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Crowdfunding Secrets Revealed by LaunchBoom’s Will Ford

Crowdfunding Secrets Revealed by LaunchBoom’s Will Ford

Released Tuesday, 18th June 2024
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Crowdfunding Secrets Revealed by LaunchBoom’s Will Ford

Crowdfunding Secrets Revealed by LaunchBoom’s Will Ford

Crowdfunding Secrets Revealed by LaunchBoom’s Will Ford

Crowdfunding Secrets Revealed by LaunchBoom’s Will Ford

Tuesday, 18th June 2024
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Episode Transcript

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0:00

that's what really turned me on to Kickstarter and Indiegogo is

0:02

the fact that, wait a minute. I can actually validate and, and, and generate thousands

0:07

of new customers without giving away any equity.

0:10

And now that I've done the heavy lifting and showed, and

0:14

I can show investors that, Hey, my idea is actually super

0:17

popular and people are actually already buying my product.

0:21

Well, now they're going to take me a little bit more serious and

0:23

now I've got a lot more leverage to potentially raise more capital

0:27

and give away less equity. In today's world, online customers, and everybody

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2:00

. Y'all this episode we're diving into crowdfunding.

2:03

So crowdfunding, I'm talking Kickstarter, Indiegogo, there's

2:06

all these other platforms. I'm sure you've invested, or maybe Viven tried to fund.

2:12

A consumer product I'm talking like no it's physical products

2:15

that you can get funding from, uh, you know, without giving

2:19

equity, which is the big appeal, but the problem is something

2:22

like almost 60% of those fail.

2:25

Without the proper uh pre-launch and all the stuff that goes

2:30

into getting to that Indiegogo page or the Kickstarter page.

2:33

And then what do you do afterwards? We'll forward from launch boom is on the podcast today, breaking down

2:39

what the model is that he's doing for the last, I think it's over

2:42

10 years, over 2000 plus clients.

2:45

This guy is getting funding for his clients within 14 minutes.

2:49

And I'm saying, you know, funding he's he has goals of about like,

2:52

you know, 20, 30 K, but then a lot, they get to six figures

2:56

very quickly afterwards, and he's going to break down his.

2:59

The model of what they do, his model as well with his

3:02

business and what goes into it.

3:05

Mindset wise throughout the whole game.

3:08

There's so many nuggets in this one. You're going to dig it, go enjoy and, uh, tell will

3:13

launch boom that we sent you. If you go and do this thing, because.

3:17

It makes me want to go launch something on my own wheels.

3:19

The man I would go talk to. So enjoy see in there.

3:22

all Right, we'll, we're cracking into this thing, man.

3:24

And I'm excited. You're a, uh, we're, we're both members of a mastermind here

3:28

locally in San Diego speakeasy.

3:31

So mastermind brother, it's great to have you on.

3:34

Thank you, Joe. It's great to be here.

3:36

And, uh, I love the work you're doing.

3:38

I love your podcast. I've been following it for quite some time.

3:41

So it's honestly an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.

3:44

Appreciate it, man. Yeah. And likewise, because when we met, uh, it was maybe a couple sessions

3:49

in that, that speakeasy mastermind. You know, we finally connected and like really got to know

3:54

what each of us are doing. And then I heard about LaunchBoom, what you're doing

3:58

in the crowdfunding space and totally unique model with this,

4:03

uh, you know, supporting people going through the crowdfunding

4:06

process, which inherently, I think a lot of people have seen.

4:09

There's a lot of failures. There's a lot of things that just don't get funded for whatever

4:13

reason or fail after the funding. So that's where you have this magical system that

4:19

we'll talk about here. And, and, uh, cause I know a lot of people think about that.

4:23

It's like, Hey, maybe they're launching a new business,

4:25

consumer product or a relaunch or some kind of side branch

4:29

of what they're doing. So yeah, man, um, before we get into it, like, so crowdfunding, I

4:36

guess, give us like the big idea because, you know, like maybe

4:39

some numbers we should know about. Some stats, what it is defined, and then we'll get in a LaunchBoom

4:45

and what you're doing in the space. Yeah, sure.

4:47

So like you, Joe, I'm a serial entrepreneur and I've built multiple

4:52

companies from the ground up. And I've had some epic wins, some epic exits.

4:57

I've also had some epic failures, which I'm actually

5:00

most grateful for because that's honestly what eventually led

5:03

me to starting LaunchBoom. And so just to kind of back up, um, right before I started LaunchBoom,

5:09

I was exiting my last company called PetBox and I couldn't

5:13

believe that I could launch new consumer products on Kickstarter.

5:18

And I couldn't believe that I could take a prototype And pre sell

5:21

thousands of units to people all over the world, take their money up

5:25

front before I have to work through manufacturing, shipping, delivery.

5:31

It just seemed like a no brainer for launching new consumer products.

5:34

Because prior to Kickstarter, I was doing it the old fashioned,

5:37

traditional way where I would come up with a product idea, I

5:41

would work through manufacturing, and I'd try to stomach placing

5:45

the largest volume manufacturing order possible for So I could

5:49

get that best price break available with economies of scale.

5:52

So anyone out there who's launched consumer products, you know, when

5:55

it comes to manufacturing, if you place a 50, 000 unit order

5:59

versus a thousand unit order, you're going to get a better

6:01

price break and you're going to be able to significantly improve

6:05

your profit margins as a result. So before crowdfunding, I would try to place the

6:11

largest volume order possible. And then I'd try to come up with the most clever marketing strategy

6:16

with launching that product. And then I better be right because if I wasn't right now,

6:21

I'm stuck with a bunch of product. I can't move. In most cases, I've already placed a 50 percent deposit down

6:27

on that manufacturing order. And I've been there before too.

6:30

And that's a scary place to be as an entrepreneur, especially when

6:33

you're launching a new product. So that's what initially kind of made me gravitate towards

6:38

Kickstarter is the fact that you could take a pre a prototype

6:43

and you could literally pre sell thousands of units to

6:45

people all over the world. And then you have all the time in the world after that campaign

6:50

to work through manufacturing and to deliver the best possible

6:53

experience to those backers with much less headache, much less risk.

6:58

Um, when I first started, uh, launching products on Kickstarter,

7:02

um, my idea from the beginning and it still remains the same

7:05

today was, Hey, why not take a few months to kind of stack the deck

7:09

in my favor by building a hyper focused audience ready to buy.

7:14

So that when I go to Kickstarter, I can more or less control the

7:18

outcome and at least get my campaign Successfully funded

7:22

and then use that early success to really kind of like game

7:27

the algorithm of Kickstarter So that now once they see all

7:31

this traffic coming into their platform and converting really,

7:33

really well now, they're like, wow, this is a popular project.

7:37

We should start promoting it. And so once you get Kickstarter to put your project on their, you know,

7:42

top landing page and they start to promote you in their newsletters.

