On this episode we talk to Indy Hall co-founder and Tiny MBA author Alex Hillman about the business side of indie filmmaking and, in particular, what it has in common with startups and small business. Also, we learn about the ancient technique of pre-crowdfunding, which White Meat: Appetizer will be using to increase the odds of success for it’s February 2025 Kickstarter campaign.

Listen to “The White Meat Podcast” on Spreaker.

Here’s the transcript:

David Dylan Thomas: Welcome everybody to the White Meat podcast. I’m your host, David Dylan Thomas, writer and director of the film White Meat, which is about what happens when a whole bunch of a undead enslaved people come back to life as zombies and yet only choose to eat white people. So today’s guest is a partner of mine. I’ve known him for years and years and years and Alex Hillman, introduce yourself and tell the good folks here what it is that you get up to.

Alex Hillman: Sure it’s always fun to sit down with you, Dave. This is great. So, my name is Alex Hillman. Probably best known for the coworking community that I started here in Philadelphia. Dave was actually in the room for the or earliest origins of that.

That’s a part of how we know each other. So in addition to being a friend, a longtime member supporter. Indy Hall is Philadelphia’s first coworking community dating all the way back to 2006 makes us 18 years old this September, like a month from right now. As we’re recording, which is wild.

David Dylan Thomas: What is up with time passing? Who, who decided that was a good idea?

Alex Hillman: Dave, we were babies back then.

But also, so Indie Hall is sort of my community, my home base. And this operation that I’ve been sort of cultivating and growing and supporting and learning from and with for all this time. I also run a business called Stacking the Bricks with my partner Amy Hoy, where we focus on mostly digital creatives.

So designers, developers, videographers, photographers, people with digital creative skills broadly, who are interested in creating products with those skills, usually a digital product. Could be a physical product. We focus on teaching them the skills they need to make it so that on launch day, they have actual customers instead of making a thing they think people want, but nobody actually wants, or they do want, but they don’t want to pay for.

And then my third hat is, is the co founder of the 10,000 Independents Project with a 10 year goal of helping 10,000 Philadelphians become sustainably self-employed. Dave is one of the 10,000 in, in more ways than one. And you know, that is a mixture of sort of both of those previous businesses or the community and the education with a third pillar of advocacy, actually working with institutions, large organizations, local and regional governments to help them understand the existence of, as well as the power of self-employment as part of the modern economy and why that group of people both needs and deserves some proportional support to the other kinds of businesses that people think of when you think of small business.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, and I’d go so far as to say you can take credit for two of those businesses, because not only do I have David Dylan Thomas LLC, which is my speaking business that Alex helped basically convince me not to be too afraid to launch. But there is also White Meat LLC, which is the business entity that controls the movie White Meat.

So we’re two down and 9,000 however many to go.

Alex Hillman: You know, it’s a, it’s a 10 year plan. We’ve got time, patient, but no, it’s, it’s very fun and really rewarding to see people who I’ve gotten to know over the years take what some people perceive as a leap. And I often look at and go, this is really just the next logical step for you and your career.

How to take that step is not always obvious because people don’t have great examples to see or learn from more examples that feel resonant because those people do things that are different from them or look different from them. But also, you know, just connecting with the other people in, in not just in Philadelphia, but through throughout the world to see all the different ways that people can make a living using really the, you know, the stuff between their ears, right? Yeah. It’s, you know, how you can use your knowledge, your experience, your expertise, your creativity to be helpful and put good things into the world. And that’s it. I just think that’s the coolest thing in the world and getting to watch other people succeed and play a tiny role in that is absolutely what gets me up in the morning.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, well, well, speaking of that and those leaps in particular, like we recently had a discussion around how to conceive of making a short film for White Meat that would kind of support making the feature and specifically how to raise money for that in a world where you can actually reach out to normal human beings and say, please help me make this talk a little bit about like how you think about that leap for regular quote unquote businesses versus like, oh, you’re making a movie. Okay. What’s that like? Right. What is, what are the commonalities or what are kind of the strategies you think to kind of like work for both?

Alex Hillman: I mean, I mean, I’ll start out by saying, you know, when you and I started talking about this, I was really clear about, like, I know where my strengths and my weaknesses are.

And I find the world of movie making in particular to be a thing where the more I learn about how it works, the more I’m amazed that it works at all, like every time I go to see a movie, whether it’s a big blockbuster or just like a really great, or even a not so great independent film to know all of the things that need to go into it and see them coalesce, even kind of coalesce is, it feels like a miracle. And so I think, you know, there is an element of building both a business as well as building a, an operational ecosystem of the people who are, who need to come together to make this thing happen. I think one of the interesting things about making even a short film is it’s with some rare exceptions things, a thing you really can’t do on your own. Like it’s certainly possible that that’s the goal. You can use that as a boundary as a creative constraint, but most of the time making something, especially with the kind of production level and value of what you’re trying to create with White Meat and the, and the short is inherently a collaborative process, which means it’s going to cost more time. It’s going to cost more money. And a bunch of the things that I’m used to getting to control as a solopreneur, whether I’m selling services or products where I can use, I can more readily use the things that I’m capable of as a constraint, right? I’m not going to make a thing that I don’t have the skills to make myself, or at least enough understanding that I could hire somebody to work with them.

And so, you know, I’d almost put it, the question back to you and you know, you have made film projects in the past, you have played multiple different roles, but I don’t actually know how many or all of them. And like, what are the things in that process that, you know, besides the fundraising part that, you know, like, this is not the thing that I will do.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, I, it’s funny. There’s so there’s, there’s two things, right? There’s the things that I don’t know how to do and the things that I know how to do, but desperately don’t want to do. That’s a lot of levels. So in terms of like the literal tasks. I was actually just recorded, and I think by the time this comes out, I’ll already be out there a podcast with Adam from Indie Hall for the Indie Hall podcast, and we talked a little bit about this.

Like, there are things that this is the first time I’m working with this large in terms of the feature this or even to some extent the short this large of a crew in terms of like I’ve never had a makeup department before I’ve never had a wardrobe or a special effects department before right? You know, I’ve worked on like action movies and stuff like that but super, super indie low budget, right?

