Episode 123: Create a Profitable Crowdfunding Campaign with Ariel Hyatt

If you do that one more time, Ariel, you're getting the whip.

Just let it be known everybody's rolling but me. All right, I'm rolling now. I don't know. I felt that was necessary to announce.

That I appreciate it. Don't. I'm puking over there.

Yeah, you got the.

Christina's call. She's clear.

She's puked grass.

You got that Chewbacca for me?

Oh, my God. Oh, you gonna kick me in here, bro?

Oh. Oh, I was waiting for Chewbacca again. All right, you have stumbled onto the Profit first podcast.

Episode one, two, three.

Oh, I started too early.

Dang it.

I don't think Ariel made any noise.

There we go. There we go.

Now we're talking. Welcome to the show, everyone. This is the Profit first podcast. My name is Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording and Pause youe Life.

Yeah. Oh, I gotta put that in my show notes that you're gonna say and pause my Life. And I'm Mike Michalowicz. I'm the author of Profit first and Serge. Serge, listen. You're listening to the show. You haven't heard Red Surge yet. What's going on? You can download it on Audible. You can pick up the book. You're getting me jacked up. I'm joined in the studio by Christina Buldak there.

Hey, and you.

You are listening to the perfect the Profit first podcast. This is a show where we discuss every single stinking element of profitability. If you've listened to all 123 episodes by now, you should be Richard than Donald Trump himself. I mean, you'd be huge if you listen to every episode. That's all I'm saying.

Hey, by the time this comes out, he might be president.

No, that was not a comment. I do not comment on politics.

We are not get either size.

That's right. This show's all about profit because revenue might be tremendous, but profit is a mind benderist. Oh, that was a tough one.

That works.

I think we did that one before.

That's right, the show.

We talk about profit, we interview a guest expert, and then actually the three of us give our takeaways afterwards. And you can also give your takeaways. You can comment on this post. Our website is profitfirstpodcast.com that'll bring you to Mike's website. You can see all our previous episodes and you can see links to itunes and stitcher and tunein. Anywhere you can find a podcast. This show is there. You can subscribe. And we love that and this is gonna be a great episode about crowdfunding. Mike, I think we should do a little profit first podcast crowdfunding thing. What do you think?

Oh, my gosh, That's a good idea.

Yes, please.

Maybe our guest Ariel Hayek will walk us through it. You know, Christina's actually looking to raise some money, and there's these sites called GoFundMe where you can get personal funding.

Something to consider, even for things like a security deposit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're looking for a new apartment.

Yeah, yeah.

There was a guy that went on a business trip and he used GoFundMe. He had an opportunity with a prospect and he went to GoFundMe and people paid for his flight.

I might do that.

All right, well, we're going to talk all about crowdfunding and how to get money to facilitate a profitable venture. But first, I want to thank our corporate partners who make this show possible. All of them, we told you last week. All of them? All of them, plus some showed up to ProfitCon.

Nice.

Yeah.

The only event in the globe dedicated to profit. And by the way, 2017 is already planned. It's gonna be September 28th to the 30th, I believe.

Nice.

In Marstown, New Jersey.

Yes. Always the last weekend in September.

Last weekend in September. Now here's what we do. Go to profitcon.us. p R O F I T, C O N. That's a cliffhanger. Us. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Thanks, Barry. Go there and get your ticket for 2017. That's how you should be up by at that point, right, Barry?

You would not miss ProfitCon, would you?

No way. You crazy.

There you go, Barry.

Chewbacca, would you be there?

Barry works like three miles from there. Seriously, you should get Barry to go to Profit.

Oh, I was looking at Barry there. Maybe. Yeah, Actually, maybe he could be our voice of God.

Yes.

Oh, we should do it. So Fundera, Fundbox, Next Tiva Receipt, bank and Xero. We'll give you a shout out or give them. Give you details on them. For now, that's the shout out. But thank you for sponsoring the show and make it a reality. Christina, we've talked about shout outs. Any shout outs from folks?

