The Big Opportunity In Crowdfunding and Amazon with Khierstyn Ross

Capitalism.com with Ryan Daniel Moran

Capitalism.com

Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 802 Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2017

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's clear that there is no one way to build a business - but there ARE ways that you can build a business quicker and more successfully. Those are the ways Ryan likes to pursue. Why waste time and money? Just get things done and enjoy the fruit of your labors more quickly. Toward that end, Ryan loves the way crowdfunding can be combined with a product or brand launch on Amazon. The two go hand in hand, and to explain how that's true Ryan's invited a crowdfunding expert and consultant, Khierstyn Ross to walk through some of the important things you need to think about as you launch products using crowdfunding.

The power of crowdfunding to raise seed money.

Unless you raise a ton of capital from angel investors or other funding platforms, you're not going to have the seed money you need to build out more professional or technical product ideas and brands. Crowdfunding is one way you can get past that extra large hurdle. Using platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo you can raise the seed money for your product and get things rolling within 30 to 60 days. But you should never try to do it on your own. There are people who have made it their business to analyze the campaigns that work best, find out why they worked the way they did, and how to take lessons from those approaches to help new products make a splash through successful crowdfunding campaigns. Khierstyn Ross is one of those people and she's got a lot of great crowdfunding tips to share with you, on this episode of Freedom Fast Lane.

Why crowdfunding is a great way to validate your product idea.

It's always a shame when someone has what they believe is a great product idea and invests tons of time and money developing it, only to discover that the market really doesn't show that people want it. How can you avoid that costly mistake? One way is to utilize crowdfunding to validate the demand for the product ideas you have. But you don't want to run a crowdfunding campaign on an idea alone. You want to ensure that you understand what you're getting into before you take that step - and Khierstyn Ross is on the show to explain how you can do that, so be sure you listen.

Crowdfunding should be the first step in a long game.

Many people who get into crowdfunding think it's simply a way to make some quick cash by building out a product they can sell. But those who understand the power of crowdfunding know that it's just the first step in a much longer game. Successful brands consisting of many products can be built using crowdfunding, which makes for an ongoing, profitable business that can eventually be sold for great profits. Find out how to approach crowdfunding the right way on this episode of Freedom Fast Lane from Ryan's guest, Khierstyn Ross.

Do NOT start crowdfunding when all you have is a product idea.

If you want one of the most important pieces of advice about running a crowdfunding campaign, here it is: Build your product prototype first, before you start a Crowdfunding campaign. If you don't have an educated idea of what it's really going to take to build your product and fulfill orders you'll likely burn through your crowdfunding money before you get anything built - and your long-term business plans will be in jeopardy. Khierstyn Ross shares the experiences she's had helping many companies not only have successful campaigns but actually build long-term successful brands.

Outline Of This Great Episode

[0:26] Ryan's introduction to this episode about crowdfunding as an audience builder.
[3:13] Why Amazon and crowdfunding are such a great partnership.
[6:15] Crowdfunding as a long term play - using the crowdfunding audience to launch new products.
[9:22] What kinds of products or events can be crowdfunded successfully?
[11:30] The types of things that do NOT work on crowdfunding platforms.
[13:42] When is it time to start your crowdfunding campaign?

Action Steps From This Episode

FOR GETTING STARTED: Consider crowdfunding as a way to get your seed funding, validate your product idea, and launch in a way you can't do as easily or quickly.

FOR GREATER SUCCESS: Build your product prototype first, before you start a Crowdfunding campaign. If you don't have an educated idea of what it's really going to take to build your product out and fulfill orders you'll likely burn through your crowdfunding money before you get anything built.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Freedom Fastlane presented by Capitalism.com.
0:08.5	This is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms.
0:16.2	And now your host, the future owner of the Cleveland Indians, Ryan Daniel Moran.
0:24.6	Hey, fastlainers, welcome to Freedom Fastlane. If you've been listening to the show for any length of time at all, you know that I believe in going straight for the result. And I look for the fastest way to get me the result that I want. This is kind of a
0:39.0	principle that I learned from my mentor, Travis Sago. I've got a goal. I want the fastest way to get
0:44.9	to that goal. Let's cut out all the noise in between. And I believe the fastest way to build a
0:51.7	million dollar business is to build up an audience, launch to that audience,
0:57.1	and then release new products over time, as many products as we can comfortably handle.
1:02.2	We've helped build over a hundred million dollar businesses using that type of a strategy.
1:09.4	So today, we're going to have a follow-up with Kirsten Ross. Kirsten
1:13.2	was on the podcast earlier talking about crowdfunding and physical products. Today she talks
1:19.3	specifically about combining Kickstarter and Amazon because it is a great fast lane for doing exactly
1:25.8	what I just outlined, which is launching to an audience.
1:28.9	The audience is on Kickstarter.
1:30.5	And then you duplicate that process when you sell on Amazon.
1:33.7	There was an article that came out recently about an Amazon seller who looked at a Kickstarter
1:38.5	and said, I can beat their timeline.
1:41.2	So he looked at the successful Kickstarter campaign. He released the same
1:45.5	product on Amazon and made hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was like a 22 year old kid who
1:51.0	made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing exactly that. Kirsten took a physical product
1:55.9	and had a $600,000 launch on Kickstarter. So for those of you who have physical products, it is a fantastic platform to get your seed
2:05.6	capital, buy that inventory, then take it over to Amazon and do all the things that we
	...

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