1986 ~ 1991
Over breakfast at a local diner, conversations turned to a unique dog fencing product popular in the Northeast. Few at the table had actually heard of Invisible Fencing and most dismissed the concept as a novelty. On the other hand, I sensed an opportunity.
I contacted the parent company and learned they were actively looking for a dealer for our area. After some aggressive marketing on my part, I was awarded the exclusive dealer contract for all of Middle Tennessee.
The challenge became taking an unheard of concept and product and creating validity and demand. I began doing home shows and third party referral promotions. At first, I did all the sales, installation and training. (I did this simultaneous to running the photography business!) Slowly, I began to hire employees and trained them to handle sales and installation.
Invisible Fencing of Mid-Tenn stumbled upon a great advertising method…talk radio. Talk radio was just beginning its remarkable comeback and I realized that the listener was actively engaged in the discussions. Radio, being theater of the mind was perfect vehicle to conjure my Invisible Fence image. I hired the most popular morning drive time host to personally endorse the product. We gave the host an installed fence and trained his dog to be contained. It worked. The host was impressed with our product and crew and his live personal endorsement Ads dripped with believability. Within months of the Ads running, Invisible Fencing became the rage. I was even invited to be a guest of a live broadcast local TV show.
The radio station we were using for our live endorsements also hosted Rush Limbaugh. I was able to make a deal and Rush also gave us a recorded endorsement with Ad copy I wrote. This was early in Rush’s career and we were able to run a significant flight of ads. Our popularity and name recognition soared.
During the installation of the fence, a wire is buried around the perimeter of the yard. The dog had to be trained to recognize the invisible boundary. Existing Invisible Fencing procedures called for driving wood stakes along the perimeter and tying a string to create a visible barrier. On large properties, this was time consuming and labor intensive. Worse, several days later, the string would sag or break. I introduced the concept of using survey flags in lieu of stakes and strings. After proving the concept was more effective, the parent company endorsed my method and the survey flags method has been adopted by the parent company, all its dealers and by all the competitors.
In 1991, when the family moved to Texas, remote managing Invisible Fencing proved to be too complex. I sold Invisible Fencing of Middle Tennessee in the Summer of 1991.
Invisible Fencing of Middle Tennessee is still in business today.