How Launchboom Works (Interview with Will Ford at Launchboom)

You want to launch a Kickstarter.

And, maybe this goes without saying, but you actually want to fund, right?

Everybody’s telling you “build an audience” and “generate leads.”

But what if you don’t know how to do that? Or what to do when you’re live?

What if you want some more hand-holding than that?

That’s where Launchboom comes in. That’s why I’ve brought on Will Ford, President and Cofounder of Launchboom, a company that specializes in helping crowdfunding creators succeed through their accelerator program.

Transcript

This transcript was generated with AI and may contain occasional minor errors.

Brandon Rollins: You want to launch a Kickstarter, and maybe this goes without saying, but you actually want to fund, right? Everybody’s telling you to build an audience and generate leads. Eh, we do that too. But what if you don’t know how to do that? Or what do you do once you’re live? What if you want some more hand holding than just this general advice that you find on the internet?

That’s where Launchboom comes in. And that’s why I brought on Will Ford, the president and co founder of Launchboom, a company that specializes in helping crowdfunding creators. succeed through their accelerator program. Now, we’re going to cut to the interview in just a minute, but real quick, my name is Brandon.

This video is brought to you by FulfillRite. We ship orders for e commerce and crowdfunding campaigns. Link below for more details. The quotes are free. Now, one last quick note. We edited with a light touch on this interview because we wanted to keep it simple, a little lo fi, and honest. Just like two professionals on a Zoom call.

All right, let’s cut to the interview. All right. So I just started the recording. We’re, uh, I guess about to begin on that. Um, so first of all, well, thank you very much for taking the time today to come onto our channel. I really appreciate it. Yeah,

Will Ford: man, I’m pumped to be here. And, uh, it’s been so much fun working with you like over like the last year.

And, um, when you told me about this, I was excited to be a part of it. So I appreciate you for having me on today. Thank you.

Brandon Rollins: Absolutely. We’re just starting. We’re just getting started out with these kinds of interviews and we’re excited to see where it goes.

Will Ford: No, I think, I think this is so cool that you’re providing all of, um, this information for your audience.

Um, there’s just so many experts in our industry and, um, it’s so cool that you’re inviting, you know, different experts in to kind of share their experiences and just help your community grow and thrive.

Brandon Rollins: Absolutely. Um, so I’ll just jump right into it, like, So, of course, I know what LaunchBoom does.

LaunchBoom is a, is a partner of Fulfill, right? I feel like that’s a necessary disclosure that I should probably just get out there. Um, but for the, you know, general viewing audience, can you explain what LaunchBoom does and how it’s changed over time?

Will Ford: Yeah, yeah. So I founded Launch Boom back in 2015. And the reason I started Launch Boom was because I’ve always been very involved launching consumer products.

And before I learned about Kickstarter or Indiegogo, I was doing it the traditional way when it comes to launching new consumer products. So what that looked like was I’d come up with a really cool product idea. Um, I would have to. Place a significant investment of my own into that product idea to figure out manufacturing.

Uh, usually with most manufacturers, you’d have to pay for, you know, half the order up front, and then the other half of the order would have to, you know, get paid, you know, once they are ready to deliver the product. And, um, and so, you know, you’d have to make a significant investment because when it comes to manufacturing new consumer products, um, you’ve got to, Uh, place larger orders or the largest orders possible because with larger volume orders, you get much more, uh, competitive price breaks and that makes it easier for you to make a much better margin when you start selling your product in the, in the market.

And so, um, you know, before crowdfunding, I would have to come up with a lot of my own money. I would have to come up with a clever marketing strategy and then I’d better be right because if I wasn’t right, then I would be upside down before I even get. Right. Because I would have had all this product that I wouldn’t be able to move.

And I’ve been there before too. And it’s not, it’s, it’s a scary place to be in. Like it’s not fun. Um, it’s also kind of risky when you put a lot of your own money into a product before you’ve even validated that there’s demand. We’re people that want to buy the product. And that’s what really turned me on initially to Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

I couldn’t believe that I could take a prototype and I could pre sell that prototype to millions of people all over the world, and I can take their money up front. Before I have to make the product and deliver the product to the end user. Um, and you know, in the early years, you know, Kickstarter and Indiegogo, they’re, they’re fairly, uh, new platforms.

I mean, they both opened their doors like around 2009. So, you know. I couldn’t believe like having gone into those platforms back in like 2010, 2011, and just seeing like all these new product ideas, raising like millions of dollars in pre sales and, you know, being an entrepreneur, Brendan, I was like, wait a minute, if I could pre sell a million dollars with a product, I could place a much larger volume order with my manufacturer and get even better price breaks, right.

And get even better margins. And it was just a much. Safer way to validate demand and launch new consumer products. So when I sold my last company, which was called pep box, um, I had, uh, an advisor on my board, um, and he asked me as soon as we exited that deal, he said, Hey, well, since I helped you through that exit, could you help me in a Navy seal, launch a new consumer product?

