Seasoned Greetings
Greg Zedlar’s first foray into entrepreneurship was in 1987, when he created T-shirts commemorating Lt. Oliver North’s role in the Iran-Contra hearings and hawked them on Hollywood Boulevard. In 1994, the senior financial advisor at American Express started designing provocative cards on his computer that he sent in lieu of business letters to drum up business, to thank a client or to make a contact. Since he started marketing the cards in May, he has had intense media interest and a flood of offers. A new business can be overwhelmed, he has learned, by early success.
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I did my direct mail and public relations campaign on May 5. By May 29, we got a small mention in the Wall Street Journal. Since then, we have had 27 articles written about us in the U.S. and two in Britain.
The publicity really caught me by surprise. In my business plan, I anticipated spending this year distributing the catalog, grinding out some orders and building business relationships.
But we started getting hundreds of offers from distributors, card shops and resellers. You can’t believe how many wanted to invest.
We were inundated with letters, faxes, e-mails and overnight packages. A couple people dropped by my home office. I was answering the door in swim trunks and a T-shirt, looking like Fred Flintstone!
The time it took to sift through all the messages and mail bogged down our sales process. Decisions fell through the cracks. I missed appointments. Someone wanted to order 12,000 cards, and I was so distracted I forgot to call them back and we lost the order. We’re not big enough for that not to hurt.
We went from ready-aim-fire to ready-fire-aim. That’s when we decided we had to pull back, redefine what we are trying to achieve and learn to make judgments as part of a funnel process, narrowing down what we can do effectively and working on those areas.
When offers are coming in fast and furious, putting something off for three to six months sounds like an eternity, but it’s not. I whittled down what I really needed to consider and what I could put on the back burner. Whenever I am presented with something, I make an immediate judgment about how much time to spend on it. I approached my mom, who is my business partner, my brother and other trusted people for advice.
I learned to consider other opinions thoroughly, even if I didn’t agree with them right away. I think we all have a tendency when we hear something that doesn’t click with us to say “no” automatically. If I run it past someone else and put my ego aside, I can see something from another perspective.
Even though we are getting large orders and have signed strategic agreements with a lot of big players, I will not feel secure for at least 18 months. No matter what offers are coming in, my chief telemarketer still has to make the same amount of outgoing calls every day. If everything else goes away tomorrow--the press coverage, the alliances we’ve made--we’ll still have our own individual efforts.
I got married this summer and we had a nice honeymoon planned, but because of everything going on, we canceled it. I have a wonderful, understanding wife who realized with me that when certain things come along in a business you may have a very short window of opportunity to respond.
If your business can provide a lesson to other entrepreneurs, contact Karen E. Klein in care of the Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016, or send e-mail to kklein6349@aol.com. Include your name, address and telephone number.
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AT A GLANCE
Company: Conceptual Thinking Inc.
Owner: Greg Zedlar and Carolyn Parker
Nature of business: Designs and distributes greeting cards for business people
Location: 909 Ford St., Burbank
Founded: 1996
Employees: 4
Projected revenue: $350,000
