Andrew Lowen has done the impossible: he got a Christian board game to succeed on Kickstarter.
How did he manage this? A lot it has to do with his background, as the Founder & CEO of Next Level Web. The rest, with his unique approach.
You can learn more about Andrew Lowen by:
Check out the Weird Marketing Tales website if you haven't already. If you want to follow Weird Marketing Tales on social media, go to @WeirdMarketing on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Go to @WeirdMarketers on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
Also - here's a link to the book, Eat That Frog, which we name-dropped about halfway through!
Andrew Lowen has done the impossible: he got a Christian board game to succeed on Kickstarter.
How did he manage this? A lot it has to do with his background, as the Founder & CEO of Next Level Web. The rest, with his unique approach.
You can learn more about Andrew Lowen by:
Check out the Weird Marketing Tales website if you haven't already. If you want to follow Weird Marketing Tales on social media, go to @WeirdMarketing on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Go to @WeirdMarketers on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
Also - here's a link to the book, Eat That Frog, which we name-dropped about halfway through!
See the full transcript with links and images here: https://weirdmarketingtales.com/how-andrew-lowen-raised-300000-for-a-christian-board-game/
Brandon Rollins: So you've got your Tinkerbell Cup, right?
Andrew Lowen: Yes, the Tinkerbell Cup with the, uh, I actually borrowed it from my wife. She had hot tea, and I said, I really need some hot tea.
Brandon Rollins: Is this like a plastic cup, like a mug or...
Andrew Lowen: No, this is like the real deal. It's a, it's a porcelain mug.
Brandon Rollins: My name is Brandon Rollins, and this is the Weird Marketing Tales podcast. On this podcast, I interview small business owners, entrepreneurs and creative professionals who are making a living, doing things that you probably didn't know you could do.
And today on the show, I've got Andrew Lowen, Founder and CEO of digital marketing firm, Next Level Web, and the creator of the most funded Christian board game on Kickstarter ever. Andrew, how's it going?
Andrew Lowen: Hey Brandon, it's going well and thank you so much for welcoming me to the podcast. I will try to be entertaining as I am informative.
Brandon Rollins: Oh, absolutely. I'm excited for this one cause, um, well, I'm gonna go ahead and give you a shout out really early on, you also run the Crowdfunding Nerds podcast, which is, I would say essential listening for anybody who's doing, uh, any kind of Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign, it's just a very good collection of information, regardless of what it is that you're looking to kickstart.
How Kickstarter works
Andrew Lowen: Yeah, I, I find that there's a lot that is quite universal when you're marketing a product. It, bottom line is you need, you know, the, it's in the name -crowdfunding - you need to fund, but in order to do that, you must have a crowd of people that are really excited about the thing that you're bringing to market and, you know, a lot of people make the mistake of launching a product without a crowd, assuming that as soon as the world gets its first glimpse of your idea that everybody's gonna put, you know, their money into it.
And in actuality, it, it rarely works that way. Um, and certainly, you know, I would say toward the beginning of Indiegogo and Kickstarter, when they were more in their infancy, it was more like the Wild West.
But nowadays you really have to have more. A lot of the times people don't even consider non-funded products to be real yet and to be worth investing it, which is quite a, uh, catch-22.
Brandon Rollins: It's very interesting cuz now we've entered this age where you, you have to have a really nearly complete product by the time you go to crowdfunding and it'll help you with the manufacturing part for the most part. But you also just, it's... the standards are higher on that platform than they've ever been.
So it really is difficult to raise that amount of money. It makes it look easy though, cuz if you look at Kickstarter, you look at Indiegogo, you look at the way they market themselves, it's all about, like, making your dreams come true and, like, making it easy to fund. And that's partly true. There's certainly some truth to that, but it's like that is, that is the tip of the iceberg.
And the whole other iceberg is like building your audience and getting product market fit and that kind of thing.
Andrew Lowen: Right? Yeah. Kickstarter's tagline is, uh, "bringing creative ideas to life," but their actual tagline is probably more appropriately "paying for the manufacturing bill of ideas that have already been brought to life."
Brandon Rollins: "Bringing a 30% boost to the people you would've otherwise had?"
Andrew Lowen: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. "Helping you pay for stupid shipping across the ocean."
Brandon Rollins: Pretty much. Yeah. "Helping you pay for sea freight shipping."
The origin story of Next Level Web
Brandon Rollins: I think this actually links pretty well to what you do with Next Level Web. So why don't you tell me a little bit about that company and what you guys do there?
Andrew Lowen: Yeah, so we actually started in 2010. I was originally, actually, I was, uh, I finished business school, got my degree, and I decided finally after being a senior in college and graduating, I decided that I wanted to become a firefighter because firefighters would get a, you know, a, a regular schedule with days off and a lot of autonomy over life, you know, in, in, in theory.
At least that's what I was thinking at the time. And then after you work for 25 or 30 years as a firefighter, you can retire. With a really nice pension and I would still be young enough to play with my kids and enjoy retirement. I'm assuming I would retire at 55 or 50, you know, and be able to do all sorts of cool stuff with lots of great war stories of battling fires and whatnot.
Well, in the midst of that process, I became an EMT and I started, on the side just to make some money, I started selling websites for another company. And, you know, I'd make about a, you know, 750 to a thousand dollars per website that I sold and then they would build it. Uh, this is back in 2009 and I realized, in 2010, I made a couple of sales in a row and I made a lot of money for me at the time.
