Chances are, you were raised on TV. You think of Mike Brady as
your father figure and you have memories of being stranded on an
island with seven lunatic castaways. So it shouldn't be a
surprise if you've considered expanding your business--into
show business.
You're not alone. Martha Stewart, with her billion-dollar
self-named business, isn't the only entrepreneur to go
Hollywood. Take the Generation Xer who went from throwing dinner
parties and selling antiques to hosting Lifetime's Next Door
With Katie Brown. Or flip over to E! Entertainment and catch
Rachel Ashwell's Shabby Chic, a decorating show that
grew out of a store stocked with refurbished furniture.
Succeeding in particular are entrepreneurs who have how-to
skills and a flair for the visual. TV has been very good to
two Philadelphia furniture refurbishers and wiseacres, Ed Feldman,
46, and Joe L'Erario, 45. Their shows, Furniture to Go
and Men in Tool Belts, are fixtures on The Learning
Channel.
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"The fame is the base," says Feldman. "My salary
for doing the show is less than 50 percent of my total salary, but
the constant exposure allows me to make the other
choices."
Other choices, indeed. Known primarily as the Furniture Guys,
Feldman and L'Erario use their Web site (http://www.furnitureguys.com) to
hawk the shows, their national radio program and a book, as well as
Furniture Guys T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, hats, touch-up wood
markers and, of course, Furniture Guys Official Citristrip
Stripping Kit. Altogether, about $1.2 million in annual sales.
Other entrepreneurs have been equally successful in stretching
their shows onto store shelves. You can order workbooks from the
host of The Christopher Lowell Show on the Discovery
Channel. In 2001, you'll be able to find Christopher
Lowell's line of paints, which Lowell, 44, aims at women, in
grocery stores or read his decorating magazine, You Can Do
It. And Lowell's Web site receives two mil-lion hits a
month.
Colin Cowie is another telepreneur spreading his name around. He
hosts Everyday Elegance with Colin Cowie on American Movie
Classics' Romance Classics, organizes extravagant weddings,
writes books (Colin Cowie's Weddings, Little
Brown; and Effortless Entertaining with Colin Cowie,
HarperCollins), and has been a contributing editor for In
Style, Eating Well and Honeymoon magazines.
But an entrepreneurial showbiz whiz has to start somewhere.
Feldman had a small business fixing furniture for stores, while
L'Erario owned a refinishing studio. Lowell was a lighting and
costuming designer on Broadway who later opened a Hallmark store in
Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and then ran an interior design center in
Solon, Ohio, teaching more than 3,000 students the art of dressing
up a down room. Cowie, 38, owns a Los Angeles-based lifestyle
business. Like many television viewers, these entrepreneurs
believed there was nothing good on TV.
"We watched the Bob Vilas of the world sell out," says
Lowell, of the handyman TV host, "and we watched Martha
ramming product down your throat for the last two years."
Says Feldman, "I realized the how-to shows on TV don't
teach anything the average person would ever use." Feldman
wondered who wanted to watch "some phony hosts who pretend to
do work their team of contractors is doing while you're not
watching."
Meanwhile, Cowie wasn't watching TV as much as he was
avoiding being on it. A slew of cable channels gave him offers,
"but they were Mickey Mouse how-to shows with an $18,000
budget. We spend $18,000 to edit [Everyday Elegance],"
sniffs Cowie, whose show costs about $70,000 per episode.
How to get noticed? Cowie threw parties for celebrities and was
a guest on talk shows. Feldman and L'Erario's local PBS
station let them run three-minute spots between shows before they
got their own program. And Lowell spent $100,000 filming his
lectures and editing them into a pilot.
But it isn't easy to make it. Says Lowell, "Being
entertaining is the number-one ingredient. Nobody wants to watch
your glue gun warm up."
And once you're on television, your job of marketing your
business has only just begun. Cowie reports that his day starts at
5 a.m., talking to East Coast vendors and that he finishes work
about midnight. "Keep your day job," is his advice.
"Television and business do not necessarily work; they
collide, actually," says Lowell. "I negotiate all my
relationships with vendors and trade-outs. I handle all of my
viewer mail. I control the input and output that's central to
my show."
Holding on to your own vision is crucial from the moment you
pitch your idea, advises Feldman. "Don't think about what
the executives might want to hear. Be yourself."
Then maybe you'll have memories from real life, instead of
episodes of from Friends and Ally McBeal. Because if
you land your own TV show, you may never have time to watch
television again.
Geoff Williams is a frequent contributor to Entrepreneur.
He was on national television once, as an ill-fated guest on
The Love Connection.
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