Michael Walker: Yeah. Woo hoo. Let's go. I am excited to be here today with my friend Justin Giddings. Justin, also known as the Kickstarter Guy, is an award-winning filmmaker and musician turned crowdfunding expert, raising $11 million with a 97% success rate. Woo. Founder of TheKickstarterGuy.com, coaching over 350 campaigns to creative and financial success.

He's a marketing strategist and crowdfunding guru, helping creators turn their ideas into fully funded realities. So really excited to have him on the podcast today to talk a little bit about what does it take for an artist to get funded, to be able to take their ideas and their vision and turn it into real life?

So Justin, thanks for taking the time to—

Justin Giddings: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I feel very honored. I feel like I'm in hallowed halls of previous cool, badass people.

Michael: Uh-huh. Yeah. Dude, it's good to have you here and also excited to have you down here at the Modern Musician studio. Yep. At some point to actually have like an in-person podcast as well.

Take the next level. Could be fun. But Justin, for anyone this is their first time connecting with you, could you share a quick introduction into your story and how you became the Kickstarter Guy?

Justin: Yeah. Let's start there. So I got into the film industry really young as an actor.

So I was doing voiceover work as a kid and that kind of thing. Went to school, got the conservatory degree, moved out to LA, and worked pretty consistently. I describe it as like I got insurance from SAG every year that I was there.

And then finally I had my big break. I was on this web series that had like 70 million views and it got turned into a TV show, and I was one of the three series regulars on there. And I was like, "Mom, I made it." This is like the big dream.

And it immediately got canceled. So I turned to my co-star. I was like, "Dude, I'm so tired of waiting for permission to be creative. What are we doing? We should make our own stuff." So we ended up writing two short films and raising about a hundred thousand dollars through crowdfunding for those two short films. This is like 2012, 2013, and two things happened. One is I started really having a filmmaking career. So eventually I moved out of LA, didn't need to live there anymore. I've got a feature coming out this year. I've won Slamdance. I continue to make films and don't really act that much anymore.

But the other thing that happened was that people started reaching out for help with their crowdfunding campaigns. And so what started out as coffee sessions in North Hollywood turned into me having a full-scale coaching and consulting business that now is also outside of crowdfunding. I help filmmakers in a lot of different ways, but also musicians. So I've crowdfunded several musician campaigns. I'm even working with some Modern Musician people like Eli—Eli Lev, right?

Michael: Yeah, so Savannah Pope is probably worth a shoutout as well.

Justin: Yeah.

Michael: She—gosh, she raised—was it $65,000?

Justin: Yeah.

Michael: One of her campaigns.

Justin: Yeah. I keep forgetting that Savannah's part of the Modern Musician. So yeah, had some really successful campaigns there. And then as a musician, I sang professionally my whole life, kind of got into acting on the stage through musical theater. So I had sang and played guitar, 'cause in college I should play guitar if I wanna be cool. So I was like that level of guitar player.

But could never write music. It was just always me trying to be everybody else. It was bad too. But then I went through an unexpected and painful divorce and all of a sudden I had a deep well of stuff to pull from.

That screenwriting wasn't really cutting it. I needed something more facile and agile as a creative expression.

Then a couple months ago, I got a development deal with a label and just released my first single a couple weeks ago. It's about to hit 10,000 streams, so it's going well.

Michael: Let's go. Oh, congratulations, man. Let's go. So that's the story in a nutshell.

Justin: Yeah, "Strawberry Moon."

Michael: "Strawberry Moon." It was really good. I remember hearing it and I got goosebumps. That's usually a good sign. So I'm like, good. I get the goosebumps, like, woo.

Justin: Yep.

Michael: Yep. There. I'm feeling that.

Justin: Thank you. Yeah. My moniker is Primal Panic with an exclamation point, so if anybody wants to seek it out.

Michael: Nice. Awesome. So yeah, let’s zoom in a little bit on this area of expertise that you've developed, which is crowdfunding. Now I’m curious where that kinda came from—like how you kind of fast-tracked through the initial hundred thousand dollars fundraising. You’re like, “Yeah, like if we raised a hundred thousand dollars, then we did like X.” Like whoa. Okay.

