The New Year was full of anticipation and unanswered questions. When will the new LegalZoom.com TV commercial start airing? What does the finished commercial look like and what will it do for sales? I didn't have time to sit around think about it. I was busy trying to get my website integrated into the new fulfillment company and credit card processors I had hired. This is when I first heard the term "PCI compliance"(Payment Card Industry).  I didn't think it was any big deal, after all I had hired two large established companies whose only business was shipping products and processing credit cards everyday. Boy was I wrong, PCI compliance is the bane of small internet based businesses. It was now a race to get everything in place before the TV commercial started to air and to make things worse I didn't know exactly when that would be. The best information I had was that the commercial would start airing the end of January, which didn't give me much time.

This was a pretty scary time, I didn't know what the commercial would do to sales or even if it would air.  I had $65,000 of inventory arriving at my new warehouse and a website that wasn't working. All I could do is cross my fingers and keep pushing forward. Then I received an email from the VP or marketing for LegalZoom.com with the video clip of the finished  TV commercial attached. Wow, the commercial looked great! The Hotdog Ez Bun Steamer was on screen for almost 22 seconds of the 30 second spot. Based on the finished commercial it was time to celebrate, that night my wife and I went out for a nice dinner for the first time in several years. I was sure that within a few weeks we would be selling 25 to 50 units a day and our financial future would be secure. I turned my attention back to getting the connection between my website and warehouse working.

By the end of January my manufacturer had come through and I had all the inventory I needed. My new LegalZoom.com TV commercial was scheduled to be phased in replacing the old commercial over the next 90 days. All I had to do was to get the website connection working and wait for the sales to come in. By the middle of February I started getting reports that friends and family were seeing the TV commercial, but instead of the 25 units per day I was expecting we only saw our sales increase by 2 or 3 units a days. This was going to a big problem because I had based all of the business projections on the assumption that 25 units per day would be the minimum level of sales. Once again my most conservative sales estimations were way off. By the time March rolled around sales were approaching 5 units a days, a far cry from the generating the projected cash flow I needed, needless to say and I wasn't sleeping at all. We had sold about $5,000 in product, but the $65,000 invoice was coming due. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that math just wasn't going to work. I had to raise $60,000 and fast.

Fortunately I started working with SCORE. over a year earlier and knew they could help me get a SBA loan. If you're starting a new business and not familiar with SCORE you really need to look them up, they can be a great asset to any small business. My SCORE counselor was incredibly helpful and he reviewed my updated business plan and helped me file for a small business loan. Luckily I had started the 3 month process back in December and was approved for a $25,000 SBA loan. Now all I had to do is raise another $35,000 to pay my manufacturer, so I contacted my primary investors and made arrangements to sell off another 7% of the business. My manufacturer got paid and it was time to head off to the 2010 International Housewares Show in Chicago.