Crowdfunding Secrets Revealed by LaunchBoom’s Will Ford

That's what really turned me on to Kickstarter and Indiegogo is the fact that, wait a minute, I can actually validate and generate thousands of new customers without giving away any equity. And now that I've done the heavy lifting and showed, and I can show investors that, hey, my idea is actually super popular and people are actually already buying my product, well, now they're going to take me a little bit more serious. And now I've got a lot more leverage to potentially raise more capital and give way less equity.

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Thank you, Joe. It's great to be here and I love the work you're doing. I love your podcast. I've been following it for quite some time, so it's honestly an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.

Appreciate it, man. Yeah. And likewise, because when we met, it was maybe a couple sessions in at that speakeasy Mastermind, you know, we finally connected and like really got to know what each of us are doing. And then I heard about Launch Boom, what you're doing in the crowdfunding space. And totally unique model with this, you know, supporting people going through the crowdfunding process, which inherently I think a lot of people have seen. There's a lot of failures, there's a lot of things that just don't get funded for whatever reason or fail after the funding. So that's where you have this magical system that we'll talk about here. Cause I know a lot of people think about that. It's like, hey, maybe they're launching a new business consumer product or a relaunch or some kind of side branch of what they're doing. So yeah, man, before we get into it, so crowdfunding, I guess give us the big idea because, you know, maybe some numbers we should know about, some stats, what it is, define. And then we'll get in a Launch boom and what you're doing in the space.

Yeah, sure. So, like you, Joe, I'm a serial entrepreneur and I've built multiple companies from the ground up and I've had some epic wins, some epic exits. I've also had some epic failures which I'm actually most grateful for because that's honestly what eventually led me to starting LaunchBoom. And, and so just to kind of back up, right before I started LaunchBoom, I was exiting my last company called PetBox. And I couldn't believe that I could launch new consumer products on Kickstarter. And I couldn't believe that I could take a prototype and pre sell thousands of units to people all over the world, take their money up front before I have to work through manufacturing, shipping, delivery. It just seemed like a no brainer for launching new consumer products because prior to Kickstarter I was doing it the old fashioned traditional way where I would come up with a product idea, I would work through manufacturing and I'd try to stomach placing the largest volume manufacturing order possible so I could get that best price break available with economies of scale. So anyone out there who's launched consumer products, you know, when it comes to manufacturing, if you place a 50,000 unit order versus 1,000 unit order, you're going to get a better price break and you're going to be able to significantly improve your profit margins as a result. So before crowdfunding, I would try to place the largest volume order possible and then I tried to come up with the most clever marketing strategy with launching that product and then I better be right because if I wasn't, right now I'm stuck with a bunch of product I can't move in most cases. I've already placed a 50% deposit down on that manufacturing order and I've been there before too. And that's a scary place to be as an entrepreneur, especially when you're launching a new product. So that's what initially kind of made me gravitate towards Kickstarter is the fact that you could take a prototype and you could literally pre sell thousands of units to people all over the world. And then you have all the time in the world after that campaign to work through manufacturing and to deliver the best possible experience to those backers with much less headache, much less risk. When I first started launching products on Kickstarter, my idea from the beginning, and it still remains the same today, was hey, why not take a few months to kind of stack the deck in my favor by building a hyper focused audience ready to buy so that When I go to Kickstarter, I can more or less control the outcome and at least get my campaign successfully funded and then use that early success to really kind of like game the algorithm of Kickstarter so that now once they see all this traffic coming into their platform and converting really, really well, now they're like, wow, this is a popular project, we should start promoting it. And so once you get Kickstarter to put your project on their, you know, top landing page and they start to promote you in their newsletters, you start to gain massive amounts of organic traffic. And so the whole point with Launch Boom and what we do here within crowdfunding is let's set up the deal before we launch. In essence, today, we basically pre sell the pre sale on Kickstarter. Then I'll explain more about how that works in a moment. And then once we have a big enough audience ready to buy now, let's go live on Kickstarter, let's set a low funding goal that we control that we know we can hit. And then let's get Kickstarter to do the rest of the work and push and promote it so that now we can tap into their tens of millions of unique visitors and generate six or seven figures in pre sales.

Well, dude, and this is where. So a perfect case study because I was going to ask you this is one of my questions, but then you make it pretty obvious on your LinkedIn, you know, and this was just posted, what, almost a week ago at the time of this recording, Western Rise being one of, I'm assuming one of your clients, they raised over $100,000. Their, their ask or their, their. I guess the goal was 20k. So to your point, I was just like, holy moly. And there's still like 20 days left on the campaign. Like that doesn't happen much, you know, unless there's a smart campaign going into it.

Yeah. So that's exactly how we do it. So a lot of people that I talk to every day from all over the world that are looking to launch their new product and everyone has the same goals and questions. They're always like, will, how do I raise a million dollars in pre sales on Kickstarter? How much money do I have to spend to do that? And, you know, how much should I sell my product for? You know, and for the most part, you know, I always tell everyone that comes into launch boom, like, you know, less than 1, 10 of 1% of all Kickstarter campaigns actually breach seven figures.

Wow.

