Family & Friends — Rally your inner circle with Tokei

Start Before You Feel Ready

Almost everyone waits too long. They want the product finished, the photos perfect and the website live before they tell a single person. Then launch day arrives, they post once, and nothing happens — because nobody was waiting for it.

The people most likely to back you on day one are the ones who already know you. Family, friends, old colleagues, the group chat. They are not a small audience to be embarrassed about. They are the reason the first twenty-four hours look busy instead of empty, and a busy first day is what convinces strangers to look twice.

The only three things you need first

One sentence explaining what you are making and who it is for. Not a slogan — a sentence you could say out loud to your aunt.
One place to send people. A single link that collects an email address. That is all a launch page has to do at this stage.
One photo or sketch. Even a rough one. A link with no picture gets scrolled past.

Why the email address matters more than the follow. A follow lives on a platform you do not control, and only a fraction of followers ever see a given post. An email address is yours. When you finally launch, you can reach every single person who gave you one, on the day you choose.

Everything below is ordered by what to do first. None of it costs money.

Build Your Kickstarter Draft As You Go

A Kickstarter draft is free, private until you submit it, and you can edit it as many times as you like. There is no reason to wait. Start it today and treat it as the place where your thinking gets tidied up, a little at a time.

The draft is genuinely useful even if you never launch on Kickstarter, because it forces you to answer the questions every backer asks anyway: what is it, why you, what does it cost, and when will it arrive.

Fill it in this order

The title and the one-liner. Rewrite these more than anything else. If someone cannot repeat your idea back to you after reading them, they are not done.
The story. Why you are making this and what happens if it does not exist. Personal beats polished — people back people.
The rewards. Start with three. One cheap, one obvious, one generous. Too many tiers is the most common first-project mistake and it stalls decisions.
The budget and timeline. Last, because it changes most. Add a margin for shipping and for things going wrong. They will.

Work in ten-minute pieces. Open the draft, improve one field, close it. A draft edited twenty times over a month is far better than one written in a single panicked evening — and it means launch week is spent talking to people rather than writing copy.

Keep a note of every question anyone asks you about the project. Those questions are your FAQ section, written for free by the people you are about to ask for money.

Claim Your Social Handles Now

This takes about twenty minutes and it is the one job on this page that gets harder the longer you leave it. Handles are first come, first served. If your project name is taken on three platforms out of four, you will end up with a different name on each — and people will not find you.

Register the same name on all four, today, even if you have no intention of posting on some of them for months. You are not committing to being active. You are stopping somebody else from taking it.

The four to register

Facebook — where family actually are. A Page, not a personal profile, so you can post as the project.
Instagram — best for anything you can photograph. Progress shots do very well.
TikTok — the one most likely to reach people who have never heard of you.
X — smaller reach for most projects, but where journalists and other makers look.

Picking a name you will not regret

Check all four before settling on any of them. If one is taken, pick a different name rather than adding underscores or numbers.
Avoid the year, the word “official”, and anything that ties you to one product. You may make a second thing.
Say it out loud. If you have to spell it every time, it is the wrong name.
Use the same profile photo everywhere so the accounts read as one project.

Put your one link in every bio. An empty bio is a dead end. Whatever page collects email addresses is the link that goes in all four profiles, from day one, before you have anything to announce.

Set Up a Free Newsletter

Collecting email addresses is only half the job — you need somewhere to send from. Services like Mailchimp have a free tier that comfortably covers a first project, and you can move later if you outgrow it.

Do not overthink the design. A plain email that reads like it came from a person outperforms a heavily designed template almost every time — especially with an audience who knows you.

What to send, and how often

A welcome email, straight away. Two short paragraphs: what you are making, and when they will hear from you next. Set it up once and it sends itself.
Once or twice a month while you build. Show progress, including the parts that went wrong. People stay subscribed for the story.
Three emails around launch. One a week before, one on the day, one near the end. The last one consistently does better than anyone expects.

One list, from the beginning. Do not keep addresses in a notebook, a spreadsheet and your phone. Every address you gather should land in the same place, or launch week becomes an afternoon of copy-and-paste — and you will miss people.

Two housekeeping points that matter more than they sound. Only email people who actually gave you their address — buying a list or adding everyone in your contacts will get you marked as spam and can shut the account down. And always leave the unsubscribe link alone; it is a legal requirement in most countries, and a quiet unsubscribe is far better than a spam complaint.

What to Actually Ask Family & Friends For

The reason this feels uncomfortable is usually that the ask is vague. “Support my project” gives someone nothing to do, so they say something kind and move on. A specific, small request gets acted on.

Ask for these, in this order

Their email address. The smallest possible yes, and the most useful thing you can get before launch.
One share to one person. Not “share this everywhere” — one person they think would genuinely like it. Far more likely to happen, and the person who receives it actually looks.
To be there on day one. Tell them the date and why the first day matters. People like being told they are part of the plan.
Honest feedback, from a few people only. Ask three, not thirty. Thirty opinions will stop you finishing.

Message you can copy

The personal ask — sent one to one, before launch. Worth the few minutes it takes to change the name each time.

Hi [name] — I'm finally doing the thing I've been talking about: [one sentence about the project].

It launches on [date]. I'm not asking you to buy anything yet, I just want a handful of people ready on day one so it doesn't launch to silence.

If you're up for it, here's the link to get an email when it goes live: [your link]

And if you know one person who'd genuinely like this, sending it to them is honestly the most useful thing you could do.

Thanks — [your name]

The group chat — lighter, easy to ignore, no guilt attached.

Right, I'm launching [project] on [date] 🎉

It's [one sentence]. Day one matters a lot for these things, so if you want to help: [your link] — pop your email in and you'll get one message when it's live. That's it.

No pressure at all if it's not your kind of thing. Sharing it with someone who'd like it helps just as much.

Launch day — short, and sent to everyone at once.

It's live! 🚀

[Project] is up here: [link]

If you were planning to back it, today genuinely is the day that counts — early momentum is what gets it in front of strangers.

Thank you to everyone who's already shared it. It means more than you'd think.

Give people an easy way out. A line like “no pressure if it is not your thing” costs you nothing and makes the ask much easier to send. Someone who feels cornered does not share; someone given permission to decline often shares anyway.

Your First Week, Step by Step

Nothing here takes more than an hour. If you do one item a day, you will have a live page, four handles, a working list and your first subscribers inside a week.

Day 1 – 2

Write the one sentence. Say it out loud to someone and fix what confused them.
Put up a page that collects email addresses, and send it to yourself to check it.
Start the Kickstarter draft — title and one-liner only.

Day 3 – 4

Register the same handle on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X.
Same photo and same link in all four bios.
Set up the newsletter account and write the welcome email.

Day 5 – 7

Message ten people individually, using the personal ask above. Ten, properly, beats a hundred at once.
Post once on each platform saying what you are making. Rough is fine.
Add the questions people asked you to the FAQ in your draft.

Then keep going, slowly. One post a week and one email a month is enough. The goal before launch is not a big audience — it is a small number of people who already know what is coming and are waiting for the date.

One last thing worth hearing early: the first launch is rarely the successful one. It is the one that gets you a list, a set of handles you own and a rough idea of who actually wants this. That is what makes the second attempt work.

Rally your inner circle to share your link

Family & Friends Playbook