Judy Johnston, Co-founder & Publisher Blue Lake Children's Publishing & Magazines for Today's Kids
How would you define what it is to be an entrepreneur?
Being an entrepreneur is about bringing ideas to life. Some people are able to create businesses all by themselves. I was very lucky 20 years ago to find my creative partner Rosie Welch. Without her, none of my “great ideas” would have gotten very far.
How did you get started as an entrepreneur? What in life prepared you most?
I had dreamed of creating children’s products, but like many would-be-entrepreneurs, I was very occupied with my “real job” at HP. The first company that Rosie and I started was the result of an idea we had for HP that HP did not want to do. At that point, our good friend Irit Hillel stepped in to say “Let’s do it!” She is from a family of entrepreneurs, and to her this was second nature. My parents were public school teachers and excellent role models, but in a completely different way. What prepared me the most for entrepreneurialism was being encouraged by my parents to get a part-time job at 15. A minimum-wage job gives you a ground-up look at how business works, and prepares you to deal with all types of situations. My parents also gave us the belief that we could always support ourselves through work, and that allowed me to take the risk of quitting HP – I knew I could always get another good job.
What is your philosophy and motivation as an entrepreneur?
I am motivated by products that I believe in. An idea must also be the foundation for profit-making, but I am not the type of entrepreneur that would start a business solely because of the profit potential. Blue Lake Children’s Publishing is the perfect match: building early reading skills is rewarding work, and building the long-term character assets and subscription revenue model is creating more shareholder value that any of our previous ventures.
Given the OEN Entrepreneur Awards "rebel" or "renegade" theme, describe how you faced up to and overcame the challenges you faced as an entrepreneur? Can you provide examples?
At Blue Lake Children’s Publishing, we applied our first outside investment to the “proven” subscriber acquisition technique of direct mail offers. When that did not produce the anticipated result, the team relied on our instinct that today’s savvy Mom was more drawn to electronic communication, and also would be more likely to subscribe if she learned about us from a trusted source. The veteran publishing advisors we had were not so sure, but we decide to follow our instinct. Within three months we stopped all traditional paid marketing and switched to online outreach, customer referral programs and selected PR. We saw results immediately.
What advice do you have for to someone who wants to be an entrepreneur?
You can only do so much planning… at some point you need to just start the business! With today’s online storefronts, it is so much easier for the small business to get attention. If you can quit your day job, your focus and your need to succeed will increase your chances of success. If you really can’t quit, you need to find a way to carve out significant focused time or you might end up being all talk, no business.