Cause now I know you’re available, you know, you’ve sold your company, you’ve got some time, would you mind helping us? And I said, why don’t we take that product? To kickstarter and why don’t we pre sell that product so we can potentially place a larger volume order and help get this product in the market faster with less risk.

And he loved the idea. So he said, Hey, well, I’m a real estate guy. How about I just give you the capital you need and why don’t you just run this for me? So I basically took it into a Kickstarter campaign, but what I did was I really spent about three months before the Kickstarter building my own community.

And I did it through Facebook advertising, Instagram advertising. And I built out this like massive audience that was excited about the product. Before I went to Kickstarter. So when I went to Kickstarter, I set a very conservative goal. So on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, you’ve got to set a goal that you know you can hit, because if you don’t hit that goal, you won’t get any money off the platform.

So you’ve got to hit your funding goal. That’s like rule number one. And so what I would do is I would build this massive email list through Facebook and Instagram advertising. To build my own community of people excited, engaged, ready to buy. So when I go to Kickstarter, I would basically set my campaign goal at like 20 or 30 grand.

And it was a number that I knew I could definitely convert as soon as I’ve launched on Kickstarter. So by the time I turn on Kickstarter, I get my entire campaign funded. Within the first hour when I launched this first product, and when that happens, we became one of the most popular products on Kickstarter at that time.

So they start to promote the campaign to their millions of viewers on their platform by giving us better placement, featuring us in their newsletter. And when that happened, we got this massive organic lift from all the community members of backers that are there looking for really cool projects to back.

And so from there. We were able to raise, you know, huge amounts of money very, very quickly. So that’s kind of when the light bulb went off for me, Brendan, because I was actually looking for more support with doing that pre launch work. And I did a ton of research and there was no one in the world supporting entrepreneurs when it came To Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

And so that’s when I saw a bigger opportunity because I’m like, wait a minute. This is a much smarter way for entrepreneurs to launch new products and it’s less risky and it’s way more effective than the traditional way of doing it. The way I was doing it before Kickstarter. And so that’s when I realized that, you know, there was an opportunity to build an agency to support entrepreneurs all over the world and having what I call.

These launch boom effects, right? And that’s why I named my company launch boom. And I bought launch boom. com on GoDaddy. I’ll never forget it. I bought it for 9. 99. And, um, and that’s when launch boom was born. I, um, partnered up with some really, really sharp marketing marketers here in San Diego. And, uh, they, they, they shared the vision with me.

I was like, Hey guys, if all we do is focus on helping entrepreneurs maximize their crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. We can build the largest agency in the world and we can get there fast. And because no one was doing it, Brandon at the time. So I’ll never forget. So I start launching in 2015 and that first year, now I had to go find projects to launch.

Right. So fortunately I had a really, really. Great track record of launching other consumer products. So I knew a lot of consumer product creators out there. So I just reached out to my personal network in the, in the early year of starting the business. And I was able to sign 15 clients and, um, it was more of a white club service.

So I’d do everything for them. Um, I had basically charged 50 grand upfront. So they had to have some kind of funding in place. Uh, 25 would go into the marketing because we’d have to do like video production, we’d have to create ads for Facebook and Instagram. And then the other half of the budget would go into advertising so I could build that, you know, largest pre launch email as possible before we’d go to Kickstarter or into Yogo and more or less control that outcome.

And so that first year we learned a lot, you know, we had 15 launches. Um, all those launches did phenomenal. They all did like six or seven figures. And then finally I’m like, well, if I’m going to keep growing and scaling this agency, I need more projects. So the riskiest thing I did, Brandon, was I actually flew out to Brooklyn, New York, and I got a meeting somehow.

I don’t even remember how I got it, but I was able to get a meeting with the executive team at Kickstarter. I met with them. I said, Hey guys, this is why our campaigns are doing so well. It’s called pre launch and I actually educated them. As to how we do pre launch, because that was foreign to them at the time.

They just had the platform. They would just launch the products. They just had the backers. They weren’t really doing any support on the entrepreneur creator side. So once I showed them why the pre launch was able to control a better outcome, they loved it. They’re like, Hey, well, you know, we’re more focused right now on continuing to build our backer audience.

So how about we just send you any campaigners that aren’t quite ready to launch with us so we can have bigger, better campaigns on our platform. And as soon as that happened, I went out to San Francisco and I met with Indiegogo’s team and I, I had the same type of conversation with their executive team and they had the same reaction.

They’re like, Hey, will, we’re building our backers. We’re not really able to support the campaigners the way you are. Why don’t we make you a preferred partner on our platform? So by the time 2016 hits a year after we open launch, boom, I’ve got this like floodgates open from Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and they’re sending me all my business.

It was amazing. So 2016, I go from launching, you know, 15 products in 2015 to 2016. Now I’ve launched close to a hundred products. That’s how many new clients were coming in and our agency was growing fast. And at this time, mind you, now people are starting to copy my model, right? So now I have competitors, there’s other agencies starting to.

