On the Journey to Salem: What is so Wrong with Rossville and Central Illinois

As we continue to prepare for our Salem journey, people are asking what is so wrong with Central Illinois, and Rossville. I mean it is where the tradition grew up and has been for a very long time in one form or another. It was where we believed we could put down roots and begin building a community, even a Salem of the Midwest. In this, we discovered while we could build a community, we could not build a global organization.

The no.1 killer was the lack of useful Internet service for business. While we were promised that this would change, our service, which costs over $150.00 a month is terrible. We have lost it for a week at a time, and it has a lot of limits. We have been told that new service was coming but now after several years and a down economy, it is no longer a believable proposition to wait. This hurts us in more ways then we can imagine.

We also discovered the distance from the highway and from airports limited access, and from the time we moved down, gas prices have permanently escalated. It takes 3 hours from Chicago, Indianapolis, and longer from St. Louis to reach here. We believed deeply that would not make a difference, and we discovered that it does. People just could not come down and hang out. We thought we could have a community but it did not happen.

Probably the worst thing was that we could never scale up in size. We had so few people available to us that we could not the talent we needed, not programmers, not on air talent, not sales folks. We could not build up enough people to make Mini-spells work or any scale of production at any level that made it economically feasible. We had the contracts but not the people to fill them. It left a few of us to carry on doing everything, and that was not possible. When the economy collapsed, we discovered just how small we were. So instead of having the talent to expand out of a bad economy, we had to shrink. It was a very painful situation and continues to be.

So we are isolated because of distance, high fuel costs, and even a lack of willing workers that will build the company with us. These are all the real world issues, and did not include the numerous ways we were blocked by locals who wanted to see us go. That is well known, but it really had only a little to with this decision. It was the resources we needed to be able to function.

Once we finally accept that we have to find outside income sources to support ourselves, that in no way could we hold on in CI, and we had to move, then the question is where. For our examination, Salem was the best. We did consider having two locations, creating a factory in Rossville and a sales outlet in Salem, but unfortunately that concept died as the staff killed it as we could not really develop structure to allow ourselves to carry out what would have been a cool thing. The economy turned against us when we were ready to take the chance.

So the question is where else is there for us? The other choice is to dissolve WSI central offices all together, and become all Internet, with no offices at all. To some degree, this was considered, and in some ways, we have chosen this solution. Don Lewis decided that Salem was for him because he could make a living. I mean where does a world class Psychic move to make an income, which has amazing artistic ability and teaching skills. So because Don chose this path, Witch School had little choice but to back him. So we are looking to keep our operation small, lean, hungry and tight. We want to us more of our resources to building our education system, not pay for fuel and extra costs for being isolated.

Where else can we go? That was the question, and still is. We are praying, hoping, and determined to make Witch School live up to it's potential. Where do we have the resources to make a difference, and we found nowhere else comparable.

For a side note, we did consider Cape Town, South Africa and we are still considering it. Especially as a winter set of offices, as it is cheap to live, and has a lot of the resources we need. Only the income potential was a problem, and okay, maybe the prejudice possible discouraged. Don has not ruled a move to South Africa, but we are trying Salem first.

So Salem it is, with all the hope, fear, anger, and tension it may bring. But the one thing I believe is that Witch School will survive and thrive, continue building it's global network, and creating opportunities for local communities wherever they are. Hopefully someday we will be able to open centers everywhere, but for now we need to build a single successful center, and for now that is Salem.