Posted Under: Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Our Heroes

Today we are talking to LeeAnn Piazzola the next guest under the “Our Heroes” series. LeeAnn, a mother of five, worked as an Account Manager for NBC Universal for the last 8 ½ years maintaining a client list worth nearly $10 million. After loosing her best friend, father in law, and ex-husband LeAnn found it difficult to focus on her career as well as spend time with her kids while working 14 hours a day. She and her sister started DiaperBuds, when a patent to their invention was granted. Today, her company is growing along with her joy of following her dream.  Let’s dig deeper into her success story…

DD: Who are you and what kind of corporate job were they at?

LP: My name is LeeAnn Piazzola. I am a 50-year-old mother of five who left a corporate position as an Account Manager for NBC Universal in 2006. I spent the last 8 ½ years of my career with NBC, where I maintained a client list worth almost 10 million dollars in billings to a roster of very high profile clients such as General Motors, Toyota/Lexus, P&G, Verizon and others. Prior to that, I worked at ABC as well as Katz Communications in similar capacities. In total, I spent 28 years working for media companies selling time to large advertising agencies for major clients.

DD: What made you leave the job? When did you realize that you wanted to be an entrepreneur & why?

LP: Between late 2006 and early 2007, I experienced a succession of losses in my life, starting with the loss of my closest and dearest girlfriend (after a long and grueling cancer struggle) in November, my father-in-law in December (also to cancer, but a swift, “hit you between the eyes” case), and lastly, the sudden and tragic death of my ex-husband in March at 52 years of age that ‘rocked’ my 2 teenage sons’ world. Recovering from these losses was not easy and it made concentrating on my job very challenging. Everything was taking me longer to accomplish and I found myself struggling to get up in the morning and dreading the routine and monotony of my schedule, not to mention the fact that my kids (4 now home) became increasingly insecure and in need of my attention, which I could not give them because I had a job to do. In short, I felt trapped.

I decided to take a leave of absence to see if I/we could handle being home, both emotionally and financially. After 2 weeks of being home with my family, I knew I wasn’t going to return to corporate life, no matter what the cost. It was time. I spent the better part of a year, cooking, cleaning, carpooling (the 3 dreaded C’s), and giving myself a chance to decompress.  It didn’t take me very long for me to realize that I had to do more. While it was wonderful being there for my kids and getting my house in the order that I always wanted, getting myself in shape and always having a great dinner on the table at night, after a while, one day seemed to string right into the next, and I began to feel intellectually boring and bored.

My sisters and I (almost on a lark) had applied to a patent on a wonderful product that my sister invented in 2005. In July of 2007 (almost a year to the day that I took my leave) I received a call from the patent attorney telling me that our patent had been granted. My sisters and I had a meeting and decided that since they were still working at corporations in very demanding jobs that I would try to get our product off the ground. We decided to pool our money, start a company, and that’s when ‘DiaperBuds’ were born. I hired an engineering company to create prototypes, a marketing company to help us ‘brand ourselves’, an ad agency to create graphics and I began my search for vending sources. What was supposed to take us one year, took us almost 3.  We conducted focus groups, packaging test, product tests and a consumer home use test. Our product was launched on July 19^th, 2010!

DD: What did you do to break the corporate jail? How did you prepare for the employee to entrepreneur transition?

LP: Ironically, I did not ‘break’ the corporate jail, the corporate jail broke me! I was literally unable to recover from my losses while I was trapped in a 14-hour day and a schedule of commuting, and unending deadlines. If I would have stayed, I would have completely ‘broken down’. I had no choice. I didn’t even realize how jailed I was until I was free.

My preparation from employee to entrepreneur came in the form of reading. I bought several books on how to launch a successful business; I read everything and anything I could about other women who have made the same kind of transition. I relied on professionals such as my marketing company to guide me in the right direction, and many of the decisions I made, I made from instinct. If it felt right, I did it. If something didn’t make sense to me, I found another way. My corporate experience in dealing with people enabled me to ‘weed’ out those that were trustworthy from those that were not. My negotiation skills definitely helped me avoid spending money wastefully, though one thing that I did not do well was to seek out the many free services available to budding businesses. If I had to do it again, I’d rely more on the many free services that are available to startup businesses today. But hindsight is usually 20/20, right? The companies that I hired to help get us off the ground provided legitimacy to our idea and gave us the confidence to continue moving forward. For me, my support team has been a critical part of my motivation…having people to bounce ideas off of; having differing points of view available to me has been invaluable. Working in a vacuum can be a very dangerous thing.

DD: What are your suggestions for aspiring entrepreneurs?

LP: 1. My best suggestion to aspiring entrepreneurs would be keep a notebook of everything that you are thinking prior to launching your biz and during the entire process. This is a good idea for your own inspiration as well as your own protection. Next, research what is going on in your particular industry…who are the players and what are they doing. Most importantly, you need to ask yourself…does what I ‘m doing solve a problem and answer an unfilled need in the market? What is my competitive advantage? What am I offering that is not currently on the market?  Keep detailed notes, can’t stress enough.

2. The next thing that I would do is to tap into some of the free services at your local Small Business Administration, or library…investigate groups such as SCORE (retired professionals) and such that are available to coach you through your process (and there are many).

3. Read books…there are a multitude of books that can give you a framework to start your business.

4. Investigate getting a patent….a simple search on USPTO.gov can get you started. If you decide to pursue a patent, make sure that you are comfortable with your patent attorney, there are many out there and they are not all the same!!!

5. Start an outline of a business plan to give you further structure, even if it’s a handwritten set of notes. Don’t be intimidated by the ‘business plan’. There’s plenty of help out there to help you get a great one written.

6. And the best advice that I can give…only work with people who are ‘believers’ in your dream. Starting a business can be a very scary, discouraging process if you surround yourself with people who are not supporters. I’m not saying that they need to agree with everything you do, healthy debate is wonderful and great ideas usually come out of it. But at the end of the day, you need to surround yourself with people who not only believe in your product/service, but also believe in YOU!

DD: How are you doing and how do you feel now?

LP: Our product, DiaperBuds, launched via our website on July 19^th, 2010. We are doing limited advertising (all we can afford at this time) and since our launch, we have gotten over 28,000 unique visitors who are spending time on our site and getting to know us. We’ve added a $1 sample pack to our shopping cart and the orders are flying in. The feedback that we are getting from consumers that are using DiaperBuds is wonderful. Our goal is to get as many people familiar with our product as possible…get the buzz going. We are embarking on a campaign to be picked up at other online sites as well as in retail stores. We will be sold on Amazon.com as well as Diapers.com by the end of this year and there are other exciting deals in the works!.

We are not making money yet, and will probably not be profitable for quite sometime, but I can honestly say that I have never felt more fulfilled, nor have I had as much fun creating this business. All my years of corporate life and making a healthy salary cannot compare to how good I feel about starting this business.

DD: LeeAnn Piazzola everyone! I second her suggestion of surrounding yourself with believers, not those who simply agree with everything you do or say, but the real supporters who wouldn’t mind arguing with you or telling you the truth.

Success to all!