7:46

You start to gain massive amounts of organic traffic.

7:50

And, and so the whole, you know, point with LaunchBoom and what we

7:53

do here within crowdfunding is let's set up the deal before we launch.

7:58

In essence today, we basically pre sell the pre sale on Kickstarter.

8:03

And 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

8:09

go live on Kickstarter, let's set a low funding goal that we

8:12

control that we know we can hit, and then let's get Kickstarter to

8:16

do the rest of the work and push and promote it so that now we can

8:20

tap into their tens of millions of unique visitors and generate

8:24

six or seven figures in pre sales. Well dude, and this is where, so a perfect case study, because I was

8:29

going to ask you, this is one of my questions, but then, You make

8:32

it pretty obvious on your LinkedIn, you know, and this was just posted,

8:35

what, almost a week ago at the time of this recording Western rise

8:38

being one of, I'm assuming one of your clients, they raised over a

8:42

hundred thousand dollars there, uh, their ask, or their, their,

8:46

um, the, I guess the goal was 20 K.

8:48

So to your point, I was just like, Holy moly.

8:51

And there's still like 20 days left on the campaign.

8:54

Yeah. I'm like, uh, that doesn't happen much, you know, unless there's

8:58

a smart campaign going into it. Yeah, so that's exactly how we do it.

9:02

So a lot of people that I talk to every day from all over the

9:05

world that are looking to launch their new product and everyone

9:08

has the same goals and questions. They're always like, well, how do I raise a million dollars

9:12

in presales on Kickstarter? How much money do I have to spend to do that?

9:16

And, um, you know, how much should I sell my product for?

9:19

You know, and, and, and for the most part, you know, I always

9:23

tell everyone that comes in a LaunchBoom like, you know,

9:25

less than 1 10th of 1 percent of all Kickstarter campaigns

9:29

actually breach seven figures.

9:31

Wow. most of our campaigns will do six figures, almost all of them.

9:35

We do obviously have a lot of campaigns every year that do

9:38

seven figures just because of our sheer volume of campaigns.

9:41

But at the end of the day, I always tell everyone that, that comes

9:45

to LaunchBoom, you know, at the end of the day, Kickstarter is

9:48

the best way to validate demand. And to pre sell enough product that you're going to be able to

9:53

secure your manufacturing and delivery to your, you know, your

9:56

first thousand plus customers.

9:59

You're not, you're not going to get rich on Kickstarter, but it's

10:02

the easiest way to validate demand. generate, generate real revenue and real customers faster, and

10:09

then put yourself in a much better position to go scale through e

10:13

commerce or Amazon or retail, or put yourself in a better position

10:17

to then go fundraise and sell equity where you'll sell much less equity

10:21

and generate much more capital. that's true.

10:24

Because at that point you've already done, honestly, the

10:27

leg work that most people would probably start with right on

10:30

the, on the seed funding and all that stuff in the early days.

10:33

And it's like, no, you've already, you have the customers, you have

10:36

all this data already, people that have committed, um, even if it's

10:40

a low level at a reservation, I'm kind of hinting to part of your

10:44

process that I've read about. Um, but it's like all of this matters to investors, and you

10:49

have more leverage as that product owner later in the game.

10:52

Yeah. I mean, that's initially what got me so excited about Kickstarter and

10:56

Indiegogo in the first place is. You know, as an entrepreneur, I have raised millions of

11:01

dollars from angel investors, VCs through convertible notes.

11:06

And, um, I, I always did that, you know, when I had a great business

11:10

idea and I needed capital to then take my idea and make it real.

11:15

And, um, and in doing that, what I realized is that I was usually

11:19

valuing my business too low. I was giving away too much equity too early.

11:23

And that's what really turned me on to Kickstarter and Indiegogo

11:27

is the fact that, wait a minute. I can actually validate and, and, and generate thousands

11:31

of new customers without giving away any equity.

11:35

And now that I've done the heavy lifting and showed, and

11:38

I can show investors that, Hey, my idea is actually super

11:41

popular and people are actually already buying my product.

11:45

Well, now they're going to take me a little bit more serious and

11:48

now I've got a lot more leverage to potentially raise more capital

11:51

and give away less equity. I want to talk about like the standard approach to Kickstarter or

11:56

Indiegogo, any of these platforms. And there's a bunch of 'em, right?

11:59

Like, so the standard approach I would imagine is someone

12:03

goes there with their idea, maybe they have some marketing

12:07

chops, maybe they don't, uh, but they're doing no pre, pre, uh,

12:12

pre-launch stuff prior to, right?

12:15

I'm curious of, of like what the standard is, like the

12:17

standard approach and kind of the rates of failure or

12:20

success is that you're seeing from those types of approaches.

12:23

Yeah, so so when I first started LaunchBoom and this is like

12:27

way back in 2014 But like back so to take a step back Joe so

12:33

Kickstarter Indiegogo They both opened their doors back in like 2009

12:37

Yeah. And

12:39

days of Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, which are the two main reward

12:43

based crowdfunding platforms. So when it comes to crowdfunding, there's a lot of different

12:47

crowdfunding platforms. You've got equity crowdfunding.

12:50

Um, you also have what's called reward based crowdfunding.

12:53

So the beauty of reward based crowdfunding is you're

12:56

not giving away any equity. All you're doing is you're pre selling your product

13:01

and then that's like Indiegogo and Kickstarter, right?

13:04

Reward based. Indiegogo and Kickstarter were the only two biggest platforms

13:09

in the space back in 2009. They were the first, and they still are today.

13:13

So when we launch any products here at LaunchBoom, we always launch

13:17

on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. There are some other ones.

13:20

But there's so much smaller and Indiegogo and Kickstarter have

13:23

done such a great job building their backer communities.

13:27

So I'm talking like tens of millions of monthly unique backers, um,

13:31

and visitors to their platforms looking for super cool products.

13:35

this is where I'm gonna pop in just for a positive for a sec, because

13:38

yeah, it's triggered my mind. It's like there's a built in customer base that's

13:41

ready to provide money and backing to your product.

13:45

So you're tapping into that and to main markets.

13:48

And then something you said earlier is with this pre pre launch

13:51

campaign, which we'll get into more. You're, you're basically firing up the algorithms of their

13:56

platform, which just like any other platform, Google, uh, YouTube

13:59

podcast platforms, all that. It's like you drive more attention or subscriber,

14:03

whatever the metric is. Well, guess what?

14:05

You're going to get more visibility on their platforms.

14:08

That's exactly right. so in the early days to answer your original question,

14:12

like it was pretty easy. Like if you were a product creator, you could literally just take some

14:17

product shots of your prototype. You could put together like a one or two minute quick video about why

14:23

your product is solving a problem. And then you could literally just post it and you could raise

14:27

like hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions in pre

14:30

sales with like zero marketing.

