w/ Khierstyn Ross, Launch and Scale
Delve into the world of Kickstarter and learn how Shopify merchants can use it to launch products and build an audience. Khierstyn Ross, Chief Brand Builder at Launch and Scale, joins us to explain...
TIMESTAMPS
[00:03:40] Kickstarter: Crowdfunding for new product inventory.
[00:07:06] Knockoffs are a real online threat.
[00:12:49] Kickstarter helps launch and boost audience reach.
[00:16:50] Storytelling justifies crowdfunding to existing customers.
[00:19:43] Pre-launch: build audience for Kickstarter success.
[00:23:33] Paid ads lead to qualified email list. VIP funnel.
[00:27:36] Preparing for launch by herding customers.
[00:33:41] Over communicate to avoid Kickstarter campaign errors.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
6/20/2023
Kurt Elster: Ah, my Shop-a-friends. Shop-a-family? Shopafolk. Shopify people. Whichever… However you call yourself, welcome back to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast.
Sound Board:
Kurt Elster: I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And today we are gonna talk about Kickstarter. We’re gonna talk about launching products and how that can work alongside a Shopify store. And joining us to discuss it is Khierstyn Ross, Chief Brand Builder at Launch and Scale, and her team helps new sellers launch and scale profitably using Kickstarter or Shopify. So, we’re gonna delve into that world of Kickstarter and how you can use crowdfunding, and that site, and this strategy, to launch your next product and build your audience.
So, let’s get started. Let’s get into it. Khierstyn, welcome.
Khierstyn Ross: Thank you. I’m so excited to be here.
Kurt Elster: Wonderful. So, let’s start with the easy stuff. Tell us about yourself and what you do at Launch and Scale.
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah, so I am the CEO, or the Chief Brand Builder at Launch and Scale, so Launch and Scale is today a marketing agency that helps brands one-on-one to validate, launch new products, and scale them up. We focus on early stage growth because honestly it’s my passion. It’s funny, because I first started as a strategy side with Launch and Scale back in 2015 to help more coaching, but then it’s evolved into actually-done-for-you services, because I think that brands that are just starting on the D2C side really need a lot of help to figure out product-market fit, who their audience is, the messaging, and really getting those foundations together to scale.
And sometimes Kickstarter or product launches in general are a really great way to assess market validation and traction early on. So, that’s really what we do.
Kurt Elster: You know, getting the idea is really not the hard part. Making the product, all right, tougher and riskier. Getting those initial orders and audience, that’s the struggle. That’s where you really enter a trial by fire here to figure out will anyone actually open their wallet for this product. So, anything that can make that process more accessible, de-risk it, I like. I’m into it. And crowdfunding is one of those strategies, for sure. Get on marketplaces, sell preorders, and crowdfunding are really the three shortcuts here.
But let’s start with define Kickstarter. For people who don’t know, what is Kickstarter?
Khierstyn Ross: Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform. What that means is that back in 2008 when it launched, Kickstarter’s vision was to help creators raise funds for new ideas. So, what’s that evolved to today and in the last really seven to 10 years is you have people like us that have product ideas that want to bring that product to market, but then look at the costs of tooling and inventory for new products and realize that they’re gonna have to fork out thousands of dollars on inventory before they even get product bought. And so, what ends up happening is without a Kickstarter model, generally if you’re not validating your product you’re forking out a ton of money to pay for that inventory, getting the inventory, and then hoping you sell it.
Kickstarter flips it on its head where it gives you a chance to take a new product prototype, do a marketing campaign for it, so you launch it on Kickstarter, and it gives you a chance to get your product discovered by people all around the world to give you money to help fund preorders. So, when someone supports your project on Kickstarter, what that means is they are actually preordering your product, which lets you collect money in advance by preselling your product, getting market validation, and raising funds that you can then take to pay for inventory and fulfill it, so it actually reverses the cash flow cycle for you.
