Jan. 8, 2020
For this episode of Art of the Kickstart, we caught up with Cathryn Lavery, the CEO and co-founder of BestSelf Co. At its core, BestSelf Co. is a company that helps you find work-life harmony, think bigger, achieve more, and spark deeper connections. Not only is Cathryn an entrepreneur and creator, but she is a crowdfunding aficionado, having run four crowdfunding campaigns to date. Listen in to hear her talk about what she’s learned as a crowdfunding project creator, how she navigates the world of entrepreneurship, and what’s to come for BestSelf Co. in the future! Topics Discussed and Key Crowdfunding Takeaways Why they decided to take the Kickstarter route in 2015 to validate their initial product before beginning production The value of a strong pre-launch strategy and how they implemented their strategy in order to set their campaign up for success Why adding a personal touch to your messaging is important when it comes to connecting with your backers The benefit of an overarching, shareable content publishing strategy to help support the launch of a crowdfunding campaign (hint: it involves Arianna Huffington) The value of Facebook Groups and how a fan-based Facebook Group developed into a positive, supportive environment that also doubles as a space to source customer feedback Links SELF Journal on Kickstarter BestSelf Co. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life Sponsors Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer's guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Click here to learn more and list your product - use coupon code ATOKK16 for 20% off! Transcript View this episode's transcript Roy Morejon: Welcome to Art of the Kickstart, your source for crowdfunding campaign success. I’m your host, Roy Morejon, president of Enventys Partners, the top full service turnkey product development and crowdfunding marketing agency in the world. We have helped startups raise over a hundred million dollars for our clients since 2010. Each week, I’ll interview a crowdfunding success story, an inspirational entrepreneur or a business expert in order to help you take your startup to the next level with crowdfunding. Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by BackerKit and the Gadget Flow. BackerKit makes software that crowdfunding project creators use to survey backers, organize data, and manage orders for fulfillment by automating your operations and helping you print and ship faster. The Gadget Flow is a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save and buy awesome products. It is the ultimate buyer’s guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Now let’s get on with the show. Welcome to another edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today I am super excited because I am joined by the super talented Cathryn Lavery, CEO and co-founder of BestSelf Co. Cathryn, thank you so much for joining us today on Art of the Kickstart. Cathryn Lavery: Thanks Roy. It’s great to be here. Roy Morejon: So I’m really excited because you are one of the OG Kickstarter creators that have done more than one campaign, more than two. You are, have done now four campaigns on Kickstarter as I’ve just found out, with most recent successful campaign Tempo with over a thousand backers and then your uber successful campaign for the SELF Journal back in 2015 that had over 6,500 backers. So let’s give our audience a little bit of background here on Cathryn and of BestSelf Co. Where did it all start and how did you guys begin the company? Cathryn Lavery: So we started with the SELF Journal, which is a three month based goal planner, which is the original three month based planner essentially. And we’d started that just because it was a pain point that we had. We were scratching our own itch and whenever it came time to actually c...