We recently connected with Frumi Barr and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Frumi, thanks for joining us today. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers

I speak often on the topic of having an entrepreneurial mindset. The universe must have decided to test me to see if I really am unstoppable! After taking months to build and launch the Barr Business School. I received a huge curveball!

At first I put my courses in Teachable and then Kajabi. But nobody bought them because I was one grain of sand on a beach full of courses. Then I was introduced to Sam, a year ago. He was just completing his program at Techstars. Sam is one of those CEOs you’d follow anywhere. A former Special Forces guy, he later taught history at Westpointe and is the quintessential entrepreneur. Sam invited me to have dinner with him and his mentors. They were quite an auspicious group!

Sam was heading back to Ukraine the next day and was going to facilitate a workshop for his agency – a one stop platform for courses, CRM, email campaigns etc. And the best part was that it was a fast-track workshop for 6 days. I thought – why not – 6 days with Sam and his team in Zoom – perfect. During the workshop. Sam mentioned Peter Sage who had founded the Sage Business School in the UK. That got me thinking. What would I do with my own name and why not start my OWN school? Well…it came to me. The Barr Business School, raising the bar for entrepreneurs.

So far so good. I had the beginning of a website up and running and a plan for moving forward by the end of the workshop. In March BBS was launched, I hired my first two fractional team members – a CMO and a Virtual Assistant. I enrolled my first students in March and in June I landed my first Accelerator as an Educational Partnership – a cybersecurity accelerator out of Canada that was rolling out next to the US and the UK. Perfect! Right? Success was just around the corner.

That’s when I got the curveball. On Sept 8th, 2022, my CMO received a letter that the company was about to be auctioned off or put into bankruptcy. Here was an opportunity for me to exercise my resilience muscles. Within 3 days of this news, we organized all our assets – videos, images, courses etc. and had a new platform in mind and a plan for how to move into action. We launched again in only three short weeks a much more robust platform!

It’s important for me to share what happened, because the company’s demise is directly related to the war in Ukraine. The team was originally in Ukraine. Because of Sam’s friends in the military he had a heads up that the Russian troops were mobilizing. He moved 32 people to Poland and continued servicing his clients. His investors pulled out recently. I am speculating that with rising interest rates, valuations being pushed down and the war, Sanity Desk was collateral damage.

BBS wasn’t the only company to be affected by this sad curveball. But here’s the difference. 50% of the companies affected did not rally. This is where the rubber meets the road. You either pick yourself up, dust yourself off and overcome adversity or you cave. It’s always a choice. And that’s why becoming unstoppable is critical to success. You never know what’s coming around the corner! And for me, once again, I had to fail forward onto a better platform for my school!

The truth is – if I were told that my expiry date was two years away, I might not have put all the time and effort into moving forward. But we never know, so as a life-long entrepreneur, is there really a choice?

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

The Barr Business School is passionate about changing an important statistic! 90% of businesses fail! We teach everything they don’t teach in Business School.

Dr. Frumi Barr, the BBS Founder, was educated as a Physical Therapist. She subsequently discovered that she had a passion for business. After founding and growing several fast growing companies, a potential investor said “no” because she didn’t have an MBA. That was the impetus to go back to school and ultimately acquire a PhD with a concentration in business administration.

Dr. Frumi is known as The CEO’s Secret Weapon. She focuses on culture first to create an environment that allows for the right decisions to be made regarding Vision, Culture, Strategy, Metrics, Execution and Cash Management.

Her Why: to create a safe place for leaders and teams to discuss what matters most.

Her Who: She guides creative, ambitious CEOs who want to grow their businesses, so they have more freedom and a fabulous culture.

Her How: She works with companies of all sizes to Scale Up and to create greater alignment, effectiveness and accountability to gain traction.

BBS emerged as a result of the pandemic and a client, Ned, who asked Dr. Frumi to teach him about scaling and sustainable growth. She loved creating the course for Ned and that was the kernel of an idea that developed nto te Barr Business School – raising the bar for entrepreneurs.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I am a continuous learner. Years ago I was at a leadership conference at which the keynote speaker was Tim Sanders the then leadership coach for Yahoo and the author of Love is the Killer App. He talked about the importance of staying in touch with people in a consistent manner, like a newsletter.

Most people who write newsletters start strong and then fizzle out. Tim said “you may already do something that you can share”. Those were magical words for me, as I had already written many book summaries, including one of Tim’s book. For the next 2 decades I shared a book summary every month.

The knowledge I gained writing almost 200 book summaries has impacted my entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy. How can one accumulate all that knowledge and not share the wisdom?

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

When one founds a school, you begin with zero students. A month later, maybe you have a dozen as a result of LinkedIn or FaceBook posts.

BBS decided to follow the strategy commonly used by software companies – give it away until you can reach a level of traction. We started with a St. Patrick’s Day Challenge which involved working through a course to completion, sharing the certificate of completion, and earning the next free course. That promotion was so successful that we engaged with the Easter Bunny for a second promotion. Within 2 months we had a few hundred students.

We are always learning, thinking and strategizing! We aspire to be the go to alternative learning program for graduating high school students and returning veterans.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.barrbusinessschool.com/home
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barrbusinessschool/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BarrBusinessSchool/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frumirachelbarr/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/frumi