In today’s session, Tyler talks to Cathryn Lavery of BestSelf.co, who recently launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $300,000 on Kickstarter in the publishing category. How to achieve 6-figure crowdfunding success is talked about at length, including plenty of actionable strategies creators can apply to their own campaigns.

Today’s Session is Sponsored by

KrakenPrint

Need a reliable printer for your next comic book or graphic novel print run? Then you need to unleash the Kraken. Head to ComixLaunch.com/Kraken for 5% off your entire first order.

Session Table Setting

Welcome back to ComixLaunch!
We try to find the best minds in Crowdfunding space. If they’re in the comics world, awesome, but sometimes the best Kickstarters are found in other crowdfunding categories…
Ideas that work in one area can be tweaked and adapted to work for us.

Take the survey for a chance to win a book — comixlaunch.com/kbsurvey

Guest Introduction

My guest today is a graphic artist who focuses on the intersection of design and entrepreneurship. She’s the cofounder of BestSelf.co, a company on a mission to create meaningful products that help people become their best self.

She shares her creative and entrepreneurial journey on her blog LittleMight.com.

Her last Kickstarter Launch for the Self-Journal raised over $300,000, and did so many things right that I just had to get her on ComixLaunch as a guest.

Cathryn Lavery, welcome to ComixLaunch!

Guiding Discussion Questions

1) You have a very compelling personal story of how, in a little over three years, you’ve been able to leave your job as an overworked architect and launch your own business creating products you’re incredibly passionate about… and Kickstarter has played a major role in that process. Can you tell us more about your story?

2) I know you’re a firm believer of validating an idea before investing too much time, money and resources into it. (Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms are essentially idea validation platforms.) And I completely agree with you. At the same time, I often tell the people listening to this podcast that simply having an idea isn’t enough to take it to Kickstarter… and that they need to put some “skin in the game” in order to get backers on board. So, where do you draw the line between how much time, money, energy to invest in a project before validating it on a platform like Kicstarter? Are there other validation steps before launching that you recommend?

3) Now, the Self-Journal project was a massive success, and raised over $15K in the first 28 hours? How did that campaign get off to such a rock-solid start?

4) One of the most brilliant things you did, and something not a lot of creators are savvy enough to do, is that you had a sweet Joint Venture deal, partnering with Blinkist, to add tremendous value to your campaign. I was a campaign watcher who became a backer… that was an offer too good to pass up. Can you tell me a little bit about how that came about? What advice might you have for KS creators looking to create a similar win/win scenario for their projects?

5) Finally, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your approach to the packaging and designing of your product… I’ve heard you on other shows talking about wanting to provide “the Apple Experience” to your backers, and the unboxing of the Self-Journal was in fact a great experience. Yet this is something so few project creators give much thought to.

Speed Round

1) Finish this sentence: “Kickstarter is _______.”

An awesome tool to turn an idea into a real thing.

2) Let’s the pretend the powers that be at Kickstarter are listening (which you know they are)… if you could change one thing about the Kickstarter platform, what would it be?

To make fulfillment easier.

3) What’s your secret weapon? (Meaning a tool, resource, app, etc. that you couldn’t create without?)

Evernote, A Text (costs $5 in the app store)

4) Fulfillment is where even successful Kickstarter creators often drop the ball… Do you have a fulfillment tip for our listeners?

Just being organized about it, getting someone detail oriented involved to help with fulfilment

5) Can you recommend one book (other than the Self-Journal) more people need to check out?

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Sponsor Mid-Roll

In a moment, I’m going to give you today’s ComixLauncher, but first, we need to thank our sponsor…

Last year, ComixTribe spent nearly $85,000 on printing.

While we rely on a number of printers to get our books to market, one printer I can strongly recommend is KrakenPrint…

Our friends Jacob Way and Sam Amborn at Kraken Print offer:

Competitive pricing.
Great customer service, especially for your first offset print run.
Monthly storage if you do not want to store hundreds or thousands of books at home.
Distribution options, including breaking down orders and shipping direct to Diamond or comic stores at their specially negotiated discounted rates on shipping.
And NOW they even offer Kickstarter fulfillment!
Kraken will pick, pack, and ship out orders for your backers.

If you want to unleash the Kraken, go to comixlaunch.com/kraken, mention the ComixLaunch podcast, and they’re going to knock 5% off your first print run…and they’re going to hook us up with a 5% credit.

It’s a classic win/win/win/win – You get a great price on printing, your backers get a beautiful offset printed book, you help the podcast out, and Kraken gets your business.

That’s comixlaunch.com/kraken for 5% off your entire first print run.

ComixLauncher

It’s time for today’s ComixLauncher.
A ComixLauncher is a short, actionable activity you can and should do right now, or immediately after listening to the show. They’re all activities I’ve done myself, and will get you one step closer to a successful ComixLaunch. They’ll transform this Podcast from a passive, lean back activity centered around Tyler James, into an active, lean-forward activity centered around YOU.

ComixLauncher 38
Today’s ComixLauncher — Take this short ComixLaunch Survey – ComixLaunch.com/kbsurvey
Three short questions

One of you guys or gals is going to add an awesome resource -The Crowdfunders Strategy Guide by Jamey Stegmier to your library.

Wrap Up

Wrap Up Questions

Any final piece of advice?

Download Cathryn’s Kickstarter Prelaunch Playbook here –

http://www.littlemight.com/welcome

Where to connect?

Twitter @cathrynlavery

Thanks for Listening.

We’re going to go even deeper into both mindset, strategies and tactics for making KS work for you.

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