Get Funded Today: The Funded Today Podcast

In this episode, we’re venturing briefly beyond crowdfunding to talk about investing, specifically how you can start your own profitable investment fund. For that, we’re going to interview our special guest Bridger Pennington, a serial entrepreneur who became a highly-successful investment fund manager. So, let’s talk about how you can replicate his success... ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Discipline yourself in small decisions so that you’ll do likewise in big decisions. 2. Live without regrets by taking worthwhile risks even if you fail—and, to the extent that you’re on the right path, persistently continue trying until you succeed. 3. A great path to wealth is through owning businesses and/or investing in businesses, as long as you aren’t limited by small market sizes and/or tiny profit margins. 4. As long as you charge your fund investors only for your performance as their fund manager, and not for other reasons, you don’t need to concern yourself with any burdensome state licensure requirements. 5. Seek out mentors and learn from them, as human capital is more valuable than financial capital. 6. Discover your obvious disadvantages, disclose them boldly as advantages in less-obvious ways, and find partners who compensate for what you truly lack but need. 7. You can enhance your wealth by teaching others how to replicate your success; facilitating their long-term success is more valuable than distributing short-term handouts. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’ll talk with Mindy Zemrak, who is the Emmy-nominated Supervising Casting Producer of ABC’s “Shark Tank.” This award-winning startup-centered reality show debuted in 2009 and has since featured thousands of entrepreneurs, including over a dozen of our past crowdfunding clients. Mindy is now casting for the show’s 12th season, which will premiere this autumn, and she is going to give us her expert perspective about how YOU can succeed on it. So, on with the show… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. People shouldn’t wait to understand something perfectly before plunging into doing it, as we also learn from our own experience, and practice makes perfect. 2. Entrepreneurs can apply for “Shark Tank” either through the Internet anytime or in-person at open casting calls, which are held between January and August at various locations nationwide. 3. Applicants should ideally show passionate energy, have working prototypes, be able to explain succinctly what makes their offers unique, know their numbers, and not necessarily have any sales or positive reviews yet (although these can help). 4. Applicants are chosen partly for themselves and their story, and partly for their business and their product, and also because they need investment to get to the next step; those who aren’t chosen one year may try again each new year and may eventually get chosen. 5. Applicants should consider alternative fundraising methods and not rely upon getting featured on “Shark Tank” because 20,000-30,000 entrepreneurs apply for it annually but only hundreds make deals and only 88-108 get featured on television. 6. Finalists will receive extensive help preparing themselves before they approach a panel of self-made millionaires (who know nothing about them beforehand) to try to negotiate a deal, which usually involves a valuable partnership plus a financial investment; these negotiations will be recorded and possibly condensed into a brief segment for television. 7. Finalists who appear on “Shark Tank” will get seen before 5-7 million television viewers in what amounts to millions-of-dollars-worth of free advertising, and should prepare to handle a surge in remarketing, sales, cross-sells, upsells, customer-service inquiries, shipping, et cetera, which they can use to expand their business as quickly as possible. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’ll focus on e-commerce strategy, especially for bootstrapped startups. And, for that purpose, we’re interviewing an expert growth strategist named John Coyle, who’s going to explain how to identify your competitive advantages, how to capitalize upon them to grow your brand, and how to strategize successfully through the three phases of bootstrapped e-commerce. Let’s dive right in… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Startups must devise products that fit the marketplace well and they must maintain at least one competitive advantage in order to survive. 2. Startups should develop as many competitive advantages as possible, which may include large market size, current market trends, brand image and/or celebrity support, product uniqueness, benefits-versus-costs, figurative deep pockets, and ample relevant data. 3. Startups should stack their competitive advantages when marketing themselves. 4. e-Commerce marketing for bootstrapped startups normally progresses through three distinct phases, which are firstly gaining traction by urgently developing one profitable revenue stream, then reinvesting profits to develop additional profitable revenue streams, and lastly scaling-up all profitable revenue streams as best as possible. 