Kickstarter, the Value of Ideas and Taxes – Small Business Show Episode 43

Greetings folks, and welcome to the small business show at businessshow.co this is episode 43 for Wednesday, December 2, 2015 here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton and coming to you from Concord, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, Dave?

I'm. I'm okay. It's been, it's been a crazy week. You know, I think part of it is we had the short week last week. Of course it was. Which was nice. I mean, you know, we had Thanksgiving and I had some really nice family time, but this is a crazy time of year, especially in the ad industry. We had, we had Black Friday on Friday and Cyber Monday on Monday. And so there's all these things going on that all need to, that are all like, our business is not usually time critical to the day. If somebody sends us an ad and says, you know, it's supposed to start on Tuesday, I mean, usually we try to get it started on Tuesday, but. But if, if there's some issue with like their creative or whatever and it gets pushed to Wednesday, you know what, that's fine. They're going to run for a month usually, right? Usually. But this, the last week and a half. No. And in fact, for the next 26 days or whatever it is, the answer is also no. You know, it's like this stuff has to start. Even if it's, I don't want to say it's the customer's fault, but even if it's something that we need the customer to feel fix in order for their ad to serve successfully, you know, it's. We feel the pressure to make sure that happens because if we can't get their ad started on Tuesday and it's supposed to start on Tuesday, it doesn't matter whose fault it is. We're not going to be paid.

Yes.

And the customer is not going to be happy. So there's lots going on. Yeah.

And does that come down to communication between the customer and your people and your team?

Yeah, I mean, right. It's all, it's all communication. I mean, but sometimes it's, you know, somebody sends in a piece of, I don't know, whatever it would be HTML that's got an error in it. And it's like, okay, well, you know, the error needs to be fixed. Who's. It doesn't matter whose fault it is. Yes, the customer created it. Yes. They're supposed to deliver us perfectly clean HTML, but if I can fix it, I'm just going to fix it. You know, it doesn't, we're not going to push it back to them. But sometimes it's like the fix makes a change to it and it's a, it's a significant change or something noticeable. It's like, well, now we need to have a back and forth. Like why did you change it? Well, because I tried to speed it up, you know, so. Sure. Yep.

Yes, yes.

It's all just customer service, but it's, it's.

Yeah.

This time of year it gets very time critical. So more so than here, more so than most of the year.

Yeah, Yeah. I was out all last week. We spent Thanksgiving in New York, which is awesome. But there's like, you're saying there's a price to pay on Monday and actually Tuesday and Wednesday as well when you.

Come back, as it turns out.

Yep. Yes.

Yeah.

So we're playing catch up here and managing issues, putting out fires and you know, it's timely as well for us. It's as everything shipped, you know, and as well a lot of purchasing opportunities this time of year from companies that want to get product out of their inventory for end of year tax planning. Sure. So we've kind of take advantage of that and bump our, our fiscal year away from December so that, that doesn't impact us quite as much.

And well, I wish I had done that. If I had, if I had been wiser when we started this business and, and really, I just mean, you know, if I knew exactly what business it was I was getting into.

Yeah, that's right.

I, I definitely would have done that because yeah, it, it's crazy. We, we book, you know, probably half our revenue in the last three months of the calendar year. It would be much better to shift three months forward and have say, you know, April 1st be the beginning of our year.

But now, I mean, you can change that, right? There's, I don't know what hoops you have to jump through and do it.

But I look like I looked into it and it was not, I don't know, I mean it, it might, it's certainly got to be doable without, you know, tearing your company apart. The corporate structure. I don't mean like, you know, your employees and everything, but. Yeah, yeah, I don't think you have to, but there's, but the IRS is, you know, they're, they, they want to, they're going to ask a lot of questions when you do something like that.