Um, you know, I'm 24 years old, just got outta college, just got married and I'm, I'm able to sell stuff and kind of pay for my half of the bills just by selling websites. And I, I ended up, you know, as I was pumping the heart of a deceased person in the emergency room one night. I was thinking, you know, I, I pumped the heart of this person for an hour and they ended up passing away.
It's a really tough, really tough experience and, uh, but there were a lot of those things, you know, we had, uh, a number of really tough experiences that night. Everybody decides to have heart attacks on Monday because they hate work. I just kind of thought, you know, what am I doing this for?
And I was really going, I wanted to be a firefighter because of residual income and autonomy in my schedule and the potential to do, I, I don't like to use the term retirement. I would say, um, I would be able to, kind of do more of what I wanted, um, earlier in life than what I expected, you know, working hourly for someone in, in the private sector or something like that.
And so I, I took a serious look at the, at website sales, and I just quit the EMT thing and started making cold calls to sell websites. And, and it, you know, that's kind of how I got started. So November, 2010, I quit everything. You know, really made a go of it and we managed to survive. And then a huge, huge change came when I branded myself because I realized people were not buying the company that I was selling.
They were buying me, that I would make sure that that, you know, I was their personal contact that would make sure everything went right if they paid money to this other company. And that's kinda what I did. So eventually I learned I needed to brand myself. And so I branded myself as California Web Options, back in, uh, 2012 and I eventually rebranded to Next Level Web because when you have clients in multiple states, then California just doesn't, doesn't do it anymore.
And option, the word says the cheap option is available. So I, I decided to, you know, I wanted to be known as that company that would bring people to the next level in digital marketing. I was able to buy that domain through a private, uh, transaction, and then, you know, we're off to the races.
Now we have a staff of six currently, and we, we really specialize in web development and design landing pages and, and e-commerce and so forth.
And then we do organic SEO which is getting people to the top of Google. We do paid media, which would pay-per-click ads ads, which would be like Facebook ads, Google Ads and, and so forth. And then we do email marketing and those are our four areas of expertise.
And um, right around 2020, you know, I don't know if anybody listening to this podcast realizes what happened in 2020, but the earth was turned upside down.
At the time we had, you know, websites were probably about 40% or or so of our business, SEO marketing, and paid advert... you know, pay per click was 60%. Web design was about really anywhere from like 30 to 40% depending on the time.
And all of our website design projects stopped paying us. I mean, they, they just stopped in their tracks. Like they didn't stop paying us, but, but our leads were like, oh yeah, you know, I'm just gonna wait until this, you know, 14 days or 15 days to flatten the curve is over. And as you know how that turned down, it lasted about two years.
As you can imagine, our website design portion of the business just completely shut off and I had, you know, full-time employees and, you know, honestly praise the Lord for that first round Paycheck Protection Program because that's the only reason I didn't have to let go of, of one or two employees.
Um, it was able to kind of be that, that thing that got us through transitioning into a new thing. And the thing that we transitioned into, we started like late 2019, right before this in crowdfunding, because I was developing a board game myself, and I had a friend that was launching a campaign on Kickstarter.
And he had no marketing. It was his third campaign, but he really had a lot riding on it and so I did my best for him to, uh, name, his name is Eric Bitterman. His, uh, board game is called the Isofarian Guard, and his company is Sky Kingdom Games. They ended up funding $260,000. And earning almost 5,000 backers for their game.
And they, so they were very happy with us and they started referring us to other people that would ask them, "how did you fund so much?" And so I started getting jobs that way. And then the whole thing happened in a, you know, right around March, April of 2020, all our website leads just, just, you know, stop moving forward.
And I just looked at crowdfunding as the opportunity to, like, I could get into a new thing that used our core competencies of, like, in essence, landing page design, paid advertising, and email marketing and you know, so we didn't have to like learn any new skills per se. But we were just able to combine these skills in a different way for new creators that really, really needed the help.
And, you know, we, uh, ended up getting very popular for that. We actually ended up hiring, uh, two people expressly for that purpose. And I'm working on hiring a third right now. Uh, so there would be four of us that are working in that. Actually, I guess it would. Um, uh, four of us are working in it now, uh, including myself.
It's actually tied with SEO marketing for the biggest sector of our business and we actually just launched a course on how to, uh, market, uh, your crowdfunding project, and that's been going very well. And so it's, um, it's, it's been a really exciting journey, but it was kind of scary, you know, making those serious transitions.
Starting businesses in a recession & the realitites of starting a business
Brandon Rollins: Oh yeah, cause I was noticing as you were saying this, it's like the two most significant transitions in your business. The first was in 2010 and the economy was terrible in 2010. I mean like it was bad in 2020, don't get me wrong. But I remember 2010 pretty well, cause that's when I graduated high school.
That was the exact year this happened. And of course, right. And of course like I'm applying for scholarships, financial aid in '08, '09, 2010. and most of it dried up because there just wasn't money anymore. I don't know, I still don't entirely understand what happened with the housing market and the stock market and the global financial system. I just don't get it, really.
But, uh, it was hard now starting a business during that time or getting really, or, or rather going full-time with a business during that time. That's scary. That's really scary.
Andrew Lowen: You know, I learned that, um, Disney, Microsoft, and a bunch of other large companies were all started during recessions. And I, I find that, you know, for myself, I just so happen to, I mean, it was 2009, the, you know, the height of the housing crisis, 2008, 2009. Um, it was, it was gnarly. You know, people didn't wanna spend money.
So I had to really, really try hard and, you know, make a lot of phone calls to, to get one person to just express interest in getting a website. And, you know, I had a couple of big breaks that were very... they didn't seem big at the time ended up making a big difference. I found, you know, that networking with, with other business professionals in person, I found a way to make that work through the organization called B&I.
