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bjbj Rachel: Hi, I'm Rachel Olsen, founder of Best Mom Products. Today I'm talking with
Jill Salzman who, let's just say, does it all. She's a third time entrepreneur, TEDTalk
speaker, author of Found It: A Field Guide For Mom Entrepreneurs, and founder of The
Founding Moms in 2010, which is a collective of live and local monthly meet-ups where mom
entrepreneurs come to exchange, connect, and learn from one another. She's also been featured
recently as one of the top 50 women to watch in tech. She has written for the New York
Times and a jillion other media outlets. I don't even know where we're going to start
with you, Jill, because there's so much. Plus with kids, you're very accomplished. So I
want to hear how you did it. Jill: Thank you. You make me feel very good about myself. Rachel:
You did it all. So tell us a little bit about your background to start. You studied law.
So why don't you fill everyone in? Jill: I did, but I can make it sound even funkier
because I have an undergrad degree in biology. I then decided to study law. I then decided
to not use that law degree, not practice. But all along the way I feel like I got a
street version of an MBA. And I always have had that entrepreneurial spark, I guess. Those
of us who are entrepreneurs know exactly what I'm talking about. And so from the get-go
I was trying out my own things and I officially launched my first company in 2005, which was
pretty much immediately after graduating from law school when I said, 'I don't want to be
stuck in a law firm all day. I'm going to go out and start a music management company.'
Rachel: How did you get into music management? Jill: Right out of college, before going to
grad school, I was desperate to work in the record business, in the music business, so
I begged my way into a job doing the coolest gig out of college, called ANR, which is basically
a scout. To go out and listen to music and find the next big thing. And if you've heard
of Jason Moraz he would not be famous if it were not for me. I love to say that because
I don't get any royalties from that. So that's pretty much my claim to fame. Then right after
working in New York doing record labels stuff for a few years and getting burned out and
going off to law school, I kind of got sucked back in. The music business is very, very
addictive, so I thought 'I've never done anything managing bands, so why don't I start managing
bands?' So that's how I got started. And I did that for a couple years and started up
my second business while I was managing bands because when your bands are out on tour you're
making some money as their manager, but when they're in the studio recording an album you're
not making much. So I thought 'I need a little hobby business so I can make some money on
the side.' Rachel: Okay. Is that where the Bumble brand came into play? Why don't you
tell everyone what Bumble Bells are? Jill: Sure. Bumble Bells are officially audible
ankle-wear for babies and toddlers. And the story is in 2007 I gave birth to my first
kiddo and she received a gift. I wish I had one to show you. It's a small sterling silver
anklet with little bells on it so when you slide it onto a baby's ankle you can hear
them toddling around, when they wake up from their nap you can hear them because they start
moving. It's very sweet, very cute. People always ask, 'But that sounds so annoying.'
It was never annoying. And my current two-year-old is wearing them and nobody seems annoyed.
It's very cute. So I started that in '07. Literally threw up a website and thought,
'Why don't I see if they sell. If it takes off it takes off.' With really no big plans,
no business plan, and it just started selling, and selling some more, and I just gunned it
with the PR and publicity so it kind of blew up after Gwen Stefani put them on her baby.
Rachel: That's pretty amazing. I want to hear that story. And a few things come to mind
when you're telling me this story. One is, you imported this product, so you saw this
opportunity. You received this as a gift and thought 'Wow, this is great.' And so were
they not being sold in the US at this time? Jill: I looked around when I received it from
some family member in Thailand and thought 'Huh, a lot of my friends are asking me for
them. Maybe let me just go check out and see if I can buy it for them in a store.' I couldn't
find them, I couldn't find them. I did some web research. Turns out there were variations
on it, but nothing as high quality, nothing as fantastic, and nothing with the name that
we gave it that I trademarked, called Bumble Bells. So I thought 'You know, I have some
family in Thailand, let me see if they can ship me some before it becomes official importing.'