Sure. Check out your account. And last week we were talking about tax related stuff and I want to revisit a couple things, but before we get started, I've been thinking he was on that long flight as I was coming home. And I was thinking about the show and how we started as dba we thought was catchy doing business as. And it turns out not as many people know really the. That phrase or it's not as common. And so then we switched and you know, the small business show, which I, I think is great, but lately especially, I always jump back and I listen to our previous interviews because I, I'll be the first admit it. I'm definitely the person learning the most on this show from our interviewers and, and our listeners that send things in. It's great. So what I started to realize is, you know, the show has really started to have its own voice, whether it's you and I talking and going through stuff that's happening in our own businesses or, you know, with the interviews that come on of other business owners. And I thought to myself, I wonder if because small business show, it's great and it's fine, but it's so broad. And I started to think what we really are is. Were voices. I mean, we're a voice combined. And I thought, well, you know, is it a better representation to. To call the show, you know, voices of small business, voice of smaller, you know, or small business voices. I really like that message that that sends. And I thought, hey, I'll bring it up on the, on the air and we'll talk about it and see if that, that phrase voices are, you know, somehow into this would better relay what we're trying to do. You know, I know we have a bunch of interviews lined up for next year, and we're expanding who we bring on the show. And what's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, so I, I and, and so that our listeners know this is. There is not a setup here. Shannon and I, he. You warned me that you had something you wanted to bring up about the name of the show, but that was only 10 minutes ago. And, and so we have not had this. This truly is us having this conversation. As you were walking me through and setting me up for this, you said, you know, that small business show is too broad. That instantly resonated with me that, you know, we really, we do serve a niche. And, and perhaps, you know, that niche has been defined and continues to be defined as, you know, and refined as we, as we keep doing this show. I'm not as convinced that small business voice represents that niche, though. But I don't disagree with you that because simply because small business is, is that. Is it still too broad I kind of like the term voice. Right. I mean, this is too, this is good. But, but I'm not. If we're going to make yet another change, which I'm.

That's a good question, right? Can we make another change?

Of course we can.

Yeah, yeah, I know we can. But doesn', a, you know, negative impact? Do we look flaky, wishy washy, or is it just, hey, this is just the way it works and five years down from not in here when we're on episode 300 and whatever.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

No, it doesn't matter. If it's the right name, we should just change to it and the sooner the better. But that doesn't mean we should rush the decision. I like, I like the term voice.

Yeah. Voice or voices.

Voices.

Voice. Voice of small business is kind of like, hey, we're the voice. You know, we're. And I think that's my thought was, hey, we're getting all this great content and feedback and experiences shared from small business owners and, you know, voices of small business or small business voices. But you're right, it does not really, you know, small business is a hugely broad term. So maybe we, we, let's chew on this.

Yeah. And I, and I'd love to hear from anybody listening as well. I mean, it, you know, this is, it's, it's your show too. Right. You make this, you make this possible, frankly. And, and, but you also help shape it in, in many ways. So, so here's your opportunity to very much help shape it. Let us know your thoughts. Feedbackusinessshow.co awesome.

And we'll circle back and we'll just kind of keep an eye on where it goes. And yeah, I don't want to let.

It go too long. I mean, I don't want to put a hard deadline on it. It would be nice to have this wrapped up before the end of the year, and I think we probably could.

Yep.

But, but, you know, and so maybe, maybe that's our soft deadline. But if we get there and we're still kind of chewing on it, we have permission to extend that.

That's cool. That's good. I, I think that's great. So jumping back into the end of year stuff, last week's show, we were talking, you know, things you need to do end of year, and there were a couple of things that I just wanted to jump back into. And one is I, I, I, it's important for tax planning purposes to start looking at, you know, what tax bracket Are you going to be in this year? And you have until April 15th to kind of move funds around if you want to fund your IRA or SEP IRA or 401k, whatever you may have. Because it's a great tax planning resource that help you lower your taxable income. But you certainly want to start thinking about it right now. Marketwatch.com has a great table that shows where, based on your income, what you're going to pull, maybe you don't even pull it out of the business. If you, if you've got a business with inventory, you're going to, you know, get hit with some of that in any way. Yeah. But you're going to fall into a certain range of what the tax bracket is. So you want to take a look and we'll post the, the link up in the show notes and then talk to your accountant and say, hey, look, if I, you know, fund my IRA by X, how's it going to impact my, you know, taxable income? Yeah. And you definitely want to be thinking about that right now.

And you want to be, I mean, you're right. From a tax standpoint, now is the right time to think about it. But also just in a general sense, you know, if you're running your own business, chances are you don't have a pension from somewhere else. You know, you don't, you don't have, it's all up to you and you really need to think about that. Especially when things are good.

Yeah, for sure.

With the business, you know, you got to take care of yourself too. And obviously your employees. And I know we've got some folks that are just sole proprietors and some listeners that have actually lots of employees. But you got to make sure you think about that because it's easy to ignore and say, oh, you know, my payday will come when my retirement's, when I sell the business off in 15 years. Well, maybe that's true, but the pot.