Yeah, we actually got a little card in the mail and forgive me if I have a hard time reading his handwriting, but this comes from John.

That's the one from John Bates, right?

Yeah. Would you like to do the honors?

Yeah, I'll read it because I'll paraphrase it. Mike, you're amazing. No, I'm kidding. Okay. Dear Mike, I gotta clear my throat. Dear Mike, thank you for my recent successful trip to Horseshoe Valley, Houston, Halifax and Nashville. Financial freedom. Stay home with my wife and my newly born baby of two months. It goes on and on. What I've been able to do that now that I've implemented profit first in my life. You as in the collective you may us, you made a life changing difference for us. I cannot thank you enough. That gives me chills. That gives me chills. We have this post on our wall and that's the impact of profit first. It's not yet your business is more profitable and then you can do these things that John did with your profit.

Yeah. We have a wall that says how we're changing the world since we're on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. And John is one of the who have emailed in thanking us for what we did.

One of the many baby daddies. Baby daddies who have emailed us. Her name is Ariel Hyatt and she wrote a book that you better. You better have read. If you haven't go get it because I'll tell you, it's amazing. It's called crowdstart, the Ultimate Guide to a Powerful and Profitable Crowdfunding Campaign. Now, I gotta be honest, when I said it's amazing, I was looking at the release date. It hasn't come out yet. It will be out October 25th. So by the time this goes live, it'll be out. Yes, it will be amaz. Amazing. I need to get my copy on it. But this show is gonna be dedicated. This show, we're gonna focus on how crowdfunding works and how you can use it to make yourself extremely profitable. Arielle, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

Welcome.

We're going to the Ariel.

It's a Jersey thing.

Jersey. Jersey.

And what about the. I know Arielle was really looking forward to come on our show and to do her Chewbacca imitation.

Really? You just went there? Went right there.

Right there.

Does it count if I just tweeted a Chewbacca meme? Can we just leave it at that? Okay, good.

I think that totally counts.

Good. Okay, so everybody, the proof is up on Twitter right now at this moment.

What's your handle?

You really don't want to do it. This is your last chance.

Not going to do it.

Okay. Will you tell us about crowdfunding at least?

I would love to do that.

Okay, well, here's the deal. Yo, chiefy. I believe, and this is just my belief, that there's more failures Less people raise money on crowdfunding than they do raise money. Is that true?

This is true.

So then how do you do it right?

Well, how you do it right is you, first of all realize that the actual campaign is the sort of icing on the cake. A lot of what you have to do is prepare. And not just prepare by recording a good video and making, you know, some juicy offers and, you know, making a compelling story for your campaign. But you need to prepare by really thinking about who is your crowd. Do you have a tribe? Do you have friends and followers online? Do you have some rich relatives? Like, you need to think about all the people in your life that would be willing to be a contribution to you way before you start your 30 day sprint for the. For the gusto.

So are you saying line up your contributors in advance?

Absolutely.

Oh, that sounds like the antithesis of what crowdfunding is. I thought the idea was the community rises to the occasion, basically, and gives you money.

I think that that's what the media would have you believe, and that's what a lot of people that I coach, and that's even what I thought when I did my own crowdfunding campaign, which is what my book is based on. But you realize very quickly, especially if you're an entrepreneur that's been focused on money, and that's why I'm so excited to be on the show with you guys, is a crowdfunding campaign is actually a sales campaign. And so if you're uncomfortable or flipped out about selling, asking for money, putting yourself out there, it's not going to go well at all. So there is a great statistic from Entrepreneur magazine that says between 69 and 89% of all projects, depending on the platform, actually don't make their crowdfunding goal. And that's pretty bleak. So really what it's about is understanding that, yes, the community will come, you will get some exciting things. Like, people that you've never met will contribute, and exciting things might happen on social media. And there are always some wild card surprises in any crowdfunding campaign, but you've got to really think through what you're doing and how you're doing it, and also how much money is realistic to raise. I think we would all love to have $100,000 or $50,000 or a huge amount, but the average crowdfunding campaign only raises about $7,000. So there's also that to keep in mind, which is how much is your tribe really good for?

