Mutli-Millionaire CEO: The Simple Steps to Self-Made Success | Everette Taylor

21:35Everette Taylor:Yeah. I also think a lot of people don't want billion dollar companies. It's pretty miserable. The bigger, I mean, you know, you run a big company. I run a big company. The bigger the company, the more problems you got. And so we were talking about beforehand is like, be really careful what you wish for, because having a business that makes a million bucks a year and top line and you get to keep, you know, with 15 to 30 % margins, 150K to 300K a year, that's a pretty sexy thing, especially with taxes. Absolutely. And like those exist every day. I mean, how many of those do you think you've seen in your career and on the platform?

22:09Oh my God. So like so many, like that, that to me is like one of the sweet spots of Kickstarter is like these businesses that are like anywhere from 1 million to a hundred million in revenue, right where they're like building a business it's not like a super large team super large company but they're profitable they can provide great lifestyles for themselves like listen when you go out and you raise billions of dollars like one or some some people raise billions of dollars but millions of dollars one like that company isn't yours anymore like you have to deal with like you know this having a board of directors that's like fucking game of thrones like it's it's board governance.

22:51Like I'm telling you, it's, it's a thing. Like it's really a tactical, like chess moves constantly when you have a board and you don't own all of your company. And also like, I have this story of a good friend of mine who a lot of people don't realize this. When you raise venture capital, they need that outsized like return. Right. So what might be impactful to you where you're like, Oh man, I can make$50 million here. This is going to change my life forever. They're like, no, no, no, no. We need to sell this thing for billions. I had a good friend of mine who early on, I think he was like series A, got a quarter of a billion dollar offer for his business.

23:33He would have left maybe a hundred something million dollars with that sale, even with, you know, giving money to his investors back. And his investors pushed him not to sell the business, right? And that business didn't end up scaling the way that he wanted to, and he didn't make that much money from it. And so that money could have been life-changing and he couldn't take it because he raised venture capital.

24:00Everette Taylor:It's so true. It's funny because we have a venture capital fund. And somebody reached out to me the other day because one of our companies, it's a great company, sold. And we got in early, so it's cool. It's like a 4X for us. but we put a lot of our own capital in and we keep our fund small. So when we get multiple, like I think we've had less than 10 % default rate and we've had a couple hundred Xs, but we've had a lot of four to five to seven Xs. And one of the other venture capitalists called me and was like, what the fuck? I thought this guy was going to run this forever. I can't believe he's bailing on this.

24:32Everette Taylor:And I was like, this is life-changing money for him. This is like 20 million bucks in his pocket. Plus he gets to go work at this strategic company and get equity in that company. We get to a little bit to ride along. I go, this is a good outcome for him. You're one of the good ones. You know, I think it's all about incentives, right? Like I have enough of my own money in there and operate a company. I know how fucking hard this is. You know, a lot of these investors are salaried investors. They got no skin in the game and they've never actually run anything. And they're ruthless in their approach, right?

25:03Like at the end of the day, it's like, one of the things that people don't think about when raising money is that when you raise money, you then take on not only the reputation of the firms and the people that are investing in you, good or bad, but also what they want and what they want out of a deal, right? What you may want may be different than a general catalyst or Andreessen Horowitz, right? Like for them, like a 4X return, they're like, why are you wasting our time? Like they need that 100, 200X return.

25:33Everette Taylor:Yeah. You know, I always thought like one of the better ones was like the Sequoia model where like, you know, and I don't know everything behind the scenes and everybody's got skeletons, but I always liked that they were like 90 % of our companies have been acquired, sold, or IPO'd. Like they actually care about the 90%. Whereas most investors, 90 % fail. They only care about the 10 % that win, like literally F off every other one. And I get it because, you know, your best founders don't usually need your help. You know, it's the ones that are on the lower end that do. But I think it's good that you guys don't glorify venture raising.

26:08Everette Taylor:Because these days, it's not even how profitable is your company. Nobody cares about that. It's how big is your revenue and how much money have you raised? Yeah, absolutely. It's crazy. It's gotten out of control, I think. But we could go on and on about that. Well, I want to talk about, like, for the small business that is going to bootstrap, Yeah. How do they try to think about how much money to raise and what a successful raise looks like when you're doing pre-orders and thinking about it this way? Yeah. I think when you're thinking about like a company that's bootstrapping, I think, number one, you want to make sure that you're covering your costs, right?

