Working
We all have a special talent we wish we could monetize – maybe you make the best pies in the neighborhood, or your photography skills are prized by your friends. But how do you turn it into a profitable business?
We get this question all the time. And the best advice is always to start small, with little to no overhead. If you can moonlight in your pie-making business on the side, you’ll not only make some extra cash in your spare time, but you’ll get a feel for whether it could actually be a profitable, full-time business down the line.
Luckily, there are all sorts of online tools popping up these days to help you sell the fruits of your labor. In a series of posts on this blog, I’m going to detail some of the best ones, starting with one of my favorite online shopping destinations, Etsy.com. More…
WHO: Serena Dugan and Lily Kanter
WHAT: Serena & Lily; an upscale linens and homewares company.
WHERE: Sausalito, CA
WHEN: 2004
HOW: When her first son was born in 2000, Lily Kanter, an 18 year veteran of the corporate world, decided to trade in her board meetings for baby bottles. Shopping for her newborn, Kanter struggled to find high-end furniture for the nursery. “There was nothing in the Bay area that was done with well edited taste,” she describes. Soon after, Kanter and her husband capitalized on the void in the market and opened Mill Valley Baby & Kids Company, a baby and home furnishings shop.
At that same time, Serena Dugan, an experienced freelance decorative painter, More…
WHO: John Scardapane
WHAT: Saladworks, the nation’s #1 salad franchise
WHEN: 1986
WHERE: Saladworks has locations in 11 states, but the company calls Conshohocken, Pennsylvania home base
HOW: Being successful in business is rarely a toss up. It’s a mix of ingredients: hard work, creativity and passion, to name a few. But for John Scardapane, founder of Saladworks, it was both.
Working as a gourmet chef in a New Jersey country club, Scardapane noticed a lack of healthy alternatives for diners and decided to take action. “I realized that there were really no healthy alternative food offerings available for consumers on-the-go, so I developed the concept to serve fresh, made-to-order entrée-sized salads in a comfortable, restaurant environment.”
With that concept in the back of his mind, Scardapane climbed the ranks at the country club, going from chef to management level. Scardapane soon learned however, that the promotion wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. “When I was promoted to management, I was guaranteed a base salary and a percentage of the profits of the club. I made these profits, but I was never given my percentage because of a prior manager’s losses. This made me realize that I couldn’t work for someone else – I had to go into business for myself,” he says. More…
WHO: Mark Boyett and Jeff Winner
WHAT: The Diner’s Deck, a deck of cards—one for each of the 52 Manhattan restaurants chosen by the deck’s creators—with each card doubling as a $10 gift certificate at the place it describes. Forking over the $29.95 for the deck can really add up to some serious savings. To break even use three cards. Use the whole deck and you’ve saved yourself around $490. Boyett and Winner’s brand, “City Shuffle,” has also recently added two new decks: The Diner’s Deck for Brooklyn and Downtown and The Bar and Lounge Deck.
WHEN: 2003
WHERE: New York, NY
HOW: “The original inspiration for The Diner’s Deck came to Jeff when he was getting ready to go on a date” says Boyett. Wanting to shake things up a bit and discover a new place to dine, Winner wrote the names of some restaurants on slips of paper, shuffled them and asked his date to pick one. Two nights later, Boyett and Winner went out to grab a bite to eat, planning to use a gift certificate to pay for the meal. Over a couple burgers, Boyett listened to Winner’s date night tale, and then it hit him. More…
WHO: Keith and Maureen Jaret
WHAT: The Petite Café, Home of the Stuffed Cupcakes
WHERE: Nutley, NJ
WHEN: 2001
HOW: “I was in corporate and always felt that I would have my own business,” says Maureen Jaret, a veteran of Wall Street. Looking for an outlet from the world of finance, Jaret took a job as a hostess at a nearby restaurant, and it was there that fate began to take its course. While working at the restaurant she met Keith, an Executive Chef from the Culinary Institute of America who would later become her business partner and husband.