So, Kickstarter really got so popular as a funding platform to help small businesses raise funds to get inventory paid for and secondary provide market validation for new products.
Kurt Elster: All right, so it’s been around a while. 2008. Man, 15 years.
Khierstyn Ross: Right?
Kurt Elster: Okay. It doesn’t seem that long ago. I remember some of the early big Kickstarter projects, including the Fidget Cube. Do you remember one of these?
Khierstyn Ross: Oh boy. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: This is the Fidget Cube from the original Kickstarter.
Khierstyn Ross: Oh, amazing. Okay.
Kurt Elster: That I’m holding up on a camera for an audio-only show.
Khierstyn Ross: Whatever. That’s fine.
Kurt Elster: Hold on, I’ll make it click for you. There we go. There’s our Fidget Cube noises. And the strange part about it was before they had even shipped the product it had already been knocked off. It had been… It was available. Counterfeits were available on marketplaces like Ali Express. So, one risk with Kickstarter is essentially advertising like a really popular product, potentially. How realistic a risk is that?
Khierstyn Ross: Very.
Kurt Elster: Oh.
Khierstyn Ross: It’s very realistic. We’ve had campaigns go live on Indiegogo, which is… When I say Indiegogo, it’s another popular crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter, so I’m gonna use them interchangeably here, but we launched a product on Indiegogo and two weeks into the campaign after raising about $60,000. Indiegogo contacts us saying like, “Hey, we’re gonna have to shut your campaign down because you are ripping off this other campaign in Japan.” It was like, “What’s going on?”
So, we did some digging and realized that actually some people in Japan ripped off all of our assets from Indiegogo and were selling the product on another Japanese crowdfunding platform. So, we were actually the original, but we had to go and prove that like, “Hey, no. We are actually being ripped off.” And had to get that one taken down.
Kurt Elster: Wouldn’t dates published make this obvious?
Khierstyn Ross: Apparently not to the team at this point. But I was like, “No, this just went live like two days ago,” and all the things, and so it’s a very real possibility, and it’s not just paranoia when people are thinking like, “Oh, some opportunists are waiting on Kickstarter for a launch to go viral and then quickly manufacture that product and start selling knockoffs before you have a chance to even get product in people’s hands.” So, it’s a very, very real possibility and there are things you can do to minimize this risk, but ultimately nowadays online, if you are doing something worthwhile it doesn’t matter when you get ripped off. It’s inevitable that you are going to get ripped off.
So, in the beginning there are things you want to do to make sure that you are the first to get it in someone’s hands, help educate your customers to make sure that they’re buying the authentic version of your product, and other things like that. But it’s a very, very real possibility.
Kurt Elster: So, when you’re successful, the Muppets will come out of the woodwork.
Khierstyn Ross: Yes.
Kurt Elster: There’s just no way around… Okay, so that’s a thing we have to just accept and prepare for.
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And view it as like, “Well, at least I’m successful enough to copy.”
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: It’s never fun, though, but at the same time, the people… I’ve had my site ripped off countless times. I’ve had Fiverr sellers just impersonate me wholesale. And fundamentally, those people are never particularly successful because they’re looking for the shortcut. They’re looking for the easy money. And so, really you just wait them out, you know? You could tear your hair out chasing them and playing whack-a-mole. But often you wait it out and then be like, “Look, we’re so famous, so amazing that people want to knock our stuff off, so you better buy from the authentic, direct original.”
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah. A really cool story was one of our clients, JamStack, a guitar amplifier, has such a supportive community post their crowdfunding campaign that again, they were knocked off, and there were Facebook ads going around to sell the… JamStack was $249 at this point, and they were selling like JamStack rip-offs for 50 bucks, and our whole JamStack customer base came to us and were like, “Hey, you need to know this company is ripping you off. We’re gonna help you take them down.” And your customers can act as advocates if you also have a really good brand, a really good relationship with them. But it’s gonna happen.
