One day, in January 2015, John and I were walking along Sail Bay in Pacific Beach.
We were reflecting on 2014, and sharing our big goals with each other for the year ahead.
I was anxious to hear about John’s big goals because he’s such a creative thinker and risk-taker; I knew whatever he had planned for his focus was going to be exciting.
It was on that walk John told me about his goal to create his first physical product ever: a journal that would focus on helping people set and accomplish their biggest goals.
Let’s break it down
Throughout this post I’ll be breaking down every step we took in order to go from John having the idea to create a goal setting journal, to actually launching that journal via a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $453k in just 33 days.
At the very ground level of everything I’m going to share is this:
Setting goals is easy. Making them SMART goals can be a challenge. Accomplishing them takes time, discipline and focus.
If you don’t take the proper steps to create a plan for your SMART goal that you can actually execute, then you will never accomplish that goal.
Big goals require that smaller steps be consistently met; that you have checkpoints and review periods in place to help you reflect, learn and stay on course; and also that you have accountability in place.
As I break down the phases John went through on his journey to accomplishing his big goal, keep in mind that each of these phases played a critical role in his success with the launch.
It is because of everything I’m going to cover in this post that John’s goal of launching The Freedom Journal on January 4, 2016 was accomplished.
The 4 Phases: Creating The Freedom Journal
I’m going to break this post down into 4 phases to keep us organized and on track. Those 4 phases are as follows:
Idea Phase
Brainstorming & Planning Phase
Hiring Phase
Marketing & Launch Phase
I’m also going to include sections that will discuss other project details like stats from our launch team, our biggest lessons learned, and finally, the milestones we hit.
Last, but certainly not least, I was able to get our core launch team involved, so you’ll not only get my behind-the-scenes perspective on our launch, you’ll also hear from each one of our Freedom Journal launch team members and get their perspectives, too.
The Freedom Journal Launch Team
Ever heard the saying: “You’re only as good as the people you hire“?
Each of our team members are pros in their niche, and each of them played a significant role in helping us successfully launch The Freedom Journal on Kickstarter.
The fact they are pros in their niche is no accident; John was actively seeking individuals who were best at ONE thing.
More on how we found these individuals later; for now, let’s meet our core Freedom Journal launch team!
Richie Norton, Prouduct
Richie is responsible for the physical creation of The Freedom Journal. We’ll dive into more details about the specific role he played, and why we couldn’t have done this without him.
Brandy Shea, Mile One Creative
Brandy is responsible for almost every visual you see related to The Freedom Journal. She designed our entire Kickstarter page, and she had a big hand in the overall branding for The Freedom Journal.
Brandon T. Adams, Keys to the Crowd
Brandon is our Kickstarter expert, and he helped us ensure that every step of the way we were doing what was best for the campaign and our visibility and performance on Kickstarter. The set up, the pace, the actions we took leading up to the launch, and a lot of what we did during our launch is thanks to Brandon’s guidance.
Tom Morkes, Insurgent Publishing
Tom is our book launch manager, and he was responsible for igniting well over one thousand engagements leading up to, and throughout, our launch. Why was our marketing so powerful? Because of Tom and his team.
John Lee Dumas, Creator of The Freedom Journal
You didn’t think I’d leave this guy out, did you? ;)
Me! Kate Erickson, Quality Control
I’ve always got questions, I’m always thinking about “what’s next”, and I have a knack for avoiding potential disasters when it comes to bigger projects because I’m obsessed with the details. I was all over quality control every step of the way.
Ready to learn how John came up with an idea, brainstormed and planned his way to an actual outline, hired a team who could help him bring his idea to market, and then successfully marketed and launched The Freedom Journal to the world on Kickstarter, resulting in over $453k raised in 33 days?
Buckle up, friends – you’re in for a wild ride!
The Idea Phase
Let’s get back to Sail Bay and the walk John and I were on when he first told me about his idea for this journal…
Initially, I wasn’t really sure I “got” John’s idea in the same way he did.
I mean, of course I know what a physical journal is, and I’m a huge fan of goal setting, but as per usual, I had dozens of questions for him…
What can someone expect as a result if they use this journal?
How will it be different and unique from the other journals out there?
Who is going to actually help you create this physical journal?
How will you launch and sell the journal?
Wait, what? (Yeah, in true JLD style, this idea definitely went way beyond what I ever could have imaged…)
And while John didn’t have answers to ALL the questions I asked at that point in time, he definitely carried an air of confidence.
