The

Entrepreneurial

Code

Lessons from an

Ivy League Entrepreneur

Chapter Thirty-Four

After all the work preparing their marketing material, the mailer went out as easily as pushing a button.  They just delivered the files to their printer along with the mailing list they purchased.  It was that simple.  Since the envelopes were sent at the bulk-rate to keep down costs, they expected students to begin receiving the materials within two to four weeks depending on where they lived in the country.

With a sense of relief, Johnny and his partners began focusing on other logistics of the program.  For example, Johnny identified a company to outsource the delivery of one million door stickers and one million register stickers to businesses near college campuses.  The cost to their company was 10 cents per sticker.  For $150,000, they could blanket VISA merchants across the country with advertisements that proclaimed “College Card Accepted Here!” 

The same week their mailer launched, Johnny began training their 10 new customer service operators, who ranged in age from 25 to 65 years old.  Ironically, Johnny, Maverock, and Abe were only 22 years old, making them the youngest people in the office.  Johnny gave his new staff an overview of the company’s background and its lofty aspirations for the College Card.  He painted a picture of NCEB as an entrepreneurial organization that provided an important service to college students.  The people they hired seemed equally enthusiastic to be part of a new company on the cusp of success.

Since they had asked students to respond to the mailer by May 15^th, they had a very good sense when they would begin to receive incoming calls.  Johnny tried to prepare his staff to handle any questions they could encounter.  Unfortunately, it never occurred to him that he needed to prepare his staff for angry calls from students, universities, or state Attorneys General.

During the week following the mailer, Johnny started to receive intermittent phone calls from new customers.  The first few calls were greeted with a lot of excitement and muffled cheering around the office.  It felt like the start of something big.  He tried not to get excited, but he couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear when the first call came through.  It was a student verifying that she could use the card at off-campus restaurants.  “Yes,” the operator responded. “Any off-campus restaurants wherever VISA is accepted.”  

 

Copyright  2005 by Chris Cononico
All rights reserved. No part of this manuscript may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.