Jill Boehler’s simple invention took her on a roller-coaster journey from speech pathologist to entrepreneurial hotshot.
Jill Boehler felt like a movie star. Seated in the spotlight in one of CNBC’s studios, with the cameras rolling, she was being interviewed by the charismatic host of the talk show The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch. Earlier that day, she’d left her home in Baltimore and flown to New York, where a black stretch limo met her at the airport and chauffeured her to the studio in New Jersey. A stylist there had curled her eyelashes and sprayed her hair. Now she was recounting for a national television audience how she had started a business selling silky, warm, microfiber wraps that fold into pouches small enough to stash in purses. Deutsch, considered by some to be the world’s savviest ad man, leaned over to stroke the wrap draped around her neck. “I love it. What a great idea!” he cooed.
What Boehler didn’t reveal that June day in 2007 was how much she needed the publicity. Creating the company had dragged her deep into debt, and she didn’t know whether she’d be able to stay in the business. Her anxiety had increased to the point that she was on medication. Still, Boehler carried off the interview with aplomb, thrilled with all the attention. Making her TV debut, she says, “was like entering a different world.” Even more amazing was how the appearance boosted her business. The evening her segment aired, Boehler was stunned to find hundreds of orders in her e-mail inbox. “Donny Deutsch catapulted my company to another level,” she says.
Just two and a half years earlier, the idea for the wraps had not even entered her head. Boehler, then 52, was working long hours as a speech pathologist at charter schools in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and planned to wind down her 32-year career in the field. “I had to sit on the floor with kids, and it was hard for me to get up,” she recalls. “I felt old. That’s the first time I knew I was past it.” For three decades, she’d taught children and adults with language problems to speak. She’d published a textbook for speech therapists and run a private practice. She and her husband, Rich, a physician, had raised three children, the youngest of whom, Jordan, would soon be entering college. By spring 2005, she was ready to retire.