Kind of pop up in Europe and pop up here in the U S and, uh, which is the best compliment ever. It means, you know, I’m doing something right when people start copying your model. Um, but in the early years, to be honest, as an agency, we were just building an email list, right? And the only issue with just building an email list is that you’re going to get a low conversion rate.

Right. So when you have an email list and you email market back to that audience, we were getting on average, like 3 percent conversions, right? So we’d have to build a massive audience in order to hit those like six or seven figure outcomes. And so at the time, what I was doing was I wanted to create a more efficient process, I wanted to make it easier for my clients to have even.

Bigger, better campaign outcomes. And so we ended up creating something called the reservation funnel.

Brandon Rollins: And this is one of your like big key, unique things that launch boom does. It’s a very specific launch

Will Ford: room thing. Yeah. So the reservation funnel, honestly, it was like the biggest game changer for us and the world.

And crowdfunding, because what we ended up doing was we took that email one step further and the idea was okay, great. Now that we’ve got the email interest and they submitted their email because they want us to notify them when we launch. The idea was, well, we’re What if we turn that into an actual reservation to create a more qualified audience?

So the idea was, it was honestly, I took it from Elon Musk when he launched a Cybertruck and he did those like a thousand dollar deposit reservations. And he ended up creating like huge amounts of revenue for Tesla on that one reservation funnel idea. I was like, Hey, I wonder if this would work for crowdfunding.

And sure enough, it did. And so the way it works is once we run a Facebook ad or Instagram ad and someone interested in the product clicks on the ad, what we do is we then pull them into an opportunity to give us a dollar reservation. And what we do is we create a call to action. We say, Hey, we’re launching soon on Kickstarter.

The first thousand backers are going to get a lower price and early delivery. So if you want the best deal before we go to Kickstarter. All you have to do today is place a 1 money back guarantee deposit, and we’re going to guarantee you, um, that you get the very best deal today before we go live. And so what was interesting was we didn’t really care about the dollar.

It was more the transaction because people don’t transact unless they’re serious about committing to a deal. So what ended up happening, yeah, as soon as we turned on this reservation system. We started getting massive conversions. So like I said earlier, when I had that original email list going into a Kickstarter, I’d get a 3 percent conversion, right?

When I took it to through the reservation funnel, if I had a thousand dollar reservations before a campaign, we’re getting 30 percent or greater conversions.

Brandon Rollins: So you’re like really measuring for, for purchase intent when you do that. And that’s one of the things that really helps you. Cause you’re like, you can just take that.

You know, make a lookalike audience out of it or do something else that like really measures for that kind of

Will Ford: thing. Exactly right. And, and, you know, I’ve been at it now for nine years, Brandon. That’s how long I’ve been working on LaunchBoom and we’ve honestly built the most effective product launch system in the world.

And what’s really interesting about what we’ve created is also the lowest cost solution, right? Because I want to be able to help every entrepreneur. I don’t want to just be able to help the funded ones. So when I, in my early years at LaunchBoom. I was really focused on building the world’s largest agency.

The only issue with that model was it only worked for funded startups. Like I said earlier, like I needed a minimum 50 grand investment in that product launch for me to do everything for the client and to be able to deliver a significant outcome of six or seven figures of pre sales, right? So the problem with that model was I could only work with funded startups.

And my agency grew super fast. So from 2015 up until about 2021, we had launched over a thousand successful product launches on Kickstarter on Indiegogo, right? So we were the world’s largest crowdfunding agency. You know, we rang that bell, you know, back in like 2018 is when we got there. And, um, and then the pandemic hit and we went through hyper growth and we exploded.

I went from like. 20 full time employees, uh, pre pandemic to close to a hundred employees by the end of 2021. It was massive growth and, um, it was an exciting time and we were doing incredibly well as an agency. Our clients were thriving. That’s really where we built our brand reputation as the leader in our space.

And then in 2022. Everything changed. And what I mean by that was I had this massive team that was ready to keep scaling the business, but what happened in 2022 was we stopped seeing qualified lead gen come through our lead gen efforts and we stopped seeing like these like funded deals. And what we realized were that creators needed a cheaper option.

They wanted a more affordable solution. And so. That’s when, as the lead gen started to decline in 2022, that’s when we saw a much greater opportunity to turn launch boom into something so much greater than it ever could have been as an agency. And that’s when we decided to kill, intentionally kill our agency and convert it into a crowdfunding community and platform where now we provide coaching, consulting, and we upgraded all of our software and technology.

So the idea was, how can we make it? Easier, more fun for anyone in the world out there with a really cool idea to actually validate demand, lower their risk and be able to successfully launch that product.

Brandon Rollins: It’s acts like an educational thing. Somebody gets involved in the program and they can learn like what they need to do to actually make sure they’re ready for the campaign.

