We’ve all heard the incredible crowdfunding success stories like the Pebble Watch and Coolest Cooler - products that raised millions of dollars through crowdfunding, seemingly overnight. This isn’t one of those stories.
 
In 2016, group of soldiers were sitting around in Afghanistan wondering why no one sold individual packets of cinnamon. After searching the internet and finding no vendors, we took matters into our own hands and founded Cinn-Credible Cinnamon Packets. We used our savings to manufacture the initial batch of prototype packets, but needed an additional $10,000 to design and manufacture retail packaging for our newfound creation. It was downhill from there:
 
We Had Horrible Timing
We made just about every mistake you can possibly make when considering the timing of your crowdfunding campaign. We began the campaign on Thursday, November 17th for a period of 60 days, ending on Monday, January 16th. That one sentence contains at least four pieces of bad timing in itself. First, Thursdays are one of the worst days to start your campaign. All of the tips suggest starting your fundraising campaigns on a Monday morning, which allows you to get a full week of momentum going before people take off for the weekend. We had just gotten things going when the weekend came and took all of the wind out of our sails. Not only that, but when everyone came back to work the next Monday, it was Thanksgiving week - the busiest travel week of the year! Guess what people aren’t doing if they’re traveling? Giving money to your campaign! Thanksgiving was quickly followed by the Christmas and New Year holidays, and to top it off, our campaign ended on Martin Luther King Day…yet another holiday.
 
We Didn’t Plan Ahead
From the moment we pushed the button to activate our campaign, we began finding things we should have thought of, and prepared for, ahead of time. In an effort to raise awareness about our campaign, we wanted to have a press release - something we could have written ahead of time. In order to have a nice press release, we needed high-quality pictures of our product - something we could have taken ahead of time. We then needed to research methods to get our press release out. We wanted to showcase our product on social media, but our accounts were brand new and had no followers. We were forced to organically grow our followers DURING the fundraising campaign, potentially missing out on a ton of opportunities.
 
We Had a Poor Splash Page for our Campaign
We didn’t end up shooting our main Kickstarter video until about week 2 of the campaign, and were continually swapping out pictures for higher quality ones (once we had them photographed) and creating infographics for our Kickstarter page. The page didn’t become “final” until almost a month into the campaign, and by then, most of the momentum was gone.
 
Although we made quite a few mistakes, there were a few gems that we figured out along the way:
 
We Streamlined Our Social Media Posts
Since we knew that social media was going to be the cheapest, most efficient way to get the word out about our cinnamon packets, we were spending a disproportionate amount of our time crafting and posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. In all, we posted more than 300 times across these four platforms. We eventually found PostPlanner, which allowed us to create and schedule posts for Facebook and Twitter ahead of time. We were able to choose the day of the week and time for the future posts, and we let PostPlanner do the rest. We ended up having posts scheduled for more than a week in advance, and whenever we were too busy to log into Twitter on a particular day, we knew our Tweets were still going out…driving traffic to the Kickstarter page, increasing our followers, and raising brand awareness.
 
We Partnered With Similar Brands
Much too late in the game, we were able to partner with Chorus Beans, a specialty coffee bean vendor in New York. We were able to trade our cinnamon packets for their coffee, providing an extra reward boost for those that weren’t quite ready to pull the trigger and support our Kickstarter campaign. It’s important to find those people in your market who are providing similar, but non-competing, products. A little synergy can go a long way.
 
We Tracked Our Links
In order to determine which advertisements and social media posts were generating the most traffic to our page, we used bit.ly, which allowed us to post not only shorter website addresses, but track how many times that particular link was clicked on, and from where it was clicked. We quickly found that our Facebook posts drove far more traffic to our site than any other platform.  
 
While we did end up meeting our $10,000 goal during the last 24 hours of the campaign, we made a TON of potentially costly mistakes. Most of these mistakes could have been solved by sitting down and creating a marketing plan, with specific dates and actions. This would have highlighted the numerous holidays our campaign would span, as well as the many marketing products we had yet to prepare. Our best piece of advice – Don’t Rush It! Spend the time to do some planning ahead of time, and save your self the headaches we gave ourselves!
 