I could tell right then and there he was going to create this journal.
A few weeks passed, and John continued talking about his goal of creating a physical journal. (Wondering how on earth you would even come up with a goal like this? Here’s how.)
Each time we chatted, his goal and vision became a little bit clearer.
The purpose of the journal, its uniqueness, and the actual plan behind making it a reality – it was all starting to come into view.
Despite the fact that John wasn’t entirely clear on ALL the things he would have to do in order to make this journal a reality – to actually accomplish this monster goal he had set – he talked about his idea for the journal with everyone who would listen, and it was clear to me John was practicing what we preach here at EOFire:
Regardless of whether or not everything is super clear to you – the plan, the steps, the variables – always keep moving forward; take just one step towards your goal every single day.
Aside from actually doing the research – and the work that followed – the most important first step John took was this: talking about his idea and sharing his vision with others.
Through doing so, he received invaluable feedback from his mastermind, from his online mentors, and even ended up connected with those who ended up becoming huge players on our launch team as a result.
Talking about his idea also got him closer to proof of concept – a huge step in the process of creating anything for your audience.
You always have to ask yourself: “Is this something my audience actually wants and needs?”
Here at EOFire, we’ve typically gone about gaining proof of concept through presenting an idea, then asking people to pay us money for it.
This is how we proved our idea to create our online podcasting community, Podcasters’ Paradise, and our online webinar community, Webinar On Fire.
We didn’t actually create anything except for a presentation to communicate the idea of these communities to our audience.
Then, after our presentation, we asked them to prove to us this idea was something they wanted and needed by paying us money for it.
Only THEN did we create Podcasters’ Paradise and Webinar On Fire.
And guess what? This process worked really well for us. To date, we’ve earned nearly $4 million in revenue from these two online communities.
But The Freedom Journal was a bit different…
When we came up with the idea for Podcasters’ Paradise, our business was barely one year old. We knew our avatar Jimmy really well, but did we really know the true wants and needs of those in our audience who were different from Jimmy?
Proof of concept in the form of money was mandatory for us if we wanted to know for sure we weren’t wasting our time.
With The Freedom Journal, here’s what was different…
WE’VE BEEN GETTING TO KNOW FIRE NATION FOR 3 YEARS
Our audience, Fire Nation, has been with us from the beginning.
They tune in every single day to hear John talk to a successful entrepreneur, ask them the same exact questions he asked the day before, and we know exactly why they want, need and love what it is we currently offer.
We’ve been listening and getting to know Fire Nation for 3 years now.
THE SAME QUESTION, OVER AND OVER AGAIN
John has been receiving the SAME question over and over from Fire Nation: “What sets the successful entrepreneurs who you interview on EOFire apart from everyone else?“
After receiving this question hundreds of times, John knew that whatever the answer, there was a want and need for people to know.
So, John set out to answer that question.
THE POWER OF A LANDING PAGE
Instead of asking people to pay us money for The Freedom Journal before we even created it, we decided to go with a different kind of “proof of concept”: we put up a landing page.
Then, we asked Fire Nation to sign up for more info on The Freedom Journal if it sounded like something they’d be interested in.
The campaign that would follow after someone signed up for more info was pure value: a promise from us to deliver a true behind-the-scenes look at The Freedom Journal project as it was happening.
But check this out: we weren’t just asking for an email address in exchange for valuable info (we know Fire Nation loves the behind-the-scenes!) Instead, we were asking for an email address in exchange for a journey – an experience.
By sharing his own goal setting process with Fire Nation through this early interest campaign, John was already introducing the power of what The Freedom Journal would deliver.
Inviting Fire Nation along on this journey was inviting them to participate in John’s journey to setting and accomplishing his own #1 goal, which is what The Freedom Journal promises: set and accomplish your #1 goal.
Each of these emails was created as we approached a new milestone in creating The Freedom Journal, with strong goal setting lessons in between.
Here’s a quick look at that campaign, which was NOT built out beforehand – I created each and every email as John’s goal progressed.
Tens of thousands of people signed up to learn more about this project we were working on long before the actual production was underway, proving to us that the idea of The Freedom Journal was definitely of interest.
Given the experience and knowledge we’ve gained over the past 3 plus years of running EOFire, and having had thousands upon thousands of interactions with our audience, we felt the three things above gave us enough proof to move forward with creating The Freedom Journal.