It's a, it was a very, very helpful thing that really kind of, you know, separated itself from other networking that I had been doing and receiving no results from. Um, because the members themselves really wanted to learn who I was, so they could refer me and then wanted to teach who they were to me so that I could refer them.
And, uh, it, it created this cool little virtuous cycle of you know, of referrals happening organically, which was very important for our business. But, But, yeah, I mean, it, it's tough like just scraping and hustling and doing whatever you can, I mean, there were some tears and, you know, blood and sweat.
Brandon Rollins: I have to imagine also that, like, part of the reason I think that businesses tend to start in recessions, at least the really lasting ones, are because people who have this idea that they wanna start a business in their head already, they're probably already good conscientious workers somewhere else.
They're good employees, they're doing something else, somewhere else, but you get laid off. Or when suddenly your career prospects don't look so good. The idea of actually striking it out on your own becomes a lot more attractive. And honestly, if you find yourself in a moment of desperation, it can push you to do the things you need to do in that first two years of business, which really are, as much as, I hate saying this about grinding. I'm big on, I'm big on work-life balance now, but like those first couple of years are actually hard and I, I don't know a way around that.
Andrew Lowen: Oh yeah, it's, it is true. I mean, I tell people that, you know, anybody that comes to us with a, you know, oftentimes we'll get board games, video games, and you know, sometimes a tech product here and there and whatnot. But for crowdfunding, first time creators, we get a lot of first time creators that ask for our services that have a dream and, you know, a really, really cool idea.
And they're working so hard with their disposal income to make this thing happen. And, you know, they work a full-time job and, and that sort of thing oftentimes. And so they, they come to us and they're like, "Hey, we wanna, we want this thing to make, um, as much as it possibly can and, you know, crowdfunding."
How do we do that? And the first conversation I have with them is, "do you want to start a business? Are you sure?" Because it's gonna be harder than just, you know, watching. It's, it's harder than I think people imagine, they have this bird in a cage. It's like a white dove and beautiful. And they open the cage, grab gently grab this bird and then, like, throw it in the air and watch 'em fly away.
And that's the idea behind, you know, just getting their idea crafted and delivered to everybody so that everybody can experience it. It's not like that, it's like the bird comes back with a pair of shackles and a desk and uh, and I'm like, you know, on a computer and it's like, all right, now you work 12 hours a day.
Um, so it, it's really hard and I think that a lot of the time after someone's first project, they learn the value of, of why you know, of a publisher. You know, a lot of the time, people are looking will look for a publisher to take on the day-to-day activities that matter, like, you know, someone's order was, uh, dented in transport.
You need to give them another box or, or they were missing apart from their game, or, you know, they need a refund for this or that. That's just some day-to-day. In addition to creating, you now have to manage and a lot of people aren't really prepared for that.
Brandon Rollins: Oh no, absolutely not. And on top of that, I feel like crowdfunding is one of the trickier things to do in terms of just having the management skills to pull it off. It's, uh, trickier things to do in terms of ways to launch a product. because like if you have money and a method, you can get things in stores by talking to the right people.
You can go straight to e-commerce and that kind of thing. But of course, you have to be able to manufacture a lot of a product, and you need certain kinds of know-how. Crowdfunding takes away the financial obstacles. But now you have to be really good at generating leads, landing pages, social media, media outreach, getting testimonials for something that isn't even out yet and like that is immensely difficult for folks who don't know that's coming.
Andrew Lowen: Right. And then in addition to that, you have all the considerations that are kind of on a strategic level of, of, okay, I fund it, and now what? Do I make the minimum order to fulfill or the minimum purchase order to fulfill all of my, um, pre-order customers? Or do I print, you know, another 3000 units and try to sell it, you know, on the side?
Or do I, you go to conventions and other things like that. Um, you know, and why would I do one over the other? And I think that the, the strategic level is where a lot of meaningful conversations that actually change the course of your future are held. Um, and so it's uh, a little bit, a little bit kinda scary to think about things from a bird's eye view.
It's also quite hard to, to think of things from a bird's eye view when you're the one doing all the making. You know, you're the one creating and, you know, soliciting a reviewer one email at a time and you know, doing research and trying to figure out if you're, you know, gonna about to fall into any hidden, hidden traps that you didn't realize existed because you're new at this or you know, that kind of thing.
How it's hard to switch frames of reference
Brandon Rollins: Yeah, and, and especially like if you're talking to a super small team or an individual thinking simultaneously on a strategic and operational and a tactical level. Really, really hard to do. Personally for me, over years of just bitter experience and trial and error, I have learned that I really have to separate out strategic company stuff from operational things like management and delegation, and then I have to separate that out from the actual, like, money generating work too.
It's one of those things I kind of wish I knew earlier, but I find it's just really hard to switch between those frames of mind in a quick way.
Andrew Lowen: Yep. You know, I find one thing is very common. So we've served about 800 different clients and most of them are in different industries. For example, we've served like three or four plumbers out of those 800, only three or four of them have been plumbers. I guess you could consider, if you consider board game industry type companies, then we've served about a hundred of those.
Right. But, you know, for the, for the vast majority, it's all very, very unique and different industries and most of the time we're working with business owners. But, uh, you know, and sometimes larger companies will work with like the Director of Marketing or, um, the Chief Operations Officer or something like that.
Um, but in all cases I find that the, the things that you need to do, the result producing activities that you need to do as a business person. Oftentimes, if I were to consult with you, Brandon, and we were to get into what it is that you're doing in your business and what you want, where you want to be and that kind of thing, I would, I would have advice for you and recommendations and almost all of them, I'm sure that you would say, "oh yeah, I know I need to do that. I know I need to do it."
