Pivot for Success

Introduction

AT THE END of 2013, I was sitting in the office of The ComfortCake® Company, the dream business I started in 2001 that sold pound cakes based on my recipes to United Airlines, Walmart, Home Shopping Network, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and several grocery chains across the country. I had just ended a call with my lawyer, who had laid out my options for holding on to the business. It had been a very difficult few years. We had started out strong, won awards, and even became an approved supplier to McDonald's. Yet several events had taken their toll on the business and on my finances: the recession of 2008; the decision by CPS to take desserts off the school menus; the need to switch to other offerings; and my desire to help care for my ailing dad. As I looked at the paperwork before me, I made up my mind: I would declare personal bankruptcy so that the business would survive. And it did. Doing so was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make, and no one but my family and closest friends even knew about it. For years, I just wasn't ready or able to tell my full story—until now.

I'm a Harvard MBA, a successful senior corporate executive, and a serial entrepreneur whose journey has been different from what you may expect. The things that happened to me weren't in anybody's textbook, nor were they what I or anyone could have predicted would happen. I've made it to senior levels of corporate America, been profiled by national publications, honored by the ...