Most of our campaigns will do six figures. Almost all of them. We do obviously have a lot of campaigns every year that do seven figures just because of our sheer volume of campaigns. But at the end of the day, I always tell everyone that that comes to launch. Boom. You know, at the end of the day, Kickstarter is the best way to validate demand and to pre sell enough product that you're going to be able to secure your manufacturing and delivery to your, you know, your first thousand plus customers. You're not, you're not going to get rich on Kickstarter, but it's the easiest way to validate demand, generate, generate real revenue and real customers faster. And then put yourself in a much better position to go scale through E commerce or Amazon or retail, or put yourself in a better position to then go fundraise and sell equity, where you'll sell much less equity and generate much more capital.

That's true, because at that point you've already done honestly the legwork that most people would probably start with right on the, on the seed funding and all that stuff in the early days. And it's like, no, you've already, you have the customers, you have all this data already. People that have committed, even if it's a low level at a reservation. I'm kind of hinting to part of your process that I've read about, but it's like all of this matters to investors and you have more leverage as that product owner later in the game.

Yeah, I mean, that's initially what got me so excited about Kickstarter and Indiegogo in the first place is, you know, as an entrepreneur, I have raised millions of dollars from angel investors VCs through convertible notes. And I always did that, you know, when I had a great business idea and I needed capital to then take my idea and make it real. And in doing that, what I realized is that I was usually valuing my business too low, I was giving away too much equity too early. And that's what really turned me on to Kickstarter and Indiegogo is the fact that, wait a minute, I can actually validate and generate thousands of new customers without giving away any equity. And now that I've done the heavy lifting and showed and I can show investors that, hey, my idea is actually super popular and people are actually already buying my product, well, now they're going to take me a little bit more serious and now I've got a lot more leverage to potentially raise more capital and give way less equity.

Yeah, I want to talk about the standard approach to Kickstarter or Indiegogo, any of these platforms and there's a bunch of them. Right. So the standard approach I would imagine is someone goes there with their idea, maybe they have some marketing chops, maybe they don't, but they're doing no.

Pre launch stuff prior to. Right. And then I'm curious of what the standard is. Like the standard approach and kind of the rates of failure or successes that you're seeing from those types of approaches.

Yeah, so. So when I first started LaunchBoom and this was like way back in 2014, but like back. So to take a step back, Joe. So Kickstarter, Indiegogo, they both opened their doors back in like 2009.

Yeah.

Right. So in the early days of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, which are the two main reward based crowdfunding platforms. So when it comes to crowdfunding, there's a lot of different crowdfunding platforms. You've got equity crowdfunding. You also have what's called reward based crowdfunding. So the beauty of reward based crowdfunding is you're not giving away any equity. All you're doing is you're pre selling your product.

And that's like Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Right?

Reward based Indiegogo and Kickstarter were the only two biggest platforms in the space back in 2009. They were the first and. And they still are today. So when we launch any products here at launch, boom, we always launch on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. There are some other ones, but they're so much smaller. And Indiegogo and Kickstarter have done such a great job building their backer communities. So I'm talking like tens of millions of monthly unique backers and visitors to their platforms looking for super cool products.

So this is where I'm going to pop in just for pause here for a sec because yeah, it's triggering my mind. It's like there's a built in customer base that's ready to provide money and to your product. So you're tapping into that in two main markets. And then something you said earlier is with this pre launch campaign, which we'll get into more, you're basically firing up the algorithms of their platform, which just like any other platform, Google, YouTube, podcast platforms, all that, it's like you draw more attention or subscriber, whatever the metric is, well, guess what, you're going to get more visibility on their platforms.

That's exactly right. So in the early days, to answer your original question, like it was pretty easy. Like if you were a Product creator. You could literally just take some product shots of your prototype. You could put together, like a one or two minute quick video about why your product is solving a problem, and then you could literally just post it, and you could raise, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions in pre sales with, like, zero marketing cost. And then. And then as that continued to happen over and over again, because Kickstarter and Indiegogo had so many backers on their platform looking for cool products to. Back then what happened was everyone rushed in. So then all these products started to come in. The landscape became much more competitive. If you were a product creator and you couldn't just launch a campaign, you actually had to put some marketing dollars in. You had to put some advertising spend in in order to compete and, you know, dominate those platforms and maximize your raise. And. And so that's about the time I stepped into the space back in, like, 2014, when I was kind of getting ready to launch my Kickstarter campaign. I basically was like, well, you know what? Like, I don't want to, like, you know, roll the dice and just like, you know, launch my campaign and hope people care about it. I want to make sure that, like, actually hit my funding goal and I actually maximize my opportunity. And so that's where I decided to start running Facebook and Instagram ads before the Kickstarter campaign. And in the early days, what did I do is I just run some ads. I'd get the clicks, and then I would drive the traffic to a landing page that I built that would be like, hey, launching soon on Kickstarter. If you want to get in on this product and be the first to receive it, all you have to do is give me your email and I'll contact you as soon as we're ready to launch. So when I first started LaunchBoom, I was just building an email list, and then my average conversion was like 4, 4% on that email list.

And was there any other bonus associated with it, or is it just like, you're going to be the first to know?