So I’m curious, with your level of expertise, I guess maybe we start with like—
 How did you learn this stuff? And also I’m curious what exactly you learned. If someone’s listening to us right now and they’re trying to figure out what are the core pieces of running a campaign, where they get started.

Justin: Yeah, for sure. So I guess how I learned it—one reason why I think we relate so well together is like, and I don’t know what your background is, but what I see now is like musician, artist who also has this understanding or ease with the business side of it, like the marketing side of it, the promotional side of it.

So my parents were entrepreneurs and I just kind of grew up with that kind of mindset. And so when I started doing my own crowdfunding campaign, authenticity is my highest value. And so when I was looking around, all I was seeing were these very low-effort, blind carbon copy, “Hey friends, skip your latte and give me your money. If everybody did that, I’d be fine.” Like weird. It’s weird. I call them "whi-nees"—we need your help. Like that’s what I saw. I was like, I can’t do that. That isn’t gonna work for me.

And so I sort of combined the marketing background and experience that I had with this value of authenticity. And that seems to be the secret sauce, particularly with artistic crowdfunding campaigns.

You know, if it was a game or a physical product of some kind, the sell is pretty easy: “Hey, buy now and you get a discount before retail.”

And that’s the exchange for the risk of this taking a while to get to you—you get a discount. But with artistic projects, people are giving an average of $50 to $100 for music that they can eventually stream for free, or films that—a $200 million Avengers movie is a $20 ticket tops. Right? So like how do we—There isn’t a retail discount. It’s really connected to sort of mission and vision and other stuff that I’m sure we’ll get into. But knowing how to get people to see the project—traffic to a website basically—is the marketing piece. And then of course the creative side of it: learning how to articulate one’s story and vision and mission in a way that really activates this age-old sense of patronage that people have always had for artists.

Michael: Hmm. Yeah. Cool. So, there are so many places we can go. There’s so much stuff here.

Justin: I know.

Michael: Uh-huh. Yeah. I like it. And the two kind of pieces that I'm pulling from what you're saying, like as a main focus point—and I guess this goes into the root of entrepreneurship or marketing in general—is sort of like, there's those two focus points. One is, what's the actual story and the offer and the emotional journey that you're taking people on when they get there.

And then two is, how do you get them there in the first place so they can even experience that, right? And so, kind of breaking up the traffic side of it versus where you're sending people to. So maybe we start with that part, which is probably the most important part, I guess. Like, they're both extremely important, but if you start somewhere, you'd probably start with the heart of the message or the heart of the release. Yeah, the story, the authenticity. So how does someone—yeah, let's start...

Justin: There. Because I think the reason the marketing works is when you've connected to that piece.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Justin: That's how people can respond to the marketing in an authentic way.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Justin: I call this story-based crowdfunding, and I'll give an example from the film space just because I think the parallels work really, really well. So I had a short film script win Slamdance, which is a big old screenplay competition.

If I were to do a crowdfunding video and start telling you the plot of the film, you'd get bored real quick—and I'm gonna do it here in a second. And I think in music it's like, if I started talking about the production or that I had this certain musician connected to it—even like, "I had this song, let me read you the lyrics," right?—if I started going through that piece, your brain's gonna get bored real quick.

So the example I give with this film is like, okay, we open on this house, this mansion, and it's over this hill, and there are all these things hanging on the wall—like a letter from the President and these medals. And then we zoom in on this old man and he's looking out the window. I guarantee you half the audience right now is kind of lost. It isn't a lack of energy or anything; it's just, I'm not seeing the thing that you're seeing in your head. I'm not emotionally connecting to that.

But if I said, okay, so this movie is actually a tribute to my grandfather who passed away. He was the most decorated CIA agent in the agency's history. This is a true story. My whole life I was told, "Grandpa's gonna die any day now because he's still sick from the assassination attempt," and he just never did.

