Day Twenty-Three- 15% The Irresistible Force Meets the Immovable Object

Since the beginning - even at concept design stage [see concept sketches below], we have been inundated with positive comments about what HappiJar could do for lots of people.

No one was imagining that HappiJar would become one of those 'must have' apps like your camera or email. The open mindedness of those we revealed the design to was astounding. HappiJar became an irresistible force and we felt compelled to push it forward into the world.

It took us about 3 months to pull together the Kickstarter campaign, then we launched it. Since then we have not stopped for a minute.

After launch we hovered around the Twitter hashtag - Kickstarter. We appeared to have joined a very long line of other Kickstarter's who were also raising funds for their projects, and there seemed to be a back lash. If you do a very quick online search you will find articles from bloggers and writers who are sick of giving to their friends, 'begging' for a miserly £5 or more to help fulfil their dreams. This is understandable that some of us might feel this way.

But there is a another side to the story. Constantly asking for friends to share links to your projects and talk to others about it; takes it's toll too. Chasing a dream requires a herculean effort, and I defy anyone who has attempted this before to complain when they see another taking on his or her quest.

Some dreams are small, and others are life changing. You will see every kind if you flick through some projects on a crowd funding site.

So here we are, 23 days into a 30 day campaign and it appears our project is fast becoming an Immovable Object! We are still searching for the stick of dynamite that will get this project rolling again.

One thing that has moved me more than I thought possible though was those who have openly shared my project and backed it against the odds. I really didn't expect the amount of help I have gotten so far.

Lots to do this week again.

Day Twenty-Two - 15% Being happy is about giving.

First draft for our new Kickstarter introduction. You like?

Our app is going to blow your socks off. Smart science and philosophical folk have for many years, studied and tested the affects of what gratitude has on our general well being and happiness. Entire nations are investing millions of pounds into research grants just to find out how to make you all happy with the least amount of effort.

Which is quite funny really, as a little effort is all it requires to feel happier. Gratitude plays a large part in our ability to live and appreciate what is happening around us. Be mindful, and then thankful for the all the great stuff that we experience enhances our outlook on life. We can trick ourselves into being more positive just be simply logging into life more!

It has been said that only 33% of our overall variation in life satisfaction [happiness to you and me] can be attributed to genetics alone. Another 20% linked directly to how we were brought up and 'hard wired' to view the world. I say 'hard wired', but I mean natural instinct.

Together 53% of our 'happiness' can be fixed to a certain degree. The rest? Well that's up for grabs. You can make yourself over 40% more satisfied with your life just be thinking positively. Amazing eh?

Next time you feel down, ask yourself: Do I really need to feel this way in this moment? The answer has to be no. Never.

HappiJar represents just one of the ways that you can proactively train your brain to unconsciously search for what it is that makes you grateful and as a result, happier!

Please carry out this experiment yourself to prove to that you have the power. Do you recall when you got your very first car? Exciting times. Do you also recall from then on every other car on the road seemed to be not only the same make and model but also the same colour? This is not the universe conspiring against you. This is your subconscious at work. You didn't notice them before until you had become mindful of it. This is the very reason why counting your blessings and being grateful for the little things in life is so powerful.

HappiJar provides you with a canvas to become more grateful.

Pay it forward. This is the effect of when someone thanks YOU for a particularly nice deed. It is human nature to feel massive contentment that your actions [indirectly or directly] have helped to make others happy. So as a result, it has been scientifically proven that you are many times more likely to go out and instigate your very own random act of kindness just to feel that buzz again! So let's get this 100% straight. Those of us who do nice things feel an urge to do more as a result of being appreciated and thanked.

To put this simply. The happiest of us, are the ones who do more for others. HappiJar allows you to not only record your own favourite 'things to do' but thank your close friends and family for being awesome - thus inspiring them to do even more good. Seriously. Who doesn't want that in their life?

Day Twenty-One - 15% Gratitude. I don't get it...

It's not the first time we have heard this. Probably four times since we have taken our design on the road.

"I don't get HappiJar.", "What is it supposed to do?",  "Really? Can it do that?" "I'd get bored using it I think".

As a designer, these questions horrified me. You see, if we had not communicated the idea and our end goal with clarity then we really had little to no chance of success on Kickstarter.

From our last blog post we already concluded that our pitch may not have been as focussed as it should. The 'angle' had not been fully explained. My mind is cast back to a business networking group and being told by someone who I greatly respect that "so long as they live, some people will never 'get it' Glen". The gratitude thing.