And they did. It was a slow build, but it was pretty fantastic by the end. Rachel: How
did you go about that? How did you get your first customers for that and what kind of
PR did you do? This is around 2007, 2008? Okay. Jill: The year I started I didn't know
anything about selling a product, so it was a year of understanding what retail's like,
how to price an item, what does wholesale mean. And doing a fig fat trade show when
I wasn't really ready for it in Las Vegas. And really messing up for an entire first
year trying things out and talking a lot to customers and figuring what they were looking
for. I had my favorite style of Bumble Bell with a cute little pattern on it and I thought,
of course, that everyone would love what I love. And as any business owner knows it never
goes that way. It was everybody's least favorite. So I learned a lot the first year and then
I really ramped up PR, which just means I reached out to a lot of magazines, online
blogs, and said, 'Hey, I'm in enough stores now, you should pay attention to me.' And
reaching out and doing publicity and press was very different than how we reached the
celeb because the celeb basically had a set of parents who moved next door to my cousins.
And I said, 'Hey, if I ship these to you would you walk them next door?' And magically they
walked them next door, and even more magically Gwen Stefani's parents gave her my little
gift with a note that said, 'Please put them on baby Zuma.' And Gwen did it. I still can't
believe she did it. But she put them on baby Zuma. She was walking around with the babe,
paparazzi shot them, so there's a photo of Gwen and her baby and my little Bumble Bell
that you can see very clearly. Perez Hilton put it on his website, circled the Bumble
Bell, identified it, so I rolled that straight into, 'Hey, People Magazine, want to feature
the celeb endorsing my product.' Rachel: Oh, very interesting. So did you go ahead and
contact People Magazine? Jill: I said magazine and you said people and I'm thinking what
people? I actually, no, at the level of People Magazine I did not know anyone and it didn't
seem like the kind of 'Hey, e-mail us off the website and we'll surely get back to you'
type of folks. So I happened to know a publicist who lives in LA and had a contact at People.
And so I begged her, she begged them, they finally said yes. It sounds a lot like luck
and magic. And I'm sure there was hard work involved, but everything came together. So
that helped us. You know what, when that came out in People Magazine I thought I would be
able to retire and I was done for the rest of my life. It doesn't happen that way. We
were quite profitable for about six months after that hit. And People Magazine stays
around in dentists' offices and doctors' offices, so a few months after the big surge sales
were still coming in quite a bit, but about a year later we could have been wiped off
the planet and nobody would've noticed. Rachel: That's really fascinating because I like to
focus on the business behind that. So for you that was a great bump. What did you do
after that? And then I want to talk to you a little bit about the reason why you decided
to try to sell it and that process a little bit. Jill: Sure. After the People bump, for
me publicity is a constant roller coaster ride of trying to get the next hit. So after
People happened I would take that and I would just keep leveraging. 'Hey, now that we've
been in People, hey would you, next publication, like to feature us?' And a lot of the publications
said, 'No thank you.' And you just keep trying. And I kept asking, and I kept asking, but
not long after our surge died from the People Magazine hit I had a realization that I hated
selling products. Yeah. And you know what, I feel like it's a very honest thing to tell
folks because I started out in a service-based business, I then moved on to product-based,
and the parts that I love about a service-based business I missed. So having sold this product
I thought 'You know what, this is for somebody who really loves products and can get into
increasing the actually products.' The thing that I am the worst at is coming up with new
styles, coming up with new flavors, new types. I have no creativity in that area. So I thought,
you know, we had four styles of Bumble Bells, we needed a whole new line of jewelry, we
needed some add-ons. We were selling what I called Bumble Booties which were crocheted
little booties with bells on them. I added a couple things here and there, but I thought,
you know someone could really take this and run with it. So that's when it occurred to
me maybe I need to sell this and hand it off to somebody else and come up with another
product I might like better. I also, you can't really tell, but I'm not a big jewelry gal
either. It was kind of a really lucky thing to fall into, but it turned out that this
is not totally for me. I think I'd be much happier selling cookies because I can eat
them. Rachel: But that's very valuable and very important for people to hear because
you can go down a path where you have a good amount of success with that and realizing
'Oh, my gosh, I put in all this effort, this is successful, but the reality is this isn't
for me.' Whereas some people, even if they realized it wasn't for them, would just continue
just because. So I feel like that's a very entrepreneurial spirit of you and just from
what I know of you you're very down-to-earth, very reality based. Jill: And I had one of
the luckiest breaks anyone could ever wish or pay for. And I still thought, 'This wasn't
for me because long-term this will just crash hard.' Rachel: Interesting. So how did you
find somebody to buy your company? Jill: I started out looking on those basic websites
like Craigslist. I started posting pretty basic places. And this is going to be a little
embarrassing, but for the life of me I actually cannot remember which site I ended up selling
it on. And, hopefully, it will come to me. But it's such a fantastic site. Rachel: Was
it a business broker site? Someone was mentioning Businesses For Sale, something like that type
of site? Jill: It was kind of like that. I had had an ad up on, probably that website,
but no, this one is slightly newer, and you know what it might have just been a timing
thing. Like I had posted it on yet another website, I posted it as many places as I could
locally, I tried really hard because I thought I could meet with them in person, and I ended
up having several meetings locally. But it just so happened that a woman in California
landed upon my ad on this site that I can't remember and she contact. And after having
gone through many, many buyers who asked me for numbers and files and worksheets, and
can you give me sales projections, and past revenue, kind of giving them everything that
I had ever had, this woman said 'How much do you want for your company?' And I said
'Well I am ready and armed with every document you would ever, ever want.' And she said 'No,
no, no, how much do you want for your company?' and I told her and she said, 'Okay.' Rachel:
Just like that? Jill: Just like that. Yeah, so after nine months of meeting with people
and coming up with documents. I paid two consultants $500 to come up with a beautiful packet of
documents that made us look incredible. It made me go, 'wow, I want to buy the company.'
