Summary

Jason Fishman, founder and CEO of the acquisition marketing agency Digital Niche Agency, discussed the world of investor acquisition through regulated investment crowdfunding. He distinguished investment crowdfunding from reward-based models, explaining regulations like Reg CF, Reg A+, and Reg D, which allow companies to raise capital from both retail and accredited investors. Fishman detailed why companies continuously seek funding for growth and competition. He then outlined the digital marketing strategies used to attract investors, emphasising that the marketing funnel, while similar to consumer marketing, requires a greater focus on building trust and social proof. He stressed the importance of a data-driven approach, pre-campaign planning, and tactics like creating urgency to improve conversion rates. He concluded by advising all entrepreneurs to begin building an audience long before they need to raise capital.

 

Key Points

  • Investment crowdfunding was defined as offering a financial stake (equity, debt) in a company, unlike reward crowdfunding (e.g., Kickstarter) where backers receive a product or perk.
  • Different US regulations govern these raises: Regulation CF allows for up to $5 million from retail and accredited investors, Regulation A+ allows for up to $75 million, and Regulation D is for soliciting accredited investors only.
  • Companies continually raised capital to fund growth, accelerate the deployment of resources, and stay ahead of competitors who were also seeking funding.
  • The investor audience for these campaigns was diverse, ranging from a company's own customers (termed "investmers") making small investments (average $1,500 on Reg CF) to high-net-worth accredited investors.
  • Digital marketing funnels were crucial for investor acquisition and involved driving traffic to an offering page and using retargeting, email drips, and social proof to achieve conversions, which typically hovered around 1%.
  • Fishman argued that a formal marketing plan, including a competitor marketing audit to identify successful tactics, was essential but often skipped by issuers.
  • To fix low conversion rates, he recommended creating more social proof (press, testimonials) and immediacy (early-bird bonuses, share price increase deadlines) to motivate potential investors.
  • His primary advice for entrepreneurs was to start building their audience (email list, social media following) immediately, as it is a powerful asset for any future fundraising or promotional efforts.

 

Transcript

Transcipts are auto-generated.

 

Kiran Kapur, Host (00:01):
Hello and welcome. This week we are in a really interesting world of investor acquisition and it's not something we've really covered on the podcast before. So I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Jason Fishman, who is the founder and CEO of DNA, which is the Digital Niche Agency, which is an acquisition marketing agency. And Jason is also a fellow podcaster, so I'm immediately on my best behaviour and his podcast is called Test Optimise Scale. Tell me a little bit about what you do because you've worked with so many startups and organisations.

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (00:35):
Yes, yes. So I've worked with over 900 brands. Over 500 of those have been around a capital raise. And we use digital marketing. Content, social media, email, long form channels, webinars, articles, videos, podcasts like this, content to close audiences, advertising and outreach to bring them into that digital marketing funnel, that pathway, those sequence of pages before the transaction occurs. I've built our own database of over 1.8 million historical investors that participate in these types of deals. Many of them use what's called here in the States and really globally investment crowdfunding, regulated investment crowdfunding. I'm part of the Crowdfund Professional Association, actually serving as vice president and the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance out of the EU. So there is a difference from the different rule sets from each country at that. But there are abilities to target investors with borderless restrictions in some cases. But basically newer set of laws and exemptions, about 10 years, depending on the law, 15 years old.

(01:42):
But allowing a founder, a CEO to go well beyond their first degree, second degree network of investors and groups, which for me is very exciting to be a part of. I saw amazing products, teams, tech, with no awareness, and particularly around their funding rounds. And some of those groups aren't here with us today. Earlier in my career, but knowing these tools are now available to most companies, it's something that I had to be a part of and is very rewarding when successful.

Kiran Kapur, Host (02:13):
So let's go right back to basics because I do like to start there. So crowdfunding is literally getting a group of people to invest in your idea or your product or your company. Is that right?

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (02:26):
Yeah. So you have reward crowdfunding. Many people are familiar with the websites, Indiegogo, Kickstarter. This is investment crowdfunding. So most commonly offering equity, common stock, preferred stock doesn't have to be. There are debt structures, safes, convertible notes, revenue share, opportunities that follow these same guidelines. But instead of a backer getting some type of reward, I've worked on film projects where you get your name in the credits or lunch with the director at a high enough level, of course. Here, you're getting that interest, at stake, that position in the issuer, the company issuing the opportunity. So it gets approved by governing bodies here in the US. It goes to the SEC. It's often listed on marketplaces that are called portals, and those are watched over and have to follow strict guidelines from FINRA and other governing body. So very official, but at the same time, gives investors access to early stage growth stage deals, typically private companies, and it gives founders access to capital.

