Using Crowdsourcing to Fund Your Business - Jason Fishman

Jason Fishman saw how difficult it was for many types of startups to receive funding from traditional sources and he had a creative response: why not use crowdfunding as a way for smaller ventures to find investors?

Jason’s agency, Digital Niche Agency, provides strategic and marketing services to help smaller ventures attract investors using the crowdfunding framework. 

Connect with Jason: https://www.digitalnicheagency.com/

If you find the Marketing Root Work podcast valuable, please become a subscriber! 

My mission is to change the way small business owners market themselves and it’s very important to me that I reach as many people as possible.

Transcript

04.01.26 [MRW Podcast] Jason Fishman Edit 
 

 hello and welcome to the Marketing Root Work Podcast. I'm Judy Murdoch. I'm your host, and today I am very happy to be introducing Jason Fishman. 

Jason is CEO. A digital niche agency where he has spent over a decade helping founders raise capital through equity crowdfunding. Early on he noticed that campaigns that performed best weren't the ones with the biggest budgets or the most aggressive outreach. They were the ones where founders told a genuinely compelling story and build real trust with their community. That insight has shaped everything his agency does. The work has never been about pushing people towards investment. It's about helping founders communicate something real so that the right people can find them. So, Jason, welcome.  

Thank you, Judy. 

Excited to be here.  

Yeah, I'm glad you're here too. You have such an interesting story. And I think that your agency does something that's really different and creative.  

Yes, yes. Important for agencies to have a niche, a specialization. We found our value, our impact here.  

Yeah. That's really cool. Tell me a little bit, like, how did you end up, like what was your path to becoming CEO of a digital agency? 

Sure, sure. I didn't exactly go to school for it but I found an interest in school and marketing and that evolved to working with agencies and around verticals I was passionate with. I grew up here in Southern California, so action sports and action sports specialists were really my focus in the early stages of my career. 

Uh. Was that a different agency? Was that a social gaming startup? They merged with an advertising network and I, I saw the fundraising process and all the inefficiencies that's gonna come into play later. Uh but working in advertising, working, uh, you know, building this mobile ad network, uh, that the company had built, that I had been a big part of, had the opportunity to work with many Fortune 500 companies, top 1000 advertisers, and found. 

That was just another name on a, a long list of vendors. You know, we run a successful campaign, was told, good job, we'll consider you for the next RFP probably sometime next year. And I, I felt a bit of a disconnect. Uh, what was, was meanwhile reading, you know, about different entrepreneurs and going to different meetings and, you know, startup meetups here in Los Angeles and said, I'm gonna begin a growth agency. 

I'm gonna work with growth stage companies, and began doing that. Seeing success, but capital raising was this common theme. Sometimes a holdup, but it was an obstacle for the groups we were working with. 

Mm-hmm. 

And the more I read about failure rates in the startup space, capital, uh, you know, being funded, not being funded was such a big part of the equation. 

And at that time, I was introduced. To Reg D 5 0 6 C, which allows for solicitation of accredited investors, meaning I could run advertising to high net worth, high household income audiences. . Which with advertising, there's data available for you to do so. I even had partnerships to get very specific audiences to go after, ran a campaign, saw success was introduced to more. 

If the laws opened up further, I was then able to target retail investors through regulation crowdfunding, reg cf and regulation A plus. Uh, reg CCF E could raise up to 5 million regulation A plus EQ raise up to 75 million. So we began running these campaigns, seeing great results. Our companies that we were working with were growing, bringing on more team members, larger offices, more market share, and we became a go-to group, uh, if not the best, one of the best in the space for this niche. 

It extends out to anyone who's looking to target investors, uh, both offline and online. 'cause you could have a, an online component of that to close investors at a higher level. I share the, the results. I showcase them on my podcast test optimize scale, and I do an educational series. So I try to be an open book about it. 

But that is the path that, uh, that got me here.  

Cool. That's a great story, Jason and I, I like that you had a creative response.  

You know, to an issue that you were seeing.  

Yes.  

Yeah. A question for you. Um, like when I, this has kind of a, a crowdfunding vibe for me. Is that accurate or am I, am I wrong on that? 

You're absolutely right. I will tell you, um. Crowdfunding doesn't always have, uh, the, the right, uh, aura around it. 

Right. 

If I say crowdfunding in front of, 

I get it. 

The VCs, they're gonna have their own 

Right. 

You know, conceptions on what that means. 

