Miles From Nowhere

Guess I'll take my time

Welp. I missed a week. I didn’t post last Thursday and so, according to my self-imposed timeline, I’m a failure and I feel like shit. But somehow, it was also an important lesson. Let me take you back a few days—

So there I was, driving up and down the 10 freeway, trying to get my daughter to fall asleep. The “up and down” was strategic: I had to stay close to home so that the very moment she finally knocked out, I could be back at my computer within ten minutes. The audio was carefully chosen—the droning audiobook of A Crowdfunder's Strategy Guide: Build a Better Business by Building Community by Jamey Stegmaier. Perfect nap-fodder for my daughter, but also, in my mind, “productive.” Because I’m already so behind! I should be further along than this! And then I hear the book narrator say:

“One of the biggest mistakes crowdfunders make when launching a crowdfunding project is launching too soon…

If you have the mindset that you’re somehow on a deadline for launching your project, you’re setting yourself up for failure from the start.”

• Jamey Segmaier, A Crowdfunder's Strategy Guide: Build a Better Business by Building Community

The whole premise of the book is “build your crowd before you launch.” Jamey lays out a beautiful list of steps you should take before you even THINK about launching (which I’ll summarize at the bottom of this post). But as I listened to this annoyingly targeted advice, a sense of calm fell over me. He was telling me (yes ME) to slow down. Every day you spend preparing will make your launch stronger.

And that’s when a familiar refrain popped into my head:

This is far from the first time this perfect, amazing Cat Steven’s song has carried me through an insurmountable moment—

• Trying to break into animation (will they ever let me in?)

• Grieving my mom’s sudden death (will life ever feel normal again?)

• Becoming a parent (will I ever feel good at this?)

This song celebrates the idea that the journey itself makes you capable of reaching the goal. Stop fighting it. Lean into it. It can be your friend if you let it.

The journey is actually a friend. It’s there to bulk you up, humble you, teach you what you need. So when you finally arrive at that goal, you’re ready to hold it.

So I turned off the audiobook and turned on the song. And whenever I play this particular song, it has to be on this spotify setting-

To be fair, this song is like a potato chip for the soul, you simply can’t have just one. Once it ends you have to start it over, just to feel that build again just to try and figure out how we’ve gone from quiet acceptance to ecstatic celebration at the sheer chance to be on the endless journey we find ourselves in.

As someone who has been through puberty, I can tell you: transformations are not pretty. Groping through the woods is clumsy and awkward and downright embarrassing. Becoming the person you need to be to get the things you want is messy. But goddamn, when you finally get there—it’s gonna make you feel good.

This part hit me the hardest. This way is the hard way. But maybe that’s the price of freedom. Sure, I could give up and find a new job, take on a new career. But if this is the only road to making this series then let’s fucking goooooo.

Or, as Cat says perfectly in the song’s orgasmic climax-

And then he’s back down again, just the quiet confidence of—

So there I was, remembering that Poodle Lagoon isn’t going to be my source of income anytime soon. It won’t give me the external validation I’m so desperate for now or maybe ever. This is about something bigger than that, it’s about achieving something outside of me.

It’s not going to be easy to transform into the person I need to be to make it happen, but I will, no matter how long it takes. So let’s enjoy the ride, shall we?

As the song wrapped up for the umpteenth time my daughter, still wide-awake in the backseat, piped up with a phrase her dad taught her, “Dang. Good song.”

Never truer words spoken. We pulled off the road and went to the beach.

Moral of the story? This week is a week late.

I did eventually finish the book chapter and, as promised here is the pre-launch checklist

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Jamey Stegmaier’s Pre-Launch Checklist (as summarized by me)

The book’s a decade old, so some terms like “blog” feel a little dated, but the advice still lands.

• Start a blog with useful/interesting content, post 3x per week for 3 months. (That’s this Substack for me—check! Nailing it.)

• Subscribe to at least 20 blogs related to your project. Comment, engage, learn.

• Read every crowdfunding lesson on his blog.

• Back 10–20 crowdfunding projects. Study them. What draws you in? What turns you off? (Fun stat: projects backed by creators with only one previous pledge succeed 23% of the time. If you’ve backed 11–25 projects, that number nearly doubles.)

• Add value to something that matters to a stranger every day for at least 2 months—without asking for anything in return. (Pure community-building.)

• Create a spreadsheet of at least 10 successful projects similar to yours and compare them.

• Create a detailed budget for your project.

• Pay a professional artist/designer to create your visuals. (This one hit me hard. My personal decks don’t cut it. I need to invest in beauty.) Seek feedback from people who don’t care about your feelings.

• Send out samples of your product to high-impact bloggers/podcasters/YouTubers. (For me, that’s a sample mini-sode.)

• Share your project preview page with at least 20 people. Ask for feedback with specific questions. Pay attention to repeated notes, even if you don’t like them. Like Bill Hader says: “When people tell you something’s wrong, they’re usually right. When they tell you how to fix it, they’re usually wrong.”

• Send personalized press releases to 15–20 outlets a week before launch.

• Clear your schedule on launch day so you can engage in real time with backers

So that sounds like it’ll take… a while. And that’s okay.