Kurt Elster: All right. It’s just a thing we have to deal with. You know, and it’s not unique to Kickstarter, right? I experienced it on Amazon. This is a common thing. A successful Shopify store, this can happen. You get your store cloned. It’s just a realistic cost of doing business. So, what are some of the other common misconceptions here about Kickstarter that you hear all the time that drive you crazy?
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah. So, still to this day, even though I’ve been directly advocating against this thought is Kickstarter in the very beginning, this thought probably popped into your head where it’s like, “Wow, Kickstarter, I can go for a new product idea and get my inventory funded, meaning I don’t need to have any money of my own to invest in a Kickstarter campaign in order to be successful.” The biggest misconception with Kickstarter is that because it’s such a big platform and they have millions of visitors a month, and because of the popularity of the platform, and because of the money raising nature of the platform, people do think that, “Oh, all I have to do is have a good product, put it up on Kickstarter and I’m a millionaire.”
And it doesn’t work that way, so that’s the biggest misconception is like they don’t realize what actually goes into raising money on Kickstarter and being successful on the platform.
Kurt Elster: So, I’ve never run a Kickstarter, but I’ve worked with enough brands who have, and we’ve worked with enough brands who’ve run crowdfunding campaigns in general, and they would all agree with you. The missing magic that people don’t realize is you still have to promote it, and it’s like a 30-day full-time job to get the press required for this to work.
Khierstyn Ross: So much. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: We’ll get into that, like what’s the strategy or how do you… what’s the marketing blueprint? But you mentioned Indiegogo. Give me the… I’ve never really understood. When would I use one versus the other, Kickstarter versus Indiegogo? Because it sounds like you use both.
Khierstyn Ross: The way I see it… Okay, without getting too granular, you look at the difference in Kickstarter is the big one. It’s like the Kleenex brand of the industry. It has the most popular, has many, many more campaigns than Indiegogo does, but the big difference is going to be in the product type. So, Indiegogo in the last three to five years has really focused on being a platform for tech-based entrepreneurs. So, if you have a technology product, they have actually developed a lot more of an audience toward tech, more funding options, more support for the tech side, so Indiegogo has really tried to niche themselves more into that tech space, whereas Kickstarter is more… Of course, Kickstarter, you’re gonna find a ton of successful tech products, but if you look at who Kickstarter’s audience is today, it’s gonna be more of the design, the creative, the gaming focus for what we expect a Kickstarter campaign to be.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And this is The Unofficial Shopify podcast. How does Kickstarter work alongside Shopify? Will these things… Do they complement each other?
Khierstyn Ross: Yes. Depending on how you use it. Kickstarter is a launch platform, so if you are a new seller launching a new product and you want to have a big, public launch, you might consider doing a Kickstarter campaign. So, you build your audience, you launch on Kickstarter, and then when you get preorders and you’re going to manufacturing, at that point what you can do is then shift your focus, send everyone over to your Shopify site to then launch your brand and continue your in-market marketing efforts as you scale.
So, Kickstarter can be like phase one for a beginner brand that really wants that splash of a launch. It can also be for existing sellers. So, for example, we’re working with a journal brand right now that they actually got their start crowdfunding three years ago, and they’re going back to Kickstarter to do another campaign for a new journal. So, this is where we’re actually shifting more toward who I think should be using Kickstarter and who is seeing more success on Kickstarter now are existing brands that are bringing new, novel products to market and want to use Kickstarter. The reason why a brand would do this is not necessarily to make money on Kickstarter, but they’re doing it because Kickstarter gives them a big audience boost. It lets them launch their product in front of a new audience so that they can then say launch the second journal on Kickstarter, introduce their brand to thousands of new people, and then bring them back over for other products.
Kurt Elster: It makes sense. I mean, really, it’s about getting access to an existing audience. It is a variation on marketplace, isn’t it?
Khierstyn Ross: Yes. It is.
