The Buddhist Entrepreneur
Yesterday I interviewed Craig Wolfe, the Buddhist entrepreneur who’s made millions selling rubber ducks that look like people. He capitalizes on getting license agreements to put the likeness of pop culture icons, celebrities and sports team’s insignia on the ducks. He ties his ducks into what is in the news (an idea I promote in my online pr book) and in the process he regularly gets some amazing press.
He’s one of the first people I’ve talked to who truly built PR into his product. He answers every phone call and email, treats people with respect, and continually improves his product and packaging. The result is he’s often doing push marketing – because more often than not, new customers seek him out. He built CelebriDucks that he runs out of his home with no permanent employees or staff into a big success.
Wolfe started our call by stating that he had made time for me to do the interview and to take as much time as I needed. In our world that is rare – people are generally in a hurry and they are too busy to talk long. The message they send is that there is always something more important than what they are doing. Or that you aren’t important enough to get much time or attention. So he established good karma.
He doesn’t measure ROI or track things – he simply plants a million seeds. Or should I say he tosses a lot of ducks on the water to see what floats. He started the company by sending a pitch to every single newspaper in the country. Only one responded – the local paper (I always say start local first and then leverage that coverage into bigger media outlets). But that one story led to a big deal and stories like that continue to send him more deals. Once the kindling started he constantly stokes the fire by looking for and writing about other places his ducks show up (or giving story ideas to journalists).
His packaging is now custom for each duck. So a penguin duck is sitting on an iceberg with a vivid ocean scene around it. The new WordPress has a bug and I can’t upload the picture but my favorite duck is the glow in the dark “Scream” duck. On the back of each box there’s an ad for the chocolate duck that you can send with some chocolates.
Unlike other kitschy promo items that get throw away, people save his. In fact, they collect them. Some are works of art. Most are funny. But they all have incredible attention to detail and all of his packaging sells the product.
Craig starts his day with a simple to do list and outsources anything he’s not good at. Talking to him it’s a little hard to pin him down. I’m drawn to his stories but I called with a purpose – to find out how he does his PR. I came away feeling that if he could make this business work then I have hope! He’s an idea guy and he’s well, very zen (something I could use more of).
I told him his story could make a great book about the Buddhist entrepreneur. He tells me that he runs a side business free of charge for someone who he considers very enlightened – just so he can be around him. You see, it doesn’t matter anyway because to Craig his job is to direct energy and this guy has a lot of good energy. Besides (this is my favorite part) the money part isn’t that much of an issue. In the end, he plans to give it all to Buddhism anyway.
Related articles
- PR Pros: Will you Blend? (newspapergrl.com)
- On Giving Referrals (newspapergrl.com)
- The Problem with Multi-tasking (ignitemylifenow.com)
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February 1st, 2012 at 9:25 am
[...] ready for the big guns, you’ll have to learn and do PR yourself. Some people are great at doing their own PR (I love this story) and they enjoy it. They are the [...]