Posts in Crowdfunding
EP 171 - How Sourcing Has Changed in 2020 and Beyond

Description: Manila is back on lockdown and Rico sits down and shares his thoughts on the Sourcing climate. Tune in to know what are his thoughts and make sure to share this if you can relate.

Important Notes:

  • How is sourcing done by then?

  • The “Anti-China” Sentiment/Stigma Globally

  • Getting Online presence to attract customers

  • Location-based Sourcing Company pros and cons

  • Shipping is still a nightmare

  • Watch out for surprise Customs inspection in China or other parts of the world

  • What then for Sourcing in 2020 and beyond

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EP 170 - Building Crowdfunding Campaigns in COVID-19 with Johnny Loh

Description:

As mentioned in this episode, similar to the 2008 recession, a lot of products or businesses will be launched after the pandemic. If you are one of the people forced to work from home or work online, this is the best time to think about launching a business/product. Tune in to this episode to know more.


Important Notes:

- Being location-independent, being a Brand Marketer, Starting a career from producing videos to E-Commerce

- Creating your own Brand rather than selling on Amazon, their Million-Dollar Product from Kickstarter

- Trying out the Digital Nomad lifestyle, living in Asia, Being an Amazon FBA Guru

- Struggles in Launching a Crowdfunding, Infringement in their first Brand of Silicone Rings

- A solid launch strategy doesn’t guarantee success, losing lots of money on multiple products they launched

- The Crowdfunding Climate: Then and Now, 2016 was the Golden year to launch a crowdfunding

- The Pandemic forcing people to work at home, and launch a commerce product

- Misconceptions in Crowdfunding, Pros, and Cons of Crowdfunding Platforms

- Personal Life struggles during the pandemic

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EP 158 - Rico on A Day in the Lab with James Davis

This episode is an appearance of Rico on the Day in the Life Podcast with the Owner of LabHand Engineering — James Davis. James takes notes from Rico on Prototyping, Product Development, Crowdfunding and much more.


Episode notes:

  • Rico on ODM and OEM, Average Life Cycle of Products when people come to Source Find Asia

  • How people underestimate the process of developing products, Rico’s “Survival Chinese”

  • The range that an entrepreneur could cost for product manufacturing, process and cost of prototyping

  • The Graphite Wallet story, How crowdfunding works, Nalin of Crush Crowdfunding

  • Engineering, Sourcing and Manufacturing is often not a known industry, Seeing people of color as entrepreneurs

  • Marketing Strategies before launching your crowdfunding campaign, buffering timelines to support your backers

  • Getting designers involved as early as possible, Starting without a bare minimum design

  • Difference between doing business in China and the US

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EP 157 - Rico on Global From Asia - Running a Chinese Import/Export Company Outside China

EP 157 - Rico on Global From Asia - Running a Chinese Import/Export Company Outside China


In today’s episode, we have Rico Ngoma appeared again at Global from Asia Podcast with Michael Michelini. Here he talked about running his sourcing business outside of China. He shares his insights, how he did it, his strategy – sort of a follow up how he did the transition.

Episode Notes:

- Spending time out of China - made him realize he couldn’t go back

- Incentivizing his General Manager

- Financial Tools Used

- Management tools Used For the Team

- Future Plans - Philippines, then where?

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EP 156 - Arjun Rai on Data Science, Growth Mindset, and Helping Underdogs

Rico interviews Arjun Rai of HelloWoofy and talks about helping the small businesses he refers to as ‘underdogs.’ They have a good exchange about what it’s like to be an Immigrant in another country and moving from state to state so much.

Topics include:

- Helping “Underdogs” in Business using Data Science, Solving the Problem for Creatives in Collaboration

- Taking advantage of Instagram before Facebook acquired it, Starting small when reaching your audience thru social media

- Misconceptions of using Emojis (and Hashtags) on your Emails and Social Media Marketing

- Raising capital even during the pandemic, Be an early adapter of Crowd Funding

- Arjun getting rejected and getting another shot, overcoming struggles in order to grow

- Going all in and betting on the product, and getting clients moving forward

- Having the right mindset and surrounding yourself with people who pick you up, getting a day job to support your hustle

- Using history as basis to your day-to-day or big decisions, Visual Language in ancient history to Emojis in our phones

- Setting remote teams and managing them like a portfolio in a hedge fund

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EP 155 - Nalin Chuapetcharasopon on Crowdfunding, Solving Cool Problems, and Launching Cool Ideas

In this episode, Rico interviews Nalin Chuapetcharasopon of Crush Crowdfunding and she shares about how she got started as an entrepreneur and her many failures. They discuss how Crowdfunding starts your Marketing Strategy and building credibility and trust from your backers/prospects.

