Page 45 - Cityview Jan-Feb 2017

“...I would offer that samecounsel to entrepreneurs today.You’ve got to commit 100% on day one if you are going to be successful.”Fence company, and it was one of those calls I’ll always remember. I got passed around on the phone for maybe 30 minutes before nally reaching the assistant to the vice president of sales.I explained to her that I had this distributing company and that I’d like to buy from her. And she said this is really interesting, this concept of you buying from us. Why don’t you writeus a letter and maybe in six months or a year, we might call you back. I was intrigued by how somebody could be that arrogant to a potential customer. And it turned out, two things: (1) they only sell through franchise dealerships, and (2) they had a patent. But the patent was going to expire in August of 1990 and this was 1989. So I bought one of their systems from a local dealer— they charged me $850 for it. There are two parts to an invisible fence. Thereis a receiver that the dog wears that emits a mild correction—we never use the ‘s’ word. There is also a transmitter that sends a signal along a wire. Well, the receiver I couldn’t open up because it was waterproof and sealed, but the transmitter just had a snap-o lid. So,I snapped o the lid, went inside the unit, and noticed that there just weren’t that many parts to this device. They charged $450 for just that half.Korda: So you were intrigued?Boyd: Yes. I took it to a friend of mine here in Knoxville that was in the electronics components business and asked him to add up the cost of all the parts. Two weeks later, he called me back, told me that in this $450 device there is $13 of components. That was my brilliant break-through, but like every other businessperson that you will ever meet knows, coming up with the idea is the easy part. It’s what youdo with it a er the fact that counts. So, the same person also introduced meto an engineer, who in the evenings and on the weekends said that he would help design my rst product for $30,000, which may not sound like a lot, but at the time, a er six years of staying in $18 hotels and selling outof the back of a Dodge Maxi-van with no air conditioning and no radio it sounded like the whole world. I told him the net worth on my balance sheet was $26,000. I have absolutely no idea where the cash was, but that’s what the balance sheet said. So I obviously wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t take the bet, which seems easy today...Korda: So you bet everything you had on this...Boyd: More than I knew that I could put my hands on—on the one idea.Korda: Well, well let me ask something. You were how old?Boyd: At that time, I was 29 when I bought that rst unit to dissect. I was 31 when we actually started selling the products in 1991. I was married—my wife was a court reporter, and I had a two-year-old son at home, Thomas.Korda: Would the Randy Boyd of today counsel the Randy Boyd back then before the decision was made put everything you have, everything you own, your entire net worthinto this?Boyd: Absolutely. Yeah, and Iwould offer that same counsel to entrepreneurs today. I work with alot of entrepreneurs and too often they are hesitant to bet everything. They want to have a plan-b, ormaybe they are going to move into entrepreneurship step-by-step. You’vegot to commit 100% on day one if you are going to be successful.Korda: That was a bold move for a young man.Boyd: So, my goal was to sell 100 units a month for $250. And I was going to sell it as a do-it-yourself item to retailers, not the franchise model. It turns out that the marketing for that model worked out really well. Twelve other companies got into the business at the same time I did, but they all copied Invisible Fence’s franchise model. My selling to retail-with the do-it-yourself method turned out to be a break through idea.Korda: What was the result?Boyd: Instead of 100 units in the rst month, we sold 3,000. We sold one million dollars-worth of product in the rst six months, ve million the next year, nine million, and then so on. Today, we’ll do about 400 million in sales.Korda: So a er a few years you bought the Invisible Fence company?Boyd: In 2006, I was out-selling Invisible Fence about 10:1, and I was able to go back and buy the original company, so now the Invisible Fence Company brand is our brand as well.Korda: So, the people that turned you down now work for you?Boyd: The people that said no to me at that time had actually sold the company to some private equity group, and I bought it from them. There was a little bit of pleasure in being able to nally buy that company that said no to me, and I guess if they had it all to do over again, they would have probably sold me a territory, but it all worked out.JANUARY FEBRUARY 2017 43