Kurt Elster: And that’s the value there. You know, if I’m building my own brand, I am also in charge of building that audience and driving that. When I do have an audience, then maintaining that mind share. That awareness. And so, marketplaces help, are one piece of the puzzle it sounds like. And if I’m doing consumer electronics, maybe I want to go Indiegogo. Otherwise, Kickstarter’s my best bet?
Khierstyn Ross: Correct. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Okay. All right, if I’m already selling products, the way you presented crowdfunding and Kickstarter, a lot of these advantages seem to be geared toward I am brand new at this, and so we need a place to start. We need to develop that audience and we need to test. If I’m already an established brand, I’m already selling products direct on Shopify, on marketplaces already, should I still use Kickstarter? Or do I risk alienating my current customers just to get some new ones?
Khierstyn Ross: So, it’s interesting you say alienating, because we actually haven’t… When we’ve done crowdfunding campaigns for existing brands where we are essentially asking our existing customers to go off of our website and buy off a third-party platform like Kickstarter, it’s all in the story you tell as to why you’re using Kickstarter. I think you’re gonna alienate your customers if you don’t share the story about why you are using that platform to help get in front of new people, but generally we don’t see a negative impact on the audience because we do look to segment communication and actually give our existing customers a chance to not receive communication for the upcoming launch, whereas there’s always a portion of our customers that will be super excited for the new product and are actually really excited to watch a public launch like that.
Kurt Elster: So, essentially if you share your reasoning, why I’m doing this, what the benefit is, you’re just very transparent about it, then it’s going to work out.
Khierstyn Ross: Yes. Exactly.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And is there anything else we should be aware of to consider when you’re balancing selling to these different audiences through these different channels?
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah, so I think that if you’re an existing brand that’s looking between Kickstarter versus just launching it on your own website like you’ve done with every other product launch, it comes down to what Kickstarter offers over your own website is it’s a public raise. So, Kickstarter, I think, if you’re looking to go big, if you’re looking to get market validation, if you’re looking to have say potential investors watch the numbers publicly, watch the comments, watch the social proof, the press, if you’re looking to do a big splash launch I think that is something you can absolutely be recreating on Kickstarter.
If you’re just looking to enroll your audience around a new product that you’re launching and you don’t really care for launch numbers, or it being public or whatnot, just stick to your own website at that point. Because the difference is that for an existing brand, you generally, unless if you’re coming in with a large email list, you still want to be building up your audience a little bit to support interest in the new product. So, there is gonna be a bit more of an investment to go to Kickstarter because there are assets and things that you’re gonna need more than if you were to just do a launch on your own site.
Kurt Elster: All right. Let’s talk through the nitty gritty. The components, the marketing blueprint here to a successful Kickstarter campaign. Number one, I want to know, how long is this process?
Khierstyn Ross: So, if you’re starting from scratch, three months. If you are an existing brand you can do it in as little as 6 to 8 weeks for a buildup.
Kurt Elster: And is this… That’s how long the campaign runs? Or there’s stuff that bookends it?
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah, so actually let’s look at the full, full process. So, there is part A, which is the prelaunch, which is getting ready for the launch, and then there’s part B, which is the launch itself. So, part A, the reason why we… Going back to the biggest mistake people make with Kickstarter comes down to just thinking you can launch and be a millionaire, what actually goes into the process of preparing for a Kickstarter launch comes down to setting yourself up for success. So, what that looks like when you do a Kickstarter campaign is that let’s say we’re working with a factory right now and they’re launching a coffee maker. We took a look at the goal that they want to raise, and they want to raise a quarter million for this.
So, we said, “Okay, if we want to raise $250,000 over a 30 day Kickstarter launch, how big does our audience have to be to support that?” And we start working backwards there. What we want to be doing to raise a quarter million is we want to be setting us up to bring in about 25% of that goal within the first 36 hours of the launch. So, we’re looking at bringing in like about $40,000, $50,000 worth of sales in the first two days of our launch. And then we look at, “Okay, well, we need an audience of about 15,000 emails to be able to do that. Cool.” So, our goal is over a three month period before our launch to build up a list of 15,000 people who are ready, excited to buy the product when we go live on Kickstarter.