Of gold method is maybe not the best way. It's not approach it.

Best way. Right.

Yeah. And you know, one of the things my, my wife who handles the, you know, HR and bookkeeping and things for our businesses is always mentions, you know, it's easier to peel it off a little bit here, a little bit there along the way.

Yeah.

You don't, you don't feel it quite as much and you just never know what's going to happen down the road. So you, I, I definitely agree with you. You, you planning for it and looking at these small chunks certainly add up.

Yeah.

Down the road you know.

Yeah, yeah. Whenever I find, you know, a little extra money, extra money there, you know, my first instinct is oh, I can, I can use it to do this and expand that and you know, and sometimes it's, I can go, you know, get something nice for myself or whatever, but stop, you know, put a little bit away first and then go do those other things.

Yeah. And you know, depending upon what bracket you're falling into, you know, it can be beneficial. Yeah. Every dollar of pre tax income that you can put away and Maybe it's a 529 fund for your kids college. You know, we've been dealing with that in the last, you know, five or six years getting ready to do this that, you know, you're getting, depending on where you live and depending on your tax bracket, a 25 to 50% bump by not having to, you know, pay the tax on that dollar.

That's right.

So really, really good planning. Another thing that, you know, we spent time just doing last week is looking at your expenses right now that probably maybe could roll over a few weeks into 2016, but maybe paying those expenses with a credit card right now. Of course you're going to use a card that has affinity points or frequent flyer or something because we've already covered that in previous show. But that bill is going to come due in 2016, but it will be booked in 2015. So you get a little time but you're going to get the benefit now instead of having to wait, you know, 12 months before you report 2016. And you can do this as long.

As you're on a cash basis. Accounting.

That's right.

Right. If you're on accruals, it gets a little fuzzier. It may still be that way, I think, but, but you, you got to go check that because yeah, like all.

This stuff, we're not accountants, thank goodness. And you definitely want to talk to your accountant or minimum your bookkeeper and say, hey, you know, I'd like to do this, what's some ways. And hopefully you've already had that conversation. We typically start talking about it like October. And you can do the same with checks as far as issuing payments. Typically the expense you can book if you mail the check in that calendar year. So if you're mailing the checks at the end of this month, they're not going to be hit your actual books until 2016, but you can claim them in 2015.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, you can. And, and, and you know, we talked about this last time, but if you get, if you get a check on the 31st of December, you can wait until January 2nd because you can't cash checks on the 1st to cash that or to deposit that. And depending on how you keep your books, that can either be part of 2015's or 2016's income. I mean, you got to book the income. You're not sure, you know, skating by without doing that. But if you, you know, if you work it right, and I don't want to use the term play it right because it makes it sound like you're doing something wrong. You're not. These are the way the tax laws work. But, you know, you can write a bunch of checks on the 31st and deposit checks on the 2nd and, you know, adjust your income for the year. That way you got to pay for it next year. You know, you got to.

It's called tax planning, not tax avoidance.

No, no, you're paying the taxes either way. That's right.

Yeah. And you just, with, you know, cash is a lifeblood of your business. So if it's a difference between, well, I got to, I'm going to pay the. Pay for this now or pay for it in 12 months.

Yep.

What's the best decision? You know?

Yeah, it's the one thing, you know, like I said, we've got, you know, because we wind up getting a lot of checks those last couple of days of the year. It's crazy, but it's how it works because companies want to get it off of their books and if they're doing all this advertising at the end of the year, it's what happens. And so it's like, okay, well, you know, on the 31st, we might make a deposit that morning, but the stuff that comes in that afternoon, like, no, no, that's, that's 2017, which is how we would do it any other day of the year, you know, sure. If we get it, we get checks in it, they might wait a couple of days to hit the bank. It's just how it works.

So. Yeah, that's right. So, and then finally, last, last, you know, quick topic is just reminder to look at your goals that you set for this year and review them with, you know, by yourself or with your employees or whoever, your, you know, somebody. You can sit down even just on your own and, and look at how do we do, you know, what do we do with our quarterly or annual goals? And then adjust. If you need to, you know, move some forward into the next year, do it. The key is, is to review them and make adjustments. It's not that, oh, I didn't achieve it, so it's a failure. But it's just to go back and then get ready in, in January to start, you know, or even now to start looking at next year and say, okay, what are we going to set up? What do we want to hit the first quarter? You know, even if you're all by yourself, you know, we talked a lot.