So while you may not ALWAYS ask for proof of concept in the form of money, it’s typically the best and safest way to go.
In any case, always get proof of concept during your Idea Phase so you don’t waste time, bandwidth and money on creating something your audience doesn’t want or need – even if you think you KNOW they want and need it.
Alright, so John has his idea for the journal, he knows what it will focus on, and he’s starting to see the details and steps a little more clearly…
He also has proof of concept from an audience who has told him they’re interested in his idea.
A goal properly set is halfway reached. ~ Zig Ziglar
Next, it’s time to put a plan in place to actually execute the idea.
The Brainstorming & Planning Phase
From January to April 2015, John continued laying the foundation for his plan by writing out each individual step he needed to take (or thought he needed to take), along with identifying the help he would need to enlist to accomplish his goal.
Planning – especially when it comes to a physical product – can be intimidating.
In fact, when I asked Riche Norton of Prouduct what his take on creating a physical products is, here’s what he had to say:
Creating a physical product is a TON of work.
For example, take a look at any product around you right now; then, imagine all the parts that go into that product (even down to the ink of the printing of the logo, or the sticker with the label or bar code).
Then, imagine this: all those pieces had to come from somewhere.
The raw materials have to be refined; the components have to be made; the pieces then have to come together in one place, (which may have been made in different factories), and be assembled.
After all that, the final product still has to be shipped to a warehouse, and then shipped again to the end user.
It’s a massive process.
If you really think about it, it’s miraculous how physical products are made in our global economy and show up in our homes so we can enjoy them – sometimes within hours of ordering them.
At the end of the day, a physical product is first made with an idea.
It starts in your head.
You put it on paper, and then take the next steps to making your dream a reality.
Every small step counts in the process of eventually creating the finished product.
And just like Richie said, little by little, The Freedom Journal started coming together…
Let’s take a look back at some milestones from the first 4 months after John had his idea…
Fun fact for January 2015
In January, with the help of a hot tub brainstorming session on a little workcation in Puerto Vallarta with Jill and Josh Stanton, John discovered the perfect name for his journal.
What started out as “Journal Freedom” eventually became “The Freedom Journal“.
Fun fact for February 2015
On February 10, 2015 John had 8 back-to-back interviews scheduled for EOFire.
One of those interviews was with the Founder of Prouduct, a sourcing solution for physical products.
His name is Richie Norton, and as you already know, he became THE man behind the physical creation of The Freedom Journal.
This partnership was as a result of the post-interview chat Richie and John had that very same day.
Fun fact for March 2015
John started reaching out to respected leaders in our space who could help give him tips and insights on their own publishing journey. After all, this was John’s first go at creating a physical product.
“What have others who came before me done in order to successfully launch a physical book?“
He connected with Jonathan Fields, Founder & Host of Good Life Project. John and Jonathan’s relationship started back on episode 104 of EOFire, and since, John has been a guest on Jonathan’s show and a speaker at Camp GLP (Good Life Project).
While Jonathan was sharing insights from his own experience with launching his book, Uncertainty, he offered John an introduction to the person who put his book together for him.
In the coming weeks, John would be introduced to Sutton Long, the woman who actually compiled The Freedom Journal in its original digital format and helped John come up with the cover design for The Freedom Journal.
Fun fact for April 2015
John started working on the layout of The Freedom Journal by sketching out on paper his first draft outline.
What would the pages look like?
What would the design on the cover be?
Hard cover vs. paperback?
What types of tasks or prompts should be included?
During this time, John did a considerable amount of research on what other already-existing journals included. He was determined to make The Freedom Journal unique, and this is the stage where he made sure that would happen.
You may have found yourself in a similar situation before: you have an idea and you want to start putting a plan in place so you can turn your idea into reality.
But what if you’re not sure what the steps are that will help make up your plan for accomplishing your goal?
I like to take a 3-step approach to breaking an idea down into actionable steps, or micro-goals, you’ll have to hit along the way.
It starts with setting aside the time to actually do the work: FOCUS.
Carve out just 30 minutes, or 1 hour, to sit down uninterrupted and get started with these 3 steps.
1. JUST START WRITING (choose your focus)
There are things you DO know about the steps you need to take to accomplish your goal. You may not know ALL the steps, but you do know some.
Start writing.