Will Atkins is an Air Force veteran, and the owner of Cinn-Credible Cinnamon Packets. He is a future public servant for the great state of Florida, where Cinn-Credible was born. Their adventures convincing Starbucks to carry their packets can be followed at their website, and @cinnamonpackets on Twitter. 

Note: You can find this post originally at www.OperationMCP.org, a veteran support organization that the Cinnamon King sits on the Board of Directors for. Cinnamon-Credible is a proud veteran-owned business, and through OperationMCP (Making Careers Possible), we assist transitioning vets with resume writing and interview prep. Navigating the civilian workforce is hard...let us help.

For deployed soldiers, the cinnamon challenge means something entirely different than the social media phenomenon here in the United States. For these servicemembers, cinnamon is near impossible to find, but is immensely needed to spice up the bland oatmeal served in combat chow halls or to give them a taste of home with their daily cup of joe. Fed up with the unavailability of the tasty spice, a group of veterans decided to take matters into their own hands, founding Cinn-Credible Cinnamon Packets from the front lines of Afghanistan. 

The brainchild behind the project is Will Atkins, an Air Force officer who was deployed to Afghanistan for all of 2016. He says he had been on the lookout for business opportunities after reading the book Active Duty Entrepreneur, which argues that entrepreneurial risk should be undertaken while veterans still have the safety net of active duty service. “Once we started the process of setting up our own business and navigating the civilian business world, then the true work began. We didn’t know how much we didn’t know!” he says. Fortunately, several organizations exist to alleviate these challenges.

One of the veteran support organizations that he credits with Cinn-Credible’s success is the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) at Syracuse University. IVMF organizes free training programs for post-9/11 veterans with a service-connected disability (Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans; EBV), a separate training program for veterans’ families (EBV-F), and a highly successful training program aimed at women (Veteran Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship; V-WISE). He also recommends the Small Business Administration, particularly their Office of Veterans Business Development (OVBD). The OVBD is focused on empowering veteran and military entrepreneurs, and offers veterans, service members and their families free business counseling and training programs, access to capital, and business development opportunities through government contracts. Especially important, was the need for a traditional civilian resume – something most military members have never had to accomplish. To achieve this end, he utilized OperationMCP (Making Careers Possible), which provides free military resume translation services, skills inventories, and interview prep to help transitioning veterans land that perfect job. In fact, he was so impressed with OperationMCP’s efforts that he now sits on their Board of Directors. Together, these organizations help ensure that entrepreneurs and transitioning veterans are set up for success. 

Cinn-Credible Cinnamon Packets recently completed a successful round of funding on Kickstarter, raising enough money to produce the first batch of cinnamon packets, currently offered on their website. This first-of-its-kind product provides individual packets of cinnamon – just like sugar packets, but with cinnamon. When he isn’t running an empire as the Cinnamon King, Will Atkins is also highly involved with VeteransCampaign, which encourages veterans to run for public office, and provides campaign workshops throughout the Washington, D.C. area. Will intends to return to his home state of Florida when he retires from the Air Force, and continue public service as an elected official. 
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Cinnamon is a much-loved staple in our kitchens, and is commonly found in our cookies, cakes, pastries, pies, breads, oatmeal, cinnamon toast, and applesauce. Amazingly, cinnamon not only tastes good, but it has numerous health benefits as well! We’ve assembled eight of our favorite uses for cinnamon (using 10 recipes), to help you take full advantage of this tasty, healthy treat, and add more of it to your daily lives.
 
Teas. Cinnamon is often used in chai teas, and can be used to smooth out some of the more sour teas. Cinnamon adds a sweet, warm element, which helps to round out the flavor. Check out this recipe from the folks at LiveStrong, which also goes into the numerous health benefits of cinnamon tea.