Before I would even say, especially if you're all by yourself. Yeah, yeah. Because it, you know, there's that old adage, right. That which is monitored is managed.

There you go. Yeah.

And. And it's that. Right. Just, I mean, even if, like, like you said, Shannon, even if you missed your goals, okay, fine. At least you know, you missed them as opposed to. Well, I just do what I do every day and some money comes in and I mean, well, we've all been there. That's like how businesses start. But at some point you've got to, you know, start paying into this because that's how you, that's how you can learn to grow a business. Is, is seeing. Okay, I can plan for this. That gives me a little bit of extra. I can add something into the plan or I can't. I have to take something out of the plan. You know, there's not enough. Yeah.

Or maybe the goal that you set, you thought was so important. What I found is often the stuff that I keep kind of pushing off. Eventually I look back and go, you know, that, that really wasn't. It turns out we didn't need that because something else happens. So, you know, even goals that you don't make are often very valuable and help in guiding, you know, your business forward.

That's right.

Time to take a look at those. So. Yeah.

Cool.

And so, you know, last night, Dave, on your Facebook page, you posted a great article about, you know, why nobody's going to steal your idea. And you know, you make a comment that I really like is, and I'll let you say it. Something about an idea being worth a hundred bucks.

Yeah. I think I've even said it on this show. If you, if you want your idea to be. If you want your idea to be worth a hundred dollars, write it down on a hundred dollar bill. That, that, you know, because ideas, you know, and it comes from the me. And I think I've heard other people say it saying that, you know, ideas aren't worth the paper they're printed on you. It's all about execution. You know, you can have a great idea. I have Lots of great ideas.

That's right.

Many of them turned into nothing. Why I didn't do anything with them.

I would argue most of them probably.

Yeah, most. That's right. You can't, you can't capitalize on them all. And, and you, but, but the flip side of that is don't wait for the best one, wait for a good one and do that that you enjoy. I mean, that's the best, you know, that's the most important part because you're going to spend your life doing this stuff.

So. Yeah, yeah. And I would say that, you know, there's a significant amount of the population and maybe, maybe and I don't know, you know, what statistics might be there, but arguably maybe those folks are ones at work that are not self employed, that are not small businesses that look at the idea and say what a great idea. Had only I thought of that I could be on my own.

Right. Yeah. What a foolish thing to think.

It is. It is. But from the outside I have one of my, my topics to, you know, in a future show is to talk about, you know, judging other people's outside by your inside. Right. Which is the thing you tell kids. But even in business it's, it's critically important and I get, I know it. That there's a huge swath of the. That's what to the population that probably network for other people that just look at what a great idea that was. Boy, you know, that guy's lucky he thought of that idea. You know, which is really from being on the inside of the business. You know the idea you're going to have them all day long. But how do you convert? How do you execute and you know, using that 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration type type thing.

But, but I still, I think those numbers are wrong. I think, I think it's, it's far more on the side of perspiration than 99%.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think you're probably really, you know, you, you really, it, it's, there's a lot of great ideas. Yeah. The article that, that I, I linked to in Facebook, we'll link to it from the, the, the show too. It was, I don't know, 10 reasons that nobody's going to steal your startup's idea. And it essentially was trying to convince people you don't have to worry about getting people to sign an NDA unless it's someone that's, you know, already doing it, in which case they're not going to sign the NDA anyway.

Yeah.

You know, you can tell anybody your idea. And in fact, it's a really good thing to tell people your idea because you'll get feedback from them. And most of what you'll get is what you're looking for is the specific feedback of why your idea won't work. They won't necessarily be right. There's a lot of people that are going to project onto you your idea won't work. And. And they'll come up with some words after that. But what they're actually saying is, because I could never make it happen myself.

I can't do it. Yeah, that's true.

That's what they're saying. But. But sometimes there's a nugget of. Of wisdom in there, like, wow, you know, your idea won't work because. And, you know, there's something in there that you're like, oh, wait a minute, I might have to. I need to account for that at the very least, you know, And I.

Think you have to be really careful with that. One of the things that I've always said is that I try not to talk about what I'm going to do versus what I've done.

Yeah.

Because. And so maybe.

Well, it depends. I mean, it depends on what stage of your business you're in, but if you're just starting out, and I'd say.

I would say it depends on who you're talking to.

True.

