How I Raised $555K in One Hour (Interview on the Cubicle to CEO podcast)

23:30And so I asked a question and I said, we have this idea that we are going to fundraise for our tech funding to take us into the following year and debut our own tech stack. And is there any insights that you might have? And this queen came in and she said, you must incite FOMO and you must give them a reason to buy. Something must be disappearing. Yep. And she's like, have you thought about limiting the amount of people that you can have? And I said, no. She's like, I want you to limit the amount of people that you have. And I want you to limit the timeframe in which they must do it. So we thought it was going to be unlimited and one day.

24:04And what she challenged us and invited us to do was to make it a very short amount of time. Because she said, you don't want to oversubscribe. Because what happens is we knew how much money we were going to be making from people over the lifetime of their subscription. so it is a risk by saying okay i'm going to take all that money up front she's like you don't want all of your users to give you all their money which is fine but then all of a sudden when you hit mrr monthly recurring revenue you're going to see a sharp decline she's like so it's going to be a fine balance so we just ran some back of the napkin math and we felt like 300 was going to be a good number for us and we started putting that messaging out and saying get on the wait list because there's going to be a limited number of lifetime subscriptions.

24:45And unbeknownst to us, unforeseeable to us, was like this demand to get on the wait list. They wanted to be the first to know. And so it really became like this Black Friday type sense, right? So it's like that one pocket listing, that one last cashmere sweater at Neiman's. And people are like, I want to be the first to know about this. So we built this wait list and we did it super scrappy. We did it on Google Sheets. from Google Sheets, what we would do was we had a VA go through and create a document for me to go each by person, line by line, and make them a one minute video. So if Ellen, you were on there, I would see Ellen Yin, and then I would go to Loom or Vidyard and I'd be like, Ellen, I just want to cast a vision for what we're going to do.

25:28We're going to use this money in XYZ way so that in the next four months, eight months, and 12 months, these are the things that you're going to see. But I want you to be a part of something bigger. This is my personal invite. I just want to say thank you for being a part of this community. And I want to invite you into what we can do in the future. I made, goodness gracious, I think over 900 one-minute videos. And the team was just like, block off this. Jasmine, you're going in and you're making this. So just minute after minute after minute after minute after minute. And then 24 hours before we opened up that sale, everybody was sent their own personalized email.

26:04Hey, Ellen, Jasmine made this video for you so that you saw it, you caught the vision and it incited even more desire to be like, I want to be a part of the 300. So we open at, I believe it was noon. We open at noon and the site is like buzzing. It's like we had to do stress tests for everybody hitting the site. And we were like, oh my God, I think it's going to crash. We just kept on saying, kept on saying, and things happened so much faster that we ended up raising 555 ,000. we ended up oversubscribing and closing the round sooner. We couldn't even get to the hour because we knew if we actually take this to an hour, we're going to have way too many people come in.

26:43And so for us to raise$555 ,000, I just don't think that I was emotionally or mentally prepared to see that happen so fast and have so many people so excited. And then having people be like, I can't believe I missed this. It was the first time that I actually saw what it meant to have a community get behind a thing that was much bigger than myself, the team, or even the business. It was about who they saw themselves in the future. Wow. Okay. I have so many questions. Good. Let's get in. Let's get in. Yes. The first thing that comes to mind is, okay, so you, first of all, kudos, 900 one-minute videos is no joke, but I'm sure you became an absolute pro at articulating your vision by the 900th video.

27:27So actually my first question is just a question of clarification, were there 900 people on the wait list then, hence the 900 videos? Or was it more or less, just wanted to make sure? Every person on that wait list. And what I'm going to do, I'll get you the exact number. Maybe it wasn't 900. Maybe it was 600. Maybe it was 1600. I actually don't know. But yes, everybody on the wait list did get a video. Okay, awesome. And then you said they got an individualized email delivering that video 24 hours before you opened the cart. At the point when they received the video, do they already know tomorrow is the scheduled date for the drop?