$1 billion.

So, okay, so if the average raise is $7,000. What is the typical, best thing to raise money for?

That really depends on what your dream is. So the thing that you obviously want to raise money for is the thing that people will feel compelled to contribute for. So you definitely need to keep your crowd in mind, and you want to figure out what would an extra 5, 7, 10, 20, or $50,000, if you could get it, what would you do with it? What would be your ideal dream? When I went for my crowdfunding campaign, I raised money to rebrand my company. I raised money to create a course, a digital online social media mastery course, and I raised money to actually do what we're doing right now, which is I wanted to self publish my book. I wanted to hire a proper editor. I wanted to hire a real graphic designer. I wanted to hire a marketing company, and I knew that it would take a lot of money to do those three things. So it really depends on what's your dream and how do you align your dream with your tribe.

Hold on. Did you crowdfund your book on crowdfunding?

I sure did.

Nice.

That's a fractal.

It sure is.

You should have listened to last week's episode because we did a whole episode around writing a book and the cost for it. And the guest, AJ Harper. Arielle explained that minimally, you should expect to spend 10 to 15,000 to self publish even before you buy in the books. She was talking about the COVID design and the interior layouts and the editors and all this different thing, all these different elements. And it sounds like the cost. That's just the starting point, that 10 to 15. It sounds like it can go to 20, 30, $40,000 easily. Did you have to raise a substantial amount of money, or did you elect to raise a substantial amount of money through your.

I did. I had a crazy goal, which was $50,000, and my campaign actually ended up raising $62,000.

I'm wiping away some sweat because if you raised, like, of all people, if you only raised 49,000 and you're the crowdfunding author, then you're like, you're screwed.

That's so true.

I have a question. I think it's a silly question. I'm pretty sure it's a stupid question, but I really need to know, how did you ask for that money? I mean, did you tell people, oh, I want to rebrand my company, and I want to publish a book? Like, when I think about crowdfunding and I like, for me, if I was gonna ask for those kinds of things, I think that people would look at my ask and be like, why am I gonna support him rebranding his company? Like, how do you ask for things? How did you ask for those things?

Yeah. So that's where the importance of the story of your crowdfunding campaign comes in. And I'm sure you've talked about this on past episodes, and it's talked about every. To be successful, everything has to have a compelling story or no one is going to care or buy from you. The same goes with your crowdfunding campaign. So, yes, it was all about those things that I wanted to do. But what my campaign story was was, please make me help me get my dream realized. That was what I asked for. So, yes, the vehicle for that was rebranding my company and creating a digital campaign. But how I packaged it was, you've known me in a very specific domain. You've known me in the music industry. You've known me as a person who's been an advocate for helping people in a very deep niche. Now is my coming out party, and I would like to help more entrepreneurs and yes, obviously include musicians and artists and the people in the music industry that I've been serving for 20 years. But my dream is to blow the roof off of that, and I can't do that without a substantial financial investment to get this book done, to get the course done, and to get the rebrand done. And my community loved it, and they went for it.

Nice.

Ariel, can you walk me through the standard makeup of a good campaign? I want to run a campaign, let's say, how do I go about the whole process?