Kiran Kapur, Host (03:37):
A typical sort of person that might be looking to gain capital would be somebody who was doing a startup so they're an innovator, they've got an invention or an idea, and then looking for capital. Or is it later on when you've sort of done that first bit and now you want a bit more money?

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (03:52):
It varies. That early stage founder is what we think of the most stereotypical and many of the companies fit that persona. Absolutely. Even solopreneur in some cases. I've worked with some of those groups, some of those individuals in some cases, usually just a few other people involved. I've worked with them on their first round, successful, applying the use of proceeds, growing, coming back at a higher valuation, doing another round. Worked with some of those companies that are now on their sixth, seventh round. Worked with the company later that started at a $20 million valuation. We weren't on their first round. We were on later rounds. They're now at a three and a half billion dollar valuation. A company we're working with right now, their first round was a $5 million valuation. They're now over 200 million and have just raised 50 million. Just past that line, they're still raising on the Regulation A Plus campaign.

(04:50):
It's a company called Rad Intel. Other companies to look at include Boxable, Mode Mobile. There's many issuers out there that you can see have grown round after round and after round. Basically Reg CF, you could raise up to $5 million from both retail and accredited investors. Regulation A+, that's the big leagues you could raise up to 75 million. And there is a strategy to be able to use Regulation A+ to go public and direct list, even for public companies to use Regulation A+ to do a priced round separate from the exchanges. So that's why I say mostly private companies, and that's why valuations can vary about 20 to 40 million on a reg CF. Very common to see hundreds of millions as the valuation for Regulation A+.

Kiran Kapur, Host (05:40):
So one of the questions I always get from the students is, why do companies keep needing all this money? So if you're going for a round, what is it that you're trying to achieve?

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (05:50):
Growth. Plain and simple. I had those same questions, not just as a student, but in the early stages of my career. And I was part of a social gaming company out here many years ago, my early 20s at that. And we were successful in raising capital, $3 million. And the CEO went right back to market shortly thereafter, but to go after more. And I thought, what are we doing? We have these resources now. We should be applying it. And was taught yes, but we're going to need more. We don't anticipate that to occur overnight. We need to start seeding those relationships and we're going to need to accelerate once this is deployed and hitting its objectives. So you don't want to go back to investors, particularly the same investors, for more money for the same reasons. You have to be able to show momentum, traction.

(06:52):
What we said in the last investor presentations came to life, and then be asking for more for those next tiers of growth. And it's competitive. If you aren't looking towards those next goals, someone else in your vertical will be. At least that's the way to think about it because you don't want to be left behind. It's better to be cautious than under prepared in that regard. And I've seen competitors steal product ideas, definitely marketing campaigns. We'll audit marketing campaigns because we want to know what's working with our target audiences and use some of those approaches. So you have to be thinking about tomorrow. And some would argue that's one of the primary roles of the CEO of an early stage to growth stage company is to continue to get more capital.

Kiran Kapur, Host (07:43):
I've got the sense that we've got a company, they're looking to grow then therefore need more capital in. You've talked about the fact that it's crowdfunding and your crowdfunding significant amounts of money here. So who is it that is your crowdfunding audience? Because that's going to then explain what type of digital strategies you're using. So are you crowdfunding from investment organisations? Is it sort of B2B or are you crowdfunding from rich individuals? Where are you looking?

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (08:11):
The largest part of our client list is Reg CF, followed by Regulation D and Regulation A+. I'll get into regulation D in a second here, but we get brought to a variety of different initiatives that target investors. Anywhere we're targeting investors and bring them down marketing funnels. This includes cryptocurrency exchanges, various types of FinTech, financial technology, apps, gold investments. In the US, you can use retirement accounts and apply towards different types of funds there, various types of real estate opportunities, individual and fund structure. So it varies. Going back to the Reg D, what that allows for is solicitation of accredited investors. Individuals with over 200K individual income over the past two tax years and expected for the third and/or 300K household and/or million dollars net worth outside of your primary home. That's how I was first brought to these deals because with advertising, you can be very specific in terms of who you target.

