The Praexis Story

I spent a decade doing workouts & turnarounds before I realized the cause of the trouble was not poor management or lack of capital. The cause was owners so focused on TODAY that they wandered off what they were trying to do. And, focused on TODAY, they failed to see what was coming.

I carried their fight by arguing economic theory. But economic theory sounds like just theory to people. People want what are called facts. Back then they couldn’t afford facts. In 1973 we built our first models, but not until the late 80s could we afford them. Not until the 90s with the internet could we affordably dig up facts about the world outside the business. That first decade I could only jawbone my clients’ adversaries. Fortunately for everyone, I have a jawbone.

In the 90s we had models and we had economic data. But everyone thought their company was different, that this data and these models didn’t apply. I needed client facts. By 2000 we were able to close the last loophole. Small businesses had their own internal databases we could access. We could show a company had wandered off and how much it cost [plenty].

It all worked wonderfully: powerful, and intimidating. Regrettably only rarely did I get to apply it without a major crisis.

After 35 years, my time was running short. So in 2004 I stopped to spend the next 5 years on this question: why not BEFORE a crisis? I wrote and researched for 3 years. The book is now in edit and will be out early next year. I found the reasons people lock down on TODAY and how to free them.

And we have the technology of models, outside data, and inside data mining to make it pay–and for the owner to prove that it does pay. Now we are ready to offer our full expertise to a few companies.