5. e-Commerce marketing should usually start with advertisements, which are great for steadily yielding quick responses—especially Facebook ads, which access a vast audience while enjoying advanced features, although Google ads are excellent for targeting prospective customers while they’re shopping for what you’re offering. 6. Although generating leads for e-mail marketing is still superior for yielding cheap results over the long term, some e-commerce marketers may want to expand into the fast-developing field of messenger marketing. 7. Influencer marketing can help; influencers sometimes request simple upfront fees, but it’s better to negotiate lower fees in exchange for affiliate cuts, which incentivize sales, plus for authority to use their reviews in other forms of marketing that may increase their followers. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’re going to familiarize you with the world of prototyping and mass-production, specifically as it relates to crowdfunding. Whom should you contact? How can you best keep your ideas from being stolen? How can you best ensure quality? We’re going to overview all of these topics and more in this episode with our very special guest, Gaston Liang, who is an expert in sourcing, manufacturing, packaging, and logistics. So, let’s get started… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Crowdfunding campaigners should develop their concepts into working prototypes before starting to raise funds to mass-produce them. 2. Creators should ideally patent their ideas, both in their own country and in their manufacturer’s country, before approaching a manufacturer—and should hire manufacturers through an NNN agreement to minimize their risk of their ideas being stolen. 3. Creators should consider manufacturing in Asia due to lower costs, may use tools like Alibaba or Jungle Scout or in-person visits to explore manufacturing options for their type of product, should avoid profiteering middlemen like sourcing agents, and should consider both communication and trust when choosing among viable options, plus the ability to accommodate unpredictable order sizes during mass-production phase. 4. Some manufacturers (like The LGG Corp) can help creators through all phases of production by providing cost-effective professional services like vetting concepts for viability, sketching them, rendering them, engineering and/or designing them into beautiful working prototypes, creating molds to mass-produce finished products, designing manuals and/or packaging to accompany these products, mass-producing and then assembling all of these items properly, warehousing them, shipping them worldwide, and handling legal requirements throughout this process—and it’s advantageous to hire a single agent for all of these tasks who can become intimately familiar with the product. 5. An average product may require several thousand dollars over 3-4 weeks to be transformed from concept to prototype, which creators may then market-test and perhaps iteratively refine—and it’s ideal to make all errors during prototype phase while it’s cheapest to correct them. 6. Creators should ideally produce at least 3-5 final prototypes for various purposes, which may include durability testing, product certifications, media production, user feedback, reporter reviews, and packaging design. 7. Crowdfunding campaigners should avoid being overcharged for molds for mass-production, and should expect to pay 30%-50% upfront for mass-production. 8. Creators can encourage high-quality mass-production through both effective project management and hired third-party inspections. 9. Although manufacturers may ship finished products temporarily to creators to store and then mail to consumers, creators may hire professional fulfillment agencies like ShipMonk to perform these tasks, instead, but it’s generally both cheapest and fastest for creators to hire a manufacturer (like The LGG Corp) that performs these tasks. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’re going to revive the subject of what to do when your campaign goes wrong—in this case, so terribly wrong that you actually need to restart it. So, we’re going to talk all about the mechanics of re-launches, both voluntary and involuntary. So, if you ever receive one of those dreaded notices that your campaign has been suspended, then don’t panic—we’ve got your back! Let’s get started… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Creators should remember that failure is normal, avoid any irrational expectations, stay humble enough to progress, work hard, and resist discouragement. 2. Creators should solicit feedback from backers (and perhaps others) anytime campaigns are not performing ideally, and use it to determine how to improve. 3. Creators shouldn’t fear to re-launch campaigns whenever they need serious revisions in their product, timing, goal, and/or presentation—and, in doing so, creators should keep their backers fully informed and treat them similarly to pre-launch leads. 4. It’s important for crowdfunding campaigners to both know and follow the rules for their respective platforms, and to render it sufficiently obvious to reviewers that they’re doing so. 5. A campaign’s relative popularity statistically increases the likelihood that people will notice any rules-violations that merit suspension. 6. Kickstarter is notorious for sometimes suspending suspicious campaigns without either warning or explanation, and it will never reinstate suspended ones for any reason whatsoever—but it does make mistakes, and creators can sometimes negotiate with it to re-launch. 7. When faced with suspension, determine the reason, appeal this decision, inform your backers, preempt the cancellation if possible, re-launch on Kickstarter if possible, remobilize your backers upon re-launch, and then proceed as before. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

