Get Funded Today: The Funded Today Podcast

We’re back atcha today with another good one that includes a very impressive guest who is also literally live on Kickstarter right now! Our client Dale Backus has developed a wildly-popular phone grip that has been raising thousands of dollars per day to challenge a complacent industry leader. Let’s see what we can learn from his crowdfunding story...

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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:

1. Entrepreneurs don’t always pioneer new markets but sometimes substantially improve existing products by providing new-and-better competition.

2. Although it’s usually best to start with a minimally viable product (MVP), some products require more-than-minimal functionality to effectively compete.

3. Crowdfunding can provide a wealth of useful data, including data that helps with manufacturing forecasts.

4. Customer surveys should be worded very carefully in order to obtain accurate actionable data, or else they might lead surveyors astray.

5. Backer updates and other communication should be authentic in presenting both the product and its creator.

6. Effective marketing can’t compensate for a flawed product, but a great product will benefit from effective marketing.

7. Successful startups need to continue to improve their products/services or else they might allow competitors to overtake them.

✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!

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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please...

• Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!

• Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!

• Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!

• And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!

We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we have a wonderful guest—Greg Mercer, who is the founder of Jungle Scout. We’re going to discuss how tools like Jungle Scout can give you an edge over your competition on Amazon.

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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:

1. Pursue your passions for work, as long as you can earn a living from them—and, after you’ve achieved financial stability, you can focus more on working for fun than for profit.

2. Entrepreneurship requires persistence despite failure, and benefits from a mentality of both abundance and generosity.

3. Amazon is poised to continue leading its industry for the foreseeable future, and has increasingly favored third-party sellers.

4. Jungle Scout aids Amazon sellers with tools like referrals to experts, comparisons of how well specific products are selling, intelligence on foreign manufacturers, and research about listing keywords.

5. Offering new products is the best way to keep your Amazon business growing, as optimizing Amazon listings boosts sales but also yields diminishing returns.

✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!

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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please...

• Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!

• Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!

• Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!

• And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!

We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’ll talk with Mindy Zemrak, who is the Emmy-nominated Supervising Casting Producer of ABC’s “Shark Tank.” This award-winning startup-centered reality show debuted in 2009 and has since featured thousands of entrepreneurs, including over a dozen of our past crowdfunding clients. Mindy is now casting for the show’s 12th season, which will premiere this autumn, and she is going to give us her expert perspective about how YOU can succeed on it. So, on with the show...

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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:

1. People shouldn’t wait to understand something perfectly before plunging into doing it, as we also learn from our own experience, and practice makes perfect.

2. Entrepreneurs can apply for “Shark Tank” either through the Internet anytime or in-person at open casting calls, which are held between January and August at various locations nationwide.

3. Applicants should ideally show passionate energy, have working prototypes, be able to explain succinctly what makes their offers unique, know their numbers, and not necessarily have any sales or positive reviews yet (although these can help).

4. Applicants are chosen partly for themselves and their story, and partly for their business and their product, and also because they need investment to get to the next step; those who aren’t chosen one year may try again each new year and may eventually get chosen.

5. Applicants should consider alternative fundraising methods and not rely upon getting featured on “Shark Tank” because 20,000-30,000 entrepreneurs apply for it annually but only hundreds make deals and only 88-108 get featured on television.

6. Finalists will receive extensive help preparing themselves before they approach a panel of self-made millionaires (who know nothing about them beforehand) to try to negotiate a deal, which usually involves a valuable partnership plus a financial investment; these negotiations will be recorded and possibly condensed into a brief segment for television.

7. Finalists who appear on “Shark Tank” will get seen before 5-7 million television viewers in what amounts to millions-of-dollars-worth of free advertising, and should prepare to handle a surge in remarketing, sales, cross-sells, upsells, customer-service inquiries, shipping, et cetera, which they can use to expand their business as quickly as possible.

✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!

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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please...

• Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!

• Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!

• Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!

• And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!

We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, you’re going to hear from our very own in-house legal counsel here at Funded Today, Thomas Alvord. He’s going to give you the insider’s look at everything you should be considering when it comes to business law, contracts, and just running your new business. So let’s get started...

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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:

1. Entrepreneurs should prioritize developing a viable business over protecting themselves legally, as the latter is pointless without (and funded by) the former, and they should expect legal issues to grow in proportion to their business size.

2. Entrepreneurs in the USA should minimize their taxes by chartering a “holding company” to own their business, limit their personal liability by incorporating their business (perhaps initially as an LLC that transitions eventually into either a C corp or an S corp), obtain a federal EIN for their business, and transact all business in its name.

3. Business owners should choose their first hires (who may become their biggest competitors) carefully, hire them with non-compete agreements, and always treat their employees well.

4. Business owners should compose brief clear contracts with good mechanisms for resolving disputes, and always try to resolve disputes amicably before resorting to either arbitration or expensive lawsuits.

5. Business owners should seek legal counsel as necessary, but minimize use of lawyers, as they are expensive and may sometimes prioritize their own interests above their clients’ interests.

6. Crowdfunding campaigners should ensure that they are not violating any intellectual property rights before launching campaigns, but avoid paying excessive attention to filing for trademarks and copyrights and patents (which may include provisional patents).

7. Amazon sellers should obtain US trademarks, which will enable them to enhance their Amazon listings with valuable “enhanced brand content.”

✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!

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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please...

• Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!

• Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!

• Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!

• And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!

We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’re busting out our secret weapon. There’s even a bit of some “water cooler talk” going on at Funded Today, that this guy is “THE Crowd Whisperer.” If there’s anyone in the entire crowdfunding universe who has an eye for a great product and how to create one yourself, it’s this man, our very own Director of Client Specialists at Funded Today, Mr. Curtis Child.

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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:

1. Learn as much as possible from your competitors’ campaigns about what helped render their products and/or presentations successful.

2. Before you ever launch a campaign, back some campaigns, both to familiarize yourself with the crowdfunding process and to establish yourself as part of the crowdfunding community.

3. Crowdfunding backers constitute a community with certain commonalities, and you can expect most of your project’s backers to be repeat not new.

4. The crowdfunding community seems to notice campaigns more readily when they use attractive uncluttered thumbnail images created from high-quality soft photographs of trendily-colored products on white backgrounds.

5. Crowdfunding campaigns raise funds better anytime they’re the first to offer the crowdfunding community a desirable innovation to a ubiquitous product, rather than marginally improving upon a previous project, although the latter can also enjoy success.

6. Rather than marginally improving upon someone else’s original idea, campaigners might succeed better by applying an already-successful innovation to an entirely-different product.

7. Many crowdfunding campaigners expect to raise $1,000,000 but don’t—but short-term success does not correlate with long-term success.

✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!

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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please...

• Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!

• Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!

• Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!

• And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!

We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!