Will Ford: And more than that, they can basically avoid all the headaches that we went through. Over the previous, you know, seven, eight years as an agency, you know, we learned what doesn’t work, what does work, um, we learned, you know, at what point to put cash into advertising or when to scale advertising, you know, there’s so many things we learned along the way.

And so what we decided to do in 2022 was we intentionally killed our agency. Brandon, it was crazy, man.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah, that’s, that’s gotta be a scary decision to make.

Will Ford: It was, it was probably the scariest pivot I’ve ever made professionally because we already had the most successful agency at the time. And the idea was like, Hey, what if we kill that and we create our own platform and we build crowdfunding tools that make it easier.

We make it way more affordable. So now anyone out there can use a credit card. If they’re bootstrapping and they can go through our proven system, but we can make it way more affordable for them to take that product idea into Kickstarter into Indiegogo and still have the same, if not better outcome that our agency was delivering.

And so we spent the, a lot of the year of 2022 building that out. And, uh, we had to shift some people around on our team into different seats to help support this new idea and model, but it was a huge game changer because now we can work with. Anyone out there that has a really cool product idea and maybe underfunded, or maybe they’re bootstrapping and they’re, they’re using their credit card to support these product ideas and these innovative products that they want to take to market, or maybe it’s someone who’s never done it before and they want to take that first idea from that napkin sketch and they want to turn it into a prototype and actually.

Launch it and turn it into a successful e commerce business, for example, which many of my clients do. And so we ended up creating what I call launch boom 2. 0. Um, the world knows it today as launch boom accelerator. And since we made that pivot, Brandon, we’ve been on, we’re onboarding more clients than I ever dreamed of.

We’re literally adding like a hundred plus new product creators every single month into our community. And the reason they’re coming in is because it is the most. Engaged active community of creators. They’re all supporting each other. They also have access to everyone on my team, myself included. So we have dedicated coaching calls every day.

So depending upon what part of the process they’re in, they can jump on a call with one of our experts. They can get their questions answered. So they get that handholding. Um, now they can do more on their own because we upgraded our technology. So that reservation funnel system I talked to you through a little earlier in this conversation, our clients can now actually build their own reservation funnels.

They can just like drag and drop imagery, messaging, uh, little teaser videos. Um, they can collect their own reservations. They can also. Price test, they can test different lead offers now. So the number one, I’d say pain point most of my clients have when they come to us and they want to launch a new product is they all have the same question.

Hey, Will, how much should I sell my product for? How much do you think I can get for this product? And I always answer that the same way. I have no idea. Let’s figure that out. Let’s use our system and let’s go test different lead offers to figure out what the market will support. So we are now able to do all of that during prelaunch.

So in addition to, you know, building a huge audience of those dollar reservations, we’re also able, before we scale that, we’re able to test different lead offers. And so the other huge advantage we have today, Brandon is. I have over 7 million backers in my database because I’ve retained a copy of every backer from every campaign I’ve ever launched from the beginning.

So what’s really cool is part of our platform allows our clients to access specific audiences that they think are their actual demographic. Uh, buyer, and what we can do is we can upload those audiences into their Facebook or Instagram accounts and do what’s called lookalike audience targeting. So now we can actually place their lead offers or their ads in the organic feeds of backers that have already had one or more successful experiences on Kickstarter IndieGoGo.

So they’re more likely to do it again. So this allows us to get a much, much bigger impact from that ad spend because we actually have data. That they can leverage to bring down that ad cost. So what’s really cool and unique about our system is what we’re really doing in essence, Brandon, is we’re helping all of our clients fail fast and fail cheap.

Brandon Rollins: Yeah. And I think that’s like, that’s huge. Cause let me think about this, like. Just kind of recap, like the basic process you’ve got at the very top, you’ve got like lead offer testing, or I don’t know if that’s the right word, but like, let’s just say offer testing. Like you’re actually testing the pitch and the price, and then you get into the more granular stuff, which is like.

Add copy imagery and that kind of stuff. And like, as you go down, it’s like, is this the right offer? Are we making the right basic pitch? And then after that, I assume, and I haven’t like worked with you guys in this capacity yet, but it’s gotta be in there. You guys will help them put together that page, make sure that nothing on there loses the conversions, and then you just kind of go through this process.

And then once you get to that point, um, and somebody’s got enough leads. They’re selling the right thing. They’ve got enough leads, the campaign page looks good. Then it is, here’s how you run it. Here’s how you ship it. And here’s how you, you know, go to e comm and it gets like progressively easier because it’s like, I feel like the what is so much harder than the how.

Like you can find anything in the world on the how, but the what is a really hard thing and helping people figure out what is like probably one of the most valuable things that. People don’t really think about too much.

Will Ford: Yeah, no, I’d say today what’s really interesting about my business at Launchboom is we have thousands of active clients right now that are either preparing to launch, they’re live on Kickstarter, you know, so they’re Actively funding their projects right now, or pre selling their products.