14:33

And then, and then as that continued to happen over and over

14:37

again, because Kickstarter and Indiegogo had so many backers

14:40

on their platform looking for cool products to back, then what

14:43

happened was everyone rushed in. So then all these products started to come in, the landscape became

14:49

much more competitive if you were a product creator, and you

14:52

couldn't just, you know, Launch a campaign you actually had to

14:55

put some marketing Dollars in you had to put some advertising spend

14:59

in in order to compete and you know Dominate those platforms and

15:03

maximize your raise and so that's about the time I stepped into the

15:07

space back in like 2014 When I was kind of getting ready to launch my

15:12

Kickstarter campaign I basically was like, well, you know what?

15:15

Like I don't want to like, you know, roll the dice and just

15:18

like, you know, launch my campaign and hope people care about it.

15:21

I want to make sure that like actually hit my funding goal and I

15:24

actually maximize my opportunity. And so that's where I decided to start running Facebook and Instagram

15:31

ads before the Kickstarter campaign.

15:33

And in the early days, what did I do is I just run some ads.

15:36

I'd get the clicks and then I would drive the traffic to a landing page

15:40

that I built that would be like, Hey, launching soon on Kickstarter.

15:44

If you want to get in on this product and be the first to receive

15:48

it, all you have to do is give me your email and I'll contact you

15:51

as soon as we're ready to launch. So when I first started LaunchBoom, I was just building an email list.

15:57

And then my average conversion was like four, 4

16:00

percent on that email list. And was there any other bonus associated with it?

16:04

Or is it just like, you're going to be the first to now? It was basically just like you're the first to know

16:08

that's how I started, right? And then, something funny happened.

16:13

Elon Musk decided to launch the Tesla truck.

16:18

And um, and so when he decided to launch the Cybertruck, he launched

16:23

this 100 dollar reservation. And if you put 100 bucks down, you were first in line to get

16:29

it off the assembly line, right? And so I'm like, hey, I wonder if that would work with crowdfunding?

16:34

And so that's when we created what we call today

16:38

the reservation funnel. So the idea here was, Hey, let's collect the email, but now let's

16:43

take it one step further and see if they'll put a dollar down.

16:47

Yeah. Ah,

16:51

only us here at LaunchBoom, but crowd funding as an industry,

16:53

because what we ended up learning was that if we could get, um,

16:58

someone to click on our Facebook or Instagram ad, we And then redirect

17:01

them to our reservation funnel, which is still a landing page,

17:04

but it basically says, Hey, we're launching soon on Kickstarter.

17:08

The first 1, 000 backers are going to get a lower price and

17:11

early delivery, and all you have to do is place a 1 money

17:14

back guarantee deposit, and we're going to guarantee you

17:16

the best deal before we go live. So as soon as I started stacking that reservation funnel, and today,

17:23

and you know, throughout most of the process, it's always been like,

17:26

hey once we have 1, 000 or more reservations, then we go live.

17:31

The most amazing part of the reservation funnel is that it's

17:34

the most engaged audience you can create to support any launch

17:37

and we get a massive conversion. So Joe, like today and literally over like the last, you know,

17:43

several years, our average conversion rates on the reservation

17:47

funnel is 30 percent or higher.

17:50

he's awesome. so now Joe, like this is why it makes it so much

17:55

easier for me to control the outcome for all my clients.

17:58

Because at the end of the day, when my clients come into LaunchBoom,

18:01

um, there's a lot of work we do to like help them understand how to

18:04

maximize their average order value and maximize their price per backer.

18:08

And I'll get into that more here in a minute, but then, but then

18:11

there's like more opportunity to like really help kind of

18:15

build a super engaged audience through the reservation funnel.

18:19

But then now I know where to set that campaign goal on Kickstarter.

18:24

So for example, if we have a thousand reservations.

18:27

And if you're selling a new product, Joe, for, let's just

18:30

say average order value, 100.

18:33

Well, I know that minimum, I'm going to get 300 or more sales off my,

18:37

my, my work, my pre launch efforts. So I'm going to set your campaign goal on Kickstarter to 30, 000.

18:45

And then when we launch the campaign, our average

18:48

funding time is 14 minutes. That's crazy.

18:52

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

18:55

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

19:00

And then when this happens, Kickstarter is like, wow,

19:04

this deal is popular. Let's start pushing more traffic to this deal.

19:08

So that's when we get top placement on their platform.

19:10

That's when they make us a product they love. That's when they start to promote us in their newsletters.

19:15

When all this stuff happens, and these campaigns on average are

19:18

about 30 days when they're live on Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

19:22

When that's, and the same is true with Indiegogo. Same type of thing happens.

19:25

What will happen is, now the deal goes from 30, 000

19:29

to hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes millions.

19:32

Yeah. You're getting that network effect. You're, you're kick, kickstarting all the, uh, no pun intended there,

19:37

but it's, everything is firing and I would assume there's also

19:41

what there's upgrades, right? Like there's higher in rewards that people aren't just getting the base.

19:46

I'm sure a lot of them are also upgrading. So that means more funding for the, uh, the product owner.

19:51

Big time, big time. Yeah, I mean, I usually try to create like a few

19:56

options for backers because I don't want to confuse them.

19:59

And, and we always have our average order value, which is like the unit,

20:02

but then we can do bundle packs and we can definitely create a lot more.

20:06

Um, we can create, you know, a lot more, um, revenue per backer

20:10

if we have more enticing options. Um, but yeah, for the most part, I mean, we've

20:15

got this dialed in today. And, um, you know, the reason I started LaunchBoom and the

20:20

reason I called my company LaunchBoom Joe is because

20:23

that's exactly what I'm doing. Like I'm basically spending two to three months preparing my

20:28

clients so that when we launch on Kickstarter, we can actually

20:32

let them know before we launch how much we can actually raise.

20:36

And then is that enough to actually complete manufacturing and delivery?

20:40

And if the answer is yes, great, let's launch on

20:42

Kickstarter or Indiegogo. If the answer is no, hey, let's continue the pre

20:48

launch a little longer. Let's build a larger audience so we can hit your goals.

20:52

Yeah, it sounds like it really people can approach you or even

20:55

just do this method, let's say, individually, but I'm obviously

21:00

there's some, there's advantages of working with LaunchBoom, because I'm

21:03

sure you have a built in list and backers that are already proven, you

21:06

know, I'm just assuming here, and obviously the proven strategies, but

21:10

like, who are the Yeah, it sounds like this pre launch phase and I

21:15

want to dive into this a little bit more for, let's say someone off

21:18

the streets, they don't really know anything, but also I'm sure you're

21:20

getting people with very savvy business background or they know

21:24

their numbers and maybe they have some manufacturing, but like in this

21:28

pre launch phase, you're learning so much about the audience, about

21:31

what you can, um, yeah, the, the numbers that are needed to actually

21:35

scale past just raising money. So I guess dive into like what's being learned and what's being

21:41

discussed outside of just what you talked about, which is huge

21:44

of raising the reservations, like what else is happening

21:47

in that pre launch phase? after I had a handful of successful Kickstarter campaigns

21:51

under my belt, I was actually looking for a launch boat.

