is developing a smart asthma management patent pending technology. He is currently getting a Masters of Business Administration in Healthcare at the Fox School of Business and Management Temple University. We talk to Nick about his personal story, background and what he is doing to help people. He also tells us why he got into the business of asthma management. Our in-depth interview also touched on sales and distribution channels and the strategy for building it out in the future and raising money, pivoting from the initial design, how to commercialization and various go to market strategies. For Nick, it’s about solving problems not just coming up with a rockstar idea. As a child asthma impacted Nick sending him to the nurse’s office and to the hospital. He dealt with it and played sports actively. We also talked to him about targeting the end user and making key changes on the device from feedback. The first version was going to be a necklace piece of jewelry but he had to pivot and iteract quickly. He first pitched the idea to solve the problem to help people find out and learn more about asthma at a Jefferson Hospital Health Hackathon sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield. He created a real rough prototype and pitched it to the judges. With the original prototype he needed to pivot and made changes. His team consists of a biomedical engineer now an MD, neurologist at Jefferson Hospital and lead technologist. A software engineer from the hardware side. It’s not a diagnostic test like sounds of your lungs for asthma management. Nick did online asthma surveys as well as in person. Determined that a necklace with an adhesive type of device was not going to work but a chest strap idea would work better as it was able to stay clean so the process of iteration and leverage and focusing on what the end user really wanted was key as they came up with rapid prototyping. So how do they plan on patenting the technology and raise money? It’s all about leveraging resources – the group first went to the Drexel Law Club who work with entrepreneurial early stage startups but they did not have an FDA focus on technologies.  However, Temple University Institute of Entrepreneurial Innovation helped provide a local patent attorney. Strados Labs won a business competition this past spring and received an in-kind gift for that patent attorney which was provided pro bono to help them with the provisional patent.  It was sponsored by Be Your Own Boss Bowl competition. In additional to working with intellectual law firm Ceaser Rivise Temple University provides Strados Labs with working space.  They college creatively packages these resources together in one bucket so that startup entrepreneurs can leverage all the resources.  The competition provides three tracks: undergrad, grad, faculty, social tracks. Strados came in second only for Nick to lose to his professor. Ellen Weber is the Director of the Temple University Institute for Entrepreneurial Innovation who work with other venture capital firms like Benjamin Franklin Technology Partners , Robinhood, Mid-Atlantic Ventures who work with startups We discussed the prototype and patent as well as  how the company will get the technology to their end users, distributing and selling the technology.  They anticipate having the provisional patent filed by the end of this year.  Once the provisional patent has been filed  with their end claims which give them first file rights if someone else comes up with the concept the first to file has a better claim to the idea.  Strados Labs will have 12 months to spend finalizing the software and hardware algorithms – When dealing with a patent it’s important to note what a company can say and what they keep secret It comes down to what is proprietary or internal v what they can mention to the public.  We know the company is developing a wearable device but they keep the sound capture feature private. Their goal is to provide extra value in this narrow niche. Focus on those end users to help them manage their asthma, provide advice and feedback from the device, survey done signs symptoms of an asthma attack of wheezing – sometimes wheezing starts slowly in lungs and you try through your own will to identify those signs and alerting them it’s not a diagnostic but alert something is happening to them alert to phone and message to parent or someone else take inhaler stop exercises breath deeply its an alert monitor track and monitor on back end but focus now is on front end – how they are bringing in people to do research – test it – market service – white papers how asthma needs to be better managed and that 2/3 can be prevented by not medicines but just managing it better – market research targeting asthmatics online forum Reddit American asthma foundation aaii – healthcare, MBA take quick survey for feedback to validate get qualitative information on people’s condition some type of technology to better manage people’s disease work with asthma research in NY how environment effects and how such technology would help doing focus groups up in Harlem pre-testing phase using this technology get feedback early then use it for testing. We asked about some of the challenging moments the company has faced as a new startup and Nick being a business leader  – they are entering a high regulatory, high barrier, high capital intensive business and also managing individuals.  Nick working his day job and doing this at night and on weekends also while he was in California during the summer while the doctor neurologist was back in the Philadelphia area.  