Why do we need 30%? Kickstarter is a platform that makes money only when you’re making money, so what that means is they have an algorithm that helps them figure out which projects are popular and which ones their customers want to see more of. So, it’s kind of like an upvoting system, but not really. So, when you go live on Kickstarter, in order for you to be visible on the platform and start to get discovered by the Kickstarter community, you need to prove yourself to the platform and the magic number is that you want to have about 25, 27% of your goal, your collective goal in quickly, because then Kickstarter’s algorithm is gonna say like, “Hey, people seem to be liking this project. We’re making money. Let’s start to boost them so they’re higher up in the technology category, or the design category,” and when you do that and you’re easier to find, suddenly you’re going to get organic Kickstarter traffic coming to your page, buying your product, and creating that snowball effect.
But you don’t get that if you don’t have that early traction in the first couple of days. You don’t get the snowball effect. You don’t start trending to raise quarter million dollars. That’s why we have a prelaunch and that’s why it takes up to three months for new brands, because if you’re starting with zero email list, no social media following, no social proof, it takes time to build that up to a point where you can stack your success. The reason why brands can do this faster is because we take a product like a journal, they already have 5,000 people on their email list, so we need a smaller audience. We need to build up their audience only a little bit to support the bigger launch goal, which is why they can do it faster.
Kurt Elster: And so, we need… We have to consider how quickly we can get that initial 25% to help make sure we really take advantage of being on Kickstarter. We’re doing a little bit of algorithm gaming so that they recognize us and push that project’s visibility up.
Khierstyn Ross: Correct.
Kurt Elster: You’re like, “Yeah, this hype process that goes on in advance.” And then you’re good. What happens in that process? What are we doing here to help ensure… You’re like, “Look, this thing takes three months.” What are we doing in three months?
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah. Magic. No, I’m kidding. So, what we are doing is it first comes down to we have a VIP funnel. So, the mechanism of how we’re building the audience is we’re focused on building a qualified email list. What that means is we set up a landing page that we send people to through paid ads, so think Facebook, Instagram, Google remarketing. We are sending people who we think are interested in the product to this page. They come to the page. They see information about the product. Say, “Hey, we’re launching in May on Kickstarter. Join our wait list and save 15% off when we go live.” So, there’s a bait.
We give people a reason to opt in. We then watch them join our email list and right when they join, the reason it’s called a VIP funnel and how we qualify them is because it’s one thing to just get someone to say like, “Yeah, I’m interested in that.” But how do you take someone from interested to serious about the product? That comes down to how you qualify them. So, the VIP part of it means that when someone comes onto your email list, we give them the chance to actually upgrade for a dollar to join our VIP program, meaning when you upgrade to VIP, you’re actually unlocking more perks, or getting a free accessory with purchase, or you’re doing something extra.
So, what we’re doing with this waitlist is we’re taking someone from opting onto our list for free to actually saying, “Well, how serious? Do you want to actually unlock all these great perks just for a dollar?” And then they give us a dollar and they’re now in the VIP program. When we have our audience building efforts from paid ads going through this funnel, we are not only looking to build up interest or a waitlist, but we are qualifying our buyers and when we look at the stats, someone who upgrades to VIP is 30 to 50% more likely to purchase the product than someone who is just on the email list and not committed.
So, that’s why we do that combination, and it takes three months, because we spend the first month testing different audiences, messaging creatives, and see what is gonna stick so that when we scale, we make sure that we have the right people on our list.
Kurt Elster: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, the moment they open their wallet, they have spent so much as a dollar, they as an audience signal that we know they’re highly… They’re qualified. They’re engaged. And it also… It gets them emotionally invested, where they are much more likely to purchase when they have the opportunity.
Khierstyn Ross: Correct.
Kurt Elster: What’s our tech stack look like here? What tools are we using?