If. If you have a trusted, you know, peer or someone else that can really help you vet an idea, I think it's like, your point. It's incredibly valuable. Yeah. To point out specifics, but, you know, and maybe it's just my own experience, but it's so easy to just be surrounded by naysayers that can kind of be like, oh, that'll never work.

Yeah. You need to make sure that if you are going to just tell everybody about your idea, you need to make sure that you're so passionate about it, that all you're doing is trying to vet out those few little hiccups and. And, you know, little speed bumps that you haven't thought of. But you're gonna do it anyway. Because, like you said.

Anyway. Yeah.

If you're at the point where you're going to do it anyway, then tell everybody because you will. You will get lots of great advice, but most of it will be couched inside of it. Can't be done.

It can't be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're wrong. That's right. They're wrong. It may not. More than likely, it's not going to be done the way you think it is when you're getting started.

No.

But even if you could take it back, you know, on a much more macro level, maybe the business you're starting today completely fails, or your idea that you're trying to implement, or the app you're trying to build, but it could be the most valuable experience of your life.

Right. That's right.

And more than likely, it's going to be a valuable experience that, that you look back on, you know, as launching you one way or another or keeping you, you know, going towards a goal that you didn't even know you had.

Yeah, that's right.

So, so very, very important, I think, to, you know, think about who you're talking to and hopefully you've got a really good support structure in place that can give you that good advice and help you, you know, you. You want that constructive criticism, by all means.

I want to, I want to read through some of these ideas. We talked about one of a couple of them here. But if we want to stop on one and dissect it, perhaps we will. But otherwise I'll just, I'll just read through.

Yeah.

You know, so it's, it's all couched as answers to why nobody will steal your. Your startup's idea. Number one, nobody. Because nobody cares. And that's. That's largely true. The number. Number two is the 1% perspiration and, and, or 1.1% inspiration. 99.

Number three gifts they have going on with.

And they have good GIFs. That's right. Yeah. Number three is a good one because the same idea executed by different people will lead to totally different products, slash businesses. And this is true, you know.

Yeah. Just like you're saying you don't know where it's going to take you. Nope. You know, I didn't start this business to go to be where I am today. I started because I didn't want to go work for somebody else. What am I passionate about? And let's go this way. And.

And it still serves your core goal.

That's correct. That is correct. Because it's. Because I'm basically. I'm unhirable. Oh.

Patently unemployable. That's right. That's the name of the podcast right there.

Patently unemployment. I love that. I love that. Yeah, that's cool.

Number four and five go together, but, but especially number five is important. It's. It's two different things, but tied because there are no revolutionary ideas anymore and because the most successful businesses are basic Ideas perfectly executed.

Yes, for sure.

I can simplify, simplify, right, yeah.

Even I still remember reading, you know, Steve Ballmer's comment about the iPhone. Who's going to pay 500 bucks for a phone? Yeah, well, there was. Everybody already had. There's all kinds of phones. Everything was free. Well, you know, all depends on execution and you know, invention, of course, in the case of the iPhone, but.

Right, right.

You know.

Yeah. Number six is because if you think Uber and Airbnb were the first of their kind, you're wrong. Thousands have failed with the exact same idea. And this is important to remember for a lot of reasons, I mean, in starting your own business, but just in general. I heard somebody saying the other day, oh, you know, Uber's going to be toast when Tesla finally rolls out their own self driving car. I thought, well, why Uber would buy those cars and then they don't have to have drivers anymore.

Got it.

Right. You know, to me that's the perfect marriage because Tesla knows how to make these cars and Uber knows how to deal with the infrastructure of getting drivers to people that want to be driven and therefore cars to people that want to be driven. And this person said, no, Tesla will just roll out their own Uber thing.

Whoa, I don't know about that. I mean, you know, Uber is a, a delivery company.

That's it.

A logistics company.

They're a logistics company. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. And I would think that that's not what Tesla is. No, not at all. They're trying to build, you know, these cars and come up with new technology and I think FedEx and UPS are probably more worried about Uber than, than anybody else.

They should be.

Yeah, I think they should be too.

That's right.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm trying to think. Yeah. Number seven, because you need to focus on what really matters and without restrictions. So fine. I agree with that. Yeah. Number eight, because you don't have the answers your market does. Talk out loud. Go out there, become an expert, speak network. I'll insert podcast and collect feedback. So yeah, that's good.