And uh, it's funny because the things that we know that we need to do are the things oftentimes that are going to bring us to that next level. But it's just so hard to just to make meaningful progress on those things when you, when so many other things are demanding your attention.
Brandon Rollins: Mm-hmm. It absolutely is. And just to tell listeners like, you know, neither of us are exempt from this. I can tell you right now on this call, things that I really ought to be doing to grow the business. I've gotta standardize offers so we have clearer pitches, clearer services, and have price packages based around that.
I need standard contract processes, so it's not all handshake. You know, it's a lot of stuff like this. Like for the, the blogging and podcasting that we're doing here. We gotta get social media up and running again. That's a whole other thing. Like this stuff, it's all very obvious when I say it out loud, but it's like, oh, I'm juggling that and the client generating work and managing other people, it's like some of the obvious stuff falls by the wayside. And this has happened to everybody that I've talked to to some extent.
Andrew Lowen: Right. You know, and as you mentioned the word balance as you get, um, you know, for, for me, I have six children and now two businesses because of the digital marketing and the, the board game publishing business, uh, it can be very complicated. And I have the things that I love to do in life.
I, I, I'm a black belt in Brazilian jiujitsu, and I, I need my, my fix of Brazilian jiujitsu every week. So I have to, at least, you know, I have to go twice a week. Um, but the, the balance of all of those things requires really, I don't have 80 hours a week to put into the business. I need to put in 40 very productive hours.
And it's like, how do I balance all of these things? and you know, there's just no possible way to balance, you know, work and life. 50 50. Sometimes work is 80 and life is 20, sometimes life is 60 and work is 40. And I just find a way to balance, you know, the, the adage of, of work life balance. I'm just trying not to fall over.
Spoon theory & eating frogs
Brandon Rollins: I have an interesting idea on this, um, that I had picked up from the internet, and I'm gonna tell you here that sounds like a little bit left field, but I think you'll find it meaningful. Um, have you ever heard of the idea spoon theory?
Andrew Lowen: I wanna say yes, but explain.
Brandon Rollins: Okay, so Spoon Theory was, somebody came up with this, in like, 2003. She has lupus, which is an invisible disability. I believe it was lupus. Um, but she's trying to explain to her friend at a restaurant, like what it's like to live with an invisible disability, right? That takes a toll on her energy, her ability to get stuff done.
And so she just kind of, like, grabs for the spoons that are on the table because it's just the prop that's there. And she says, "Okay, everybody gets the same amount of spoons, but some things cause me more spoons than others. And when I'm outta spoons, I can't do anything else for the day."
Um, and it, it's a really neat, um, metaphor for, like, invisible disability, that sort of thing.
But I also think that even the general public can take this in, in a meaningful way and say, like, actually I don't know that I have the spoons to do a business strategy and the, and take care of my family and, and, you know, do the revenue generating work in one day. And once you accept this, I think then you can say, all right, here's how I'm gonna use my spoons today.
Here's how I'm gonna use my spoons the next day. And so on.
Andrew Lowen: Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I, I like that. I, um, was originally thinking the Matrix where there is no spoon.
Brandon Rollins: Well, yeah. There is also that spoon theory where there is no spoon at all.
Andrew Lowen: Yeah, but I, I think that I understand this spoon theory in terms of what a what, um, there's a book that was written called Eat That Frog and I could explain it in two ways. Your biggest result producing tasks are your frogs. Nobody likes eating frogs. I mean, I understand some people like eating frogs, but not me.
And so the, the, uh, the concept behind eating a frog, it's gross. You've got other items on your plate that are much better and tasting and you wanna, you wanna dive into those, but the only way you're gonna be able to get up from the table is if you eat your frog and... consider the most important thing that I do, that I would do that day to be my frog.
So I decide, all right, uh, for example, you know, maybe it's, um, updating my contract. It's really important. I've got a really big deal that's coming, and I need to make sure that it goes well. I need to get them, or, or let's just say I need to send, uh, an agreement over to, to a new client so that I can actually start the work.
That's really important. Then, then I'm gonna be able to collect the money and so on and so forth, and start with a new client that becomes my frog. There are so many things. I mean, that's the actual work, right? And there's so many other things like getting phone calls, getting email, um, social media stuff and other types of fires that tend to arise where an existing client will need something done and you know, that, that, that will get in the way.
And some, what I try to do is I try to have three frogs, three meaningful tasks, and my day, my eight hours or whatever it is that I'm in, my chair is devoted to getting those three things. And I find oftentimes that I get to like 3:30 in the afternoon, and I've only got one of 'em finished. It's like, oh my goodness, I need to get, I need to work on these other two.
I need to put my phone on silent. I need to not look at my email and I need to just get this thing done. And that's oftentimes, you know, the way that my business moves forward is just making sure that those things are done. I'm blessed to have staff that, um, also are able to get things done and I'm able to delegate, which is very, very helpful.
But I started out just me and those three tasks. Sometimes only one was completed in a day and I need to re uh, you know, kind of reorder my list of frogs the next day. So the two frogs that I failed to complete today are gonna be on tomorrow's schedule, and a third one is gonna be added two. And I'm gonna try it again.
You know, I'm gonna try to eat those frogs tomorrow.
Brandon Rollins: And I, I, I think that's a good way of looking at it, and I, I believe it was, I think it was Mark Twain who came up with that idea. I might be wrong on this one, but I think he said like, if you have to eat a frog once a day, eat it first thing in the morning, or something like that.
Andrew Lowen: Yes.