So I’ve never even had a stunt coordinator before, right? So these are all things where at this level of maturity as a filmmaker, I want to hire professionals to do, which is a whole other level of like, I’ve never had a payroll before, right? It’s always like, hey, I’ll buy you a lunch and we’ll call it even, right?

Like super micro budget stuff. So it’s like, okay, we’re going to have like all this infrastructure that I know nothing about. And I absolutely need to hire professionals and trust them and seed so much control. Both out of necessity, because I don’t know how to do these things, but also just out of like, scale.

I don’t, there’s only one of me. And I’m, I’m 50 now, I’m tired, I don’t want to do everything. And, and the thing that I know how to do but don’t want to, and I’m doing as little of as humanly possible is producing. So all the movies I’ve made have been like these micro budget things to varying degrees of scale, but were always like, because I could not, because I could not dupe anyone into producing it, I had to produce it.

Which, on the one hand, is great, because now I know how to produce and what you have to do, and I can look for that in producers. But on the other hand, it’s like, exhausting. And it is my goal, my personal goal, to only write and direct this film. So far, I’m sucking at that because there’s just certain things you have to do to get it off the ground.

And we can talk about how films and startups share certain commonalities. But But, my, my end goal is to get to the point where all I am doing on this movie is writing and directing. And that’s it, and other people are like, I’ve got a great idea for raising money, and I’m gonna build this out and do that, and I’m gonna control all these things that you don’t want to control.

Which, by the way, is another interesting topic, is how control plays into business. But but yeah, so for me, it’s very much about how do I get to a point, personally, where all I’m doing is writing and directing. And, in the meantime, doing as little, like minimalist, like Apple website, you know producing as possible.

Alex Hillman: Makes a lot of sense. It’s also something that like, I, I think that’s part of why films feel so magical to me. The more I learn about how they’re made is because it, it’s a, the things you just described are things that I really struggle with. And like, on one hand, I’m fully aware of the limitations that presents in the kinds of things that I can work on.

But it also like, once I’ve made peace with it, then it’s like, well, that I can think of it as a creative constraint and go, how do I have an outsized impact with what I do have? And so I feel like that’s maybe the, the common thread and part of what gets me excited about kind of riding shotgun or backseat or however you want to describe it with, with this project of yours is I know what my instincts are and I don’t think that they would serve most of my instincts are, I don’t think they would serve this project.

There’s a few that I think will when it comes to the fundraising and the marketing and things like that. But in terms of like the actual operations of something like this, I, I’m excited to be close to it. To see how it is done and not, not even to see how it is done through a lens of like, I want to see a, an expert at this because it sounds like you’re confidently not an expert in this.

And so like, I, I’m actually kind of excited to see the imperfect version of this relinquishing of control. So that I can learn from it, because it’s something I would like to be better at.

David Dylan Thomas: Well, it’s interesting too, because like, it’s so funny, it’s like, see how it’s done, and it’s like, brother, if you want to see how it’s done, you better get on a different movie.

But it’s, because the thing is, one there is no how it’s done. Like, and again, I’m curious to sort of like, look at this from the more like, small business angle, how much this translates, but but with film, I’d say with almost any creative dinner, but it’s endeavor. But especially with film today, how it’s done is however you can do it.

I mean, there’s just no like there’s no rule book. There’s lots of rule books. There is no rule book that works. Consistently, right. Or even I would say 50 percent of the time.

Alex Hillman: I think that’s a very, very congruent conclusion with the business world. You know, especially, I’d say this is more true at the smaller end of the business spectrum, like bigger businesses, I think like, asymptotically trend towards some kind of homeostasis.

You know, more layers of management and there’s more MBAs in the room. There, there’s more homogeneity and the ways the decision is being made. And that’s why the outliers stand out so much. Right. Whereas in small businesses, there’s so much variety to the approach. And I think, I mean, the, the core lesson that I learned early and that, you know, I’ve taught and share with so many people is it’s okay to have a vision that you can’t achieve yet.

The question is, is what can you achieve today with the resources that you do have that is any step directionally closer to the longterm vision so that stacking the bricks business as the, the name of the business as a metaphor is just that it’s, you don’t build the whole castle, you lay the first layer of bricks in order to lay the first layer of bricks, you lay the first brick, right?

And so it’s this sort of deconstruction of the end goal and going. Well, if I can’t do that yet, but I want to be able to do that, what’s the thing I can do? And that’s the thing that I think a lot of folks, especially the more, like, creative brained they are, really struggle with that. And, or, the you know, I’m sure this is true in the film world as well, the number of people who’ve got a genuinely great concept that never sees the light of day because they’re always looking for the right gear or the right partner.

It’s like, this is where perfectionism gets in the way and perfectionism turns into a kind of protectionism. Where your perfection is there to protect you from you know, if, if you do nothing, the outcome is guaranteed, nothing happens, if you do something, the outcome is never guaranteed, and that’s scary on one hand, but I also think it’s the, it’s the excitement of well, I don’t know how it’s going to go. All I can really do is do a good job of understanding my strengths and do the best job possible of stacking the deck in my favor towards the outcome that I want.

David Dylan Thomas: Well, I want, I want to talk a little bit about that, that stacking the deck part, because I do agree it is very much, and it’s interesting, but maybe not surprising to learn that in just general small business, the level of unpredictability, the degree to which you have to stack the bricks, the degree to which you have to counter perfectionism is, is similar, but one of the things I learned from you when we were having early conversations about crowdfunding the short film, which we’re calling White Meat: Appetizer at the moment, that’s the working title so crowdfunding for that, which, like I said, is about 60K, versus, or maybe I didn’t say, it’s about 60K budget versus the 10 million budget we’ll probably need for the feature, again, getting to the small version that you can do versus the big version.

Alex Hillman: And if I remember right from our conversation, that 60K is already whittled down from, it was closer to, closer to six figures in your original projection, and then you had some, you had some partners who have done film projects production that looked in and said, that’s a lot of risk to take on is the way I heard it.

