Page 221 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

appreciation and demand for what I was offering.

Karen Starr
Hazel Tree Interiors
Akron, Ohio

Even with our excellent credit history, 2010 was a bad time in banking to
ask for money. We didn’t need much, but we couldn’t swing it completely
on our own. My husband Jon and I needed a small credit line to lease the
building where we planned to house our interior design and framing
business. Unfortunately, the bank said no.

Later that day, Jon was on the phone with the landlord of the building,
telling him that we just weren’t going to be able to make it work and that he
could release the building to the other interested party. As I heard him
saying those words on the phone, I had an incredible surge of hope, and I
remember shouting, “Jon, no! We have to give it another shot! Tell him we
just need a few more days to try again. We’ll have to go back in to the bank
and make them hear us out. If they’ll just sit down and listen, they will
believe in us.”

It totally worked! The bank did hear our plea, and we eventually got what
we needed to get going. Two years in, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. But
we almost accepted the fact that it wasn’t meant to be and carried on with
our lives. I am so glad we put in more effort. It meant everything to us to
give it one more passionate plea.

David Fugate
LaunchBooks Literary Agency
Encinitas, California

For me it was when I signed a big client after flying out to their corporate
offices, making a pitch, and getting a tour of the grounds. When I got the
call from his marketing VP that they wanted to go with me over a couple
other agents they had met, that was the moment when I knew LaunchBooks
was going to work. Truth be told, I didn’t even know that I had any doubts
about it working before that call, because I had been an agent for more than
twelve years already and knew what I was doing. But because of the way
my employment worked at the old agency, I literally had to leave with
nothing—no income stream whatsoever from the 1,000 books I had sold
while I was there—so I was literally starting from scratch. But when I got