And so this mythic figure that I looked up to—who was like, you can't get, I don't know, more cool and manly, if you will, like a Cold War spy—was invincible. And then I got a call one day from Grandma saying, "Hey, he's getting really sick. He might die soon." This is a call I've received dozens of times. I kind of ignored it. And he passed away. I never got to tell him all those things.

So this movie is my way of telling him all those things and kind of honoring his memory, and hoping that this next adventure is the greatest one that he gets to have. Right? So you can probably feel the emotional difference between those two things.

Michael: Hmm.

Justin: The movie is not about Justin's granddad, right? It's about whatever the plot is. But that's the core—the story behind the story.

And there's some science to this. It activates things called mirror neurons, which I can get into in a minute kind of deeper, but otherwise I'll monologue the entire time. But you can sort of see that when you have an emotional connection to the story behind your project—what it is you're trying to do, the music that you're trying to create or get funded—that's going to be so incredibly important for your audience as patrons. Because they're not gonna spend $100 and get $200 worth of stuff. What they're spending on is the story—is that emotional connection.

And there's some science behind that, which I can get into in a second, but I figured you might want to jump in.

Michael: Oh man, that's so good. Yeah, I love those—the A/B comparison of like the same thing, but just communicated in different ways, how much more powerful that second one was.

So I would love to hear more about the science behind it. And specifically, where my mind goes is: how to pull that out of artists, especially if they're someone who's like, "Oh, I don't know if I have a good story," or "a good emotional way to connect to that." I'm curious where you start with artists, and maybe what are some questions they can reflect on to get to that root.

Justin: Perfect. Yeah, let's do it. So to put a finer point on it—I think for musicians—it's really easy to talk about genre or influences, right? Like, "I make indie folk music, lots of Bon Iver," and with the idea—and I don't think it's a bad idea necessarily, because we do this with ads and stuff—that, "Oh, you might have a shared interest in that artist, and that might get you excited," right?

But I encourage artists in general to shy away from those pieces and to really lean into: Why do they have to make this project and not some other project? Why did you write this song and not some other song?

Why do you have to get this out of you? Particularly for musicians, I think, right? As we know, the music industry is tough. Particularly for people not in something like Modern Musician, if you're relying on streaming numbers to make money or to get eyeballs and an audience, it's really, really tough.

So there's got to be something that is driving every musician to get up in the morning and do this thing—to throw themselves onto the fire almost of creating work.

And it's okay if some of that is vanity stuff—"I want to be famous"—but even then it's like, why are you using music to do that? What is it about this music, this song, this album—which is a lot of what my crowdfunding clients are doing, an album or EP—what does this mean to you? What does it express? Where did it come from? Why are you doing this one?

I don't know about most of your audience, 'cause I'm somewhat new to being a professional songwriter, but I have a bunch of songs. But I'm choosing the ones to release, and I'm choosing the ones to put into an EP. Why did I choose these ones? What do they represent on an emotional level? Because that's what's going to resonate with the audience—when you can articulate what it is about this that is weirdly so uniquely special to you, but then has this universal quality that people go, "Oh yeah, I remember my divorce," or "my breakup and the pain that I felt," or "the betrayal that I felt," or "the shock that I felt," "the anger that I felt."

Like, I can relate to those emotions, even though I wasn't just married to his ex-wife, right?

And so those are often the initial questions that I'll ask. Why this and not something else? You've made a choice. You've curated your selection of what it is you're going to bring to the world. Why that selection and not...

Michael: Hmm. Good stuff. Yeah. So it sounds like really the heart of it is going deep into the why, or going deep into the purpose—what inspired it. That versus focusing on the what is a lot more compelling from an emotional standpoint.

Because if you're describing the what, like, "Oh, I recorded this guitar here and played this note and I recorded this..."

Justin: And it sounds like this, it, it, cool. Like, and—but actually, this is a good segue into the science, right? Why does this work? Why this, right? Hmm. So, you can Google this stuff. There's something called mirror neurons. So our brains have evolved, developed, created to have empathy—physiological empathy, right? This is why listening to music or seeing a movie is so cathartic because—and this is the science piece of it—when we see somebody experiencing a strong emotion, research has shown that our brains light up in the same emotional areas.