Brandon Rollins: It sounds like Mark Twain, who knows if he actually said it, it could be entirely apocryphal, but...
Andrew Lowen: Yeah, I, uh, let's see who, uh, Brian Tracy was the one that coined the book. So he, he, Brian Tracy wrote a book called Eat That Frog. And, uh, it's all about, you know, great ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time. So definitely Check that one out
How Andrew got a Christian board game to success on Kickstarter
Brandon Rollins: Link will be in the, um, in the transcript, in the show notes.
So, um, something totally unrelated, I, I wanted to actually ask you about Deliverance, which is the board game you recently launched on Kickstarter that raised over $300,000.
So of course, two questions about that. Uh, what is it and how did you raise that much money on, um, on a pretty niche game.
Andrew Lowen: Yeah, so Deliverance is a tabletop board game where you play cooperatively together with up to four players as angels in the army of Heaven. You come down to this small modern day town called Fallbrook that is filled with demonic activity. It's not a power center. There's no, uh, it's not a center of influence and there's really no reason that you can discern, no visible reason or easy, obvious answer to why there are so many demons plaguing this town.
And so you are sent in to investigate and to put a stop to whatever it is that is going on. And so, uh, the game has a campaign that is like a story driven thing that you can play through and experience. And it also has a, what, what I call a skirmish mode, which is perfect for game night. It's about one to two hours to, to play a game and you're all working together.
So it's a, it's kind of a, it's kind of a blast, but the game itself, I made it because I was just, I wanted to play something like that. I think that a lot of people with great ideas, that's kind of the original impetus to making a thing. They see a gap in the market. They themselves wish was filled, and they decide that they're gonna be the ones to fill it if no one else will.
And so that's how Deliverance began as like a, a kind of hobby side project and um, this was back in 2016. I started work on Deliverance. And so it's been about six and a half years since I started work on that. Um, we brought it to Kickstarter in June of 2021, funded $314,000, and got a ton of support.
Really excited about that. But then since then, we've raised about $182,000 more. Which puts us close to the half a million dollar mark. And, um, we, you know, we have a thriving community and that sort of thing, and it's really cool. A lot of people love the game. And we're currently, actually, I just received the announcement that the final prototype copy will be at my house by Monday.
Uh, which is gonna be really fun. Yeah. I can't wait. And so, you know, we'll, we're gonna manufacture 5,000 units and a ton of add-ons like an neoprene mat and metal coins and other things. And um, so it has a lot of support.
The idea itself, it was kind of a, you know, as a marketer, I, a lot of people that are first time creators, they, they believe in their idea and that's really important, I think, to believe in what it is that you're doing and to have passion for what it is that you're doing.
And I certainly had both. However, I thought, if this is gonna be a real thing, I, it's such a niche product. It's, it's a, it's an unashamedly, I'll say, Christian product and it's supposed to be a Christian game. Honestly, those are not very good.
Brandon Rollins: They, they, have a tough time. Um, the, the creators of those games have a tough time getting their ideas to come out in a way that has mass appeal, for sure.
Avoiding the common mistake: no market for the game
Andrew Lowen: Yeah, and the, I mean, the problem is usually that it's, it's more about, I, I would say it's edutainment. So it's more about education than entertainment. And, you know, for somebody that is a, we'll, say a non-Christian person, they're immediately turned off by the idea of a Christian product. Um, just like I would be immediately turned off by the idea of, um, I don't know, like a, a, a political product that is not my political affiliation.
It just is not something that I'm looking to, like, I'm looking to play a game. I'm not looking to play a game about real life. I'm looking to have fun and kind of escape real life. That's what games are for. You know, we're not, we're, we're not here to, you know, argue the Bible or, or argue about, about politics, you know, when we're at game night.
Where I think most, you know, Christian game developers fail on the starting blocks. And I do actually give, I give speeches and I consult with Christian game developers and I always yell at 'em and say, like, "make products that people want to play." Most of the time that people make their Christian game, it's because they want to, um, cause people to join the Christian faith and you fail because non-Christian people are not interested in learning about your religion during game night.
And Christians are not, they, you don't need to bring them into your religion because they're already in. So who would actually play that? You know, there's really not a market for it.
And what I did with Deliverance was I just assumed that my market were already Christians. I'm making a really cool Christian thing. I'm not gonna, you know, call out alternative lifestyles in the game. It's a game. It's not meant to, you know, lecture you about, about life or something. And so I built it with the premise of, "okay, everybody's Christian, we're all, we're all saved."
Let's just tell a really awesome story using this great content that is largely untapped. You've got this amazing biblical lore about angels and demons and saints and, and all this stuff. It's like, why are people not, you know, exploring this? And the reason oftentimes is because it's, it's actually, it's actually quite hard, um, to get it right.
But, um, most of the time it's based on the premise that you're, you're trying to like convert someone to, you know, and I just didn't wanna do that. I just wanted to be able to tell an awesome story in this, you know, using this theme. And I found that, you know, of course a lot of Christians jumped on board, but there were a lot, and I would say about half of my backers.
Are non-Christians that are really excited to explore the source or, you know, this material in a safe way that is not, you know, preachy and, and whatnot. And I didn't realize that there was a market like that, but it was something that was, uh, as Bob Ross would say, a happy little accident. A lot of people really enjoyed it.
Brandon Rollins: See that's really interesting cause it's like, because you're putting in entertainment first, you can do what a lot of the folks in the market have not been able to do successfully, which is take many of the very interesting stories from the Bible and turn them into something that people can really enjoy in a different format like that has, that's been untapped.