Nick had to find the time and make sure he was communicating effective and quickly needed to find the right people and manage the work stream and also maintain his current job. What wanted to know what contributes to his success – he said a relationship with his co-founders the neurologist and although Nick is the face of Strados Labs his co-founder makes things smooth when running ideas past him or acting as a sounding board for being a devil’s advocate which balances the good with the bad.  Its good to be positive but things are not always rosy so his co-founder is a good balance keeping him well grounded. Insurance reimbursement of the device for asthma management. The problem is that once a year people with asthma can be admitted to the ER with cost of $2500 and where it costs $20,000 a device for their solution $150 bucks can reduce risk to go to hospital and reduce those high-risk individuals by 60% less reduce asthma and reduce potential death or going to ER.  The plan on having the insurance company reimburse  through ins company and promoted by doctor hard time managing we will provide you pluma ware system reimbursed end users, not the person using it but doctors new business development force Build a relationship with insurance area health technology comp who work with Medicaid and chronic diseases – use reminders to become more engaged with asthma management to leverage their device to partner with health systems improve health understand educate them innovation partnership spoke at hackathon non-hackathon sponsored by BCBS. Advice for others he gives – to startup overwhelming most common mistakes students or preventing them from starting – coming up with a rockstar idea best idea and they stop if they think it’s not the best – for him ideas change so much focus on problem and improvement upon those issues or problems – he started with wanting to solve the problem now is developing the solution focus on problems v ideas – Recurring themes resources – help – people here to help – at top-ranked entrepreneurial program Philadelphia meet ups network events talk to them about ideas – Philly startup leaders – new in CC – new tech meetup Philly – leverage through temple Univer entrepreneur network summer studio incubator reach out to those you know in entrepreneurship – intellectual property hardship creating things v creating apps people want to invest in electrons v atoms – Fully functional is challenge for things apps that is coding but here you have to build it and test it so more difficult to get funding federal grant challenging to get through Kickstarter IndieGoGo developing things medical devices – if he knew about these resources 6 months ago – doesn’t want to fail but will now know them federal funds natural science foundation SBIR funding process dept of engineer institute of health all have funds for small business who want to start businesses who will help him write the grants trying to leverage innovation partnership through the small business association dev a tech national science foundation and they like your idea resources pre-proposal key components of stuff and how to develop commercialization of it Voucher stipend to write grant, someone, to help SBIR agency to send to – Lightning round sponsored by audible. A book Nick recommends – The Alchemist, written by Paulo Coelho de Souza – It’s about an individual on his journey to find a treasure. His entire motivation as a shepherd is to be rich but he goes on journey not where you get but how you get there he ends up the same – for him, it’s about the journey what he has learned and get to place he wants to go and help asthma Three take-aways from show:     Don’t be afraid to ask questions even as a new entrepreneur just talk to people about your idea to many people get caught up it being secreative or having to much concern about signing NDA, your idea will get stronger if you talk more about it; Focus on who you are working with, some people want to work with their friends but be careful who you work with and who you bring onto your team they might have a certain skill set but focus on the person beyond just their skill set and make sure it’s aligned with your vision; Have fun it’s an exciting journey, it’s risky but just be smart. Last show: To listenup to our last show with Steve Bazemore and get all the show notes about career advice, personal development head on over to mitchellchadrow.com/show030 Sponsors Today’s show is sponsored by two awesome sponsors Snappa a resource at mitchellchadrow.com/snappa No need for graphic designer experience no need for photoshop Snappa Provides Graphics for social media ads, blogs Snappa has Pre-made templates and all you do is add their hi-tech photos text graphics Guess what there is a feature that allows you to Resize your images is that cool or what As a Non-designer myself I now use snappa to make beautiful graphics Mitchellchadrow.com/snappa check it out you can sign up for free and they have other plans as well The second is Mitchellchadrow.com our listeners are looking for those special resources to help startup a business, generate ideas for family and life or to or to help them gain employment until they startup So join other trusted friends of the Listenup Show, the Mitchell Chadrow Podcast and join my email list now at mitchellchadrow.com – and as a thank you I will send you an outline for the Startup entrepreneur and the ebook 30 Tools and Resources to Startup just for joining today it’s great whether you are using it for business family or life so grab it today – guess what Snappa is on that list Strados Labs is incorporate his business an LLC in DE but operates in PA in an incubator space at temple How to stay in contact and connect Stradoslabs.net He enjoys talking about being an entrepreneur. Product looks like team and blog topics on healthcare and asthma management.   The post Healthcare Wearable Technology Solutions Asthma Management Nick Delmonico Strados Labs Show 031 appeared first on mitchellchadrow.com.