And then we also have a group of clients that have finished crowdfunding. That we’re helping, uh, transition into e commerce, right. And we’re helping work through their manufacturing. So we also provide another program called source boom. And the idea is like, you know, once we get through crowdfunding.

Well, let’s help our clients source the best, you know, sourcing experts, manufacturing experts, and deliver the best possible experience to those backers. So now we truly set them up for success because now they will have great products landed and ready for e commerce or Amazon or retail. So it’s, I’d say the coolest thing about what we do at LaunchBoom is what we’ve pioneered.

Which is what I call pre launch. It’s all about figuring out how to maximize the product launch potential. But we do all the heavy lifting before we get to Kickstarter or Indiegogo. And so we start with messaging, positioning. How can we position that product to appeal to the greatest amount of people out there in the world?

But we also start with like market research. So we look at, okay. Who are your competitors in this landscape? What, what makes your product unique, superior, different to those competitors? And then we look at what are the price points of those competitors? What’s a realistic price that we can put on your product to help you maximize that average order value?

And that’s also how we help protect our client margins through this process. Now that we’ve done that messaging positioning work. Now let’s go test. Let’s go see if people will pay this much money for this product. So what we do is we create different reservation funnels. We create different lead offers, and then we basically point those advertisements on Facebook, on Instagram, and we look at the data.

We look at what’s converting. We look at, we look at what’s the cost to acquire that 1 reservation, right? So what’s really, really cool about what we’ve done is we’ve created a data driven process that literally will tell our clients before we get to Kickstarter, how much money they’re going to be able to raise, whether or not they’re going to have a big enough campaign to support the manufacturing requirement they need.

Cause every manufacturer is different. Everyone has different minimum orders that they have to place in order to successfully produce and deliver that. Experience to that backer. So the beauty of my system is today. I’ve got thousands of clients here at LaunchBoom. I’d say half of them are like super green.

They’re maybe launching their first or second product ever. The other half of my clients are very successful e commerce brands, and they love my system because they can validate. New product demand faster for lower cost. And if they get great data, great. Now they put more time and resources and we go hard into Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

And we generate thousands of new loyal backer customers through the experience. And we make it easier for them to produce, deliver, and move into that e commerce or Amazon or retail opportunity or all three. Just depends on the client that we’re working with. And so what’s so cool about what we’ve built that launch boom is we’ve got this data driven pre launch process that allows us to actually control the launch outcome.

So we’re not guessing anymore. And so I’d say that is. Probably the number one differentiator with launch boom and anyone else in the world right now is that if you’re out there and you’re interested in launching a physical tangible consumer product, if you come into launch boom, we can tell you within a matter of months, whether or not you should put more time and resources into it because we can find.

For a much lower budget, I’m talking like under 10 grand, we can find whether or not it’s worth putting more time, more resources into going big on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, because in some cases we might take a client through pre launch and the data isn’t positive, right? Or we can’t get people to, uh, you know, put a dollar reservation down because, you know.

For whatever reason, you know, there’s an issue with the product or, uh, the value prop isn’t there, or there could be a variety of reasons, which really cool is that we can actually, um, run surveys, uh, to the people that did show interest and we can ask them what they liked, what they didn’t like. And so it gives our clients an opportunity to potentially iterate and improve that product.

And then we’ll test it again.

Brandon Rollins: This is also key because I feel like people really sleep on the possibility of just starting work on a project and then doing the research and then quitting because it doesn’t actually make sense from a market perspective. There’s no shame in that. It’s like, I’ve got a lot of, um, board game, you know, general contacts that are out there and it is a running joke.

In every game designer’s life that they’ve got like 20 games that are sitting on a shelf somewhere and one of them makes it to market because it’s like you table that and some of them you just like you play them a few times and it’s just not worth continuing. And if you’re able to do that on like a market level, figure out if anybody’s actually going to buy the darn thing in the first place, you can potentially save somebody tens of thousands of dollars, probably more than the accelerator costs.

Let’s be honest. Uh, what, what’s the cost by the way to, to get in there? Like, is it a month a month

Will Ford: kind of thing? Yeah. So, so yeah. So right now, just to be direct, like Brandon, it’s. A one time cost, 9, 800 to take your product into my system that gives you access to my team members here at LaunchBoom. It gives you access to all the perks for being in the community.

So you’ll get access to like our partnerships, like FulfillRight, right? So we can help you not only like have a successful crowdfunding campaign, but also what happens after crowdfunding. We can help actually set you up so you can actually start scaling and growing and building a profitable business. We have e commerce partners, we have Amazon partners.

So the beauty of our system is it’s a one time cost. Um, if someone out there, if 9, 800 is like a scary number, we have payment, we have payment plans now. So people can use credit cards and make like monthly, quarterly payments. If that helps them, you know, take their idea to market and do it within their financial means.