We’re back atcha today with another good one that includes a very impressive guest who is also literally live on Kickstarter right now! Our client Dale Backus has developed a wildly-popular phone grip that has been raising thousands of dollars per day to challenge a complacent industry leader. Let’s see what we can learn from his crowdfunding story… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Entrepreneurs don’t always pioneer new markets but sometimes substantially improve existing products by providing new-and-better competition. 2. Although it’s usually best to start with a minimally viable product (MVP), some products require more-than-minimal functionality to effectively compete. 3. Crowdfunding can provide a wealth of useful data, including data that helps with manufacturing forecasts. 4. Customer surveys should be worded very carefully in order to obtain accurate actionable data, or else they might lead surveyors astray. 5. Backer updates and other communication should be authentic in presenting both the product and its creator. 6. Effective marketing can’t compensate for a flawed product, but a great product will benefit from effective marketing. 7. Successful startups need to continue to improve their products/services or else they might allow competitors to overtake them. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

As promised, we’re going to break out our newly-minted Ultimate Crowdfunding Pre-Launch Checklist! And, after this episode, we’re going to give it away to you for free… no catches. And you can start using it to prepare yourself to take your next big idea to the next level. So, hang in there until the end and let’s get started! ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Entrepreneurs should commit to success, improve both their character and their competence, obey the Golden Rule, build a good team, lead them well, and focus on customers. 2. Crowdfunding campaigners should offer the crowdfunding community a minimally-viable tangible product that is sufficiently new to them, that is neither too “niche” nor too localized, that has been refined through market-testing into a functional prototype, that enjoys an appealing form, an easily-pronounceable positive name, and adequate legal protection. 3. Crowdfunding campaigners should set minimal funding goals (and consider “stretch” goals) while assembling rewards packages from their core product up to pricier options, each with persuasive descriptions, plus prices ending in 9; prices should accommodate production costs, platform fees, marketing costs, collection/transfer fees, data management, “free” packaging/shipping, returns, taxes, and the unexpected, along with both “early bird” and bulk discounts. 4. Crowdfunding campaigners should join Kickstarter and/or Indiegogo, familiarize themselves with these websites’ rules and features, back some projects, and plan to launch on Kickstarter if at all possible. 5. Crowdfunding campaigners should allow at least 2 months to prepare, avoid campaigning during either December or possibly August, expect unexpected delays, launch either in-season or when ready between Monday and Wednesday (except on major US holidays) while it’s still morning in the USA, campaign for 30-45 days, and finish between Wednesday and Friday before it becomes evening in the USA. 6. Crowdfunding campaigners should practice their “sales pitch” to perfection, appealing to both emotion and reason by showing-and-telling both features-and-benefits through plain honest conversational language friendly to a global audience, supported by positive reviews, and then translate that pitch into persuasive campaign media. 7. Crowdfunding campaigners should familiarize themselves with analytics, and arrange as many pledges as possible in advance from personal or business contacts, e-mail leads, social-media fans, social-media influencers, reporters, and others, while preparing to engage in post-launch marketing plus effective customer service. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, you’re going to hear from our very own in-house legal counsel here at Funded Today, Thomas Alvord. He’s going to give you the insider’s look at everything you should be considering when it comes to business law, contracts, and just running your new business. So let’s get started… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Entrepreneurs should prioritize developing a viable business over protecting themselves legally, as the latter is pointless without (and funded by) the former, and they should expect legal issues to grow in proportion to their business size. 2. Entrepreneurs in the USA should minimize their taxes by chartering a “holding company” to own their business, limit their personal liability by incorporating their business (perhaps initially as an LLC that transitions eventually into either a C corp or an S corp), obtain a federal EIN for their business, and transact all business in its name. 3. Business owners should choose their first hires (who may become their biggest competitors) carefully, hire them with non-compete agreements, and always treat their employees well. 4. Business owners should compose brief clear contracts with good mechanisms for resolving disputes, and always try to resolve disputes amicably before resorting to either arbitration or expensive lawsuits. 