Michael Walker: Hey, this is Michael from Modern Musician, and before we start the show, I wanted to let you know that right now I’m looking for new artists to mentor personally. Specifically, we’re looking for artists that have at least 1 song professionally recorded. It doesn’t have to be Beyonce level production, but it just needs to be something that you feel proud of and you’re ready to promote. We’re looking for artists who are really just poised for growth, and are ready to go all in on their music. There’s a saying that when the student’s ready, the mentor appears, and so if that's you, if you’re truly ready for it, then I want to invite you to apply for a free coaching call with our team. The goal is to launch an automated system that allows you to build a loyal and engaged fan base so you make a sustainable income with your music online without having to sell your soul to social media, or post 20x a day on TikTok. Before we get started, we always offer a free 30-minute coaching call to make sure it’s a good fit before you get your campaign launched. At this point, the artists that we’ve worked with have hit over 561.3 million streams, a #1 album on iTunes, and we’ve helped many artists grow from scratch to making a full-time income with their music online. In a few rare cases, they’ve even been able to generate over $1 million a year with their music. With that being said, we are very selective with who we work with just based on who’s the best fit and who we can best serve. Because we have a limited amount of time available for those free sessions, we do require an application process where you can submit your music, and you can apply for a free coaching call with our team. So if you’re interested, go ahead and click on the link in the show notes to submit an application and share one of your songs. I'm looking forward to checking out your music, and now… let’s start the show!

Salvador Briggman: Nowadays, people want to hear from you and I don't think you can shy away from the spotlight just because you're afraid, maybe, of offending one or two people. That's like, “Oh, this guy, right? Peddling his CD”. Maybe it's not for them. That's okay. It doesn't mean that they're never going to be your friend again or something like that. Right? It just means that you're just showing up.

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

All right. I'm excited to be here with my new friend, Salvador Briggman. So Salvador founded the popular blog CrowdCrux. He's been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNN, and more, and he helps creators to raise money on crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. He runs a company called LaunchAndRelease.com which focuses specifically on music crowdfunding. For a lot of artists, I think one of the biggest challenges that we have is around monetization and funding and getting things kickstarted, so really looking forward to connecting with them today and talking through some of the best practices that he finds that are working right now for musicians for helping to raise funds to create their music. So Salvador, thank-you so much for taking the time to be here today!

Salvador: Michael, thank-you so much for having me. Looking forward to sharing some great tips and advice with your listeners, and that was a great introduction. Thank-you.

Michael: So kicking things off, for anyone that's watching or listening to this right now, and this is their first time connecting with you. Could you share a little bit about your story and kind of how you got started creating LaunchAndRelease.com?

Salvador: Yeah, sure. So I got started in the industry back in 2012 when I was living in Brooklyn, New York, and I just graduated from George Washington University and I was doing a mini econ thesis comparing the different categories on Kickstarter, which is a website you can use to get funding for things like music, but also for tabletops for inventions, and what I found is that depending on the category you're launching on with Kickstarter, your variables that affect success are going to be very different. So your experience as a musician, if you're trying to grow your fan base or make profit from your music, it can be very different than if you're an inventor or a gamer or someone doing a publishing project like a book. So I really got started with CrowdCrux, which is my blog. I also do a podcast, and over time, I also got to know other people in the industry. Ian Anderson was one of the leaders in the industry in the early days focusing on music crowdfunding. As time has progressed, we've done different collaborations and unfortunately he had to take a step back from the industry, but I've been able to continue to plow forward with a lot of his great work when it comes to his books and courses, and also have my own as well. Sort of at the broader scope there.

Michael: Very cool. You know, it's funny you mentioned Ian. I think that when I was touring full-time with my band Paradise Fears, I think at one point I connected briefly with Ian related to a crowdfunding thing.

Salvador: That's cool. I mean, he's an awesome guy, you know? I think he and I both share this idea that there's not enough good education out there for people who are looking to get funding, specifically if you're a small creator or you're creative inclination, how to actually market yourself, how to get attention, how to build a tribe. There's not a lot of good information and it's great you're doing a show like this as well to deliver that information.

Michael: 100%. Yeah, I mean, that's what it's all about, and that's why I appreciate you being here as well to be able to share and kind of shine a light on some of these areas that might be a little bit dark and challenging for artists.

Salvador: It's also one of those things where I think when we hear marketing/promotion/sales, everyone kind of tightens up. Right. And it's like, if a musician or an artist, people should just like naturally discover my music, but you and I probably both know there's also work that goes into getting people to even notice and to listen and to build the fan base. Right? So there's definitely a lot that happens behind the scenes there.

