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I'm sure there's a lot more to this business than we can know from this fairly sunny writeup, but always good to hear about businesses that succeed outside of t
by jasonshen 9y ago
I'm sure there's a lot more to this business than we can know from this fairly sunny writeup, but always good to hear about businesses that succeed outside of tech on HN. A couple business lessons I took away from this account:
1) Know your market - she was a teacher and deeply understood the pain of finding ways to engage students in a hands-on way.
2) Hustle: "she hand-wrote tens of thousands of letters to teachers. She followed up by driving to 60 teacher supply stores."
3) Capitalize on your hits - their first really popular product was a book on health and nutrition called "My Body" that sold more copies than there are teachers in the United States and still sells today.
4) Evolve the business: as technology became more popular, they started making materials geared around tech and their 2nd big product was "Technology for Terrified Teachers"
- jlebrech 9y agohustling like Ray Kroc
- jedberg 9y agoAlthough she seems to be much less caustic than Ray.
- aliasxneo 9y agoThis is pretty cool - my spouse is home schooling our children and they absolutely love the "My Body" book. My 5 year-old was actually teaching me things the other day.
- sireat 9y agoThe writup is sunny because it is the classic "local done good" story written by a local paper. It is an inspirational story. Just remember this business started in late 70s. This is not some get rich quick story.