5. Business owners should seek legal counsel as necessary, but minimize use of lawyers, as they are expensive and may sometimes prioritize their own interests above their clients’ interests. 6. Crowdfunding campaigners should ensure that they are not violating any intellectual property rights before launching campaigns, but avoid paying excessive attention to filing for trademarks and copyrights and patents (which may include provisional patents). 7. Amazon sellers should obtain US trademarks, which will enable them to enhance their Amazon listings with valuable “enhanced brand content.” ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

As promised, we’re bringing on one of our past clients, namely Rob Peck of AquaVault. He’s got a very unique perspective and I think you’re going to love it. So are you ready to learn directly from an actual Kickstarter creator who raised over $200,000 on a project? What about learning more about how to absolutely crush a “Shark Tank” appearance? Or are you just curious about the day-to-day hustle-and-grind of entrepreneurship? If so, then today’s episode is for you! Let’s get started… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Entrepreneurship involves faith, capital, and persistence despite figurative headaches. 2. Entrepreneurs should identify a sufficiently-common problem (while noting that cures are easier to sell than prevention) that nobody else is solving well enough, innovate a product to solve that problem, and engage in market testing (perhaps at trade shows) to ensure that their product is actually desirable, as well as to refine it—and such feedback will prove whether-or-not an idea is truly worth pursuing. 3. Entrepreneurs may use crowdfunding not only to raise funds to start mass-production, but also to obtain both feedback and “brand ambassadors,” plus to show proof-of-concept that can leverage a better deal on “Shark Tank.” 4. Entrepreneurs may use “Shark Tank” to get both a good deal and good publicity, but should note that they likely won’t ever get televised unless they show something sufficiently different and/or entertaining that will appeal well to television audiences. 5. Entrepreneurs should perpetually reach out to relevant retailers and reporters and interest groups and such. 6. Entrepreneurs should note that growth is both expensive and challenging; they may want to form specific long-term plans to leverage what they already have in order to obtain loans to fund what they know for sure will work, and they should always seek deals that are mutually-beneficial to all parties involved. 7. Entrepreneurs should manage others with the right balance between oversight and autonomy. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

Have you ever wanted to listen to an actual Kickstarter creator who raised over $100,000 on a project? What about learning the ins-and-outs of a successful appearance on “Shark Tank”? Or, are you just curious about the life of an entrepreneur? If so, then today’s episode is going to literally rock your world! Let’s get started… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Desire is vital, and positive thinking is helpful, but thoughts without action accomplish nothing; thankfully, it’s never too late to apply yourself, excel, and achieve success. 2. If you’re feeling frustrated with trying to find a solution to your problems in the marketplace, then others may feel similarly, which could indicate a good entrepreneurial opportunity, which you may explore through both market research and product development. 3. It helps to prepare oneself through both research and practice before doing something important, and to do it with an experienced partner for support. 4. Crowdfunding campaigns are good for not only raising funds but also validating ideas. 5. Crowdfunding campaigners need to market themselves to attract attention, and should prepare to defend their intellectual property against cheap knockoffs. 6. “Shark Tank” can provide a startup with mutually-beneficial partnership plus great publicity, but only if the “sharks” respond favorably to it; otherwise, it could hurt. 7. “Shark Tank” might accept your audition, record your appearance before its “sharks,” and even buy equity in your company, but won’t necessarily show your segment on television unless NBC can edit it to appear sufficiently dramatic. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