21:54

I was like, Hey, there's gotta be someone out there who can help me with my prelaunch video, my prelaunch, you

21:59

know, advertising campaigns. So I can like, you know, maximize my audience before I go to Kickstarter.

22:05

And I couldn't believe that there was no one out there doing it.

22:08

And so that's when the light bulb went off, Joe. You know, I was actually going through an exit of my last company

22:14

and I'm not the kind of guy to sit at home and do nothing.

22:17

And I was thinking to myself like, what's next, what's next?

22:20

And I started researching Kickstarter Indiegogo and their

22:23

platforms were growing like year in, year out, like just going through

22:27

massive growth back in 2014, 2015.

22:30

And so basically what I ended up doing was I, um, I did a lot of

22:34

research and then I'm like, you know what, I'm going to build.

22:38

The largest crowdfunding campaign, um, agency in the world.

22:41

I want to be the largest crowdfunding agency in the world and

22:44

I want to be the one to basically help entrepreneurs all over the

22:48

world succeed with their product launches no matter where they are.

22:52

And so I'm like, what am I going to call it? So then I'm like, you know what?

22:56

I went to go daddy one day, I'll never forget it.

22:59

And I start typing in names like, what is this?

23:01

What is, and then all of a sudden like LaunchBoom came to my mind.

23:04

And I typed in launchboom. com and it was available for 9.

23:08

99. I couldn't believe it. And so, so I bought the domain and at the time I was

23:12

working with a young group of marketers here in San Diego.

23:16

And I said, Hey guys, how would you guys like to be millionaires

23:19

by the time you're 30 years old? And they're like, well, that sounds great.

23:23

I'm like, I have an idea. We're going to build the world's largest crowdfunding agency.

23:27

We're going to call it LaunchBoom. But all we're going to do is crowdfunding.

23:30

So we're not going to do any other marketing projects. We're just going to stay focused on crowdfunding campaigns.

23:35

And they said, well, let's do it. So I ended up partnering with these super smart, awesome marketers

23:40

that were really young at the time. And uh, LaunchBoom was born.

23:44

And we started slow. I really started with my personal network and, um,

23:49

I reached out to people. I knew that we're also launching consumer products.

23:52

And I said, Hey, let's launch on Kickstarter.

23:55

Let's launch on Indiegogo. And they were like, what's that?

23:58

I'm like, this is crowdfunding. This is how it works.

24:00

They're like, well, we'll, we know you, we trust you.

24:02

So let's do it. And so the first year I only launched maybe 15 launches

24:08

That's pretty sizable. I mean, that's more than one a month.

24:10

I mean, you're getting some data in. It was great, you know, so I started small and I also self funded it.

24:15

So this was the first company I've never raised investment

24:18

from investors, um, outside of me and my partners currently.

24:22

Um, so it's all self funded. So I was like, you know, I'm going to start this slow and I'm going

24:26

to figure this out as we learn. And so I launched 15 successful campaigns in 2015 and in 2015

24:34

all of them did over six figures, if not a lot more than that.

24:37

And so then in 2016 I took my data and my case studies and I flew up to

24:44

Indiegogo's office in San Francisco.

24:47

And I said, Hey guys, like this is who we are at LaunchBoom.

24:50

This is what we do. This is why our campaigns do much better outcomes than if

24:55

they just go in, you know, with no prelaunch work done.

24:58

And, uh, they said, well, this is great. You know, we're focused right now on building our backer

25:02

community and we don't really have any resources focused on

25:06

supporting the entrepreneur. Will this make you a preferred partner?

25:09

And we'll just direct anyone who's not ready to launch to your team.

25:12

Ah, smart man. Integrations. Okay.

25:15

So I said, that's awesome. That's exactly why I'm here.

25:18

Great. So right behind that, I went to Brooklyn, New York, and I

25:22

met with Kickstarter's team at the same conversation.

25:25

And I said, Kickstarter, this is why my deals are doing so much more, uh,

25:29

you know, funding on your platform. Uh, it's called pre launch.

25:32

This is what I do. And they said, we're looking at growing our backer

25:36

community so we can have even more successful raises.

25:38

And we're not doing anything with pre launch,

25:41

so we'll send that to you. So as soon as that happened, Joe, like the avalanche of

25:46

lead gen just opened up. And I started getting all my business directly

25:50

from the platforms. Dude, that's, it's brilliant.

25:53

And I want to, I'm going to like pause on how important that

25:56

actually is right now, because that's integrating into the.

26:00

It's honestly, it's like, it's right to the motherlode.

26:03

It's like right where you want to direct people to. It's where the money is at.

26:06

They're at the backer communities, Kickstarter, Indiegogo.

26:08

But now you're becoming that preferred partner and

26:12

you're becoming resourceful and valuable to them.

26:14

It's obviously they're. Their agenda was to grow their internal database of backers,

26:19

which helps their company grow because it's reliable, predictable,

26:23

of course, scalable for them. And now here you are, you're like, yeah, uh, that's also for me too.

26:27

I'm just solving a different thing. Yeah, no, it, it, it was risky to be honest, looking back on it in

26:33

hindsight, just because they could

26:35

mean having those conversations with them? Yeah.

26:37

Cause I was still so early and I knew it was a risk,

26:40

but I knew it was the only way I was going to get more

26:42

qualified deal flow for my team. And so, so it was risky because they could have easily been

26:46

like, Hey, well, great idea. We're going to go ahead and compete with you now.

26:50

Good point. Yeah, that is, that is the flip side.

26:53

Yeah, and you're like, oh shoot crushed from day one kind of thing.

26:56

And, and, and, and I knew that going into it, but I was

26:58

like, you know what, like. I got to do this now before someone else does.

27:03

And, um, and I'm so glad I did looking back on it because it

27:06

allowed me to go from 15 deals in 2015 to a hundred deals in 2016.

27:11

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27:38

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28:41

And so 2016 was like when we learned a tremendous amount.

28:44

Um, that's like, you know, we just had so much more experience, so

28:48

much more exposure to deals and we started to learn what verticals

28:51

do well, what verticals don't do well, uh, what deals do we want

28:54

more of, what deals, you know, should we redirect somewhere else?

28:57

Cause crowdfunding isn't a good solution and we can get into that

29:00

a little later, Joe, but, um, it was, it was a really pivotal

29:04

year for us at LaunchBoom. And then by 2017, what's crazy is like two years into it, Joe.

29:09

We were the largest crowdfunding agency in the world.

29:12

So we had succeeded But my question, and this is one that's not totally on the

29:18

crowdfunding topic, but like the fact of you took a ragtag, you

29:22

know, group of guys and gals who didn't really know much about

29:26

crowdfunding, but they trusted you, you know, they worked with you.

