The owner knew his business was in trouble back late 2020 when I was first introduced to him by one of his mentors.

This is the situation the business owner faced being slowly boiled to death, not understanding it until he was nearly dead, and now is wildly flailing about as death has drawn nearer. But if you put that same frog in a pot of water that is room temperature and slowly bring it to a boil, it will not sense the peril and will be slowly cooked to death. It recognizes the sudden change in its environment as a threat. The story goes, if you put a frog into a boiling pot of water, it will immediately try to escape. But to be successful, he had to upskill himself and change his ways. Simply put, the company had grown beyond the owner’s ability to run it. Indeed, while the company looked like a $75 million dollar a year company from the outside, it still had a $15 million dollar a year owner. The company now had a workforce of approximately 150 employees yet was struggling to ship $2m of product a month. In pursuit of this goal, the owner invested in a footprint (~250k sf), production apparatus, and workforce of a $75 million dollar a year company. And over the subsequent twenty-ish years, he had grown it to become about a $15 million dollar a year company with a $15 million dollar a year footprint (~60k sf), a $15 million dollar a year workforce, and with $15 million dollar a year owner.īut a few years ago, the owner decided he wanted to be a $75 million dollar a year company.

The company was started by an energetic entrepreneur who saw an opportunity 30 years ago and chased after it quite successfully.

It was going to take invasive surgery and a lot of rehabilitation to save this company. But by the time I arrived, a serious cancer had metastasized and had left no organ, no business function, without considerable rot. The story goes like this…įrom the outside, even on the surface, the company looked successful. Please donate today!Ĭome along for a real life business story of The Peter Principle and/or The Dunning-Kruger Effect in action. Help us to keep bringing you this high-quality content.

Peter effect