Michael: 100%. Yeah. The analogy that we use is that sort of like starting a fire, where the fire represents your audience but if all you have are the logs, like the songs or the music, then if you just drop them in a fire pit, and that's all you do, then the fire doesn't just magically start, like you need a way to actually generate the sparks to generate the flame or traffic to get music in front of people.

Salvador: Right. Yeah. In that analogy, I would say crowdfunding is kind of like pouring gasoline on the fire. So if you think about it, you can get your music out there in many different ways. Crowdfunding is very unique in that you're centering all of that attention around a very specific project, which usually also has a fundraising goal, and you're trying to hit that over a very short time span, which is usually around 30 days. So it's literally like pouring liquid gasoline on that fire cause you're getting so much activity in a short span of time. It can be a little bit overwhelming as well, but it also means you're compressing all of that marketing promotion to a really short time span so you get the most out of it in that way.

Michael: makes a ton of sense. Yeah. It seems like… I've heard this idea before from some of my mentors and like the marketing spaces that you really want to make your marketing feel like an event. You want to make it feel like an event and crowdfunding and having a 30-day event is one of the best ways to really kind of focus those efforts. Real quick, I'm curious having worked with lots of artists now and help them to launch their Kickstarter and their crowdfunding campaigns, I'm curious what you found, being some of the biggest, common obstacles or challenges that artists are struggling with that crowdfunding can help provide a solution to. 

Salvador: Sure. So, I mean, I think the first one is setting realistic expectations, right? So crowdfunding is great if you're trying to raise money. I’d say the average would be around $10,000-$10,500. I'd say I specialize for musicians between $10k-$50k. So it's really going for that sweet spot, and if you look at the average as well when it comes to 10k raises, it's around a 100-116 people that are comprising that raise. So first of all, it's just to be realistic. Like, yes, obviously it's great to get a lump sum of cash, but there's also obligations tied to that, which is fulfilling your rewards, maybe going on tour, sending out CDs, paraphernalia like posters, right? So it's about first getting that sense of like realization. I'd say the second big one is understanding what you need to do to have that pull to get those people to show up so you can actually fund a campaign over 30 days between 10-50k. Like, what are you doing behind the scenes? What do you need to have in terms of a video? The campaign page and sort of like the mechanism that gets people to make a decision there.

Michael: Awesome. Sounds like what you're saying is that 1) like this isn't just a magic button or where you press the button and it's like, all right, cool: $10-50k, but you really need to make sure that you're presenting it in the right way and you understand that they're like fulfillments or rewards and there's a system to it, and then actually understanding the mechanics of that system and what do you actually need in order to attract the 100-200 or whatever the amount is for that raise that you're looking for.

Salvador: Exactly, and I think it's kind of confusing cause a lot of times we think crowdfunding, we think strangers, but in reality for a lot of musicians, there's sort of this thing we call the 6 circles of influence, which is that initially, you're usually tapping into your inner circle, and then you're going out to your intermediate circle, you're going to things like your fan base, your fan list, your email list, your social media marketing, and then from there you kind of go outwards to maybe like PR and trying to do some Facebook ads. But it's really starting with your immediate focus, your fans, the people that have your back to kind of jumpstart that fire, as we used that analogy before, and then it sort of grows outwards, if you will.

Michael: That's such a great point. Yeah, it seems like it's an easy tendency to feel like the answer is out there or we feel like what we're looking for is like “out there” and there's like a very self reflective moment where you're kind of like: Oh yeah! There are so many great movies and Hollywood stories it's about, you kinda go on this journey, but ultimately you find out like: Oh, the answer was actually inside of me the whole time. And for a lot of artists, it does seem like it's easy to neglect or overlook our existing community, our existing inner circle, our friends, our family, the people that are really closest to our roots, and so it sounds like what you're saying is that these crowdfunding campaigns, it's like really important not to overlook those roots and, in a lot of cases, that inner circle is going to be a bulk of your crowdfund.