Image courtesy of
Londoneats.wordpress.com

They are likely to be the ones to benefit from the generosity of others, but never quite realise that 'paying this forward'  is essential for the wave of gratitude and happiness to propagate fully. Vis-à-vis - everyone prospers as a result.

So in reality, when I am told by another that "I don't get it..". I know exactly what kind of person I am dealing with straight away.

We still need to help ourselves with the Kickstarter pitch though - and this will happen over the weekend. We will never be able to convince an ungrateful person to suddenly begin journalling about or be thankful towards the things and the people they love in their lives. What we CAN do is remind those of us who 'get it' that practising gratitude on HappiJar is a great way to not only make ourselves feel awesome, but by paying it forward and spreading the happiness around - we get to see others smile too :)

Happiness is like strawberry jam. You can't spread it around without getting a little on yourself too.

Have a great Friday!

Day Twenty - 15% I'm Awesome. Back Me.

We missed our blog post yesterday. As you might have guessed we are thinking really hard on how to increase the coverage of our project on kickstarter and make our target.

It's only fair that after reading numerous articles on what makes a great kickstarter campaign and what not to do - [many of which we discovered before our project began] that 10 days away from either an epic come back or the slow slide to failure and a big rethink... we regale you with experiences as they happen. Hence this blog.

Here are what most articles on running successful campaigns say and we have added our own points too;

1. Personality. Introduce yourself. Stumbling upon a campaign is not good enough. you also need to convert a few visitors to sharers and backers. Include yourself in the first paragraph and or the video. Probably both. Use the naturally infectious enthusiasm for your idea to convince people that you are worth a few quid pledge. We decided to use the main video to introduce the product as best as we could. Comments have been really favourable so far. It has been described as clean, professional and happy :) and we have had over 250 video views! Conversion to pledges has not been so impressive though. The general view though.. is that my personality has not shone through. Which is a shame because I am delightful. 
2. The Angle. Choose your pitch wisely. You are not on Kickstarter to peddle t-shirts. Unless of course you are on kickstarter to peddle t-shirts. Then please - peddle away. No, for example if your product will resolve a problem that we all face on a day to day basis, then highlight that. The rest is just smoke and mirrors. Be specific on why your project simply must. Not. Fail. Or the world will implode etc. Our project has been designed to help people feel more grateful and happier as a result. A major hurdle for us is that we as humans never really think about happiness until we don't have it. Then - we as people will not naturally resort to anything technological to help out. It's a hard sell. So how did we solve that problem?  Wellll.... to be honest I don't think we have. Our angle has always been SURPRISE!! Really? Yes, an app can help you do this - look how cute it is and why hasn't this been funded already. You can tell that our angle needs adjustment.
3. Network. It goes without saying that meeting people face to face is far more powerful. That's why everybody recommend that you introduce yourself in person on the video. Going out to your local community and impressing yourself upon people as an enthusiastic entrepreneur who can't but help save you from [insert angle/pitch/problem] is very powerful. It builds an awareness for the product that might have otherwise been lost on a Kickstarter page. Many people you meet on the street will never have heard of Kickstarter. How did we resolve this? I am very good at taking my business on the road. I love to meet new people and chat. Which is kinda rare for an introverted engineer like me. What I found was that I could win people over, but I struggled to get them to provide me with feedback or backing. Lots of colleagues have backed, but not in the numbers we need so far. A lot of time and effort goes into meeting face to face - the return on investment is not quite as compelling though.
4. Family. It is fast becoming a well known fact that you bring your crowd with you to Kickstarter. Your friends, family, close acquaintances, your pets. Anyone. The harsh reality is that convincing your friends to part with the minimum donation is one thing, but getting them to spread the word can be slightly trickier. EVEN if you are good at your job at promoting your 'idea', this might not transfer as well through others mouths. You must consider pre-writing tweets and status updates for your buddies so they don't have to remember all your enthusiastic rantings. Give them a fighting chance to spread the word on your behalf. We have done this and seen lots of like and shares as a result. Not enough though. What we noticed was that when it comes to asking for help - most of us are scared to do it. Therefore we don't expect it of others either. Human nature. There is also a fine line between badgering people and asking your mates to 'do a good thing' for you. I found myself 'pledge swapping' [that's promising to pledge on friends charitable endeavours in return for a pledge on mine], phoning friends individually, emailing them and explaining what it was I wanted them to do...  
5. Tell Me I'm Great. Reviews and articles written on your behalf by magazines, newspapers, businesses and personal blogs are apparently a large source of potential backers. I have yet to see this. The problem I faced was, I teed up a number of articles to be written ahead of launch day, but they could not help until they saw the page on Kickstarter. It was then I realised that having a landing page would have been a great asset. The projects bare essentials and a link to send interested writers to. As it turns out, many of the websites I wrote to never came through with their promises, or just didn't return my website messages, emails or phone calls. It is then you realise that raising funding to make people happy isn't enough today. You have to be a story! A real bit of news for people to read.