The way I heard them to like, that is a lot of financial risks take on for something of this scale. What would the $50,000 version look like? And use that as a creative exercise. Like, well, what can I cut or what can I get creative with to get closer to a more manageable, because that’s the thing is like the, the number, the dollar amount is a thing.

But like the way you feel about a dollar amount is purely psychological. I think the more important part is how you look at that dollar amount and go, well, how does that translate to risk at that doll- If I’m putting that amount of money on the line, how does, how, how are my odds, right? If $60,000 out there are the odds good that I get $60,000 worth of outcome or some multiples of it or are they or is it like it’s going to be a ton of work to get $60,000 worth of outcome out of this and that’s where I’m back to what we’re like there is no common formula. That is a, what I just described is more of a heuristic than a formula.

It is a way to look at a dollar amount and go, if I’m, I’m, even if I have that money, if you had $60,000 today to write a check and completely self fund it, if you were going purely on vibes, you may as well be lighting that 60K on fire because it’s just as likely that you see, never see a dollar of outcome in return.

But if you look at it and go, what am I going to need to do to make that 60K turn into  the first 6 million of your fundraising for the for the full film, and so risk is not about how do I mitigate the bad things? I mean it is what what are the what are the downsides and how do I cap the downsides?

But also is the risk worth the reward? Is 60k Going to get me closer to the first 50 percent of a 12 million dollar budget, right? And is that path? You Like, again, not, not, not that you need to know the exact steps, but knowing what you know, does it seem reasonable or does it seem like a long shot?

David Dylan Thomas: So it’s interesting to put it that way, because as you described that, what I’m also hearing is almost the value prop of spending the money. Because if you talk about it purely in terms of risk, there is not a single film that is even remotely likely to succeed. That is not a term that exists in film.

There’s more likely to succeed. Right? Maybe 10% versus 3%, but there is no, like 75%. There’s like,

Alex Hillman: There’s no guarantees in this industry.

David Dylan Thomas: There, there’s like, it’s, it’s, it is worse than the restaurant business. Yeah. And that is saying something.

Alex Hillman: And so, and that’s such an interesting framing. ’cause when people think about like odds, right? People are like, well, you know, 25% chance, that’s probably not gonna happen. Versus 75 percent chance is like, oh, that’s probably going to happen. Right. And what we’re talking about is the difference between 3 percent and 7%. You’re trying to add that, like lift at such a small scale where, you know, there’s been three and 7 percent is literally double and change.

You’re, the deck is still massively stacked against you, but the odds are still better than they would be without it. And so through that lens, I think a short film before you try raising money for a full length feature, absolutely increases those already abysmal odds. And then also you, in addition to, you know, awareness that it brings, a fan base that you can build when you raise money through whatever means and you show that you can execute on that money.

Again, the investing world is not my area of expertise, but I know enough about how investors think and investors are also looking for ways to de-risk their investments. Again, the most, most of them go in knowing that the odds are not in their favor. They’re looking at same kind of odds, trying to go from 3 percent to 7 percent odds.

And they’re looking at, oh, you got money last time and a) you made anything. Yeah. Number goes up. Yeah. You made it something that people like number goes up a little bit more. You didn’t go over budget or you stayed under budget. Number goes up. So like you’re proving to future investors that will be necessary in the equation that you have the ability to pull this off.

And even when you make mistakes along the way, which are inevitable, that you’re able to describe to them here’s what we ran into and here’s how I solved that problem. Here’s how I, you know, we, we hit budget. We almost went over, but we didn’t. And here’s how, or we had somebody who was really derailing the project and here’s how I took care of it.

Like, those are the kinds of things that I think they’re the non-monetary value, but the nominal increase of odds, whether it’s for yourself or the perception for other people that you’ll need to get involved to do the bigger project, that’s the game that you’re playing. And I think that has a lot in common with the rest of the business world.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And I, and I think that cause there’s a degree to which, and I, I, this one of my, one of my producers Dan Maccarone does a lot of work with VC and he, and it’s funny, I met him in New York after I’d gone to an event that was basically looking for better business models for social media and across the board, it was like this anti VC rant, right?

Like for, for, for fairly obvious reasons. And afterwards I was like, it’s weird. I’m talking to you about like VC. Cause it just came from this event where people were like, you know, down on VC. And he said, look and this is a perspective I hadn’t thought of before. It’s like, look the people you’re looking for to get capital from, you need to ask them why you should take their money.

Alex Hillman: I completely agree.

David Dylan Thomas: Right? And that was like such a flip for me because I’m used to thinking of VC in that Shark Tank kind of I am a humble peasant.

Alex Hillman: It’s a very Oliver Twist, “Please sir. May I have some more?” Versus I have something you want. You tell me why I should let you on this ride

David Dylan Thomas: Yes, exactly and that completely flipped the script because for me and I literally have a manifesto about this for me it’s very much saying the people who invest in this movie if you’re just investing it for money a) you’re an idiot because you should know by now how bad this is. Like, you know these, these markets are, but, but b) you are going to ask me if you’re, if you are just looking to maximize profit, you’re going to ask me to do things that morally I do not want to do. Right. You’re going to ask me to make, make people work longer hours. You’re going to make me cut things that you think people will find socially unacceptable, blah, blah, blah, blah,

Alex Hillman: I would also say they may not make you, but you may feel like you have to. Yeah. That’s, and I think that’s the more insidious version.

David Dylan Thomas: Hmm.

Alex Hillman: Is not when investors, it’s pretty rare. It happens, but it’s pretty rare that investors make any, but, and there’s board seat power and all kinds of stuff like that.

I’ve seen investors do some truly shitty things to business owners and founders. But the thing that I see way more often is founders and business leaders changing their decision-making dynamics. And I think in the worst case scenario, being a little more flexible on their morals than they would be if there wasn’t this other outside pressure.

And so a thing that I, you know, I’m a fan of crowdfunding because ultimately in this earlier stage, in some ways it’s a way for me to test my own ability to, you know, to fulfill on the promise without, while staying aligned with the goals and the values of the work, right? Because those people are putting, it’s somewhere between like a, a preorder and a patronage support, right?

