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Thinking Big, Really Big: Sheryl Leach

 

Sheryl Leach’s Story: To toddlers, nothing’s bigger than the character Barney the Purple Dinosaur and his friends on the Barney & Friends TV show aired on PBS since 1992. And they can thank Sheryl for their plush pal.

She created Barney and his world; built up a company within a company around the property, landed the programming on the Disney Channel and PBS; promoted the franchise, worldwide licensing, publishing, home video/DVD distribution, a theme park attraction at Universal Studios Florida, a movie, a fan club and more – and finally, the property was sold, along with video production company Lyrick Studios, in 2001 for more than $350 million.

All that because Sheryl was thinking entrepreneurially. “I was always looking for products and programs that I felt good about and that would entertain my young son and hold his attention, because very few things would hold his attention,” remembers Sheryl, who had the idea for Barney when she was a new mom living in Plano, Texas, in the ’80s.

When a friend recommended the videotape Wee Sing Together, the result was both a child-raising revelation – and a business epiphany. Her son sat still and watched the entire hour-long video. Sheryl and her generation of teachers and child-development specialists had believed that a two-year-old’s attention span was only about five minutes.

“I started noticing what worked with him and what didn’t – the characters, music, pacing and so on – and I came up with a formula in my mind of what was needed in order to work with preschoolers,” Sheryl says.

“Then one day I was stuck in traffic and was thinking it would be really smart if someone would design a video or a TV series, putting together all these elements that actually work with two-year-olds. And if it worked with American two-year-olds, it would have to work all over the world, because at that age children are very much alike.

“Then I thought, what would a person have to have in his or her background to do this? The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was describing my own experience; I was describing myself!”

She immediately applied her background in teaching, educational publishing and software sales, marketing and distribution, and combined that with business advice from her then-father-in-law, Richard Leach, chairman and CEO of the family publishing and printing business.

She, along with “a talented and dedicated team,” developed a series of Barney videos and began distributing them by direct sales. They sold well. Soon, Sheryl approached the Disney Channel about airing Barney’s show under their umbrella program, Lunchbox, which offered a smorgasbord of new, weekly lunch-time children’s programs.

In 1991, PBS awarded the Lyons Group a contract for Barney & Friends, as the network sought to start a block of pre-school TV programming to boost ratings. When Barney was sold, along with Lyrick Studios, to HIT Entertainment in 2001, Sheryl became financially independent.

Sheryl Leach’s Key Move: Thinking Big – Really Big

The fact that Sheryl addressed her child-raising need with an entrepreneurial perspective was her first good move. But her second key step was to put no limits on her vision. She was determined from the start that Barney would be a huge success.

“People ask me now, ‘Did you ever have any idea that there would be Barney programming and products literally all over the world and in every language?’” Sheryl says. “And I always say, ‘Absolutely!’ Because I did, from the very first moment I had the idea."

“When you see something so clearly in your mind as already completed, all you have to do is just connect the dots to it. It’s when you lose sight of that vision that you get lost along the way or start to doubt yourself.”

So Sheryl saw her job of building the company largely as one of removing obstacles between Barney and the realization of her vision. The product wasn’t real yet? Produce it; and she did, using her own skills and background, and the initial capital. People didn’t know about the product? Market it; and she did, promoting Barney at dozens of retailers herself.

“You already know that it’s going to happen; you’ve already seen it – so your job is to remove all the obstacles to make it happen,” Sheryl says.

Sheryl’s Bonus Insight

Succeeding as an entrepreneur is only the first step on an amazing journey, Sheryl says. The next is experiencing the joy of giving back – using your money to further good in the world. Helping others, and becoming part of the philanthropic community, is a wonderful byproduct of financial success.

These days, Sheryl and her son are spending some time starting a restaurant in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

But most of her time, Sheryl says, is spent in passionate pursuit of promoting youth-based media through her not-for-profit organization, the Shei’rah Foundation. She’s also developing a feature film, The Unicorn Sonata, through her company, SL Productions LLC.