The Man From Krypton Fowler Sets Stage For Phase Iii Of Remarkable Career
Would you pay 500 bucks to take a business course from a guy who claims to have spent three months on Krypton?
W. Barry Fowler is betting that enough people will to make franchise lightning strike for the third time in his business career.
Twice now, Fowler has turned the art of franchising into fortunes.
His third effort, launched from his new base in Spokane, is the Krypton Institute, a franchised program of instruction designed to teach business skills to entrepreneurs.
Fowler, 49, is the founder of Sylvan Learning Centers, an education-related franchise operation that took him from a junior high classroom to a comfortable retirement before he was 40.
He followed Sylvan with The Little Gym, another education-based franchise that added significantly to Fowler’s bottom line.
In between the two came a five-year retirement, and it was during that period that Fowler spent his time on Krypton.
This is where the story falls off a bit.
Krypton was actually a boat, not Superman’s doomed home planet.
“In 1987, I’d just stepped down as chairman of Sylvan Learning Centers,” Fowler recalls.
“I was originally a classroom teacher, but from the time I was 14 I’d always been involved in some sort of a business venture. So the sale of Sylvan offered me the opportunity to step away and reap the rewards of a whole lot of work. For five years, I took a hiatus.”
Friends who feared a prolonged period of inactivity would drive Fowler crazy urged him to write a book about his business experience.
So for three months he retreated to Krypton and thought about writing a book, “and that was the genesis of this whole operation.”
“I wanted the book to be meaningful,” Fowler says, “full of information. I felt my target market was the small business owner, and I wanted it to be a sharing of tactical information that would be valuable to people starting a small business, or taking a small business to a higher level of performance.”
Fowler was a public school teacher in Anaheim, Calif., when his entrepreneurial bent led him to the concept of offering a private program to teach basic learning skills to children and adults.
He moved to Portland to start his project, and turned to franchising to push the concept to its maximum earning potential.
“With a franchise,” Fowler says, “I’ve got somebody on-site who cares just as much about the longterm success of the business as I do. Ownership is there, and in my opinion, ownership protects quality.”
Today, Fowler says, Sylvan Learning Centers has about 600 franchises around the world. He says the company enjoys a market capitalization of about $530 million, and about 2 million students have been through the Sylvan program since it was founded in 1979.
Fowler sold his interest in Sylvan in 1987, and has no ongoing connection with the company.
His five-year vacation evolved into something else. When he returned from Krypton, the actual writing of the book he’d spent three months thinking about slipped into the background as he was lured back to activity through consultation. The concepts he brought to those who paid his consultation fees were the ideas he developed on the boat.
Then in 1992, he saw a fledgling company called The Little Gym in Kirkland, Wash., that was a children’s fitness center. He was captivated by the concept, and bought the firm. At the time, it had four outlets.
Today, The Little Gym operates about 150 franchises in 16 countries. Fowler sold controlling interest in The Little Gym at the end of 1994.
“After the sale, we could afford to live anywhere we wanted to be,” Fowler said, “so we chose Spokane.”
Fowler grew up in Dallas and Tulsa. But his wife Anne, the daughter of Frank and Frances Sadler of Spokane, grew up here. They frequently visited here and, “The more time we spent here, the more we thought what a great place this is to raise kids.”
And to start a new company.
Fowler decided to condense his consulting work into a classroom course, and set up instruction in Spokane. The first courses were taught in February.
Franchising was the next step.
“The customer has defined our market,” says Fowler. “About one million new businesses open their doors in the United States each year. Most will fail in the first few years. Others will never reach their profit potential. There is a strong need and an extraordinarily large demand for Krypton’s small business training program.”
The program is a five-evening course, or condensed into 2-1/2 days for weekends, detailing Fowler’s philosophy and tips on how to establish and grow a business. But the instruction is customized to meet each individual business’s particular needs, Fowler says.
For a franchise fee starting at about $60,000, Krypton franchise owners are trained in Fowler’s system and granted territorial rights.
Five franchises have been awarded so far: one in Spokane, two in the Washington, D.C.-Annapolis area, one in Ottawa, and one in Darien, Conn.
“I believe the Krypton Institute will certainly rival the success of Sylvan Learning Centers,” Fowler says. “We hope to have 400 to 500 franchises around North America, and we think we will saturate that market in about six years.”
Earlier this month, Fowler acquired Computer Enlightenment Inc., a New Hampshire computer education and software development company that specializes in serving small businesses.
Fowler says he will use the company to establish the Krypton Small Business Network, an Internet-based information service, education resource and communications link for small businesses.
Computer Enlightenment also will be used as a support tool for the Krypton Institute franchises.
With the institute in place and the computer support network taking shape, Fowler has even found time to get around to writing that book that sparked this new phase of his business career.
“Finally, it’s done,” says Fowler. “It’ll be out late this summer. The name of the book is ‘Return From Krypton: Rational Steps to Entrepreneurial Success.’
“It’s practical information, and what I hope will be a call to action for the would-be entrepreneur who has a dream and would like to take the next step.”
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