Sure. 

And really it's just a volume of smaller participants, uh, constituting the entire amount. So instead of one investor putting in a million dollars 

mm-hmm. 

It could be 500 investors putting in $2,000 each. It's an easier ask and more power with those numbers, the people who repost the opportunities that come out of it. Uh, but yes, uh, it's very much investment crowdfunding. 

Could be equity, could be a safe debt, convertible note, different types of structures. Mm-hmm. We also work with groups that are bringing in, you know, large real estate investors or different users that are gonna invest on their FinTech app, their, their cryptocurrency exchange, their, uh, gold IRA products. 

So it, it ranges. Mm-hmm. But, but it's heavily built around investment crowdfunding.  

Yeah, I mean, I think actually, in my opinion, that's what's really creative about your approach. It's really interesting. So, one question I have for you is like, oftentimes when I think about, you know, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, however you wanna think about it, usually what I am thinking about more is it's, it's often sort of a pet project somebody's trying to fund. 

Sometimes it's somebody who is having medical expenses, that type of thing. Um, but going more to more of the commercial side of it. Usually like if you contribute to someone's project, you, you get something in return. So I, I, for some reason, I remember somebody did like a Harry Potter Lego, um, set and like people got a free set or something like that if they, they hit their target. 

So what is kind of like, what's the skin in the game that. These folks get, um, when they do make an investment? 

Sure, sure. Beyond Legos? 

I would totally go for Legos, but Yeah.  

Well there's different types of crowdfunding. So you have reward crowdfunding and donation crowdfunding that you just touched on there. 

Mm-hmm. 

Reward crowdfunding. Uh, most commonly on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Uh, shorter campaigns generally 30 days. It's all about the pre-launch. 'cause you need the first day to set you off on the right trajectory. Really, you need to raise a third of your external goal in the first 24 hours. Otherwise, your campaign has a 70, 80% chance to fail. 

There's a whole formula for this. 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Uh, donation, crowdfunding, that's the, uh, you know, GoFundMe, uh 

Right. 

Different types of platforms where, like you said, a medical emergency and you're not really looking to give anything in return as much as to look for the community to step in with, with donations. 

Exactly. 

Very valuable platforms to both sides of who's getting involved. When I first learned about, uh, at that time it was called equity crowdfunding, but investment crowdfunding, I was basically given an example of, I believe a Kickstarter campaign. Uh, a VR headset. I think it was Oculus that, uh, was successful in raising on Kickstarter. 

Mm-hmm. 

And then six months later was acquired by, by Facebook, uh, for, for massive amounts of money. And some of the backers felt, uh, that was a bit unfair of, Hey, we, you know, we got you here. We didn't really get anything in return.  

Right.  

Okay, I guess we got our headset. 'cause there's, you know, typically perks when you're putting into a reward crowd fund campaign, the rewards. 

And that really opened my eyes up to investment crowdfunding because that's how it was positioned as the solution. Where now individuals could still get perks. You can still have levels of, hey. You put in $500, a thousand dollars, 10,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand. This is what you're getting in return. 

Sometimes that's your name in the credits of a film. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Or you get to attend the premier, you get to have, you know, brunch with the director, you know, higher tier perks there, of course. Right. Uh, but that, that is still something that you could use in investment crowdfunding. Mm-hmm. The same terms have to be available to everyone of course. 

But you also get. Your investment. So in many cases that's common stock or preferred stock. Okay, got it. Equity, it could be revenue share, it could be debt, you know, set percentage paybacks. Okay. Uh, so investment crowdfunding, same, same principles. Typically a longer campaign and a higher average transaction amount. 

Okay. Okay. Um, one of the things that I, that you shared that I got my attention was. Most of the audience who will be listening to this are generally, uh, solopreneurs. They are professionals. They offer services. Many of them are certified or licensed professionals, so this may or may not be something that they would avail themselves to, even though it's good for them to know about it. 

What I was really interested in is what you said about, there were two things, so one was storytelling.  

Hmm.  

Um, you know, sort of the use of storytelling in the content. And the other thing, um, that was of interest is the connection to the community. Yes. 'cause both of those things are, um, I don't know if I would call them creative strategies, but they are definitely strategies which. 

In my opinion are underused  

mm-hmm.  

By most business owners. And, um, I'd love to hear a little bit more about, um, if, if you've got one or two really good stories you could tell about either, um, an organization that you, you did this for by, you know, from the beginning or, um, maybe an organization whose funding was not working very well and you were able to come in and really make a big difference for them. 