Different expectations than an investor, but it’s a good proving ground in so many ways in the market, in the feedback loop, but also I think for you, the creator to say when I’ve taken tens of thousands or more dollars from a crowd of supporters how does that affect my decision making?

And I think a thing that people often don’t think about until they’re in a compromising situation is they think about what they’re going to do when things go well. I’m thrilled to send positive updates from the set to all of our supporters. What are you going to tell your supporters when things are really bad? Yeah. And thinking about that ahead of time. And again, zoom up even bigger when you’ve got investors. Do you, do you tell your investors that things are going wrong? Do you ask them for help or do you hide it? Do you try and cover it up? Do you try and maintain some level of, I don’t know, decorum or whatever that makes them think that you’re still crushing it when in reality, like it’s crushing you. And I think that money is such a weird thing. I I’m fascinated by, I’m fascinated by business in general, but specifically the, the psychology that people have.

And it’s just the, the psychologies, the range of ways that people react to money. Buyers and sellers, large scale, small scale, like it’s all relative and it’s all very personal and it’s like people were taught in economics class that, you know, there’s all this rationality around money and boy, is that a load of crap.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh yeah. I wrote a whole book about how it’s a load of crap.

Alex Hillman: So, so yeah, so I, so you know, all that to say, I think that I agree with that take completely of like the, the people whose money you’re taking matters. On so many levels, but it also really matters how you decide to show up and how the money does or does not change it or how you let it change you.

And you’ve been thinking about, you know, setting some boundaries for yourself ahead of time and going, this is how I will let it affect me. And here’s how I will work to for it not.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. I mean, and I think we’ve, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve already done that. So we wrote this manifesto, which you can find it at whitemeatmovie.com. that basically it’s, it’s the equivalent of those signs you see on lawns that are like, in this house, we kind of like, you know, respect whatever it’s like in this house, we pay our workers fairly and we, you know, show preference for working with black owned business and blah, blah, blah. But one of the things that is in the manifesto is this idea of this is a Philly story.

We want to shoot it in Philly and as much as possible work with with Philly crew. And to, like, the money thing, the opportunity came up where it would actually be cheaper. Well, not cheaper necessarily, but easier. Like, we, we can get a location for free for the short in New York. The, the short takes place in a coffee house and there are bars and restaurants that one of our producers owns in New York where we could probably shoot for free.

And just to get that, and it was a moment we were having this conversation, I literally said, don’t make me tap the manifesto because one of the things in the manifesto was like, look, I, this is a Philly story and there are practical reasons to have, like the short is also going to be a way to start vetting crew in Philly and start making relationships in Philly with the community.

So all of which to say there is every reason to try harder to make it in Philly than anywhere else. And if literally every location in Philly says no, maybe then we talk about New York, but it’s like, we need to exhaust Philly. We need to rule out Philly before we do what would legit be an easier choice to shoot in New York.

And that’s one of those, like, because the way I put it is always, what are you will, how much money are, what kind of money, what are you willing to leave money on the table for? That’s the phrase. What are you willing to, in this case, I’m willing to leave money on the table to shoot in Philly.

Alex Hillman: Yep. I also, it’s a thing where, there’s a few things that come to mind for that.

One is. It’s a short, it’s a short term decision that affects a bunch of longer term decisions and outcomes, right? So these decisions are not made in a vacuum, as you said. It affects crew, cast, a whole number of other things. So making one, you have to think about the decisions as part of a system, right?

The other thing I’m a firm believer in the way you start is the way you continue, or I also like the version, the way you do anything is the way you do everything. And to make such a critical, like foundational and early decision at that point, I think it’s just as powerful. And I’d say like any additional costs that shooting in Philly costs you, you will more than make up for in consistency of messaging and not having to spend time designing around or explaining around the decision to do the thing that saves a little bit of money. So short term thinking versus long term thinking, not just through the economic lens, but also like how will that decision make other later decisions harder or they make the easier version even more disadvantageous.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And again, I don’t want to, I don’t want to make it sound saintly. There are compromises as well. It’s sort of like, Oh. I have a producer who already knows a crew that works together really well in New York, and there I might be willing to say, okay, well if that crew wants to come to Philly, or if I can’t find any stunt coordinators in Philly, but there’s one we already know about who’s awesome in New York, okay, then that’s like, that is a compromise I’m willing to make.

So I think it’s also this very sensitive, and it’s funny, you say like, how will the money affect your decision making, and I’m like, I am really curious to find that out. I do not know. I hadn’t thought of that before.

Alex Hillman: And again, I think there’s so much value in figuring it out at a smaller scale where the stakes are lower versus before you enter it.

Because again, you could go into the bigger version and go, well, that a counterintuitive thing that I did while it was small and there was a cost, but the cost was manageable, ended up being worth it. Now I can be more confident going that making the counterintuitive choice when the stakes are much higher.

When you do have somebody else’s, investor’s, money being like, Dave, that’s a weird decision. You’d be like, I know it’s a weird decision. I made it last time and here’s how it worked out versus I got a vibe. So I think, I think again, using it as a way to. I feel like every experience is practice for every experience that comes after it universally in life.

And so this is a narrow lens version of that. Yeah, it’s so powerful to have practical practice. Yeah. Make the thing you’re doing valuable on its own, but also be practiced for the next phase.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And that was something like, I’m glad. I decided to make the short. Originally, that was not the plan.

Originally, we were just going to just go for it. I am an impatient man, Alex. Which again, makes movies a terrible way to spend your time, because movies take years if you’re lucky. But but yeah. And, and through a series of events, we ended up, I ended up writing a script that I liked. And I actually kind of want to talk about this too.

It’s like, you talk about finding out, in those bricks, which what are bricks that you actually are good at and have control over what things are you basically going to need to hire people to do or find people to do or whatever and get collaborators. There’s also a degree to which it’s about making the bricks themselves fun.

Alex Hillman: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: So for me, like this podcast we’re recording right now, I’ve been making podcasts since 2006 actually, and I’m very good at it and I’m, I enjoy doing that and it’s something I, it’s something that doesn’t feel exhausting when I think about the idea of doing

Alex Hillman: Right.