26:48Like you don't want to be underwater because you did a Kickstarter or because you did a pre-order. That happens too. And there's people that are inexperienced that don't know how much things cost. They haven't thought about, you know, what could like the worst thing that could happen. Like, so if you say, you know, you want to raise, you want to sell X amount of products and you want to raise half a million dollars, then you should probably say, I want to raise 700, 800 because there's going to be unforeseen things that you don't know that's going to pop up. Right. And so you need to always add a little cushion for the things that you cannot see.

27:25Even the smartest entrepreneurs, the most skilled entrepreneurs, they can't predict that. You know, like, you know, a few years, like, could you have predicted that we're going to have tariffs the way that we were? Like, who can predict something like that, right? And so you have to add a little bit of buffer in everything that you do. But then also, hey, have a very clear strategy on how you're going to utilize all of the capital that you're coming in. So like say, hey, you're selling this product in pre-order or crowdfunding for$100. It costs you X amount of dollars to make it. Shipping, thinking about marketing costs, like, hey, you're going to run ads.

28:03You're going to do things to like actually sell this product in pre-order. like you want to make sure that you're still coming out in the green after marketing costs after uh shipping manufacturing all of those things you want to make sure that you have a

28:16Everette Taylor:buffer to come out in the green what do you think a good buffer is is it like 25 to 30 percent more than you think i would say it depends on the product it depends on a thing like for example like comic books i think we might sell more comic books than anybody else in the world like all the independent comic companies launch on Kickstarter. Comic books, like that's like when you're launching comics, it's like, that's a very like straightforward thing. Like there's very well-known manufacturers, publishing, et cetera, et cetera. So like there's a little less for it. Also it's lightweight. It's like not heavy shipping costs.

28:55So like maybe you only need to like have a 10 to 15 % buffer. But if you're talking about like heavy hardware that you're shipping from China and like all these things, you might want to have a bigger buffer of like 25, 30%.

29:09Everette Taylor:That's a great suggestion. That's fascinating about comic books. Yeah. I would never think you could get money from people for a comic book. Tell me about that. Oh, yeah. The comics are crazy. We can't say this for sure, but we're almost confident that we sell more comic books on Kickstarter year than anywhere else in the world. and comics is interesting the same way games and design and technology and these audiences that we've built, it has become the go-to for publishing comics and like manga and all these different things or graphic novels, right? And to the point that like now we're having celebrities like Charlamagne Tha God and others, when they release a graphic novel or comic book, we had Jeremiah Love who was the number three pick in the NFL draft this year, a Heisman finalist.

29:59you know, launch a comic book with us. How did it do? They all did really, really well. What's really, really well?

30:06Everette Taylor:Hundreds of thousands? No, we've had people, they didn't raise millions, but we've had people raise millions of dollars just on a comic book campaign. Charlemagne launched a comic book? Yes, he did. A graphic novel, yes, yes. What's the difference? The graphic novel is more like a book. It's like kind of like actual novel, like a book, but comics are lighter weight, et cetera, et cetera. Interesting. But yes, so we have that in this because we built this like really crazy audience of people that are super engaged in that space. And that's where we do the best at Kickstarter is that we've garnered an audience around design and technology and tech access.

30:45We've garnered an audience around gaming. We've garnered an audience around publishing and comics and these things and film. And so that's what makes Kickstarter so valuable is that we have a ready-made audience for you on the platform to tap into. And for comics, it's like what better way to kind of like get rid of the risk by just being able to get all the money up front.

31:08Everette Taylor:Yeah. So let's say that you want to write a comic book. Yeah. Could you get the comic book ready, kind of have all your ideas, create a cool video launching it, you know put a couple thousand maybe into the quote-unquote marketing and product design then put it up there and if you don't get any pre-orders or if you don't get enough you just pull it and give money back yeah so kickstarter is all or nothing so like if you don't hit your goal then you know all that money goes back so kickstarter is amazing because you can actually see in real time like how much demand you actually have for your product and then like Listen, if you don't hit your goal, then it's like, okay, I didn't waste a bunch of money.