So we literally have like the lowest cost, but by far the best solution in our industry right now. And that’s why we’re having so much success because it’s a system. That basically controls the outcome for every single product that we turn on. So literally we only go live on Kickstarter or Indiegogo when we control the outcome.

When we know we can raise enough money to actually build, manufacture and deliver an awesome experience to that backer. And that’s the hardest part because at that point, now that you validated demand and now that you have happy customers, well, now you also have product. So now you can turn on your e commerce store.

Now you can turn on your Amazon channel, or now you can start shopping those, those retail connections to get your products into Walmart or, or target, or, you know, wherever you want to sell.

Brandon Rollins: And it’s like, it’s honestly on Amazon, if you’ve got the right product and then even in a somewhat decent looking page with all the A plus content and whatnot.

It can be like seven bucks to get a purchase. It’s not that hard to get big purchases on Amazon, especially not if you’ve already gone through a Facebook ad driven process, a Kickstarter driven process. It’s like by the time you get through that, you’re probably kind of a lock for Amazon success

Will Ford: as well.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, at the end of the day, like when it comes to launch boom, the reason I still love what I’m doing here is because we truly have built the most effective product launch system that I know of. And we continue to iterate. We continue to improve it. The idea and goal for launch boom is we want to make it fun.

We want to make it easy and we want to make it as affordable as possible. So anyone. In any part of the world that has this idea of burning in their mind that they’re dreaming about, that they’re thinking about, that they want to launch, that they can actually launch it now, even if they’re underfunded.

Right. And they can actually take that idea, turn it into a real profitable business. And if we do this and continue doing this well, Brandon, my goal is I’m not going to stop doing what I’m doing until I’ve helped over a million entrepreneurs, uh, take their product ideas. And turn them into profitable businesses.

Once I’ve done that, I’ve truly made a positive impact on the world. And that’s what we’re doing here at Launch Boom. And that’s what makes it fun. It’s just seeing like all these campaigns do so well. So what’s cool about that pivot I told you about earlier, when we killed the agency and we pivoted over to this coaching consulting platform, we’re launching more products than we ever dreamed of launching.

So on average, we’re launching like eight to 10 products every single week. All year long and they’re all doing phenomenal, like they’re all doing super well.

Brandon Rollins: And the beautiful thing is like, you’re not trading your time for money anymore or having or paying someone else to do that. And at the same time, you’re able to give people something that is quite a bit less expensive.

Like I know, and I’ll be honest with you, if you’re like really scrappy starting up and you do this with like shoestring budget, the little bit of savings from a job, 9, 800 is a terrifying figure. Like I, I launched my first campaign when I was driving a 1, 500 car for comparison, but, but like, honestly, when you compare that to agency fees, like a good marketing agency, a mid range price is probably a hundred, hundred, 10, 120 an hour.

I mean, like we’re talking mid range, like probably low mid range, um, at this point, and that stuff adds up so, so, so unbelievably fast, especially when you’re talking market research, product validation. This isn’t even getting into advertising expenses. 9, 800 is actually like quite a bit lower than that, and it mitigates quite a bit of risk.

Will Ford: I mean, I mean, Brandon, what’s even cooler about kind of where we are today at LaunchBoom is like, I’d say another one of like the top number one pain points are funding, you know, a lot of my clients are like, Hey, well, can you invest in my company? Uh, well, can you help me fund my advertising budget? So I can go bigger on this campaign.

And what’s really cool is I’ve also. Uh, recently found a funding partner that will literally provide my clients with anywhere from like 100 to 200, 000 in interest free credit lines to support these launches, which is honestly more than enough capital, uh, to, to not only like maximize your campaign, but then to get the money out of the platform to easily repay that credit line.

Before any interest is ever due. So, I mean, literally like over the years, because I’ve worked with thousands and thousands of product raters, they all ask the same questions, right. At different parts of the process. So all I’ve done over the last decade is I’ve. Found the best solutions to those questions.

And I literally created a platform that makes it easier, way less risky, and honestly more fun because when you’re an entrepreneur going out alone, it’s lonely, you know, and now you don’t have to, if you come to launch boom, you have a whole community of like minded people that are doing the same thing that want to help.

everyone succeed. And so it’s way more fun when you have a community of other people that are energized and excited about the products are launching and they want to share their resources and they want to make sure like everyone in the community is thriving, which is really what’s happening right now at launch boom.

So, so again, whoever’s listening to this, if you have a product idea. You don’t have to do it alone. You’re not by yourself. There’s a whole group of people worldwide here at LaunchBoom, um, that want to help you, that want to see you succeed. And, um, again, you don’t have to go at it alone anymore.

Brandon Rollins: Absolutely.

Now, follow up question on the financing. Like, of course, getting low interest financing, a lot of folks, you know, they want to see bank documents they want to see or inventory or something like that. Oh, we actually just had an inventory financing guy on. I think that one’s going to be up by the time this is up on YouTube.

But, uh, so with this, it’s like, do they look at the advertising? Do they look at the results and kind of make a determination based on what they think the expected revenues are going to be?