Salvador: Yeah. So, I mean, if we talk about growing your fan base, there's sort of two ways, right? One is going to be having new people listen to your music, and having more people know your name, and having more people who go to a party and your music track is actually playing, or people playing your music. The other is to deepen your relationship with your fan base and to have those fans then also introduce your music to new people. I would say crowdfunding is much more pushing on the second rather than the first. So you're using this event as you, as you phrased, to get people to invest in what it is you're doing, to put their money where their mouth is, to be able to then have a poster of you or your band, to be able to get a CD, to be able to attend your next concert, right? You're using this as a way to deepen your relationship with your fans, and it's one of the coolest things to be able to support a musician that you love, and after that point in time, you can maybe transition to other things like Patreon, which is subscription based crowdfunding and other ways to fund your music. But if we're talking Kickstarter, I'd say it's really about deepening that relationship with your fans, and also having your friends and family be able to play a part in that role, that next stage in your career.

Michael: Let's say that someone's listening to this/watching this right now, and maybe they've thought about the idea of doing a Kickstarter. They've seen other artists doing them for $10,000 or $25,000, or one of our clients, Savannah Pope did a $63,000 Kickstarter raise. So maybe someone's watched this and they see those things happening and they're thinking: huh, maybe I could do something like that, but I'm not really sure where to start. I'm curious what you found to be some of the biggest challenges that artists initially struggled with when it comes to launching a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Salvador: Well the first one, and I can give you an example here: So I have one student whose live right now. So this is Jesse Terry's new album Arcadia and he's already raised $38,000 170 backers. So he initially came and he ended up actually purchasing one of the books that I have on launchrelease.com, and he sort of was just looking to get more information. I think the big thing is not knowing what to do in terms of like a sequence. So we talk about inner circle, right? What are you going to be saying and emailing and messaging and calling in terms of your friends to warm them up to what it is you're doing, without sounding like you're begging or pleading or those kinds of negative things? With your intermediate circle, what are you actually going to communicate? Are you going to send them right to the Kickstarter? How soon or how short are you going to be in terms of doing that? Is this going to be a month ahead? There's a lot of just like nitty gritty detail stuff that I think holds back a lot of musicians who are like: I want to do this, but what is the step-by-step procedure going into it? And also, what do I need to have on a great campaign page to get people excited? What kind of rewards should I be offering? So I would say that when it comes to that, what you're doing and whether you're listening to this podcast or going and looking at other Kickstarter campaigns, you're doing studying right then and there; you're looking at how other people are doing their projects, their rewards, what they're offering. So you're already doing a great step there, but you really have to commit to that process and be willing to move forward in listening to all those and developing a process of: Hey, this is what my marketing plan is going to be. If you want, we can talk more about that.

Michael: Yeah, no, that's fantastic. I'm sure we'd be here for like 10 hours if we want to go through every single step, a step-by-step procedure, but that makes a lot of sense. It's just kind of like that feeling of empty page syndrome or like where do I start, and there's all these different things. I don't know what to do; what steps to take. So you've worked with a lot of artists now and you've helped them do successful, crowdfunding campaigns. What are some of the biggest, common mistakes or things that you see artists doing when they do a Kickstarter campaign that maybe we can help them avoid?

Salvador: Yeah. So the first biggest mistake I see is that a lot of people will discover me or discover information after they've gone live. So they didn't even think about: okay, now I've launched it, now I have to market and promote it. You should really be thinking about that, I'd say, at least 2-3 months ahead of time in order to make sure you have your ducks in a row. The second would be not having scripted communications. I know it sounds really boring. I know it sounds very cookie cutter, and we love to create new stuff, but at the same time, if you're going to be communicating with hundreds or dozens, or even thousands of people on your email list, you really need to think about having scripted communication so you can easily just email to people that you can send out. Then people tend to get very frustrated. They’re like: Oh, I'm writing so many of these emails. I can't go through this. This is so overwhelming. This is a lot of process. So the more that you can streamline that process, that's another big one. The third one is with the video I'd say. The video, people going too long, unfortunately. I love to hear myself talk just like everyone else, but a lot of the times with the video, we really look at the KPI, which is, I'd say between 3-4 minutes max would be a great Kickstarter video. If you're going longer, you gotta be really good at video production to maintain that attention. But the video is just meant as like a teaser to whet people's appetite to build comfort to have them see your face, to be reminded of the songs that they love, to understand how this fits into your career. Right? So failing to do that in the video and having a video that goes too long is another major pitfall. Another one I would say is the rewards. I have a lot of creators who come to me and they're like, Sal, you know what? I'm going to do all digital rewards! I'm going to make tons of profit as a musician with this campaign. It sounds great theoretically, and I agree from a business standpoint, it's great to have high profit margins, but if you really think about the experience for the fans and them being able to hold a CD in their hand or have a poster or having something that they can really just have a memorabilia item. That feels so much cooler and people want to participate in projects like that. So I'd say that's another really big, critical misstep. 

