Get Funded Today: The Funded Today Podcast Funded Today LLC

In this episode, we’re venturing briefly beyond crowdfunding to talk about investing, specifically how you can start your own profitable investment fund. For that, we’re going to interview our special guest Bridger Pennington, a serial entrepreneur who became a highly-successful investment fund manager. So, let’s talk about how you can replicate his success...
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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:
 1. Discipline yourself in small decisions so that you’ll do likewise in big decisions.
 2. Live without regrets by taking worthwhile risks even if you fail—and, to the extent that you’re on the right path, persistently continue trying until you succeed.
 3. A great path to wealth is through owning businesses and/or investing in businesses, as long as you aren’t limited by small market sizes and/or tiny profit margins.
 4. As long as you charge your fund investors only for your performance as their fund manager, and not for other reasons, you don’t need to concern yourself with any burdensome state licensure requirements.
 5. Seek out mentors and learn from them, as human capital is more valuable than financial capital.
 6. Discover your obvious disadvantages, disclose them boldly as advantages in less-obvious ways, and find partners who compensate for what you truly lack but need.
 7. You can enhance your wealth by teaching others how to replicate your success; facilitating their long-term success is more valuable than distributing short-term handouts.
✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!
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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please…
 • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!
 • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!
 • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!
 • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!
We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’ll talk with Mindy Zemrak, who is the Emmy-nominated Supervising Casting Producer of ABC’s “Shark Tank.” This award-winning startup-centered reality show debuted in 2009 and has since featured thousands of entrepreneurs, including over a dozen of our past crowdfunding clients. Mindy is now casting for the show’s 12th season, which will premiere this autumn, and she is going to give us her expert perspective about how YOU can succeed on it. So, on with the show…
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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:
 1. People shouldn’t wait to understand something perfectly before plunging into doing it, as we also learn from our own experience, and practice makes perfect.
 2. Entrepreneurs can apply for “Shark Tank” either through the Internet anytime or in-person at open casting calls, which are held between January and August at various locations nationwide.
 3. Applicants should ideally show passionate energy, have working prototypes, be able to explain succinctly what makes their offers unique, know their numbers, and not necessarily have any sales or positive reviews yet (although these can help).
 4. Applicants are chosen partly for themselves and their story, and partly for their business and their product, and also because they need investment to get to the next step; those who aren’t chosen one year may try again each new year and may eventually get chosen.
 5. Applicants should consider alternative fundraising methods and not rely upon getting featured on “Shark Tank” because 20,000-30,000 entrepreneurs apply for it annually but only hundreds make deals and only 88-108 get featured on television.
 6. Finalists will receive extensive help preparing themselves before they approach a panel of self-made millionaires (who know nothing about them beforehand) to try to negotiate a deal, which usually involves a valuable partnership plus a financial investment; these negotiations will be recorded and possibly condensed into a brief segment for television.
 7. Finalists who appear on “Shark Tank” will get seen before 5-7 million television viewers in what amounts to millions-of-dollars-worth of free advertising, and should prepare to handle a surge in remarketing, sales, cross-sells, upsells, customer-service inquiries, shipping, et cetera, which they can use to expand their business as quickly as possible.
✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!
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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please…
 • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!
 • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!
 • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!
 • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!
We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’ll focus on e-commerce strategy, especially for bootstrapped startups. And, for that purpose, we’re interviewing an expert growth strategist named John Coyle, who’s going to explain how to identify your competitive advantages, how to capitalize upon them to grow your brand, and how to strategize successfully through the three phases of bootstrapped e-commerce. Let’s dive right in…
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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:
 1. Startups must devise products that fit the marketplace well and they must maintain at least one competitive advantage in order to survive.
 2. Startups should develop as many competitive advantages as possible, which may include large market size, current market trends, brand image and/or celebrity support, product uniqueness, benefits-versus-costs, figurative deep pockets, and ample relevant data.
 3. Startups should stack their competitive advantages when marketing themselves.
 4. e-Commerce marketing for bootstrapped startups normally progresses through three distinct phases, which are firstly gaining traction by urgently developing one profitable revenue stream, then reinvesting profits to develop additional profitable revenue streams, and lastly scaling-up all profitable revenue streams as best as possible.
 5. e-Commerce marketing should usually start with advertisements, which are great for steadily yielding quick responses—especially Facebook ads, which access a vast audience while enjoying advanced features, although Google ads are excellent for targeting prospective customers while they’re shopping for what you’re offering.
 6. Although generating leads for e-mail marketing is still superior for yielding cheap results over the long term, some e-commerce marketers may want to expand into the fast-developing field of messenger marketing.
 7. Influencer marketing can help; influencers sometimes request simple upfront fees, but it’s better to negotiate lower fees in exchange for affiliate cuts, which incentivize sales, plus for authority to use their reviews in other forms of marketing that may increase their followers.
✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!
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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please…
 • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!
 • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!
 • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!
 • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!
We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’re going to familiarize you with the world of prototyping and mass-production, specifically as it relates to crowdfunding. Whom should you contact? How can you best keep your ideas from being stolen? How can you best ensure quality? We’re going to overview all of these topics and more in this episode with our very special guest, Gaston Liang, who is an expert in sourcing, manufacturing, packaging, and logistics. So, let’s get started…
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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:
 1. Crowdfunding campaigners should develop their concepts into working prototypes before starting to raise funds to mass-produce them.
 2. Creators should ideally patent their ideas, both in their own country and in their manufacturer’s country, before approaching a manufacturer—and should hire manufacturers through an NNN agreement to minimize their risk of their ideas being stolen.
 3. Creators should consider manufacturing in Asia due to lower costs, may use tools like Alibaba or Jungle Scout or in-person visits to explore manufacturing options for their type of product, should avoid profiteering middlemen like sourcing agents, and should consider both communication and trust when choosing among viable options, plus the ability to accommodate unpredictable order sizes during mass-production phase.
 4. Some manufacturers (like The LGG Corp) can help creators through all phases of production by providing cost-effective professional services like vetting concepts for viability, sketching them, rendering them, engineering and/or designing them into beautiful working prototypes, creating molds to mass-produce finished products, designing manuals and/or packaging to accompany these products, mass-producing and then assembling all of these items properly, warehousing them, shipping them worldwide, and handling legal requirements throughout this process—and it’s advantageous to hire a single agent for all of these tasks who can become intimately familiar with the product.
 5. An average product may require several thousand dollars over 3-4 weeks to be transformed from concept to prototype, which creators may then market-test and perhaps iteratively refine—and it’s ideal to make all errors during prototype phase while it’s cheapest to correct them.
 6. Creators should ideally produce at least 3-5 final prototypes for various purposes, which may include durability testing, product certifications, media production, user feedback, reporter reviews, and packaging design.
 7. Crowdfunding campaigners should avoid being overcharged for molds for mass-production, and should expect to pay 30%-50% upfront for mass-production.
 8. Creators can encourage high-quality mass-production through both effective project management and hired third-party inspections.
 9. Although manufacturers may ship finished products temporarily to creators to store and then mail to consumers, creators may hire professional fulfillment agencies like ShipMonk to perform these tasks, instead, but it’s generally both cheapest and fastest for creators to hire a manufacturer (like The LGG Corp) that performs these tasks.
✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!
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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please…
 • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!
 • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!
 • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!
 • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!
We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