Like not, not a lot of people have been able to pull this off. I'm honestly struggling to think of one game other than this one that has. Now, it's interesting that you take this, you put in an entertainment context. You don't, um, you're not being preachy or anything like that. It pleases not only the audience who you're originally going after, and then you, you also happen to pick up a lot of others too.
Because turns out the stories when you divorce 'em from some of the cultural baggage of trying to change someone's religion actually stand alone as being interesting and something to engage with.
Finding the beauty in existing stories by taking an outsider's point of view
Andrew Lowen: Right. You know, you have a lot of really fun stories like Michael, the Arch Angel disputing with Satan over the body of Moses. He's like, first of all, why would, why did Satan want the body of Moses? Second of all, could he, like, pick up the body of Moses if he wanted to. Like, is he a physical being and you know, why were they disputing and what does that even mean?
Were they fighting with swords or with words or, or just, you know, what, what, what did that even mean?
Brandon Rollins: And what compels somebody to, to start an argument with Satan, essentially?
Andrew Lowen: Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and so you, you know, to be able to actually play Michael the Archangel and send a demon to the abyss with a mighty smite. That's awesome. That just feels cool.
It's almost like, I know this is tangent, but you know how Kung Fu Panda was made in the US. It was one of the highest grossing movies of all time in China, and the, um, there was a, gosh, I can't remember who it was, but it was a, it was a famous Chinese director that said Kung Fu Panda is, uh, such a great movie. It celebrates China in a really fun way. And it's, it's, uh, it was just so popular with everybody there, but it could have never been made by a Chinese person, Chinese director.
And that's because it, um, the panda is treated with reverence. It's treated as though it's, it's practically God-like, and you, you don't make a dumb, bumbling idiot panda do funny things. That's just not what you do. Right?
And so it sometimes takes the outsider to make something that, that, you know, people really love and you know, somebody that's thinking outside the box.
And so for Deliverance, you know, a lot of people think, well, you know, angels always win. You know, angels have to win. If you know, God says "Do this," then it happens and no one can stop it.
Right? And, and of course there's a, uh, an element to that that I believe wholeheartedly is true. However, you have, uh, one example in the Bible.
There's Gabriel, the messenger of God. The guy, the guy that was like, flew over to Mary and was like, "Hey, Mary, you've got baby Jesus inside."
That guy, it's like the top postal worker in Heaven. Um, he is trying to deliver a message to this guy named Daniel. It's prophet named Daniel. And he, he's talking to Daniel and he's like, Hey, I was dispatched like three weeks ago, but the Prince of Persia withstood me for 21 days, and it was only when Michael the Archangel came to, uh, to assist me that I was able to break away and deliver this message to you. And then after this message is delivered, I'm gonna have to go back and assist Michael the Archangel, who, you know, my context was not able to defeat the Prince of Persia on his own.
Like we're talking about like the general of the armies of heaven, right? Not able to beat this demon or fallen angel called the Prince of Persia, and then later they talk, he says The Prince of Greece is gonna come. It's like, oh my goodness.
Gabriel and Michael together could be, could barely withstand this guy. And this is very interesting stuff. Like God says, Hey, do this Gabriel and God's like, I know it's gonna really suck, but you're, you'll be okay. You know, you'll be okay. This Prince of Persia is actually able to, to kind of in, in a way, like stop the, the messenger of God for and would probably have for much longer if Michael didn't, didn't come and like assist.
And that's not something that a Christian would typically, um, like it, it's not a normal part of their theology that they consider that when God says something like demons will try to stop it and can be successful.
Brandon Rollins: That's really interesting and, and the comparison you made to Kung Fu Panda is actually pretty apt here because Kung Fu Panda is surprisingly good at getting its underlying philosophy across, well, it, it's a lot more accurate than it would initially seem on the surface. Is there some Hollywood magic going on? Yes.
Is there like some necessary, um, element of making characters fit into certain prototypes? Like, this is the funny one, this is a smart one. That kinda thing. Yes, absolutely. That's happening. But fundamentally, it actually gets a lot of Eastern philosophy in the movie in a coherent, clear, easy to understand way.
And I think that you're, you're doing the same thing with, with basically stories that are all around us, at least in America and, and in other heavily Christian nations. You're just able to take those and recontextualize them and actually show the things that are easy to miss because we're just surrounded by it all the time.
We wouldn't even think of, of pointing it out anymore.
Andrew Lowen: Right. And, and I find it really fun. The, you know, the game, if I were to describe the feeling of playing the game, a lot of people will liken it to a book series called This Present Darkness. Um, which is kind of angels battling against demons and jocking for position around humans. Uh, whereas Deliverance is more like the angels and demons are the main characters of the story, and humans are just a side character, if you will.
So it's more about what's happening in the spiritual realm and like battling against demons and dealing with kind of the fallout of, of the fallen world, the physical world around them, uh, which is, which is really cool. But my, the intent is that you feel like this epically powerful angel that's almost about to die, you know, and, and so you can actually lose the game is one of the things that people are kind of...
it as gamers, we understand that you should be able to lose. That's the only way you'll ever develop tension. Um, and it should feel meaningful. Like your, the consequences for losing. Oh man. You know? And so, um, I just wanna make it feel fun without going all the way into Jumanji or like a board where you actually release all the spirits and or like Ghostbusters.
Their trap that they, that gets opened and then all the ghosts just fly out. I don't want it to feel like that when you open the box of Deliverance to play it. You know, it's like we've gotta get all these demons back in the box before the games end. I want it to feel fun without kind of, you know, stepping as I, as I say, into the realm of Jumanji where you're now trapped in the game.