David Dylan Thomas: So it’s like, oh, if there’s any way this can help make my movie or help with any of the goals of making the movie, yeah, let’s do that.

And there’s even a degree to which the journey itself right because you talk about is this what is the risk of the 60k and when I hear that part of what I think is if I were what I spend 60k just to make the short, right, would the short existing and being a good short be be enough right I’d be worth 60k which I hadn’t thought of quite in those terms before but I like those terms because again if you take into account the things you can’t control and you take the outcome of, okay, exactly the opposite of what I wanted happen, or only 50 percent of what I want it to happen.

Like, how little of my goals would have to be achieved before it stops being worth it?

Alex Hillman: That’s a great, great framing. Yeah, totally agree.

David Dylan Thomas: And I’m like, 60k for this short I have in my head to just exist? It’s a bargain. Let’s do it, right? And again being responsible about it making sure that you’re not promising anyone anything you’re not giving them And making sure they’re also on board with the idea.

I think that’s a key especially are contributing to this campaign We know it might not work We know that they’re all the the risks involved but even and this comes as someone who’s contributed to crowdfunding campaigns before like I contributed to the Veronica Mars campaign back in the day for the movie, which was like one of the most successful and my, I can’t speak for everyone, but my headspace was, was not, oh man, I really want a DVD. Oh man, I really want a t shirt. My headspace was, I am a huge fan of this. I love that they’re even trying to do this. I just want to be a part of making this happen, and if it fails, if it ends up being a shitty movie, I won’t be happy about that, but I will still feel it was worth it. That I tried.

Alex Hillman: I got to be a part of the story.

I feel like that is the most effective execution of crowdfunding, really, is that. It’s an opportunity to invite people to feel like they’re a part of the story. It’s the same reason why, like, it’s the kind of monetary version of how, like, fan casting and, like, cameo speculation and stuff has become part of film marketing.

Right? Where the idea of withholding information to make the fans talk about, you know, Their ideas, not that they, and sometimes people become a little too attached to those ideas, but it’s, I don’t know, it feels kind of like the way people get sucked into a sports bracket during a football or a baseball season where like, I think fundamentally we are just psychologically wired to want to root for stuff.

And, and part of that is, is being given a feedback loop to feel like my rooting mattered, even if it absolutely, and so this is a more concrete version where the rooting actually can matter substantially, even if the outcome is a loss. Right, right. You don’t like, again, I’m not the kind of sports fan that cheers for a team and then gets sad when they lose. I would prefer a win, but I’m, it doesn’t wreck my entire week when they don’t

David Dylan Thomas: You have a more Buddhist sports fandom.

Alex Hillman: I am an unusual Philadelphian in that way, but I feel, but I feel like if you approach crowdfunding, both as somebody who’s putting your money on the line and more specifically, someone who’s asking people to put their money on the line, what you’re really doing is asking them to root for you.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, it’s someone, someone once put it as buying versus tipping. Like, cause. Let’s face it, Alex, $150 is a lot to pay for a t shirt. Oh yeah. If I’m asking you to pay, like if, and if I was literally saying, Hey, give me $150 for a t shirt, I would just sell a t shirt on Etsy and be like, this costs $150. That is not what I’m doing.

Alex Hillman: But the t shirt, the t shirt is symbolic. And you know, I mean, it’s funny, it makes me think of another scenario. We’ve got an event collaborator here at the Indy Hall clubhouse who does these events two to three times a month. Then he had like branded t shirts made for the crew and people kept asking, “How do I get a t shirt?” And so he made a different color version the t shirt so you can distinguish the fans from the crew and sold it for a hundred bucks and the deal was you buy the t shirt you get into all the events for the rest of the season for free So basically like pull off a pre-sale and I was like, what is like a silly thing? But also, and for him, it’s not so much about the fundraising part of it. The monetary part is not really all that meaningful. The commitment to the ongoing existence of this experience basically is giving the super fans a way to execute their super fandom and say, I am going to come to the rest of the season’s worth of events anyway.

So let me prepay for some portion of them, get a deal, but more most importantly feel like I’m a part of this thing continuing for the rest of the season and hopefully into the next. So as a much smaller scale version of it, but I think it’s ultimately psychologically pulling off the same move. The t shirt is the token.

It’s more about the experience, the opportunity to be bought in. And when I say bought in, I’m not talking about the financial buy in, it’s the, it’s the psychological, emotional. I am now a part of the story. I have a story to tell when it succeeds. I get to tell that I was a part of that. And even if, or when it doesn’t succeed, I still have a good story.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, yeah. I don’t, I don’t even wear my 99 Percent Invisible t shirt anymore, but I love the fact that I helped get them healthcare for their workers. I’m so proud of that fact.

I want to talk a bit about pre crowdfunding, cause this was something I didn’t really know about until I talked to you and I think it’d be helpful for anyone else out there who’s sort of interested really, really in any kind of crowdfunding, but certainly film crowdfunding. Describe a little bit what pre crowdfunding is.

Alex Hillman: Yeah. So. Crowdfunding is, is an often misunderstood process because people approach it more like tipping, right? When in reality, crowdfunding happens one of two ways. One is you activate the crowd you already have access to and say, hey, everybody chips in a little bit, that covers our budget, we can pull off this thing.

The reason to use a crowdfunding platform like a Kickstarter, like an Indiegogo or something like that is because you get the network effects of reaching people beyond who you can already reach. So crowdfunding is somewhere between 50 percent financial, 50 percent marketing. Depending on how your strategy works, those proportions could shift.

It could actually be more valuable in the marketing in terms of reaching wider audiences, and more specifically, the correct wider audiences that watch those channels for things to get involved in, than it is just the straight cash that you’re trying to raise. So, folks generally think of, this is true of most product launches.

I’m gonna go make a thing and then on launch day I’m gonna tell the world about it. And they’re all gonna be super excited about this thing and this opportunity I’m presenting to them and they’re all gonna want to give me their money. And, depending on who you are, that may or may not be true, trending towards not how it’s gonna work.