It was basically just like, you're the first to know. That's how I started, right? And then something funny happened. Elon Musk decided to launch the Tesla truck. And so when he decided to launch the Cybertruck, he launched this $100 reservation. And if you put 100 bucks down, you were first in line to get it off the assembly line, right? And so I'm like, hey, I wonder if that would work with crowdfunding. And so that's when we created what we call today the reservation funnel. So the idea here was, hey, let's collect the email, but now let's take it one step further and see if they'll put a dollar down. Right. And so that changed everything for not only us here at LaunchBoom, but crowdfunding as an industry. What we ended up learning was that if we could get someone to click on our Facebook or Instagram ad and then redirect them to our reservation funnel, which is still a landing page, but it basically says, hey, we're launching soon on Kickstarter. The first thousand backers are going to get a lower price and early delivery. And all you have to do is place a $1 money back guarantee deposit and we're going to guarantee you the best deal before we go live. So as soon as I started stacking that reservation funnel and today, and you know, throughout most of the process, it's always been like, hey, once we have a thousand or more reservations, then we go live. The most amazing part of the reservation funnel is that it's the most engaged audience you can create to support any launch. And we get a massive conversion. So, Joe, like today, and literally over like the last, you know, several years, our average conversion rates on the reservation funnel is 30% or higher.

Awesome.

So, so now, Joe, like, this is why it makes it so much easier for me to control the outcome for all my clients. Because at the end of the day, when my clients come into launch, boom. There's a lot of work we do to like, help them understand how to maximize their average order value and maximize their price per backer. And I'll get into that more here in a minute.

Sure.

But then, but then there's like more opportunity to like really help kind of build a super engaged audience through the reservation funnel. But then now I know where to set that campaign goal on Kickstarter. So for example, if we have a thousand reservations and if you're selling a new product, Joe, for let's just say average order value $100, well, I know that minimum I'm going to get 300 or more sales off my, my, my work, my pre launched efforts. So I'm going to set your campaign goal on Kickstarter to $30,000. Okay. And then when we launch the campaign, our average funding time is 14 minutes.

That's crazy. So you're hitting that goal in 14 minutes on average.

14 minutes every time. And we, we not only hit the goal, but we actually exceed the goal.

Sure.

And, and then when this happens, Kickstarter is like wow, this deal's popular. Let's start pushing more traffic to this deal. So that's when we get top placement on their platform. That's when they make us a product they love. That's when they start to promote us in their newsletters when all this stuff happens. And these campaigns on average are about 30 days when they're live on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. When that's. And the same's true with Indiegogo. Same type of thing happens. What will happen is now the deal goes from 30,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes millions.

Yeah, you're getting that network effect. You're kick starting all the, no pun intended there. But it's. Everything is firing. And I would assume there's also what, there's upgrades, right? Like there's higher end rewards that people aren't just getting the base. I'm sure a lot of them are also upgrading. So that means more funding for the, the product owner.

Big time. Big time. Yeah. I mean I usually try to create like a few options for backers because I don't want to confuse them.

Right.

And, and we always have our average order value, which is like the unit. But then we can do bundle packs and we can definitely create a lot more. We can create, you know, a lot more revenue per backer if we have more enticing options. But yeah, for the most part, I mean we've got this dialed in today and you know, the reason I started Launch Boom and the reason I called my company Launch Boom Joe is because that's exactly what I'm doing. Yeah, like I'm basically spending two to three months preparing my clients so that when we launch on Kickstarter we can actually let them know before we launch how much we can actually raise. And then is that enough to actually complete manufacturing and delivery. And if the answer is yes, great, let's launch on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. If the answer is no, hey, let's continue the pre launch a little longer. Let's build a larger audience so we can hit your goals.

Yeah, it sounds like it really, people can approach you or even just do this method, let's say individually. But obviously there's some, there's advantages of working with Launchpoon because I'm sure you have a built in list and backers that are already prov. You know, I'm just assuming here and obviously the proven strategies but like who are the. Yeah, it sounds like this pre launch phase and I want to dive into this a little bit more for let's say someone off the streets, they don't really know anything. But also, I'm sure you're getting people with very savvy business background or they know their numbers and maybe they have some manufacturing. But like in this pre launch phase, you're learning so much about the audience, about what you can. Yeah, the numbers that are needed to actually scale past just raising money. So I guess dive into like what's being learned and what's being discussed outside of just what you talked about, which is huge, of raising the reservations. Like, what else is happening in that prelaunch phase?

After I had a handful of successful Kickstarter campaigns under my belt, I was actually looking for a launch. I was like, hey, there's got to be someone out there who can help me with my pre launch video, my pre launch advertising campaigns, so I can like, you know, maximize my audience before I go to Kickstarter. And I couldn't believe that there was no one out there doing it. And so that's when the light bulb went off. Joe. You know, I was actually going through an exit of my last company and I'm not the kind of guy to sit at home and do nothing. And I was thinking to myself, like, what's next? What's next? And I started researching Kickstarter, Indiegogo and their platforms were growing like year in, year out, like just going through massive growth back in 2014, 2015. And so basically what I ended up doing was I, I did a lot of research and then I'm like, you know what? I'm going to build the largest crowdfunding campaign agency in the world. I want to be the largest crowdfunding agency in the world. And I want to be the one to basically help entrepreneurs all over the world succeed with their product launches, no matter where they are. And so I'm like, what am I going to call it? So then I'm like, you know what? I went to godaddy one day. I'll never forget it. And I started typing in names like, what is this? And then all of a sudden like LaunchBoom came to my mind and I typed in launchboom.com and it was available for 9.99. I couldn't believe it.

The best.