31:50And you know exactly how many comic books that you have to make. Like I know people are very controversial about Kanye. Kanye is one of the biggest crowdfunders, pre-order people in the world. They know exactly, he knows exactly how many Yeezy boots, Yeezy shoes, all of that. That's just crowdfunding and pre-orders, right? And so knowing the specific number, instead of being like, hey, I'm going to print out a thousand comics. Well, you only sold 700. So now you only have to make 700.

32:19Everette Taylor:That's great. So you would just come back and be like, all right, now I'm going to do another one, but I'm just going to do it for 700. Yes. And so I can just start small and then scale my way up. Absolutely. Oh, that's so smart. Because, you know, I think a lot of people think, well, we were told if I build it, they'll come. You're like, no, they won't. You got to drag them kicking and screaming. I think that's like a Wayne's World thing, right? If we build it, they will come. Yeah, that is true. So what else would surprise, like, is there anything that you're like, I'm kind of shocked that this raised this much money or most people wouldn't realize?

32:54I mean, we just had a board game raised$28 million. It was a trading card game, but Cyberpunk just raised$28 million. So it always astounds me. Like, you know, we think about like we have a lot of video games on the platform, but we have a very healthy audience of people that do tabletop and trading card games and things like that. That's still a thing, right? Like that's still a thing that people are really engaged with and people are constantly. Today we had someone raise, I think,$2 million in the first 30 minutes for a board game, right? So a lot of people don't realize how popular. People know video games are very popular.

33:32A lot of people don't realize how popular board games, trading card games, role-playing games still are.

33:38Everette Taylor:Yeah, that's true. Also, I have a couple people on my team that play Dungeons & Dragons, which I did not know was a thing. But that weird little micro niche is crazy too. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot of money behind it. Interesting. So this is trading cards. Trading cards, yes. So like Pokemon trading cards. Similar, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. I'm sounding like such a boomer right now. I know this is really big with the kids. But I got into it with Logan Paul on this because I was like, I think this is a terrible investment strategy. And I think anybody who buys, you know, it's okay for the super rich people to buy like a$7 million card or whatever.

34:14Everette Taylor:They don't fucking care. It's like one one millionth of their, you know, net worth. But for a normal kid who doesn't have much money, probably doesn't even own a house yet or any assets, to say that trading cards are going to hold their value long term just because they have over this last cycle freaks me out. Yeah. I mean, well, there's different types of trading cards. There's the Pokemons. Pokemon is actually tied to a game. Yeah. The cyberpunk trading card game is actually tied to a game that you can play with people, right? As opposed to you just hold it. Instead of like, oh, I have the Michael Jordan rookie card, et cetera, et cetera.

34:52That's very, very different. So the beauty in trading card games on Kickstarter, they're often things that people are just playing and they're having fun and they're not thinking about this thing that is going to hold value. Don't get me started on a trading card thing. I think it's so ridiculous, by the way.

35:07Everette Taylor:He was like, careful if you say it on the internet because people will be like, blah. I know. And I go, no, I'm going to save the receipts on this. Come at me in three years. I know. But I don't want to be right. I'd rather that they made money and I was wrong, but I don't think that's going to be what happens. Yeah. Well, I think it's like everything, like the NFTs, card games, all this stuff. The powers that be, Cody, you know what I'm talking about. There's certain people that have influence and they say this thing is worth this, right? And then everyone does that. And the people, the powers that be, they end up making a bunch of money.

35:42And then there's a lot of people that lose a lot of money because they're trying to follow that trend.

35:48Everette Taylor:Yeah, they just hold the bag. I think it's a real issue when you buy things that don't have inherent value. I mean, I'm like old school, like Buffett. Like a house is always going to have a value because you have to live in it. Yes. You know, and a car, you can utilize it, you know, commodities. We need it for the economy. But, you know, anything that you trade, even art, which has held its, you know, its value over many, many years is tough. if you hold it just for value because who are you going to trade with quickly if you need some cash? That's tough. I used to run a big art platform called Artsy.

