Risky Business
All entrepreneurs face start-up problems. But in an industry where the clients face the hazards, these adventurers had to find insurance or head back to the land of the employed.
Today, business is booming for Fulcrum Learning Systems Inc. in
Redondo Beach, California. The company's organizational
development seminars capitalize on cutting-edge experiential
education trends, and Fulcrum's adventure-based learning
programs cater to a steady nationwide clientele of Fortune 1000
companies, community and youth organizations, and sports teams.
Building their company from the smallest of beginnings,
Fulcrum's co-founders, J. Linwood Paul and Leslie Bourne, were
bitten by the entrepreneurial bug a decade ago. But the heady exhilaration of making their own way in a field
they knew like the backs of their hands was tempered by
administrative realities. In an industry where clients are
regularly put in controlled-risk situations, qualifying for
liability insurance would be no easy task--especially for a company
with no track record to prove its safety. It's the single
element that can make or break an adventure-training company, says
Bourne: "Without insurance, there is no business." Paul and Bourne were no strangers to challenges. By 1989, they
had worked as independent contractors for more than five years for
one of the nation's leading adventure-based learning companies.
While traveling around the world, they'd learned the business
from the ground up and successfully coached thousands of
participants. The pair often acted as lead instructors or day
captains in the absence of the company's owners. Content Continues Below
Paul and Bourne's personal cachet was growing, and clients
were wondering out loud if and when they'd start their own
adventure-based learning business. But the realization that it was
time to make their move came slowly. "On our fifth trip to
France, when Leslie and I were leading a team, we looked at each
other and said, `Hey, we can do this.' How did we know? Because
we were [doing it]," remembers Paul, 44. Bourne, 37, says, "It was what we were preaching to
clients. We'd go out and assist groups of people in
establishing their dreams and goals and values, and help them
realize how big they were. Through that process we both [realized]
we needed to take that step, too. It [became] important for us to
push ourselves to another level."
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