After they wed in 1987, the couple continued to add to their food industry experience, running a catering company and several restaurants. In 2001 with $100,000 in savings, they launched The Petite Café in Nutley, New Jersey. “We served breakfast, lunch, dinner and did catering,” explains Jaret. While the Petite Café prided itself with being ahead of the curve with trends and products, there was one area of the business where they struggled. “The one area where we could not attract attention was with desserts,” says Jaret.
That all changed when Jaret decided to put her chocolate cake on the menu. “I made a chocolate cake that had always been popular with friends and family, so we chose to put it on the menu.” To promote the treat, Jaret decided to bake the cake in cupcake form and sell it during the busiest time of the week: Sunday brunch.
Keeping with their tradition of having unique items on their menu, Jaret decided to mix things up a bit and fill the cupcakes. “My husband and I developed a recipe for a peanut butter filling. The following Sunday, I prepared 200 chocolate cupcakes, filled with the mixture…it was an instant hit.” While Jaret expected customers to rave about the chocolate cake, they sang the praises of another aspect of the dessert instead. More…
WHO: Karen Robinovitz
WHAT: Purple Lab Cosmetics
WHEN: 2007
WHERE: New York, NY
HOW: It all started with a cocktail party. “I ate so much that after twenty minutes, I felt full and uncomfortable, like my pants were suddenly one size too small. I told my husband I had to go home and he was a little disappointed…I jokingly said, “Well, if my lip gloss would plump my lips and not my hips, I wouldn’t be in this mess.” And with that, the idea for Purple Lab Cosmetics was born. “The light bulb in my head blinded me,” says Robinovitz. “What if there was a lip-gloss with plumper and appetite suppressant?” she thought.
After that fateful cocktail party, Robnovitz picked up the phone and called a friend who worked at a major makeup brand to see if she could make the product. “My husband grabbed my phone and said, “YOU make this product. This is the start of your brand!”
Two weeks later, Robinovitz trademarked “Huge Lips Skinny Hips,” a lip gloss that plumps your lips and curbs your appetite, seting the wheels in motion for developing her brand. “I had no idea what I was doing but after asking around, I found a lab, who recommended a manufacturer for components. I joined a beauty organization so I could create a network of insiders who could guide me,” says Robinovitz.
To get the product off the ground, Robinovitz and her husband invested their life savings into the new brand. “In the beginning, the investment didn’t seem large. What started as $5,000 turned into $50,000. And it hurt when I crossed the threshold of $250,000.” At one point, Robinovitz even considered selling her engagement ring. Thankfully, today, Purple Lab is funded by outside sources—and Robinovitz still has her engagement ring. “We now have investors and partners, which was vital and really the only way for us to take Purple Lab to the levels we envision,” says Robinovitz.
When Robinovitz started her brand she was working as More…
In a past segment on the Today show you mentioned a couple of sites for individuals wanting to work from home. I want to look for work from home opportunities on the web but don’t want to be scammed. What are the sites?
-Toree, Iowa
Working from home definitely has its perks. “You don’t waste time commuting. You can be home for your family when you need to. You can usually set your own schedule. You don’t have to pay for a work wardrobe,” are just a few of them, says Allison O’Kelly, CEO of MomCorps.com. While working from home can make things easier, searching for a position is anything but simple.
To sidestep work from home scams, start your search with sites that feature only vetted work from home opportunities. Two of my favorites are Women for Hire and Mom Corps. Although both are geared towards women, the sites provide free listings of legitimate work from home jobs for both sexes. Another place to check for work from home jobs is directly with companies. For example, JetBlue has agents that work from home.
Once you think you’ve found a real work from home opportunity, do a little poking around. Start by asking More…
WHO: Tina Corso-Hess
WHAT: Corso’s Cookies
WHERE: Syracuse, NY
WHEN: 2001
HOW: “I always loved to bake since my first easy bake oven and I also loved art. Once I combined them both into decorated cookies I knew I had found my niche,” says Corso. When Corso had trouble finding a unique gift to send to a friend who had a baby, she decided to take matters into her own hands. The result? A million dollar business. “I decided to send her some cookies decorated like flowers in a basket. She loved them so I started making them for thank you gifts…they created quite a buzz around town. Every time I sent cookies out the recipient would want me to make more to send to someone for them. It seemed to be a snowball effect,” says Corso.