She didn't even request a single document. And, hey, you know what, anyone can sell a
business is what I learned in that experience. Anyone can sell a business. It just takes
the right buyer. Rachel: That's fascinating to me. So did you find out about her background?
Did she have a lot of other online stores in her background? Why was she so interested
in this particular business? Jill: She liked the website. I don't even believe she had
kids. You know what, I don't know much about her because the exchange was so quick. She
sent over some money, I sent her over some Bumble Bells, we were done! We didn't really
even have a get-to-know and she was in California. So I wished her much luck and I don't even
know what's going on now. Rachel: Oh, my gosh. Okay, well congratulations. Jill: You can,
too. Everyone can sell a business. Rachel: I think I read this was 2011. Correct? Jill:
Yes. You are good. Rachel: Well I do my research. We talked before. Jill: So much easier to
chat with you. Rachel: I wanted to switch gears a little bit. That was your second entrepreneurial
venture. And while you're doing this it sounds like you also started The Founding Moms, the
local monthly meet-up group. And this story is fascinating and I want to tell everyone
who's listening, if you want to hear this story in depth with all the good stuff, I'm
going to refer them to your TEDTalk because you TEDTalk I found so interesting, entertaining,
and I loved all of that stuff. But I don't want you to have to repeat yourself. I want
people to get a good feel for your background who might not have seen that. First of all,
how did you become a TEDTalk speaker? Jill: Real easy. There was a friend locally who
said, 'Hey, there's a TEDx organizer. People looking for speakers, and so I applied and
I said I really want to tell my story and he said let's meet for coffee and over coffee
I said, 'I want to tell everyone why moms make the best entrepreneurs' because of certain
reasons that had happened along the way building The Founding Moms, and he fortunately agreed
and was fantastic. Rachel: That's awesome. I feel like you've mentioned this a little
bit, you are, from everything I know of you, you're a networking guru. Jill: I love to
network. Rachel: You do. You're very personable. It definitely seems just like it's a natural
trait for you. Jill: Absolutely. Rachel: You said in your TEDTalk that mom's make the best
entrepreneurs because they make it up as they go. And innovation is a fancy word. I really
see, and tell me if you agree or don't agree, that your third venture, The Founding Moms,
is really built on networking. It's all about networking and connecting. Jill: It is. Rachel:
So tell us how you got this idea and executed on it because it blew up pretty much. Blew
up in a good way. Jill: You know what? It's the first business that I ever started that
I didn't intend to have this business. I was running my music management company and then
started the Bumble Bells, and I think I was pregnant with my second child and sick of
working in my home office. You can see my very messy home office. And for years I just
never left. I thought, well, e-mail, phone, why would I waste my time going to meetings?