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah, so the ones that we use, we use ClickFunnels for the landing page software. There are cheaper softwares you can do this with, so any landing page builder, or doing this straight in Shopify. You can do that if you want to not have something extra. But we like ClickFunnels for different reasons. Get into that another day. Number two, we use Klaviyo for email, and then ad wise, we’re using Meta, which will be a combination of Facebook, Instagram and Google remarketing specifically targeting people who have come to the website or been searching, doing branded search on Google, like if they’re searching specifically for your brand.
We do that because a lot of people will see an ad, go to Google, do a bit of extra research on you to see if you’re legitimate before opting into the waitlist, so we want to be recapturing that intention.
Kurt Elster: So, we’ve got our prelaunch VIP list we generated through a landing page, and then we ask those people through an email series, we try to get them to spend a dollar on VIP access, and we incentivize that with something. A discount, free gift with purchase, something.
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And now what? Our campaign has still not launched.
Khierstyn Ross: Yes. So, we’re at the point where we’re like, “Hey, we’re about 2, 3 weeks away from launch. Our audience is almost the size we want.” The next thing we need to do is take someone from on our waitlist and getting email content to essentially herding the cats, which is taking someone from, “Okay, well, I’m on your list,” to, “Ready with my wallet the day and hour that you launch.”
So, the next step with Kickstarter is not… Because our goal is not just to get a preorder from someone, our goal is to get traction immediately. So, what we’re doing two weeks before launch is we’re doing some last minute validation checks, such as we can send an email to someone, the magic nine word email, which says, “Hey, are you still planning on preordering next week?” Number one, gets them bought in, gets them replying, gets them ready. Number two, we can do a seven-day launch countdown email series, which essentially, the Tuesday before we launch, we are gonna start and say like, “Hey, it’s confirmed. We’re approved by Kickstarter. We are launching next week and here’s what that means for you.” We are handling common objections, such as what is Kickstarter, how to buy on Kickstarter, when are we launching, why do you need to act fast, and essentially creating a sense of urgency and training people on our list to be ready and waiting at 11:00 AM when we launch.
So, there’s a whole bunch that goes into communication, but ultimately we need to be herding the cats and herding the people so that they are ready and understand what’s happening and why they need to buy immediately.
Kurt Elster: So, I always thought this was like a whole big PR push and that’s what would make or break these things, and this is more like traditional audience building exercise through a sales funnel. It’s just like a longer, fancier sales funnel.
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah. PR definitely-
Kurt Elster: Is there any PR to this?
Khierstyn Ross: Yes. PR typically is not something that we find works until after the campaign. It does depend… After the campaign is live. A lot of PR agencies or publications, and journalists, and influencers have been burned covering Kickstarter campaigns because they find, and this isn’t everyone, this is not a blanket statement, but this is typically what we find is where journalists were so keen to cover projects in 2015, now so many of them won’t cover projects until the Kickstarter project’s been funded or they’re fulfilling, because what’s happened over the last 5 or 6 years with Kickstarter campaigns is so many newbies got into it, raised a bunch of money on Kickstarter without manufacturing being figured out, that so many products that were promised a four-month delivery, it’s still four years down the road and they haven’t fulfilled yet.
And so, journalists have just gotten, blanket statement, have been kind of burned and they don’t want to stake their reputation on projects that are not going to fulfill. So, a lot of them are like, “Hey, just wait until you’re actually fulfilling or until you have some reviews and then we’ll cover you.” There are, of course, exceptions, but we shift our focus kind of away from PR and more toward say podcast interviews of the founder to raise awareness to consumers, social proof with UGC content, and things that we can really build a sales stack for the product to show consumers that the product does what it says it will do and the product exists.
So, we focus less on press and more about asset creation that we need to show consumers that this is actually going to be what they want.
