Laying the ground work to support a national TV commercial was a real shot in the dark. There were so many unknowns; how many units do I need in stock, what website capabilities do I need, how am I going to ship out all the orders. The only information I had to go on was based on the sales increase caused by a single article on page 19 in our local newspaper. That one local article resulted in 30 extra units sales over the next 3 days. How do you extrapolate sales resulting from a single local newspaper article to sales resulting from a national TV commercial? My best working guess was that sales would start out at about 25 units a day and grow from there. I knew that if I was personally shipping out that many units a day that's all I would be doing. I wouldn't have any time left to work on the strategic issues and product development. It was time to hire a fulfillment company.

I spent several weeks researching various fulfillment companies. I wanted a company with locations in multiple states and one that had experience with direct response TV products. Once I decided on one I turned my attention to beefing up my website. Up until this time I had been maintaining my own website on GoDaddy.com, now it seemed like it was time to hire a professional. This was another case where having my own network of people to tap into was useful. I reconnected with some of the marketing people I used to work with and got the name of a good programmer. Then I turned my attention to inventory, this was my biggest dilemma because Chinese new year was quickly approaching. If you haven't imported products from China before you probably wouldn't know that manufacturing completely shuts down for most of the month of January during Chinese new year. The best information I had was that the LegalZoom.com TV commercial would start airing at the end of January. That meant either I  commit to a production run in December or I wouldn't have any inventory until almost April. There comes a point in every entrepreneur's venture when they have to take a leap of faith and this was mine.

By the time Christmas came I had signed a contract with a fulfillment company, hired a webmaster and issued a PO for a container full of product. I was on the hook for over $100,000 and had made all of  those commitments without seeing the finished commercial or even knowing exactly when it was going to air. For all I knew at this point LegalZoom could have decided to scrap it. I remember hearing the story of how Andrew Carnegie gambled everything he owned and everything he could borrow to start the first US steel plant. Somehow he managed to keep his factory going under tough economic times until he started turning a profit, within a few years he would be one of America's richest men. Everyone that has started a business from scratch at some point had to take a gamble. By December 2009 all my chips were in the middle of the table and I was doubling down.