Sure. Absolutely. It is all built on storytelling and audience, community building.  

Yeah.  

All have different financial professionals come to me and tell me they're going to be one of these campaigns, maybe for one of their clients, maybe for someone in their portfolio, and they're just focused on the numbers, which are very important. 

They're not,  

no, no, no.  

Yes. Metrics  

for sure.  

Exactly. They'll say, Hey, you could raise 5 million on Reg cf. Do we need two months or three? What's the cost of capital? It's like. Well, we gotta take this different steps back. I'll talk to 'em about the success rates of the industry and how the 10 per the top 10% of issuers really get all the investments. 

The bottom 50% are stagnant. I'll talk to 'em about positioning and creating social proof and third party validation that line around the block feeling versus an empty restaurant sensation. It's really social dynamics at play on these crowd campaigns.  

Yes, very much.  

Whether it's reward donation, or equity investment, of course. 

Mm-hmm.  

So how that story is being told, how we're learning about the problem, and hopefully in a relatable fashion, how we're exactly, we're, uh, enrolled in the solution, in how we're believing. In the founder, in the team.  

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.  

In their mission. How we're optimistic about the growth of the vertical be because you have to be, uh, compliant in how you're speaking about this. 

And there's rules around the forward looking statements. There's a lot more room to talk about how the industry's growing than how your company is actually growing because you have to be able to. Make everything come to life. Right. So if you're speaking in, in too much certainty about what's gonna be produced next year in five years Right? 

Or in 10 years, you, you could, uh, you know, cross some different lines.  

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah.  

Uh, one group we've worked with that the story of the founder has really resonated with me. Mm-hmm. Uh, is a company called Greenfield Robotics. Uh, robotics for agriculture, working with farmers. Oh, interesting. Uh, removes the need for chemicals, uh, in, in really managing farms, cutting fascinating, maintain different types of stock. 

And, and it's the founder's story that really got me, uh, captivated and, and looking to, to, to work with them. Uh, the founder, um, uh. Multiple generations of farmers and his father, uh, uh, unfortunately, uh, developed Parkinson's disease and attributed that after doing heavy research to different chemicals.  

Oh,  

wow. 

Uh, so looked at it as, you know. Mission life journey to take hi, his career in tech, uh, look at smarter ways to farm and yeah, reduce the needs for chemicals, especially Oh, cool. As he was looking more into what we eat and chemicals and uhhuh, how farms are taken care of and, and, and chemical exposure, uh, sure. 

To farmers. So created this and I could tell you, um. The response he's received from different audiences and how that's led to the development of their community and how percentage of that community has now invested has been overwhelming. They've maxed out the rounds. It's been, you know, very exciting to be a part of. 

And for, for all of the right reasons. It's not just working with the banker who's looking at these percentages as much as going along,  

right.  

Uh, for, for the ride on this mission with the founder.  

Right, right. It's very, it's, it's interesting that you have, uh, and it makes perfect sense. You have to navigate. 

Between different groups with different sets of interests, right? Yes. So, you know, um, the money people come to you, are they usually your first contact? Um, are the people who are more involved in the money and finance and, and that type of thing?  

It's a mix.  

Okay.  

Uh, I work with everything from solopreneurs and sometimes in professional services. 

Could talk about, you know, the range of different industries and verticals that are now using these vehicles, these exemptions. In some cases it's the investor and talking to me about their portfolio. Companies looking to make introductions from there. In other cases, it's the broker dealer.  

Okay.  

Or, or FINRA regulated portal. 

They have these marketplaces where a volume of these deals are listed on their site and we get an introduction from there. In other cases, it's the lawyer, the accountant, often through these referrals, uh, founders. That's really  

interesting.  

Reach out to me too, uh, about this. Uh. More common, they're already going down this path. 

And speaking to me about marketing, uh, with all of the content I do, I also get many inquiries. Also the events and workshops I'm a part of, of people who are exploring this path towards funding.  

Mm-hmm.  

But as you highlighted, as you, you know, keyed in on there, it's really an exercise of not only marketing, uh, but community building. 

Right? Yes. And having a percentage of that audience convert, I'll, I'll ask that from a group of how large is your audience? How many email subscribers, how many social media followers? We could build it from the ground up. I could give plenty of stories of solopreneurs where that was the case. But whether we're building it, whether it exists, that's what's going to lead to a percentage of them investing. 

