Mutli-Millionaire CEO: The Simple Steps to Self-Made Success | Everette Taylor
5/27/202647 min
If you've been wanting to buy a business for years, get your ticket to Main Street Millionaire Live. You’ll learn how to find the right business for you, make deals, evaluate them, finance them, and own the upside: https://contrarianthinking.biz/MSML26_BDYT You've got a product idea. Maybe you've even built the thing. But now you're stuck on the part that actually matters: getting people to give you money before you've spent a fortune building inventory, hiring a team, or raising venture capital that'll own your company before you do. Everett Taylor is the CEO of Kickstarter, the platform that's helped creators raise over $8 billion and launch everything from billion dollar companies to side hustles that print cash. He came up through the mailroom, got stabbed working a parking lot, and built his career by learning how to sell himself before he had anything to sell. Now he runs one of the most creative funding platforms in the world and he's breaking down exactly how to raise money without giving away equity, how to pitch without sounding desperate, and why most people fail before they even start. In this episode, you'll learn: Why selling yourself is the first skill every founder needs and how to build confidence even when you're starting from zero The pre-order pyramid: exclusivity, urgency, value, timeliness, and trust, and why video is the number one thing that makes or breaks a campaign How to calculate your real costs so you don't lose money on every sale and why you need a 25 to 30 percent buffer for the things you can't predict The biggest mistakes founders make when pitching: not being concise, not building trust, and not understanding the difference between pitching VCs and pitching customers Why raising venture capital means giving up control and how pre-orders let you test demand, keep equity, and build a real business on your terms
(00:00:00) Introduction: How to Raise Your First 100K Without Connections (00:00:52) The Self-Selling Framework: Marketing Yourself Before Your Product (00:03:54) Mental Toughness and Emotional Regulation: The Two Traits You Need (00:08:24) Pre-Orders Over Venture Capital: The Kickstarter Advantage (00:10:21) The Pre-Order Pyramid: Exclusivity, Urgency, Value, and Trust (00:13:41) The Video-First Rule: Why Great Campaigns Start With 30 Seconds (00:17:11) The Biggest Pitch Mistakes: Get to the Point or Get Lost (00:20:20) When to Bootstrap vs When to Raise Millions (00:23:02) The Venture Capital Trap: Why a 250M Offer Got Rejected (00:26:29) Cost Management and Buffer Strategy: The 25-30 Percent Rule (00:32:46) Surprising Success Stories: 28M Board Games and Comic Book Empires (00:37:49) The CEO Playbook: Mental Toughness, Humility, and Rolling Up Your Sleeves (00:40:43) Remote Leadership: Trust, Aggressive Goals, and Performance Management (00:43:26) The Kickstarter Turnaround: Rejecting Mediocrity and Rebuilding Culture
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsEverette Taylor· Guest0:00
You're not gonna get the CEO job if it's an easy job. [laughs] Like, they're not just giving you polished companies that are like, "Here is Apple." They're gonna give you a company that has a lot of problems. And me, I came in and I said, "Listen, mediocrity has no place here."
Codie Sanchez· Host0:15
I'm gonna sit down with Everette Taylor, the CEO of Kickstarter. Today's episode is all about how to raise money and how to build trust, how to pitch without sounding desperate, and what it takes to be a CEO and an entrepreneur in a business. What are the biggest mistakes you see people making when they pitch their product for the first time?
Everette Taylor· Guest0:32
If you don't catch my attention within the first 30, 45 seconds, like, it gets rough. A great pitch is something that you humanize and make people feel like you're relatable and what you're trying to do is relatable, and they understand.
Codie Sanchez· Host0:44
What do you do when you have to make a hard decision fast?
Everette Taylor· Guest0:48
People may not like this answer, but my job as a CEO is to make sure that...
Codie Sanchez· Host0:52
Okay, so you've been part of startups and product launches, and now you're the CEO of Kickstarter. Um, but I'm curious, since you've seen it all, let's start for the person who wants to get their first 100K- Yeah ... into their business or product. What would you tell them?
Everette Taylor· Guest1:12
What would I tell them? Well, number one, I would say is can you sell yourself?
Codie Sanchez· Host1:18
Mm-hmm.
Everette Taylor· Guest1:20
You know? If you don't have any resources, if you don't have any connections, can you actually sell yourself? Can you sell the dream? Can you sell the vision? Like, I tell people all the