Literacy For All - Barbara & Ed Wilson of Wilson Language Training

Positive Enterprise Value

In the Positive Enterprise Value Podcast, we have the fun of interviewing and listening to some of the most seasoned, successful Entrepreneur Owner-Managers on the planet. The journey through their lives and through their enterprises, through their communities, through their families, and in their successes they leave behind breadcrumbs for us to see and to examine. This week, I have the fun of interviewing my friends Barbara and Ed Wilson, the founders of Wilson Language Training. Wilson Language Training is the most widely known firm to provide curriculum or pedagogy for teaching students, dyslexic students, how to read. And, perhaps even more importantly, how to teach teachers how to teach dyslexic students how to read. You'll hear from Barbara and Ed how they began their business, basically as a coaching or tutoring operation teaching a few dozen kids at a time, and realized the massive scale of demand of the millions of students who needed their help to learn how to read across the country and around the world. They generously and candidly share with us stories from their 38 years of marriage and their 35 years of running this business, including trying to attract and retain great talent; some of the foibles of trying to work with school systems across the country; their very clever, almost intuitive, sense of setting the company up to really scale; and a bit about a recent event where Bigelow helped them to architect a recapitalization with Alpine Equity Partners, which specializes, among other things, in education businesses. I hope you enjoy this session with Ed and Barbara as much as I do. I think you'll hear their authentic kindness come out in the podcast, as well as their perspicacity, their attention to detail, and their mastery of their domain.