28:04So they were already anticipating, right? Yes. Okay. So we said, hey, it's going to happen on this day at this time, sign up for the wait list. So you're the first to know. Got it. And so we were sending cultivating emails speaking to that audience specifically. Got it. And then for the hour, you said you can't remember exactly, but maybe it was around noon. Again, I just love to like understand the process behind every little minute detail and decision. So noon, why noon? Was that a time that typically, for example, in my business, I find that I often do live events at 11 a.m. Pacific time. And I think at this point, it's probably just habit.

28:38There's not really any real data that shows that's the best time window compared to other ones. We haven't tested that many, but I'm just curious for you, did you pick middle of the day and a middle time? If you're in LA, I assume you're on Pacific time, West Coast, right? But did you pick a specific hour that you felt like the most number of people could be active and get to their computers or their phones to buy? Or again, was that just kind of like a, you know, we're just going to announce the time and then people will show up and make it happen? You know, it was either 11 to noon or it was noon to one.

29:07So that timeframe. And so what I've discovered is my favorite time to do webinars. I am based on the West coast is 10 AM. I love that time. But what I've discovered is that 10 a.m. Hawaii is three hours ahead. So 7 a.m. is a little bit early on that side. And when we move it to noon, we have 9 a.m. Hawaii, noon Pacific, 3 p.m. East Coast, but also 8 a.m. London. We have a very large contingency. So our largest market is going to be the U.S. represented within the community. U.S., Canada, and England and Australia are very pretty close behind that. And so because we have a SaaS offering that they can access at any other time, this is not like a course or a live dissemination of information.

29:50We wanted to make sure that we kind of had level ground for all people who were interested. So yeah, it was a strategic timeframe for us. Okay. Thank you. I had an inkling, but I wanted to be sure because it's always really interesting to hear just even how the slightest decisions can make a difference in the success of a launch or a drop like this. Okay. So$555 ,000 came through. The last piece of the $1 ,500 offer itself was how did you land on that price? Why$1 ,500? What was the thought process behind that? It was what we wanted somebody to make to be a part of it. So the more that somebody invest in something, the more they have like active value or ownership to it.

30:31So we did want these lifetime members not to have money that they could just indiscriminately spend and say, oh, that was something I did. We wanted these people to be the people who are giving us feedback on the product. And we knew that$1 ,500, it wasn't exactly$2 ,000 and it wasn't$9.97. We really liked this$1 ,500. At the time, our pricing was$49. So we said, for somebody to be in here for three years, do we think that we're going to over-exceed that three-year value? And the answer for us was, heck yes. And as long as we knew that the people we serve are getting a better deal all in, that's what we were 100 % about.

31:06I think it's a great filter, actually, for a lot of our listeners to think through pricing. Like, okay, pricing is subjective, right? It's like when someone says, oh, does anybody know an affordable hairstylist? It's like, well, what's affordable to you, right? That's very nuanced. And so I love the way you're thinking instead where it's like, it's not about is this price quote unquote expensive or cheap? It's more so, yeah, like you said, within the timeframe or within the container of what you're giving them, would it be a better deal for them to part with the money than to keep the money and do things the way that they are.

31:40So love that mindset shift. So this waitlist then, you said you were driving these people who were interested in knowing about the drop being the first to know onto this waitlist. But you also said you did have your preexisting users on Social Curator. So the waitlist, was it open to the public or just to the people who are already active users? It was just to active users. And so one thing that we like to balance very strategically strategically is how much we're making an ask publicly. So I've always grown up with this idea, give, give, give, ask. And Gary Vaynerchuk had a much smarter way of saying it.

32:18He says, jab, jab, jab, right hook. So a jab is going to be something like, oh, I'm just going to, I'm going to give you something. I'm going to give you something. And then a right hook is an ask. And so we want to be very careful and strategic when we're making asks outward facing. We know that when we make an ask, it's very powerful. We are able to move because we have way over indexed the amount of information and goodwill and education that we're giving on outward facing so that when we make an ask, somebody feels like, yes, I am ready to be committed because I've received so much on the front end.

