The In-Crowd: Week 4 – Milestones

“The In-Crowd” is an inside look at crowdfunding, with Ariel Publicity Artist Phil Putnam and RocketHub.com co-founder Brian Meece.  Each Monday, the boys are giving us an honest look at a crowdfunding project in action and dish on how things are going each week.
What is crowdfunding?  Find out here.

What does it look like?  See here.
-  -  -  -  -

WEEK 4:

22 days in, 53 days remaining.  $2,000 raised (20% of the $10,000 goal), $8,000 needed.  The focus on heart had some clear impact on funding, and more importantly made Phil more at home in the campaign.  The need to hit the 25% funded milestone in the next week is extremely crucial.  That’s where Phil and Brian are setting their sights.

Phil Says:

My mother exhausts me.  In a good way.  Her energy level at her age (slightly over 60) is remarkable, even mystifying.  How does she do it?  I’m feeling confident that crack rock is not her secret, and also pleased to know that she is the kind of person who is not going to be done with life before she is really done with it.  You know what I mean?

The reason I mention her manic awesomeness is that she visited my partner and I in NYC for the past few days, and it was really wonderful.  Our traipsing the streets of the Apple also pulled me away from my laptop and gave me some distance from the keystroke/facebook addiction that successful crowdfunding requires you to nurture and feed.  It was fortunate timing, as I needed a break from the grind, and I sensed that my fans/friends did too.  There’s only so many times they can hear the message before they start feeling annoyed or guilty, and only so much of my social media presence can be swallowed by the crowdfunding message before they feel like I have nothing else to say.  Thus, I left my MacBook Pro on the shelf and hit the town with Mom, facebooking pith and caprice along the way via my iPhone that had nothing to do with “Songs About You”.  It helped me have some fun, and it helped my fans/friends remember that I’m a person and not just a fundraiser.  This, plus the focus on heart and being myself that I wrote about in last week’s entry, helped me inhabit the campaign in a more comfortable way.  They say that when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  But I’m not (just) a hammer.  It was nice to remember that.

A few hammer-free days helped the campaign too.  Sometimes the fans/friends needs a breather, and even though the ticking clock becomes a compulsion, down time is not necessarily lost time.  I used the down time to hint at the drive to the 25% milestone that I’m pushing on this week, and so far it’s going well.  Also, the heart seemed to set in.  I had a few more people say they are very eager to have a song written about them and are working to gather the $800 contribution that would grant them the song-writing reward.

The 25% milestone is what’s most important right now.  It’s well within reach, just need $500 more dollars by July 22 to hit it, and I think we will.  However, if my instincts are true, this campaign is going to be a nail-biter the entire time.  I’d love to be ahead of the game at some point or even exceed the goal well before the time deadline, but my gut says that’s not going to be the case.  I think it’s going to be hard-fought the entire way and will require complete commitment every day.  If so, I’m there.  It’s what I signed up for, what I chose, and what I presented to my fans/friends.

Here are the nuts and bolts for this week, which include what I addressed above and a couple new items:

1.  Exhale – when the time to take a breather arrives, take it.  Be sensitive to the fact that your fans/friends may need a breather even though you don’t.  Give them what they need.

2.  Educate Over Time – running a crowdfunding campaign is like launching a new brand (“Songs About You”) with 10 brand new products in the line (the 10 Reward packages), and it takes a MASSIVE amount of daily education via social media impressions for people to know what the heck it is and what you’re asking them to do.  This mass of education takes time to accomplish, so I’d recommend planning no less than 60 day for a crowdfunding campaign, even if your goal is much smaller than mine.

3.  Video – it’s not a “E” word, but it is immensely important to the success of crowdfunding.  Vlog everything.  If it’s important enough to share, it’s important enough to Vlog.  Vlog it.  Video is your friend, and your most important ally in getting people online to pay attention to your message.  Vlog it.  Vlog it.  Vlog it.

On we go, into week 4.

Phil

Brian Says:

So it’s the end of week 3 in Phil’s crowdfunding campaign and now it’s all about the milestones.  Namely the 25% milestone.  We know that projects that hit 25% have a 90% success rate and Phil knows this, too.   So Phil is smartly pushing his network to hit this milestone by bringing his fans on the journey and getting them energized about this “mini-goal”.  The previous week was good for Phil in terms of “showing more heart” with his communications.  The conversations seem to be converting into RocketFuel.  Now each milestone leads to the next – so after Phil hits 25%, he can push toward that 50% marker.  He did a good job this week of picking up some higher-impact contributors, so if he can keep this momentum and possibly hold a live event in the near future to showcase his project, he has solid chance of success.

Brian Meece