Will Ford: No, honestly, it’s, uh, it’s really interesting. Uh, but the, uh, credit facility that we’re working with, um, for the most part, like if you’re a U S registered business, so if you have a U a U S.

Business entity, whether it’s an LLC, a C corp, an S corp, it really doesn’t matter as long as it has a EIN number and it’s a registered U. S. business, um, they can, they can, they can lend you money. That is good to know we don’t even have to show them add metrics or any data. Like that’s literally all they need to see.

Now, obviously, depending upon how long that business has been around, how long, you know, like, uh, we’ll determine how much money they can lend you. Right. So like, if you just opened it and you reach out to them a month later, they might not be able to give you a 200 grand. They might only be able to give you a 30 or 50 grand, but they can still provide that, that.

That credit line to make

Brandon Rollins: that can still be really useful. Like if you’ve got the metrics that are backing you up, at least like internally, if you look at this and you have a very good reason to think you’ll succeed, but you’re just like 15, 000 bucks short or something could be a good option.

Will Ford: Yeah, totally.

I mean, um, it’s amazing like what resources are available to entrepreneurs today. And, and I’d say that’s probably one of the things that, um, I, I’ve really focused on the last year is providing those resources to my community in my launch room. Uh, platform. And so everyone in my community has access to all these resources that, that I’ve continued to find.

I continue to add them if I think they’re going to add value to my client. And, um, it doesn’t have to be scary anymore. It’s actually the opposite. It’s actually a ton of fun. And, um, and it can be extremely lucrative if you’ve got a cool product idea.

Brandon Rollins: Absolutely. So, um, let me think. Actually, I do have a question after this, but I guess second to last question for now.

Um, so kind of on an unrelated note, what do you see? Um, where do you see launch room going in the next five years? You have any other initiatives in the pipeline that you’re ready to share? Yeah.

Will Ford: Yeah. I mean, like I said earlier, like, Okay. I love what I do here at launch boom. And so does the rest of my team members.

Like everyone is genuinely passionate about supporting these entrepreneurs and succeeding in succeeding with their product launches. And so honestly, the next five years, like I just want to continue to create the lowest cost solution to make it as fun as possible and to help as many entrepreneurs as possible.

And to answer your question directly. Five years from now, I’d like to be as close to that million dollar number as possible. Like I’d love to eventually help a million entrepreneurs, product creators, um, have successful launches. If, you know, and if it takes me 10 or 20 years to get there, so be it, but I’m not going to stop until we get there.

That’s

Brandon Rollins: awesome. I think that’s a good goal. So, um, real last question. If there is one thing that you think potential Kickstarter creators need to focus on, just one piece of advice to give them, what would

Will Ford: it be? Yeah, so, honestly, and I know this might sound a little cliche, but if anyone out there is considering launching a new product on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, you’re going to save a lot of time and a lot of money if you reach out to my team.

And you don’t even have to hire my team. Like, like we have experts that will talk to you. Uh, we’ll, we’ll tell you the ins and outs of crowdfunding. Maybe crowdfunding isn’t the right direction for you. And if that’s the case, we’ll tell you why, and we’ll point you in the right direction, but you can save a lot of time and a lot of headache and a lot of money.

If you talk to someone on my team and, and again, you don’t have to pay any money to do that.

Brandon Rollins: All right. And anybody who’s interested in learning more about Launch Boom, I’m going to include all the links down below in the description so you can easily find them. And from there, you’ll be able to just learn anything that you want to know about Launch

Will Ford: Boom.

Yeah, yeah. And again, we love learning about new product ideas. We love helping entrepreneurs. So if you’re out there and you’ve got an awesome product idea and you’ve been thinking about crowdfunding, like we’d love to talk to you. Um, But other than that, yeah. I mean, like Brandon, there’s, there’s just been so many like success stories over the years.

Um, like, um, like I know before we had this, uh, you know, this call together today, um, I know, um, you know, you were like, Hey, will, you know, it’d be really cool if you could share like a cool success story, you know, what’s one of the coolest campaigns you’ve ever worked on? Right. And I want to take a minute and talk about that because, you know, there’s so many and a lot of people, they always think I’m going to like talk about like my multimillion dollar, you know, campaigns.

And honestly, a lot of those aren’t my best campaigns, believe it or not, because a lot of those big multimillion dollar campaigns, they spent a tremendous amount on advertising to get there, to be honest. Um, but I’d say like, probably like one of the coolest stories is this, uh, group of entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka.

Uh, they reached out to me and they had this really, really cool product. It’s called Spring. And what it is, it’s basically like these like wraps you put around your calves. And, uh, it actually massages your calves, which your calves have one of your major arteries in your body. And so they found that if you wear these, uh, leg wraps on like long, uh, travel or, you know, airplane trips that it totally eliminates like being jet lagged.