32:46So when we were doing this lifetime sale, it would have required way too much messaging and convincing of a cold audience, what they were building into. And we didn't want a cold audience coming in because my cold audience, like 1500, that's really nothing. People spend, you know, five,$10 ,000 on a course, getting 1500 just to be a looky-loo was not for the market that we were trying to serve. We wanted people who wanted to build alongside us. So it was a really beautiful thing that our segment was a lot smaller than anything out publicly. And so people felt like they were on the ins and I was going into the community.

33:19I was doing live videos. I was explaining why this was going to be. The language and the cadence and just like the overall energy that you carry in with people who are already paying customers is so different than a cold audience. Absolutely. And you brought up a brilliant point, which is that not all money is equal. Even if, like you said, person A gives you$1 ,500, person B gives you$1 ,500. It's about what they do with that investment of the$1 ,500. And I think that's really smart because you're right. There are lots of people who might've just been curious about what you were doing and would pay, but would not be active, would not give you feedback, which would therefore defeat the purpose.

33:54So - 100%. Excellent, excellent point. I think we can all stand to remember that whenever we're launching something and thinking through, are we going to make this a public ask or a private ask? and really asking like, what is the end objective of the type of users that you want to get in there? What types of behavior do you want to be promoting? And then making sure you're filtering based on that. That's so smart. The$450 ,000 that you originally wanted to raise, and then of course the$555 ,000 that you actually did raise, I think it's really helpful for our listeners to understand how you spent that money.

34:22There was actually an episode on our show where we talked to two founders who had raised over a million dollars, the more traditional way with VC funding or angel investing. And we actually broke down their burn rates and what they were spending on. But for you as a SaaS founder, I'm curious, you had mentioned that you were planning to hire some junior developers, some engineers. So I know staffing was the main priority, but was there anything else within that half million dollars spend that you had deployed that capital on pretty quickly after this closed and or are still deploying? And I would just love to know what you're spending on to continue to grow Social Curator?

34:59Absolutely. So because we started off as a membership, anybody who has a membership understands that the profit margins for digital goods is just bananas. And so the fact that we had been able to really cultivate a very strong organic marketing arm so that when we went into opening and closing of Social Curator, we were able to see these really massive spikes of users coming in. we felt very strong about the model itself. We knew how to optimize our cost for productions within the membership. So what we needed to do was create a new casing for the membership to go in and function like SaaS. However, because we had, this is a whole new arm, a whole new division of the company that specifically within this is people's salaries in the tech world, specifically in Los Angeles.

35:53most everybody, most everybody's around six figures. And so for us to absorb a tech arm and they need runway to build. So we were funding the build behind the scenes so that our profit margins were decreasing with the belief that when the tech and that SaaS came along, that we would then be able to start growing. So what we were doing was fundraising specifically for Tech Runway. 100 % of that went to funding TechSass Runway. Got it. And now that you are several years removed from that initial drop, if you were to need an infusion of cash again in a big lump sum like you did in 2020, knowing what you know now, would you do something similar again?

36:42Or would you perhaps seek more traditional venues for funding the second time around? It really depends on what we would want to fundraise for. I do believe that if we go for expansion, like pure expansion, I think that traditional bank funding, angel rounds, VCs would be a better way to go because it's hard to sell somebody on this idea of more. We want more. If we were to offer something else that improved their relationship with the platform, that improved the community, offered a different feature set, offered something that directly benefited them, I would 100 % go back and fundraise from this crew.

37:22I think it worked before. It's very, very, very win-win. However, we have to be able to show the win-win. So depending on what the objective was for the fundraise, I think I would choose according to that. That was a really great answer. So to recap, the distinction is if it's about product improvement, aka answering the question of what's in it for me for your end user, then you'll go the more community raise route. Otherwise, if it's just about pure expansion of team, of top line revenue, of user base, then it's the more traditional route because there's not a clear what's in it for them, right?