But, um, yeah, so I think, I think Deliverance does that really well. It's been play tested so many times and get, and just, um, um, we've worked on it so hard, but it's really become, it's a force on its own now, you know, and I think it has legs for the market.
What comes next for Deliverance?
Brandon Rollins: Yeah. So what comes next at this point? You, you've got the prototype arriving soon, and then is it just manufacturing, freight, customs, fulfillment?
Andrew Lowen: Yeah, so the, the idea from, I guess we'll say a strategic level, so we, we're gonna manufacture these units. We have about 3,200 copies out of a 5,000 unit print run that are, that are already spoken for. So we have about 1800 units of what I call the deluxe edition, the one that is, you know, it has like those really nice looking plastic miniatures of angels and it's got, you know, uh, other things that you can get, like metal coins and, and just really cool upgrades.
It's, the box is about five and a half inches tall by a foot square. And um, so there's a lot of cool stuff that come in there, but after those 1800 units are sold, what I plan, or actually during the midst of when they're being sold, depending on the speed at which they're selling, I plan on producing a version that is going to be much lower quality, come with fewer components like no miniatures, we'll get rid of a plastic insert, we'll get rid of, uh, you know, we'll change the cardboard, the thick cardboard character sheets down to card stock so that it's a lot lighter, and, and things like that.
And will shrink the height of the box by a lot. Uh, that is my. and we'll print, you know, if, if we can 15,000 units or or so of that, of that version and actually sell it direct to consumers through things like Amazon, our website. And what happens if we sell it very well, we will reach distribution and that's really like the land of milk and honey for, for board game publishers.
You wanna make sure that when you, you know, print something that distributors are gonna buy five to 10,000 units from you. So that, I mean, that makes your print run a lot easier. They'll sometimes, you know, in some cases they'll prepay, um, you know, a big distributor like Target or Walmart or Barnes and Noble will, will buy and prepay for their, for their order that you will print and send to them.
And it makes manufacturing so much easier. That's another place that's kind of behind the scenes that is not Kickstarter, is not crowdfunding, but that's where money comes from, so that you can actually print and, and, you know, maintain the, the sales of the business.
Um, so we're already working on, uh, actually the next two expansions, but we're gonna have a crowdfunding campaign either late this year. early next year. And so we're just kind of working, head down, swinging on game development and art and other things like that so that when we're ready we'll go, we'll go to Kickstarter again.
And my goal is to make a million dollars with that next Kickstarter, we're able to, it. It's, it sounds like a lot, but I think that with our first campaign we made $314,000, our top offer that was, like, for everybody was the $149 pledge that included everything. We call it the all-in, you know, where you buy the game and all the add-ons that are available and whatnot.
The idea is that I want to go to Kickstarter again, now that I've built trust with my existing people, we're gonna have thousands of games available on the market that people are playing and giving reviews and feedback, and people are telling other people that this game exists. Um, we we're gonna reach that, you know, a lot of people were very cautiously optimistic with, with deliverance.
You know, maybe they're Christians and excited that a thing exists like this. Uh, or maybe they're non-Christian, they're excited. A theme like this exists, but they did not purchase because maybe it was a, uh, it was unproven. Like, is this gonna be this preachy thing that I'll be embarrassed to share with my friends?
I'm not sure yet, so I'm just gonna err on the side of caution rather than optimism. And so I expect to win a lot of those people after we actually release the product. And a ton of reviews come out. Those people are going, you know, and, and really firsthand testimonials and high ratings and whatnot. Um, I believe that the game will do very well.
Currently, it, it actually has an online mod that is free, uh, using something called Tabletop Simulator. We're able to put all the components in the game there. And we've had, um, we have about 3000 subscribers to that mod. So we, we've, I wanna say we've had maybe 10 or 12,000 games that have been played on, uh, just online using that system.
And the reviews that have come in are averaging us at 8.7 stars outta 10 on Board Game Geek. And, uh, the game's not even out yet. We have, you know, 150 reviews so far.
Brandon Rollins: And that's a tough crowd to get a good score on too. Like honestly, any game above a six on BGG is usually worth playing as a general rule.
Andrew Lowen: Yeah, I think that some people, you know, they just don't like a game that takes longer than an hour or, or other people don't like a game that is, you know, laying tiles and doing dumb stuff. I wanna swing a sword and kill dragons, you know, and a lot of it is just personal preference, but, you know, the, the game mechanisms and actually feeling like you're doing this epic thing versus moving cubes around a board that I, a lot of people rate games well, when it feels like you're doing what the game is, is about.
You know, like pandemic, you know, you feel like you're fighting, uh, these outbreaks of diseases. You don't feel like you're necessarily pushing cubes around on a board. You're like, "Paris is gonna have outbreak if we don't fix it. You know, send the medic."
Brandon Rollins: Yep.
Andrew Lowen: It's very thematic. Right. So...
Brandon Rollins: It's still too soon for me to play that one.
Andrew Lowen: Yeah.
What Andrew wished he knew before starting all this
Brandon Rollins: Uh, so I got one last question for you.
Andrew Lowen: All right.
Brandon Rollins: What advice do you wish you could go back in time and tell yourself before you started all of this?
Andrew Lowen: Oh man.
Brandon Rollins: You can interpret that as Next Level or Deliverance, either one.
Andrew Lowen: There are really two different levels or two different areas of advice that I would, that I would give one for Next Level and one for Deliverance. I'll, I'll give one, one of each in 2020 when everything's switched, it was really, scary. But when we went full force into marketing and crowdfunding, we could have run harder.