Take out a piece of paper and start writing out what you do know, and then choose the ONE thing you’re going to focus on first based on priority of tasks.
The other steps will present themselves to you in the form of roadblocks or pivots, so don’t be so concerned with what you don’t know right now.
The important thing right now is to start taking action on what you do know.
2. DO RESEARCH
Surely whatever you’re looking to accomplish has been done before by someone else.
Have you typed into Google what it is you’re trying to accomplish, along with words like “how to”, “outline” or “project plan”?
For example, if my goal is to publish a physical book, then I might Google:
How to publish a physical book
or
Project plan for publishing a physical book
Sometimes good old research can take you a long ways towards getting down the smaller steps and milestones you’ll need to hit in order to accomplish your bigger goal.
Again, the rest of the steps will come to you, but you have to get started in order to figure them out.
3. ASK OTHERS WHO HAVE ALREADY DONE IT
We are ALL standing on the shoulders of giants; ask others who have already done what it is you’re trying to do what they did.
It doesn’t mean you’re going to copy them or steal their ideas; you’re simply giving yourself a place to start.
In order to find people who have already done what you’re trying to do, join an online community that is focused in the area your goal is about; reach out to your existing online contacts, mentors, or mastermind members and simply ask: “Have you ever done this before, or do you know someone who has?“
Start talking about what it is you’re looking to accomplish and you’re bound to find someone who has either:
– already done it themselves,
– knows someone else who has done it, or
– can make some educated recommendations that will help you take your next step forward.
Once John had written out the steps he knew he needed to take in order to accomplish his goal, he could then start creating a timeline and delegating those parts of his plan he knew he couldn’t execute alone.
I’m going to dive into what the timeline and delegation looked like in the next Phase, but first:
Always remember what it is you’re best at, and when you come across a step or part of the process that seems super scary because you have NO IDEA how to accomplish it, reach out to someone who does.
Not sure what you’re best at?
Ask 5 friends and family members to write down 5 things that they think you’re best at.
Simultaneously, start making a list of all the things you have experience doing – things you’ve done in previous jobs, or things you were really good at in school.
You might write down that you’re good at things like:
working with numbers;
coming up with creative ideas;
managing a lot of moving pieces;
seeing the big picture;
attention to detail;
noticing missing pieces;
taking an idea and then running with it…
Also think about when you’re most excited about working on something. What is your role in those situations? What part do you play really well and enjoy doing?
Now that you have an idea of what you’re best at, let’s talk about what you can do with the parts of your plan you know you’re NOT best at.
We talked about how we turned to those who are pros in their niche for help at the very beginning of this post. Perhaps as important as taking action yourself is knowing when and what to delegate to someone else.
The digital design, the illustration, the editing, the production, the materials, the distribution… these were all tasks on John’s plan that he listed out when going through the 3 steps I outlined above; they’re also all areas John is not an expert in.
Here’s a look at what John’s initial plan (him simply writing out the steps he knew he needed to take in order to accomplish his goal) looked like:
First things first, John needed to create a mock up of how he envisioned the journal looking.
So, the first step on John’s plan?
Create a mock up of The Freedom Journal
No fancy designs or perfect pages – just a sketch of how the pages and the journal overall would look.
Pretty straight forward, right?… You want to create a journal, so in order to do that, a clear step in the beginning of the process would be actually drawing, sketching, or outlining what that journal will look like and include.
As a result of taking action and completing this first step, John realized he needed someone who had experience actually putting books together digitally and designing layouts.
He wouldn’t have thought about this had he not gotten started, but because he took his first step, he was presented with his next.
Instead of wasting his own time working IN all of these areas when he could be leveraging his time working ON the project as a whole (the timing, the marketing, the outreach, the vision & message he wanted to communicate), John went in search of his launch team.
“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” ~ Pablo Picasso
Accomplishing your biggest goals doesn’t happen haphazardly, and it certainly doesn’t happen alone.
Once you’ve started drawing out a plan and the steps you’ll need to take along the way, find the support you need and ask for help.
The Hiring Phase
As John started taking just one step forward towards accomplishing his goal, his next steps started to reveal themselves.
Once he had created a mock up of how he wanted The Freedom Journal to look, he needed to find someone who could help him put it together.
Good thing he had that conversation with Jonathan Fields… as you already know, for this step of the process John hired Sutton Long.
Sometimes all it takes it asking around to see if anyone you know can recommend someone who specializes in X in order to find the perfect person for the job.