Those folks are not walking around through the world waiting for David Dylan Thomas to release his next film project. Right. Like just that, that is not most of us. And I think even I’ve even seen like truly famous people try to launch this and, and people hesitate, right? Like, well, you’re rich and famous. Why are you coming to me for money? Right. Stuff like that. So, so like being rich and famous is not a, does not solve for this problem. What does solve for this problem is momentum. And again, I think this ties really, really well to the rooting for a sports team metaphor. People want to root for a sports team when they’re doing well, right?

I may not be into the sport or the sports team, but when they’re doing well, I’m all in. And so pre crowdfunding is essentially the work that you do before you launch the crowdfunding project. So naturally, you know, especially with something like Kickstarter and especially with a film project, you’re going to have a video that is basically your pitch for what you’re raising money for, your emotional and personal connection to the audience.

You’re going to have your story. You’re going to have your, you know, here’s what we’re going to do with the money. You’re going to have your tiers for backers asking for certain dollar amounts and rewards and all those things. The trick is that Somewhere in your first, I’d say one to three days of whether it’s a one or two week Kickstarter or even a month long one within your first few days to show somewhere around 30 percent completion of your initial goal.

And the reason for that is, is the earlier you show that the momentum begets more momentum. People see a thing that’s moving fast. They go, I want to get in now. I want to, this is clearly successful. I want to be a part of it. Versus is this going to succeed? I’ll wait for somebody else to make the first move.

Right. Yeah. And 30 percent is again, let’s do heuristic, not a math equation and you can get there a bunch of different ways. So one of them is to say, you know, the goal is to raise 60K let’s actually set the goal at 30K and with high degree of confidence that we can reach that 30K early and get the other 30K through stretch goals.

Right. I’ve seen people do that successfully, but the, the, that’s a little more sophisticated and maybe a little bit riskier. I think the simpler version of what you’re doing and it is required in both is to then like really look at your network. Look at the communities you’re a part of, look at the people who know you and trust you, look at the people who you look up to, and if you were to ask them for something, they might say yes.

You gotta give them a chance to say yes rather than assume that they’re gonna say no. And ask them to pledge. To contribute in those first few days, let them know when, when, ideally when it’s going to be, let them know what their options are, you know, maybe the full list of crowdfunding options, maybe some particular ones that either you think they’d be interested in or that are particularly valuable for showing momentum on.

And you’re not asking for their money then, but you are asking for a commitment. Which means, you know, you probably want to overshoot whatever the goal is a little bit, knowing that not everybody’s going to follow through. That just happens. But again, doing this very, very direct. And I know that like you’re literally sitting down and you set a goal I’m going to write 50 emails in an afternoon or whatever it is. Like, that’s the kind of work we’re talking about. It’s sending out those personalized emails. You can have the bulk of it can be templatized, but it’s the idea is send that email that makes them explains to them why you thought of them.

Let’s know what you’re doing and says on this date, we’re going to be launching the crowdfunding. Our goal is to, within the first few days, reach X amount of dollars. If there is a level that you’d be willing to contribute to towards that goal, it’d be great to know that now as a commitment, as a pledge.

I will let you know first when we actually launch the Kickstarter before we technically announce it because if you want to announce it as close to that momentum as possible and it’s really, it’s, this is back to that, like stacking the deck in your favor. This is how you take the mechanics of crowdfunding, which my favorite analogy is that crowdfunding at its best case is like a slingshot and that first 30 percent is all it’s about putting the pebble in the slingshot and pulling it back and then aiming it right if you don’t pull the pebble back and you aim the pebble just falls out right but if you pull it back a little bit and you aim it in a direction the odds are not a guarantee or a bank break, any number of things happen, but the odds are it’s going to go in the direction you pointed at, at, to some reasonable distance.

And this is giving you more chances to do it. You can pull this off later. Like if you were to do a thing where you launch it and you’re like, oh shoot, like only a couple people donated, you could execute this plan in real time and go, hey, this is like, this is how people, I think both succeed and fail when they launch a Kickstarter or something like it without all of this prep work, and it doesn’t magically take off, they may scramble, and, if they’re good, and if they, if, and if they’re lucky, frankly, they may be able to pull it off, recover that momentum in whatever time is left, and the thing that will push them across the finish line, there’s basically two versions.

One is where you brute force your way across the finish line. The other is where you figure out what is the path to building momentum. And this is this, I like this one because it makes it so on day one of the crowdfunding campaign, you know, which path you’re executing.

David Dylan Thomas: And I, and I like the almost conspiratorial, hey guys, you’re going to do this cool thing. We’re gonna like we’re gonna game Kickstarter together. We’re gonna like, you know, like being invited to that Yeah, like I can’t speak for the people being invited, but I feel like being invited to that so like hey We’re we’re we’re that we’re day one.

Alex Hillman: Yeah, your inner circle, your inner circle. Exactly. Exactly And again, it’s a way for people to help It’s one of those things where I know the line of like, you know, every dollar counts and it does. But it’s a way for you to tell the folks who maybe only have limited funds that contribute, say like, even if you’re contributing at the lower levels, your, every dollar you contribute actually matters more because it’s part of the momentum building.

So it’s, you know, I’d say akin to, doing a match donation with a political fundraiser or something like that, where like I was going to donate that money anyway, but the fact that I’m putting that money out as a match incentivizes the next person to pitch in towards the goal. Those are the kinds of psychological plays that again, people just don’t, people don’t generally want to put themselves on the line until or unless they see other people doing it. Other people that they feel represents them represent their interests. So they go, well, if that person’s doing it, it can’t be that bad of an idea. So yeah, this is, I think it’s one of my favorite plays and the truth is like you can, I apply this to, to physical products as well and digital products where it was not crowdfunding, but like when I launched my book, so I launched a book a rare bright spot during the pandemic but in, in August of 2020 I launched a book called the tiny MBA.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. We launched the same day or one day after each other, same week for sure.

Alex Hillman: It was within a week of each other. I, I technically launched on my birthday, August 26th. But I did a pre sales campaign for about three weeks before it and use that to build momentum and what I did. And I believe this is similar to what you did when you launched your book, which is I made a list of people who I thought not only would buy the book, but would talk about the book. And reached out, and a lot of it was very manual, to say, hey I’m watching on this date. It would be awesome to have you as a, you know, a day one buyer.