I was very concerned that there wouldn't be enough leads, if you will, that would want our services. I didn't know how we would market. I was involved in social communities and things like that, but I didn't have a clear idea of how this service would work, if people would actually come, you know, year in, year out and whatnot and or month in, month out.
And I should, I would love to tell myself it's gonna work. Just run hard, run hard in that direction. I, you know, there are companies, in fact, actually very recently Funagain distribution announced their doors are closing and they cited the, the reason for that, they're, they're a big board game distributor and they, they deal with, um, consolidation and other things that, you know, big companies like Barnes and Noble and Target, you know, buy from their, from them.
And that's one of the great ways to get, to get in there. And they ship lots of really great products. But they cited the reason for their closing was that the, the pandemic, you know, their shipping companies, so the pandemic years really put a strain on their overhead, and they weren't able to overcome it. So my expectation is that what actually happened behind the scenes is that they had some obviously very serious customer flow issues where customers were saying, oh, I don't want to ship right now because containers are too expensive.
And, you know, we've got other things that are very expensive. And so the customer that was the creator that was making the product didn't want to use any shipping company. And Funagain's volume dropped a lot, but all of their warehouse workers had to keep their jobs because they, the warehouse needed to be able to handle the volume that they expected to come in.
And I think that maybe they waited too long to lay off workers or make the hard decisions that they needed to make in order to, to survive as a company through that time. And I think that, um, that's something that we, as Next Level Web, we branded Crowdfunding Nerds and it's, it's its own brand now.
And as you mentioned, we have our Crowdfunding Nerds podcast, which is over 110 episodes now. We've been doing it for over two years and I mean, it, it was really, as I look back, it was like the lifeline that kind of saved all of everyone's jobs and kept us, kept us going and whatnot, and really kind of helped morph us into.
What we are, and it certainly doesn't feel like work when I get to, you know, work on other really, really fun board games, RPGs, video games. I mean, that's such a fun thing to do. Um, and then the, the, so the second piece of advice I would give myself, I. For Deliverance, it was a very expensive hobby for a long time.
In fact, our, um, I, I racked up, uh, almost $60,000 of debt, uh, to make this game. I put $45,000 on our home equity line of credit, and I put we'll say around $15,000 on a credit card that, um, had a 0% interest for one year type agreement. I, I put a lot into, like, I really, like I said, when I believe I believed in this game, I put my money where my mouth is.
Every penny I didn't have but had access to, I leveraged and we raised $141,000 in the first eight hours of the launch of the campaign paying, you know, clearing all of my debt in eight hours. I made Jeff Bezos money for just like, you know, eight hours. And, you know, overall we raised $314,000 and, and since then more to, uh, of course cover shipping and then extra people buying in and whatnot.
So, um, I really, um, had a hard time spending the money on the things that were quality. One of my mantras was that I wanted a high quality overproduced game that was a showpiece on people's shelf. I wanted people to be very proud of the product that they had purchased and. I wanted them to show it off.
And in order to do that, it required more time, effort, and energy and money than I was originally prepared for. But I would, the advice that I would've given myself is just go, if I knew that I would make $141,000 on the first day, I had about $5,000 left of of credit line, I would've spent it all.
In fact, when we made that $141,000, I opened up my credit cards and was like, all right, I'm gonna spend as much money as I can on ads because it, it, it's returning. We earned like $9 to every $1 we spent on ads and I would've just found a way to spend more, and I saw all of the signs. It wasn't like, you know, if I could go back in time, I would've just spent more money.
I, I would've told myself, hey, look, these are the signs that I have identified and I would've identified for other clients. But I'm not paying attention to them because it's really scary. You know, I'm, I'm in the, in the weeds as it were. And I, I really just, I needed to pay attention to those signs.
The, the engagement and the excitement and the, you know, the people saying, I really am looking forward to this and, and all that. I mean, there was a lot of that, and I should have just let that kind of calm me in, in a way. But, um, you know, hindsight is 20/20, right?
Brandon Rollins: Yeah, absolutely. And it's like when you're in the middle of this stuff, it's so hard to tell what is confirmation bias and what is like a sign that you really need to double down.
Andrew Lowen: Yep. And I think that a lot of these challenges working as a solo entrepreneur or a very small team, it's really, really important to have your war room of counselors that you can ask these questions and, and share sensitive data, sensitive information. And, uh, I think there's nothing more valuable than wise people that care about you, that you trust that aren't just gonna give you advice because they, you know, they, oh, I think you should just spend more money.
You know, I mean, they understand the situation and they're speaking from a place of wisdom and being educated and caring for you. So a person like that, or a group of people like that, make everybody more successful.
Brandon Rollins: I think that's some good advice to end on. So at this point, where can people find you online?
Andrew Lowen: Right now you can go to playdeliverance.com, which is a landing page for Deliverance, the board game, if you want to get more information about that. So play playdeliverance.com. And then if you want to look into our Crowdfunding Nerds or Next Level Web, you can go to crowdfundingnerds.com.
It's all about, you know, our crowdfunding services. Or nextlevelweb.com, which is our, kind of our main site that has all the info as well. Or the Crowdfunding Nerds podcast. I run a podcast every single week where we share exactly what we do to make our campaigns work.
We've worked with over a hundred crowdfunding campaigns and we've raised a collective well beyond $10 million at this point for our creators.
Brandon Rollins: And all of this, by the way, will be in the transcript and show notes for anybody who's looking to easily access those.
Andrew Lowen: Awesome.
Brandon Rollins: I'm gonna go ahead and take us out.
Andrew Lowen: It's been, it's been a real blast.
Brandon Rollins: I've enjoyed having you on.
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