And so I bought the domain. And at the time I was working with a young group of marketers here in San Diego and I said, hey guys, how would you guys like to be millionaires by the time you're 30 years old? And they're like, well, that sounds great. I'm Like, I have an idea. We're going to build the world's largest crowdfunding agency. We're going to call it Launch Boom. But all we're going to do is crowdfunding. So we're not going to do any other marketing projects. We're just going to stay focused on crowdfunding campaigns. And they said, well, let's do it. So I ended up partnering with these super smart, awesome marketers that were really young at the time. And launchpin was born and we started slow. I really started with my personal network and I reached out to people I knew that were also launching consumer products and I said, hey, let's launch on Kickstarter. Let's launch on Indiegogo. And they were like, what's that? I'm like, this is crowdfunding. This is how it works. They're like, well, we know you, we trust you, so let's do it. And so the first year I only launched maybe 15 launches.

That's pretty sizable. I mean, that's more than one a month. I mean, you're getting some data in.

Yeah, yeah, it was great, you know, so I started small and I also self funded it. So this was the first company I've never raised investment from investors outside of me and my partners currently. So it's all self funded. So I was like, you know, I'm going to start this slow and I'm going to figure this out as we learn. And So I launched 15 successful campaigns in 2015. And in 2015, all of them did over six figures, if not a lot more than that. And so then in 2016, I took my data and my case studies and I flew up to Indiegogo's office in San Francisco and I said, hey guys, like, this is who we are at launchpin. This is what we do. This is why our campaigns do much better outcomes than if they just go in, you know, with no prelaunch work done. And they said, well, this is great. You know, we're focused right now on building our backer community and we don't really have any resources focused on supporting the entrepreneur. So will this make you a preferred partner and will this direct anyone who's not ready to launch to your team?

Ah, smart man integrations. Okay.

So I said, that's awesome. That's exactly why I'm here. Great. So right behind that I went to Brooklyn, New York and I met with Kickstarter's team. I had this same conversation and I said, kickstarter, this is why my deals are doing so much more you know, funding on your platform. It's called pre launch. This is what I do. And they said we're looking at growing our backer community so we can have even more successful raises. And we're not doing anything with prelaunch, so we'll send that to you. So as soon as that happened, Joe, like, the avalanche of lead gen just opened up and I started getting all my business directly from the platforms.

Dude, it's brilliant. And I want to pause on how important that actually is right now because that's integrating into the. Honestly, it's right to the mother load. It's right where you want to direct people to. It's where the money's at there, the backer communities, Kickstarter, Indiegogo. But now you're becoming that preferred partner and you're becoming resourceful and valuable to them. It's obviously their. Their agenda was to grow their internal database of backers, which helps their company grow because it's reliable, predictable, of course, scalable for them. And now here you are, you're like, yeah, that's also for me too. I'm just solving a different thing.

Yeah. No, it was risky, to be honest, looking back on it in hindsight, just.

Because they could have those conversations with them.

Yeah. Because I was still so early and I knew it was a risk, but I knew it was the only way I was going to get more qualified deal flow for my team. And so it was risky because they could have easily been like, hey, Will, great idea. We're going to go ahead and compete with you now.

Good point. Yeah. That is the flip side. Yeah. And you're like, oh, shoot, crushed from day one kind of thing.

And I knew that going into it, but I was like, you know what? I got to do this now before someone else does.

Yep.

And. And I'm so glad I did, looking back on it, because it allowed me to go from 15 deals in 2015 to 100 deals in 2016.

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So 2016 was like when we learned a tremendous amount. That's like, you know, we just had so much more experience, so much more exposure to deals and we started to learn what verticals do well, what verticals don't do well, what deals do we want more of? What deals, you know, should we redirect somewhere else? Because crowdfunding isn't a good solution. And we can get into that a little later, Joe. But it was a really pivotal year for us at launch.

Boom.

And then by 2017, what's crazy is like two years into it, Joe, we were the largest crowdfunding agency in the world, so we had succeeded.

My question, and this is one that's not totally on the crowdfunding topic, but like, the fact of you took a ragtag group of guys and gals who didn't really know much about crowdfunding, but they trusted you, they worked with you. How did you keep them focused and mission driven to scale this thing so quickly in a short period of time? Because that's the nut that a lot of folks I think have a tough time with is scaling an idea. That's great. Okay, understood. But now it's like you have this whole crew around you to stay focused on that mission and plan.

Like, what are I. I'd say for me, like, first and foremost, like, it. It was just like the perfect group of people that I partnered with to make this happen. And the reason I say that is because, like, I was at the point where I was in my early 30s when I started LaunchBoom. And I was working with a group of marketers that were, like, just out of college. They were, like, in their early 20s, mid 20 Hungary. And when I had met them, they were taking deals to do deals. There was no focus. They were honestly, you know, barely surviving financially, and they were doing great work because I actually hired them to help me with my early campaigns.

Yeah. So you knew how they worked already, huh?