(09:21):
You can filter by household income, by net worth, by digital behaviour, by pages they follow or websites that they visit to define them as in market. So I began running banner ads to these audiences, seeing performance, and then was brought to more and more and strategic partnerships came out of the woodworks where we began as a growth marketing agency. But it's very important to have your niche as an agency. Very important to have your specialisation. Otherwise, you're one of a thousand other agencies in Los Angeles or London or whatever it may be. We're one of the few that are recommended for these things. Now, the audience varies test optimised scale. Something I say a lot. We want to be testing different audiences, different channels, different creative and different funnels. And without enough variance there, our hands are kind of tied to whatever we think is going to work.

(10:14):
And we have assumptions going in. Sometimes they're correct, but we need the data to show us what's producing. The only way to measure is with numbers, which numbers are the greatest when we're comparing these different audiences.

(10:25):
They range. In some cases, it's 20 to 35. In other cases, it's 65 and older. We have to cast a wide enough net or do enough variance of the audience testing to see what's performing best. But to paint a bit of a picture on the Reg CF and Regulation A+ campaigns, you're looking at about $1,500 on a Reg CF as the average investment. It was actually 1,700 last year across all Reg CFs, but I want to project conservatively. Regulation A+, about $2,500, I would say, is a safe conservative benchmark for your average investment. What does that mean? You probably need a thousand investments per one and a half, $1.7 million raised on a Reg CF. Notice I say investments, not investors. I'll find 10 to 30% of the investors will participate multiple times, particularly during the closing messaging and fear of missing out of going in at higher levels.

(11:21):
Regulation A+, about two and a half million for those thousand investments. And if you're throwing digital metrics at it, maybe it's a 2% conversion rate, which is actually high for these campaigns, I'd say more of 1%, which means you probably need 50,000 to 100,000 visits of that offering page. Where if you're getting the conversion rate, that's the most important metric actually, the closing rate, you're able to bring in those volumes of investments. But once you see it working, let's say you're using advertising to get there or maybe outreach, maybe earned media through PR, you can scale it. It's somewhat systematic in terms of buying more ads to get more traffic, to get more investments if the conversion rate's there. So you can do a rolling close, take disbursements of the capital, reinvest portions of it back into the advertising and get to much higher and higher at higher levels.

(12:14):
All the way through, you're looking at who that target audience is. Do they visit these types of sites? Are they in these age brackets, these demographics? Are they on these platforms? What can we find that we can do more of? And I had mentioned earlier, I built my own database at this point through extensive data collection of individuals who've invested in these deals. So it removes part of the educational process. They don't need to learn about what Reg CF is. They already have a portfolio in many cases of Reg CF investments, at least one, but in many cases, I attract investors with over a hundred of these holdings. They're small, but a hundred of these holdings in their portfolio. So they're far more likely to convert.

Kiran Kapur, Host (12:56):
That's really interesting because when we came on, I was expecting this to sound really, really sort of difficult and complicated, but basically you're selling a product, you can put in a certain amount of money and for ... I'm not knocking ... It was $1,500, wasn't it, with your first one? I mean, you've got to have cash to be able to do that, but it's not thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. It's a relatively small amount. And you're persuading them that if they invest in the reg CF, they're going to make some money back. That's generally the idea.

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (13:33):
Well, I have to throw some asterisk and disclaimers there. The SEC would not want us disclosing it in that fashion, unless we had the ability to guarantee it. I say we. I really mean the issuer, the company that is issuing the investment opportunity. We're a marketing agency working on their behalf, so I say we for that reason. There are deals that guarantee that though, debt. So 10%, 12% back. And in these periods of time, there are reg CF campaigns that run on those terms. When you're speaking about equity, you wouldn't want to use that language. You could talk about growth of the industry. There are issuers who have been able to talk about a future liquidity event really around going public or exit strategy, but it has to be compliant. You have to make sure you're following the rules and speaking about it in a way that does not mislead investors.

(14:37):
So if it's a debt deal, it's guaranteed, it's backed short, smaller percent back than what you'd be playing for with an equity deal and looking to see a company grow from a $20 million valuation to much larger. Reg D is different. So a reg CF, regulation A+, it's typically a 100 to a $1,000 minimum, which the issuer gets to set in the filing. I generally recommend around $500, maybe three to 500. There was another audience I didn't really mention in there. There's been a term coined of investmers. So your customers- Investors. ... could invest in what you do. And I've seen that happen with B2B, definitely B2C. There are restaurants. I actually went to a bar in London when I was out there for a conference called BrewDog. They were one of the first companies to use Regulation A+. And at the time, on the menu, you could get a share and a pint.