That's really interesting. That is very, very interesting. Do you, uh, another question. Do you work with not-for-profits? Because it seems like. They would also greatly benefit from your approach  

because they can't, um, give away equity. Okay? A nonprofit, it wouldn't follow the same, uh, filing. Uh, they can do reward, uh, crowdfunding campaigns, uh, donation campaigns. 

They can have for-profit entities. Okay. Again, the legal structure that, that's not my area of expertise somewhere on the marketing side, but, uh, they could build different entities and fundraise around those and the not nonprofit can, you know, market those. Uh, but there are ways it can be accomplished. 

Yeah. I bring it up only because I, I just very recently talked to somebody who's a grant writer for not-for-profits, and she said, because currently, you know, a lot of federal, federal funding's been pulled. Um, in particular, um, she works with, um, like social justice organizations and they are like currently not having, you know, like a real good experience trying to get federal, you know, federal funding. 

Yeah.  

So, um, she said there's. A fair amount of panic right now, panic, anxiety, um, in that space because, um, you know, like the money that they were always able to count on, it's no longer available. And so that, that made me think, um, when I was talking to her, like, you know, this is a group who could probably benefit from creative options. 

You know, like, what other options do you have if the federal government, if you can't depend on the federal government. So that was why, why I brought that question up.  

Yeah, and I speak to those groups. Um, there are verticals that, uh. Uh, the funding has dried up.  

Yeah.  

From venture capitalists and angel investors and more traditional channels. 

Yeah,  

yeah. Uh, MedTech, health tech, biotech. There's been different slowdowns there over the past year, year and a half. Uh, and how, uh, current events have affected funding and pathways for those companies to grow. So I'll see something like that happen in the news, and then more inquiries come through our site, more referrals accordingly. 

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, given like the types of organizations you work with, what do you think, like, like one of the, the number one mistakes, um, they make, and it can be a mindset mistake, it could be more of a functional mistake, but like, where do you see people, like if you could like, give them one piece of advice, um, like what piece of advice would you give them? 

So I have a joke of treat your agency better, but what I really mean by that is partner with the groups that you're, you're working with. Yeah. Don't necessarily look to, you know, point fingers. They're prepared for that. They know how to address those situations. Uh, but you wanna look at the goals and how you're going to get there together. 

Yeah. And it's about managing. To a point of effectiveness versus seeing success right out of the gate, uh, as it combines. Good point. Uh, you know, number two in there, it could really be number one, it's unrealistic expectations Okay. And how those, uh, expectations are going to be met. So I'll, ill Yeah. Speak with too many founders, too many CEOs who  

Yeah. 

Are like those bankers in the conversation of, Hey, we wanna raise the full amount. Yeah, less than 1% of the companies last year did, you know, we worked with several of those. Uh, I worked with many of the companies that, you know, raised a million dollars or more, and only so many companies use these filings, so a good percentage of both. 

Uh, but, uh, the, the right questions are how do we do it? How do we do it effectively? If it's not working, how do we optimize it and how do we link arms with the professionals who are working with us to be able to leverage their experience to do this successfully? Uh, versus just hear about case studies or results or what's possible and assume that's what's going to occur and in a very small window of time. 

Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that. That's such a pragmatic answer. Um, what is the horizon? Um, and it, I'm sure it varies a lot, but between the time you, perhaps your engagement begins to, and, and I'll, you can preface it. This is not a promise, this is nothing like that, but just, um, I just, I'm, I'm asking to get an idea, um, from you. 

Just in terms of like what is realistic,  

the timeline and the results associated.  

Yeah. Yeah.  

Well. Three months to 12 months is the common timeline. Okay. That's obviously a broad range. Okay? Uh, the contributing factors the same way I said for reward crowdfunding, you need to raise a third of your external goal, right, in the first 24 hours, right? 

For reward crowdfunding. Notice I said external. Because you have an internal goal and you want to blow past the a hundred percent level for investment crowdfunding, you really need to come outta the gate with. A substantial amount raised if you're looking to raise a million dollars. Really interesting. 

You wanna see a hundred K or more showcased on your offering page, and that doesn't need to be a hundred K from one investor or three that could be a hundred K from a hundred people that you know. Sure. A thousand, uh, dollar average each, right? Some people, a few hundred dollars, you get to set the minimum in the filing commonly between a hundred and a thousand. 

