As expected, the Dragons breathed fire and the brokers braved it, with the Dragons fighting among themselves for a piece of the action.
As expected, the Dragons breathed fire and the brokers braved brimstone – but it was more the Dragons fighting among themselves that had the two DLC entrepreneurs smiling.
“We should have known a product involving money would interest Kevin O'Leary,” says Kevin Cochran, who with co-founder Jay Seabrook presented the enRICHed Academy DVD package before the CBC’s Dragons Den. “While our eventual goal is to increase sales in the Canadian and U.S. market, the real reason we created the program was to stop young people from making financial mistakes, like the ones I made."
While O'Leary offered Cochran and Seabrook an intriguing package, consisting of his endorsement and a 10 per cent share in the company, it was the group of Wealthy Barber David Chilton, Boston Pizza's Jim Treliving, Lavalife’s co-founder Bruce Croxon and marketing guru Arlene Dickenson that appealed to the enRICHed Academy founders. Their offer of 12 per cent share (split among them at 3 per cent each) will provide Cochran and Seabrook with the high-profile endorsement they were looking for.
The deal is currently being restructured, and the $40,000 is off the table.
“But the money was never important to us,” says Seabrook. “It was the endorsement that we wanted.”
In the comment section of MortgageBrokerNews.ca, Cochran pointed out that he and Seabrook had really gone looking for “an endorsement deal with zero investment from the Dragons,” but asked for $40,000 just to follow the rules of the game.
The episode, which aired Sunday night, was the culmination of an almost year-long effort by the two DLC brokers to grow the retail horizons for the DVD education package.
EnRICHed Academy is a program designed to teach teens and young adults how to earn, save and invest their money through an entertaining DVD format. The DVD package has been presented over the last several years, through hundreds of live speaking events at schools all across North America.
“When we looked at the credit crisis, we thought it was the right timing for this product,” says Cochran. “When we launched it a year ago, we sold over 1,300 boxes in a week.”
To date more than 6,000 packages have been sold.