The first thing you should do, as we talked about at the top of this interview, is before you even go into your process, you need to really take stock and ask yourself, who in my life is really supportive of me? And you want to actually make a list of, if I went and I asked every single person I know for money, who's good for 10 bucks, who's good for a hundred bucks, who's good for a thousand bucks, and who's good for in between, then what you want to do is you want to really understand and study the science of crowdfunding. The brilliance of having all of these different crowdfunding platforms and having all these case studies is there's a lot of amazing statistics, and I put a lot of them in the book to kind of ground everyone that's reading, but understand how many levels of rewards you should be offering. So the answer is somewhere between five, Five and nine. You don't want to have too many to overwhelm people. You don't want to have too few. There's also a sweet spot in the reward categories. You want to have some rewards that are around $75, because that's an average crowdfunding campaign give. You also want to be really careful that you're not doing like a $1 or a $5 tier, because if people are going to give five, they probably will give you 20. So start a bit high. So you want to make sure that you have a compelling video. You want to make sure you've got a great name for your campaign. You want to make sure you've got five to nine, ideally seven to nine, great offers and rewards. And then what you want to do is clear your damn calendar because you're going to need 30 days, hours a day to really focus. And that's where I see people fail, is they think I just push a button, I just go on Kickstarter or I just go wherever and I, you know, put a few little posts on social media and everybody's going to come with the money. That is where the failure will start to happen. So it's about every day, on top of your job, on top of what you do for your own career and your business and your family and your life, you need to have two to three hours a day to just focus for the whole 30 days on your campaign.

Okay, but let me give you a unique circumstance that I just heard of. I know someone who had a great campaign, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and is so overwhelmed now, can't deliver on it, and it seems to be unwinding the campaign success. He promised to deliver this product a month or two ago and now can't do it. Have you seen people run into that problem? And how do you navigate that if.

You have this is a common problem. This is like the embarrassment of riches problem. Right? He probably never expected that to happen. He needs to probably, I would imagine, get a team around him that can help facilitate the delivery of whatever this is, because this happens often. And my advice, this area is your crowd will not be upset if you don't deliver as long as you communicate what's happening. So he needs to be really clear with his communication and say, hey, I don't have the right manufacturer, or hey, I've hit a snag in my delivery, or hey, there's been an unexpected issue. As long as you share and you are humble and clear, people will be super forgiving. And I've seen this so many times and I've Contributed to quite a few campaigns where, you know, a year later, something shows up and you're like, oh, yeah, I crowdfunded that a long time ago. So that is definitely a pitfall. But I think communication and problem solving are your. I mean, that sounds very, very trite, but those are the. Those are the keys, are there.

I talked about GoFundMe in the intro. Are there sites out there? Maybe GoFundMe is one where people just contribute without a. They don't get a benefit. They just get the benefit of knowing they've contributed to somebody.

Absolutely. And GoFundMe is exactly that. And we see that with medical emergencies or people lose their house in a fire or they need something urgent. GoFundMe is the perfect platform for that. I would not recommend that platform. If you're, you know, a musician putting out an album, you should use the appropriate platform for you. And of course, there's now hundreds of platforms, and there's a lot of niche platforms as well. So you definitely want to do your homework about which platform is right for you and think about why you're choosing that platform.

Is there scams? I actually have never seen one in the news, But I presume GoFundMe people like, oh, I'm gonna fake a heart attack and raise $50,000, or maybe on another funding platform for their business. Oh, I'm making this product. And then they're a fly by night and disappear. I've never heard of that. But I presume that's happening, right?

It has happened. I've read a couple of, you know, freak incidents like that. Indiegogo and Kickstarter are pretty. They're very, very diligent in the research that they do. When a campaign goes live, there's always a approval process. So you can't just, like, throw up your campaign and be like, hey, everybody. They actually vet it and check to make sure that you're. And there's also some pretty stringent banking laws around your campaign. So you have to, like, prove that you're not, you know, a drug dealer or doing something super shady. And most of the major crowdfunding campaign platforms are very savvy to this because they have to stay in compliance. So they're not going to let scammers, you know, abound. But yes, I have read about and heard once in a while something creepy happens.

Where do. How do I approach a family member or whatever if I. If I have people that I know, I can go to and raise some money? So say I went to my sister and said, hey, hey, Sid. That's my nickname for her. I nickname everyone, just so you know.

Everybody gets.

Actually, I just nicknamed Eleni at the office now.

Kravitz.

Yeah, Kravitz.

What's Ron's that name?

Obi Ron. Oh, Kenobi and Christina's cabbie. Aaron's Mo. Mike is Hawaiian lumberjack. I'm now Fat Daddy Fat.