Michael: You’ve listed a bunch of really good ones there, and what I love about things like the conversations like this and be able to avoid mistakes is that each one that you just listed there is potentially, I don't know, a $10,000 mistake that someone could avoid having to learn it the hard way, and through experience learning from each other we can have a shortcut. 

Salvador: Yeah. I just want to add there as well, you don't want to make sure that your audience is getting a lot of value out of this would be: idea of co-creation, which I think really pioneered the crowdfunding industry, which a lot of artists, they think like: Oh, I'm going to release something, and then people just kind of listen to it on their own experience. When it comes to crowdfunding, you're almost kind of creating this experience with your listeners/with your fans. One of the big mistakes is not to do any kind of updates, or to not engage in the comment section because “I'm too cool”, right? They really wanna have a little bit of backstage access where they can just sample or get a comment reply, or be able to read a personal update from you. That stuff is golden, and being able to deliver that experience for your fans, I think, is really game changing, right? If you don't do that and you really shy away from the spotlight, unfortunately, you're going to be leaving a lot on the table. 

Michael: Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So it sounds like co-creation and interacting with your community back and forth is a really important part of maybe even how you create the rewards, how you do the launch. Really, it's a conversation. It's not necessarily just like: Hey, I'm doing this thing, but it's really about kind of going back and forth and communicating with your fans.

Salvador: Exactly. If you'd like, I could also go more into the process leading up to the launch, or I'm not sure if you had another question on there.

Michael: Yeah, I was thinking that maybe where we could go from here is kind of like a zoomed out approach. You mentioned that before you launched the Kickstarter campaign, you don't want to start thinking about this stuff in the middle of the launch, like: all right, I'm live, and oh, wait, no one's seeing it. Like, what am I doing? I've got 20 days left! Ah! You want to at least have 2 or 3 months ahead of time to kind of plan it beforehand and go through the phases. So I'm curious, just like at a high level, if you're looking at a campaign like this, could you break it up like into phases or kind of like stages? What are like, I don't know, 3-5 of the main stages that go into a successful crowdfunding campaign?

Salvador: Right, and kind of on that point, one of the things I say is, the more you freak out in the beginning, the less you're going to freak out before you go live [both laughing]. It's always going to be anxiety. It's always going to be stress, and there's always a little bit of that kind of boiled in with doing something new, but the quicker you get that out of your system/out of the way, then it's much more when it comes to smooth sailing. So in terms of breaking down the launch, I'd say there's a couple of different phases, but I'd say there's two major ones: One is what we call the pre-launch. There's also a technique that we talk about in the book which is preloading, and then when you're live, we think of that more as the live campaign phase, and there's also a post-Kickstarter phase, which would be Kickstarter late pledges are going to Indiegogo in demand, or you can use other survey tools to continue to extend the sale with the campaign. A lot of my focus is on trying to get people to spend more attention and time on the pre-launch because if you get that right, it makes things a lot easier/much more like gliding/smooth sailing. So when it comes to that, I would say the big one is you're doing 2 things at once: you are communicating with your inner circle, your intermediate circle, your fans, all those people we talked about with your circles of influence, and at the same time, you're also assembling your Kickstarter page. So a lot of the times creators might be like: well, I'm going to keep this hidden because I don't want people to think I'm not good at what I'm doing, or I don't want them to critique it. This is actually a great opportunity for you as well to get feedback on your page, and we talk about this as like a preloading technique, with the book: Artist's Guide to Crowdfunding Domination. What you can do there is that by building the page and getting feedback as you're going with the process, you can also get people to input on what it is you're doing to get more excited about the launch, and to feel like they have that kind of special VIP access when it comes to you. So there's a lot more we can talk about, but I do think those would be two of the major stages would be pre-launch in and live with the Kickstarter.

Michael: Yeah, I love kind of zooming out and seeing those things broken up into different phases, and so it sounds like really like the kind of the main phases are those 2, but then you also mentioned there is kind of like that 3rd phase of like post-launch. So like the pre-launch, the launch and the post launch, and you shared a little bit of an overview of like the pre-launch, being about when you kind of interact with your community, you start getting things set up, you start getting feedback, maybe you could give like a brief synopsis of the launch and then like the post-launch and then from there we could maybe dig a little bit deeper into one of those different phases. 