  Crowdsourcing, Crowdfunding, entrepreneurial ventures.  Equity crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in the next ten years is going to be the next big thing. I have a friend who is a professional, smart, successful whose son is starting a software company. Guess what, they are going to use it. They are not going to use the big banks or VC's to fund them and they could if they really wanted to. For passive income this same friend has bought a lifestyle franchise / so for his next franchise purchase he is going to sell a share of the franchise store using, that's right, you guess it right, crowdfunding and he may consider crowdsourcing. So what is Crowdsourcing anyway and why should you Listen Up Trusted Friends to this viable alternative for obtaining those needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a larger group of people online rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. Now Crowdfunding its the use of small amounts of capital from a large number of individuals to finance your new or next business venture, startup. Crowdfunding makes use of your networked platforms through social media and other websites that get the word out about your new business and attracts investors. So why you ask? Crowdfunding - it increases entrepreneurship by expanding your pool of investors from whom funds can be raised beyond your traditional circle of owners, relatives and empower you to focus beyond the big banks and venture capitalists by using alternative means to expand your reach. Remember your smarter than most. Kickstarter IndieGoGo just to name a few. Take small donations for charitable, artistic endeavors or contributions to launch your new or existing business in return for the product being made, service, or some type of a thank-you So how can all this be done now you may ask - well the JOBS Act - so let me educate you but keep it entertaining - this Act creates a special exemption for crowdfunding so that companies can sell securities by way of crowdfunding. Generally, under the Act, companies are limited to raising $1 million in any 12-month period using crowdfunding and $2 million with audited financials. Companies cannot crowdfund on their own but will have to engage an intermediary that’s registered with the SEC as a broker or funding portal. These intermediaries will be required to vet the company seeking to fund. Individual investors will be limited in the amount they can invest by way of crowdfunding in any 12-month period to: if your annual income or net worth is less than $100,000 – the greater of $2,000 or 5 percent of annual income or net worth, or if your annual income or net worth is more than $100,000 – 10 percent of annual income or net worth up to a maximum of $100,000. When calculating net worth, you should not count the value of your primary residence or any loans secured by the residence (up to the value of the residence). Many other new and young entrepreneurs startups, franchises will want to do the same with their products and businesses as well.  Maybe our guests or Trusted Friends in the Listen Up Podcast audience. Just look at all the crowdfunding sites there are so many entrepreneurs that need help. I currently interview startups, young and new entrepreneurs on my podcast.  Take my recent interview with Scott Pecorello Show012 and next Friday I am interviewing Amira Idris on Show016. These startups are so interesting to listen to, they have a wonderful outlet right here on the Listen Up Podcast, the Mitchell Chadrow Show and mitchellchadrow.com, to increase their visibility, with all the Free Premium Resources that we provide right here as they get going.  All you have to do is subscribe at mitchellchadrow.com So the take away Listen Up Now the startup news - you to can raise crowdfunding and sourcing from non-accredited investors since 2012. So what, you may ask? This is a really big deal! Don't let someone scare you out of this possible and extremely appealing viable option instead of going directly to the big banks or VC's. Do you have to know what you are doing? Sure thing! That's why we have this community of Trusted Friends.  Education, Trust, not just saying we are authentic but in the actions as well not just the words. Doesn't matter if you can raise money from accredited investors, big banks or VC's. You can't rely on these entities to help you in the new economy and you must take action to consider other alternative options to raise your own funds. The crowd funding and sourcing way. Sure there can be a lot of noise in the Crowd but your crowd is smarter, right? Maybe. You'll get funded as well - they whisper? No guarantee but there are not many guarantees in life. There's no problem here - you are just trying to stack the deck in your favor. Naysayers will say beware caution ahead - well dealing with the big banks and VC's but maybe just maybe there are better opportunities to empower yourselves. So what must you and your non accredited know right off the bat? Yes, its the collective crowdsourcing experience of the group.  Well your a new or young entrepreneur so we are all on notice - correct!  