This would be the very first delegated task John would hire for – well, other than partnering with Richie for the physical production of The Freedom Journal.
Bringing Sutton on board created a sort of domino effect in the hiring process.
As John continued to take one tiny step forward with the creation of The Freedom Journal digital file, he realized there were a lot more steps in the process he hadn’t thought of – and that he knew he couldn’t do all on his own.
By the time Sutton had the very first digital file for John to review, the next several steps in his plan started to present themselves.
This is when I stepped in to start overseeing the project details, manage the moving pieces that were coming into play, and call out things that might be missing.
So you have an idea of what the process looked like as these new steps starting presenting themselves and we began looking for the individuals who would become a part of our core launch team, here it goes…
Once I had the digital journal file from Sutton, and a request from John to start making moves to bring this version 1 file to a final file for printing, I started with what I already knew needed to happen.
You can think of this like my own mini plan within John’s overall plan:
Printer specifications;
Editing;
Revisions;
Details check;
Final design.
While these may not be the exact steps – or even all the steps – that come to mind when you receive the first version of something and are tasked with making it final, I bet looking at them now they seem rather obvious, right?
Of course, before something becomes final and is ready to send off, you need to know what you’re sending off. So my first step was to confirm any specifications the printer expected when they received the final file.
Then, as is true with anything we create, I knew there needed to be an editing process. This was especially important with this project because we were requesting 10,000 prints of The Freedom Journal our first go-around.
When you think in those terms, 1 tiny mistake actually results in 10,000 mistakes.
While I’m typically responsible for a lot of the editing that goes on here at EOFire, I knew we couldn’t take the risk of my less-than-professional editing skills on a project this big.
So I reached out to an editor I used to work with at an advertising & marketing agency to help with the editing process.
I knew her work was TOP NOTCH because I had worked with her on very similar projects for over a year; I also knew she was working as a freelancer at the time.
Luckily, she said yes, and that’s the day we hired Whitney Henry as our editor.
While Whitney was working on her first pass, I realized it would be beneficial to introduce her and Sutton; after all, there was no need for me to be the middle woman when going from editing to revisions.
Because I had worked with Whitney a TON at the agency, it was a great combo; I was able to quickly get answers to any questions related to the mark up from Sutton, and I was also able to check Sutton’s revisions with confidence.
Here’s a look at parts of Whitney’s first pass on editing:
…and this is exactly why we needed to hire a pro for this part of the process!
As the editing and revisions were happening, I started going down my list of steps, paying a little more attention to the details – like the quotes that were being used and the recommended resources that were included – and also to the overall design.
During this “close review” is when I realized we could definitely step up our game with the illustrations inside of the journal (see that group of people with their hands in the air in the image above? Yikes!)
I’m not a designer, nor do I claim to be anything more than a sub-par drawer. What I did know is that the placeholders were not in line with our brand or the desired feel of The Freedom Journal, and I knew I could communicate that well – I just wouldn’t be able to create it myself.
If we wanted this done right, we were going to have delegate this task.
In order to take the next step with the illustrations, I reached out to our designer, Brandy Shea, and I asked if she could help us source illustrations for the journal.
Brandy has been doing work for us for nearly 3 years; knowing her expertise and familiarity with our brand, I knew she was the right person to turn to.
After she accepted, I wrote her an email that included details about the style we were going for and the overall look and feel we wanted the journal to have.
I also sent her the cover design that John and Sutton had created, along with some examples of illustrations that I liked and thought would be a good fit for the inside.
Here’s the exact email I sent to Brandy at this stage in the game. It was sent on June 22, and included these points and details:
As per usual, Brandy nailed it!
She got to work sourcing illustrations for us, and within a month we had landed on our final design elements for the inside of the journal, which are the same ones you see in The Freedom Journal today.
Alright, let’s check in with our timeline…
Fun Fact for May 2015
What started out as a scanned copy of John’s mock up being sent to Sutton, and then John passing a PDF version from Sutton over to me for editing, resulted in two team members being hired to help: Whitney and Brandy.
Fun Fact for June 2015
We went through the editing and revision process 6 times before we discovered that the first 10 day sprint was completely missing!
Fun Fact for July 2015
John and I took a trip out to Maine to see his family, and we met up with Whitney at a cafe where she handed over the hard copy edits she had done. WOW! It was so cool to actually hold something that was directly tied to John’s goal for the first time; everything up to this point had been digital.
