Running Out of Miracles
By Bob Smietana
posted 5/14/2004
 2 of 5
The business side is pretty straightforward. Where's God When I'm S-Scared? had an initial sales order of 400 copies and took off from there. Big Idea sold 50,000 videos in 1994. By 1999, sales peaked at 7 million videos, or about $40 million in revenue.
This was heady territory for Vischer and Mike Nawrocki (co-creator of VeggieTales, writer, and the voice of Larry the Cucumber), who years earlier were asked to leave St. Paul Bible College (now Crown College) for skipping too many chapels.
As Big Idea grew, Vischer began to craft a master plan for its future. He saw two possibilities. He could remain a storyteller like C. S. Lewis, or he could become an "empire builder," like another of his heroes, Walt Disney.
Being the next Walt Disney also felt a lot better than being plain old Phil. A middle child, whose dad left home when he was nine, Vischer felt invisible as a kid. His drive to build Big Idea—a company whose positive messages would strengthen families—was fueled by his childhood experience of loss. Vischer, a natural introvert, figured that through Big Idea he could keep more families together, keep more dads from leaving, and make himself feel important.
"When the first VeggieTales video started to catch on, I remember my sister saying, 'We never thought you'd amount to much'—which was partly joking, but only partly," he says. "I really felt driven, I think, to prove that I actually existed. The bigger it got, the more I felt validated. I am not nobody—I am Mr. Big Idea guy."
But in 1999, everything started going wrong.
Big Idea's business plan projected sales would grow from $40 million in 1999 to $125 million in 2002. So the company expanded, hiring staff and "spending money like mad," Vischer says. It also signed a multimillion-dollar loan agreement with LaSalle Bank, and started work on Jonah, a $10 million, self-financed project, all based on those projections. Unfortunately, the approach was way off.
Instead of growing, sales went flat in 2000. Big Idea suddenly could no longer afford to pay its bills.
"It became clear at that point that [Big Idea] was absolutely going to fall apart unless God intervenes," Vischer says. "Unless God shows up and somehow wipes away those massive mistakes, this was going to crash and burn."
To survive, the company desperately needed to cut costs. That meant layoffs, something Vischer promised himself he would never do.
"I thought—this cannot be God's will," he says. "I can't do that to people."
Searching for a Miracle
The only way to save the company was for Jonah to be a My Big Fat Greek Wedding kind of success. If that happened, God could save Big Idea.
Crendalyn McMath, who teaches in the MBA program at Chicago's North Park University, says that entrepreneurs like Vischer can have a hard time letting go when things go wrong. Instead, McMath says, they respond with what she calls "escalating commitment."
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