I already had worked with them for six months or longer. And so I recognized talent and potential. And, you know, at that point, they also. We had a lot of trust and respect and working with each other just because we had been working with each other on my successful launches. Yeah. And so, you know, when I sat down, you know, with. With my business partner today, Mark Pakota, who is now CEO of LaunchBoom, and I've always been president of Launch Zoom, we've always been partners on this thing. But, you know, when I sat down with him and I said, hey, Mark, you know, like, I think there's something so much bigger here. But if we do this together, we can't just do videos to do videos, and we can't just build websites to build websites. We only do crowdfunding projects. And we have to be very focused, because if we stay focused, we're going to win, because, you know, we are the best marketers in this space, based on what I'm saying, because there's no one there at the time. And so. So he's like, you know, will, this makes a lot of sense. Let's do this. And so I'd say finding the right group of people that were open to being coached and mentored, and also, like, the fact that we had the trust and that relationship in place made it easier to kind of get it started. But then the proof is in the pudding. As soon as we started having win after win after win, it was fun, man. Like, we used to. Like in the early days when we had our office in San Diego, we had a little office on the beach in Pacific Beach. Cool. We would have launch parties, and it was fun. Like, as soon as we'd hit that crowdfunding button on Kickstarter and would go live. Yeah. We'd see all the funds come rushing in. Our clients would be in the office with this party in.

Oh, that's cool. So you're probably getting that whole. Yeah, it's just a great vibe. Hopefully some videos capturing of the moment, too.

Totally, man. So, like, like, that was, like, the proof in the pudding. So, like, would put all this work and effort into the pre launch, would have a party, would launch, it would see all the funds coming in from all over the world on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, depending upon the platform we launched on. And then from there it was like, when's the next one? You know what I mean?

Gets addicting. Yeah.

And then we go from 2015 to 2016, and now we've got these preferred partnerships with Indiegogo and Kickstarter and we've got even more lead gen coming in. We're having launches going live every single week. You know, it just, it was just like this like energy I can't even begin to articulate, but it was super, super positive. Morale was super, super high. Still is. And that's honestly what really powered us through that, like, not only like scale phase, but like, just like kept us excited and wanting to wake up in the morning to go to work.

I could hear like, well, I can hear the excitement in your voice. Just route. I'm like, because I've been in those launch environments and then. And you see the funds coming in or whatever that thing is, the metric, you know, but especially a crowdfunding. I mean, like, you have a straight up goal that we're all watching, like, hit refresh, hit refresh, right? But you have. So I heard, you know, it's camaraderie like that. It's the environment, obviously. Focus, I think, is the biggest piece there. It's so easy to get distracted and. But like crowdfunding and getting very clear on that and then just stacking your wins, I mean, that compounds everything for you and Joe.

And then like the other piece I haven't talked about yet is being open and wanting to learn. Right? Because, like, this space we were pioneering, like what we are doing and we're doing back then had never been done before. So I needed a group and a team that was really wanting to learn, excited to learn. So literally, like, I'd have people on my team say, hey, Will, I think we could do it better this way. You know, there's a Facebook conference coming up in San Francisco. Like, can you fly me up there? I'd really like to go learn more about, you know, how we can get better returns on our ad spend. And I'd be like, absolutely. So, like, I always encourage my team to continue to stay hungry to learn. And I always encourage, you know, I always make that, you know, top of mind too, for myself, because that's where the innovation really lies, is not just getting comfortable with, okay, hey, now our system works. Let's just Keep, like, selling more and more deals. That's not it. It's like, hey, how do we make this more fun and even more lucrative for creators all over the world?

Yeah.

And that's been our story for the last decade. So, like, so we create this reservation funnel, we revolutionize the industry. Right. We go through massive growth, we have tons of success as an agency, and then all of a sudden, this crazy. This crazy thing called the Pandemic happens. And to be honest, Joe, like, when the pandemic first happened, I was like. I was a little freaked out because I'm like, oh, shit. I was like, oh, shit, I'm screwed. Because people are going to want to put food on their table for their family, and they're not going to want to back a project that they might not receive for 12 months. So I was scared going into the Pandemic. I was like, oh, no. Like all. Everything we just worked towards these last five, six years is now down the drain. And I really thought crowdfunding was going to be dead. And fortunately, Joe, I was wrong. And I'm so happy I was wrong. Because what happened was more and more people were working from home, the government dished out all this money, and people were spending more time on social media.

Yeah.

So we actually were generating the biggest campaigns. We went through the biggest growth spurt I ever dreamed of. And I ended up going from, like, pre pandemic, like, 25 employees.

Up until the end of 2021, I had just under a hundred employees.

You did the opposite of basically everyone else.

And I never would have guessed it. I really thought we were going to be in trouble. But we learned a lot and we worked on thousands of product launches. I mean, it was awesome. But then, end of 2021, something happened, Joe. It got to a point where I had a heart to heart with my business partner, Mark. And I'm like, mark, you know, like, I don't think I'd hire launch boom to launch my new product on Kickstarter. And he's like. And he's like, why? And I'm like, it's too expensive. The agency model. I'm like, there's got to be a better way. Where? Instead of just working with funded startups because you had to have money to work with me as an agency, because we were white gloves would do it all for you. We needed advertising dollars, we needed video production, marketing dollars. So you couldn't just be like an entrepreneur with a good idea to work with me. You actually had to have some kind of funding to put into the prelaunch and the crowdfunding management so that we could do it all for you and deliver a great return. So there's this huge part of the market that we couldn't address with our agency. And I said, mark, I'm like, I know today, based on everything we just learned over, like, the last eight years, I know how to do the same thing and get a better result for a fraction of the cost. Because now we have AI. Now there's been technological advances that we've incorporated into our platform. And so he's like, you know, will I feel the same way? And so that started conversations with our leadership team in early 2022, where we intentionally killed our own agency. Joe.