29:29

How do you keep them focused and like mission driven to

29:34

scale this thing so quickly in a short period of time?

29:37

Because that. That, that's the nut that a lot of folks I think have tough, a

29:41

tough time with is scaling an idea.

29:44

Like that's great. Okay. Understood. But now it's like you have this whole crew around you to stay

29:48

focused on that mission and plan.

29:50

Yeah, I, I, I'd say for me, like first and foremost, like it,

29:55

it was just like the perfect group of people that I partnered

29:59

with to make this happen. And the reason I say that is because like, I was at the point

30:04

where I was in my early thirties when I started LaunchBoom.

30:07

And I was working with a group of marketers that were

30:10

like just out of college. They were like in their early twenties, mid twenties, hungry.

30:15

And when I had met them, they were taking deals to do deals.

30:19

There was no focus. They were honestly, you know, barely surviving financially.

30:25

And, uh, they were doing great work because I actually hired them to

30:28

help me with my early campaigns. I was, I already had worked with him for six months or longer.

30:35

And so I, I recognized talent and potential and you know, at

30:40

that point they had also, we had a lot of trust and respect and

30:43

working with each other just cause we had been working with each

30:45

other on my successful launches.

30:48

And so, you know, when I sat down, um, you know, with, with my business

30:52

partner today, Mark Picotta, who is now CEO of LaunchBoom.

30:56

And I've always been president of LaunchBoom.

30:59

We've always been partners on this thing. Um, but you know, when I sat down with him and I said, Hey Mark,

31:03

you know, like, I think there's something so much bigger here.

31:07

But if we do this together, we can't just do videos to do videos.

31:11

And we can't just build websites to build websites.

31:13

We only do crowdfunding projects. And we have to be very focused because if we stay focused, we're

31:18

gonna win because, you know, we are the best marketers in this

31:22

space based on what I'm seeing. 'cause there's no one there at the time.

31:25

And so, so he's like, you know, will, this makes a lot of sense.

31:28

Let's do this. And so I'd say finding the right group of people that were.

31:35

Open to being coached and mentored and also like the fact that we

31:39

had the trust in that relationship in place Made it easier to kind

31:42

of get it started But then the proof is in the pudding as soon

31:46

as we started having win after win after win It was fun, man.

31:50

Like we used to like in the early days when we had our office in

31:53

San Diego We had a little office on the beach in Pacific Beach.

31:57

We would have launch parties And it was fun.

32:00

Like as soon as we'd hit that crowdfunding button on Kickstarter

32:03

and would go live, we'd see all the funds come rushing in.

32:07

Um, our clients would be in the office with this party and

32:10

Oh, that's cool. So you're probably getting that whole, yeah, it's just a great vibe.

32:14

Hopefully some videos capturing of the moment too.

32:16

Totally, man. So like, like, that was like the proof in the pudding.

32:20

So like, we put all this work and effort into the pre launch, would

32:23

have a party, would launch it, would see all the funds coming

32:26

in from all over the world on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, depending

32:28

upon the platform we launched on. And then, um, from there it was like, when's the next one?

32:33

You know what I mean? Gets addicting. Yeah.

32:36

And then we go from 2015 to 2016, and now we've got these,

32:40

you know, preferred partnerships with Indiegogo and Kickstarter.

32:43

And we've got even more lead gen coming in.

32:45

We're having launches going live every single week.

32:48

You know, it just, it was just like this, like, energy I

32:51

can't even begin to articulate. But it was super, super positive.

32:55

Morale was super, super high, still is.

32:58

And, um, that's honestly what really powered us through.

33:01

That like, not only like scale phase, but like, just like kept

33:05

us, kept us excited and, and, and, and wanting to wake up

33:08

in the morning to go to work. I could hear like, well, I can hear the excitement in your

33:12

voice just route and like, because I've been in those launch

33:14

environments and then, and you see the funds coming in or whatever.

33:18

That thing is the metric, you know, but especially a crowdfunding.

33:21

I mean, like, you have a straight up goal that we're all watching, like,

33:25

hit refresh, hit refresh, right? Um, but you have, so I heard, you know, it's camaraderie like that.

33:30

It's the environment. Obviously focus, I think is the biggest piece there.

33:34

It's so easy to get distracted. And but like crowdfunding and getting very clear on that and

33:41

then just stacking your wins. I mean that compounds everything for you.

33:44

And, and Joe, and then like the other piece I haven't

33:47

talked about yet is being open and wanting to learn, right.

33:52

Because like this space, we were pioneering, like what we

33:55

are doing and we're doing back then had never been done before.

33:59

So I needed a group and a team that was really.

34:03

Wanting to learn excited to learn so literally like I'd have people

34:07

on my team say hey, well I think we could do it better this way You

34:10

know, there's a Facebook conference coming up in San Francisco.

34:13

Like can you fly me up there? I'd really like to go learn more about you know How we can get better

34:17

returns on our ad spend and I'd be like absolutely So like I always

34:21

encourage my team to continue to stay hungry to learn and and I

34:26

always encourage, you know I always make that, you know top of mind too

34:28

for myself because that's where the innovation really lies You Is not

34:33

just getting comfortable with okay. Hey now our system works.

34:36

Let's just keep like selling more and more deals That's not it.

34:40

It's like hey, how do we make this more fun and even more lucrative

34:44

for creators all over the world? and that's Been our story for the last decade.

34:49

So like, so we create this reservation funnel.

34:52

We revolutionize the industry, right?

34:54

We go through massive growth. We have tons of success as an agency.

34:58

And then all of a sudden this crazy, this crazy thing

35:01

called the pandemic happens. And to be honest, Joe, like when the pandemic first happened, I

35:05

was like, I was a little freaked out cause I'm like, Oh shit.

35:07

I was like, Oh shit, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm screwed because people

35:11

are going to want to put food on their table for their family.

35:13

And they're not going to want to back a project that they might not receive for 12 months.

35:17

So I was scared going into the pandemic. I was like, Oh no, like all everything we just worked towards

35:22

these last, you know, five, six years is now down the drain.

35:26

And I really thought crowdfunding was going to be dead.

35:29

And fortunately, Joe, I was wrong and I'm so happy I was wrong because

35:35

what happened was more and more people were working from home.

35:38

The government dished out all this money and people were spending

35:42

more time on social media. Yeah. So we actually were generating the biggest campaigns.

35:47

We went through the biggest growth spurt I ever dreamed of.

35:50

And I ended up going from like pre pandemic like 25 employees.

35:54

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

35:59

you did the opposite of basically everyone else. I, and I never would have guessed it.

36:02

I really thought we're going to be in trouble, but we've

36:04

learned a lot and we worked on thousands of product launches.

