Episode 10: How to grow an audience before launching a crowdfunding campaign with Dustin Bouch

Hey! Welcome back to the podcast. This episode’s guest is Dustin Bouch. Dustin Bouch has designed,developed and manufactured many different physical product lines in his career. Dustin’s newest project has him co-founding Backmate, a revolutionary doorway massage system designed to relieve back pain, neck pain, headaches and more. In this episode we discuss: Loving to fix things when he was a kid [2:32] Dustin tinkering with stuff around their home [3:22] Why he took a job with a significantly lower pay [4:05] How he became an entrepreneur by accident [5:51] Letting go of his first business [7:46] Working on his first product [10:58] Developing a combination outdoor survival device (FOGO) [12:51] Lessons from FOGO that he applied to Backmate [15:00] How to test for product-market fit without a finished product [18:19] Challenges in manufacturing a product overseas [22:40] Importance of growing an audience before launching a crowdfunding campaign [26:30] Marketing Backmate [31:34] Best way to learn more about Dustin and Backmate [33:07] Quotable Quotes If you don’t have a good product-market fit there’s nothing much you can do. Scientists really fight tooth and nail to get a little bit of budget to work on their pet projects. It’s really important to be able to have that margin so that you can sell it to distributors, so they can sell it at retail. But also when you sell it online that you have enough margin to cover your customer acquisition. Develop a community first around a product and using that to leverage your crowdfunding and then your first product pushout. It’s really important to not get married to your ideas. Have 2 or 3 products that you’re going to be testing through that process at the same time and know that you’re only picking the best one. It’s so important to get really large backing on Kickstarter within the first 24 hours. It’s a huge indicator of success. Links to sources and tools Learn more about Dustin his co-founder and their product - Backmate - at https://mybackmate.com/ and find out how it can help relieve back pain Connect with Dustin on his social media accounts where you can ask him questions, recommendations or referrals. Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mybackmate/ Personal Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinbouch/ Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/18223194 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mybackmate/ Subscribe to their Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/mybackmate) to see Backmate in action. Support our podcast Rate and review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pass-the-secret-sauce-by-matt-shields/id1506940483 the podcast on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. Tell a family member, friend, or colleague about the show. Subscribe: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pass-the-secret-sauce-by-matt-shields/id1506940483 so you never miss an episode. Subscribe to us on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ5e...