Salvador: Right. So I think, if you're going to be going down this route and you're even thinking of doing a campaign for like 30 days and you're like: Oh, I've listened to the Salvador Briggman guy and he's talking about preparing for three months. It sounds like a lot of work. In my mind, I think the only way you can make the math work out is if you have a really long-term view here. So first of all, with the actual going live with the Kickstarter campaign, like I said, that's around 30 days in which you're live. The first 3 days are extremely critical as a launch period, and the reason why is that research shows, and stats show, and my experience shows that if you can get enough people taking action and backing your campaign on the first day, #1 you start to actually trend in the charts on Kickstarter. #2 other people see that are on the fence, and that's called social proof in marketing terms, and they then start to take action, they start to share it and get really excited. #3 It begins to build momentum and people start to get excited in the comments, they start to engage more when it comes to your updates, so there's a lot more momentum that's built if you can get people to take action within the first couple of days, then you get more into what I call the Kickstarter slump of death period, which is where it's a little bit more challenging to maintain momentum. This is where things like media attention, media buying, using things like Facebook and Instagram ads, working with an influencer, using other tools out there to do a referral program are great to maintain momentum in the middle period. Towards the end, a lot of creators experience an uptick because there's this urgency where the clock is like ticking down. It's like there's a couple of days left to go. One day left to go! And you're never going to be able to number one, get these perks and rewards your musician is promising, but also be a part of the community, right? Be a part of that VIP tribe. So you tend to see an uptick as well after the campaign, and then there's that post campaign phase, which we can talk about more, which I would say includes not only Kickstarter late pledges, Indiegogo in demand, but also websites like Patreon as well.

Michael: So, gosh, I know that each phase could probably be like a book in and of itself, but maybe for the launch phase, a couple of questions that I'm sure that come up a lot are things like, how long should I do the campaign for, also, what should I offer in terms of the rewards? So I'm curious what you found working best for artists in terms of structuring the campaign.

Salvador: One tool, to drop a tool name, would be KickTraq. It's a great tool. It's free. I'm not associated with it at all, but you can put in any URL for any Kickstarter campaign and it will show you the data and the statistics for that campaign, and as well, the duration that they set for it, the average amount that has been funded for that campaign, and if you do an analysis for music campaigns specifically, the average amount is usually around $50 for the pledge, and then you tend to see around, I'd say, $75 to around $175 being people that are more in the upper tier. So first of all, you're going to be thinking about rewards. You want to first think about, okay, the average person is probably going to be supporting at around the $50 tier, right? So maybe the $25 tier or a lower tier, it's like something that's nice to have. It could be a digital download or it could be something small, but really you're trying to push people. I know this is like one of those marketing practices that people don't always like, but you're trying to push people to the tier you really want them to back at. So you should want to value load that middle tier of $50 and have the best possible things, whether that's the poster or like a signed copy of the CD or whatever it is that you want to give in that middle tier, because then more people are going to be like: eh, if I'm going to be backing this guy, might as well go for that tier. So I would say that that's definitely one thing, when it comes to the rewards. I think the other question you asked me was on duration, right? So for duration, the shortest campaigns I've ever seen be successful are around 7 days, but I wouldn't recommend it for beginning musician. It's a lot of work and it's super stressful and you really have to have your ducks in a row. 30 days is great. It's an average, it's a median when it comes to Kickstarter, because #1 that's enough time for you to have a great strong starts, for you to have that ending fear of missing out, and also a little bit of middle to maybe do some like PR media and Facebook ads, et cetera. If you go longer than 30 days, the problem is usually maintaining momentum. If you have a budget when it comes to Facebook ads, or if you're working with another influencer, you have a really strong marketing plan, it can work out, but what I typically see works better is sticking it to 30 days and then go into either kickstarter late pledges or in demand for maybe another 2 weeks and be like: Hey, we're extending the sale for anyone who last minute wasn't able to get this. We decided to extend the sale for another 2 weeks. You can get on in there, you can get your reward. Again, this is never happening again for this album. Go and check it out.

Michael: Good stuff. So this sounds like it's possible to do a longer one if you have a lot of things lined up already with marketing, but in general, there's a lot of dead space to fill and so 30 days is kind of a sweet spot. What you mentioned around value stacking around a $50 price point, that's like a sweet spot where a lot of people will go up to it if it's a good bundle. It makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, sometimes I see artists doing high ticket tiers around $1,000, $2,000-$5,000. I'm curious if you've seen that working well and if so, what kinds of things in particular someone might offer for like a one-of-a-kind kind of thing. 