36:08

I mean, it was awesome, but then ended 2021, something happened,

36:12

Joe, um, it got to a point where I had a heart to heart

36:16

with my business partner, Mark. And I'm like, Mark, you know, like, I don't think I'd

36:21

hire LaunchBoom to launch my new product on Kickstarter.

36:25

And, and he's like, and he's like, why? And I'm like, It's too expensive.

36:30

The agency model. I'm like, there's got to be a better way where instead of just working

36:35

with funded startups, because you had to have money to work with

36:37

me as an agency, because we were white club, we do it all for you.

36:40

We needed advertising dollars. We needed video production, marketing dollars.

36:44

So you couldn't just be like an entrepreneur with a

36:47

good idea to work with me. You actually had to have some kind of funding to put into the prelaunch

36:52

and then crowdfunding management so that we could do it all for

36:54

you and deliver a great product. So there's this huge part of the market that we couldn't

36:59

address with our agency. And I said, Mark, I'm like, I know today, based on everything

37:04

we just learned over the last eight years, I know how to do

37:08

the same thing and get a better result for a fraction of the cost.

37:12

Because, you know, now we have AI, you know, now we, there's been

37:16

technological advances that we've incorporated into our platform.

37:20

And so he's like, you know, well, I feel the same way.

37:23

And so that started conversations with our leadership team, uh, in

37:28

early 2022, where we intentionally killed our own agency, Joe.

37:34

Interesting. That mind you, Joe, Joe, that mind you was number one in the world.

37:39

I mean, literally like I was flying all over the world

37:41

every month, pre pandemic. I was speaking on stages, educating people all over the world about

37:46

how crowdfunding works, how to succeed with your product launch

37:49

on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and, and then I decide to kill my own agency.

37:55

Wow. Yeah, that takes some balls for one, but also it sounds

37:59

like you're, you're, I mean, you're, you're living what you're preaching right now, which is like, don't be stagnant.

38:03

Don't assume that this is the model forever. And you're also looking out for, I would say more impact, right?

38:09

Like not just a small group of people that can launch and

38:12

afford you in your team, but now you really want to scale.

38:16

I have a lot of questions here. It's like, how did you do that?

38:19

You mentioned AI. I mean, I guess.

38:22

How long ago was this when you killed your agency?

38:25

So, so Joe, Joe, it's honestly the craziest move I've

38:27

ever made professionally. Like I said, we are the number one agency in the world.

38:32

Um, you know, you, you search on Google, crowdfunding,

38:34

Kickstarter, Indiegogo. We're going to pop up top three every time we have all the

38:39

traffic, we have happy clients and, um, and then I make a

38:43

decision with my leadership team. I just say, Hey guys, there has to be a better way.

38:47

We should be able to improve our model so we can make

38:51

it even more affordable. So now we can support everybody, not just the funded startups, but

38:56

also the underfunded startups. And we can do that by pivoting away from agency.

39:01

And leaning in on a coaching consulting platform where we

39:06

elevate our tech so that now we can plug in AI and we can

39:11

actually make it more fun, even less risky, and now we can support

39:16

more product creators worldwide. And so it took us about six months to kind of really think through and

39:22

build out this new business model. Cause it's entirely, it's totally different from an agency

39:27

Oh yeah. And so we took six months mapping it out.

39:30

We had daily calls on it, really making sure we flushed it out

39:34

before we actually kill our agency.

39:36

It gets me. Good move. Right, right.

39:39

We, we, I needed to make sure that if this was going to

39:41

happen, it was going to work. And then July, 2022, We made the pivot and we became a coaching

39:47

consulting platform with elevated tech and We also have 10 million

39:53

backer emails in our database That have backed one or more of our

39:57

products over the last decade That now we can actually share with our

40:01

clients today So that we can help them get look alike audiences and

40:05

significantly reduce their ad cost To build those large pre launch

40:10

audiences so now You Boom, you know, let's call it LaunchBoom 2.

40:15

0 is now we're no longer an agency.

40:18

This is July, 2022. We're only focused on this coaching consulting platform.

40:23

And, um, you know, in all honesty, like we spent the second half of

40:27

2022 kind of upgrading the tech, making sure our clients were having

40:31

a positive experience, having a great experience, uh, making sure

40:35

that we added the right people on the team to make that possible.

40:38

And then in January 2023, that was like our first full

40:42

year using this new model. And it was the best year of my life.

40:47

What'd you learn? Like, what was, what were some big differences right out the

40:51

gate that you, that you learned? What I learned first and foremost is that by, by, by pivoting away

40:58

from agency and looking at this coaching consulting model serious

41:02

and then upgrading our technology and, and adding those AI plugins.

41:07

What I realized is that we could expedite the time you now need

41:12

to go through a prelaunch and get ready to launch on Kickstarter

41:15

Indiegogo, but you can also not only maximize efficiency, But you can

41:20

also maximize the ad spend the ad dollars which are critical when it

41:24

comes to launching on Kickstarter Indiegogo And you can get even

41:27

better returns Also, what I realized is that you don't need an agency.

41:32

So for example the way it works today Let's just say

41:35

Joe you sign up with me today. You're like, well, I'm working with LaunchBoom We're

41:38

gonna launch my new product. I want to say hell.

41:40

Yeah, Joe, let's go So you'll be on let's just say we onboard you today

41:44

You'll be on an onboarding call with my onboarding expert here at

41:49

LaunchBoom, and you might be on that call with 10 or 20 other new clients

41:54

that are being onboarded today. Okay. Group session.

41:56

I like, So what it is, it's a one to many model, and the beauty in this

42:00

is that you're going to learn from each other's questions,

42:04

and you're going to get the same support from our expert.

42:07

And by the time we get off that call, we're going

42:09

to have you through step one, which is onboarding.

42:12

Now you're in step two, messaging, positioning, uh, working through

42:16

your, your, your pricing strategy and you might be on a call tomorrow.

42:21

With maybe 10 other clients that are dealing with the same set.

42:23

So you're going to learn from each other's questions and

42:26

still get the same exact support from our expert who manages

42:30

that part of our process. So that's how I'm on my model works today.

42:34

It's what I call a one to many model as opposed to

42:36

agency, which was one to one. So the problem with my agency was even though it was, I could

42:40

say I was the biggest in the world and I have a, almost a

42:43

hundred employees on my team. The problem with that was as I continue to bring in more projects,

42:47

I had to hire more people. And as a business owner.

42:50

That wiped out all my profit margin.

42:54

So even though like, you know, when you looked at LaunchBoom,

42:56

our revenue was super sexy, my, my profit margins weren't that sexy,

43:00

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

43:03

Yeah. And at the end of the day, that was another reason I had this heart

43:06

to heart with Mark at the end of 2021, my business partner, because

43:09

I was like, Mark, what's the point? Great.

43:11

We don't want our revenue again next year. Great.

43:13

We're still barely, we're making razor thin margins.

43:16

Like, and we have to work harder. And that's the agency model kind of in a nutshell, right?