(15:33):
And this is after the success of a much larger campaign that they worked on. I know a few of the professionals that worked on that campaign here in the US as well. So it allows your customers to become shareholders alongside you and grow together. But yes,

(15:52):
These smaller amounts, I actually have favoured them in many ways. Don't get me wrong. If you're a founder and you're tuned in and you could complete your round with one strategic investor and your growth benefits them, and you're both playing for these larger goals together, and it's a simple, straightforward process, a straight line between two dots, if you will, I would say do it. And the investors gravitate towards the momentum. So the top 10% of deals, I would say, get all of the investments. The bottom 50% are pretty stagnant. And there's a formula where you want to bring your first degree network there, but it could be small investments. I've heard people say, "I've already asked my first degree network." This could be a hundred people at a thousand dollar average each. Some of them coming in at 100 or 500, whatever you set that minimum at.

(16:44):
Others, 5K, 10K, but they really just want to see you succeed. They want to be connected to it as well. Maybe they're customers, but you can get that first 100K from the people around you in small increments in many cases and then build from there and add more traffic and so on and so forth. Those small increments I see occur on holidays, I see them happen in negative news cycles, things that affect the stock market. We're still seeing investments on those down days. We're not seeing them on the Reg D campaigns from the accredited investors. Those may have a 25K, 50K minimum. I've worked on some where it's a 5K, 10K minimum. I have one right now in that category. I've worked on others where it's 100K, 500K minimum. Tougher bet to put in 100K when there's strong uncertainty, different if you're putting in $500 and just putting a chip on the table and looking to be part of the experience.

Kiran Kapur, Host (17:44):
I think that the British phrase is past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. And you would see that on every single advertisement. And you're right, you're selling the possibility of a return rather than an actual return. As you said, this isn't a rewards based thing like a Kickstarter. This is an investment. Okay. So we've got potentially a lot of smaller investors that you're trying to reach. You're selling them the potential of a return on their investment, but it's a risk. You've talked about your sort of 1% conversion rate and then working it back. So can we talk a little bit about ... We all talk about the marketing funnel, and that's what you've just talked about, isn't it? The bottom of the funnel is the conversion rate and then we work up. For an investment, is it any different to a sort of standard marketing funnel?

(18:34):
Are there more places where things can get stuck?

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (18:38):
I would say every campaign is a little different, even for the same brand, and you should be testing multiple funnels. So it's a quest for a higher conversion rate on an ongoing basis. The Reg CF and Reg D campaigns differ. Reg D, the advertising, the outreach is set to produce a lead in most cases with the investment then occurring offline. In some cases, it occurs online.

(19:09):
I still believe in an offline conversation to strengthen the relationship as well as the transactional value. So someone who may be coming in at the minimum, even if that's for 25K, maybe an offline conversation leads that conversation to be as crazy as it may sound, 250K. So if your advertising is going to some type of lead form, contact information's put in there, maybe there's a free asset that's distributed, a pitch deck, a video, some more information, sign up for a webinar or group pitch, content marketing, email drips, different updates on a weekly basis, going to those accredited investors, a longer funnel, a longer sales cycle, if you will. Reg CF, Regulation A+, more commonly traffic driven to the offering page. We may A/B test it with traffic driven to a webinar signup page or some other type of landing page, but really only if we're not getting a strong enough conversion rate on that offering page, if the traffic is working there in a good place.

(20:14):
But yes, I would say more similarities than differences to a regular marketing campaign, to your point. I point at the number seven of more or more touch points very regularly, and it's not the first visit to the offering page that someone puts in their personal identifying information and their financial information, as much as they tell themselves they're going to come back. We have retargeting ads, those ads that feel like they're following you around, running to them from there and with different messaging than to the prospecting ads.

(20:47):
We have content. And I said, updates, headline worthy announcements on a weekly basis and going across the social media pages, investors are searching around, doing their due diligence, perhaps more than if they're buying apparel or another product category. So we want to showcase as much social proof, as much third party validation as possible. "Hey, spoke on this podcast last week. I'm speaking at this conference next week. Look at this financial publisher who just covered us. Look at this investor testimonial." We need to instil that trust. People are sceptical around online investments, investments as a whole, especially something they're learning about online. So that's a big, big part of this marketing funnel.

Kiran Kapur, Host (21:34):
It's really interesting because the techniques you're talking about are no different from anything else. What I think makes it stand out and perhaps because it's financial product is the amount of tracking that you are able to do and are doing.

