A brief first-person video/transcript in which Dr. Paul Shealy recounts a major business failure at his company Learning Strategies. He describes over-investing in a new program invited by a prominent doctor, losing core-business focus, accumulating debt (~$350,000), cutting staff and salaries, persevering, and ultimately rebuilding to profitability (within 18 months) with lessons about knowing your core business and taking only affordable risks.
Hi, my name is Dr. Paul Shealy, and you can find me@learningstrategies.com one of the greatest mistakes we ever made at Learning Strategies is with our success. We began to believe that we couldn't fail. So we designed a program upon invitation from a famous doctor who really wanted this particular way of going. And so we built the program. But not only did we built it, we actually believed so strongly in it that we poured all of our resources into it, to the point where we got off of the kind of business that was our success, our core business. And it turned out that once everything was developed and we started promoting it, nobody wanted it. Imagine it would be like creating a dog food and no dog would touch it. I mean, it was a complete disaster. But now, not only were we off our plan, so we're spending more money than we were bringing in, but in building this program, we created so much additional debt that now we were owned by our creditors. So it ended up being a situation where we had to make the decision, are we going to stop business today and walk away from it all, or are we going to shift our way of being? So my business partner, Pete, and I decided we're going to stay in it. We ended up having to take a huge cut in salary, lay off most of our employees, pay them less the ones that stayed. And we stayed with it. We had almost $350,000 in debt when we started this venture. Within a year and a half, we had a million dollars in the bank. We had paid all our debts. We. We had learned one very important lesson. Understand your core business and don't think beyond your own capability, but grow your capability. Grow your success upon success. Take the risks that you can afford and be willing to do the hard work to stay with it to get to where you want to go. I'm Dr. Paul Shealy, LearningStrategies. Com. All the best to you.
