Amanda Palmer learned a lot from her days as a street mime. She was one of those living statues – the kind that look so unreal….until they ARE real. Amanda learned quickly that she could actually make a living with one thing: connection.

Connection was in the gaze between her “statue” eyes and the eyes of the person dropping a dollar into her hat. Amanda quickly became an expert at seeing her buyer. As a statue she never once asked a single passerby to leave any money. She simply offered a hat placed carefully in front of her, and a connection she was able to offer thru her eyes alone.

Several years later, Amanda was in the midst of a growing music career when she decided to shift from the ask (selling albums and asking people to buy them) to another new strategy. After having spent years connecting with her community, her audience, Amanda took to the online world and launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for her newest release.

What happened next shocked both Amanda and the entire Kickstarter community.

Nearly 25,000 people contributed well over $1million to the campaign. The goal, by the way, was set at $100,000.

With that, Amanda had unlocked the secret that marketers everywhere have been trying to learn: don’t make people buy….. let them.

By putting trust in a community she had fostered for years, Amanda let them choose how they wanted to spend their money.

By offering a product that her community not only cared about but would share with their inner circle, Amanda gained new fans and buyers.

And by connecting with an expansive and growing community of supporters, Amanda met her goal 10 times over.

Amanda’s story is one that seems to go down in the pages of “But can that actually happen to me, too?” and “She sure got lucky!” Well, maybe. More than likely, though, “lucky” would have looked like meeting her goal plus a little bit extra, going “viral” with the right connections. It’s just not the case here. Amanda used the tools she had available to her to build connection and offer choice, and she created lifelong buyers and fans in the process.

What can be learned from Amanda? Tell me your big ah-has in the comments. And if you have the 13 minutes, watch her TED talk here.

xo