37:55Absolutely. And given our fortuitous position, I probably would not go seed, angel, or VC. I would go bank. So bank loans are so hard to get because banks will only give money to people who are already making money. Yeah, they're so risk-averse. It is. However, if you have a business that is proven that you're making money, but what you need is a cash infusion for expansion for this, and you can clearly articulate the ROI and what timeframe, we would be able to do that. And again, I would go bank route because I don't want somebody telling us what to do. And a bank doesn't tell you what to do.

38:27They just need to know, are you going to pay us back and by when? And to me, I would still go for that money. Any money that doesn't come with an attachment of a micro boss is money that I would pursue first. Yes. And no equity that you have to take off the table for somebody else, right? Correct. Yes. Correct. So, so smart. So this flash sale, I know we already talked about it exceeded your expectations. You cut it off before the hour. I'd love to know just like a peek back into that day where you and JD literally hunched over your computer watching the sales roll in and you turn to each other at a certain point and go, we got to cut this off.

38:59And you just like made the decision right in that moment? Or were you kind of like going back and forth for like 10 minutes being like, should we close it? Should we let it run the full hour? Like give us a little behind the scenes peek at the real dialogue that was happening in the moment that you decided to shut it off. Ellen, thank you so much for this question because I've never spoken about it. So we've been in business long enough to know that despite your best efforts, you're not in control of the outcome. And so while we gave it 110%, we also knew we weren't guaranteed 300. We weren't guaranteed three.

39:33And so the way that we have learned how to be unattached is to decide where we're going to be and how we want to feel regardless of the outcome. And so when you're thinking about this, this is fundraising. It's not a make or break. We have these goals and we have hopes, but we're okay if it fares the way we want or not. So Seth Godin said it best. He doesn't want to ever pursue a test that must work. So for us, and I love that because this was a test that we hoped worked, but it was a nice to have. It wasn't a need to have. And so what we decided to do is we had said, we're going to be out. We're going to arrange for a babysitter.

40:13We are going to go to lunch and we're going to celebrate whatever happens. So we had already decided that by the end of the hour, so it was either that we were at lunch, you know, planning to be there at noon or at one that timeframe. So crystal blue skies, we live in Newport beach. We decided to do something local. We were outside waiting for a table and he and I were not expected to be completely glued to Slack. There was a channel and we just kept on seeing people come in. We team and I, we're just slacking. We're like, do we pull it now? What do we do? Oh my God. Do we stop it? Oh my God. Oh my God.

40:47So it's just this complete thread. And JD, who is an Enneagram two, wing three, in a place of service, wants to help people all the time. He's also big on celebration. But I am talking about, there was one time where we had a launch back in 2017 and it was tanking so bad. It was an offer for a brand new course. Now I'm not in this flash sale anymore. Let me back up a little bit to kind of paint a picture of how he functions and what we learned in this lesson. So in the middle of this launch, and it was tanking so badly. And I was having a freakout because we had pre-invested money in ads. And I'm like, when is the ROI going to happen?

41:26Because we had anticipated that we were going to be cashflow positive from these ads by this date. And it wasn't happening there. And I was in full on freakout mode. And we had this really expensive bottle given to us by clients of wine. And he said, let's go outside and let's start a fire. and we're going to enjoy this bottle of wine. And I said, you're crazy. I am not opening. Like I have to deserve opening that bottle of wine at some point in the future. And he had said, if we cannot enjoy a beautiful bottle of wine at our Morse moments, we cannot enjoy the beautiful bottle of wine at our best.

42:00We have to understand that who we are and what we're becoming in this moment is actually shaping who we're destined to become. So if we are going to have to go through it anyway, Can we not just take a moment and celebrate this? And let me tell you, it was such a beautiful experience. I was still overwhelmed. I was still sad. And at the end of that launch, it so far exceeded our expectations at the last minute due to the scrappiness and things that we had changed and how we innovated and pivoted. Great. But what we had to learn in that moment is when are you going to celebrate? And do you have the willingness to celebrate even if it's not going the way that you had anticipated?