So if I'm seeing somebody cry, the crying part of my brain is gonna start getting active. I may not actually physically cry, but there's something in the brain chemistry that looks for those emotional cues and then mirrors them back. And they're called mirror neurons, right?

So when you're doing your pitch video—well, let's keep it just in art for now—when you go watch a movie and you watch a 60-foot person go through a thing, and there's sensory deprivation, it's quiet outside, it's just this, right? It's just the stuff you're seeing on screen. There's no additional lights. Our brains kind of can't tell the difference. And that becomes this piece of reality. We're not sitting there the whole time with the brain going like, yeah, none of this is real. This is fake. You can just ignore all this, right? We're fully emotionally invested in made-up stuff.

Michael: And the—

Justin: Same thing happens with songs. You know, we sing along with them. We sit there and cry because this other person describing their experience or an event or whatever through song somehow all of a sudden feels like we are that person and we are experiencing that because our brains are lighting up in this mirrored emotional experience.

Michael: Hmm.

Justin: And I think that's a really good songwriting tip. This is why they say "three chords and the truth," right? Like finding that emotional space inside yourself is so important and valuable.

But of course, in marketing terms, that's why the pitch video, emails, social media posts—when you can connect to the emotional through line or mission or vision of your project, that's what's gonna get people excited. Not "I'm releasing another song" like the 1,500 other songs—or 15,000 other songs—that are coming out today across the world, right?

Michael: Mm-hmm. Oh man, that's so powerful. It's so wild too that just like we have these mirror neurons, I know, like, you communicate with people across the world and be able to almost have this collective mind or this collective consciousness.

Justin: It's fascinating to me. It's fascinating to me that regardless of where somebody falls on sort of a metaphysical spectrum, the fact that our bodies truly do light each other up, I just think is kind of an amazing gift of being human. That we get to share in the experiences of the tribe around us.

Michael: Hmm. And just like the—it's so interesting—the communication vehicles through which we can express that and express those shared neurons, whether that's through words or through symbols that can trigger a certain part of our brains, or through music, or through a story or a film.

Justin: Mm-hmm.

Michael: Really interesting. Okay, so that's cool. Any other pieces that we wanna focus on there before we move on to that second big pillar that we had talked about around traffic and getting people to see the story?

Justin: Yeah. No, I think that's a really good starting point. I guess the finer point on it is that—particularly, I think, as a musician, even honestly more than a filmmaker—the authenticity. Knowing who you are, knowing what you care about, knowing what you want to say is so incredibly important, I think, for an artist's development of their voice, of their artistic voice.

And so I don't think people can spend too much time mining that. And whether that's therapy or religious practice or meditation or mindfulness, really understanding and knowing yourself is a gift—even if—like, I'm a very open-book kind of guy, but like, I have depression, anxiety, I've struggled with an eating disorder. Like, it isn't about getting rid of your demons. It's about learning how to commune with them so that they can contribute to your artistic voice.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Justin: And so, you don't have to be a suffering artist to process your suffering. I mean, for me, my music is straight up: I'm feeling feelings that are too big right now, and instead of binging, I'm gonna write a song, right? Like, it's a coping mechanism. But it only works if I'm being real with myself.

And the reason why I could never write music for most of my life was because I would sit down and I would try to write a good song that sounds like a Coldplay song or sounds like a Bon Iver song. This is never gonna work. It's never gonna work.

So this artistic integrity, this authenticity, is super important. Rick Rubin talks about this a lot. So yeah, that's the finer point on that. And then we can get into marketing land.

Michael: Hmm. Oh man. Good stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's crossing the boundary between music and just being a human and learning how to connect with who you are and express that. And music is a blessing and a gift to be able to connect with that.

And there's many different forms of expression to do that. But it's great that that's kinda where you start—is like you get connected with who you are and learn how to express that and not necessarily try to hide who you are, but actually use this as a way to say the things that often are hard to actually say out loud.