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (21:48):
Yes, yes. And the attribution gets to be a bit tricky at that because if we have ads running with financial publishers, some of them allow us to run ads from their Facebook page. Others are featuring the issuer in their investor email newsletter to their subscribers. Then there's earned media, PR. If there's multiple traffic sources that play a role in that conversion, the attribution gets to be very difficult and you have to determine with each client what that single source of truth is and be able to use that to determine where to go next. I really just use the analytics for data driven decisions. We're not affiliate marketers. We don't take a success fee. We're not broker dealers. I don't get a trophy sent to me. If I get a 20X return on advertising spent, I would frame it. I'd have a nice glass case if I did, but I don't.

(22:45):
We just want to be able to look at the results one week, determine what to do the following week and see an increased performance from there.

Kiran Kapur, Host (22:54):
So I think, again, one of the questions I often get when people are trying to plan out a campaign is, how much do you plan it out beforehand all those stages? Because you've talked about retargeting, you've talked about all the other things you can do, and how much do you do on the fly as you're going through?

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (23:08):
Well, I highly recommend a marketing plan for this. Sounds basic, sounds self-explanatory. I can't tell you how many issuers want to skip those steps. I saw it in marketing of e-commerce campaigns and other ones as well too, but there's such a heavy administrative process and undertaking, if you will, of what needs to occur for an issuer to go live. A Form C, a Form 1A, a Form D 506C, comments from the SEC, back and forth, building the offering page, the pitch video, all of the different pieces, audits, financial reviews. The game appears to be get your campaign live for most issuers. And then they think, "Hey, I'm going to be online. There's billions of people a day online. This round's going to fill itself. I could raise up to five million. I could raise up to 75 million." The Reg CF could raise up to five.

(24:13):
Less than 1% of issuers do.

Kiran Kapur, Host (24:16):
Wow.

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (24:16):
10% raised a million or more last year. Happy to say we work with many of those and have case studies of them, but there are many misconceptions in the space. And then once they're live and realise, "Hey, this isn't moving. I need to market." How fast can you get advertising live? Can you get publishers to talk about this? Do you know any investors? Can I have any investors brought in? It's that type of frantic discussion in many cases versus the appropriate steps of a marketing plan. There's a model I've built called the eight point plan that starts with industry overviews and the stats you're going to pull for the campaign and then a competitor marketing audit, not a competitor audit of, "Hey, these are other companies and they're raising or these other companies and here's why we're better a competitor marketing audit." Success leaves clues.

(25:01):
We want to stand on the shoulders of these other issuers that are moving and

(25:08):
You can take different concepts from their advertising and the publishers they're using and the messaging and every piece of what the audience is converting on right now. So you want to pull that into your campaign and define the audiences you're going to AB test the channels that you're going to use with the creative that's going to go inside them, strategic partnerships that could help accelerate it and the actual projections. Algorithm, impressions, clicks, conversions. How many times a piece of content or an ad's been seen? How much traffic it actually drives to your page? I talked about some of those traffic goal numbers and then how many investments are coming out of the other side, obviously contingent on the conversion rate. That way you could pinpoint the key drivers, stuff that's overproducing. You could see where traffic's falling off and look to optimise at that stage versus right off a whole channel.

(25:56):
This is how you see an outstanding level of marketing performance in comparison industry averages. So can't talk about how important that planning process is.

Kiran Kapur, Host (26:09):
And it's the bit that, as you say, investor skip, but sometimes so do marketers because we want to get on with the execution because that sounds the exciting bit. If you start finding you've got conversion problems, bear in mind you talk about test, optimise, scale. So maybe you've tested and actually we seem to have a bit of a conversion problem. What do you change? Where do you even start looking? You can go, this part of the funnel's sticky, but what do you do then?

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (26:35):
What a great question. I'll tell you when I learn the answer. No, no. We've had to manage it to a point of effectiveness so many times, but you're asking the right question. Again, it's not what type of return on ad spend can I anticipate what's my cost of capital? You've seen companies succeed. I imagine you've seen companies fail based on the nature of that question. And I think the answer to this question is what separates the top performing campaigns from those that stop early and take a loss on the initiative. To answer, my gut response is create more social proof and immediacy. Easier said than done. But I mentioned half of the campaigns are pretty stagnant. Half of them really don't pass about 100, 120K USD. If you are able to produce that from your first degree network and inspire them to share with their audiences, your second degree network, you're getting a massive headstart among half the race.