Salvador: Yeah, that's a great question. It kind of brings to mind this one podcast that I did with these musicians who did like a cave concert, which is so freaking cool. I mean, you can do higher end rewards for sure, but what you should know is that similar to if you have a record label, you need to do a little bit of sales to make those convert. So by that I mean, you maybe need to have a conversation or: Hey, if you were thinking of backing at one of these bigger tiers, shoot me an email; we can have a quick conversation if you have any questions. So the higher up the rewards tiers goes, first of all if you're going to $1,000 or whatever, you need to definitely have more high level/high fidelity communication, AKA phone call, right? #2 in terms of what would work, well, I definitely leave more of the creative ideation to the creators, but what I've seen in the past, aside from having a cool concert like that, it's usually access in some way. So that could be like a special dinner. That could be something where they're meeting like the entire band, that could be where it could be education related, or maybe a beginning musician can get some thoughts on their music tracks. It's usually access in some form, but I'm sure there's so many other creative ideas that musicians have had in the past.

Michael: Yeah. So it sounds like some of those things can work, but it's worth noting that in order to sell something for $1,000-$5,000-$10,000, it also might require a little bit more of a connection point where you're actually like having a call or a zoom call with a fan, but generally it's around like a point of access and then there's creative ways that you can essentially have that access.

Salvador: There are ways as well to scale that. I mean you could do a live stream, for example, and you can invite some of your hardcore fans and say: Hey, I'm going to be on the live stream for 10 minutes before we go live publicly for the hardcore fans. Hey, show up 10 minutes early so you can give some special feel like that, or you can create a specific video that you send out to your wait list that expands more on that, being like: hey, if you were thinking of one of these bigger tiers, I made this video, go and check that out. So it doesn't necessarily have to be communication, but it would help your cause a lot if you could get on the phone call.

Michael: Yeah. You know, one of the things that we coach in our program is high ticket offers and VIP fan experiences and things like that. It's exactly what you're saying. We call them fan sync sessions, but basically it's an opportunity to connect with the fan and be able to, effectively, sell a higher ticket experience to a fan who's the right fit for it. There's an application process for it, but it's cool seeing some of these overlapping ideas with a crowdfunding or Kickstarter campaign.

Salvador: Yeah. I mean, I definitely think there's a little bit of overlap. I think the biggest mover with crowdfunding is that people are in a very visceral sense supporting the next leg of your journey, and they're kind of taking that journey with you. And maybe that album's not going to happen without them, right? So it's really a very unique experience. And it's not something you're launching a crowdfunding campaign, like every month, right? If you're doing something like that, maybe you’re more interested in like Patreon, or how to make more profit with selling and streaming and learning how to have different channels. But crowdfunding is really about making a special experience, deepening the relationship with your tribe, building your tribe a bit as well, getting more brand exposure, getting that lump sum so you can then go out there and you can produce whatever it is that you're looking to come out there. But yeah, I do think there's a lot of overlap as well.

Michael: It's powerful having a reason why. Yeah, I've heard it described before and like marketing is, and there's a book, I'm not sure if you heard this book, influenced by Robert Chavdini, I think is what it's called.

Salvador: Yes, I have heard of that. Yeah.

Michael: There's a story that I think is fascinating and it's totally relevant to the conversation we're having now around having a reason why. Basically in the book he studies mental triggers and sort of influence and what is it in terms of persuasion that persuades humans, both for positive and for negative. One of the triggers he talks about is social proof, like you described with the social proof of the first 3 days having a big impact. One of them was what he called the reason why, and what they was: as long as you have a reason why, even if it's not really that good of a reason, then it significantly increases the odds that someone is going to “comply” with a request. So the example that they gave was someone cutting in line for creating a copy at a scanner. Basically, if they didn't have a reason why, if they just tried to cut, then 20% of the time they'd actually be able to cut without getting forced to go back to the line, but if they gave him a reason why, and they said like “I need to pick up my daughter from gymnastics class”, then compliance went up to like 95%. That was interesting and extremely powerful, but then what was really interesting as well was then they tested it with like a really bad reason; so not even a good reason, but they said like something like “can I cut in line because I really need to get some copies made” and compliance was still like 80% versus 20-25%. I might be getting some of the numbers off, but basically the premise of the idea was that significant increase when you have a reason why, even if it's not necessarily like the best reason on the world. But as it relates to crowdfunding, it's actually a great reason why. If you have a good goal or you have a good thing, like the reason we're raising is because of this. 