Kurt Elster: So, you’re right. It was potentially shooting fish in a barrel if you had a good enough press release and the right contacts in the past. You’d be like, “Hey, here’s a cool thing,” because often they were just overpromising. They had not delivered yet. There was no question did they underdeliver. They haven’t delivered at all yet. It’s very easy to make a lot of crazy claims. And certainly, I’ve experienced this, where you order your Kickstarter and then your thing doesn’t show up ever. Or it shows up many months to years after it was promised. And you get enough people who get burned like that, like, “All right, I get that they’re not gonna cover it anymore.” And so, you’re going… Your approach is, “Hey, you’re still doing PR, but this is grassroots. Get the founder on podcasts,” that kind of thing.
All right, that makes sense. What are the other challenges here? What are the common Kickstarter issues I gotta know about and overcome?
Khierstyn Ross: Oh my gosh. Overcommunicate. So, because Kickstarter campaigns are notoriously late, especially in this day and age of supply chain problems, a lot of founders do a great job on the campaign, they raise a bunch of money, but then they do not communicate with their customers on delays, or they don’t have a good communication strategy, and what a great way to burn bridges with your customers and kind of kill your brand trust before you’ve even started. So, people screw up communication strategy all the time, so you want to be communicating on a regular basis updates, even if you literally have nothing to say. Your customers want to hear from you to know that they’re eventually getting the product, so that is number one where people screw up.
Number two, raising money too early. So, Kickstarter is doing a great job of screening campaigns and being transparent with what stage of development you’re at. Kickstarter will not let you launch an idea anymore. You need to actually prove that you’re capable of producing the product and delivering on the promises, so it’s very common for when you look to get your campaign approved by Kickstarter, if you’re making an outrageous claim for like, “This thing is waterproof and charges your battery underwater,” they’re gonna say, “Hey, I need you to show me an iPhone video of this actually happening.”
And they’re really helping make sure that what is being promised on Kickstarter, they’re really protecting their backers now for like what’s promised. Can this actually be delivered? But I think a lot of the time even if you kind of get through that, if you raise money too soon you’re at a huge risk of under-raising, essentially, and you’re gonna end up only raising 100K, but what you actually need is a million.
Kurt Elster: Okay, and so Kickstarter now actively, like a person looks at these and tries to vet them.
Khierstyn Ross: Yes. Correct.
Kurt Elster: All right, good that they’re protecting-
Khierstyn Ross: Better.
Kurt Elster: … backers, and ultimately their customers, their end users.
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: The campaign itself, once I’ve gotten past my prelaunch process, I’ve gotten approved, what does a successful campaign look like? What elements go into that? I know it’s like you have to have a video. What else?
Khierstyn Ross: You need the campaign page, which is essentially like your product page for a website. You need to focus on the benefits of the product, show images, who’s it for, et cetera. That’s your sales stack. You also need reward packages, which are essentially the bundles that you are preselling, so think things like, “Oh, buy one journal for this much on Kickstarter and save. Buy two journals on Kickstarter and save.” Just like that. So, those are the elements that you need for Kickstarter.
Kurt Elster: All right, well, that part seems… The actual campaign itself seems like the most straightforward part here.
Khierstyn Ross: Yes.
Kurt Elster: All right, so I’ve got that mentally in my head. What’s your favorite success story? You’ve been doing this a while. You rattled off something about journals. What’s your baby? What’s the one you’re proud of?
Khierstyn Ross: I’m proud of many but the one I am probably… We’re gonna go with Lisa from Ceres Chill. She started a… Ceres Chill is a breast milk chiller, so Lisa, when she had two young kids and commuting an hour to work every day, found that there weren’t any good pump-on-the-go breast milk solutions, so she built her own. And when Lisa came to me, full-time lawyer, two young kids, dad overseas, or husband overseas, and she just… I told her she should quit her job so many times and she ended up sticking with a very full-time job for three years and building her company from zero at launch right up until doing $3.3 mil in three years. And she’s probably someone I’m most proud of working with and being a part of the journey because she realized such a big vision. And all the excuses that you hear from other entrepreneurs about not having enough time, or they can’t do it because of resources, or whatever, she was just like, “What do I gotta do?” She was so resourceful, and she made it happen.
