This was by far one of the craziest experiences that we have gone through in our entrepreneurial lives!

In January 2014, my sister and I learned that auditions were open to appear on the show Dragons’ Den…and we’ve recently heard the news that we will air in a short segment of approximately two minutes on February 11th at 8;00 PM.

Here is our story;

If I were to tell you that we religiously watch the show, and that it is our favorite, and that for years we’ve dreamed about being on it, that would simply be an understatement; we are outright Dragons’ fans!

So, there we were toying with the idea whether to enter the competition…auditions are open, why not? LET’S DO THIS!

Though the idea seemed tantalizing, being the show fanatics that we are, we decided to give it a shot. Our audition was at Concordia University in Montreal. On the first day there were about 50 people waiting to pitch to the show’s producers. My sister and I had perfectly memorized our pitch and we felt more than ready to audition in a way that would set ourselves apart from the other 50 entrepreneurs. However, we felt we had one significant problem; out of those 50 people looking to strike a deal with a Dragon, we were the only ones who did not have a product!

Our business offers an amazing and unique service that we are very confident in, but we were going to need to articulate this to the producers in an exceptional fashion rather than performing a simple product demonstration. We delivered our pitch and felt confident that we did well. Although it was quite challenging, we succeeded!

CBC tours in about 33 cities across Canada and they had over 3,000 people for that audition alone which meant we had less than a 5<>percentage<> chance to get selected to pitch to THE DRAGONS. We knew our chances were slim but as the saying goes, “You miss 100<>percentage<> of the shots you don’t take.” So we took a shot. Fortunately, we got a call back three weeks after the audition ―one of the producers called and said, “Girls, you have been selected to pitch your business idea to THE DRAGONS. We believe you girls will do great on the show.” We were absolutely ecstatic! We could barely believe we were actually going to meet the dragons face-to-face and potentially showcase our business on national television. Our business name is FIESTA, and we promise you, that is exactly what we did that night!

The process of preparing to face the Dragons was intense and required us signing several NDAs with CBC; you lose most of your rights when you are filming for a show. You also have to be ready to accept all the editing, etc., and we knew this could be very risky ―but we knew it would be worth it! We decided to play in the Dragons’ playground and we were ready to deal with fire.

We practiced our pitch many times together and with our producer/coach. At the end of the day, it is television so you need to be entertaining. Originally, we wanted to bring kids because Fiesta is all about the KIDS, but the producers wouldn’t allow us. We also wanted to bring videos of our venue and a party in order to show the Dragons exactly what we do, but that was a no-go as well. We were lucky to have our business mentor who helped us a lot by determining the potential value of the business, and projections of future gains, etc. We were also very blessed to have lots of family members and friends who gave us valuable feedback regarding our pitch and preparation for our appearance in Dragons’ Den. Despite the obstacles that were thrown at us before we even walked into the Den, we were determined to persevere.

March 28th was the big day! We arrived in Toronto one day before pitching to the Dragons. That night after a nice dinner, we went to bed early but it was nearly impossible to fall asleep. Nerves had already started to kick in!

The next morning we had breakfast, we prayed, and at 1;00 PM we arrived at the CBC recording studio. We finally met our producer “coach” in person because up until that point we’d only corresponded via e-mail and phone. She was extremely nice and very helpful. Once we were there, we set up our sweets table and waited about four hours until it was finally our turn to step into the Den and face the Dragons. This is a one shot scenario – if you choke, then that will be aired on TV for the world to see! Feeling the pressure, we took deep breaths and did our best to control our nerves. We saw a couple of pitchers leaving the Den crying, and that only made staying calm that much more challenging. Trust me, we were downright scared! We finally told ourselves that we were going to have fun with it regardless of the consequences. Our time was nearing and the pressure was intense, then out of nowhere, our producer tells us we need to change our pitch! She told us the Dragons were getting tired and that we needed to spice things up! Talk about feeling stressed; we were expected to change our pitch, the one we’d perfectly mastered, just moments before facing the Dragons…tired and now possibly annoyed Dragons!. Without choice, we changed our pitch at the very last minute! Feeling totally overwhelmed and frazzled, it was at this point that we just wanted to get it over with. We finally decided on three major priorities; 1. DO NOT fall going down the stairs, 2. DO NOT let the dragons bash our business, 3. DO Have fun in the Den!

The make-up artist gave us a few touch ups. We put our microphones on, the cameras were ready and it was finally our turn to go. We were backstage ready to go down the stairs to face the Dragons… the producer began the countdown, “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Karla and Alejandra from Montreal!” We walked down the stairs, legs trembling, Ale murmuring something that sounded like a prayer under her breath, and then there they were, five Dragons staring intensely right at us…

To be continued…