36:21So it is -

36:22Everette Taylor:Wait, I didn't know that. I liked Artsy a lot. Is it still around? Yeah, still around. And they just merged with Artnet and formed a super art company. But art is a super valuable asset if you know what you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing, it could be a terrible investment. But if you know what you're doing, like so much of my net worth is actually tied into my art collection you can take out loans against your art collection all these things so there's a lot of tricks to the trade when it comes to art what's the most expensive piece of art you bought oh cody i'm not gonna say too much i'm not gonna say but i i've done very well fascinating do you have specific artists you like buying from are they like like really well-known ones like picasso or warhol are these like I stay typically contemporary.

37:12I try to do living artists. I have some artists that are not living. My philosophy starting off was that I wanted to support black artists. Right. And now it's shifted to like I want to support artists that are meaningful to me, but also are solid investments as well. And so I'm tracking everything from like where they went to grad school, what galleries represent them, what museum acquisitions they have, what other collectors are buying them. Like what are they trading? How are they trading privately? How are they trading publicly in the auctions? Like I'm tracking all that stuff.

37:48Everette Taylor:You have a saying that I really liked, which is as a CEO, you should think that nothing is beneath you. Yeah. Can you talk to me about that? I think the components of a good CEO is mental toughness, which I've talked about a lot. Like being a CEO is lonely. It's hard. You have to get through a lot of stuff that most people are never going to relate to or never empathize in your situation. People don't feel sorry for CEOs. Like they don't. Like if you want to be in a job where people don't give a shit, be a CEO, right? Right. That's that's that's the that's the key. So you have to have that that mental toughness to deal with all the things that that's going to come with it.

38:30I think number two is having the level of humility to know that you need people like you need the right talent, the right people around you. You have to have people that you can trust. I want to be the dumbest person in the room with my exec team. Like I want people, I want killers. I want people who are subject matter experts. I want people that are just absolute geniuses in whatever their craft or field is around me at all times. I think also as a CEO, you really have to be willing to do anything and everything, right? Like, you know, this morning I was doing like some customer support stuff where like I had an angry creator or angry backer or whatever.

39:10Like you got to be able to roll up your sleeves and do whatever it takes to make things happen and drive the company forward. And so to me, it's really that mental toughness, having a great team, but also just being able to roll your sleeves up and do all the things and fill in the gaps. Right. Like you have to make that work. Right. And it's also keeping a mind of creativity, innovation and always thinking forward. Like you have to be thinking 10 steps ahead all the time. And most people don't think like that. Most of the people you work with are not going to think like that. And so they might get upset with you because you're thinking three, four, five steps ahead where they're thinking only in the short term.

39:51Everette Taylor:I think CEOs have to make a lot of hard decisions too. You have some decision making frameworks. Like what do you do when you have to make a hard decision fast? Yeah, for me it's like it's a no brainer. What is the best thing for the company? Like my job as a CEO, and people may not like this answer, but my job as a CEO is to make sure that this company goes on for the next 10, 15, 20, 100 years and to drive shareholder value. Take the emotions out of it, right? That's going to hurt some feelings. But my job, why they hired me, is to make sure that this company continues on, continues to grow, and to drive shareholder value.

40:33This is business. It's not personal. And people have to understand that.

40:38Everette Taylor:Yeah, people need to hear that more. My last two questions. One is, you run a fully remote company now. What is the key to managing people and to being a leader to remote workers? Yeah, I mean, trust is huge, right? Like, you know, the ability to give people that much freedom is that you really have to trust. And the talent acquisition part of the job, bringing the right people, the right people with the right morality, the right ambition, the right intensity in that environment, like you need that, right? They have to be really locked in. But also, this is the not fun part and the part that probably people hate for me as a CEO is like you got to be even more aggressive about your goals.

41:26You have to be more on top of people's performance, like performance management, setting aggressive goals, making sure that people are actually locked in, like is really, really important. Because I've learned personally that if you don't give people enough work and if you don't set high enough goals, people are going to naturally slack off. Like if you set the goal here, well, you can set it here. People aren't going to go beyond that. They're going to meet you there. So I try to set ambitious goals to make sure that people are locked in. And then also communication is key from Slack to Zooms to Google Meets to having people meet in person.

42:02Like that is an integral piece of it. Like you still have to have in-person moments every year that people can really feel that camaraderie.