Justin: Yeah. Yeah. You know what, one more thing too—and the reason for this is like, my experience consulting with artists has been—imposter syndrome. And artists are often kind of pooped on, particularly musicians. I mean, I don't wanna get into all Spotify and streaming, but like, there's this sense that we're a dime a dozen, you know?

And all we do is think up creative ideas, and anybody could do that kind of stuff. I have this belief—core to my worldview—is that artists are sort of the shamans for the human tribe.

So in a tribalistic society, in a tribe, there would often be a person who would be set aside and designated to provide transcendent experiences for the rest of the tribe. So, births and deaths and coming-of-age ceremonies, myths and stories that provide meaning—because the hunters and the gatherers would go out and hunt and gather and they would come back and they needed somebody to give them a sense of meaning and purpose for life that could feel very monotonous.

Like, "Hey, when you go out and hunt, you're actually inhabiting the Jaguar God," right? Like, that's a thing, you know? And so it elevates and provides transcendence for the human tribe. And I think that's all art is now today. And what we artists are, is we hold this very special role.

And in crowdfunding, like literally, people are going out and hunting and gathering, and then they're bringing some of their resources to you as patronage, going, "Hey, let's elevate my world a little bit." That's your job and responsibility with music or film or art or whatever.

And so I want artists to know—musicians to know—that we have a very beautiful and valuable role in humanity.

It's kind of a gift and an honor, I think, to be entrusted with that responsibility and that role.

To be able to give moment—like, you getting goosebumps from listening to my song—like, what an amazing, incredible gift that we don't pay enough attention to. That somebody, not next to me, across the world, through some magic phone box in our pockets, gets to have an emotional moment. I mean, that's incredible.

So that's the final piece on the emotional story side. We'll never discuss it again.

Michael: Oh man. That's so good. Yeah, I mean, it's powerful, and I appreciate you bringing that up. 'Cause it is easy to lose sight of that—how important that role is and what we're really doing here.

Justin: Yeah.

Michael: Cool. So, yeah. Onto the steps. Yeah. Alright. Let's talk about money, money, money. Woo. Yeah.

Justin: Yeah. Because now I gotta pay for all that stuff.

Michael: But it is, it's really important to learn how to promote your music, because even the best story in the world, if nobody hears it—sort of like a tree falling in the woods—if no one's there to hear it or experience it, then it doesn't necessarily mean that there's not a beautiful expression that's happening. But it certainly is disconnected, or it's missing one of maybe the most valuable pieces of music, which is about communion and coming together and having that ripple effect.

And so I would love to hear your advice for artists as it relates to crowdfunding, and maybe more generally too, in terms of getting eyeballs or ears—earballs—on their music. What do you recommend for artists as it relates to building their audience?

Justin: Yeah. So there's sort of three essential ingredients to a successful campaign, and I'll kind of move quickly through some of them. But in answer to this question, first off, let's recognize the value of a marketing plan. It's really easy for people to sort of think, “If I build it, they will come. If I post it, they will listen.” And it's like, no, no, no—you gotta do something to get them to hear it, right?

And so, once they hear it—once they're on the crowdfunding page—your pitch video becomes really valuable. Your perks and rewards become really valuable. But a lot of people start there when they go to prep for a campaign, like, “What cool perks am I gonna offer?” And frankly, the reality of it, particularly with artistic patronage, is that perks are cool and you can make them cool, but that's not what's driving the campaign. It's that emotional piece. They want to see you succeed and they want to be a patron of what it is that you're doing.

And you talk about this a lot with Modern Musician and the Street Team and all that kind of stuff. That's part of it too. Give them an experience, right?

So for anybody listening, obviously, this is why people like me exist—crowdfunding coaches. But whether or not you hire—I'm saying "you" to the people listening—whether or not you hire somebody to help you do this, just know that the job is a marketing job. That's what your research and your time should be spent on.

So then the next thing is like, okay, well how do you do that? How do you get tens of thousands of people to see your projects so that your conversion rates match out to where it works—so you can actually get funded?

Ads can be helpful for musicians. They're really not at all for film. And I think one difference is just the nature of what could be consumed in an ad space for a crowdfunding campaign. You can catch somebody's attention with some of the moments—which is what you talk about—or a hook or something, and hook them in and drive some traffic.

