Many of you have a hobby, dream, or aspiration and have had people in your life encourage you to turn it into a business. Well, that’s exactly what happened to me. Cutting coupons, matching them with ads, and then sharing that information with friends and families led to many discussions about turning this info gathering process into a business. My big concern was the volume of information that was processed every day of the week. How do you keep up with the information and deliver it in a timely and accurate manner 52 weeks of the year. It sounded like a huge and overwhelming task. Yet, I knew my friends loved the savings and I anticipated others would pay a fee to get the same information.

In a few short years of being a coupon addict, home computers and technology caught up with my hobby. In February 1998, Coupon Sense was born. At that time, not everyone had access to a home computer. And the internet, what was that? Hard to believe 12 years later nearly every home has multiple computers and the capability to access the internet with our phones.

Coupon Sense members from the early days will remember the newsletter we sent out with the reports. I think about those days with fondness - I survived! To get the grocery ads early, I had a paper route that was delivered in the Phoenix area. We picked up papers Tuesday night, my kids folded the papers and I sat by my computer and entered the data from the ads. Wednesday I was up at 2:00am so I could deliver my papers while my kids were in bed, come home by 6:30 to get them ready for school and then I would go finish my paper route. I’d rush home by 10am, finish the ads and then start the copying process.

We knew exactly how many lines of data we could print. If we had one extra row of data, the postage went up. Did anyone realize that ink has weight? Reports of 4 double-sided pages were folded , stapled and raced to the Post Office to meet the 5:00PM deadline each Wednesday.

There were times when I wanted to stop the insanity. The partners I started the business with decided it was too much for them with their young families. I plugged on. Every time I thought about quitting, I was reminded of the many women who shared with me the difference Coupon Sense made in their lives. They were counting on me to deliver a product that they relied on each week. What a burden, but, also, what a motivation to deliver a quality product on time. I couldn’t quit because I didn’t want to let anyone down.

Once we had 200 subscribers, I was thrilled! I hired moms to enter the data. These women entered the ads (while I continued to throw my papers), then saved the information to disks and physically drove to my home so we could upload the data on my computer, nothing was sent via the Internet and we did this process for the first 5 years or so.

Within a couple of years we started emailing the reports as an attachment. The learning curve was huge for our members, we had to teach people over the phone how to open an attachment, how to search the reports, etc. We were the first interactive experience many moms had with their computers. I remembered when we decided email attachments were the future (Internet wasn’t even a consideration) and we would no longer mail out physical copies – I worried that this might be a bad decision, but, look where CouponSense is today.

Today, 12 years later in 2010, we serve communities around the United States. We help families save money on their groceries and with those savings their quality of life improves, whether it is because debt is paid down or a child takes piano lessons – life gets better with CouponSense.

It has been a great experience, growing a business from my dining room. I’ve grown as an individual and as a business person. In those early years, I fell asleep each Wednesday as soon as my head hit the pillow – I was exhausted every Wednesday for years! Now, Wednesdays come and go, like any other day of the week because CouponSense.com has a great team of individuals who help prepare, distribute, edit and organize the data.

Thank you Coupon Sense team and wonderful, generous members. Enjoy the savings and let us know how we have helped to improve your life!

With Love,

Laurie Meyers

Founder of CouponSense.com