“Entrepreneurs: The only people who work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hour weeks” – Tweeted by Lori
Several weeks ago, I wrote about the role of the entrepreneurial spouse in building a winning company. One of our readers boldly told me the article was incomplete: The three examples I included were all men with supportive entrepreneurial wives. He was right. Since I wrote that column, more than 115 readers have come forward to share extraordinary stories of entrepreneurial women being aided by remarkable men.
I’ll share more from their responses next week. But one of the most interesting stories to emerge came from a highly notable place: Lori Greiner, one of the nation’s (and the world’s) most prolific inventors of retail products. Lori has developed more than 350 products and holds more than 112 U.S. and international patents. She is widely acclaimed as “The Queen of QVC” due to her out-of-the-ballpark success in launching new products on QVC (and even helping to elevate and shape the brand of that program).
She’s also a celebrity, as a star of ABC’s Shark Tank. In fact, on the day of our interview she was on her way to the Fall 2012 Shark Tank premier. For the past 15 years, Lori, “the warm blooded shark,” has enjoyed a career that most can only dream of.
Yet Lori fondly shares she is the first to credit her husband and partner Dan as an important asset in her company.
Lori became an entrepreneur by fortunate accident – her degree was in Communications and Journalism (from writers everywhere--Go, Lori!) As she tells it, she kept having great ideas (such as a book of fairy tales for the 1990s) that she’d put on hold or put to the back of her mind, and then she’d see someone else step forward with a similar idea and succeed.
Lori’s husband, Dan, is not an inventor. Nor is he a risk taker, Lori says. But he was the person who believed in her from the beginning. When she saw a bestseller book remarkably similar to her original idea she vowed she would never “miss the boat” on a good idea again. Dan supported this.
Lori’s next great idea was an earring organizer. She took out a $300,000 loan, created a sample and managed through personal chutzpah to get her product into J.C. Penney in time for the holiday season. Within 18 months, the product had made her rich.
Six years into the business, Dan ended his career as corporate controller to join Lori’s company and to work by her side. How many husbands and wives could work together 24/7? Clearly, Lori and Dan’s partnership has broken the mold. According to published sources, they work from a single partner desk at a sunny home office where workdays begin at 9 a.m. and often proceed until midnight. Today the company sells more than 100 retail products, and a large part of her sales occur through QVC.
Lori gets “a look” when she’s onto a good idea, he says – and by evening, she’ll often have a design down on paper. Lori is the one who runs and drives the business, handling the legal, sales, creative, marketing and more, plus the strategy and overall big picture. Detail oriented and trained in accounting, Dan is the specialist who handles the parts, the shipping and packaging, and the inventory and accounting issues to make a business that carries some 112 products work so smoothly while it’s accomplishing such meteoric success.
Lori’s reputation as “the warm blooded shark” is well earned—she’s highly invested in helping the careers of others as well. At the time of our interview, Dallas Robinson, CEO of KISSTIXX (they received investment from the Sharks’ Mark Cuban last season, but due to Lori’s involvement and help are in the midst of a QVC launch of 2 new items that Lori developed along with Dallas) pops in to say “hi”. Says Dallas: “Lori’s the greatest—and Dan is also essential. Packaging, shipping, timing, inventory, all the details to making a QVC launch successful—we’re continually working with Dan, too. He’s a man who fully knows what he’s doing and is absolutely essential to helping make their company go.”
What an inspiring partnership. For anyone interested in learning more about what it takes to work with Lori’s team, they should visit www.lorigreiner.com, visit her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Lori.Greiner1, or connect with her at @LoriGreiner. And they should definitely stay tuned to this season’s episodes of Shark Tank, where Lori will be playing a pivotal role. Lori’s first episodes start Oct.5 th and 12th with many more to follow this season.
As to Dan, any man who is interested in inventory is definitely my kind of guy. On the topic of what it takes to manage hundreds of products, parts and packages—there is an app for that. It’s called Fishbowl Inventory. Perhaps we should talk.