Generally speaking though, I don't recommend ads for creative campaigns because again, with patronage, it's a little bit harder to justify. The transactional nature of that kind of goes away because they're not going to show up and get something again for cheap, right?

So what I recommend my clients do is to build a team of people who are willing to spread the word. In my world, I call these people core team members. They're generally worth at least a couple thousand dollars in backing—their efforts bring in that much. And I have sort of tiers in my system, but one of my tiers is what I call “street team”—funnily enough.

But I think the takeaway principle for people listening is finding the people who are motivated because they're either huge fans of your music and what it is that you're creating, or they're getting something for this. They're getting a custom song written for them, or they're getting—I have a client who's doing guitar lessons—they're getting something out of it. And it becomes sort of an exchange where, again, all parties feel like it's a win-win.

And they're willing to do the work of commenting and liking and sharing on the crowdfunding, on the social media posts, and sending out direct messages in a way that creates awareness for the project. We're not really trying to sell people; we're just trying to make sure that the people we have access to—family, friends, fans, and followers—are aware of the thing that's happening.

And if we can make them aware and make it relationship-centric—“Here's what I got going on in my life. Of course, if you want to jump in and contribute, that's awesome. But honestly, what a great excuse for us to reconnect. I haven't talked to you since high school. How’s life, man?”—with that kind of energy, people get really excited. Like, really.

And my clients end up telling me at the end of week one, “I'm actually having fun.” I'm like, “I know.”

Michael: Wow. Yeah. Got goosebumps as you were talking about that, because I was just thinking about Street Team as a platform.

The whole purpose behind it is building communities that are exactly like what you're describing—to be able to reward and kind of honor your fans or the people in your community, in your inner circle. Whether that's a fan or a family member that's connected to you on these different layers of yourself.

And so it sounds like what you're recommending is—one of the core pieces is to find who is your inner circle in different layers of the people closest to you. Your closest friends, family members, contacts. And then building this Street Team or building this community of team members that are spreading the word for you as you get it launched.

Justin: Yeah. Even just as an example of this, I call them the “organic social echo chamber.”

If you post something on Instagram, it's going to, on average, be seen by 3% to 6% of your following—of your audience. But if you have someone come along—let's say you have five, ten people come along—and they comment and they save and they like it and they share it to their stories, all of a sudden the algorithm goes, “Oh, there's some movement here.”

And then the social media algorithms, in their creepy, omniscient ways, know exactly who's going to be into this. And so they start actively putting it into the timelines of people who are going to be into what it is that you've just put out there, based off of the hashtags or the wording or the music and all that kind of stuff.

So in that particular example, that core team becomes your initial round of organic engagement—which is such a guru-y term—but kind of hacks the algorithm in your favor. It proves to the math, to the code behind all of it, that there's something here. You should be putting this out to more people.

And then the platforms absolutely do, because that's what's driving all of their decisions—more users.

Michael: Yeah. And to be fair too, you are actually creating a movement when you're doing that.

Even if it is sort of like you kind of hacking the system, but also it's hacking in a way that's real. Because it's not like you're just creating a bunch of bots that aren't real. You're actually having your closest contacts and family members and friends and people in your community actually showing up.

And you're galvanizing them around this campaign. So it's actually a totally legitimate use of the platform.

Justin: Hmm, hundred percent. Especially when, especially if your core team is made up of fans, right? These are the people who are listening to your music. They are the algorithmic demographic that is responding to the stuff you're putting out.
 And so the more they get involved, the more that teaches the algorithm, like, oh yeah, these are Michael's fans. Let's make sure they're seeing all these posts.

Michael: This is really just making my mind go fast with integrations with like, the StreetTeam platform.

Justin: Oh, I know buddy. We're gonna be talking down in Florida about all sorts of stuff.

Michael: Yeah, we definitely gotta sync up too on like, working in best practices from the communication with those team members. I mean, I know we have group DMs now, but also one feature in particular I think is really relevant to this specific strategy is contests.

