Entrepreneurial Success From Believing You're a Player

“When people asked me what I would do if this didn’t work out in six months, I was shocked. I never doubted it. I was playing the game for real.”                                                                  Sharon Leone 

To become successful at anything you must see yourself as a legitimate player who is more than entitled to sit at the table—or to start your own table. When you begin, you may not know all the rules of the game or all the other players or even what all the cards mean, but you can learn it all with practice and perseverance . That’s exactly what Sharon Leon did. 

When Sharon was attending the University of California at Berkeley, her friends called her the “candy girl” because of her enthusiasm for her work in a local candy store near campus. After graduating Sharon worked for a while in commercial real estate, but she missed the happy atmosphere of the candy store. Besides, her appetite had been whetted for owning a business. 

Sharon tried to buy the candy store where she had worked—three times. On her third and final attempt, Sharon tried a new approach. “I wanted to open up candy stores like theirs all over the state near college campuses. The owners liked the idea but wanted to maintain ownership of the new stores themselves. Even though they had forty other businesses, they wouldn’t sell me the candy store. They said they would rather kill the business than sell it.” After three tries, Sharon realized that particular game was closed.  

When she couldn’t create a way to buy into the candy business, Sharon decided to sell candy from her home to corporations instead of to individuals. She had never heard of the terms “premiums” or “ad specialties” and didn’t realize she was entering a new game in the field of promotions. She began by approaching a chocolate company to make candy for her with corporate logos on it. She started out small, spending $500 for six chocolate molds. “I had hand-written labels. I took terrible pictures and sent them to people, but I didn’t know they were terrible then. Even if I’d had the money, I wouldn’t have known how to use it wisely. I wouldn’t have known what I wanted from a brochure or what identity I wanted to present.” 

Sharon started talking to people at large corporations about buying candy with their company logo on it. She approached realtors, the University of California, all kinds of companies that seemed good candidates to her. Many of them bought her candy. She did her marketing homework by reading the local business and community newspapers. If she read about a company that she hadn’t heard of, she researched it. “I felt I had no right to call on a company unless I knew what their logo looked like and what they did.” 

Her big break came when Visa gave her an order for $16,000—62,500 embossed chocolate coins. Still working out of her house, Sharon bought an embossing machine and called on her parents and her five brothers and sisters to help. It took them three weeks to emboss, wrap, and ship the chocolate coins. From there sales took off. Sharon sold 117,000 coins in her first year.  She moved out of her house to a 700-square-foot office and expanded to double the size two years later. She quit counting coins that year when she broke the one-million mark.  

After the birth of her first child, Sharon and her husband bought a home with space for her business so she could run it from there rather than put her daughter into daycare. During the hectic holiday crunch she rents space outside the home. “I realized that since I own the business, I can do what works best for me. However, I put in six years of long hours and hard work to grow it to this stage. If I hadn’t been so focused, I could have easily quit in the second year. But then I would never have known how easy it was going to be as I learned more about this business and how to deal with peak seasons.” 

Key points of Sharon’s story:

1. Do something that you like. Sharon left the commercial real estate business because she missed the happy atmosphere around selling candy.
2. If your first idea and efforts don’t pan out, look for a different angle. When Sharon couldn’t buy the candy store, she thought about selling candy to corporations.
3. Do it even if you don’t know how. Sharon knew the candy store business, but not corporate “ad specialties” business. She researched businesses and learned along the way.
4. Know your customer. Sharon was right in thinking she needed to know at least what her potential companies did and what their logo looked like in order to sell her candy coins to them.
5. Stay with it. Sharon found the second year difficult. Had she quit then she never would have felt the joy of her success.

 Have fun, 

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