Uh, some people, maybe it's 5K, 10 K, 20 5K. Mm-hmm. They want to support more. They wanna have more chips on the table. Uh, but you need to be able to show people believe in you. People  

vest. Yeah.  

People looked at the deal. Yeah. Uh, there's a, a funny saying of if your mom won't invest in you, why would I? 

Meaning  

good. Very good.  

You've gotta have your community behind you. I don't you're right. Care whether you have a, you know, a hundred thousand people in your email list, or a thousand, some people who know you need to be able to show they trust in what you're doing and enough to put some of their assets. 

Could be small amounts of that, uh, you know, invested in there and looking to appreciate, uh, but you need to bring some of your own capital. Uh, you then need to have scalable traffic sources, meaning. Advertising, uh, perhaps outreach, uh, could be earned media and different types of press, but I would say the advertising gives you the most ability to intentionally scale up and at a low cost. 

Uh, the email. LinkedIn outreach fantastic as well. But I would say the call to action is a bit different there. Mm-hmm. You're looking for larger investments, maybe to have a conversation with those prospects, uh, that the cost that would be required to get them to the offering page and hope they convert from there. 

I've seen advertising to be more efficient, that there are strategies that, uh. Uh, are very large, you know, millions of emails going out and can produce the necessary numbers of visits. Uh, but I look at that, you know, it could be 50,000, a hundred thousand visits to an offering page. To get a thousand investments. 

Yeah. That's a 1%, 2% conversion rate. Those numbers are important. If you're getting a thousand, $2,000 is the average investment. That could be, you know, a million, 2 million. If it's 2000. Wow. And at 2000, that could be 4 million raised, but you need to figure out how to get the traffic there. Right. 

Advertising, you could scale up. It's a matter of reaching the right audiences from there with the right messaging, bringing them into the right story. Yeah. And then taking 'em down the funnel. Uh, so being able to look at those pieces, it's very important because if you have a strong first month, maybe you can finish in three months at a million. 

Okay? Got it. Uh, if you're playing for 5 million, maybe you need longer or to do things that are more aggressive at the early stages in terms of advertising and press. Uh, but asking the right questions, building the right projections accordingly, and making sure it's all tied into a timeline will get you there. 

In a more, uh, consistent fashion.  

Yeah, no, it makes sense. And I, again, I just wanna speak to, there's so many moving pieces in this.  

Yeah.  

Um, you know, I mean, not the least to which, you know, there is the communication strategy in the story, um, which feel pretty core to me. But at the same time, people need to have contacts. 

They need to have a community. They, you know, what also occurred to me was that so much of this in some ways comes, comes down to the owner or the principals. And how much do they, how do they own their story? Do they own their message? Do they own their product? You know how, like how compelling a case do they make? 

The most proactive founders have the most successful raises. Uh, I would say it could very much be translated to marketing campaigns as a whole, especially for professional services  

for  

sure. Uh, I run a marketing agency. I've done over 230 episodes on my podcast. I, uh, look to speak at conferences, be a guest on podcasts, write articles, guest articles, workshops, the more. 

Uh, thought leadership I put out.  

Right,  

right. More credible. My agency, uh, right. Is perceived as I also have all the case studies and, you know, testimonials and everything to back it again, social proof and third party validation.  

Case studies are good.  

Mm-hmm. And people invest in people, people buy from people. 

I hear that for B2B marketing, we're targeting businesses. Yeah. We're really targeting people.  

No, they're human beings that are  

businesses.  

Yeah. They're actually human beings behind those businesses.  

Yeah.  

You have to, you have to connect in meaningful ways with them.  

Absolutely. So the same's true with, uh, the investors, of course, if they, when I talk to investors about why they invest in these deals. 

Yeah,  

yeah.  

They reference the founder to me by first name as if they've known them and known them for years.  

Yeah.  

Yeah. They understand their background, their story, their mission. They see videos, uh, of them in advertisements on their social feeds every day and in their email box once a week or more. And mm-hmm. 

You know, featured at all these different speaking events, uh, they're setting the narrative.  

Right.  

They get to shape how the audience thinks about the deal, thinks about the offering. Right?  

Right.  

So definitely things that could be taken to other marketing campaigns for here, but I could tell you for investor marketing, investor acquisition, this makes a, a meaningful difference. 

Right? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. Question for you. Um, has AI had any effect on your business in terms of creating, like the create, you know, doing creative, um, doing messaging, that type of thing? I, I understand AI can be sort of, it can be a tool and tools can cut both ways, but I'm just very curious about. 