Well, you're Flash. We can still call you Flash Flash.

Or Fat Daddy Fat Bag. But what if. I'm trying to think of a nickname for you, Ariel, but say I, I go to someone I know is going to fund me. Isn't there a response gonna be just, I'll give you the money? Like, I don't want to go through these machinations of going on the web and set up an account and all this different stuff. Isn't it hard to convert over people that want to give you money in the traditional sense and make them do these extra steps just to fund you?

I'm not sure how many of your friends and family just give you money. I mean, no one actually is true, right? I was going to say that's like a world that I wish I had. Yes. It's funny, even during my campaign, my aunt, my godfather, they were very confused by the whole setting up the credit card thing. So I was very happy to just accept, accept the check. And I actually talk about that in the book. Be prepared for that. But if you are going to ask, you know, you're an 80 year old or your grandma or someone who's not used to using technology, they might hit a stumbling block. And then you should make it very easy for them to give you the money. No matter how that's going to be, whether it's PayPal or you set up a square account and literally take their credit card number over the phone. Those are things that happen in every single person's campaign that I've ever coached where there's someone that just cannot figure out how to use the platform. Just make it easy for them because you want their contribution, even if it doesn't get.

How do you make it easy? Just take the check and then you, you set it up like you were them.

Yeah, you can do that. Or, I mean, you know, if you have any integrity at all, take the check and just mail them the goodies or invite them to the party or whatever the reward level is. It doesn't.

I'm trying to figure out, how do you get displayed like, I presume the reason I want Aunt Betty's money is to show other Possible future contributors that someone else has already contributed, and they're substantial money.

Right, of course.

So how do I get Aunt Betty, who has no clue how to do go on any of these websites, how do I get her money recognized as an Aunt Betty contribution?

You're gonna have to find a cousin or go over to her house and walk her through it if you really need her contribution on that platform. Okay, yeah, that would be. That would be what I would do there. But, yeah, that's. That's a tough one.

Okay. Is there some things that are just absolute no nos when it comes to crowdfunding? Like, I don't know, material that's like adult material. Like, you never do crowdfunding for that stuff. Christine was like, yeah, absolutely.

I'm like, really?

I don't know. I'm just thinking, is there certain categories or certain things? Like, if you're looking to raise money for xyz, don't use crowdfunding.

I think the beauty of the Internet is there's sickos everywhere. There's definitely that. But I mean, there's a niche for everything, right? I mean, if you really know your audience and if you're really creating a good. A product, a service or something for them, you'd be amazed at what people will raise money for. I think as long as you have a crowd that is supportive and on board, you could raise money for anything.

And could it hurt you in the long term? Say I sell a coaster. So I got a coaster here. Nice one, right? It's pretty beautiful. So I'll hit on the microphone so you can hear it. Now you know it's a coaster for real. I can't deny that. That coaster, say I decide to sell it on the crowdfunding platform. I give away bonuses. Maybe I reduce the price a little bit. I do different things to get. Build excitement. Now I'm in business. Don't I have now a recorded history of selling this coaster at a discounted price and giving away stuff. Will it make it more difficult to sell stuff in the future because of the discounted past?

Not necessarily. Because that's the benefit of being in someone's crowd. If you think about the coolest cooler, that was that massive crowdfunding campaign that went bonkers. And all the early adopters that were smart enough to buy one of the original coolers was delighted because they got that cooler at a discount. But it was a great campaign because it showed proof of concept. Not only did it show proof of concept that, like, here's something that a lot of people clearly want, but it had a cool factor, like you got the discount or you got the extra bonuses because you were smart enough to get in on the ground floor. So there is a cool factor to being an early adopter. And I think people understand and like with the Pebble Watch. The watch was a smashing success after it came out and there were tons of people that bought it after the fact. So it's a great proof of concept. And I don't think people get really that upset about it in the long run.

I'm looking up Pebble Watch now. I never heard of it before. All right, so, okay, so you have me convinced. What are the sites to go to for crowdfunding? Maybe give us a list of two or three or four with what they cater to.