And basically being able to create a list of actions that members of your community can take, whether that's like following you on Instagram or pre-saving a song on Spotify, or just a custom button click that you could say, “Whatever—click here to go to the post and comment on the post.”

But rewarding fans who complete those actions with either tokens that they get for the community or actually having a contest where if they earn the most tokens, then they can get a year of access to your Diamond Inner Circle, for example.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's some really cool integration opportunities there.

Justin: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Mm-hmm.

Michael: I—

Justin: I mean, even just the work that, 'cause I'm in this, I'm going through the program now. But even just the work of how we are building our audience in the system is such a—

Most of my clients don't come to me with a mailing list of their fans, of the people who want the content that they're about to go fund.

Michael: Hmm.

Justin: So you can show up to our first coaching session and you've got a mailing list of 500 or 1,000 people, like that's already putting you in a—Particularly the way Modern Musician teaches it, which is very qualified. These are the fans, right? And man, showing up on the day with that kind of list is super powerful.

You know, and like Savannah raised $65,000. She doesn't have to pay that back. That isn't in some weird 95/5 split with some label that will never get repaid. That is her people showing up for her music, and she's able to have now the creative freedom to make the things she wants to make. It's amazing.

Michael: Hmm.

Justin: Absolutely.

Michael: Cool. Well, Justin, this has been a lot of fun and really helpful for understanding in simple terms, like what are the most important things to focus on when it comes to running this type of campaign.

But also thinking about this wider in terms of building a community and doing releases on an ongoing basis.

So I really appreciate you coming on the podcast today to share a little bit of your expertise. And obviously this is something that you've really cracked the code on—97% success rate.

Gosh, like how—what was the numbers?

Justin: 350 campaigns. $11 million over the last 12 years.

Michael: Yeah, so that's absolutely incredible. So for anyone that's listening or watching this right now that's interested in learning more—and you obviously like, you've really broken this down into a step-by-step guide for folks who are running these types of campaigns, who are interested in learning these strategies—What's the best place that someone could go to learn more?

Justin: Yeah. Just go to my website, TheKickstarterGuy.com. Right there, you'll be prompted to schedule a consultation with me and put in your project details. It's pretty in-depth. It's like 45 minutes. I want to get to know you, the project, the timelines, the budget amounts.

We talk about a lot of that stuff really, really in-depth. Most of my fee is on the backend of the campaign, so it's more of a partnership.

There's no “Hire me as a coach” button on my website, so we kind of gotta feel each other out and both feel confident that there's a really successful path there. And then if that's the case, I go over my process and my rates, and people can decide if they want to work with me or not.

Michael: Hmm. That's really cool. And I guess at this point, you really don't want to ruin that 97% success rate, huh? You're pretty selective.

Justin: The reason I do it is because I don't put all of it on the backend. 'Cause then I'm just some guy giving advice. There's a dynamic that happens when I'm hired. There's an expectation, professionalism, and timeliness. I, of course, know that my clients quite literally invested in what I have to say. But I put a lot of my fee on the backend because then my client always knows that if I'm giving advice, it's through the lens of “This is what I think is actually gonna help you raise the most amount of money.”

Not “I'm telling you what you want to hear,” right? It's, “This is what I think is gonna help you be the most successful,” 'cause I share in that.

And I like that. That's the dynamic I want. We're all invested with each other. But at the end of the day, we're also all trying to do this as well as we possibly can.

Michael: Mm-hmm. I like it. Yeah. I really think that that's the future of most business—is some form of revenue sharing or profit sharing as much as possible.

Justin: Mm-hmm. I agree.

Michael: Cool. Well, Justin, like always, we'll put the links in the show notes for easy access. But it's been really great having you on the podcast and appreciate you being a member of our community now as well. Again, to see your wins in the weekly wins is very cool. Can't wait to see you grow with your StreetTeam community and to be able to partner up and collaborate on integrating all the lessons that you've learned into the platform as well.

Justin: A hundred percent. Super honored to be here. Thank you for bringing me on. Yeah, I'm excited to kind of see where this journey continues.

Michael: Hmm. Awesome.