And you're right, I'm totally an extrovert, I love to meet with people but I thought 'I'm
too busy, I'm running businesses. I'm not going anywhere.' So I think pregnant with
my second kid I had gone to a women's networking event that was the expensive type of rubber
chicken eating, suit wearing, not-for-me type of event. And I was very pregnant, it was
just too formal. I thought, 'I am desperate to connect with women who are not as formal,'
not older, they were generally older than me, and who just had babies and had their
own companies. It's so funny to say now, two and some years later, that I didn't know any,
but I didn't know any at the time. So I was on meetup.com for some reason and I thought,
'Why don't I start a coffee thing here in Oak Park, Illinois?' And I invited anybody
who wanted to just chat. So there's a local coffee shop downtown. We met. There were about
five of us at the beginning and I thought 'Oh, my God, glorious, five people!' And it
grew really fast. About six months in we were 200 strong online. And one woman came up to
me at the Oak Park meet-up, we are, by the way, four miles outside of Chicago, and she
said, 'Jill, could you start up a chapter of this in Chicago? I hate driving all the
way to Oak Park.' So I said sure and when I went to meetup.com to open up another one
I thought, 'Well, wait a second, I can open one up anywhere.' I'm from the east coast
and I had lived in LA going to grad school, so I thought why don't I start it in those
two cities and see if it works? And it did. By the way at the beginning we were called
the momtrepreneur meet-up, which no one can pronounce and I don't know why we were called
that. Once I realized about a year into doing in casually, 'Hey, I want to connect with
other women while I'm running my two businesses' I thought 'this could be a business. There
are a lot of women who want to meet-up.' That probably also contributed to 'It's time to
sell Bumble Bells. It's time to close up Paperwork Media. I need to focus on the full time because
I've never done something as big as this.' So we're two years informally. Deciding we
are not the momtrepreneur meet-up, but we're The Founding Moms. And we're at 31, soon to
be 33, cities. About 3,000 member so far. And it's awesome. Rachel: I think it's awesome,
too, because I attend the San Francisco meet-up. Jill: Do you know Stephanie? I've never given
her a hug in real life. Rachel: I do, we've actually met for coffee. She lives like 15
minutes from me. So it's great. We're both in the East Bay. It's been awesome, very valuable.
So I'm curious, when you're doing something like this, what is your business model? I
noticed recently that you launched an online community. You're growing, you're managing
all of these cities, and I know a lot of people are struggling with this. How do you make
money from it? Jill: Right. Well, this is the first business I've launched where I didn't
have a plan and I still kind of don't. I know in my heart of hearts this will be big and
a big money maker, but it's not right now. We're not really monetizing in a big way.
So we have sponsorship that covers the majority right now of our income. And this online community,
we only launched it two months ago, which will hopefully become very profitable but
it s just launched so we're just starting up. But I refuse to charge anybody who comes
to my meet-ups. So each of the Founding Moms Exchanges, which is what we call our meet-ups,
has their own host, and certain hosts in certain cities have said, 'In my city it won't work
unless I charge five bucks a head.' So for example our New York City host, she refuses
to do it unless she charges. And I think that's wonderful. She knows her city, she knows the
temperature, but in the meantime the meet-ups are just come and hang out, it's not really
monetized yet. Rachel: Right. But that's interesting to hear. I think that's how most start-ups
start. [??] I just started my newsletter, which by the way thank you I read your newsletter
tip. So I'm asking you for free advice here but I know that it applies to everyone listening,
too, how did you get your first sponsors for your newsletter? Did you approach them? Did
they approach you? Jill: Anything I ever start out doing I approach them. So I asked a couple
of companies, so long ago now I don't remember who they were. I, basically, started out asking
for very little money. And they said, 'Sure, of course, we'd love to.' And at the time
I think I had 200 people on the list, but to the sponsoring companies it was worth it
to them to go out to 200 businesses. So slowly, but surely, right now I don't believe I'm
doing much seeking. I am looking possibly to hire somebody to help me do that. But now
if you notice anybody big time in the newsletter, they've come to me and asked to be featured.