Absolutely. So in my book I talk about you have to make a big decision when you're crowdfunding, and that is do you want to do an all or nothing or do you want to do a partial raise platform? And the two biggest ones are, of course, Kickstarter. Kickstarter is an all or nothing platform. So if I want to raise $25,000 and I raise 24,999, I do not get any of my money. Then there's, there's a little late on the button. Then there's Indiegogo, which is another very large platform that does allow you to do a partial raise. So you could keep, you know, what if you, you fall grossly short and you only raise 10,000. I think that once you take the effort to do a crowdfunding campaign, $10,000 is still a lot of money. And you've gone through the effort and the pain to ask everyone in the world that you know, for money you should be able to keep a partial raise. So I would look at Indiegogo for that. Indiegogo is also a wonderful platform if you want to associate with a not for profit. So if you're doing something that has a charitable aspect to it, they can align you with a not for profit so that a portion of what you raise can go to charity. So Those are the two biggest players. Of course, we've talked about GoFundMe. If you're looking to do something for a medical emergency or you're looking to raise money for a school, or you know, do something that's strictly really personal without a rewards attached to it. And then one I would love to give honorable mention is Pledge Pledge Music. They are for the musician and artist community and they do a fabulous job of helping musicians raise money. For projects and tours and their dreams. And as you know, the music industry is in a very crazy place right now. So it's really helped musicians get money in their pockets and further their careers.

And do you have any specific tip to ensure that if you use a Kickstarter or you do any of these programs from a business perspective to launch a business, to sell a product, do you tip to ensure profitability to make sure you don't actually raise money but lose in the process?

That's really about being a savvy business person right before you start your campaign. And luckily, anyone listening to this has you and you teach people how to measure profit and what that really means.

I think we've got our shout out, Christina, for the next episode. That's all I want. I just wanted to hear you talk about me. That was. Quite frankly, that's more than you know.

That's the key right there is don't be an idiot about this. If you have a product, you have to make sure that you're building in your postage, your handling all the bits that you might not think about.

There is a theme going on. Christina, last week we talked about don't be an idiot. Right? Wow, Ariel, this has been very insightful. Where can people learn more about you and your great new book?

So, my book, there's a free chapter available for download and you can read all about it at my website, which is arielhayett.com or I'm a Twitter addict. So if you want to find me there, I can be found at cyberpr.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us for today's episode.

Thank you. It's been fun.

Thanks, Arielle.

We were, you know, we were kind of chill on her, Chris. We didn't. We didn't go all in on making her make sounds before in the preamble, which we didn't have online. We should been recording that, but we didn't put online. She was. I thought she was gonna go crazy. I thought she's gonna go off the.

Well, she's. See, she is so knowledgeable and so expert that she's delivering so much value that she's like, she doesn't want to get nutty with us too much.

She doesn't need the. Yeah. The fluff I throw in to ruin the show. Right. She actually brings intelligence to the show.

Exactly.

I gotcha.

She's the smart one, you know, In.

A second, Chris and Christina, we're gonna talk about what we learned from Ariel. But first, I want to thank our corporate partners.

Please.

I keep throwing Chris over. He's like, do I sting him? Do I not sting him?

You want me to punch? If you ever want me to punch.

You, just punch me.

Oh, hell no. I don't want you punching me. Me. Let me tell you about our sponsors. I want to start with Zero, our premier sponsor. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if they have a crowdfunding plugin for their cool accounting system because they have so much flexibility. You can plug in this, you can plug in that, you can plug in everything.

Yeah.

Christine is like, don't. Just don't even go there. Zero. It's our accounting platform. We've used it for two years. We love it, highly recommend it. It's the most innovative accounting platform on the cloud. Receipt bank. How many receipts are floating around this disgusting desk?

I can spot 20.

20 easily. 20. I leave them there because I scan. My problem isn't keeping track of these receipts. I scan them into receipt bank, so they're already recorded. It just sits here.