42:35So now let's flash forward back to this one hour flash sale of lifetime subscription so that we self fundraise the next iteration of the business. He went into the restaurant far before we'd ever closed. And he brings out two glasses of champagne and he said, we've already won. We won with three and we won with 300, but we've already won. And so to close that, my whole body was buzzing. And I like, and JD had said, okay, when we're done, we're getting off the phones and we're just being, and I was like, yes, so we're slacking the team. I'm like, okay guys, I'm gonna go to lunch. I'll be right back.

43:10But blah, blah, blah, blah. We put down the phones, we clink our glasses. And I said, I cannot believe we just did that. And it was one of those times in your life and in your business that you look back at every time it didn't work. And every time you felt like a failure and every time you questioned the build and every time you wondered, why did I make this decision? And how did we end up here? And what is it all for? That just in that moment, it was just so undistilled, so good, and so sweet that I said, just be here now, enjoy lunch, and we're going to go back, get back to work, and we're going to continue building like we were before.

43:48So for that time, it was freaking epic. And then we get back and we build. It's just another day at work. That's such a beautiful reminder. I love that that you have that energy to balance you. Like when you're having your like highs or lows, that your husband is just this steady, like we're going to schedule this celebration. And it reminds me a lot of my husband, Dustin, actually. He's very much always trying to create space or push me to celebrate the little things. And so I love that you have that person in your corner that does the same for you. We are fortunate. We are fortunate. And for people who are listening and they might not have that partner or they might not have a partner, that's no problem.

44:27The key here is to find yourself a circle of people who will hold space for you and who will hold up like a digital champagne glass with you. It's just make sure that you're finding yourself aligned with people who can hold space and hold belief and then also remind you to celebrate along the way. Yes, 1 ,000%. Now, I wanna take a quick moment to circle back to an earlier strategy point that you made because I just realized, okay, my listeners are not gonna be happy if I don't ask you this further detailed question, because I'm sure there are some people who heard, oh, Jasmine did these hundreds of personalized videos for people.

45:00If you can do it at your level of business this many years in and take that time, then there's so many people listening to this podcast who can and should do the unscalable things when they're really swinging big for a new goal, right? So I would love to know just real quick, high level, the more logistic side of that, so that if somebody wants to implement something similar, that they have the right tech or the right approach to be able to actually execute that. So you mentioned, I think you did these one minute videos on Loom and was it Vidyard that you said the other one? I said you could use Loom or Vidyard.

45:32I use Vidyard. It was acquired by Google V-I-D-Y-A-R-D. Okay. And it's just like, it's just a plugin and it's exactly Loom, but it's there on Chrome. Oh, amazing. Okay. Well, I'll have to check that out. So you would record these one minute videos and then the actual individual email sends. Did you have someone on your team literally like in Gmail, just like copy paste each person's email address and send the link? Or is there a more streamlined way, I guess, to like send very individual emails with these different links to each person? Okay. So I'm going to keep it as high level as possible. And then you can ask details.

46:07Okay. So when we had our users sign up for the wait list, they would go to a page and they would put in their first name, last name, and their email address. And what that populated on the backend was a Google spreadsheet that had a dialogue box for their first name, for their last name, and for their email address. So when I would go in and I would see Ellen Yin, and then I would see your email address, I would then click on my browser in Vidyard. Hi, Ellen. I would give you my shtick, then I would get a unique URL. I would copy the URL and put it in the Google sheet. And I just did that again and again and again and again for everybody.

46:51Then what we had is as we were doing them on the daily, we would have a VA go into intercom and she would click on the email address. It would populate an intercom. She would copy the unique URL and then we had a template. And so the template was automatically like, hi, Ellen, blah, blah, blah, blah. Jasmine made you a video. If you have any questions, loop back, but don't forget 24 hours from now. And so that was the entire logistics of it. Okay. So actually quite simple, a lot of manual copy pasting, but very simple to actually execute. Okay. Yes. Love that. And at the time, and we still do, we were working with an offshore VA.