Salvador: Yeah. It's ethical influence, right? If you want to think about it that way. The other way I would say is like, if you ever saw, I don't know, a drop for a new product; you ever seen a new shoe that's been released and people are literally like waiting outside the block, or a new iPhone back in the day and people were just like waiting in line for that to happen. And you think about it, like, I'm like, you know what? Like my old iPhone works just as good. I have enough pairs of shoes, but as you said, the reason why is that something new is coming out, right? And it's this whole event that's happening. It's like: all these other people are excited, so my reason why for standing in line for so long and then going out there and grabbing this and ordering it very quickly is because it feels like a great event. This is happening. This is a big thing.

Michael: Super smart. Yeah. Make it make it. I think events based is one of the mental triggers is like making something into an event with a start and a finish. A really important one, I think, is scarcity, and the idea that there's a limited amount of something. When you talk about like drops or like shoes, my wife is a fan of posh peanuts, which is like a baby clothing brand, and they do drops for, skins where they have different like designs on these baby clothes, and their community just goes wild, and they resell these prints for more than they purchased them for. It seems like a lot of it's really driven by this events-based drops and scarcity and there's a limited amount. So they get then and they can resell it for later. 

Salvador: I mean, talking to that point, one of the things in Kickstarter terminology that's always been a hallmark is this idea of limited quantity rewards, early bird rewards, and you can even have duration based rewards. So for example for a person listening, if you're like, I want to give a special experience to fans who show up and maybe at like the $75 pledge, give them access to all these great, incredible goodies, but I don't want to have like hundreds of people backing this, maybe only like a small number, like 20. You could limit that reward quantity. So people come there, they see there's only 20 of these, maybe already 5 of them have been taken. There's that fear of missing out on that limited quantity metric that you were referencing there. So I think that's also why Kickstarter has been around for so long. It bakes in a lot of those marketing principles. 

Michael: That's powerful. Maybe one thing that'd be worth addressing because for good reason, I think a lot of artists, especially, are very sensitive to the idea of marketing and persuasion and it can be challenging sometimes. We don't want to feel like we're manipulating people or we want to make sure that we are doing things the right way. I'm curious to hear your mindset in terms of: how do you view the difference between like, I don't know, manipulation and persuasion, and how can artists use these marketing principles in a way that there really is a positive way to provide service as opposed to feeling icky about it.

Salvador: Well, I would say two things as well to focus on, which is, I mean, you look at some of the top artists… I don't know too much honestly about Taylor Swift, but one thing I did read is that she's always in the charts for these different variations of songs that she's producing, which is a super smart marketing idea. And you hear as well about other musicians on the come up, I think like 50 cent and he would pass out albums and really try to get this almost like beefing kind of personality in the media to draw attention to his music. So other artists are doing it already. It's a decision of whether or not to participate in that culture and to have more downloads. But the other thing, so persuasion, versus manipulation. The first thing is: if you have a song or you're singing from a certain perspective, you want to have your voice heard because you think it's going to impact other people for the positive, maybe you had a life experience and you're passing on that emotion to connect with other people, I've had people who when you listen to a song, maybe you're in a really dark place and just hearing that song lightens your mood and lightens your day. If anything, you have an ethical duty to get the word out about a great creation like that, in my opinion. So I really think  if you're creating something great that's improving people's lives that's helping them, you're competing against other people out there that are putting out not so great music, or that's auto tuned, or even just other messages like McDonald's and major corporations. So you gotta be willing to toot your own horn. You gotta be willing to market it. I think it's ethical if you're doing it because you're trying to improve people's lives and you have created, and you've worked hard on something that you've put a lot of effort into designing the music for, and it's original, right? Original art is so rare, especially with AI nowadays. People want to hear from you, and I don't think you can shy away from the spotlight just because you're afraid, maybe, of offending one or two people. That's like, “Oh, this guy, right? Peddling his CD”. Maybe it's not for them. That's okay. It doesn't mean that they're never going to be your friend again or something like that. Right? It just means that you're just showing up. Other people have graduated from law school and they're talking about that. Other people have new businesses that they're launching and they're talking about that. Other people have major events in their life and they're broadcasting that. Why can't you focus on something that's important to you and market that? That to me is definitely ethical. 