John rescheduled an interview for late July that he had originally planned on doing in September with a guy named Brandon T. Adams. It was during this rescheduled interview in July that Brandon introduced himself as a crowdfunding expert and subsequently was brought on board The Freedom Journal launch team.
Fun Fact for August 2015
Richie was prepping for his trip to China in order to oversee the actual printing of The Freedom Journal!
Simultaneous to all of the moving pieces I was managing, John was focusing on the very beginnings of the marketing and outreach plan for The Freedom Journal.
After dozens of conversations with Brandon and others who had done book and physical product launches before him, John decided he would launch the journal on Kickstarter. More details on the reasoning behind the Kickstarter decision ahead…
Once Brandon was on board and ready to help us with the Kickstarter aspect, John went in search of a book launch manager.
At this point, the whole hiring phase might be starting to sound like it was all a little too easy, right?
How did all these team members just “appear” for us?
How did we even know we need these people on our team in the first place?
Again, as we continued taking one step forward on our journey to accomplishing this goal, we started realizing other steps – other pieces of the puzzle – that were missing.
If John wouldn’t have come to me and asked me to edit Sutton’s digital file of the journal and take it from version 1 to final, then we would have continued on, not realizing we actually needed an editor.
We also probably never would have guessed we’d need a designer for the illustrations – we only realized these things once we had gotten to the review stage, at which point it was obvious things like the existing illustrations weren’t going to cut it.
And speaking of unexpected steps… Brandy’s contribution to The Freedom Journal launch team went way beyond just sourcing illustrations.
When I talked to Brandy about the time she spent on The Freedom Journal project, and the number of design iterations she went through from start to finish, here’s what she came back with:
Number of design iterations for our Kickstarter page
I’d say that I probably mocked up about 3-5 branded “themes” before settling on the Kickstarter launch theme we ended up using.
We also tried quite a few variations of the frames around each individual picture you saw on the Kickstarter page (3+); the section headers (7+); the reward level graphics (3+); and the campaign cover image (which was updated 10+ times during the live Kickstarter campaign).
The overall planning and mockup process was actually pretty similar to designing an entire website.
Leading up to the January 4 launch, Brandy clocked 64 hours (this was in December alone) working on graphics and The Freedom Journal design – that’s just for the Kickstarter page! (So that doesn’t include time spent creating other web graphics, images we used for ads, or any of our social media assets).
Additional marketing materials created by Brandy
Cover images advertising the launch of the Kickstarter campaign for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, & Google+;
Cover image for The Freedom Journal Facebook group;
Sidebar graphics for the EOFire website (created about 3-4 different versions);
At least 5 different sets of graphics for Facebook and Instagram ads.
Number of photoshoots we did for the campaign: Seven!
Brandy did 3 photoshoots to get “hero shots” of the journal;
Brandon did 1 photoshoot of the journal “in action”;
John and I did 2 separate professional photoshoots to get the lifestyle shots you see on social media and in our marketing;
We had a photographer at The Freedom Journal Launch Party to take shots of the journal.
This is not to mention the hours we spent with Caleb Wojcik and his team to create, shoot and produce The Freedom Journal Kickstarter video, which you can check out a “behind the scenes” look at right here.
Image credit: Caleb Wojcik, editing: Jen Wojcik
Wait, who’s Caleb, and how did we know to hire him for our Kickstarter video?!
Well, we’ve known Caleb for quite some time now – first as a fellow entrepreneur who lives in the San Diego area, then as a fellow mastermind member, and most recently, as a guy who is really amazing at what he does: videography.
Getting an inside look at Caleb’s business and the direction he wanted to take it from being in a mastermind together, we knew he’d be perfect for the job.
So, we reached out, asked if he would be able to help, and he said “YES!”
Now I don’t want you to think we just magically knew these were all the things we needed to create, and that these were all the people we needed on our team.
It was one step at a time that led us to realizing we definitely needed an editor, a designer, a Kickstarter expert and a book launch manager (among the many other team members you’ve heard me mention throughout this section).
And so once we started diving into the strategies and recommendations from Brandon around the Kickstarter launch, that’s when we realized we needed someone who could keep an eye on – and help us oversee – all the moving pieces.
There were A LOT of moving pieces.
Tom Morkes became our sixth launch team member, which completed our dream team for The Freedom Journal launch.