(27:42):
And if that was 200, 250, 500K, a million right out of the gate, you're setting a much stronger foundation for yourself to hit these larger levels. It's tough to believe a company is going to disrupt their industry and take market share, but they've only raised $17,000, even $67,000. It's a lot more believable if it's up 167,000. So probably some tactics with email drips, maybe live events to invite your first degree audience to get there. It's really a focal point of those first tranches, if you will. But from there, it's more social proof, more third party validation, even just being able to point to things that have been manufactured. So press releases, paid press. You're now getting logos that you could feature in your advertisements, on your offering page, in your email newsletter, on your social posts as featured by. I would get investor testimonials, even if it's from a family member, whomever it is, but just to talk about, "Hey, I invested.

(28:52):
This is why maybe not as direct you should too, but they could get away with saying far more because they're a third party. Check with legal, make sure it's compliant. I need to add that asterisks always. But the audience can project themself into that persona and capture that narrative for their own thought process. So you want as much of that as possible. Customer testimonials, you really want to look at who's in your network. Would love to see a strategy where

(29:22):
There's 90 people put into a list and each one is promoting to their audience on a different day and then you're able to tap into that post or make some comment or have it go out to your audience based on the social algorithms and how it's appearing. A lot of different ways to do this, but I'm hoping when that list of 90 people is put together, you are able to find some individuals in your network who have a large social media following, or manage an email newsletter, or a social club, or a LinkedIn group, or a blog, a YouTube channel, maybe there's some local press that you could get ahold of. Maybe there's some vertical-specific media that is intrigued by what you're doing and wants to get awareness around it. Always surprised by not just using your first degree network and really just honing in there, but the second degree network and who they may know.

(30:13):
You can get it out there and notice I'm not saying, "Just spend more on advertising as much as let's look to get conversion rates." I didn't mention perks yet, and you talked about some rewards and how those are guaranteed. You can set perks into your filing. All terms need to be available to every investor. But with those terms, you can give away bonus shares. Some of them have time restraints to it, early bird investor, 30 days, 60 days. It's not uncommon to see a share price increases and dates around those and getting people to feel that immediacy. So they have to invest by February 12th, excuse me, March 12th, referring to a campaign in my head here. March 12th, otherwise they have to pay more. These are very real things to create more immediacy. And if it's really not working, don't just stop. You want to keep testing and look to pivot and manage it to a point of effectiveness.

(31:10):
Once you're able to crack the code, you could do a lot more of this, but move to a closing. That closing messaging, you often see a spike of investments, people on the sidelines that want to get in before this closes.

Kiran Kapur, Host (31:24):
That's so interesting. You talked about emergency, you've talked about social proof, you've talked about third party endorsements, all the things we would talk about generally. But this immediacy and having a closure and that fear of missing out, "Gosh, if I don't do something, how many times do we see that on any product?" That's amazing that it's the same techniques.

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (31:46):
It sure is.

Kiran Kapur, Host (31:48):
Joseph Fishman, that's been absolutely fascinating. It's not a world I know very much about, and I've really, really enjoyed it. Before I let you go, is there anything you would say to somebody that was sitting there thinking, "Should I be trying to grow mine? Is this something that I should be doing?" Because I think sometimes entrepreneurs, particularly perhaps British ones, tend to sit in our sheds not necessarily getting out there. Is there a message?

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (32:13):
Get out of your sheds. Do more. A lot going on out here. No, I'm a marketer. Start building your audience today. If I'm speaking with the perspective of issuer, one of my first questions is, how large is your audience? Your email list, your social media following for the brand, you individually, your team. You can send 25 invitations to connect per day, per profile on LinkedIn. Actually about 40 once your account's warmed up. You look for a 20% or higher acceptance rate, 20% or higher rates response rate. You can start building a network of investors, of strategic partners, prospective clients. And it doesn't sound like much, but over the course of a month, over the course of six months, over the course of 18 months, you may have tens of thousands of people in your audience. And if you announce around, perhaps using one of these vehicles, you then have a pool of people waiting that would be interested.

(33:23):
Likely a percentage of them will invest. If you never decide to do an investment campaign, there's probably some other promotion that you can direct them to at a later time. That audience is powerful. Whether you're a content creator, whether you're a brand, many would argue that every brand is a media publisher. Every brand is a content creator in this day and age. So keep building your audience.

Kiran Kapur, Host (33:48):
Fantastic. Jason Fishman, founder and CEO of DNA and also fellow podcaster of Test Optimise and Scale. Thank you so much. That was really enlightening.

Jason Fishman, Founder of Digital Niche Agency (33:58):
Pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much for having me on.