Episode 19: “Tuning Into Your Superpowers” with Crowdfunding Guru Khierstyn Ross (#ThisIsMyEra the Podcast)
What does it take to start a successful crowdfunding campaign? Khierstyn Ross knows the secrets – and she’s learned through her own successes and failure. After her first attempt at a crowdfunding campaign failed miserably, she worked hard to learn from her mistakes and ended up raising $600,000 in funding… and going on to become a crowdfunding guru who helps her clients bring exciting new products to market.
In this episode, Kuda Biza and Alexander Star talk to Khierstyn to learn the secrets of her success. Listen now to learn what goes into a successful campaign on Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, as well as how Khierstyn discovered how to harness her personal strengths to become a successful entrepreneur and scale her consulting business. Khierstyn is refreshingly transparent about how she learned through trial and error, meaning that this episode is full of takeaways about tuning into your own strengths and finding your own personal route to success.
Dig in deep in order to learn from failure.
After Khierstyn’s first crowdsourcing campaign didn’t raise the funds she had hoped, it would have been easy to just call it a failure. Instead, she carefully examined the components of her campaign in order to figure out what went wrong. Through research, she was able to adjust her strategy and relaunch the campaign, eventually accomplishing massive success.
Khierstyn’s experience reveals that learning from failure is key – but also that it takes putting in the work to divine what lessons are to be learned from that failure.
Embrace your strengths, and let them guide you.
A lot of Khierstyn’s story is rooted in self-discovery. After spending several years working as a mentor to college-age entrepreneurs, she tried to enter the corporate world… and even though she tried two different positions, eventually she accepted that the traditional corporate job wasn’t for her. Khierstyn is, to her core, an entrepreneur, and her success came after embracing that part of herself.
Khierstyn points out that, unlike a lot of entrepreneurs, she didn’t quit her traditional job in order to start pursuing a passion. Instead, the passion came second. But once she started single-mindedly working to manifest the vision of a life she had for herself in which she was her own boss, the rest eventually fell into place.
Find your audience.
This was a key takeaway from Khierstyn’s first experience with crowdsourcing: in order to launch successfully, you need to put the audience in place first. As Kuda points out, this is true in many realms of entrepreneurship, not just when crowdfunding. In order to have the social capital to launch a new product, you first need to find the people who will cheer you on, buy your product, and support your mission.
(If you’re anxious to get started, skip ahead to 31:30 for Khierstyn’s advice on building an audience for your launch!)
TAKE MASSIVE ACTION NOW
Map out your week.
Every Sunday, Khierstyn spends time setting her priorities and key tasks for the week ahead. This helps her mentally visualize the way her time will be spent over the next week, as well as break down into concrete steps everything that needs to be accomplished.
She’s a fan of using Asana, which is an app that works particularly well when coordinating teams. If you’re more of a pen-to-paper person, take a look at the #ThisIsMyEra 90 Day Planner, which includes a weekly overview that will help you consider what needs to be done in the week ahead, as well as reflect on the past week’s accomplishments.
Figure out how to fully capitalize on your peak performance time.
When do you accomplish your best high-level thinking? When does your mind slow down a bit? As Khierstyn emphasizes in this episode, managing your time in order to take advantage of your own peak performance windows is key to maintaining a high level of productivity. For many people, this could mean scheduling big-picture thinking in the mornings, and focusing on less brain-intensive tasks in the afternoon. But if your personal peak times are different, adjust for that self-knowledge and schedule accordingly.
Episode Outline:
00:45: Introduction
02:00: How Khierstyn got her start as an entrepreneur
05:30: When identifying opportunity, focus on the skills you’ll gain.
07:00: Khierstyn’s first, failed crowdfunding campaign
09:00: How she came to terms with not being right for the corporate world.
10:30: How to learn from failure.
14:00: How to analyze your mistakes.
16:30: How Khierstyn learned how to structure her days.
18:00: Why networking was her first step towards finding her path as an entrepreneur.
20:30: What an average day looks like for her now.
23:30: Why Khierstyn takes time to plan out her week every Sunday.
25:00: Her thoughts on digital planning vs. putting pen to paper.
28:30: How Khierstyn tackles the challenges of scaling a business.
30:00: Three of her benchmark tips for success.
31:30: Two ways to build up your audience.
33:10: Khierstyn’s podcast and how to work with her.
Episode Links:
Connect with Khierstyn:
Crowdfundinguncut.com: learn more about her podcast, find resources for starting a crowdfunding campaign, and contact Khierstyn to work with her!
Khierstyn recommends reading The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks.
Connect with #ThisIsMyEra on Facebook (@thisismyeraofficial)
Connect with #ThisIsMyEra on Instagram (@thisismyeraofficial)
Join the conversation across all platforms with the hashtag #ThisIsMyEra
Pull quotes:
“The greats and the legends get named by other people, not themselves.”
“Expect to be uncomfortable and scared… you have to just lean into that.”
