Meet Emily Kelleher-Best | Founder and CEO, Seed&Spark

We had the good fortune of connecting with Emily Kelleher-Best and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Emily, what do you attribute your success to?
It’s hard to know exactly from the inside of a company how people feel from the outside. But after nearly 12 years of building Seed&Spark I think we are successful because we view all of our activities as an expression of community care. For me that means we it for the whole community we serve, not just the subset of people who might use our platform. We are focused on the care for the entire creator community and we want to be value-add to the other important infrastructure and support organizations within it. So instead of spending any money on digital marketing, we have invested in relationships with film festivals, universities, unions, artist support and service organizations and activist organizations. We have built workshops meant to help creators at every stage of their journey build sustainable careers while getting their work made and delivered to audiences. We show up in our community 100-150 times per year all over the country offering these workshops for free in partnership with all those organizations. That means we get to hear directly from our community all year long, about the regional challenges and opportunities, and we can incorporate that feedback into how we continue to build. As a result, I think we have a lot of evangelists and advocates out there who, even if they have never crowdfunded on Seed&Spark, have received value from us. And for me that’s the core of building with community care in mind: your goal is not what you can extract but always what you can add.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Seed&Spark has been around 12 years. We have the highest campaign success rate, largest project size per project. We don’t spend money on digital marketing and we don’t charge fees to creators to use the platform. We have the most demographically and geographically diverse pipeline of creators of any platform in the world. We’ve helped them raise close to $60 million dollars. We’ve built a brand that’s valuable and reliable for our community and sustains itself. And one of the things I’m most proud of is how we turned a lack of resources (I was a young woman, first time founder trying to raise VC and it went about as well as you’d expect) into our biggest super-power. We didn’t have any money to market Seed&Spark when we launched. Our social media accounts were new, our network was small. But I had done my market research by going to film festivals and artist networking and service events, I saw that the host organizations were often looking for high-quality programming to keep their members engaged. So we developed a workshop called “Crowdfunding to Build Independence” where we teach how to use the tools for a kickass crowdfunding campaign to build a sustainable career, and we offered it for free as programming to any organization that wanted to host it. And I was humble – I would show up if they gathered 100 people or if they gathered 2. And we just kept showing up.
We now teach about 150 workshops every year for free in collaboration with partner organizations. We do not spend a dime on internet marketing and yet we continue to grow. Why? Because if you get face to face with someone and offer them something that is valuable to them, you’ve converted them not just into a likely customer, definitely an evangelist, or in many cases – an actual friend (you know who you are). It is possible to turn 100 people into evangelists in one event. It’s not possible to do that with a digital marketing campaign for the same price. And, I can say personally, continuing to offer these workshops and interfacing with the creators it impacts is a wonderful way to continue to find real meaning in my work.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Many of my favorite things are on the same quarter mile stretch of road so this is how we spend Friday: I always take my friends grocery shopping with me at DeKalb Farmers Market (A World Market). I go on Friday mornings as soon as they open and shop for the week.

Then I’d turn right out of the parking lot and stop for a latte at Radio Coffee Roasters. We would take our coffees to
to Kudzu, which is my favorite place to find vintage everything and local jewelry. I furnished half my house and have also found some of my most favorite dresses all at Kudzu.

Saturday:

I would make sure we got tickets to see a show at Theatrical Outfit – there are so many wonderful places for live theater in Atlanta – and this one always has the kind of shows that break me to pieces and put me back together.
If my friends visit with their kids I love to take them to see matinees at the center for Puppetry Arts. It’s such a special place for kids that pulls back the curtain on such a beautiful art form.

Sunday:

If we were feeling really, really fancy I would take them to eat at Georgia Boy which was one of the most stunning multi-course food experiences I’ve ever had. It’s a real celebration spot. Southern Belle, which is the restaurant that GB sits inside of, it also a stunning experience. Then you can go to see a film at The Plaza which is one of my favorite independent movie theaters in the country.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
First and foremost, I am so deeply grateful to my parents who were very generous to share their hard earned wisdom along the way. I find myself quoting them to other people a lot! My dad likes to day “You know what you do, but you don’t know what you do does” and it’s about having faith in your own work and being less attached to the outcomes because they will always surprise you!

I also have what I call a coven of close women friends (they know who they are) who keep me laughing (or are there for the crying) and have been for decades.

And some really incredible other women leaders who I look up and who I know I can call for anything – wisdom, commiseration, introductions – Lisa Russell, Sky Kelly, Greta McAnany, Virginia Bauman (who I got to join my board!), Kt McBratney, Farah Allen – and many more!

Website: www.seedandspark.com

Instagram: @ebestinthewest @seedandspark

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-best-0663964/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7uhaMFBaE7mBMwzW2tttEA