Entrepreneur admits mistakes as TLG goes into liquidation
TLG Education, the high- profile business set up by one of Scotland’s female entrepreneur role models Norma Corlette, has gone into liquidation with all of its 20 staff made redundant.
The company’s website says it works with 100,000 young people every year and is “one of the largest and most successful education training providers of its type in the UK”.
Corlette, formerly married to motivational guru Jack Black, was until recently a board member of the Entrepreneurial Exchange. She set up the business as The Learning Game in 1998 and within five years had built a thriving company based on meeting a growing demand for external trainers to help both pupils and teachers raise their performance in the classroom.
But Corlette told The Herald she now wanted to pass on to aspiring entrepreneurs the lessons of her “mistakes”, adding: “We should have changed our business model sooner.”
The Milngavie-based company at one time employed 30 in Scotland, had set up franchises in Germany and Ireland, and had plans to extend them to Asia, North America and Australia.
Her ideas were applauded by the late Sir John Harvey-Jones, the former ICI chief turned TV troubleshooter, as “opening whole new opportunities”, and her materials were in use at 84% of Scottish secondary schools.
The courses include “My Amazing Brain” for younger pupils, which teaches them how their brain works, and “Self-Empowered Learning” for older classes, which was a sell-out in nine months.
Corlette had devised the courses after 15 years of research and enlisted the help of Professor John MacBeath, formerly of Strathclyde and Cambridge universities. Bank of Scotland provided development cash, and four years ago she said the company was “self-funding and highly profitable”, with a turnover topping £2m and profits of £250,000.
Corlette ran an all-female management team and had said that being a single parent had made her “so focused you have to take personal responsibility”, adding that “women with kids can (run their own business) if they believe in themselves”.
Earlier this year Corlette, 51, who spent 10 years as a primary teacher, was shortlisted for the 2008 Women of Influence Award, run by a committee of Scottish businesswomen in collaboration with the charity NCH.
Last year she said: “It has been suggested that women business owners prefer to adopt a management style which favours a more considered and slower growth. Men appear to be greater risk- takers, which has a huge impact on investors. Bring the two together and you have an exciting mix which would make for steady, stable growth.”
The business had benefited from a push by the Scottish Executive to raise teaching standards in Scottish schools.
But two weeks ago TLG Education was put into liquidation by insolvency firm Tenon Group, which said all jobs had been lost. It was unable to provide any details of the liquidation or creditors.
Corlette, however, was happy to respond to The Herald last week. She said: “I am finishing all the projects we had, nobody has been left with unfinished business or left in the lurch we are a small company and I have used the same people for years, and seeing that the situation was getting tight we haven’t been buying stuff.”
All staff had been properly paid, she added.
On a report that a similar company had already started up in business, she said: “One of our competitors took one of our staff and immediately started phoning our clients.”
Corlette said: “The climate has really changed quite a lot, the funding has changed quite a lot, and there is an awful lot more that schools can do for themselves. The competition now is not external, it is internal within the schools themselves.”
She admitted that the business had been too dependent on government funding. “I don’t think that was a good business model we should have moved to an associate’ model because funding is getting tighter. If you have got overheads, your prices are too high and you are not getting greater flexibility in pricing.”
On her future plans, she said: “I put myself out there, and I have learned a lot of stuff. There is a tremendous amount I can hand on, both to young people and to older people in business. I am very passionate about women building businesses … I don’t want people to make the same mistakes as me.”