Eat Shrink And Be Merry

Hello! Janet and Greta are so busy taping TV and creating recipes for Reader’s Digest that they seldom have time to blog anymore. So, you’re stuck with The Wealthy Barber! I thought that every so often, over the next few months, I’d share some of my favourite Janet-and-Greta stories.
Oh, where to begin? Here’s a classic “Greta moment.” Soon after launching Looneyspoons in Canada back in 1996, we made the decision to self-publish south of the border, as well. It was a tough decision. We had very little marketing money (the sisters’ Canadian sales were still modest) and the U.S. market is highly competitive. Plus, the media tends to be much more celebrity-centred. I knew that Americans would love the cookbook but, frankly, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to get their attention.
Right after the U.S. release, Greta called me with a “fantabulous” idea. She was on tour in the US and that morning had read an interesting article in USA Today. Amazon.com, the now-famous but then just-starting-out seller of books over the internet, was hosting a very unusual fundraiser that upcoming Saturday. They were going to auction off a number of celebrity-related items with all of the proceeds going to charity. Included among those items was a lunch with the Queen of Book Sales, none other than Oprah herself! Greta reasoned, quite logically I thought, that if she bought the lunch and Oprah had a chance to hear the sisters’ amazing story (see Eat, Shrink & Be Merry! introduction), that she may well invite them on her show. Remember, we were just starting out and had very little capital. Yet, this seemed like a good risk to take, so I told Greta she could bid up to $5,000 US. Remember, too, that back then very few people were even on the World Wide Web. So, Greta was very confident that $5,000 would be more than enough money to win the auction lunch.
The bidding ran from 9 am that Saturday until noon hour. Greta was on her own at the office and was monitoring bids every second. At 11:55 am I phoned Greta from my son’s hockey game to get an update. “We’re winning!!!” Greta screamed into the phone. “It’s so exciting…only four minutes to go!”
“Fantastic!” I responded. “What’s our bid?”
“Fourty-three thousand dollars!” was Greta’s response. “But, that’s my limit.”
I’ve heard of going over budget but holy smokes! Thankfully, as I’m not even sure we had $43,000, a science-fiction novelist outbid Greta with 10 seconds to go. Greta was bitter, but at least she still had the shirt on her back.