Pair Cultivate Friendship and Garden Business
Conventional wisdom warns against mixing business and friendship, but Darcy Lyons and Terry Kirby have found that starting a company has only strengthened their 14-year relationship. Developing a joint vision, encouraging each other and maintaining a sense of humor has sustained them as they go about building their home-party sales of garden accessories. Lyons was interviewed by freelance writer Karen E. Klein.
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Terry and I met in 1986 through a mutual friend. She was a paralegal and a marketing consultant for a computer magazine, and I was a landscape architect and senior consultant for Arthur Andersen’s retail division. We both decided to leave the corporate world and stay home once we began having children.
I had been to several home sales parties hosted by Terry while I was still working. She’s a military wife and she has found that direct-sales parties are very popular in the tightknit military community. Because the families move so often, it is a business that the women can take with them. In February 1999, we went to lunch to celebrate the birth of my second child and I mentioned to her that I thought party-based sales for gardening products would be an interesting concept.
I thought a lot about this business and who would work with me. I knew I needed a partner so we could split the work between us, and therefore spend more time with our families.
I also thought it would be a lot more fun working with someone rather than alone. I have a whole range of friends who tend to be very controlling and I realized they were not going to work because we wouldn’t have a free flow of ideas. Terry and I have a very good, easy relationship. We can tell each other what we think, and she had that military tie and experience in direct sales.
We talked about it and felt that our personal strengths were complementary and would be beneficial in starting a business that we both felt passionate about. Terry is a “big idea” person, while I tend to be more detail-oriented. A successful business needs both.
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Of course, having differences can be maddening at times. While Terry is mapping out our spectacular growth plan, and claiming the world as our playground, I have my head buried in a stack of shipping analysis reports, trying to determine if we should use brown or clear packing tape. If we did not understand that each personality is vital to a successful business, we would spend half our time wishing we had a partner more like ourselves.
One thing we’ve learned is that we must agree 110% on what we are trying to accomplish. I recommend that entrepreneurs write a mission statement that they are passionate about and post it so they can read it every day. This helps get you through the days when you are ready to set your hair on fire and dive headfirst into oncoming traffic.
When I have days like that, I’m grateful to have a partner who is my cheerleader. A Garden Party took about six months of planning and setup before we held our first party, and there were many days when I thought I should be committed to a mental institution for trying to start my own business. When that happened, I would call Terry and after a few minutes she had me back on track. We work hard at keeping each other focused on the mission of the business.
We learned the hard way that when it comes to product selection (we have 14 vendors) we have to agree absolutely on what goes into our catalog. For instance, we carry an Oriental lantern that I love, but she absolutely hates. And there’s a checkerboard that she loves and I hate. We haven’t sold one of either item. From now on, we’re not going to pick any product that we don’t agree on.
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Before we started, we talked extensively about what it takes to partner a business with a friend, and we decided that our primary goal was to ensure we remained friends, regardless of the success or failure of the business. We also decided that our kids came first. They are the whole reason we started the company, so we could have more time with them.
Keeping a sense of humor is also very important. If we can’t laugh at our mistakes, we aren’t having much fun or learning from them. Our business, and more important, our friendship, has flourished since we started the business. We now have 15 consultants in California, Texas, Missouri, Colorado, Virginia and Japan. Our development goal is to have consultants in all 50 states by 2004.
If your business can provide a lesson to other entrepreneurs, contact Karen E. Klein at the Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016 or at kklein6349@aol.com. Include your name, address and telephone number.
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AT A GLANCE
Company: A Garden Party Inc.
Owners: Darcy Lyons and Terry Kirby
Nature of business: Direct sales of garden tools and collectibles
Location: 170 Andrew Ave., Encinitas 92024
Founded: 1999
Employees: 0
Web site: https://www .agardenparty.comn E-mail: agardenparty@earthlink.net
Year-to-date revenue: $35,000
