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"This little gem of a book offers sage advice..." Too Young to Retire is on sale in bookstores nationwide and online.
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Doug Harmon: When Your Kid Is Your Boss
After many months
of experimenting with personal coaching and a revolutionary teaching method, he was all
but ready to declare himself retired, in fact, was “surprisingly at peace” with
the concept. He is financially independent
and his wife, Joanie, is happily engaged as an art director for The Masterson Group, an
advertising agency in New York City, supplying health insurance coverage for the couple. But life happened while Doug Harmon was busy making other plans. He had intended to go fishing more, to travel, and to enhance his skills as a pastry chef. Then he got an urgent long distance phone call from his daughter, Laine Caspi, mother of two and inventor of a new style of baby carrier, asking him to help with the care of her daughter at a consumer show in Boston. It would be her first exhibit of The Ultimate Babywrap™, a version of a baby carrier she discovered while traveling in Israel. She had launched her business in her garage, selling the baby carrier through a Tupperware-like network of young mothers. Since Laine was still nursing her daughter at the time, she needed help with babysitting while she worked the show. Taking turns around the floor with baby Neve, snug in the carrier, both father and daughter were a walking advertisement. Sealing
His Fate “During that
weekend, here’s what I came to find out: my dad is an incredible salesman! He could sell anything to anyone, anywhere,
anytime. Not only that, but he does it with
JOY! Infectious joy that spreads to the
consumers, to me, to anyone within earshot. Dad
sealed his fate on that weekend because there was no way I was letting him get away,”
Caspi says. She had reached a
point in her business she was either going to expand with a handful of other products she
had already designed, or be “a nice little side business.” She even had a new name for her fledgling
business, Parents of Invention LLC (Grenada Hills, CA), but knew she couldn’t grow it
by herself. Harmon had loaned
seed money for the start up. Now his daughter
asked him if he would take on the bookkeeping for her business and he agreed. After a self-taught crash course in QuickBooks,
Harmon took over financial management of Parents of Invention. “First,” Caspi says, “he had to go
through a year’s worth of really, really bad bookkeeping. While this was going on, we were on the phone
four, sometimes five times a day, and in the midst of all of it, we became friends. I realized my dad wasn’t seeing me as
‘his little girl’ anymore. He had
respect for me as a business woman.” So just what is
Doug Harmon’s role in Parents of Invention? Most important in his estimation is
“being a committed listener…the one who always sees the possibility of success
of the business when the other is losing sight of it.”
In addition to keeping the books, he is a one-man IT department for the
company. It doesn’t hurt that he
“loves to create order where there is chaos,” or that his IT experience includes
apparel manufacturing and textile conversion. At his desk by 7
a.m., in a home-based office overlooking the Hudson River, Harmon launches into a day that
may include any or all of these tasks: placing
orders, shipping, customer and vendor relations, as well as overseeing commissions,
royalties, and collection issues. He’s
been to China to learn more about manufacturing – The Ultimate Baby Wrap is made in
Los Angeles, but several new products like Teeny Towels™ anti-bacterial mini-wipes,
the Romp ‘n’ Run™, a playmat and totebag in one, and Sack ‘n’
Seat™, which converts any chair into a child-friendly seat, are all being made in
China. Harmon travels to seven U.S. cities a
year to exhibit at shows like the American Baby Faire and the forthcoming All Baby and
Child, in Las Vegas. “There’s not
very much he doesn’t do and I can’t imagine that there would be anything he
wouldn’t do if I asked him,” Caspi says. High Risk Challenge What is the most
challenging part of working for one’s daughter?
“Being aware that working together has soured many a family
relationship,” says Harmon, “and being certain to err on the side of
over-communication.“ Adds Caspi:
“Initially, I was afraid to ask for too much. It’s always hard when asking
someone to work for free not to overstep.” Although
Parents of Invention is “within striking distance” of meeting its goal of
$250,000 in sales for 2004, neither partner has as yet taken a salary. Financial payback
will take time while the company continues to expand.
Despite their success with such online outlets as BabiesRUs.com and 60 baby
equipment stores around the country, Harmon recognizes the need to create better
incentives to build up the sales force. With
several new products in the pipeline and a healthy working relationship, this
cross-country father-and-daughter team are optimistic.
Says Caspi, “Getting to hang out with my dad, just the two of us, and
getting to know him as a person, is the most rewarding.
We have so much fun together! On
our last trip we karaoked together, went to the movies, laughed a lot, drank too
much…and that was only one of our trips.” Harmon is elated by
their ability to work well together under what he considers “a day-by-day,
moment-by-moment challenge with a very high risk.” Their partnership is free of
earlier parent-child associations, he says, “except that maybe it is the polar
opposite. From the time that Laine was a
preteen until her mid-twenties or later, I was the first one to upset her. Now she tells me, I am the first one she calls
when she is upset. That is the best promotion
I have ever gotten. “Carrying a
baby in The Ultimate Baby Wrap keeps the baby and parent very close. A thickness of cotton-Lycra t-shirt material has
more than enough tensile strength to carry the baby safely, securely and comfortably, yet
it is not thick enough to separate the parent and the child to a point where anything
either is feeling cannot be sensed by the other (unlike our competition). Apply this description metaphorically to me and
Laine working together and you’ve got the picture.” Parents of Invention: www.parentsofinvention.com Doug Harmon: doug@theultimatebabywrap.com Home |
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