You just hoard them.

What is. I spend 20 bucks on what? Here? Oh, the station that was for. That was for two drinks. $20.

Wow.

I will never go there again. They're not a sponsor, but if the station in Mountain Lakes was a sponsor, they'd be lauded on the show nextiva. How awesome. Nextiva.

Next voiceover ip. Love them.

Oh, I'm speaking at Next Con. You guys gotta join me out there. It's in Phoenix this November. So right when this is broadcasting, you can still get your ticket right now go to Next. I guess it's Next Con.

Yeah, I think so.

Or just go to Next. I v. A check out their upcoming events. I'm keynoting now. Now, Chris, they're putting on no lie, dude. They're putting on a stage with the opener. Steve Wozniak, the co founder of Apple, then me, then Guy Kawasaki are to the start like, one of these eggs doesn't match. You know what I'm saying?

It's a McAllister sandwich.

The McAllister sandwich put me in the.

Middle because now more people are gonna show up.

He probably says, like, mike, please clean the stage between Steve Wozniak. I read it as a Makino fundbox. Oh, invoice financing.

Right.

Yes.

Yeah. So cash flow accelerator. Really what it is. If you have invoices due to you, Fundbox releases the funds to you in its entirety. Then when you collect the funds from your client, you return the funds to fund a box.

Show me the money.

Show me the money. It's a show Me. The money button. Yeah. You know, it's funny. They have, you know, these buttons like we have. Here's a show. The money button. That's our cha ching button on my desk. The. The funbox money. Now, this may be myth or folklore, but I believe it to be true. You hit their button as hard as you can, and it actually shoots the money out into your stomach. It just blasts it into you. And then there's Fundera. And Fundera, our buddy Meredith Wood over there, who was at profitcon and had to leave for a wedding.

Yeah, she came just, you know, to say hi and to talk about Fundera for a little bit, and then she just scooped because her best friend was getting married.

That's commitment. That's commitment. Fundera is a one stop source for any of your loan needs. Okay? That's our poor partners. We love you guys. And you as a listener, should be checking these folks out. Christine, what did you learn on today's episode from Aria?

I learned that communication is key. And you. If people are giving you money to help you produce a product or whatever it is that you need them for, keep them updated. They want to know what's going on, whether you're succeeding, whether you're failing. As long as you're honest, I think people will continue to support you.

I took away Pump the prime. No, prime the pump.

Donald Trump.

Prime the pump. And then build a wall. Prime the pump. Prime the pump. Meaning you got to get supporters before you pursue supporters so that those future supporters see the past contributions of other folks. It builds that momentum. And then my favorite, I circled it. Don't be an idiot just because I've heard that twice. Now, listen, go into this with business savvy, not you're going to raise money. The question is, how much are you going to net at the end? Even crowdfunding, you got to be profitable. I mean, if you're raising money because you have an illness and you're using GoFundMe, the goal here is not to have some money left over, but. But in a business sense, if this is a business objective, you got to ensure that profitability is baked into your crowdfunding.

Chris, how about you breath help me realize my dream? That's the story she said that we should portray or that should be portrayed through a crowdfunding campaign. I love that because that answered my question. It's like, okay, we want to rebrand the company. So what? Who cares about that? Why would Aunt Matilda give me any money to rebrand my company? But the story is great. And it's funny because it ties into what really spending a lot of time building right now, which is my dream, which is Pause your Life. It's an actual nonprofit organization. Yes, it's an official nonprofit, and we're facilitating retreats and meetups for people who want to hit the pause button. You know, life is so relentless. Life never stops. And you know the famous Stephen Covey idea of sharpening the saw, right? And there's a story like, with Abraham Lincoln, I'm not sure if it was true, but they said if. If Abraham Lincoln had six hours to cut down a tree, he'd spend the first four hours sharpening the saw, right? So what happens in life is we keep working, working, working and banging our head against the wall. And if we don't stop, then we're not as effective, we're not as strong, we're not as healthy. So that's what Pause youe Life's all about. And that is my dream. So I don't know. It's an official nonprofit, so I might have to choose one of these platforms. Mike and Christina, Maybe I'll do a little crowdfunding.