Michael: Man, that's powerful stuff. Yeah. Getting in touch with the fact that if you are creating something that could help someone else, then not speaking up about it, not using these strategies to get the word out is literally a disservice to other people. It's not just about you. It's like, yeah, you're being selfish by not promoting yourself; by not marketing. Really powerful message. It feels like learning how persuasion works, learning how motivation works is so powerful as a general life skill as well. Just like getting yourself to act as you behave; to do things, and it seems like the only way that anyone is gonna be motivated to do anything is if it has their interest at heart; if it's good for them. Someone's not going to do something if they're not motivated because it's going to help them. So whether something's persuasion or like manipulation seems to be in… Both of them, the only way they're going to work is if the person is motivated to do something that seems to be in their best interest. So probably manipulation is if they're motivated, but they're being misled so it's not actually in their best interest or as persuasion as if it is in their best interest.

Salvador: Yeah, and I think manipulation is really where you're also delivering something that's fake. I think about fraud, that kind of word comes to mind, and I think manipulation is you don't have their best interests at heart, like you said. Here's the thing, if you're going to be a successful musician, you are going to have someone on your team who's doing that. So maybe because you're getting started right now, you have to be the one to toot your own horn, to launch the Kickstarter campaign, to do the crowdfunding, to research, to educate yourself. Maybe you're the one who has to do that now. As you grow as a musician, you're going to have someone on your team who's doing your marketing, so it's going to happen regardless, you're just fulfilling that role because right now you're growing your craft.

Michael: Good stuff. Yeah, and to kind of come back to that point that you made earlier around like co-creation, it seems like things get a lot easier if you really ask the question of: how can I best be of service, or how can I provide value, or how can I create something that changes people's lives in a positive way? By having those conversations, like you called it the pre-launch and kind of like preceding it, you're doing it in a way that actually allows you to better provide value to your community, and it seems like that really is kind of at the heart of why the strategy that you're talking about works because you're preceding it with making sure that what you're doing actually is providing a value for people. 

Salvador: Yeah, and I think as well if you're even including other perks or rewards, let's just say you're going on tour, you then get to see those people in person and they're a Kickstarter person. How cool is that? You guys can like bump hands and be like: we actually made this happen together. That is such a cool experience and it really takes away from just like everything being digital nowadays; digital community, you can look in these people's eyes and you can see how your music has impacted them and you can form that real bond between the creator and the fan. 

Michael: So good. Well, hey Salvador, man, this has been a great conversation. I think, hopefully, people are feeling really motivated by this to be able to use crowdfunding/use event based marketing to be able to reach more people and to be able to fundraise for a specific purpose. I know it's like the tip of the iceberg that we were able to get to today but it sounds like you've spent your life really dedicated to artists to do this step-by-step. So could you share a little bit more details about… If someone's listening or watching this right now, and they're interested in learning more, diving deeper, maybe checking out the book or the resources you offer, what's the best place for them to go to take the next steps? 

Salvador: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I would say music is such a different category, which is why I think you really have to focus on advice that's tailored for music. I cover a lot of other topics as well. So, if you're really looking to do a music campaign to deepen the relationship with your fans, to make more profit from your music, to really get serious about this, and it could be the first time in your life. First of all, if you're kind of at that point where I just want information, I got a great free course out there at CrowdCrux.com/music. When you go there, you just enter your name and email and you can start getting some lessons on “how to do” in music crowdfunding campaign. Also, what are some of the secrets when it comes to what other people are doing behind the scenes that you might not be aware of. I elaborate more on sort of like the step-by-step going into the pre launch and launch as well. So that's CrowdCrux.com/music. If you're at that point where you're like: Sal, I don't want to go and watch more videos and Google around, I just want to get access to what I got to do exactly, I definitely would say the best source is launchandrelease.com. So you can go there, you can learn more about the artist guide to crowdfunding domination, and also you can see a lot of the testimonials of people who have sampled that and have enjoyed it. That's really where you can go: launchandrelease.com. You can learn more about this book, which has a lot of those techniques that we've been talking about. I totally appreciate, Michael, what you're doing here for musicians, and I think it's really needed in the industry. Like I said, I think there's a lot of overlap as well between how you and I see the world when it comes to marketing. 

Michael: Thanks man. I appreciate you being a part of it. Cool. Well, like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access, and looking forward to talking again soon.

Salvador: Awesome. Thank-you so much for having me!

Michael: Yeeeaaaah. Hey, it’s Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there’s a few ways to help us grow. First if you hit ‘subscribe’ then that’s make sure you don’t miss a new episode. Secondly if you share it with your friends, on social media, tag us - that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review it’s going to help us reach more musicians like you take their music to the next level. The time to be a Modern Musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.