Working as a real estate agent, Corso used part of her commissions to fund the start-up. “I would go to the store, buy a pound of sugar and ten pounds of flour pretty much every other day. Then I’d wait to get paid on one bouquet to go out and do it again,” said Corso. The fledgling cookie business received its biggest boost from its first large order. “One thing that really helped was an order for 5,000 heart shaped cookies from the American Heart Association. We didn’t have any equipment for this. We had to do all the rolling by hand. I called every relative I had, every friend I had to help. With that order, the money we made helped us get things really started,” says Corso. A new and improved website also helped Corso’s Cookies gain exposure. “Once we got a really good website up, other companies started coming to us wanting to sell the bouquets on their site,” says Corso. Today, Corso’s Cookies are sold on over 100 websites, including ProFlowers and Amazon.
As orders kept getting larger and more frequent, Corso decided to leave the real estate business behind and pursue her true passion. “Within 6 months of starting cookie bouquets, the cookies just dominated. The tipping point for leaving real estate was my getting three hours of sleep a night,” explained Corso. But Corso wasn’t the only one burning the midnight oil—her husband Peter Hess also worked overtime to get the business off the ground. “My husband worked a full-time job to support us and worked with me in the evenings and weekends to prevent us from having to hire an accountant, janitor or salesperson. He kept on top of business matters and I More…
WHO: Rachel Braun Scherl and Mary Wallace Jaensch
WHAT: Semprae Laboratories, a company founded by women and focused on women’s sexuality. Semprae provides evidence based solutions supported by real science to create a place online for women to talk and learn about sexual satisfaction. The company’s flagship product is Zestra, a blend of botanical oils and extracts clinically proven to increase satisfaction.
WHERE: Saddle Brook, NJ
WHEN: 2008
HOW: “Much of how we got here feels like serendipity,” says Scherl. Both former successful marketing and strategy consultants, Scherl and Jaensch focused on women’s issues for most of their careers. “We focused on women-driven businesses – birth control, health and beauty, fertility– servicing leading companies including Johnson & Johnson, Wyeth and Church & Dwight,” says Scherl.
Knowing about their passion for women’s issues, a venture capitalist friend showed them a business plan for Zestra. “He said, ‘This opportunity, this category is for you’,” says Scherl. In April 2008, the pair met with the company’s higher-ups hoping that they could potentially manage the company. They was under the impression that Scherl and Jaensch were coming to the table with funding to back the troubled brand. “We parted ways believing that our interests were not aligned,” says Scherl.
Although the meeting didn’t turn out the way they hoped, Scherl and Janesch’s walked away with their curiosity piqued. “As we looked at the category, which we now define as sexual satisfaction, it looked like the “perfect storm” from a marketing perspective,” says Scherl. The pair noticed how many women were looking for More…
WHO:Eric Schnell and Steve Kessler
WHAT: Steaz: The Healthy Beverage Company. Steaz is the maker of USDA Certified Organic and Fair Trade Certified beverages, including iced teas, green teas and energy drinks. They’re the best-selling natural Energy Drink brand in the U.S.
WHEN: 2001
WHERE: Newton, Pennsylvania
HOW: Kessler and Schnell met in the 90’s while working at health food companies. The same family owned both companies and the duo worked together on the launching of over 1,000 products. “One day we said that we could create a company that really makes a difference in the world; we had a great idea-making soda healthy,” says Schnell. Their vision was to take a familiar taste and make it healthier. “We decided to change soda and make it healthy. We put green tea and organic ingredients in carbonated water,” says Schnell.
Schnell and Kessler took their idea and did what I typically tell people not to do. “We used every nickel in the bank, mortgaged our houses, took out credit cards and maxed them out…all the crazy things entrepreneurs do. We believed in the concept,” says Schnell. The gamble eventually paid off. With about a half a million dollars in seed money, Kessler and Schnell began to build their brand. They worked tirelessly to promote their brand and six months before it’s official launch they left their 9 to 5 jobs.
Today, their business More…