If you’re open to a review, I can send you an early copy, all those kinds of things basically make it so that launch day was not the first day people were seeing the thing. Launch day people were being the wide world was being brought into a train that had already left the station and that train was full of people that were excited and bought in and they felt like they were a part of it.

And so their message was, I’m a part of this. It’s really cool. You can be a part of it too. In the case of book, it’s, I read this early, totally, like, resonated if you’re into X, Y, and Z, you’d love it as well. Or in some cases there’s like, I’ve known Dave for the longest time. Everything he puts out is great. This is no different. You should absolutely check this out, those kinds of things. But I think this, this pre sales or pre crowdfunding strategy applies to lots of things where so long as you are not being deceptive, right? Cause I’ve seen people sell a thing as if it exists and then not build it until after they’ve made sales.

And that’s very different from being honest and transparent. This thing doesn’t exist yet, but I would, but I will be working closely with the first 10 or 50 or a hundred people who buy in so that they get early access. They get the updates from the, you know, you basically like a an inner circle type thing.

You get usually selling early access or a feedback loop or something along those lines, but, but yeah. I think there’s some people have a, a really negative reaction, that sort of thing. They feel like it’s scammy in some way to sell a thing that doesn’t exist yet. I think it’s scammy to pretend it exists.

You know, there’s this technique in the startup world of like building a landing page for a thing that doesn’t exist, but making it seem that like it does. Pointing Google ads or Facebook ads at it and then having the buy now button just go to a form that collects their contact information and tracking conversion rates and using that to like justify, they treat that as quote unquote validation.

I think validation is a bullshit approach to starting businesses. That’s a whole other tirade at the end of the day. That is deceptive practice I think that for as commonplace as it is, I think that is an unhealthy relationship with the company the person creating and the person they’re creating it for.

If they’re, they’re willing to be deceptive in that way. What did I say? The way you start is the way you continue. The way you do anything is the way you do everything. For me, that’s a leading indicator. Well, what other ways are you willing to lie to people versus I’m willing to be honest and transparent that I haven’t built this thing or I haven’t built it completely. I’m not going to put more time into it until I have some buyers. Here are the inherent risks. If you’re in, I’d love to have you.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And I think that level of transparency shows a level of respect that indicates that you value the person more than you value their money.

Alex Hillman: I think that is really, really well said.

And so important. When. I mean, I think it goes back to the manifesto, right? It’s like our relationship transcends the money. The money is useful, but the relationship is valuable.

David Dylan Thomas: Yes. I think that’s, yeah. And, and, and thinking, I mean, you were talking before about how weird money is. And I feel like as time goes by, I began to transition from thinking of money as this more, the better, right. Just get as much as you can and then you will be secure and happy and whatever. To think of it more like blood. Like you need a certain amount to survive, it needs to flow, but if you have too little, you’ll die. But if you have too much, you will also die.

Alex Hillman: That’s right.

David Dylan Thomas: There is an optimal amount of money, and that is what you should aim for. And any surplus you should give to someone who needs more blood. You know?

Alex Hillman: Totally agree. Totally agree. Totally agree.

David Dylan Thomas: Awesome, man. Well, it has been, it has been great having you on here. I’m certain we’ll have you back on again. I will tease that what we’ll tease this for the next time you’re on, tell me about your relationship with horror, going back to what the early two thousands, late nineties, what was the thing you did?

Alex Hillman: Oh man. So I, I, I have to admit that of the movie genres in the world, I don’t do horror very well. I don’t enjoy being scared. Like Suspense and thriller movies are like, like for me, the, the, the perfect quadrant is something like Seven. Right. This is creepy, but not scary. This is tense, but not uncomfortable. And that movie has some pretty uncomfortable parts. But like jump scares or, or dread I struggle with. And so like

David Dylan Thomas: Stay away from J-horror, my son.

Alex Hillman: So there, there, there are like, there’s an entire genre of new stuff, even things like Midsommar, which I eventually watched. I mean, I’ll tell you this, like, I remember when going to see Get Out. And like, based on how it was marketed, I was like, I don’t know how I’m gonna handle this. And there’s a couple of jump scares. But that’s, that was more psychological thriller than horror. I think. And I was like, okay, this I can handle, but it’s so it’s tough to tell from movie marketing. So a lot of times I’ll just like, I’ll read the Wikipedia page and be like, I get it. I’m good.

So all this to say, I had a girlfriend in the early two thousands who loved horror movies, like the Freddy’s were her favorite. Classic eighties horror, and she really was bothered by the fact that I wouldn’t watch them with her. And then I had a job where we were the agency of record for FEARnet, which was a collaboration between Comcast, Lionsgate, and some other library of horror, suspense, thriller movies.

And so I built their MySpace page. I built a bunch of stuff. It was like early web streaming stuff before any of Netflix, Hulu, stuff like that was happening. We built some really cool technology and digital experiences and listener, you won’t be surprised, but mid 20 year old me, who was a big old dummy definitely was taken aback by the kind of yelling at that I received when my girlfriend found that I found out that I would watch the horror movies for work, but not with her.

So I learned an important lesson there in hindsight should have been obvious, but, but yeah, that project, you know, I’d literally have horror, you know, something like, House of Wax on in the background, like, which is a freaking weird movie. So I don’t know, I have an appreciation for the genre, but I always say like the guys who used to run Reply All the podcast had a relatively short run show called the Scaredy Cats Horror show or something like that, where there was two hosts, one of them was like my wife who like falls asleep to horror movies, which is a thing that baffles me. Like she can’t sleep. She puts on a scary movie and it’s like falls asleep. That’s wild. And so Alex Goldman, the one host was like that loved the horror genre would fall asleep on that. They were soothing to him. And PJ, the other host was like me. We’re like, I struggle with watching a horror movie because I’m. So taken out of the cinematic experience because my overactive imagination is wondering about the ways this is going to keep me up at night later. I’m so distracted. And so, like, the thing I liked about besides, like, feeling very seen listening to that show, the entire sort of progress, what they did was every episode, PJ would get assigned a classic horror movie to go watch, come back and they talk about it on the show with somebody who is somehow associated with the production of that film, which is a super cool concept, whether you’re a horror fan or not. But the thing that I, I think it helped me with, even though I still struggle with horror movies, is an appreciation for the tropes and the techniques and things like that.