They think the list it big enough, it's starting to get noticed and we're making more money
from it, so it's really nice. Rachel: Yeah. What is that tipping point, I'm curious. At
what point did you feel like people started seeking you out versus you seeking them? Jill:
There is none. And I actually once upon a time researched and tried to find out numbers
and what's the subscriber number I'd have to hit or what's the magic open rate. I didn't
even know what an open rate was. And there doesn't seem to be one. It depends on your
industry, it depends on who you are, what you've offering. Once we hit about 500 I felt
very confident. which is funny now that we have 3,000, but at 500 I was like, 'Oh, we
are off and running!' And I can look at old e-mails and see that when I was pitching via
e-mail, which is pretty much how I pitch everybody, it just said in there 'We're 500 strong' and
it kind of read now like, 'Oh, you poor thing' but at the time I thought it was great. And
I'd get a lot of no's. I'd get like 90 no's and 1 yes all the time. Rachel: Let me ask
you, The Founding Moms, if somebody wants to get involved and start a Founding Mom in
their city is that something that they can do? Do they contact you? Jill: Oh, yes. Oh
please, yes! There's even a button on the home page of foundingmoms.com that says 'start
one'. If you just love to network, love to connect with folks, and want to turn into
a local hero in the way of entrepreneurship it really just takes e-mailing me and connecting
with me and we will get you off and running with your own meet-up page and Founding Moms
page. Rachel: Great. So how do you manage all of this? Because I noticed like, you're
checking in, like on the Facebook page of the San Francisco local moms, so we're all
connected there and you're on that, too. Are you on as part of every single city? Jill:
You know, every city is different. So you are in San Francisco where there's a Facebook
page for San Francisco. Most of our Founding Moms Exchanges don't have a Facebook page.
It's got to be created. So that's why it looks like I can be everywhere all the time. A lot
of cities are missing that. I leave a lot up to the hosts and they sort of take over
and run their exchange however they want to, which is a wonderful bonus for them, but then
I'm adjusting to how everybody's doing everything everywhere. That's kind of why we launched
the forum two months ago, because all the folks in San Francisco know each other in
San Francisco and don't realize I could tap somebody in Atlanta or Seattle or New York.
So that's why I launched the forum. But, generally speaking, I am on the computer a lot. I'm
on social media a lot. And I enjoy it, I totally enjoy it. It fuels my biz, so. Rachel: Right,
right. Connecting. I wanted to ask you also about, you have almost 12,000 Twitter followers.
How does one get that many followers? Jill: I think I've been on Twitter more than three
years now, so I was on it way early. And I was on it in the day when you could follow
a million people on someone else's list, and Twitter would not penalize you yet. I think
if you do that now they suspend your account, or do horrible things to you. I don't know.
But at the time I collected a lot of people when I didn't even understand what I was doing.
Rachel: I was so curious. Jill: It was a jump start. But you know what a lot of it is Tweeting
at other people a lot. So instead of those tweet folks who just tweet quotes or titles
to articles, that's lovely, but a lot of it has to be back and forth. and I noticed the
people who have like 50,000 followers, almost their entire feed is just back and forth with
other people. Rachel: That's good advice. So they're really engaged in relationship
building rather than just pushing information out there. Jill: Those of us who use Twitter
as a news feed or as a way to get new information, they're really annoying because it's all just
thank you so much! @soandso. It's a toss-up, so I try to do 50/50, but. Rachel: Out of
all social media which outlet have you found to be the most valuable and why? Jill: For
all businesses altogether I have found it to be the most valuable on Twitter because
I have had the most offline contacts, friendships, business relationships, sponsors, partners,
all through Twitter. I find it's much easier to contact and get response from reporters
on Twitter. But in terms of if you're seeking hits to your blogs or you're just click-through
back to your website, Facebook hands down. And I am not a huge Facebook fan, so I don't
spend a tone of time on there, and if I did maybe I'd get more out of it. Obviously, it's
like kindergarten, what you put into it you get out of it. I find that if you message
a potential reporter or sponsor on Facebook it's weird, but if you do it on Twitter it's
completely culturally acceptable to do that. So I love Twitter. I m very much an early
adopter, trying to meet new people all the time. Maybe that's why it works for me. Rachel:
That's great advice. I just read about your recent blog on IdeaMensch and are posting
and it said that you were going to be launching a two-day conference in Chicago. Is that accurate?
Jill: You know, I have a funny story about that, in terms this just relates to all marketing
and publicity. That was, it feels like it was ages ago, that was probably a year and
a half ago I was going to launch it. And in order to launch the conference I contacted
our local news station WGN in Chicago and I said, 'Can I come on and promote this conference
we're going to have.' I went on and I promoted it and I talked about tips for mom entrepreneurs.