43:20

Like, it's like you got to keep scaling, scale resources,

43:23

scale responsibilities, like something that a lot of agency

43:26

owners talk about or think about is like, okay, well, with more

43:30

customers are more liability, more team members, more liability.

43:34

And, you know, it's like, do we want that stress?

43:37

Is that a smart model to really scale? It's okay if it's boutique and that's, that's what

43:40

you want to jam on fine. But if you're really looking to scale, scale.

43:44

This is a perfect case study to even apply another place.

43:47

It's the one to mini model, the coaching model. And, and, and there are other nuances with the agency model too.

43:53

It's like when you're an agency, you're doing all the work for the client.

43:56

So if anything goes wrong, it's my fault, right?

43:59

And so the beauty of this coaching consulting model is

44:02

that it's a do it with you model.

44:04

Our clients have to invest their time too, but our clients want

44:08

to, because they need to learn about the market research.

44:12

They need to learn about their customer profile.

44:14

Yeah. They need to learn how to maximize their ad spend.

44:17

And, and the beauty of the do it with you model is that now

44:20

we can serve more clients. I was able to literally drop my cost, my, for my

44:26

agency, my agency model used to be like 50, 000 minimum.

44:31

Half that would be ad spend, half that would be marketing.

44:33

And then I'd take 10 percent commission off the gross

44:36

crowdfunding campaign. That was, that was my model, right?

44:40

The beauty of today is All my programs are basically

44:44

under 10 grand and I

44:46

And they're getting the full thing. they get the full thing.

44:49

It's actually better today than it was as an agency because

44:51

I've got more data they can use. And my tech is way slicker than it was back during my agency days.

44:57

And at the end of the day, I take no commission. So

45:03

Interesting. that's it. And now guess what?

45:06

My client has more meat on the bone. So

45:08

And you're in it for them, like with them.

45:10

They're not thinking, okay. Cause that's the whole thing with crowdfunding.

45:13

It's like, I don't have to give away money early days.

45:17

It's like, that's their money. So you're like, look at, look, look at the bag of cash.

45:20

You just got from this whole one to many things. Yeah.

45:27

great. Now they've completed Kickstarter. Now they have more money to reinvest into their continued

45:33

growth and development. Right? Because at the end of the day, people aren't

45:36

crowdfunding just to launch. People want to build a profitable business and

45:41

crowdfunding is the smartest way to do that product launch.

45:43

And honestly, it really is. If you're not crowdfunding and you're listening to this, you

45:47

should be crowdfunding guys. It is the easiest.

45:51

Most stress free way to validate and test any new consumer product idea.

45:55

So consumer pro I was going to say, so consumer product masks,

45:58

yeah, like mass quantities.

46:00

We're not talking digital products here or anything like that.

46:03

Right. Or are we, can it be different?

46:05

yeah, that's correct. Yeah. So like for the most part, um, you know, we're, we're the best when

46:10

it comes to tangible hardware. Any type of consumer product and there's a variety of articles that

46:15

do incredibly well on Kickstarter Indiegogo Generally speaking.

46:20

I always tell people that Kickstarter Indiegogo is going

46:23

to perform super well especially if you have a product that

46:27

appeals to a male audience a male audience of You know ages

46:32

25 to 55 years of age if you Are those just like the buyers that are on those platforms

46:36

Yeah, that's the majority of the backers. Now, we do have success with female products, but like, if like, I get

46:42

a call from someone and they want to launch a new cosmetic line, I, I,

46:45

I usually redirect that elsewhere, because they're not going to raise

46:48

as much money on Kickstarter based on just my data and experience.

46:52

But, good. You're telling them that early too, before they go down the whole

46:55

rabbit hole themselves, you know? Totally.

46:58

And, and, and, you know, just to kind of fast forward

47:00

to where we are today. I mean, right now I have over 2000 active clients in my LaunchBoom

47:05

community and we're onboarding about 100 new products every month.

47:11

Um, and that's been consistent over the last almost 18 months, right?

47:16

So Right. So, so what's so cool is that like now we're actually

47:20

helping more people succeed. Now, the beauty of what LaunchBoom has become is our prelaunch system

47:26

has really become the best way to fail fast and fail cheap.

47:31

And so what's really interesting when you look at LaunchBoom, Half

47:35

of my clients are early stage startups looking to launch their

47:39

first or second product, but like their mom and pops bootstrapping

47:43

using credit cards to do this. The other half of my clients are actually very

47:47

successful e commerce brands. And I even have some fortune thousand clients that work with us.

47:52

And really what they're doing is they're just using my system

47:55

Transcribed To fail fast and fail cheap to validate and test

47:58

new product ideas and guess what if my data is positive great

48:01

They'll put more funding into it. They'll have a huge Kickstarter campaign outcome My pre launch data

48:06

isn't successful or the data isn't positive They you know, they will

48:11

look at the product iterate it and test it again Or maybe they put that

48:15

idea on the back burner and they put the resources on another product

48:18

that is gonna do well So what's super cool about what LaunchBooms

48:22

become Joe and the evolution of our business from agency to coaching

48:27

consulting is we really have the best product validation system

48:31

Dude, that's it. Yeah, it's huge.

48:33

And that's, I would assume that's where most people are failing.

48:36

They, they either don't even get to launch point, but they do

48:39

all this prep work and they're probably spent in the wrong

48:41

places, not knowing the data, not knowing the audience, getting

48:45

the commitment from an audience early, or even owning that audience

48:48

right on a list of their own. I mean, these are all elements that are extremely valuable for after

48:55

launch, which I want to touch on briefly is, um, you know, after

48:59

the launch itself, obviously that's not going to last forever, you

49:03

know, the crowdfunding campaign. So like, what does it look like without getting like super deep?

49:08

Cause I'm sure it's a whole nothing conversation, but like, where do

49:12

you direct people or how do you support them suggest for them

49:15

to do after a successful launch? Yeah.

49:17

So, so like I told you earlier, right? So I've got expert coaches on my team internally that

49:22

will basically spearhead specific parts of our process.

49:25

Right. So when I told you about my 2000 clients today, That's not

49:31

everyone getting ready to launch. That's That's accumulative.

49:34

Like that's everybody that that's like people that

49:37

are being onboarded today. People that are running ads, building that prelaunch

49:40

community, that build stacking that reservation funnel.

49:43

Uh, this is, these are clients that are getting ready to

49:46

launch in the next week or two. Uh, these are clients that are wrapping up their Kickstarter,

49:50

their Indiegogo campaigns. And then these are clients that are getting ready to deliver and

49:55

ship their product to backers. Right? So depending upon the part of the process they're in here

49:59

at LaunchBoom, LaunchBoom. com. Our coaches and experts will basically plug them into

50:05

specific partners of ours to help them kind of get to that

50:09

next step and to do it most affordably, most efficiently.