The Freedom Journal Launch Team
From top left to right: Brandy Shea, John Lee Dumas, Richie Norton, Brandon T. Adams, Kate Erickson, Tom Morkes
If you’re working on launching a Kickstarter campaign, you certainly don’t have to have the same set of team members, or even put together all the marketing and launch materials we did.
The time spent on editing, designing, planning and sourcing illustrations, all the way down to the exact number of hours Sutton spent on putting our final digital file together, or that Brandy spent prepping our Kickstarter page for launch, will vary depending on your project.
This is meant to be a guide – not the exact steps everyone has to take in order to be successful on Kickstarter.
“You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.” ~ Jim Rohn
One – step – at a time.
The Marketing & Launch Phase
Now that our entire launch team was in place, it was full steam ahead on laying out our marketing and launch plan.
Once John decided on Kickstarter as a launch platform for The Freedom Journal, a lot of our marketing plan was created – and played off of – that decision.
Given the authority of the Kickstarter platform, we would be treating Kickstarter like our “home base” for the 33 days of the campaign, and knowing where we wanted to send people (to the Kickstarter campaign) made it much easier for us to determine what types of marketing communications would be most beneficial.
Before we dive into the specifics of why Kickstarter played such a powerful role in our launch, let’s check in with our timeline as we move into the Marketing & Launch Phase so you have a good grasp on where John was at in terms of accomplishing his goal:
Fun Fact for September 2015
We got to do a killer FaceTime call with Richie while he was walking through the factory as The Freedom Journal was being printed! Here it is:
Fun Fact for October 2015
John called up Richie at essentially the “twelfth hour” and told him we had to add a second strap to the front of the journal to hold pages down on both sides – something that was never in the initial plan, but that John saw on another journal and knew we had to implement ourselves.
That’s not all… I asked Richie if there were any other “late adds” and he shared this fun little fact:
John was very particular in what he wanted. For example, the bookmark had to be just right. In fact, the factory had to go to the marketplace and buy special material that met John’s specifications for the bookmark, and then they had to dye it from white to gold. It was intense!
Fun Fact for November 2015
We received a shipment at our front door of the very first set of Freedom Journals, and that same week John personally shipped out Freedom Journals to key influencers, including our “33 day” EOFire guests. (More on the 33 days in a minute…)
Fun Fact for December 2015
John started out with over 40 levels for the Kickstarter campaign, but after speaking with several Kickstarter experts, including Clay Hebert of CrowdfundingHacks.com, he narrowed it down to just 17 levels for the Jan. 4th launch.
Let’s focus on the production aspect for a minute: to Richie’s point before, creating a physical product is a lot of work.
So when I asked Richie how many people were actually involved – like all-hands-on-deck in China – here’s what he shared:
Estimate: On the actual book there were probably about 100-150 people’s hands involved in printing, binding and packaging.
But when you consider all the components it took to produce each part of the book, we’re talking about hundreds more.
For example, the cardboard inside the cover comes from one supplier; the faux leather from another supplier; the paper from another supplier; the gold edging from another; and so on and so forth.
I think we could be conservative and say if you go down to the raw materials, it could be anywhere from 300-400 people that worked in one way or another to produce The Freedom Journal.
Here’s a look at the journal actually being printed, bound and shipped from overseas:
See that guy standing back there behind the millions of Freedom Journal pages? That’s Richie on the ground in China overseeing the press.
So now that you have an idea of where we’re at timeline-wise, let’s dive into why Kickstarter was such a powerful platform for us, and what aspects of the Kickstarter platform we leveraged in order to have such a successful launch.
Why Kickstarter?
This is one of the most common questions we’ve received from our audience throughout our journey to launching The Freedom Journal.
Here are some of the major reasons why we chose Kickstarter vs. just using our own platform, EOFire.com:
1. The platform and potential exposure
Stats don’t lie – check out the reach of the Kickstarter platform to date (stats taken from the Kickstarter website on March 14, 2016):
When you have the opportunity to leverage a platform that will help you promote your project and has this sort of track record, why wouldn’t you use it?
Plus, Kickstarter was providing us with a non-biased 3rd party for our launch. There is no gray area or question as to whether or not we actually had over 7,000 backers or raised over $453k during our 33 days on Kickstarter. It’s fact.
2. The customization and opportunities
Kickstarter not only allows you to create your own page with your own design for your project, you can also create multiple levels for your backers to choose from.
