Kelly Ripa/TLC Show audition - part 2

continued from Monday..........
On June 26, about a week later, we were in the air on the way to the auditions, both of us memorizing the 30-second and 2-minute audition spiels we had written only the night before. I met Kirsten and her 8-week-old daughter (exclusively breastfeeding, so she had no choice but to accompany us) in the Chicago airport. Now, Kirsten and I have had a lot of adventures together: Besides inventing a product when our babies were only 2 months old and developing it since then, we had traveled to Rhode Island, Las Vegas, Florida, Texas, and many parts of Virginia all in the name of the bizzyBee. Suddenly we found ourselves facing an exciting new avenue. What were we about to do? Who auditions for TV shows? Certainly no one I know. Were we going to be those people who go on American Idol who can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but their family and friends have told them to “Go for it” because they love them so much? Were we going to be made fun of and realize what we had been working toward for 2 years was a silly pipe dream? What we were about to do seemed so crazy.

After a relatively short cab ride we arrived at the hotel where we would be auditioning and staying for the night. We went to our room and prepared for the audition, beginning to feel at once exhilarated and hesitant as to what we were about to walk into. Downstairs, the audition room was buzzing with excited, nervous chatter from about one hundred women inventors and those who came to support them. We signed in and received our number: 104. Pictures were taken of each woman and her invention. My niece was a trooper and the hit of the day. Everyone stopped to comment on how precious she was. What an icebreaker!

We were told that it would be several hours until our number came up, so we decided to go back to the room and rest. On our way out of the waiting room we met woman after woman who either asked about our invention or wanted to share theirs with us. The women were passionate about their ideas as we were, and had been working as diligently as we had to bring their concepts to fruition. Women were in many stages of realizing their ideas. Some had rudimentary prototypes that were homemade, others had professionally made prototypes, while some women had products that had been manufactured and were already on the market. Yes – there were empty buckets begging for a tune to carry, but mostly there were fantastic concepts that will enrich our lives in some way if they are marketed successfully.
to be continued..........