The non accredited investors  are not the big banks or VC's - precisely - why we want them - by our side - I hope that is obvious.   The non accredited investors may have collective crowdsourcing sales or distribution experience and have experience in purchasing stocks in companies with great ideas. That's not the point. We are tired of relying on big banks and VC's for our education, training and thought control on what is or is not a good investment . These non accredited investors do love your startup concept, and do envision one in every household, thats the point of our interest in you and your company and our CrowdSourcing and the Group collectively is smarter and may even know more about getting it to the market, how to run the business, or achieve positive cash flow. We know that startups write business plan and the non accredited investors use that to fund it, but our experienced business owner guests and collective non-accredited investors are smarter then you may think, they know cash flow is important as well which at the end of the day provides the business with a viable business not merely a business plan. Do you really think that the big banks and the VC’s are the only individuals that can drill down and ask the right questions of our startups or are the only people that have the secret sauce to success about just how these products will be brought to market and become sustainable. Well, think again! Our Trusted Friends and the non-accredited investors out there are being educated right here and will know about the importance of the cash flow plan in addition to the business plan of these startups as an essential focus point for success in their investment. We interviewed Damian Salas in Show 014 from the Close School of Entrepreneurship and as these Young Entrepreneurs and new startups need to tell there story they know they have a wonderful platform right here on our show. Our Trusted Friends the Non-Accredited Investor is not as naive we know that sales are an essential part of a good idea of the startup - we have the Crowd and Sourcing here for education, training, and wisdom from past experiences. While we enjoy focusing on the product we are smart enough through proper crowdsourcing, delegating and listening to these startup management stories of the company. Sure we believe in our guest products and solutions especially when we are given a sample product so that these entrepreneurs can continue to grow, yes we believe that the startup will be able to manufacture and distribute the product in the future. By the way that's why smarter non-accredited investors are investing smaller amounts in many companies which help them diversify their own investment portfolio.  We are smarter then you think we believe in the management team and the story of the startup which determines the success or failure of the product. No, we are not going to oversimplify the sales process to lull us into a false sense of security in the product or startup. There is a lot of information out there online, in the stores and each day we can be overwhelmed by it. Yes, we are consumers but also entrepreneurs and Trusted Friends of a Community where we pride ourselves on educating ourselves, learning from one another right here right now. Yes, we are also producers and have faith that it takes more than just a positive response to the company offering. We must be realistic of the timing between the product time offering and when it's actually available to the public.    You know as a startup that the costs and time of production and distribution can be greater than you anticipate and build that into your plan. It will not deter nor discourage you as this Trusted Friends Community is here for support. Meanwhile, you now get that publicity right here, providing you and your companies with Free Premium Resources and better access to the market non-accredited investors with the Jobs Act can level the playing field and move on good ideas and have those new ventures and startups move first to market.   This can help the startup’s idea get to market so that does not becomes outdated. The guest startups here don't get a false sense of security after a successful Crowd Funding. You are well grounded and realistic especially when you get constructive feedback news – such as the idea can be much improved with better management, delivery, and achieving a positive cash flow. So launching the business is merely the starting point as well as what kind of money you can raise.  It’s all about the startups education and lessons learned which are required for what it takes to get to market and quantifying the actual cost of sales.  We are smarter than you think regardless of what is raised for the company.   The post CrowdFunding CrowdSourcing Entrepreneurial Ventures Show 015 appeared first on Startup Entrepreneur Listenup Show.

الحلقة 3 - من بودكاست "سوالف في الريادة" بعنوان - نموذج العمل : من حيث ينتهي الأخرون نتحدث عن الخدمة outgrow.me التي نموذج عملها مساعدة المشاريع التي تنجح بالحصول على تمويل من KickStarter و IndieGoGo على عرض وبيع منتجاتهم. رابط الحلقة على المدونة http://bit.ly/12ABWoN