Learning Curve

It’s exhausting, exhilarating and expiring…in 11 days.

We’re just over three weeks into The Adventure Kickstarter. It’s a 33 day campaign that ends on Oct. 30th and by now, I’ve definitely learned a thing or two about crowdfunding a creative project.

Here’s my top three:

1. People are insanely generous and supportive.

   • I’m an introvert. I’m one of those people who might check Facebook daily but rarely posts to it. Obviously with crowdfunding, you have to be a lot more active than one or two posts a month. My introverted self cringes at this. I really don’t want to be annoying to everyone who has been awesome enough to follow my social media pages. However, I’m learning the more you share your experience, the joys, the worries, the ups and downs, the more people want to support you. The more they care, and share, your moments. It’s crazy and awesome.

2. Crowdfunding is an exhausting and exhilarating emotional roller coaster.

   • This might be one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done. There’s a level of exposure to crowdfunding that goes against my paranoid tendencies. But, with the energy and love I’ve put into writing The Adventure, I also really want people to respond to it. So I watch the Kickstarter page like a hawk. And on the days of low or no activity, my brain immediately dives into the worry cycle of “I’ve lost momentum! What am I going to do?” A whole 24 hours passes and my worry is chocking…then someone backs the project and my elation soars and tears threaten my eyes. (Yes, I can be a basket case sometimes. My poor husband). Obviously this is a twisty, turny, uppity, downity roller coaster that in the end will totally be worth it.

3. There isn’t enough preparation in the world!

   • I prepared for the kickstarter in every way I knew how. Now that I’ve gotten into it, I realize that there were more things I could have done. There’s obviously a balance here. You can hit a point where the preparation is really just stalling, but if I run a kickstarter in the future, I’ll definitely be looking at more ways to spread the word. They say it takes at least three times for people to see something before they’ll act on it. Except for friends, it’s kind of difficult to get that high level of exposure for such a home grown project. This is where I need to be bolder. I need to be willing to approach more media, more people in general, who can help get the word out.

There’s my top three. Honestly, I could write whole essays on each one of these and barely scratch the surface but such long monologues would be self indulgent and probably boring to anyone unless they’re running a kickstarter too.

Thanks for listening to my shortish monologues and for sharing in my experience so far!

Blessings,

Jennifer

(We’re 82% funded so far! Thank you to everyone who has shared, supported and encouraged The Adventure process. 18% to go and the project will be 100%! I’m doing a happy dance.)