You know, what has your experience been?  

Yeah, yeah. The, the, the, the popular question these days, I feel like everywhere I go could get the grocery store.  

I couldn't resist.  

Do you use ai? No. No. It, it's, it's, it's highly relevant, so  

Right.  

Has it affected our business? Absolutely. First of all, I have competitors that use AI and charge very low amounts. 

Uh. There's this concept of AI slop. I am focused on quality and more importantly, the results that our content, our marketing, our creative produce, right? So I'm less interested in saving my team time. Frankly, 'cause my clients don't care about that. We're not charging them by hour Exactly. Or anything. 

Right? So if I figure out a new system tomorrow to shave down hours, who's it really benefiting? Uh, it has to be better than human is my role. Right? Yes, internally agreed, meaning if it's, uh, subpar, but we're able to put out more content. I mean, there are strategies where, you know, your search engine rankings could increase by putting out a high volume of that stuff. 

Mm-hmm. It's not really what, uh, moves the needle on our campaigns. Uh, does my creative team use ai? They use it for inspiration. Yeah. Okay. They found if they're asking AI to build them images or videos. You could tell it's ai.  

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  

Good AI usage. You shouldn't be able to tell it's ai, at least in most  

cases. 

Absolutely. Agreed. You know, totally agree.  

So, uh, we've been adopting strategies for business development, uh, for ideation that, uh, you know, can support and what we're writing, what we're designing. Cool. Uh, for, for outreach. Uh, but, uh, at the same time, uh. I'm not wowed even as a tech guy by the fact that AI can do amazing things as much as, is it better than human? 

I've seen people present to me marketing plans that were created with AI and they're flawed.  

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes, that's right. Um, I have found that AI can be great for research. It can be really good for parsing through a lot of data. On your audience. Mm-hmm. It can be very, very helpful for that, as you said. 

Absolutely. It's great for brainstorming and just sparking, um, different ideas. Um, I have yet to see anything like created by AI that I thought was very effective. And ultimately, as you and I both know, it comes down to is it effective? Is it getting results? How are people responding to it?  

Exactly. 

Exactly. 'cause that's what we're gonna, we're gonna be measured by.  

Exactly. Right. Yeah. Um, I think, I don't know if you heard the, read the story. I think Coca-Cola put out a, an advertising, a very expensive ad that was AI generated and it just got slaughtered by, by the viewers. People just, people hated it. 

There's  

time and place for it to look like ai. Right. But my general, you know, approach towards it is it should, you know, be behind the scenes. No one wants to see me solve a math problem with the calculator. You know, it needs to, well, you know, feel real  

cool. We have covered so much. Is there anything we haven't covered yet that you would like to speak to? 

Well, I really love how you focused on the story and the community because it's glossed over too many times. Agreed. Uh, I, I use numbers. Numbers are the only way to measure when we're building a marketing strategy. I look at it as an algorithmic roadmap. I mentioned some numbers about traffic and, and how many visits to an offering page you need to see to get conversions. 

You know, you build that out as an algorithm so you can see where traffic is falling off if it's not performing. And this could be traffic from anywhere, from your LinkedIn outreach, from your email outreach. It doesn't have to be advertising. Uh, even with press and other types of mentions, you wanna see how much traffic's coming through and the conversion rate of that traffic. 

That all starts with that community. You should be building community today  

totally.  

If you're getting a few extra email signups, a few extra Facebook followers, LinkedIn followers, you know, group members each day, that really adds up. Over the course of a month, over the course of six months, over the course of a few years, uh, I'll talk with groups that get backed up in their filing process for, you know, three months when they thought it was gonna take one. 

Uh, for, for the regulation a plus campaigns similar to paperwork to go public. Uh, and IPOI heard it's about 80% of the paperwork I, I've seen that delayed up to 18 months. And if you're growing your audience by a few thousand people a month. Do the math. It, it really stacks, uh, when you have an in offer, right? 

When you have an ask, you can anticipate more people, uh, getting involved, more people converting, more people sharing from there. Mm-hmm. That audience is undervalued. Build your audience. I agree. Do more to do that today and make sure they're engaged because they will show up, uh, when you have new announcements. 

Yeah. You know, I think, uh, another good point in there is simply not, I mean, just to remember that again, these are human beings and they're connected to you and your business for a reason, and, uh. I'm actually a big fan of doing research and understanding. What is it about you, um, that people are resonating with? 

