Ken Endelman
Resume of Failures
School Career
Ken Endelman was an industrial arts major who had the privilege of attending two different high schools upon the recommendation of the Boys Vice Principle of the first school. He had a 4.0 average in all his Auto shop and print shop classes. His superior auto shop skills were able to be leveraged to earn passing grades in his French class as the teacher needed work on her KarminGhia. He managed to get into Pierce Community College in Woodland Hills where it took him a little over two years to get his AA. After which he got into UCLA where after a little over 2.5 years he earned his BS in Political Science.
Failed Businesses
1992- 1996 – Cofounded Polestar Pilates and walked away from it in 1996. The company is still in action today.
1990 – Cofounder of the Pilates Institute in New Mexico. Partnership failed within a year, I was forced out and had my ownership dissolved.
1976-1990 – Current Concepts (Balanced Body) couldn’t afford to pay me a salary and only survived by living off of wife’s wages.
1983-1985 – Distribution business with the contract Northern California for Piacere (with pleasure in Italian) Coffee Company. Sold distribution back to the company with pleasure.
1979-1981 – Built “Authentic” Italian coffee carts for ABC Coffee in Sylmar, California
1975-1976 – Liquid Sleep interiors – Failed partnership and couldn’t figure out how to make any money. Led to introduction to the Pilates community after selling share to partner for a small amount.
1973 – Employee at Interspace water beds -Lasted 6 months, company went bankrupt.
1968 – Employee at Clarks Autoparts – Fired after two months for being in two auto accidents in company vehicles in two months.
1962 – Failed Guppy fish selling business. Water evaporated before anyone was found to purchase.
Biggest Mistakes Made
2012 – Allegro 2 launched in November, and we could not get the supply chain fixed well enough to ship consistently until 6 months to a year later.
2011 – Purchased ‘CoreRunner’ from inventor Jonathon Hoffman lost over 100k in R&D and other operational costs as well as harming our relationship with a friend and client before realizing that the product wasn’t a good fit for us, and could be a liability.
2003 – Developed a product line based on the demands of a particular client, and sunk a lot of money into it before realizing the market was not large enough to make it back.
1998 – Poor inventory control led to dangerously high inventories which put us out of compliance with our loan covenents.
1992 – 1996 – Hired many people to keep up with demand, but it took nearly 10 years to actually get rid of many of the people that should not have been hired in the first place.
1991 – Tubular Steel Studio Reformer released at the same time and had the same problem but for professional use.
1991 – Created the personal reformer was aiming to create a reformer that would be able to sell to home users for under $500. We ended up having it cost over $500 and could only sell it for $899 with too low of margins for distributions channels.
1980-1992 – Continued to make waterbeds in parallel with the Pilates Equipment and it didn’t make enough money to cover the opportunity cost.
“The only time you mustn’t fail is the last time you try.” ~Charles F. Kettering
“I failed my way to success.” ~Thomas Edison
“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward.” ~Thomas A. Edison
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ~Thomas Edison
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” ~Henry Ford
“Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure… it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.” ~Robert Schuller
“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to get things done, and those who don’t want to make mistakes.” ~John Maxwell
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” ~Winston Churchill
“The only real failure in life is one not learned from.” ~Anthony J. D’Angelo
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ~Albert Einstein
“Life’s real failure is when you do not realize how close you were to success when you gave up.” ~Anonymous
“In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time.” ~Anthony D’Angelo
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ~Thomas A. Edison
“You can’t have any successes unless you can accept failure.” ~George Cukor
“My reputation grows with every failure.” ~George Bernard Shaw
“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” ~Michael Jordan
“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” ~Abraham Lincoln
“The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” ~Napoleon Hill
“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.” ~John Dewey
~“The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try.” ~Peter Drucker
“You always pass failure on your way to success.” ~Mickey Rooney
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” ~Elbert Hubbard