Interesting.

Yeah, that mind you, Joe. Joe. That mind you was number one in the world. I mean, literally, like, I was flying all over the world every month pre pandemic. I was speaking on stages, educating people all over the world about how crowdfunding works, how to succeed with your product launch on Kickstarter, Indiegogo. And then I decide to kill my own agency.

Wow. Yeah, that takes some balls for one. But also, it sounds like you're living what you're preaching right now, which is like, don't be stagnant. Don't assume that this is the model forever. And you're also looking out for, I would say, more impact, right? Like, not just a small group of people that can launch and afford you in your team, but now you really want to scale. I have a lot of questions here. It's like, how did you do that? You mentioned AI. I mean, I guess, how long ago was this when you killed your agency?

So, Joe, Joe, it's honestly the craziest move I've ever made professionally. Like I said, we are the number one agency in the world. You search on Google, crowdfunding, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, we're going to pop up top three every time. We have all the traffic, we have happy clients. And then I make a decision with my leadership team. I just say, hey, guys, there has to be a better way. We should be able to improve our model so we can make it even more affordable. So now we can support everybody, not just the funded startups, but also the underfunded startups. And we can do that by pivoting away from agency and leaning in on a coaching consulting platform where we elevate our tech so that now we can plug in AI and we can actually make it more fun, even less risky. And now we can support more product creators worldwide. And so it took us about six months to kind of really think through and build out this new business model because it's entirely, it's totally different from an agency model. And so we took six months mapping it out, we had daily calls on it, really making sure we fleshed it out before we actually kill our agency.

Good move.

Right? Right. I needed to make sure that if this was going to happen, it was going to work. And then July 2022, we made the pivot and we became a coaching consulting platform with elevated tech. And we also have 10 million backer emails in our database that have backed one or more of our products over the last decade that now we can actually share with our clients today so that we can help them get lookalike audiences and significantly reduce their ad cost to build those large pre launch audiences. So now LaunchBoom, you know, let's call it Launch Boom 2.0 is now we're no longer an agency. This is July 2022. We're only focused on this coaching consulting platform. And you know, in all honesty, like, we spent the second half of 2022 kind of upgrading the tech, making sure our clients were having a positive experience, having a great experience, making sure that we added the right people on the team to make that possible. And then in January 2023, that was like our first full year using this new model. And it was the best year of my life.

What did you learn? Like what was, what were some big differences right out the gate that you learned?

What I learned first and foremost is that by, by, by pivoting away from agency and looking at this coaching consulting model seriously, and then upgrading our technology and adding those AI plugins, What I realized is that we could expedite the time you now need to go through a pre launch and get ready to launch on Kickstarter Indiegogo. But you can also not only maximize efficiency, but you can also maximize the ad spend, the ad dollars, which are critical when it comes to launching on Kickstarter Indiegogo. And you can get even better returns. Also, what I realized is that you don't need an agency. So for example, the way it works today, let's just say, Joe, you sign up with me today, you're like, well, I'm working with LaunchBoom, we're going to launch my new product. I want to say, hell yeah, Joe, let's go. So you'll be on, let's just say we onboard you today. You'll be on an onboarding call with my onboarding expert here at LaunchBoom. And you might be on that call with 10 or 20 other new clients that are being onboarded today.

Okay. Group session I like.

So what it is, it's a one to many model. And the beauty in this is that you're going to learn from each other's questions and you're going to get the same support from our expert. And by the time we get off that call, we're going to have you through step one, which is onboarding. Now you're in step two, messaging, positioning, working through your, your, your pricing strategy. And you might be on a call tomorrow with maybe 10 other clients that are dealing with the same steps. So you're going to learn from each other's questions and still get the same exact support from our expert who manages that part of our process. So that's how my model works today. It's what I call a one to many model as opposed to agency, which was one to one. So the problem with my agency was, even though it was, I could say I was the biggest in the world and I have almost 100 employees on my team, the problem with that was as I continued to bring in more projects, I had to hire more people. And as a business owner, that wiped out all my profit margin. So even though, like, you know, when you looked at Launchboom, our revenue was super sexy, my profit margins weren't that sexy.

And that's what matters. I mean, yeah, that's the number. Yeah.

And at the end of the day, that was another reason I had this heart to heart with Mark at The end of 2021, my business partner, because I was like, Mark, what's the point? Great. We double our revenue again next year. Great. We're still barely, we're making razor thin margins, like, and we have to work harder.

And that's the agency model kind of in a nutshell. Right? Like, it's like you got to keep scaling, scale resources, scale responsibilities. Like something that a lot of agency owners talk about or think about is like, okay, well with more customers or more liability, more team members, more liability. And you know, it's like, do we want that stress? Is that a smart model to really scale? It's okay if it's boutique and that's, that's what you want to jam on, fine. But if you really look into scale, this is a perfect case study to even apply in other places. The one to many model, the coaching model.