50:13

And so to answer your question, like when we have clients that

50:16

are getting ready to wrap up their crowdfunding campaigns, guess what?

50:19

We get them on a call with a coach that gets them plugged into our

50:22

expert partners that might be able to get their Amazon set up.

50:26

Or actually, they might be a better fit for retail.

50:29

And so we'll get them plugged into our retail partners. Or maybe they want to get their Shopify store built.

50:34

And they want to start, you know, building their

50:37

Shopify e commerce business. We have, you know, e commerce experts.

50:41

We also have shipping fulfillment experts. Maybe they need help shipping fulfilling.

50:45

So the cool part about LaunchBoom is I've spent the last 10

50:48

years working with hundreds of different professionals

50:52

in my space at different, you know, phases of the process.

50:56

And I literally handpicked the best ones.

50:59

So, so today I've got an expert portal directory that

51:03

all my clients have access to. All my partners offer special discounts to my clients because they

51:08

know that they're already validated. They're already qualified and that they're probably going to

51:12

do really well in their program. And so that's how we help them get to the next step.

51:16

And that's how we actually help them grow and scale beyond crowdfunding.

51:19

I just keep imagining all of the mystery, like, the question

51:23

marks that happen with people who are trying to do it alone.

51:26

If you go down this route, I mean, like, I can't imagine

51:29

doing it myself, and like, Been in business as an entrepreneur

51:32

for many years, but have not done the consumer product thing.

51:35

So it's like, if I even thought, and obviously a business

51:38

who's already in it, maybe they have some connections.

51:40

Cool. But you're still streamlining the process.

51:43

But like, if you don't have any of this background, I don't know

51:46

how you get it done without losing a bunch of money, a bunch of

51:49

resources, maybe your partnerships in the, in the meantime, you know,

51:53

it's like, it can be disastrous. I mean, I mean that that's how we built this thing, right?

51:56

I started doing it myself. I was looking for support.

52:00

Support didn't exist. So I decided to create it.

52:03

I thought LaunchBoom was the best brand name ever

52:05

for what we do, you know?

52:07

And, um, and then, and then again, you know, having, you

52:11

know, thousands of product launches under our belt

52:13

gave us a ton of experience. And trust me, we've made a lot of mistakes.

52:17

And we've hit a lot of roadblocks, like, remember the

52:19

iOS updates a few years back? That really threw a wrench at us.

52:23

But we had to work through that, you know? And so what we're continuing to do here at LaunchBoom is

52:28

we're continuing to innovate. And my goal is never to be the cheapest option.

52:31

I'll never be cheap, but I'll always be the most affordable.

52:35

And I'll be the best solution. And that's what our team is excited about.

52:40

That's what keeps us pumped about what we're doing.

52:42

Because as we're learning more about AI, which is super exciting,

52:45

We're learning that we can continue to create efficiencies

52:49

to continue to reduce the cost and reduce the risk for all

52:52

entrepreneurs all over the world. And if, and if we just keep doing that, we're, we're,

52:57

we're going to continue to win. I really believe that, you know?

53:00

I love it and I can see it. I know you are and I mean, you're currently winning and it's just

53:04

going to keep expanding man. So hats off to you for doing this and taking the endeavor on

53:09

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

53:15

and kind of a wrap up question here is more for like for you to leave.

53:20

Yep. Us with um, some kind of insight like what because I want to

53:24

get into like what Obviously, you're very enthusiastic.

53:28

You're focused. You've done the work like what's kept you in the game to stay focused

53:33

and motivated as an entrepreneur for so long and You obviously said you

53:37

can't sit still in your house after an exit and stuff like that Most

53:40

people maybe haven't had an exit yet But like what's the mind game

53:44

or something that just keeps you focused and driven as you are now?

53:48

Yeah, no, great question, Joe. I mean, you know, just to kind of wrap this up, like I genuinely,

53:54

at the end of the day, like I get energized by helping people.

53:58

I like to help people and what I love about what I do at LaunchBoom,

54:01

it's the first time in my career that I've built a global business.

54:07

So I literally today and I get goosebumps telling you this I get

54:10

to wake up every day and I get to help people all over the world

54:13

Take their dreams and actually make them real businesses and I

54:18

on another episode Joe I can tell you story after story about so

54:21

many of my clients that came to me having never launched a product and

54:25

We took them through our system. We Kickstarter Indiegogo campaign outcome and you know

54:31

They ended up exiting for you know, hundreds of millions of

54:34

Oh man, that's cool. And just to be a big part of that and to be able to have the

54:39

opportunity to do that for people, honestly, that keeps me pumped up.

54:44

That keeps me energized. And I don't even feel like I'm working anymore, man.

54:48

see, that's the key right there. It's you're building, you're building this impact into

54:51

your life and you obviously it doesn't feel like work.

54:54

You're doing it and it just gets better and better. it's awesome.

54:57

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

55:02

I mean, I peeked at some of the products you're launching

55:04

and I want pretty much every single one of them. So I'm like, you're doing something right.

55:09

Well, that's another funny story too. So like when, when, when I first started LaunchBoom, all, as we

55:13

went through like that growth in 2016, um, all my clients

55:17

are sending me samples and prototypes to my house and my wife

55:21

and my wife's like, well, this has to stop.

55:23

Like we, we don't have any room. There's no more room for more boxes.

55:27

And, and so, you know, it was kind of like being a kid

55:30

in a toy store, you know. Yeah, I figured it was about, I was like, man, there's some

55:33

cool benefits as being the one, like you're just testing

55:36

all these products, but just like your wife, my wife,

55:38

she's like, let's get it out. Stop the boxes.

55:41

You need your own place. Oh,

55:45

deliveries to like my campaign managers, you know, my internal,

55:49

and they're all having a blast testing out the products, you

55:51

There you go. Oh, well, man, this has been a pleasure.

55:54

I figured this is how it'd go because this is how our chats

55:57

have been, but I'm happy we got to get some focus time together

55:59

outside of the mastermind where it's kind of a whole group thing.

56:02

So, um, keep doing the good work, man.

56:04

And I would love to have you back again, maybe in another

56:07

year or so, when you learn a whole boatload of more things

56:10

and, um, keep sharing the fun. So thank you so much.

56:13

Check out LaunchBoom. com everyone anywhere else that you want to direct people to

56:17

Honestly, just, just go to launch, but we have a lot of free, we have the most free education in this space.

56:21

And, uh, you'll get, you'll get a really good idea.

56:24

If not, most of your questions answered there. And then if you want to talk to anyone, if you want to learn

56:29

more, you can actually schedule a call with a human being, not an

56:32

AI machine, but you can actually talk to a human being on my team.

56:36

Um, if you are super interested or getting ready to launch

56:39

that next awesome product idea. Right on.

56:41

Go do it, y'all. All right, Will. Appreciate you, man. All right, Joe, thank you, man.

56:45

Have a great day, man. You too.

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