Lovely. And they put a little ticker at the bottom that advertised the conference. We
never put the conference on. No one ever bought tickets. So the conference never actually
happened, but I got a phone call about two or three weeks after I was on WGN from NBC
Chicago that said, 'We saw you were talking on WGN about your conference, would you mind
writing for us and becoming a columnist for NBC Chicago because you look like an expert
on mom entrepreneurship? So I am to this day a columnist for NBC Chicago from something
I promoted that never happened. Rachel: I love it. That is an amazing story. Jill: You
never know. It's amazing. You never know. Rachel: Well I appreciate you sharing that
because it's funny, I was researching this yesterday and it said July 9th and it didn't
give a year. And I thought . . . Jill: When you said IdeaMensch I actually thought 'Didn't
that site shut down a year ago or something?' But I guess it's still up if you found it.
Rachel: I think it's still up. I just read another article on it about why with IdeaMensch
they needed more women on there. So I think I just read it and thought, 'Late breaking
news for my interview with Jill tomorrow.' (ha, ha!) Jill: We're not throwing a conference
any time soon. Although if I need a new writing gig we will launch a conference. There's nothing
coming up any time soon. I'm doing a lot of speaking at other conferences that other people
are putting on. Rachel: Well, that's still a great story. I wanted to ask you, you're
part of Tory Johnson's Spark and Hustle, which is a conference for mom entrepreneurs. Tell
me, how did you get involved with that? What has the result been? Jill: Well I've known
Tory, not personally, for some time. She's appeared in my newsletter, I think I've appeared
in hers. So we're friends, e-friends. And I don't think I pitched her, it was somebody
who had seen me speak at a chamber of commerce somewhere in Illinois who wrote and said,
'Hey I'm volunteering for this conference.' And I said, 'You are? Hey, you want to find
out if they need any speakers?' So she asked and I got an invite pretty much ten minutes
after she asked them. And I didn't realize she turned it into a 20 city tour this year,
so I said 'Can I do a couple cities?' and she said 'Sure!' And so I did Minneapolis
last month and I'm doing Chicago and Detroit at the end of this month. And it's a fab [inaudible
00:30:13] day for women in business. Rachel: It's coming to San Francisco next week. I
have some appointments set up, but I was debating if I should change it and try to go. What
was the result? You spoke. Did you also get to hang around and talk with a lot of the
entrepreneurs? Jill: Well, I actually was on a panel, so I don't feel like I even spoke.
It was just sort of a Q&A. And it depends, I guess, on your purpose for going. I loved
it because, as a speaker, I got a table to sell my book and I was just able to chat all
day long and say, 'Hey, we have a Founding Moms Exchange in Minneapolis. Care to join?'
So for me it was tremendous in many ways. I hope to experience the same thing in Chicago
and the same thing in Detroit, and if I could go to San Francisco I would. But I bet you
the vibe is very different in each city and I'm really looking forward to Chicago and
trying to see how different it is. Rachel: Yeah. Okay. Great. So you mentioned your book,
so I wanted to get to that, and it launched in 2012. I wanted to know what made you decide
to write a book and how long did it actually take you? All right, there it is. Jill: No
shame, people. Rachel: What made you decide to write this book and how long did it take
you to write it? Jill: I just decided upon reading Jason Fried's book Rework. If anybody
listening has not read it you must read it, it is a fantastic business book. I read it
and I thought, 'This is so fantastic, but there's nothing like this for moms or for
women in business'. It was written by two guys. So while it was very valuable I thought,
'I could do this for my membership.' So it was kind of like what you hear in the movies.
I got up in the middle of the night one night, grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and I made
a list of fifty chapters that I had in mind and I jotted all the titles down. And so the
book idea was pretty much jelled in those ten minutes. I went back to bed. I then wrote
it out. Each chapter is really not very long, they're like two pages a pop, so I just sort
of scribbled out my ideas. And the key to writing a book, really, is the editor. If
anyone is thinking a book, it's really not about the writing it's about the editor. So
I hired an editor who really helped me. The book writing took me all of six weeks, but
the book editing took many, many months or fine tuning, getting it right and then having
a graphic designer design. All the work to go into publishing the book. Rachel: So did
you have a publisher who wanted to publish the book for you? How did that process work?
