Finding Peace During My Kickstarter Campaign

Penny S. Tee Article

Well, as I promised in my last blog, I started my Kickstarter campaign in time for my birthday. IT’S LIVE! It has 21 days left and really could use lots of help—we’ve only collected 9% of the goal so far. I’m very grateful for those of you who have contributed, but anyone can tell my campaign needs help if it has any chance of me receiving any of the money—remember if the goal isn’t hit, I don’t receive any funds.

I’m convinced that I live “in the flow” and as I move along my journey, doors open up. Hopefully this will work and if not, it’s still what I was supposed to do —there was a lesson that I had to learn. I’m educating myself about Kickstarter—unfortunately some of which I should have learned before I started my campaign. Oops.

If you recall, I attended my Publishers and Writers of Orange County meeting as I write a monthly article for their newsletter. The speaker was touting the fact that a Kickstarter campaign had helped him. Then again at their San Diego meeting another speaker coincidentally had run a successful Kickstarter campaign. I couldn’t help but think the Universe was giving me a nudge to run one too. So I took a leap of faith . . .

If you don’t know, Kickstarter is a crowdsourcing campaign. You are offering what they call “rewards” and in return, people help fund what you are trying to create—in my case my book, “Blasted from Complacency: A Journey from Terror to Transformation in Israel.”

My rewards are things like the ebook and paperback, speaking gigs etc. You are getting something for your contribution—just not until the book and campaign is completed. Essentially, people are pre-paying for these rewards so it helps in my case to produce the book, which I am independently publishing. Kickstarter of course gets fees for running the campaign on their platform so you get the balance.

All the writing and edits are done and we’re in the home stretch—it’s still hard for me to believe it’s finished after years of working on it seven days a week until all hours. Unfortunately it’s been much more expensive than I had been told, thus my attempt to have people help.

I have to admit my Kickstarter campaign has been a challenge to my goals of finding Peace within and outside myself. As the campaign began and I saw those close to me pledging, I felt encouraged. Yahoo, as humans we need to feel loved.

Asking for help itself was a learning experience—it’s not been my nature. Why? Childhood crap. And I have to tell you, others didn’t mention, running a Kickstarter campaign may put in your face all of your issues—even ones you thought you had resolved, oy.

The big drawback to Kickstarter is that if you don’t make your goal, you don’t get any of the money pledged. Later I would find out that the majority of campaigns fail, but hey why couldn’t I be on the sweet list? After all I know lots of people—over 4,000 Facebook friends and more than 700 followers. Would they be interested in helping?

What about all of those groups I belong to—Writers4Writers, temple, James Malinchak mentoring, Toastmasters, Influencers, personal growth groups—the lists of organizations I belong to is long. What about all of those blogs I’ve written about folks for years now—would they be willing to contribute? I love speaking with people, learning and am constantly going to one meeting or another. Wouldn’t they be willing to buy a book ahead of time to help? We’ll see.

There also was the promise of generous Kickstarter fans who like to back projects. Would they be interested? I sure hope so.

My best friend topped the list of pledges so far—not surprising, she has a heart of gold. Ours is one of those relationships where we don’t get to speak often, she’s in Connecticut and always involved in too many things, but when we do we just catch up and can speak for hours. And my other friends I’ve had for years—I’m grateful to them as well.

I find you watch what’s happening on Kickstarter like a ticking bomb—I suppose that’s appropriate given what I write about. But then the pledges slowed down to a trickle. What happened to those Kickstarter strangers who donate to the campaigns I had heard about? And of course, then I started to do even more research and find out oops, you were supposed to have this all planned out with friends and family. It turns out they are supposed to be your primary source of pledges. Oh my.

I’ve even tried to “boost” the campaign through The Crowdfunding Center—hopefully that will help!

My goal of $18,000 is lots of money—but that is my current budget without all of the bells and whistles I would love. I was honest. Of course I knew it was hard for me alone, but when I set up my campaign, being honest about my budget seemed appropriate. I didn’t adjust it since I saw campaigns that had raised far more than that. I told myself that many people care about Israel—wouldn’t they be supportive?

The budget has risen quickly from what I was originally told—faster than a cake in the oven and I’ve burned a few fingers dealing with this fact.

Unfortunately I’m not a celebrity who was paid an advance to pour my heart and soul out writing my memoir over these last years. But it has been an effort of love. Love for Israel and love for my son — my “ethical will” so he would understand his mother’s motives, thinking — and what made Mom, Mom.

One of the most important things to do is to ask your followers to let their friends and followers know that they support you and to share your campaign. The more people who see your campaign, the more people who might want to support you, too. So please share my campaign. It’s a numbers game, the more people who see your campaign, the more opportunity for someone to take an interest and make a pledge.

Please share, tweet, post on Facebook, email, send carrier pigeon, call your friends, work associates and ask your guru to send good vibes — but especially make a pledge. Namaste.

I hope you will support me by making a pledge and sharing my campaign with your friends.

Peace, שלום, سلام

As always, I invite you to Join Me On My Journey . . . 

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