And there are other nuances with the agency model too. It's like when you're an agency, you're doing all the work for the client. So if anything goes wrong, it's my fault. Right. And so the beauty of this coaching consulting model is that it's a do it with you model. Our clients have to invest their time too, but our clients want to because they need to learn about the market research. They need to learn about their customer profile. They need to learn how to maximize their ad spend. And the beauty of the do it with you model is that now we can serve more clients. I was able to literally drop my cost for my agency. My agency model used to be like 50,000 minimum. Half that would be ad spend, half that would be marketing. And then I take 10% commission off the gross crowdfunding campaign. That was my model. Right. The beauty of today is all my programs are basically under ten grand. And I take.

And they're getting the full thing.

They get the full thing. It's actually better today than it was as an agency because I've got more data they can use.

Oh, yeah.

And my tech is way slicker than it was back during my agency days. And at the end of the day, I take no commission interest.

So it's all purely on the coaching and one to many model.

Interesting. That's it. And now guess what? My client has more meat on the bone.

Yeah.

So.

And you're in it for them. Like with them, they're not thinking, okay. Because that's the whole thing with crowdfunding. It's like, I don't have to give away money early days. It's like, that's their money. So you're like, look it, look, look at the bag of cash you just got from this whole one to many thing.

And now as an entrepreneur, which is what we are, Joe, now think about them, it's like, great, now they've completed Kickstarter. Now they have more money to reinvest into their continued growth and development. Right? Because at the end of the day, people aren't crowdfunding just to launch. People want to build a profitable business and crowdfunding is the smartest way to do that product launch. And honestly, it really is. If you're not crowdfunding and you're listening to this, you should be crowdfunding. Guys, it is the easiest, most stress free way to validate and test any new consumer product idea.

So consumer product, I was going to say. So consumer product, mass, you know, like mass quantities. We're not talking digital products here or anything like that, right? Or are we?

No, yeah, that's correct. Yeah. So like for the most part, you know, we're, we're the best when it comes to tangible hardware, any type of consumer product. And there's a variety of verticals that do incredibly, incredibly well on Kickstarter Indiegogo. Generally speaking, I always tell people that Kickstarter Indiegogo is going to perform super well, especially if you have a product that appeals to a male audience. A male audience of, you know, ages 25 to 55 years of age.

If you are those just like the buyers that are on those platforms.

Yeah, that's the majority of the backers. Now we do have success with female products, but like if like I get a call from someone and they want to launch a new cosmetic line, I usually redirect that elsewhere because they're not going to raise as much money on Kickstarter based on just my data and experience.

That's fair, but it's good you're telling them that early too, before they go down the whole rabbit hole themselves, you know.

Totally. And you know, just to kind of fast forward to where we are today, I mean, right now I have over 2,000 active clients in my LaunchBoom community and we're onboarding about 100 new products every month. And that's been consistent over the last almost 18 months. Right, right. So, so what's so cool is that like now we're actually helping more people succeed. Now the beauty of what launch boom's become is our prelaunch system has really become the best way to fail fast and fail cheap. And so what's really interesting when you look at launch boom, half of my clients are early stage startups looking to launch their first or second product. But like their mom and pops bootstrapping, using credit cards to do this. The other half of my clients are actually very successful e commerce brands and I even have some Fortune, thousand clients that work with us. And really what they're doing is they're just using my system to fail fast and fail cheap, to validate and test new product ideas. And guess what? If my data is positive, great, they'll put more funding into it. They'll have a huge Kickstarter campaign outcome. My prelaunch data isn't successful or the data isn't positive. They, you know, they, they will look at the product, iterate it and test it again. Or maybe they put that idea on the back burner and they put the resources on another product that is going to do well. Right. So what's super cool about what launch rooms become, Joe? And the evolution of our business from agency to coaching consulting is we really have the best Product validation system that I know.

That's it. Yeah, it's huge. And that's, I would assume that's where most people are failing. They either don't even get to launch point, but they do all this prep work and they're probably spent in the wrong places. Not knowing the data, not knowing the audience, getting the commitment from an audience early, or even owning that audience right on a list of their own. I mean these are all elements that are extremely valuable for after launch. Which I want to touch on briefly is, you know, after the launch itself. Obviously that's not going to last forever, you know, the crowdfunding campaign. So like what does it look like without getting like super deep? Because I'm sure it's a whole nother conversation. But like where do you direct people or how do you support them? Suggest for them to do after a successful launch?

Yeah, so, so like I told you earlier, right? So I've got expert coaches on my team internally that will basically spearhead specific parts of our process, right? So when I told you about my 2,000 clients today, that's not everyone getting ready to launch. That's, that's accumulative. Like that's everybody that, that's like people that are being onboarded today, people that are running ads, building that pre launch community, that build, stacking that reservation funnel. This is, these are clients that are getting ready to launch in the next week or two. These are clients that are wrapping up their Kickstarter, their Indiegogo campaigns and then these are clients that are getting ready to deliver and ship their product to backers. Right? So depending upon the part of the process they're in here at launch, boom. Our coaches and experts will basically plug them into specific partners of ours to help them kind of get to that next step and to do it most affordably, most efficiently. And so to answer your question, like when we have clients that are getting ready to wrap up their crowdfunding campaigns, guess what? We get them on a call with coach that gets them plugged into our expert partners that might be able to get their Amazon set up. Or actually they might be a better fit for retail. And so we'll get them plugged into our retail partners. Or maybe they want to get their Shopify store built and they want to start, you know, building their Shopify E commerce business. We have, you know, e commerce experts, we also have shipping fulfillment experts. Maybe they need help shipping fulfilling. So the cool part about LaunchBoom is I've spent the last 10 years working with hundreds of different professionals in my space at different phases of the process, and I literally handpicked the best ones. So today I've got an expert portal directory that all my clients have access to. All my partners offer special discounts to my clients because they know that they're already validated, they're already qualified, and that they're probably going to do really well in their program. Yeah. And so that's how we help them get to the next step, and that's how we actually help them grow and scale beyond crowdfunding.

