Crowdfund Like A Boss By Thinking Like A Project Manager

Speaker 1 0:03
This is the crush crowdfunding podcast, the number one place for people who want to launch on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. My name is Nalin. And I invite you to join me for tips, hacks and insights to get you launched and fully funded.

Speaker 1 0:20
What's up everybody? Welcome to another session of the crush crowdfunding podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today to talk to you some more about crowdfunding and how you could absolutely go out and crush it on Indiegogo and on Kickstarter. Again, I'm so thankful to have you here today with me. And I'm so so excited to talk to you about what I have in store today. Today I

Speaker 1 0:46
actually wanted to talk a little bit about life, its trade offs, and how that relates to crowdfunding. Right? So in life. I'm going to start off by saying in life, there's the saying "you can't have your cake and eat it too." I'm not sure if you've heard it or not. But the first time I heard it was actually probably when the first or second year when I moved to Virginia, and I was going to school and I was like, what does this mean, you can't have your cake and eat it too? Of course, like, of course, I'm going to, you know, buy a cake and I'm going to eat it. But actually, it's what is called, like an idiom, or our proverb, or like a figure of speech. Pretty much literally speaking, the proverb like means you cannot retain your cake and eat it too. This is pretty much what Wikipedia is saying. But what this actually means, what this actually means when you're thinking about the grand scheme of things, the grand scheme of life, the grand scheme of everything that's going on around you. What it actually means is that you can't enjoy both of two desirable but mutually exclusive alternatives. Okay, so I sound I probably sound a little smart here, but it's just what Google was telling me when I asked what "you can't have your cake and eat it too" means. I'm going to repeat it again. Okay, it says you can't enjoy both of two desirable but mutually exclusive alternatives. So, pretty much what this is saying in like a really complicated matter is that there are trade offs in life. Right? You sometimes just have to freakin choose. And so what this means, you know, in life, you might be up for two different jobs. You might be called back for two different jobs that you both you're just so excited for both of them, you're like, Oh, I really want this because there's these pros and cons. Or like, Oh, I really want this other job because there's these pros and cons. Or you might be excited about to you know, move to this city or that city. City a has these pros and cons. Oh, city B has these pros and cons. Oh, do I do what I do? Or you're presented with these two different hobbies that you are, you know obsessed about you really like doing. But in your particular city, the main meetup for the group is on the same exact day on the same exact night. Or something like, hey, there's these two different dishes that I absolutely love eating at this one restaurant and I'm and I, you know only eat out once a month. And there's these two dishes just staring straight at me and I love them both. What am I to choose? You know, you're not gonna choose both, you're gonna have to choose one, right? There's trade offs. There's those trade offs in life that just happen every once in a while that just happen in your life. Which again, goes back to this "you can't have your cake and eat it too." What this converse with this little mini conversation about trade offs, let's kind of take it back and and just think about how does this actually relate to crowdfunding? Well, I really want to talk about this because a lot of people come to me and they don't really think that in crowdfunding, there are trade offs. People think that crowdfunding is a specific niche that all magical things has happened. They launch and they get a million dollars right away, they launch and they get thousands of backers flooding into their campaign right away. But I'm going to break it down to you, crowdfunding is also all about trade offs. The main trade offs that have to do with crowdfunding is when you're just actually looking at your project. I like to tell people that when they actually look at their project, when they approach their project, they should really approach it the way someone like a project manager should can approach every single project right? For example of a project manager in real life is looking to build let's say, like a house, right a house. Just a house like a like a two bed, one bath, three bed, two bath kind of house right? One story two story doesn't really matter. Just envision a house. It might have that blue front door that you've always dreaming of, or kind of that red Norwegian door look that you're thinking about, whatever kind of house you want a picture in your head, just picture a house. When a project manager is looking to build a house, there are trade offs they have to think about. There's three core tenants that they have to keep in mind with every project that they approach, with every house that they have to build. And those three things are scope, budget and time. Three things, scope, budget, and time. Right? And as a project manager, you can't control all three. It's kind of insane to think about that. But you can't take charge of all three, all three cannot go exactly the way you want it to go. There are trade offs. If you know the person who wants a house built it's like okay, this this house must be two stories, this house must have, you know, be facing west so that the sun hits the house a certain way on Friday afternoon, or this house must be on this 30 degrees slope, or this house must be so and so. So that's the scope, right? If the scope is something that is controlled, then it's either the budget or the time that you really have to think about, right? If the scope is to build this house on a slope, and the person who wants the house really wants it done in 30 days, or in one week, then only way to get that done is to blow up the budget, right? Is to like just inject tons of money into it. However, if the person wants to do the house on this 30 degree slope, but they're like, it can take you six months, it can take you six years. I don't really care. However long it takes you that's totally fine. Right? So if there's lots of time, maybe you as the person who's building the house, are like okay, sure, I'll just bring in my cheapest contractors whenever they're available. So again, you're controlling for some things, but you have to give on something else, right? You can't there's no way you can control all three things. Because if you want a house that's built on a 30 degree slant in 30 days, and you're saying, I don't want to spend any budget on it, what are you building? You're building nothing. You're probably just like, you're building jokes. You're building lies. You're building your own House of Lies, House of cards I guess. When you're looking at this project, when you're looking at this house, right? There's always trade offs. There's that scope, what the house looks like, what it's going to be at the end of the day, there's time. How much time do you have? Do you have a week? Do you have a month? Do you have six months? Do you have one year you have two years, three years, four years? Or in the budget? Do you have $100, $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, a million dollars, how much money do you have? And all of these are not things you can all control at the same time. It's all about trade offs. If you want to control the scope, you know what the house looks like, and the time when it needs to be built by, then you're probably going to have to give on budget. You're probably gonna have to spend a lot of money to get that exact house that you want in that exact same same timeframe that you want. If you are controlling for scope, the house that looks exactly like this, and you don't have a lot of money to spend, are you controlling for scope and budget, then you're probably going to be taking a lot longer time to get that house built. Right? So that's kind of a real world example of how a project manager would approach a certain project approach that house that they're building approach that project. So let's take this to crowdfunding, when you're looking at crowdfunding it's all about trade offs. It's all about these three things. You have to keep in mind, that scope, that budget and the time. So let's break it down how this all relates to crowdfunding and your campaign. How do scope budget and time relate to your crowdfunding campaign. So with scope, think about it this way, your scope is pretty much how much you're looking to raise for your particular project. Right? It's how many backers you need, how much revenue you need, how much funding you actually need to get this project to life, right? Some people's scope for their crowdfunding campaign is that okay, I just need 50 backers, and that's the absolute minimum that I can, you know, go out and get this thing made. Or maybe even making it by hand, I can only make 50 something like that, right? Or some people are working with really large manufacturing factories and like, and the factories are like, okay, the minimum that the minimum moq, the minimum quantity that you need to get in order for me to produce this for you at a reasonable price for you is 1000 units. 1000 units. So that would be your scope, your scope would be to get 1000 backers to actually back 1000 units of this or, you know, less backers to back two or more units of it. But let's say that's your scope, right? So that's how scope relates to crowdfunding. That's your goal what you have to make, right, for crowdfunding. When it comes to time. This one's a key word when it comes to time. It's how much time are you going to give yourself to get ready to meet your scope? Because with crowdfunding scope doesn't really change, right? Scope is like pretty set. If you have a factory that says, you can only make, I can only make you with at a minimum 1000 units so that you can get this x dollar price point per unit that you want and if anything less the price point goes up really high so your costs just drastically get out of hand, that's not possible for you, right? So your scope is $1,000. So when we're thinking about time, how long do you have in order to meet that scope that you've set out for yourself? Is the time three weeks, is the time three months, is the time three years, like what kind of time do you have set up for yourself? If you're looking to get 1000 backers, but you're looking to do that within three months, rather than three years or three months, rather than six months, or one year, you bet that it's going to take a different budget at each timeframe. Right. So time and budget. So that's time right? How much time do you have in order to get to that scope that you're aiming? And when it comes to budget, how much money do you have to invest? Do you have zero dollars for marketing and promotion? Do you have $100 for marketing and promotion? $1,000, $10,000 $100,000 it's all different, like everyone is approaching this crowdfunding thing in a different way. Everyone's scope is pretty much constant, right? You come into your crowdfunding campaign with a pretty constant scope, because you're like, hey, I need to make 100 units. I mean, to make 1000 units, I need to make 500 units, I need to raise $50,000 to, you know, buy the mold, you know. So the scope is pretty constant, but everyone's budget and time just ranges all over the place. And so you have to think to yourself, when you're before you launch your project, what am I going to give? And what am I going to invest? And are you going to give time and put in time to put in the legwork to form those relationships with influencers, with journalists, with press, with vloggers, with bloggers, or with potential backers with people in your crowdfunding niche that can be potential backers, or are you going to be spending budget? Are you going to be investing that money into paying for partnerships, pay money to be put in front of people who have a master crowdfunding backer list will you be paying for advertising. Will you be investing and paying for you know yourself to be at these different trade shows to talk to people who potentially will get your product, will you be paying for you know a roadshow to go across the country to talk to different people in different cities? Will you be paying for organizing events that will be you know, introducing your product? Will you be paying for your product to be placed in gift bags for different celebrities around the world right? So with a constant scope, whatever a unit number you have to make, or you have to get to, or whatever funding goal you have to get to that scope, what are you willing to give? Are you willing to give on budget? Are you willing to give on time? In a perfect world you can definitely control everything right, your you can say I want 1000 backers, and I have you know enough budget to get to it in three months,