42:11Everette Taylor:Everett's words about being a CEO really hit me. And that's because you guys know if you're a CEO too, it's really hard. You're like a bad hire, a couple bad expenses, a bad agency or two away from your business being in real problems. And that's exactly why we built the Growth Boardroom, because we don't think you should ever have to make those potentially million-dollar decisions alone. So in Boardroom, we have a board of advisors, all of our tools and systems that we use to run private equity-style companies that are profitable and consistent over time. Inside the boardroom, our advisors help owners find their next lever, the next person system cash flow fix that helps the business run more smoothly so you can actually enjoy running it.

42:54Everette Taylor:If you've ever thought that you need help and you want somebody else alongside you in this game of ownership, this might be for you. You can schedule a call with my team here and we'll see if you're a fit. And if you are, we'll invite you into the boardroom where you get access to our advisors, where you get access to our quarterly planning and all of the technology we use to run profitable, consistent businesses that we actually love to run. You can click the link below or go to contrarianthinking.co slash boardroom. My last question, I suppose, is really what do you think you've done? I mean, Kickstarter has been through a lot over the years.

43:29Yes, yes, yes.

43:30Everette Taylor:And you, from many accounts that I've heard when I asked around about you, have turned around this company. And it didn't seem like it was very easy. It was not easy. So what was the key? Like how did you change the culture of a fully remote company? On a four-day work week too. Oof. I mean, fuck, dude. I need to hire you. I know. I was at this conference this weekend and there was a panel of really incredible Fortune 500 black CEOs. And they said something that rung true. And they said, you're not going to get the CEO job if it's an easy job. Like they're not just giving you polished companies that are like, hey, here, like here's Apple.

44:18Here's, you know, here's Microsoft. Like, no, they're going to give you a company that has a lot of problems and a lot of issues. You know, we were down over 20 percent in revenue year over year when I took over increased competition. We had a completely remote team. We had four day work. We had a lot of things working against us. And me, I came in and I said, listen, mediocrity has no place here. I do not accept mediocrity in any form in this company. how we deliver products, how we serve our customers, how we show up every day as employees and team members. That's really, really important. So for me, it was like, I wanted to bring a level of intensity that Kickstarter never had, a level of urgency that Kickstarter has never had.

45:08And I wanted to be customer first. We started to build out things and build products that our customers and users and backers have been asking us for years. And we're just like, no, we're, you know, we're a big company, billions of dollars, you know, raised on the platform. We don't have to do these things. And I was like, no, we need to start listening to our creators in our community. So I aggressively had the focus to start building for them. I had the focus to reshape the team, get the people out of there that didn't need to be there, bringing in new talent. This is a new day at Kickstarter.

45:42and then like just having a level of ambition with our goals to really rethink what Kickstarter is. Reshape the brand. Like this is not begging for money. This isn't just crowdfunding. We are helping people build real businesses. We're creating careers of some of the biggest artists and creatives in the world. Like this is what it is. And we want people to know that. And then also building out more than just crowdfunding from pre-launch to crowdfunding to post-campaign. We've added three new business lines since I've gotten there. So like really just reshaping what Kickstarter could be.

46:16Everette Taylor:I'm so excited to see what comes next. Thank you. Here's what we'll do. We'll go donate to 10 Kickstarter campaigns. I'm going to correct you. We'll go buy. Buy or back. Good one. Buy or back. We'll go buy or back 10 Kickstarter campaigns off of this. We'll link them below in the YouTube show notes. And if anybody has a Kickstarter campaign and you want us to consider it even after we do the 10, drop them in the comments and we'll go back some cool ass companies. on there. I love it. Thank you so much for being on here. Thanks, Cody. I appreciate you, Everett. Everett, where do people follow you?

46:47Everette Taylor:On Kickstarter and... They can follow me on all the social platforms. What's your favorite? Let's give them one. Ooh, what's my favorite? Threads is my favorite. Threads is my new favorite thing. This is just you and my 65-year-old mom. Yo, Threads, I love it. So I'm just at Everett on Threads, but I'm at Everett everywhere on LinkedIn and Snap. I don't even use Snap like that. I don't know why I said that. Instagram, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so we'll follow Everett on Instagram and threads. Yes. And Kickstarter. Thank you for being here, man. Thank you. I appreciate you.