We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Karl Dakin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Karl below.

Hi Karl, thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?

I believe most entrepreneurs are heroes. These people take on a challenge to make the world a better place. Change requires innovation. Most people prefer the status quo – it is safer to keep the things you know than to try something new. Yet, entrepreneurs take on the challenge to do things differently and change people’s minds. In many cases this makes their lives better. Entrepreneurs face rejection, are viewed as ‘different’ and often live on a financial roller coaster. With Splish Naturals, we are now launching the Heal Your Heroes program within its pending Reg CF crowdfunding campaign. Each investor may gift Splish products to a hero of their choice. As a result, I am studying ‘heroism’. I am learning about subjective and objective criteria for heroes – people who work to help others while placing themselves at risk. I am learning about the ‘recognition’ of heroes and the impact on the hero, the impact on the person doing the recognition and the impact on society. Recognizing heroes elevates the person inspiring them to do better and elevates society by giving us hope. As the leaders of Splish, we hope that our Heal Your Heroes program inspires others to recognize their heroes and set up other programs to do the same.

Karl, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I tell everyone that I became a lawyer to ‘run away from the farm’. As I started my career, I found myself working with tech startups – helping them with everything. After 20 years of advising from the back seat, I decided I would prefer to drive the car myself. I have been active in leading many businesses through the challenges of ‘the start’. Almost always, this work included raising capital. Many businesses were in startup or early stages where funding is hard to come by. I learned about many ways of raising funding including many common ways that commonly don’t work. I have explored alternative funding, impact funding, tax credits, economic development grants, etc. By becoming a student of funding early stage companies, I learned that the key to the investment decision is the motivation of the investor. I found common identified investor candidates such as banks, angel investors, and private equity firms simply do not have sufficient motivation to invest in almost any small businesses. Having only a single motivation, a return on their capital, they search for those opportunities with the lowest risk and highest return. Can’t blame them. However, most businesses will never meet these criteria. They simply do not generate enough profits and/or are too high risk. I realized that in almost every situation, there are people, businesses, governments, social causes who benefit from the success of a business without making an investment. As a result, they make better investor candidates. I developed a process of identifying these candidates which I call the Motivated Money Method that I teach to my clients. I do podcasts, bootcamps and workshops to share what I have learned wherever I can. Through my different businesses I offer coaching services, develop new funding models and manage capital campaigns for entrepreneurs, businesses, community organizations and charities.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

I work to give my clients great value for their money. Quite often they cannot afford to pay cash and I offer to share in the risk of fundraising by getting paid out proceeds from the capital campaign. This places me alongside my clients instead of an adversarial or disengaged position on their success. This commonly, but not always, creates a relationship that can stand the test of time and the good and bad days of entrepreneurship. These clients refer me to new clients – sometimes years later.

I take a community point of view. I look at the business of my client from how it impacts the community. I work to foster relationships with allies who stand to benefit from the success of the business (see Motivated Money Method). This changes the entrepreneur from the ‘lone wolf’ to a contributing member of society where community members will work together to help the business through its hard spots.

Finally, I work to share what I have learned. I speak, write, and donate time to worthy causes. This makes me more visible and elevates my credibility.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I can’t say I have a great (interpreted as large) audience on social media. I write, I speak, I am a guest on podcasts and produce my own podcasts. In all of my communications I try to share information of value. I don’t complain without a solution. I don’t voice opinions without data. I don’t try to entertain. I work to make myself a source of quality, curated information.

I have learned that people give credibility to teachers, authors, and speakers. It’s better to be at the front of the room than in the seats. I want to be in the feature article, not in the banner ads. I work to set up public events, not simply post social media.

I believe that all social media should be targeted. It seems almost all Internet communications is some form of spam randomly throwing out messages without concern to the fact that the recipient is being disrespected by sending them anything in which they are not interested. Social media should be respected, not abused.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dakincapital.com, www.capitalinnovation.institute, www.entrepreneurcoach.pro
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karl.dakin
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karldakin/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/KarlDakin
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLna70o76W0h5lTyseqVmHYRTQMpzI1NyP