Jill: Immediately upon making that list of chapters I contacted agents galore. And I
found one pretty quickly who said, 'I'd love to shop this around for you.' She spent about
a year shopping it. She is a fantastic agent, but what the publishers kept telling her was
that, 'Hey, you know, we keep looking at books in the same category and they're not doing
so well. So we're not interested.' So I thought, I could wait another year until somebody is
interested or I can do what I keep telling all entrepreneurs to do and do it myself.
But I also wanted to get it into every bookstore, nook, and cranny around the country and it's
very hard to do that without calling each bookstore as an independent publisher. So
I heard from a bookstore owner about a distributor who could distribute me all over the country,
even onto Amazon. Everywhere. I applied to the distributor and the distributor said 'We
are not going to accept any independent publishers. We don't take self-publishers.' If you have
a publishing company. So I created a publishing company, essentially and I applied as the
publishing company. So if you get the book, on the back, I don't know if you can see it
here, there's a little logo and it says Piggott Press, and I named it Piggott Press because
[inaudible 00:34:22]. It looks like it's not my company and a publisher published me. And
that's how I got in and the distributor now distributes my book. So I sort of gamed the
system. But it's totally legit and legal. Totally legit. So that's it and they told
me that in the business book world it's about a year between each book, so coming soon I'll
start writing the next one. Rachel: So that's fascinating to me. You've really worked the
system in every way. I feel like no one could ever say no, or that's not a possibility,
you would find a way, you created you own publishing company. I feel like we could talk
for ten hours at least about all of these different things but I know that we're limited
on time so I wanted to ask you one more question and then a few closing questions. What I wanted
to know is, you definitely seem like your best advocate, so have you ever hired a PR
person? Jill: Yes. Yes, I have. When I was managing, I can take you through all three
companies, when I was managing bands I used to hire publicists for them, so I was very
familiar with publicity. But I ended up doing publicity for my bands better than what the
publicists we hired were doing, so I became a publicist and that helped me quite a bit
there. So I start doing publicity from what I knew for Paperwork, doing it for the Bumble
brand. And only for a couple of big, big publications like People, I guess you'd call it hiring,
I gave them a little bit of money to try to land [inaudible 00:36:07] spot and if they
landed it I paid them. So that was really for high end, People Magazine, really major
magazines. And then for The Founding Moms the only time I have ever hired a publicist
was when my book came out, but they were more, they were called Raw Marketing, and they were
more of a marketing company than a traditional publicist, so they helped quite a bit online
. And I worked for them a couple months when the book came out and I'm back to me, myself,
and I. Rachel: What does the future hold? Where would you like to see The Founding Moms
or any other venture go? Jill: I would love to see The Founding Moms in every corner of
the universe. It doesn't sound too grandiose. Really anywhere where there are mom entrepreneurs
who need to get away from the kids or bring the kids and meet other women. There are so
many of us it's ridiculous. So I'd love to see it all over the world, as many places
as possible. And I'd like to be earning money from it one day. Some big money. But that's
pretty much where I see it. I do actually have another company in mind for the first
time in a very long time. But The Founding Moms all the way for a while. Rachel: You
sound very driven. What drives you? Jill: Honestly. I don't know. I love doing what
I do and I'm so fortunate to be able to do it. And to figure out how to make money from
nothing is quite a thrill. So, I love it. My parents were very hard working folks. They
are immigrants. They worked really hard and I think just taught me the basic value of
hard work and persistence. If anything I am persistent. Rachel: Persistent. I love it.
Jill: I don't know what drives me, but everything and everyone. Rachel: That's awesome. Thank
you. Jill, I definitely appreciate you coming on. You're so energetic and I love that you
are just so honest and candid and so glad that you started this because now I have a
whole new group of women that I can relate to. I tell my husband, I say, 'You have your
good friends and the families that your kids go to school with, but I have found my people.
Mom entrepreneurs are my people.' Jill: I feel exactly the same way. And every month
that I go it's like I'm not really running it because it's just an amazing group of women
running itself. Rachel: Right. That's awesome. So thank you. And I just want to say in closing
for anybody who's listening or watching this and you find it valuable, you can see more
videos like this with mom entrepreneurs at www.bestmomproducts.com and I'm also going
to include a link to Jill, The Founding Moms site and where they can get a copy of your
book if they are interested. HYPERLINK "http://foundingmoms.com/" http://foundingmoms.com/ gdtF hn*y gdtF h_AT
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