Writing this guide and experience log has been quite useful for me. I will be changing my Kickstarter page slightly to display my personality more [which is that I am delightful] and describe my angle with more focus [which is gratitude needs to be practiced. What better tool than a mobile phone]. 

Thanks again for reading. 

Day Eighteen - 15% I need HappiJar

I hit the wall today. If HappiJar was an actual working app then I would have emptied it of all my happy encounters and then some by this afternoon... I had visions of me vibrating myself through the ground whilst shaking out all my HappiButtons lol.

I guess all the hard work and energy I've poured into this campaign has just started to catch up and ask hard questions of my faith that we can get funded in time.

I'm sure that all Kickstarter project managers go through this. But how many make it out the other end successfully? Not many I'm willing to wager.

We gained 2 more backers and opened up a few more opportunities by talking to networks and pouring my heart out to whoever would listen. Normally in situations like this I would never contemplate failure. I am and will forever be a fighter to the end. Yet my mind is considering how best to deal with a soul crushing defeat.

12 days left. 15% Funded. A come back here would be epic on a grand scale. Minstrels would sing songs about us and the tales would be infectious.

I love a good fight, but what feel I have stumbled upon is the long tortuous digestion of my idea within the stomach of the almighty Sarlac Pit [Return of the Jedi].

Is there a return? Of course there is. So long as there are a few hours left, we can still do this. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Happiness and gratitude. Happitude.

Day Seventeen - 15% Updates!

Today has been a nexus of changes. 

1. Lots of advice from strangers on Facebook and Twitter who are trying to will us on to victory.
2. New t-shirt reward made up. Hoping to drag in a few more backers who want some physical gifts.
3. Clothing designer [ex-Kickstarter] is designing us a one-off tee for our project :)
4. 2 new artists HappiButton sets. THEY ARE GORGEOUS! Check em out.

If our backer activity graph is going to be flat-lining until our Kickstarter time is up, then we are going down FIGHTING!! We have 2 weeks left and 24 hrs in each day. Are we sleeping? No... we are terminators. 

...But there is no coming back. 

Lessons Learned:

1. Seriously. If you spot a great Kickstarter project and NEED to collaborate with them. Go after it!
2. Keep chatting to your friends and backers. You need all the support you can get.

Day Sixteen - 15% Learning to Pitch - even when drunk

Classic day. Managed to grab me some business networking in the afternoon and in the evening.

As the day wore on I became more and more drunk. Even managed to pitch my idea to a bunch of really nice guys in a pub at 11pm. Hey - they got it!

Learned a lot about why I am doing this. It turns out that even when drunk I am still smiley, positive and ON IT! I love what I do and am excited to think that one day we will be rolling this phone app out to everyone.

Not quite sure it will be with Kickstarter though... if the stats continue to flat-line like they have.

Also we now have a cocktail designed for our social gathering in 2 weeks. We just don't know what to call it yet.

Lessons Learned:

1. Keep looking towards the little wins. Trust that things always work out for the best.
2. Always have a business card, or QR Code handy with your Kickstarter URL on it... you just never know...

Day Fifthteen - 15% Growing new Networks

No backers today. Just had to get that out there. Now on to the positivity again.

I met with two people today, one friend and one a new contact who was interested in my activities and HappiJar. I also received a phone call from a professional crowd fund project manager. It was great to hear from the experts on what to do and the options available to us to get this party started.

So many new ideas to digest that's it feel like being cast into a nexus of energy and I'm trying to catch some of it on my tongue #faceburn.

Contacted the venue to speak to them about how to host a great social for HappiJar in two weeks time. This could be awesome.

We are moving forward with our collaborative endeavours together with other companies, charities and Kickstarter projects - but nothing to show for our work as of yet. More shares, more RT's, and Facebook mentions... but no more backers.

