YouSaid · the spoken record

Melissa Bernstein

lines on the record: 30
first: 2018-02-05
most recent: 2018-02-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You mean this morning or in general? It's a combination. The good news is that we absolutely do have things that we disagree on, which is good and which is healthy. But I would have to say that I think we have our respect and our admiration that keeps it working perfectly both from a business and a personal perspective.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think two things. One is they have Rolodexes that are much larger than ours and introduce us to folks that can help with things. And then financially also, frankly, freedom to grow and expand more exponentially if we want to expand our footprint internationally. opened up those doors too.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. Yep, we kept significant ownership and we brought in some investors who now will sit on our board and participate very actively with us also and helpfully.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In fact, every reason why they wouldn't succeed. And I think that's been a part of, you know, to the extent we have a business model. I think that's been a part of it all along is to not go with the tide, not go the direction, not look at things and say, that's what everyone is doing. That's what we should do because our feeling has always been if we copy Every good model out there, at very best, what does that mean? We're going to be mediocre by definition because we are simply following and copying what everyone else is doing.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Melissa, even when she's working on a product, I mean, even with our own test laboratory with our six children at home, is always using our products with our own children.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, sure. That's nice. She tells all the exciting great parts. Oh, yeah. So my part is, yeah, and it failed and it all came back to us. And there I was in the warehouse receiving it all back. That was my role in this.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But also our most elaborate undertaking and involved more tooling, more machining. It was by far our largest endeavor ever.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have had so many failures, and that's why we love that word because failure is a word that you have to get comfortable with and you can't fear the failure.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd say at this point we probably had a couple of part time people that were helping us. We have a person who's coming up on his 20 years this year. His first job with us was a mix between helping us change our baby Brendan's diapers, helping us weed the driveway. And also when trucks would come and deliver products to our house, he would help us unload the truck and load the products in and help us pack up products and ship them.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That you have to them and everything that we've done for them in the first couple of years and are now saying to us, we don't care, even if he wants to sell it to us for less money than you are, anything. It doesn't matter. We are loyal to you for everything that you've done.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we weren't confrontational about it. We were at a huge show thousands of customers. And when they came to us and they started to tell us that this is what this person was doing and they assumed that we were part of it or that we knew it was going on, when they found out the truth of what was going on, it was amazing how many customers came up to us and literally in front of us ripped up orders that they had placed with this person who was our agent and said, here, you can show this to them now that we understand what's going on, we will absolutely never in our lifetime order anything from that person. And I think that gave a little glimmer of hope to Melissa myself. While on one hand we had a little bit of an exposure to the darker side of the business world. I would say simultaneously we had a really nice exposure to that there are a lot of people out there who will appreciate the loyalty.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, he was. And this is someone that we had entrusted. And he told us the reason was because we wanted to grow slowly and grow with our independent neighborhood stores. And he wanted us to immediately take them and put them in the mass market. And because we didn't want to do that, he figured he would just do that on his own with our product. So that was his good reason for doing it.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh gosh, I wish it were that easy Not quite like that. So no. So once we had the designs for the puzzle, I mean, everything again was trial and error. I mean, I could tell you one of the things that happened early on was the very first time we went to a very large toy show where you would exhibit to retailers and show them your products. And the agent who we had hired to help us make our puzzles had a display set up just down the hall from us with our exact puzzles.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say for most of the things that have happened along the way, we had no idea. And we learned as we went and we would, almost the way you were asking the question now, we would ask ourselves the question then. So wait a second. If we need animals drawn, we need artists, how would we do that? So we went to the library and we'd look at a lot of children's books and we'd look for illustrators that we liked and we would contact illustrators and we'd see who might want to help illustrate this. Each step of the way was, you know, a new phase of learning, but at no point was there ever a magic answer or an easy answer. It was a lot of making mistakes and falling down and some horrible learning experiences along the way.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. Years, right. Basically, it was a video a year. We produced a video a year for three years, and we had three videos out there in relationships now with, I'd say probably, I'm going to guess a couple thousand retailers.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We actually weren't. Our first company name that we called ourselves was Lights Camera Interaction. And the reason the company is called Melissa and Doug, it's funny because we from day one, every single product we made, we were signing our names and we were writing on the back of it. And so one day we said, Well, wait, let's just answer the phone say home, listen, Doug. And that's how we became listen, Doug.