What does it take to manage customer service? Why is customer service more important now than ever before? And finally, what are the best ways to ensure that you, too, can provide world-class customer service? Let’s dive right in… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. It’s hard to maintain superiority in products/services indefinitely and, whenever your competitors offer comparable benefits-and-costs, customers will rely upon other factors to make purchasing decisions, such as how well they know and like and trust you, plus how well you treat them. 2. Customer service is vital in encouraging customer loyalty, along with positive reviews, which are the most powerful form of marketing—and customer-centered businesses tend to thrive. 3. Service starts with actively nurturing love for our neighbors as ourselves, which naturally leads us to act in accordance with the Golden Rule by seeking mutually-beneficial business relationships, and it also starts with us and then works outward through our organizational structure. 4. Customer service is mostly an operations job not a sales job (although it may benefit from some salesmanship), and it should remain part of everyone’s job even if dedicated specialists are hired to oversee it. 5. Customer service improves whenever it’s measured, including through brief customer-satisfaction surveys. 6. Customer service generally involves setting proper expectations, communicating effectively (which may involve audio or visual communication), and proactively resolving concerns with empathy—and empathy is facilitated by avoiding presumptions, listening well to understand, and maintaining a positive attitude despite challenges. 7. Customer service in crowdfunding involves effective use of welcomes, updates, comments, surveys, and farewells. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’re waxing philosophical once more. The topic: FREEDOM. The reason: we think that it’s the most important word in the world to focus on. And today, we’ll show you why... ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Bondage is sometimes entirely self-imposed, but we can discipline ourselves to escape this sort. 2. We should each value freedom, which allows us to achieve our greatest potential for happiness, although such results will differ from person to person in their details. 3. We should each freely choose to clarify the details of the sort of life that we ultimately want to live, devise a specific plan to achieve it, and start immediately to follow that plan. 4. We can freely choose activities that will enable ourselves to become freer in spending our time and/or money without health constraints, and also in enjoying feeling inner peace without either guilt or regret, and to maintain proper harmony between all such aspects of our lives. 5. Gaining freedom in one respect may require sacrificing some freedom in other respects, and not all sacrifices are worthwhile, so we shouldn’t sacrifice recklessly. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’re circling back around to our extremely popular “Life After Crowdfunding” series with perhaps our most practical episode in the series so far, which is about how to turn your website into a cash machine. Let’s dive right in! ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Entrepreneurs should reject “entremyopia” to embrace realistic expectations, including that all startups will face challenges, but that greater challenges can potentially precede greater rewards. 2. It’s good to offer your product/service on your website, but it’s better to enhance that website with effective analytics code, optimized sales media that emphasizes your unique selling proposition (USP) to maximize your website’s conversion rate (which is typically 1%-4%), and both SEO and persuasive marketing (which will be harder to do profitably for cheaper items) through ads, e-mail, affiliates, et cetera, to help draw paying traffic to itself. 3. Collecting customers’ e-mailing addresses and then remarketing to them via e-mail can help you to build a beneficial long-term business relationship with them while obtaining additional sales from them at low cost, all of which can maximize their lifetime revenue to your business. 4. Your initial business goal should be to achieve profitability through a breakeven CPA at minimum, which will be worse than it was on Kickstarter and may require you to spend capital at-a-loss for a while to build a sizable-enough customer base—and you should wait until your business is more mature before starting to develop its branding, which yields results that are harder to quantify. 5. Your business can grow better by offering multiple products/services through multiple channels with multiple payment methods, et cetera, and offering cross-sells, upsells, et cetera. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we have a wonderful guest—Greg Mercer, who is the founder of Jungle Scout. We’re going to discuss how tools like Jungle Scout can give you an edge over your competition on Amazon. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Pursue your passions for work, as long as you can earn a living from them—and, after you’ve achieved financial stability, you can focus more on working for fun than for profit. 2. Entrepreneurship requires persistence despite failure, and benefits from a mentality of both abundance and generosity. 3. Amazon is poised to continue leading its industry for the foreseeable future, and has increasingly favored third-party sellers. 4. Jungle Scout aids Amazon sellers with tools like referrals to experts, comparisons of how well specific products are selling, intelligence on foreign manufacturers, and research about listing keywords. 5. Offering new products is the best way to keep your Amazon business growing, as optimizing Amazon listings boosts sales but also yields diminishing returns. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we are continuing our “Life After Crowdfunding” series by discussing how to make big money on Amazon by optimizing your listings. Let’s jump right in… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Amazon listing titles should include the brand, the model, its attributes, and its benefits, while incorporating appropriate keywords for SEO determined through research. 2. Amazon listing bullet-points should each introduce a single concept in ALL CAPS and then detail that concept in a paragraph that both sells and aids SEO, providing information that’s thorough enough that potential customers don’t need to look elsewhere for it. 3. Amazon sellers should register for a U. S. trademark so that they can register their brand with Amazon, which will enable them to control how distributors present their product, and also to enhance their own listing with branded content. 4. Amazon listings should incorporate “enhanced branded content,” which should typically include a main high-resolution “hero” image on a white background, plus seven additional images showing its size and/or usage (including “lifestyle” shots), along with a pitch video. 5. Amazon sellers should actively solicit (but not incentivize) reviews from crowdfunding backers and/or Amazon customers, which will boost sales while identifying problems. 6. Amazon listings should generally render it as easy as possible for customers to buy. 7. In optimizing your Amazon listing, you should focus firstly on maximizing its conversion rates so that it sells as effectively as possible, secondly on maximizing its SEO to attract “organic” traffic as effectively as possible, and thirdly on perfecting your marketing (which we may present in a future episode) to attract referral traffic as effectively as possible. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we are bringing you Zach’s special interview by Carson Jorgensen in his pretty-famous podcast “The Definition of Success.” Carson and Zach discuss quite a few things that are a little bit different than what we normally talk about in our podcast—they talk about business, life, happiness, and (probably most importantly) the whole idea of self-awareness. Let’s get started… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. We should develop self-awareness about who we are, what we can already do well, what we need to improve, and what we want to become, all of which will facilitate both our success and our happiness. 2. Self-awareness is aided by feedback from others; we should humbly accept such feedback to the extent that it helps us to progress, but also refrain from worrying excessively about what others think about us such that it impedes our progress. 3. We should focus our attention NOT on what we either can’t or shouldn’t control, but on what we can control, learning to control it well, which will facilitate our freedom in various respects, along with our happiness. 4. We should genuinely be ourselves, but also persistently strive to become our best selves. 5. We should focus not on tearing ourselves down but on building ourselves up in all of the various aspects of our lives, which involves maintaining our motivation while focusing persistently upon improving one important thing at a time, measuring our progress until we’ve mastered it. 6. We should maintain a connection with our past selves, maintain empathy for other people, seek mutually-beneficial relationships with them, and remember that freely doing nice things for them might encourage them to do likewise for us. 7. We should evaluate our potential business partners very carefully, and wisely delegate business responsibilities to specialists. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’re bringing back our very popular series “Life After Crowdfunding.” And today’s topic of Amazon is one of our favorites—it’s the 800-pound gorilla of e-commerce that you cannot ignore. Let’s dive right in! ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Crowdfunding success doesn’t necessarily lead to e-commerce success. 2. Amazon provides a wealth of readily-available intelligence that can help entrepreneurs to gauge how much demand exists for a product, how well (or poorly) those demands are already being supplied by competitors, how intense and/or mature such competition is, and what prices they need to either match or beat, all of which may help them to avoid wasting their resources on developing products that people don’t want. 3. Amazon sellers can’t ask for a premium price without offering a premium product. 4. Amazon prices should cover an Amazon referral fee of usually 15%, and perhaps an Amazon fulfillment fee that varies according to product. 5. Amazon sellers should perfect their listing before their marketing, and then quickly accumulate high-rated reviews from customers to build a good reputation that will boost sales. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we learn from Stoicism! Let’s get started… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. We can live more happily by gleaning time-tested truths from great philosophers, including the Stoics, whose beliefs about pursuing happiness through virtue originated in ancient Greece, thrived in classical Rome, and continue to attract some modern adherents worldwide. 2. We should nurture gratitude for what we already have (whether time or things), and cheerfully use it well, while actively curbing our potentially-limitless desires for more, lest we allow our avarice to spiral out-of-control. 3. We should not worry obsessively about what we cannot control (like our past or our reputation or our mortality), but humbly accept it while instead focusing our attention on what we can control (like our present or our character or our time-usage). 4. Our thoughts help shape our outcomes, and our decisions determine our destiny; we should not mindlessly react to our circumstances as they arise but instead proactively “seize the day,” “live in the moment,” question our desires to reject any unworthy ones, focus our attention not on our difficulties but on the opportunities that accompany them, exercise our imagination to rehearse success rather than failure, and plan our future (including by preparing for misfortunes). 5. We generally know what we ought to do but we sometimes procrastinate committing ourselves to it fully; instead, we should immediately demand the best of ourselves and then exert our willpower and minds to become our best selves, which may require sacrifice. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’re talking about one of Zach’s most favorite things: the #1 reason why your life “sucks” right now—and what you can do about it! Let’s get started… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Reality is objective, but perspective is subjective and may depend upon our frame-of-reference, and so our reference-points influence our perceptions, which influence our happiness. 2. Many qualities like wealth or achievement are relative across time-and-space. 3. Whenever we evaluate ourselves or evaluate others or compare ourselves with others, we should remember that each individual characteristic is merely a tiny part of a complex whole, that each of us usually succeeds better in some ways than in others, and that we don’t normally perceive the entire truth about anyone. 4. “The grass is always greener where it’s watered,” so we should strive to nurture good desires and thoughts, acknowledge opportunity and find hope in it, and persistently learn-and-improve toward our potential, while remembering that some successes may require substantial sacrifices. 5. Whenever we obtain unnecessary material possessions that we want, we then “need” to spend more on maintenance, we tend to grow accustomed to them and may even take them for granted, we may easily want more, and such desires can potentially spiral out-of-control unless we actively curb them while nurturing gratitude instead—but genuine happiness is found not in stuff but in intangible things like self-improvement and experience and service, which reminds us that we’re not the only people with problems. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

You might find this episode’s topic a bit interesting: “Life After Crowdfunding: IndieGoGo InDemand – What Do I Do After I’ve Had a Successful Campaign on Kickstarter?” An interesting question! Your journey has just begun. Don’t worry, though—we’ll get it all covered in this episode… ---------------------------------------------------------------- ⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways: 1. Indiegogo InDemand is an excellent platform for gleaning additional funds for your project while it’s awaiting fulfillment (between Kickstarter phase and e-commerce phase), while leveraging the relatively-high “organic” traffic to Indiegogo’s website. 2. It’s best to prepare your Indiegogo InDemand page to debut immediately when your Kickstarter campaign ends, and to redirect traffic from your Kickstarter page through a “Spotlight” button to your Indiegogo page, so that you don’t needlessly lose either momentum or pledges. 3. It helps to market your Kickstarter campaign through short URLs with adjustable forwarding that can be updated anytime your project transitions from one platform to another. 4. While campaigning on Indiegogo, you should use “secret perks,” negotiate Indiegogo newsletter appearances, and possibly leverage your success to obtain additional funds from angel investors and/or venture capitalists, including on “Shark Tank,” which can also be good for publicity. 5. You can end your Indiegogo InDemand campaign anytime (and even resume it anytime) until your Kickstarter project is fulfilled, but you shouldn’t expect your InDemand campaign to raise more than a fraction of what your Kickstarter campaign raised. ✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please… • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode! • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions! • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it! • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it! We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!