Lesson #2: Make The Best With What You Have

“I didn’t have a video background, but my husband and I borrowed video equipment and started to shoot scenes on a tabletop in my basement,” says Aigner-Clark. “I put a puppet on my hand and plopped my cat down in front of the camera. My husband and I used our home computer to edit our first video.”

Aigner-Clark never expected to be running her own company one day, let alone a company that was at the top of its industry. But that is exactly what she found herself doing when her homemade children’s educational video became a wildly successful hit.

She had borrowed video equipment from a friend in order to make the very first Baby Einstein video. She had used her own basement as the set for the film. And, she had invested $18,000 of her own money into the project to develop, design, and package the product. It was money she had taken out of her and her husband’s lifelong savings, but together, they had deemed it a worthwhile investment.

Aigner-Clark did not go out in search of the best videographer she could find. Nor did she seek out bank loans or venture capital investments. Aigner-Clark wanted to make the video with whatever means she had available to her at that time. Whether it was her own time, money, or resources, Aigner-Clark was determined to do it on her own, and save costs in the meantime.

It was a successful strategy. “In the first year, with one title, we made $100K in revenue,” says Aigner-Clark. “This was nearly five times my teaching salary.” But, even as the company continued to grow, Aigner-Clark insisted on maintaining her hands-on and frugal approach to running her business.

Under Aigner-Clark’s leadership, the company never had more than eight employees working for it. Even when sales crept into the $20 millions, Aigner-Clark maintained her small tight knit family of staff. She personally did everything from designing the popular Baby Einstein logo – rather than hire a professional graphics designer – to packaging and sending out the videos. A friend of hers helped design the package for the product, while yet another of Aigner-Clark’s friends helped her put together the music for the videos. Those two friends stayed with the company until the end.

“By the time we sold the company in 2001, we had revenue of over $20 million in sales for the year, with just ten videos and a handful of books,” says Aigner-Clark. “The company was still just my husband and me – we had five employees and a couple of consultants.”

Aigner-Clark understood the importance of keeping costs low and using all her available resources in the early days, until her business was well established. She leaned on her family and friends for support, and carried out much of the operations by herself. But, it was in doing so that was able to get the company off the ground and running even when others might not have thought it possible.



Lesson #2: Make The Best With What You Have

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