I would encourage anybody that's doing anything that, to take some time and you know, put it down, record it, blog about it, get out there, talk about it. You know, find a mentor that can connect you with other people and, and just get, get to talk about it with, with other people that are, will be as excited about your ideas or quick to tell you, you know, why.

That'S not why it's not going to work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But have some chops behind them. That, so you value it instead of just your brother in law that works for the post office or something.

Right, right. Or wherever. That's right.

Yeah, whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Number nine and number nine and number ten are, are related. Number nine is because you don't want to tune yourself to this level of thinking and have, and you have better things to focus on. It's true. If you're worried about everyone you talk to stealing your idea, you're focused on the wrong things. Yeah, no, it doesn't matter. People are going to know what your idea is once you roll it out.

That's right. You have to get it out there and you know, you got to execute and hopefully you're going to execute better than the other guy. Yep.

But if you're first to market is good. Best in the market is best.

That's right.

You know, I agree.

Yeah.

And then the last one is because people you'll interact with will never sign your NDA to know more about your idea that they don't care about in the first place. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never had good luck and I've never wanted to sign them. You know, sometimes you have to, I don't know about your field. Maybe you guys have to more when you're reviewing things or looking at stuff that's pre release.

Yeah, but that's different. I mean that, yeah, this is more about, you know, starting a business. But yeah, I mean when we, if we review something, we'll agree to an embargo, which is effectively an NDA. Sometimes we'll agree to an embargo. Sometimes with advertising campaigns, believe it or not, we have to agree to an NDA or an embargo because the campaign is for a product that's not released yet. And, and so you know, we, I mean we, we're gonna see it, we're gonna know or we're gonna see, you know, the marketing collateral at least for it and we're gonna know about it like. Yeah, well, we'll agree not to talk about it. We're not gonna talk about it anyway, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's just how we do business. We don't, we don't divulge that stuff anyway. But, but I get it. I mean they need to protect every possible hole where it could leak out.

Yeah, there's a, there's a comment here I love in the, in this article is that you should be more worried you your startup idea than that they will. Wow, that's great. You know, if you've really got a good idea you know, so I like that, I like that. That's cool. So, yeah, I think it's, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Back to your, you know, a hundred dollar idea comment. I think it's great. And I think if you, if you want a great idea for a business, you should start a business selling ideas to people that think that is the most important thing.

That's right.

Yeah.

See how many people pay for that.

You'll be, I believe you would be wildly successful. You probably need to market to folks watching TV late at night, you know, looking for things then. And there's a, like I said, huge part of the population, most of them working for other people that think, you know, that guy got lucky because he created here. He came up with this great idea for X.

Right.

It's just not the case. But no, they probably never, never believe it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My problem is I know this into my core and the issue is anytime I have a good idea immediately I'm thinking five years down the road of oh, I'm going to have a factory and this and I don't want that, you know, and then I just squash the idea. It's exactly the opposite for me.

Yeah. And well, you can look at, go, go look at Kickstarter. You know, I'm a huge fan of Kickstarter and we fund stuff all the time, my wife and I and always joke about it's like what is ever coming on time? Nothing. You know, I have the, I don't know if you ever heard about this. I guess it's one of their top, you know, campaigns. And it was for this, this cooler, an ice chest basically that had a built in, has a built in blender, has all this cool stuff, has speakers, all this kind of thing. And this guy they raised, you know, he tried it once and it didn't go anywhere. Came back a different time of the year, summertime maybe, and it became one of the top funded. I think they raised 11 or 12 million bucks.

Wow.

Yeah. But these guys have nothing but problems and I follow that. I find it, you know, and I bought one and you know, well, I pre ordered one, I should say.

Yeah, no you didn't. You backed the company. That's right. With the chance of getting a cooler.

Yeah. And that's, and that's great because the process of watching this has been incredible. You know, again, on the outside, great idea for a product. These guys are going to kill it. They're all going to be millionaires. Well, you know, the, the last, the update, this guy Gave is just, I mean, they've just had a miserable time trying to get this thing built. Everything from, you know, product failures to strikes at factories in China and this and that. And he really basically came out in the last update and said, you know, I want you guys to know it. On the outside, it seems like we've made all this money, but, you know, we, we have not. We're looking, we're trying things to raise more money so we can get everybody a cooler. So it's, it's, again, it's all about execution. So if you look at the, the campaigns that fail on these, you know, crowdfunding platforms, they're ones that typically they fail because they can't execute, right?