If we were to simply promote The Freedom Journal launch on our website and still try to introduce multiple levels to our audience, it would take special coding, multiple plugins and we’d probably get less than half the visibility and stats on the project as a whole.
With Kickstarter, we were able to create a $2 level, a $39 level, a $250 level – even a $10,000 level – all with a few dropdown selections and the click of a button.
Plus, Kickstarter gave us detailed reports and updates on who was buying, where they were buying from, and what they were buying whenever we wanted.
The capabilities of the Kickstarter platform really helped bring what we could offer – and who we could offer it to – to the next level.
3. The engagement and participation
Crowdfunding brings people together. It gives backers something in common (supporting a campaign) and it allows you, the project creator, to bring your backers into your world.
Giving people ownership and a part to play in the process makes a huge difference. As humans, we want to be a part of something and we want to participate in experiences.
Kickstarter allowed us to bring our community along on this journey with us to launching The Freedom Journal. They weren’t JUST investing in a journal, they were investing in an experience with us.
Again, having Kickstarter nailed down as our launch platform helped shape all of the marketing we would do leading up to, and during, the campaign.
Now that we had the Kickstarter platform on our side, it was time to get creative with the marketing tactics we’d use to get people there.
Marketing plays a huge role in not only helping you bring what it is you have to offer to the world, but also in helping the world find what it is you have to offer.
After a ton of back and forth and a lot of brainstorming we settled on 5 key marketing tactics we would use together to make a huge splash.
There were of course a lot of marketing ideas we tossed around that didn’t make the cut, but more on that in our lessons learned section.
Once we had settled on the 5 key marketing tactics, we did what we could to divide them amongst the launch team members, each of us having an area where we would “take the lead” so to speak.
When it came down to planning and organizing the several moving pieces that would eventually come together to make up our marketing strategy, there were a lot of tools we leveraged to help.
As an example, Tom and his team use Basecamp as a communication and project management tool, and Basecamp is where we kept track of who was doing what and where we were at in the process with a lot of strategies. A new thread for each idea helped us keep things straight.
For example, one of our threads was specifically related to how we were going to get our Press Release picked up.
We also had a thread that was dedicated to keeping track of the guest posts we were writing and when they actually went live.
This helped us keep on top of the content we needed to create, and who was in charge of that piece of the puzzle.
Google Drive and Dropbox were also two tools we used A LOT throughout the campaign to share documents and files quickly and easily.
Alright, let’s review the 5 key marketing tactics we used first, since they were all things we did far in advanced of our actual launch; then we’ll dive into what actually happened on launch day and beyond.
The 5 key marketing tactics we employed to crush our Kickstarter Campaign
1. Making The Ask
One of the biggest marketing tactics we employed throughout the entire campaign was The Ask.
John has now interviewed over 1,200 entrepreneurs, and for the past 3+ years he’s been building relationships with these people and giving as much value as possible away to those he has connected with.
The Freedom Journal launch was John’s opportunity to now ask for their help.
Remember earlier when I mentioned that Tom, our book launch manager, was responsible for over one thousand engagements?
Tom was the lead on The Ask marketing tactic because this is what he does: he helps manage book launches, which always require that you have some type of support from others in your industry or niche in order to launch big.
That support might be by way of a testimonial, a foreword, or them actually sharing your project with their audience.
With Tom and his team’s help, we sent emails requesting support from every single interviewee who has ever been on EOFire.
Here’s the initial outreach email Tom sent to each of our past guests on EOFire:
When Tom received replies back from these outreach emails, it was our #1 goal to get people to share The Freedom Journal on January 4th with their audience via an email.
So when someone responded saying, “Yes, I’d love to help out; send me the info!“, then Tom would reply with another email that focused on what we wanted most.
We’d say something like…
“While any support you could give would be very helpful and much appreciated, we are looking for your support from the most powerful touch point you have with your audience: an email to your entire list about The Freedom Journal.“
We know the power of a list, and so that was our #1 goal with each and every contact we reached out to.
Those who agreed to email their list were on our pre-release list: we sent The Freedom Journal to those who were willing to help support the launch so they could feel confident about what it was they were recommending.
We also included a link to a detailed page in these reply emails, where those who wanted to support could find all the info, links, images and direction they would need in order to make it as easy as possible. This is sometimes known as “swipe copy”, or “swipe files”.
This is really important when you’re