Page 88 - The Magic of Tiny Business

Chapter Five  Be Ready for Takeoff

and I knew that in April, Oprah would be doing her very
first Earth Day show to coincide with the annual Earth
Day event (the same one we launched at seventeen years
before!). And so April became our target month.

The Oprah Effect

Nancy activated her network, finding publicist Ann-
Marie Nieves, who had a line into someone on the show
and who “got” what we were about. We prepped and
waited in ready position. Our narrative was in place and
we had a warehouse full of bags, but there were only two
of us in the office, one phone line, a fax line, and our brand
new, just integrated, scalable cloud platform. We were as
ready as we could be—but still not knowing how ready we
needed to be.

We got a “maybe” in early April. Then the show pro-
ducers called to request samples only seventy-two hours
before the show was going live. We used the fastest UPS
service to ship our product out and continued to wait.
Being invited to send product still wasn’t confirmation
we’d make it onto the show, but we were getting closer.
Then we got the “yes” call. ECOBAGS would be on the
show in less than thirty hours visible to an audience of
millions!

My mom came to my house, as did my Oprah-watching
neighbor. I cannot remember if my husband was in the
room. He was probably at work. We turned on the TV
and I saw my brand on national TV on The Oprah Winfrey

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