Fund Your Dreams Like a Creative Genius

A Guide for Artists, Entrepreneurs, Inventors, and Kindred Spirits

Brainard Carey

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781621536482
• eBook ISBN: 9781621536505
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship

How to Get Others to Support Your Vision If you have a dream that needs backing, be it an art project, an invention, or even a business, this is the book for you. Brainard Carey offers advice with solid examples of how building relationships with sponsors, investors, grant-makers, and patrons is something every creative person can pursue. Carey draws from his extensive experience and interviews with others to show artists and creative people how to raise money without the use of crowdfunding platforms. Readers will learn how to articulate their funding needs, develop a campaign, and approach sponsors. Chapter topics include:

• Defining your funding goals
• Pitching a proposal
• Writing to someone you've never met before
• Conversational tactics to help you ask for funding
• Methods for keeping in touch with potential sponsors
• Real examples of artists and entrepreneurs who succeeded in gaining the support of philanthropists and patrons
• And much more

With chapters divided between practical how-tos and case studies, Fund Your Dreams Like a Creative Genius, offers readers both instructive and demonstrative lessons in making their next big project a reality. Everyone can do it with the right tools, and Carey offers an insider's guide to an otherwise daunting process.

Chapter 1

CREATE A PRODUCT

 

Money. It’s what makes a business or most dreams flourish and is also what stands in the way of growth. In the early stages of every new venture, the very first concern and top priority is always where the money will come from. It used to be that in order to start a business the route was to visit the bank, provide reasonable collateral, and secure a loan. These days, with an economy that is often highly volatile and with the advent of the internet constantly changing the landscape of how things are done, the era of the bank loan is rapidly fading. Crowdfunding has taken the place of traditional overhead capital in many cases through sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. But what if you want to circumvent even these modern traditions and find a way to raise capital even more independently? What if you would prefer not to give a percentage of all income raised to one of the many online platforms like Indiegogo, Patreon, and Kickstarter?

The fact of the matter is, there are countless ways to secure yourself a little extra green on the side; the only obstacle is the limit of your imagination. Just ask Brian Chesky, CEO and founder of the now ubiquitous vacation and short-term rental platform Airbnb. In the early days of this business, Chesky and his cofounders Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia had a problem. They were rapidly running out of money to run their nascent, unknown start-up.

The business itself was the result of chance. When a design conference flooded into San Francisco creating a space issue—there simply weren’t enough hotel beds to fit every participant—the three cofounders used the lack of space to their advantage. Low on funds and needing to pay the rent, they opened their loft space to conference participants. Three air mattresses plus complimentary breakfast at $80 a pop not only helped three visitors find a place to stay, it got the rent paid and gave rise to what would become Airbnb.

 

There are countless ways to secure yourself a little extra green on the side; the only obstacle is the limit of your imagination.

 

Fast-forward to Denver, Colorado, in 2008. The Democratic National Convention was presenting the very same temporary housing need as the San Francisco design conference, and Airbnb was still in its very early stages. The team needed to solve a fundamental problem, which was figuring out how to fund their business enough to market it and bring in more paying customers.

They already knew that the DNC was a tremendous opportunity. The idea of people opening their homes to others was catching on. But things weren’t growing quite fast enough; they needed another way to keep their little boat afloat.

That’s when they came up with a most unconventional idea in order to capitalize on the convention in town. They would sell cereal.

You read that correctly.

They would sell cereal. The team ordered a thousand boxes from a local printer, got themselves a glue gun and some cereal, and went to work. They created a limited-edition series of politically themed cereals, namely Obama O’s and Captain McCain. Each variety had five hundred boxes each, individually numbered and filled with real cereal. In the lead-up to the Democratic National Convention, the team sold off their cereal boxes for $40 each. It was thinking so far outside the . . . well . . . box, they had no idea whether their plan would pay off.

It took a bit of hustling to get the word out about their limited-edition breakfast series. The team turned to small-time bloggers asking them to run features to small audiences. This grassroots marketing began to snowball and eventually landed them on national network news, giving them and their cereal start-up funding an enormous boost.

Against all odds, the Airbnb founders sold every last box, raising $40,000 that would allow them to dig out of the serious debt running their little business had put them in. They took their capital and their unusual idea to Paul Graham, asking him for a spot in his start-up accelerator Y Combinator.