Lessons Learned:

1. This is a white knuckle ride if you are not fortunate enough to get funded in the first week. Be prepared for the highs and lows and an out and out street fight to keep you project rolling...
2. Opportunities will come and go. Just do your best to take advantage of as many as you can and keep a diary of your little wins. Like a blog perhaps ;)

HUGE things need to happen this weekend, but with so many balls in the air - we are beginning to wonder if we are jugglers or project manager? Or both. 

Day Fourteen - 15% Charity. It begins Online.

Another backer? I'm afraid to say that it was due to a bit of arm twisting... but they all count eh? Eh?

We are still waiting on some good news from the t-shirt manufacturers and the creative collaborators... but in the meanwhile we did move along a couple of other potential happy encounters!

A talented TV voice over artist is on board and agrees to record their own rendition of my poetic offering - https://soundcloud.com/glen-cooper-4/be-present-take-a-bow

Which means we can put together a feel good [hopefully viral] YouTube video to go with our Kickstarter campaign. Got a good feeling about that. Speaking of which, how about we take another look at our 30 second Star Wars video. Seems a shame to waste an opportunity like this ;)

Finally we manage to make contact with a lovely charity so we could give offer them our support through free advertising using HappiJar. They love our idea and once we have final confirmation from their founder - we will announce the charities name and the new button design! Making progress.

Lessons Learned:

1. Pick up the phone, speak to people. Make things happen. Rattle some cages.

Lots of loose ends. I feel dirty.

Day Thirteen - 14% Chasing. Again.

The long hard slog continues.

Today was all about chasing emails, messages and making a phone call to a well known chocolate manufacturer. Why? Well we are looking for more commercial backers for the phone app too. We believe that the happiness brand we are creating with this project will appeal to certain 'feel good' brands :)

We also finally decided to go with a t-shirt reward for our campaign! Please check our project updates for more information. This is exciting stuff :D

Also against all the odds, a live Kickstarter project has agreed to collaborate with us! This is seriously good news and again, all the details are in our project updates.

Lessons Learned:

1. Be prepared to add to your project rewards at a moments notice. Hassle people for their input continuosly. This could put a flatlinning project back on track. Worth a go!!
2. Don't Stop. Believing! Lol... keep pushing hard and things will happen. Also do not underestimate the power of localism and your close networks. 

We are optimistic that we can begin to turn our steady backer growth into a torrent. We just need a bit of luck and some more 'share the loving'. 

Day Twelve - 14% Bank Holiday Juggling

Our first and last bank holiday Monday! We also had one backer too!

There was no way that I was going to get any rest today. My better half was sick [poor baby], I had a photo puppet film to create, emails to answer, tweets to re-tweet and projects to research. Oh and help my very good friend to complete our website. So here's what I got up to, in detail:

1. I built a 30 second Star Wars spoof in PhotoPuppet on my iPad JUST so I could impress the creators of one of my favourite Kickstarter projects; Crowd Funding Alliance X-Wing Squadron. With my master piece I was hoping to get a bit of late promotion for my campaign... unfortunately I am still waiting to hear from them. This is not news to me though. Most of my Kickstarter experience so far has been thinking up creative ways to make contact with people and never hearing back from them. 
2. I also managed to contact two of my really nice connections via LinkedIn to tell them all about what it was I was doing. It was met with a mixed response. They love me, but don't like what Kickstarter is doing. Bit late for that, but I had a fantastic chat with them anyway. Always good to catch up with friends.
3. Whilst on LinkedIn I also managed to finally give a friend a well deserved recommendation in the hope that he would spread the word about HappiJar as a favour. Let's just say we'll check back on that one at a later date ;)
4. One of my best friends uploaded our website and we are now represented using our domain www.happijar.com! This is fantastic and major kudos to him for helping me :) Please check it out.
5. Finally made the decision to research and draw up budget costings for some more physical rewards to balance out the digital ones. I finally relented after yet another request for me to consider it. So far I have approached a local t-shirt company to help us design and draw up a plan. More on that soon.
6. Local business social group have written a new article about our project in their blog. Apparently it will be published tomorrow - so we got that to look forward to :)
7. I spent 3 hours combing Kickstarter projects for possible collaborators... more about that soon - but one find was quite exciting. Think HappiButtons with not only limited edition artwork, but sound clips attached too!

Lessons Learned:

1. Grow a very thick skin. Preferrably one with many additional arms and heads. You'll want a built in computer monitor too and smart phone recessed into your chest.This is what a successful Kicksterter probably looks like.....
2. Keep surfing Kickstarter. If you don't find any help you may atleast get inspired by someone elses pitch enough to make yours stronger too. 

Busy, busy. Keep sharing.