She’s got a great vision. She has impacted thousands of moms’ lives and it’s just been really an honor to work with her, so I think I’m most proud of that one.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That one sounds really good. That’s very interesting.
Khierstyn Ross: Very cool.
Kurt Elster: What resources do you send people to? You know, somebody… You’re like, “Look, you’re not ready to start the Kickstarter, but clearly you’re thinking about it. There is a twinkle in your eye here.” Where do you send them to educate themselves on this process?
Khierstyn Ross: Oh, man. So, while I have hundreds of videos, let’s simplify. Number one, there’s a link that has our latest free resources that you can go to, which is launchandscale.co/gold, G-O-L-D. Go there. But if you were looking for the best video to get started, to understand the Kickstarter journey, check out 3 Reasons Why I Think You Should Stop Using Kickstarter in 2023. That’ll be a really good video to start with.
Kurt Elster: All right. We’re going contrarian.
Khierstyn Ross: Yes.
Kurt Elster: Launch and Scale. How much of this process do you do? If I want to get this off my plate and I’m willing to throw cash at you, how much will you do for me?
Khierstyn Ross: We will do all of it for you.
Kurt Elster: Oh.
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And why don’t you launch a product or campaign yourself on Kickstarter?
Khierstyn Ross: Number one, don’t want to split my focus, because I’m really committed to growing this business, but number two, I haven’t come across either the right partner or right idea to do it.
Kurt Elster: Perfectly cromulent answer. You know, I think for… People have posed a similar question to me. Or they’re like, “Well, obviously you have a Shopify store. What is it?” I’m like, “I don’t.” Because A, I have a successful business serving Shopify merchants, and B, I know too much, right? It’s just… To start this business, I had to be ignorant to how difficult it would be. Knowing what goes into building an eCommerce business, it’s like, “Look, same deal. I don’t want to split my focus.”
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah. I do have ideas for merch, and launch journals, and the book, but a supplement company, like something totally different, you know how much it takes to get one offer to work. It’s just… It’s something on my-
Kurt Elster: If you’re not fully invested in it, it’s just… For me, it would be tough to treat it as a side hustle. I want all-in or nothing.
Khierstyn Ross: That’s me, too. But in saying that, when I get to the point where I can take one of our team members as a brand lead on that eCommerce brand and we can have someone doing the day-to-day operations on it, when we’re at that point, that’s what I see happening. But right now, it would literally be me with two businesses, and I’m very all or nothing, as well, so…
Kurt Elster: Yeah. But if you can say like, “All right, this is the vision and we have people who can execute it,” now things change. You’re right. And you could… One business can support the other in growth. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.
Khierstyn Ross: Yeah. But I am more passionate about working with people to build their businesses right now.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, I’m just obsessed with entrepreneurship. I just get exposed to interesting entrepreneurs all day. It’s a lot of fun. You know, why mess with that? All right, finally, give me one piece of advice you would give to our Shopify merchant listeners today.
Khierstyn Ross: If you have a big dream for doing something, stop saying why you can’t do it and start asking how you can do it. The best success stories I have ever been a part of is when I’ve gone to someone and said, “You need 50K to launch this product,” and they come back to me two weeks later with the money and now fast track six years later it’s an eight-figure brand.
Kurt Elster: Whoa. Yeah.
Khierstyn Ross: But that’s the level of commitment. So, the entrepreneurs that make big changes in their life, that take their business to that next level, are not saying why they can’t do something. They figure out how to get it done.
Kurt Elster: The path forward is through. Look for how do we work around these issues. No, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. And good to be reminded of it. Well, Khierstyn, thank you so much. A huge thank you to you for joining us, sharing your insights, and to our listeners, if you have thoughts or questions about today’s episode, join our Facebook group. Search Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders because I would love to continue the conversation with you. And until next time, my friends, keep selling.
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