The Anexas Story - Chapter 38: A Knockdown

Thanks for showing so much love to my book – The Anexas Story. Based on many requests to publish chapters of the book on LinkedIn, I continue to write a series of articles based on these chapters. Please read on and keep believing that there is an entrepreneur in you…and everyone! 

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Things do not remain constant, neither does success. Getting completely wiped out when you have just started and have a small team is one thing but getting whacked when you have built up huge client following, team and reputation is another. The sorrow and pain associated with the first are minuscule as compared to the profound grief the latter brings in.

Like that seven-year itch, infamous for bringing in the decline in marital relationships, the seventh year brought with it a decline in the business. We had never marketed our services aggressively. We mostly relied on pulling the customers through references of our existing loyal customers. We lived by this belief that marketing is what you do when your services are no good. So, why should we push our services through advertisements and marketing? Right? Wrong.

The first blow came from digital disruption, disrupting the sweet journey we were enjoying for so many years. The online training industry started taking away many of our potential customers due to its accessibility and low cost. Our main strength was face-to-face classroom training as we believed that the best learning took place when you learn along with other human beings watching them go through the same process as you. In a classroom you utilize all of your senses, and this multisensory learning enhances your grasp of knowledge and strengthens the neural network in your brain bringing you closer to the state of achieving an expert tag.

However, the harsh fact was that our customers did not think so and we lost a lot of the business to technology. The oil sparked the second blow. The Middle East, where most of our business interests laid, underwent a major economic crisis. One of the major drivers of this crisis was the downward trend in oil prices. While it was good news to the world, the Middle East economy was adversely affected. This resulted in tighter budgets in the organizations reducing the funds allocated to training and process improvement consulting. Focus shifted to operations rather than enhancements. Even though we tried convincing the companies that such situations were the best times to invest in process excellence, the billings reduced dramatically.

This downward economic trend again resulted in further revenue loss due to the increased supply of consultants and trainers in the market due to massive job losses. Thus, at the beginning of the seventh year of our existence, we started getting a sense of the decline. We started losing out on the market share. The training centers started wearing a deserted look. The newly opened training centers which we set-up in Bangalore, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi appeared to be a bad investment due to their underutilization. The team of consultants did not have sufficient projects to work on. As a result, the expenses continued to exceed the revenue for a year. It meant that this seven-year itch would destroy our marriage with success and end up in a bad divorce. It was a knockdown we had not envisaged. But knowing myself, the game wasn’t over at all.

For one, I still had not met Amitabh Bachchan!

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For subsequent articles, please watch this space.

You can buy the book directly from its website on https://www.anexasstory.com

or on Amazon on https://www.amazon.in/ANEXAS-STORY-There-Entrepreneur-Everyone-ebook/dp/B07ZGLN8C7

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Amitabh Saxena is founder of Anexas, a well-known lean six sigma and project management consulting organisation. He has trained over 50,000 participants and has 30 years of experience in consulting more than 300 organisations around the world including Fortune 100 companies across industry domains. With a strong team of 25 Master Black Belts, his organisation Anexas has been helping individuals and organisations achieve eminence through excellence since 2006. They can be reached on [email protected].