Speaker 1 13:58
right? Like that's in a perfect world but I'm

Speaker 1 14:00
gonna I'm like, I'm practical person, I'm a really practical person. And I'm realistic, right? Not everyone can control everything. So with that scope, can you just think to yourself? Do I have budget to invest in building an audience and getting people to become backers? Or do I have time to invest in this, and slowly but surely chug along to make this happen in, you know, a longer period of time. That's what I want to talk about today is just about how just life is about trade offs. Is this about all the little things that you're constantly just making choices about, right? Am I going to go left? Am I going to go right? Am I going to do A or am I gonna do B? What am I going to choose today versus what am I going to choose tomorrow? Right? It's all about the little trade offs. And it's actually like that with crowdfunding to the three things you really have to keep in mind, again, is the scope, the budget and the time for when you're going to win the project in your crowdfunding campaign.

Speaker 1 14:58
So with that said, I

Speaker 1 15:00
Hope you really learn something valuable today. During the podcast, I'm really passionate about this particular topic because it trips a lot people up, a lot of people come to me and they say, hey, I want to raise a million dollars, I have hundred dollars to spend, and I need to do it in 30 days. And I'm like, Well, guys, let's talk about this. If you want a million dollars in 30 days with a $100 budget, it's probably impossible unless you have a million people in your audience already. Right? Like, let's be honest here. Let's be reasonable, lets be practical, right? What is your scope? What is your budget? What is your time?So thank you again for listening to the crush crowdfunding podcast and I look forward to seeing you again next week here at the same time, go out and crush it guys. Thanks for listening to the crush crowdfunding podcast at crush crowdfunding.com. Tune in the same time next week for more ways to crush your launch.