And I think that when you have a deep appreciation for it, the scares aren’t as scary. And I’ve just never crossed that threshold where like, I know enough to appreciate it, but not enough to have it feel comforting in the way that it seems to be for fans of the genre aren’t

David Dylan Thomas: There’s a certain distance you know cuz I agree like because I became a horror fan by making this movie because I had to watch so many horror movies to kind of get grounded and it is it’s a thing of like you reach a point where it isn’t so much about the scare It’s like well, how did they achieve the scare and like you can kind of appreciate it at a craft level. Which, when they actually manage to scare you as a seasoned horror fan, you’re even more impressed, right?

But yeah, you haven’t gotten to that point yet where you have that

Alex Hillman: Kind of like subversion meets subversion meets subversion. Exactly. How many layers deep can we go here?

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Alex Hillman: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: It’s like, oh. I have never seen that type of decapitation before. Well, it played. So, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Alex Hillman: So it’s like, you know, my, my approach is generally like if, if something answers the zeitgeist where like everybody’s talking about it and I’m like, I need to see this. Again, sometimes I will read the Wikipedia page and be like, I’m good. Yeah. I don’t need to watch this. Other times we’ll be like, I think I can handle this.

I’ll just watch it on the smallest screen possible. In the middle of the day. In the middle of the day with lots of other people around. So yes, I am a scaredy cat, but I, I’d say I’m an appreciator of the genre of storytelling and visual. Themes and, and it’s very cool to see. I think it’s cool to see anything like this.

That’s been around for so long, go through all the changes that it has and how, you know, people use it as a response to things that are happening in the world and how what’s popular is related to things that were happening in the world. And, and, and sort of the, the ties between our sort of collective emotional zeitgeist and themed storytelling through, through cinema and otherwise.

I think that stuff is super cool. Anything that gets you to think about an idea or a problem or an experience through some kind of adjacency, I think is a powerful tool. And the idea that scary movies are on that list of powerful tools is amazing. Even if it’s something that I struggle with.

David Dylan Thomas: It’s funny how many like non horror fans are among our supporters.

I should say as of this recording. I’ve already started pre crowdfunding for the short and we’ve already hit, I’d say maybe 25 percent of our goal for day one. So, so it, it, it works ladies and gentlemen, or at least it’s starting to work. It’s. It’s fun for learning.

Alex Hillman: Well, and then the next move real quick, just, I mean, a little bit of like live coaching and this may already be in the roadmap, but as you cross that, like 30 into 50%, depending on how that’s going, one of the first things that I’d be doing is letting that first 25 percent know that you’re at 25 percent and invite them to say, hey, here are a couple of ways that you can help that are either an additional backing or here’s some tools that you can use to share this to your network to your space. Like you, you can activate them as early as you want and also like give them more than one way to contribute and participate early on those earliest fans and supporters. Again, they’re there to root for you.

They’re going to be your easiest to activate. And that makes them, I think the most likely path to like second and third generation supporters. Which can include the public launch, but you don’t have to wait for that to get there.

David Dylan Thomas: And again, that’s part of the revelation of it, and why I like working with people like you who aren’t as precious about that stuff.

Because I’m a performer, and I always think about the theatricality of things. It’s like, oh, I must reveal this here, and do all this grand spectacle. Where you’re kind of like backstage back of house being like, Oh yeah, well, if you want that plate to be ready by this time, you’re going to start working on it here.

And then that’s how you get it to be ready and then do all this work, you know?

Alex Hillman: And the thing to remember is that theatricality a) has a place, however you are the performer. In those particular scenarios, you usually are not the person who’s responsible for filling up the room, make it, putting everything in its place before you walk on stage.

So this is one where you are both the performer and back of house and stage crew and house manager and all of those things. And so, you know, you’ll be changing hats a bunch of times. And I think that’s a okay, but I think the, the unique opportunity by being the person who gets to kind of flow between all of them is you can be intentional about selecting people from the early phases to pull into the later phases before everybody else and-

David Dylan Thomas: What’s weird about it is that as a performer being given permission to collaborate with the audience like that’s not yeah That’s a good way to excites me, but it’s not something I’m used to thinking about Yep, and it’s sort of like oh you mean they can also be part of the show and they can oh, okay. Now this whole thing opens up.

Alex Hillman: That’s right. Yeah, it takes it takes some confidence in yourself and faith in them. And also things to use for us, like calibrate expectations to know that, like, if you’ve got a hundred people, a hundred people that have bought in financially, a hundred of them are not going to take another action with you.

Like five to 10 might, right. And maybe more like, depending on who they are, but like, Having folks on a waiting list doesn’t mean all of them are going to buy. Having folks in early support list doesn’t mean they’re all going to support again. So it’s like thinking and figuring out what is realistic. And I tend to look at the more conservative end of the expectations and go, I would rather have low expectations, have them be exceeded and be pleasantly surprised than have fantastical high expectations and be let down.

Only because I chose an expectation that was more likely than not gonna let me down. Like, that’s me, that’s me doing it to myself. Yeah. And nobody else gets to be to blame. So, I’d rather see like, alright, well, you know, if, if out of 100 people, 5 or 10 are willing to be reactivated in some other way, that’s great.

And if it ends up being 20, kick ass.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Let yourself, let yourself be surprised. Alex, this has been awesome. I’m sure we will talk again and thanks for being on the show.

Alex Hillman: Always a pleasure,

David Dylan Thomas: Dave.

Alex Hillman: Good luck with the rest of the crowdfunding and of course the rest of the short.

David Dylan Thomas: Thank you. For the white meat podcast, I am David Dylan Thomas.

Check us out on whitemeatmovie.com and we will see you next time.