Episode Notes:

- The lifestyle of an Entrepreneur, solving cool problems, and meeting new people

- How to get started, looking at other models, failures until finding something right

- Crowdfunding as a start of the Marketing Phase of a product, changes in Crowdfunding

- Importance of focusing on Traffic, channels where to reach an audience

- The process of building and then working with their own team, growing it and being remote

- Crush Crowdfunding building a test-heavy marketing phase, crowdfunding on Indiegogo and Kickstarter

- Marketing Budget on Ad Spend, Multimedia, Landing Page to start a campaign

- Connecting People with the network you have to launch a project/product

- Marketing is Attention, spending a cost effective strategy for organic leads, speeding up lead-generation process

- Advantages and disadvantages of Influencer Marketing

- Entrepreneurs should work to build credibility and trust ahead of launching your product

- Addressing fears and frustrations of prospects, converting your audience to backers of you project

- Breaking even is a best scenario in Crowdfunding, maximize number of users and activate to upsell and cross-sell

- Choosing the right Crowdfunding platform for your product

- Crowdfunding climate during the Covid-19 Pandemic, this is the best moment to be an Entrepreneur

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Ep 137 - Running A Digital Marketing Agency In SEA with Jordan Glickman

In this episode, Rico and Jordan talk about the digital marketing industry in Southeast Asia particularly in the Philippines where e-commerce has been thriving in recent years.

Topics include:

  • Advantages of doing business in the Philippines

  • The growing e-commerce in the Philippines 

  • First Client: Low Budget, High Level Result

  • Why getting clients for the money is a bad move

  • Biggest misconception about digital marketing

  • Practical advice for launching a brand

  • Budget Talk: How much to set aside for marketing and brand launch 

  • Identifying the best product to sell

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Ep 44 - Finding Your Why w/ Nick Ramil Founder @ Enterchina.co Part 2

Second part of our interview with Nick Ramil, founder of Enter China and founding team member of Brinc.io

Topics incl:

  • Why Rico stepped down from Enter China
     
  • How to start networking in China
     
  • 4 pillars of entrepreneurship mindset
     
  • Reading people as a life skill
     
  • "To do Lists and MUST Do Lists"
     
  • Visualisation and Affirmation techniques
     
  • Journaling and Role Models
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Ep 37 - Over $10K in 14 Days on Kickstarter, Heather Shuster Returns

In this historical episode, Rico spoke with Heather Shuster (the podcast's first ever return guest) about her successful and ongoing (as of April 6th, 2017) OLLI Fair Trade Rubber Flip-Flip Kickstarter campaign.  

Topics Incl:

  • The importance of pre-campaign prep work.
     
  • How they secured her first $3k in sales prior to the campaign.
     
  • One clever hack OLLI is using to speed up her shipping process.
     
  • How Holly Shuster's duck face game fairs on Instagram
     
  • Now that she's got the money, what's up next for her business?
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Ep 31 - Meeting Two New Friends A Week w/ Heather Shuster olliworld.com

In one of my (Rico) favourite episodes I sat down with Co-Founder of Olli and Enter China member Heather Shuster (also known as Indiana Jones in the community) about her journey sourcing from Sri Lanka and manufacturing fair trade rubber footwear in China:

Topics Incl:

  • Her journey to China
     
  • Why she chose to go out searching rubber plantations in Sri Lanka
     
  • Being called "Mr. Shuster"
     
  • Making the decision to meet two new friends a week for self-improvement
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Ep 23 - EC Success Stories - Over $400K Raised, 2 Kickstarter Campaigns (with Winson Tam)

ChinaMike, Rico & Winson Tam Skyped in from Chicago, Guangzhou & Shenzhen to talk about Winson's insane Ruggie Kickstarter and his previous All Season Sweats campaign which have raised over $400,000 CAD.

Topics Include:

  • Why you should drop a product even after a successful campaign
     
  • How to launch a bootstrapped campaign by offering a % of the raised funds
     
  • Why the "Law of Attraction" isn't just some woo woo bullsh*t
     
  • How Winson leveraged a hometown relationship to get featured on MAJOR news outlets like The Huffington Post
     
  • The 2 must read books for your basic marketing knowledge when outsourcing your campaign
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Ep 13 - 100% Funded in 48 Hours Kickstarter - Wood MacBook Skins with Bambooti.be

Rico Skyped with the Bambooti.be Boys, Pieter Van Moll & Freek Gielen, about their 200% funded Kickstarter campaign. Their campaign ends in 2 days and their slogan is simple and catchy, "A Wooden Back For Your Mac" but the unique selling point isn't doesn't end there. Topics Include.

  • The strategy that got them 100% funded within 2 days of launching the campaign
     
  • Why they chose to manufacture in the UK rather than China
     
  • How Freek used his design skills to make a MacBook everyone adores
     
  • One of THE BEST ways to get influencers, tastemakers & major publications to pay attention to your campaign
     
  • How they plan on scaling their business via a drop shipping business model
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