I remember I funded the Pebble Smartwatch, which was a Kickstarter, right? I mean, it, you know, it's, it's its own business now, but that's how it started. And I remember, you know, it was the same kind of thing, just plagued with delay after delay after delay. And finally they were going to have a press conference and they booked a room at ces, right? So every member of the tech press is in line for this conference. And of course, every single one of us had backed this, this thing because we wanted this cool smartwatch, right? You know, it's like this perfect, perfect audience. And, and so we're all in line for this press conference. And I remember talking to Jason Snell, who he's on his own with sixcolors.com now. He was. Oh, yeah, sure, Editorial director on Macworld and all of that for quite some time, decades in fact. And he and I just happened to be in line together. And we were saying, you know, we each spent our 150 bucks or 124, whatever it was, you know, and they raised 10 million bucks or whatever it was. And we were saying, I really want to see that they've made this thing and, you know, that the product actually exists and that it's going to come out at some point soon. And all of the stuff that actually came to pass, right, but wouldn't it be funny if we went in there and they said, so we really wanted to just show the world that Kickstarter is not about pre ordering, it's about investing. And we'd like to show you the beautiful vacation we took with all your money, you know, and just showed a slideshow of it. All right. You know.

Chaos.

It would have been chaos. Yeah, but it would have been, you know, it. That, that's part of the problem, right, is people think that they're pre ordering it. That's right. On Kickstarter and Kickstarter and you're not at all, you know, it's. Yeah, you got no guarantee.

That's right. And these guys, this, this cooler, it's called the coolest cooler. You know, they did a similar thing that pebble did at, you know, you know, they roll this thing out and they expect, hey, we're going to sell a few thousand, you know, wow, maybe, maybe 5,000. Wouldn't that be great?

Right.

Some number and higher or lower. And they wind up selling a huge quantity. I mean, it's ice chest thing. This guy sold 60,000 of them.

Yeah. It changes your business. You can't just make them out of your garage anymore.

Well, that's right. And most of these guys don't have businesses when they're, you know.

Yeah. They truly start with an idea and maybe a prototype. Yeah. But I've seen Kickstarters succeed and get funded with just drawings.

That's right. And you know, like, like pebble did when pebble guys were. They had already had some pre agreements in place, I believe. And yeah, the guys on this cooler thing actually referenced this, that you could go buy the pebble at Best Buy before they were done delivering all of their watches to the folks that had funded the campaign.

That's right.

And it really made people upset. Well, the coolest guy, these cooler guys have done the same thing. You can go buy this cooler on Amazon. Yes. It's, you know, 500 bucks versus 150 or whatever. Right. But the fact that they had said. And you know, he had to come around and say, well, we're selling them up there because we, you know, we need the cash. We want to do this and do that. So it's been fascinating and I think it just really goes right to that. It's all about execution. Because if these guys crash and burn during the execution phase, it doesn't matter how good their idea is, someone else come along and build something similar who's got the infrastructure and logistics and factories and this kind of thing. But these guys are starting from. In many ways from a sketch.

Yeah, that's right. Which is cool. I mean, I actually really like the concept of Kickstarter and. And it has actually freed up a lot of regulations, in fact from privately held companies in terms of selling shares of their stock, that it's actually opened up quite a bit for folks, which is. So it's good. I mean it brings. Because there's momentum there and there's a lot of attention it kind of gave them the ability to open things up, which is good.

Yeah. I'm going to reach out to this guy and we'll see if we can get him on the show.

Yeah.

Experience.

Yeah, we'll be nice to him.

Yeah, yeah, of course. So, yeah, we're in. I'm in awe of this guy.

I would love to hear the story. I mean, and I know it's, it's not, you know, the, the, the, the fairy tale ending. I mean, it's not over yet, but, you know, it's, it's, it's the trials and tribulations that. He would be a great guest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll reach out to him and just we chat about it. He's been also, like you said, we'll be friendly, so.

Of course. Well, of course. Because, I mean, I haven't done anything like that. I would love to.

Absolutely.

Learn the process. Yeah. He's probably got a lot of lessons. Feedback at BusinessShow Co is where you can email us, folks, and we would love to hear from you.

Absolutely.

I think that does it for the day, Shannon. Right.

I think so. Enjoy the rest of the week, everybody, and we'll be back with you next week.

See you next week.