I just keep imagining all the mystery, like, the question marks that happen with people who are trying to do it alone. If you go down this route, I mean, like, I can't imagine doing it myself and, like, been in business as an entrepreneur for many years, but have not done the consumer product thing. So it's like, if I even thought, and obviously a business who's already in it, maybe they have some connections.

Cool.

But you're still streamlining the process. But, like, if you don't have any of this background, I don't know how you get it done without losing a bunch of money, a bunch of resources, maybe your partnerships in the. In the meantime, you know, it's like, it could be disastrous.

I mean, I mean that. That's how we built this thing. Right. I started doing it myself. I was looking for support. Support didn't exist, so I decided to create it. I thought Launchroom was the best brand name ever for what we do. Cool. You know, and. And then. And then again, you know, having, you know, thousands of product launches under our belt gave us a ton of experience. And trust me, we've made a lot of mistakes and we've hit a lot of roadblocks. Like, remember the iOS updates a few years back? That really threw a wrench at us, but we had to work through that, you know, and so what we're continuing to do here at Launch Boom is we're continuing to innovate. And my goal is never to be the cheapest option. I'll never be cheap, but I'll always be the most affordable and I'll be the best solution. And that's what our team is excited about. That's what keeps us pumped about what we're doing. Because as we're learning more about AI, which is super exciting, we're learning that we can continue to create efficiencies, to continue to reduce the cost and reduce the risk for all entrepreneurs all over the world. And if we just keep doing that, we're going to continue to win I really believe in it, you know, I love it.

And, and I can see it. I know you are. And I mean, you're currently winning and it's just going to keep expanding, man. So hats off to you for doing this and taking the endeavor on because someone had to do it. I guess no one had to do it, but I'm happy you did it. And we got to meet. And kind of a wrap up question here is more for like, for you to leave us with some kind of insight. Like what? Because I want to get into like, what? Obviously you're very enthusiastic, you're focused, you've done the work. Like, what's kept you in the game to stay focused and motivated as an entrepreneur for so long. And you obviously said you can't sit still in your house after an exit and stuff like that. Most people maybe haven't had an exit yet, but like, what's the mind game or something that just keeps you focused and driven as you are now?

Yeah, no, great question, Joe. I mean, you know, just to kind of wrap this up, like, I genuinely, at the end of the day, like, I get energized by helping people. I like to help people. And what I love about what I do at LaunchBoom, it's the first time in my career that I built a global business. So I literally today and I get goosebumps telling you this. I get to wake up every day and I get to help people all over the world take their dreams and actually make them real businesses. And I on another episode, Joe, I can tell you story after story about so many of my clients that came to me having never launched a product. And we took them through our system, we had a huge Kickstarter Indiegogo campaign outcome and you know, they ended up exiting for, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars.

Oh man, that's cool.

And just to be a big part of that and to be able to have the opportunity to do that for people, honestly, that keeps me pumped up, that keeps me energized and I don't even feel like I'm working anymore, man.

See, that's the key right there. It's, you're building, you're building this impact into your life and obviously it doesn't feel like work. You're doing it and it just gets better and better.

It's awesome. And to be honest, like, I can't see what we end up launching tomorrow.

I mean, I peaked at some of the products you're launching and I want pretty much every single one of them. So I'M like, you're doing something right.

Oh, that's another funny story, too. So, like, when I. When I first started Launchpoam, as we went through, like, that growth in 2016, all my clients are sending me samples and prototypes in my house, and I as much. And my wife's like, will, this has to stop. Like, we don't have any room. There's no more room for more boxes. And. And so, you know, it was kind of like being a kid in a toy store, you know?

Yeah, I figured. I was like, man, there's some cool benefits as being the one. Like, you're just testing all these products, but just like your wife. My wife, she's like, let's get it out. Stop the boxes. You need your own place.

So now I just redirect those deliveries to, like, my campaign managers.

Smart.

You know, my. And they're all having a blast testing out the products, you know?

There you go. Oh, well, man, this has been a pleasure. I. I figured this is how it'd go because this is how our chats have been, but I'm happy we got to get some focus time together outside of the mastermind, where it's kind of a whole group thing. So keep doing the good work, man, and I would love to have you back again maybe in another year or so when you learn a whole boatload of more things. Cool. And keep sharing the fun. So thank you so much. Check out launchboom.com everyone anywhere else that you want to direct people to follow. Honestly, just.

Just go to launch. But we have a lot of free. We have the most free education in the space. And you'll get. You'll get a really good idea, if not most of your questions answered there. And then if you want to talk to anyone, if you want to learn more, you can actually schedule a call with a human being. Not an AI machine, but you can actually talk to a human being on my team if you are super interested or getting ready to launch that next awesome product idea.

Right on. Go do it, y'.

All.

All right, well, appreciate you, man. Thank you.

All right, Joe. Thank you, man. Have a great day, man.

You too.