47:26Now, normally I work with all W-2s. However, there are some instances where working with an offshore VA is so much more beneficial. It's like we had such a clear system and process laid out for her that all she was really doing was copying and pasting. and she's very detail oriented. So it worked in our favor very much so. Absolutely. And it's so foolproof, like you said, if you have a very specific process and then of course, you know, for some projects, it just, it wouldn't make sense to hire a full-time copy paster on your team as a W2, but for a specific project that makes total sense. Okay.

47:57Awesome. The last piece then to wrap up this case study, I think the last piece I'm really curious about is since you did cut off the sale before the full hour and there were people who presumably missed out right on the wait list, either because they didn't show up on time or they forgot or whatever the reason is. Did you end up offering anything special to those who had just signed up for the waitlist, period, even if they didn't take advantage of this flash sale? Or was it kind of like, you snooze, you lose. You had the chance to be on the waitlist. And if you missed your opportunity, unfortunately, that's just it.

48:30Well, we were very clear on the front end that it was first come, first serve. And so we were setting our expectations to manage the expectations. Now, I think it would have been nice to offer something to them, but these were already paying subscribers. And so to me, that wasn't necessary to give anything digital because there were so many resources already on the inside of Social Curator. I was not going to downsell. I don't think that that would have been like the proper thing to do in that mechanism since we were fundraising. And we didn't get a single, I mean, we got people being like, I can't believe I missed this.

49:03We got, I mean, we got these emails that were just break your heart. Like this person was sick and I this and I got stuck in traffic, but we're just like, we're so sorry. We're oversubscribed. So we were able to walk in integrity. We managed expectations and we did not have anything on the back end of it. I love that. I think that clear communication and that pre-frame upfront is often so missed. People just kind of assume that everyone's on the same page, but you really have to go that extra mile to make sure people fully understand what they're signing up for and that they have every opportunity to show up if they can.

49:35So that's really helpful. Thank you so much, Jasmine. This was incredibly insightful. And I'm really grateful for just the opportunity to get a peek inside the decisions that you're making in your brain. Because so many times we see someone's outward decision, but we don't understand all the layers and details that went into a certain decision. So I think this would be very illuminating for a lot of our listeners. Is there anything else I missed about this flash sale that you just want to speak to? Or do you feel like we covered it all? I think the unexpected benefit, which was something we hoped, but we remained unattached was that people were really excited to be on the journey.

50:08And so oftentimes entrepreneurship feels a little bit lonely. And even though you have a phenomenal team, you can sometimes get lost in the mire of who you're serving and how you're impacting their life. And so when people were saying like, oh, it feels good to be part of something bigger, that was so good. And then they have a vested interest. They want to make the product better because they know the better it gets, they've already invested. And so for us, that just felt like a really good moment to be in and understanding who we're serving and understanding like they want to build alongside of us.

50:38I love that. Thank you. You have so much, so much wisdom and like so many great one-liners that you dropped, especially that one that you referenced from Seth Godin, the don't ever set out for a test that, you know, has to work or something. That one was really good. So thank you. Where can our listeners go find out more about Social Curator and Join? When I was on your website, I think I saw like, it's like a social media agency in your pocket, which I loved that, the accessibility of that. So tell us where they can actually go and try it for themselves, but also where they can go and connect with you.

51:08I would love that. But first and foremost, if we adhere to the give, give, give, ask or the jab, jab, jab, right hook, I'm not actually going to make a pass for Social Curator. I have a podcast called The Jasmine Star Show. Let's get to know each other there. You get to understand, am I a good fit? Do you think the product that we're talking about, are we in alignment? That would always work better. However, if you want to go and get a sneak peek, socialcurator.com or The Jasmine Star Show. Welcome back. I hope this episode gave you some fresh ideas and a dose of inspiration to take bold action in your own business.

51:38If you loved this conversation, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share with a friend who needs to hear it. Until next time, thanks for listening to The Jasmine Starr Show.