Graham was skeptical at first—this was 2008 and the markets had just crashed, setting off what would become the recession. He was looking for businesses that could survive during the austere times ahead. He was unconvinced that a rental company was one of those businesses.

Just when it looked like Airbnb would have to seek elsewhere, they revealed their unusual method of raising capital. Graham was so impressed by the success of the cereal boxes, he offered the team a spot. Their absolute ingenuity proved to the entrepreneur that they had what it takes to keep a business going even when success is slow and debt is piling up.

When it comes to funding your business, your art, or whatever your dream is, the sky’s the limit as far as ideas go. If you are an artist, you have a serious advantage in that you are already used to thinking in ways that are completely different to the traditional ways the world goes round. Make this perspective work for you. Create and imagine ways you can earn money to keep your business or art practice afloat. Learn from the example of the Airbnb crew that sometimes, when the moment is right, the most outlandish ideas are the ones that will get you the furthest.

If you liked that idea, keep reading until you find the approach that seems the most exciting and most comfortable to you.

 

Against all odds, the Airbnb founders sold every last custom cereal box, raising $40,000 that would allow them to dig out of the serious debt running their little business had put them in.

 

CHAPTER 1 CHECKLIST

1. Write down the goal amount to be raised.

2. Come up with a product that is easily made and also attractive.

3. Give yourself a specific time frame to reach your financial goal.

4. Make your product (or have it fabricated).

5. Find a place that is heavily trafficked to sell your product.

6. Use social media to promote your product or event.

7. Reach out to bloggers for more coverage.

8. Write a press release about what you are doing.

9. Make a schedule on your calendar to manage your time on these tasks.

10. Follow up with any media inquiries; have a press kit ready.

11. Have a system to accept credit card payments so you can swipe cards (like Square or PayPal).

12. Meditate or visualize success (do not underestimate the power of this!).

 

“Nothing will teach you more about perceived value than taking something with literally no value and selling it in the auction format. It teaches you the beauty and power of presentation, and how you can make magic out of nothing.”

—Sophia Amoruso

Chapter 2

AUCTIONS FOR EVERYONE

My auction guru, Jim Wintner, the CEO of benefitevents.com, which is a personalized auction platform, likes to tell a story about Warren Buffett and his late wife Susan. Susan’s idea was to auction off lunch with him. They began to do that and were netting as much as $20,000 for lunch locally. The money went to Glide, a San Francisco charity that provides food, health care, and other services to the homeless, the impoverished, and people struggling with substance abuse.

Then they began using eBay and sold the lunch for $350,000! Every year since then Buffett has done this, and the most he has raised from one lunch with Warren Buffett is $3,456,789 in 2016. That’s right, over three million dollars—through eBay. The lesson there is to figure out who is the Warren Buffett in your community to get big success for your auction, and don’t hesitate to go for big money. It’s okay to think about hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions; both require the same process, and will help you realize your big dream.

Auctions are one of the best techniques in the strategies of many nonprofit organizations. Silent auctions make appearances at gala dinners and preschool fundraisers alike. They draw on the basic human tendency to consume and compete, sometimes with surprisingly good results.

STRATEGY

Auctions are one of the best techniques in the strategies of many nonprofit organizations. Silent auctions make appearances at gala dinners and preschool fundraisers alike. They draw on the basic human tendency to consume and compete, sometimes with surprisingly good results. So why not try your hand at an art auction? Not only is it a great way to raise a little money, but if you know a few artists, you’ll also help them get their art out into the world. This process will work for entrepreneurs of any kind as well as nonprofits and individuals who have a cause. You can auction off all kinds of things, not just art, but consider auctioning art that is from local artists. You can of course auction other objects, like the clothes or ephemera of well-known pe...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 | Create a Product
• Chapter 2 | Auctions for Everyone
• Chapter 3 | A Moveable Feast: Fundraising over Dinner
• Chapter 4 | Texting Your Way to Full Coffers
• Chapter 5 | Fundraise by Design
• Chapter 6 | Start a Festival
• Chapter 7 | Write Letters the Old Way
• Chapter 8 | P2P Campaigns: Viral Gold
• Chapter 9 | Angels and Venture Capitalists
• Chapter 10 | Pet Parties: Local Fundraiser for Any Cause
• Chapter 11 | The Classics, Abbreviated and Ready for Updating
• Afterword
• Suggested Reading
• Index