Um, I actually come out of an agency, um, research background and so I was one of those persons in, you know, kind of like way in the backend, um, showing videos to people and asking them questions, you know, why this cat litter? How does, you know why? Why this cat litter? You know? Well, 'cause my cat really likes it and if my cat really likes it, that makes me a good cat mom. 

You know? But these things matter.  

Yeah. I've spent too much time on AI recently researching different hobbies. Golf and can nerd out on the analytics there and snowboarding and food and travel. Uh, I'm a new father. Uh, my wife and I wife get all these different recommendations and I, I really dive deep into the research. 

It comes from my marketing background. It's a matter of asking the right questions. You know, sifting through. Really not, there's a lot of data out  

there.  

Yeah. Uh, but I, I like to upload spreadsheets and have it calculate numbers, uh, off of it for me that, uh, w would take hours, uh, days in some cases. Uh, I know there's different, you know, rules, but, but still, uh, being able to upload it and, and ask specific questions. 

It doesn't for me in the matter of a minute, you know, a couple minutes.  

Pretty  

cool. Uh, you, you, they, they say reading gives your. Thoughts, breath, uh, you know, writing gives it precision, reflection gives it depth. It's a saying. I, I  

interesting.  

Live off of. Uh, but, but, uh, when I'm getting that research, I, I am inspired. 

I'm able to, you know,  

yeah, yeah.  

Build from there. Otherwise, I'm shooting in the dark and with my own thoughts, right? You need the hard data to determine where to go from there.  

Yes. Amen. Thank you for saying that. A lot of people in marketing, um, seem to think like evidence is, um, optional and that makes me completely insane. 

Me as well.  

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's your opinion, but like, do you have anything to back that up? So Jason, um, this was, this was such a great conversation. Um, I really appreciate everything you shared. Um, how do folks keep in touch with you? Like if they, they wanna learn more about what you're doing and, and get more into like the specific things you're doing to help your clients. 

Sure. Uh, I welcome anyone to reach out over LinkedIn. Uh, Jason Fishman. Digital Niche Agency, DNA, uh, here in Marina Delrey. You can go to our website as well, uh, www.digitalnicheagency.comandonyoutube.com/at Digital Niche Agency, you can find our podcast episodes, all different types of educational content. 

Uh,  

cool.  

Please, uh, enjoy and feel free to reach out.  

Yeah, you have a lot of content. I took a look at that and you, you've got quite the library.  

Thanks. Uh, we have a lot of findings, a lot of learnings, and if we keep 'em guarded, we feel like we're doing an injustice, uh, to the audience that could benefit from this. 

So, uh, have a lot of examples, a lot of numbers, uh, like you said, the research, uh, we, we research for every webinar that we put out beyond just what we see on our campaigns. That's cool. And we always say, you know, we have assumptions, but we need the data to show us what's physically working. Yes,  

absolutely. 

You can utilize our data on there.  

That's great. Jason. Thank you. Thank you for, you were so generous with your time and what you shared. This was, I really enjoyed our conversation.  

Me as well. Glad it was, uh, on both sides. Uh,  

good, good, good,  

good. Yes, this  

has been great. It's always, it's always nice to talk to somebody who understands sort of both the, the creative piece of it, but you also, like, again, you're using numbers, you're, you know, you're looking at your evidence. 

I really appreciate people who bring both of those things together.  

Likewise, and it's a reflection of who we work with in the sense that with marketing, especially with, you know, marketing for capital raise, one budget in many cases has to produce the next. So we need to figure out effective ways to do that. 

Yeah, not find creative excuses. Uh, and the way it's articulated, you know, we get to set the narrative on, on how these things operate, so  

yeah.  

Glad to hear that stood out.  

Oh, yeah. I, I wish you great success. I will let you know when this comes out. You can spread the word.  

Okay. Of course. But thank you. Send it across our channels. 

Do you think it'll be a few weeks, a few months?  

Um, maybe a month. Okay. About four weeks. Okay.  

Yeah. Yeah, that, that's, I only ask, so we can prepare on our end. Uh, we'll definitely send it out across our email newsletter and social channels and add to our YouTube playlist. So absolutely,  

thank you so much for your time and, and your generosity. 

Thanks, Judy. I appreciate  

you having  

me  

on a lovely rest of your day. Okay, bye-bye.  

You as well. Take care.