Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Lorie Line, of Lorie Line Music of Wayzata, remembers the day the CEO of Musicland called.
She had borrowed $2,500 from her husband, traveled to California to produce her own album of piano music, and convinced a few small distributors to start selling it after big retailers turned her down. Buoyed by her first royalty check of $350, she had just quit her $40-a-day job playing the piano in Dayton’s department stores.
“The Mall of America was under construction” in the early 1990s, she said, “and one day the CEO of Musicland visited the store and said, ‘What’s the best-selling item?’ and the employees said, ‘We don’t have her. Everyone wants Lorie Line.’
“Jack Eugster, God bless him, called me at home. He said, ‘I’d like to carry your music. I have a thousand stores.’ I said, ‘That would be great,’ ” Line said with a laugh. She was speaking in October to a group hosted by Rider Bennett law firm. “Then Target called, Best Buy called. It was awesome.”
Great moments in small-business history — every business owner lucky enough to have one loves to recall the watershed deal, the day that everything changed.
Today Line operates the largest woman-owned record label in the country and just wrapped up her 47-show holiday concert tour.
But I like to find out what happened before that, because no breakthrough ever comes out of nowhere. In Line’s case, in the late 1980s, she first called all the record labels around the country, trying to get them to produce her album.
When she got no takers, she looked on the back of her George Winston albums, and called the sound engineer listed. She went to California, returning three days later with the master track.
Then she started through Dayton’s managers, asking if they’d buy her CD. They declined. She finally convinced one vice president to let her put a stack on the piano as she played. “I put 40 copies on my piano and all 40 sold. I knew I was in business,” Line said.
Each CD had a postcard attached, which buyers could mail back if they wanted to be on Line’s mailing list. She started routing “a little tiny tour” to places like Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Mankato. Those same people started looking for her albums in the music stores, and those requests finally got Musicland’s attention.
It’s a great story, both the glorious punch line and everything that came before. Her tale got me thinking: What are you doing today to generate your company’s big breakthrough tomorrow?
— Beth Ewen
Editor and co-founder
Upsize Minnesota
be***@*******ag.com