In this episode, we’re going to revive the subject of what to do when your campaign goes wrong—in this case, so terribly wrong that you actually need to restart it. So, we’re going to talk all about the mechanics of re-launches, both voluntary and involuntary. So, if you ever receive one of those dreaded notices that your campaign has been suspended, then don’t panic—we’ve got your back! Let’s get started…
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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:
 1. Creators should remember that failure is normal, avoid any irrational expectations, stay humble enough to progress, work hard, and resist discouragement.
 2. Creators should solicit feedback from backers (and perhaps others) anytime campaigns are not performing ideally, and use it to determine how to improve.
 3. Creators shouldn’t fear to re-launch campaigns whenever they need serious revisions in their product, timing, goal, and/or presentation—and, in doing so, creators should keep their backers fully informed and treat them similarly to pre-launch leads.
 4. It’s important for crowdfunding campaigners to both know and follow the rules for their respective platforms, and to render it sufficiently obvious to reviewers that they’re doing so.

 5. A campaign’s relative popularity statistically increases the likelihood that people will notice any rules-violations that merit suspension.
 6. Kickstarter is notorious for sometimes suspending suspicious campaigns without either warning or explanation, and it will never reinstate suspended ones for any reason whatsoever—but it does make mistakes, and creators can sometimes negotiate with it to re-launch.
 7. When faced with suspension, determine the reason, appeal this decision, inform your backers, preempt the cancellation if possible, re-launch on Kickstarter if possible, remobilize your backers upon re-launch, and then proceed as before.
✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!
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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please…
 • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!
 • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!
 • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!
 • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!
We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!

We’re back atcha today with another good one that includes a very impressive guest who is also literally live on Kickstarter right now! Our client Dale Backus has developed a wildly-popular phone grip that has been raising thousands of dollars per day to challenge a complacent industry leader. Let’s see what we can learn from his crowdfunding story…
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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:
 1. Entrepreneurs don’t always pioneer new markets but sometimes substantially improve existing products by providing new-and-better competition.
 2. Although it’s usually best to start with a minimally viable product (MVP), some products require more-than-minimal functionality to effectively compete.
 3. Crowdfunding can provide a wealth of useful data, including data that helps with manufacturing forecasts.
 4. Customer surveys should be worded very carefully in order to obtain accurate actionable data, or else they might lead surveyors astray.
 5. Backer updates and other communication should be authentic in presenting both the product and its creator.
 6. Effective marketing can’t compensate for a flawed product, but a great product will benefit from effective marketing.
 7. Successful startups need to continue to improve their products/services or else they might allow competitors to overtake them.
✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!
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👉 We want to help as many people as we can; so, if this podcast helps you, then we urge you to please…
 • Subscribe to it on our website so that you don't miss an episode!
 • Discuss it in our private Facebook group with us and fellow entrepreneurs! Join this group to network for success and to get personalized answers to all of your business questions!
 • Review it on iTunes to help us reach more people who need it!
 • And tell all of your associates who might benefit from it!
We rely on YOU to help spread the word!!!