Coffee. Cinnamon is a healthy alternative to traditional sweeteners, and is commonly used in coffee to liven up the taste! If you use cinnamon in your coffee instead of cream or sugar, you could save more than 70 calories per cup, and gain a super metabolism boost!

Healthy Treats. Cinnamon has always been associated with sweet, rich baked goods…especially around the holiday season. Here are our favorite, delicious, healthy recipes that showcase this versatile spice: Banana Bran Muffins, Multi-Grain Waffles, and just for good measure (although not quite as healthy) Clone a Cinnabon Cinnamon Bun!
 
Nut Butters. Cinnamon-flavored nut butters are simply delightful, and a healthy, protein-rich alternative to regular butter. One of the more common is Cinnamon Almond Butter.  
 
Oatmeal. Most people know how cinnamon can take bland oatmeal and liven it up with just the right amount of sweetness! But you may not have known that cinnamon can improve your brain function...something we all need in the morning!

​A new study, released by the New York School of Career and Applied Studies has shown that as little as a tablespoon of cinnamon a day could help protect people from viral infections, such as the flu. 
 
The study analyzed the effects of botanic extracts such as cinnamon, onion, garlic, and peppermint on pathogens. Cinnamon resulted in the deactivation of 99.9 percent of viruses in lab tests, while the other extracts had no significant effect. The cinnamon actually damaged the structure of the virus, eliminating its ability to infect people and cause sickness.
 
Dr. Milton Schiffenbauer presented the findings at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. You can read more about Dr. Schiffenbauer’s previous research at the New York School of Career and Applied Studies’ website. 

When not being used for the cinnamon challenge, the list of ailments that cinnamon can actually improve is endless. Here are the top 6 reasons why you need to add more cinnamon to your diet:
 
1. Cinnamon Helps Fight Diabetes. Research has suggested that cinnamon can help improve blood glucose levels and increase insulin sensitivity.  Results from a clinical study published in the Diabetes Care journal show that a daily intake of just 1 gram of cinnamon was shown to reduce both glucose and “bad” cholesterol after just 40 days among middle-aged diabetics. Another study published in Agricultural Research Magazine found that the same gram of cinnamon per day can help manage, or even reverse, type 2 diabetes.
 
2. Cinnamon can improve learning ability and memory. Studies in lab mice found that after ingesting cinnamon, the mice metabolized the spice into sodium benzoate, which is used as a drug treatment for brain damage. This led to improved memory and learning among mice previously determined to be “poor learners.” The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Alzheimer’s Association. In human tests, cinnamon was shown to improve scores on attention span, virtual recognition memory, working memory, and visual-motor response speed.
 
3. Cinnamon Soothes Arthritis. In a study of 122 spices and herbs for efficiency in the reduction of uric acid levels, extract of cinnamon was found to be the most effective for suppressing the enzyme that is responsible for the production of uric acid.
 
4. Cinnamon Lowers Risk of Having a Heart Attack. A clinical study with rats found that after ingesting a sugar solution to raise their blood pressure, rats that then received a dosage of cinnamon had reduced blood pressure, whereas the rats that were given a placebo did not. Cinnamon also improves circulation due to the presence of a blood-thinning compound in it, which ensures adequate oxygen supply to the body’s cells, and reduces pain.
 
5. Cinnamon Reduces Pain. Cinnamon is also an anti-inflammatory substance, which helps reduce stiffness in muscles and joints, and helps reduce the effects of tension and sinus pressure headaches.
 
6. Cinnamon Aids in Digestive Health.  Due to cinnamon’s carminative properties, it is especially effective at aiding indigestion, nausea, vomiting, upset stomach, diarrhea, and flatulence. Cinnamon does this by eliminating excess gas from the stomach and intestines, while countering acidity.
 
When confronted with such a long list of healing attributes, why wouldn’t you want to add cinnamon to your daily diet? Cinnamon has long been used as a healthy alternative to sugar in coffees and teas, and is commonly sprinkled over oatmeal and cereal. Whether you find it in a jar, or in a packet, you’ll want more cinnamon in your diet today!