Or, or, you know, uh, basically jet lag, it eliminates it. And at a time I was flying all over the world, speaking at conferences about crowdfunding. So they sent me a demo and I would literally wear these leg wraps on their plans. And people looking at me like, what’s on your legs? And it was like this awesome massage the whole time I was.

Traveling on these 10 hour flights or 15 hour flights to Hong Kong or wherever I was going. And, uh, I literally had no jet lag. I’d like land and I’d feel fresh and ready to go. It was amazing. It’s also a really cool product for like people who work out a lot and just kind of like, you know, just really great rehab type tool, uh, for people who are like super into fitness or people who run a lot.

Um, so anyway, they brought the product to me and they’re like, Hey, well. And now that you’ve demoed the product, can you help us launch it? And I’m like, absolutely. It was, it’s a phenomenal product. It’s called Spring S P R Y N G. And, uh, and we ended up launching it on Indiegogo. But before we launched on Indiegogo, Brandon, I took them through my prelaunch reservation system and we couldn’t.

Get any decent conversions. So at the time they’re like, Hey, we’ll, our cost to produce this thing is 30. So eventually we want to sell for 150, but we’re willing to give a deal on Kickstarter at 99 to maximize orders. And I thought that was an incredible deal, right? But today, Brandon consumers are super sharp, right?

So when they saw this really cool looking product with all these like massage features that they thought it was like. Well, what I concluded was that they thought that it was a gimmick or it was a ripoff because it was like almost too good to be true. Like, how can I get this awesome massage device for both my cast for 99 bucks?

It must be, uh, you know, there’s gotta be something wrong here. Right. Like, like consumers just weren’t putting down reservations. They weren’t signing up to, you know, buy the product when we bought, we’re preparing to launch. So I basically did some more market research and I told the guys in Sri Lanka, I was like, guys, listen, you guys have an awesome product here, but your competitors are selling for like thousands of dollars.

And so there’s a huge gap here. I go, I know your cost is 30, but would you allow me to sell this for 189? And then you can go to retail at like 250 or 300. Because it’s a great product and, and you’re undervaluing, um, your, your price, in my opinion. So they said, Hey, well, at this point, we just want this to work.

So whatever you think we need to do, go ahead and test it. So I tested a lead offer at 189. And all of a sudden our reservations were like the lowest cost reservations we’ve ever seen come through. We ended up getting thousands of these dollar reservations. And then when we took it to Indiegogo, we ended up pre selling over a million dollars.

And now mind you, their cost didn’t change their cost is still 30 to produce that unit, but now I just basically like tripled their profit margins, right? Because now I’m selling for 189 versus 99, right? So. As you can imagine their team in Sri Lanka, they love me, right? Because not only did I help them pre sell a million dollars, over a million dollars on Indiegogo, but I made them a huge profit margin on that launch.

And they were able to reinvest that back into their e commerce. And now they’ve got a super successful business. So like, that’s the value of the pre launch. It’s figuring out how to maximize your average order value, how to get people to actually Pull the trigger and transact with you before you get to Kickstarter.

So that’s always a story I love sharing. Uh, just because it again goes back to like really what we’re doing at the end of the day, which is we’re mitigating the risk for all of our clients and we’re helping them position their products and maximize the price of every unit they move through the system.

Yeah,

Brandon Rollins: I think that’s a really good example of just the kind of things you can do because like that’s, that’s one of those things that only you only really figure out that you need to change pricing strategy just through testing it out and seeing what happens. And it’s amazing that that just occasionally happens where people actually perceive something as being a much better product when it has a higher price tag.

Will Ford: Yeah. Yeah. And again, there’s so many other stories like that, but I know you wanted me to talk about kind of a success, a success story. And that always is like top of mind because they were ready to like throw the rag in and call quits on it. And I convinced them to let me continue testing. And because we, we, we repositioned the pricing, we ended up having a major breakthrough.

Yeah,

Brandon Rollins: that’s a pretty amazing story. All right. So at this point, what I’m going to do, probably just between you and me is I’m going to like, probably edit around the order just a little bit. So it’s a little more fluid. So I’ve got my last question last. Then pop on intro and outro, but I think we’re good to go.

I think we’ve got a lot of good video here. All right. I’m going to go ahead and pause this recording. If you could thank you for watching this interview, I appreciate it. And I know that Will at Launch Boom does too. Details on both of our companies are going to be down there in the description. And just in case you missed the name earlier, my name is Brandon.

I’m here on behalf of FulfillRite. If you need help shipping your orders, go to FulfillRite. com and request a quote. We’ve shipped for thousands of crowdfunding campaigns, and we would be happy to ship for you as well. The quote doesn’t cost a thing, so if nothing else, you get some good information about pricing.

Link in the description. If you enjoyed this video, please take a moment to like and subscribe. Don’t forget to slap some postage on that bell so we can express ship new videos to you as soon as they drop. And last but not least, if you have any questions, leave a comment down below. I will personally answer as many of them as I can.

Thanks for watching.