Mining Daytime TV for Ideas

I probably watch way too much daytime t.v. Occasionally, I can justify it by telling myself that it's for "educational purposes". In any event, home entrepreneurship seems to be one of the hot topics of the moment. Oprah has done a few shows on kitchen table moguls, as has Montel.

If you can catch a repeat of Montel's February 8, 2007 show, I recommend it. I particularly enjoyed Michele Hoskins' story.

Her maternal line had handed down a secret recipe for a honey, cream syrup for three or four generations. Ms. Hoskins decided that rather than just hand the recipe down to her daughter, she preferred to hand down a business: so she brewed up a batch in her basement, labelled the bottles and convinced her local supermarket to do a trial sales run by handing out free samples and a free case to the market itself. She then had friends and relatives buy like crazy and purchased the remaining bottles herself as a customer. This created buzz for her product and the manager decided to actually purchase a few cases and then to permanently stock her pancake syrup. From this humble beginning, a million dollar business was born.

I love stories like this.

Check out the show highlights at www.montelshow.com under "past shows" type Feb. 8, 2007.