Yeah. And by the way, if the listeners didn't notice, you dropped the keyword. It's Aunt Matilda. That's today's keyword. If you email. If you email, Christina ikemicalowicz.com and you can prove that there is an Aunt Matilda or any. It could be your Uncle Matilda, for God's sake. If there's any kind of Matilda, if that's your name, someone in your family's name or even remotely close, the first person that sends that in, Christina Michael mikemcalaetz.com will get all four of my books autographed and signed mailed right to you. But you gotta have proof, Christina, the.

Gay Matilda might be listening.

Dude, that's what I'm saying.

Matilda, email me.

Your whole life you've been like, I've been cursed with this name.

And now you're like, finally, free books.

Finally.

I've been relieved.

All right.

That's all I got.

Well, this is great. You can also leave your takeaways, too. That's right. You're listening. I'm talking to you now. You who listening right now. Now you have takeaways from what was discussed here, right? What Arielle said. So what are your takeaways? Go to profitfirstpodcast.com, go to episode 123, and go ahead and comment on the post. And we want to know your questions and your comments. And while you're there. You can see all our previous episodes and you can also click to see us on itunes and stitcher, you can also rate and review our show. There's a lot of stuff you can do to help our show. It actually helps us a lot. And we never actually asked for that, Mike. We never, we've never said on this show how important it is to rate and review this show in itunes.

Like we haven't. We should and we should be saying it. If we, if we followed Ariel's direction, I would have asked my aunt Matilda to put some great reviews up there in advance. So I missed that one. So. But you know, it is important. We want to spread the word and the best way, actually, I was about to say the only way, the best way to spread the word is reviews. Because then when other people see reviews, it gets more reviews and it gets the momentum going and then itunes ranks it higher. So we'd love for you to review the living crud out of us.

That's right. And we're happy to be part of your profit journey. And Mike, you are just changing the world over there. You and Christina and Oberon with profit first professionals. I mean this, your whole business is unheard of.

Unheard of. Here's our mission. We are looking well our taglines to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. 83% of entrepreneurs that run their businesses today are surviving check by check. They are barely floating. They are about to drown. It's scary. It's terrifying. And I bet you you listening right now. You're in that boat too. Our mission before hopefully I wrap up on this planet is that 83% of businesses will be profitable. Won't live under the stress of the day to day lifestyle of surviving check by check. It's going to take a herculean effort. And why don't we start it with you? Why don't we make your business profitable. Now here's how you do it. Go to profit first professionals dot com. Click on the find button. We will introduce you to an accountant, a bookkeeper or coach, whoever, whoever suits your needs to help guide you through profit first and hold you accountable to drive the profit in your business. Now I know you need an accountant, bookkeeper or coach. Anyway, you probably have hired all three of these people. So it's not like this is a brand new person, someone you've never used before. This is someone that's doing the core functions you need. But here's the big thing. They are specialists in profitability. Every element of their business, every way they support you has profit in the forefront. So go to proffersprofessionals.com, click on the find button. We'll make the introduction. You'll make profit.

It's that simple, really. So thanks for listening, really. We're happy to be part of this journey. Your profit journey. And by the way, Mike, your new book, surge. Good stuff, my brother. Good stuff.

Oh, I happy you're enjoying it.

And. And excuse me. So check out our website, profitfirstpodcast.com thanks again to Ariel Hyatt and Mike and Christina and Obi Ron and the Hawaiian Lumberjack. He hasn't been on the show in a while. Mike who?

Oh. Oh, yeah. No, because we're. Yeah, now we're totally screwed because we're in this. We're in the old space for the podcasting. So the lumberjack right now is out there on the phones making profit for folks.

There you go. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week.

Bye.

Oh, no, I'm fading.

Get out. Get us out. Get us out.