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say it depends on how you define the word failure there because it probably was a failure in terms of having a product that instantly sold and instantly was successful. Yet it was the biggest success we ever had in that what we learned from that and all the learnings came from that are precisely every single thing that our business is based on today. To Melissa's point, the idea of having direct relationships with all these customers, doing anything that they wanted. I mean, they would call us in the middle of the night. I have a problem with one of your tapes. The phone was on our bed. We would answer it in the middle of the night. Everything that we do today, we learned, I would say, in that first couple of years. And frankly, maybe most importantly, just the fact that not everything is going to work perfectly.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the second thing we learned was that for something new like this, you need to help seed some knowledge and some support about it. So Melissa and I then started spending all of our weekends driving back around to the same stores all throughout Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts. And we would have play dates in their stores. And we would sit down in a carpeted area in the store and we would sing songs with children. We would hope and pray that there would be one child there or two children there. maybe they would tell a couple of friends.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the beginning, people were not buying these from the stores. So they were remaining in the stores and they were remaining on the shelves, which is not good for long-term business proposition. So we learned yet another few business lessons. One was that we learned our packaging was interesting because you looked at it and you had no idea what this product was.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is to you, please. And I think after enough begging, they figured out the only way to get us out of their store was to take a few of these and present them to their customers. So we would leave very happy that they decided to take a few of these tapes and try to sell them.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we did. I mean, we got our first little lessons in business because, right, you want to make some copies and you find out, well, we won't make you four copies. We have to make you 5,000 copies. And we said, what in the world are we going to do with 5,000 copies? We made lists of our relatives and that didn't get us fully to 5,000. And so we literally bought a little combination television VCR player, put it in the back of my father's station wagon. And we started driving around, knocking on doors of retailers. And the funny thing was, this was right around holiday time when we finished this product. And so all the little Mah and Pa toy shops throughout New England. This was their busiest time of year and we would walk in there and apologetically carry in our tape player and our TV and put it on their counter and beg them, please can we just show.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it did. It took all of our savings, and then we finished this. We said, wow, this is awesome. And then we looked at each other and said, well, wait, what do we do with it? We had put no thought at all into what do we do with this product. We now had to figure out, well, how are we going to pay for the next lunch? And what are we going to do to get this product out there?”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes and yes, it was singing. It was dancing. And it was encouraging children who were watching this to participate along. It was literally teaching them some of the songs, teaching them what we were dancing to.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we wrote a script for this and we literally went around to stores and parks and we cast real children. We didn't want this to be contrived or fake. We didn't go to casting agencies. We literally would sit in grocery stores and look for animated children and approach them, which probably couldn't do today. Couldn't do today not as successfully. We literally in parking lots would watch for children that are interacting with their parents. And we had eight children that were in this video. And then we shot at some friends' houses in Westport, Connecticut, some schools. What were the videos like?”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what we decided to do first was we both had a little bit of experience with television and television programming, and we decided that we wanted to make a program for children that would be groundbreaking in that children wouldn't sit there and watch it. They would actually participate with the program. And so we literally wrote scripted produced, directed, cast, wrote music, Melissa sung in it. Wrote lyrics.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remember when we were in Melissa's kitchen and we were talking about doing this? I remember them being. Let's say because she had the greatest thing going and she was leaving it to do, well, we weren't too certain.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we walked out of there knowing that we wanted to start by doing some interactive products for children, things that they could really interact with rather than be passive recipients of.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we booked ourselves into a little bed and breakfast in Lennox, Massachusetts, I think was called the Cliffwood. We locked ourselves in the room. What everyone would do if locked in a room in Lennox, Massachusetts and brainstormed business ideas. Literally said, let's close this door, and we are not leaving this place until we know what our path is and what we're going to do.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It wasn't something that I wouldn't want to do, unlike Melissa and her investment banking experience. But no, but there was something inside me that tugged and wanted to do two things. One, wanted to do something for children and frankly wanted to do something of my own creation also.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was right out of school. I was planning on going into education and I wanted to work at a university. And right when I was getting ready to do that and head off into a career in higher education, I got a call from a person I'd worked Summers for, Jim McManus, one of the greatest mentors, greatest marketing people in the world. And Mr. McManus said, nope, you're not doing that. You're going to come work for me and be my assistant, be my right hand. And so I went there right after school Worked for Mr. McManus for a couple of years and had an incredible experience.”
2018-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Melissa & Doug: Melissa And Doug Bernstein (2016) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT