Berry Fowler, who is perhaps best known as the founder of Sylvan Learning Center, is more successful at starting and growing businesses than he is at retiring from them.

“I’ve tried retiring four different times,” he says. “It doesn’t work for me.”

The Journal last featured Fowler nearly a decade ago, when he was operating a life-coaching business, Fowler International Academy of Professional Coaching, out of his Spokane home.

At age 77, he says, “I still have multiple projects.”

He keeps active with his separate Fowler School of Business & Executive Coaching and business consulting company Berry Fowler & Associates Inc.

He also remains involved in the life-coaching business, although he has sold that operation to one of his students who had become a master trainer.

“So I’m pretty much full time, which is the way I like it,” he says.

Fowler says his coaching ventures have trained and certified coaches in over 90 countries, and “10,000 individuals have come through our training.”

Now, he says he has two main business focuses.

One is training business owners, managers, and leaders who are at or near retirement age and seeking to supplement their retirement as certified business and executive coaches. The other focus is consulting about franchising.

Fowler, who’s on the older edge of the boomer generation, says 70% of people approaching retirement age don’t have the economic means to retire and keep the lifestyle they’re used to unless they find another avenue of cash flow.

“That’s why so many of these experienced people would be perfect as executive coaches,” he says. “Many are looking for a way to stay engaged and remain relevant and maybe leave a lasting legacy that helps others.”

Tuition to become a certified master business coach ranges from just under $2,000 for the self-directed online course to about $4,000 for a one-on-one course, according to the Fowler School of Business & Executive Coaching website.

Fowler says his business operations remain profitable.

“My revenue is fine,” he says. “I like cash flow, but I’m fortunate to where I don’t need to build a giant company anymore.”

On the franchise-consulting side, Fowler’s background includes Sylvan Learning Centers, the personalized instruction and study skills franchise operation he founded in 1979 in Portland, Oregon, and sold in 1985 for $5.3 million.

Other successful franchising operations Fowler has grown and sold include The Little Gym International Inc. infant and child learning and physical development programs, and national tutoring provider KnowledgePoints.

Altogether, the operations have been franchised to over 1,000 locations worldwide.

Noting that one recent university study found that two-thirds of millennials have career goals to become business owners, Fowler contends there’s demand and opportunity for successful small business owners to be franchisors.

“When you have very limited capital, and you want to create a culture of people who are as excited as you are about your business, (franchising) is the perfect growth model,” he says. 

He sees opportunities for applying artificial intelligence in franchise operations.

“With AI, there's so many opportunities to really start a franchise company on a shoe-string budget … because you could get so much done on your own.”

He says AI templates can help with developing disclosure documents, franchise agreements, and operations manuals, that could otherwise cost tens of thousands of dollars.

“I’m keen on helping the small business owner to leverage their successful business and share it with others,” he says.

Fowler moved in 1994 from Mercer Island, near Seattle, to Spokane, where Anne, his wife of 39 years, grew up. They live in Anne’s childhood home on the South Hill, where they raised four children, two of whom still live in the Spokane area.

“I love my family time, and holidays are great when we can gather everybody,” Fowler says.

He has two longtime hobbies.

“I love to read,” he says. His favorite genres include science fiction, historic fiction, and business research. “A vacation for me is seven days in a hammock with stacks of books.”

His other hobby is painting. “I’ve painted all my life,” Fowler says. “I worked my way through college as a caricature and portrait artist, and I’ve been painting and drawing ever since.”

Fowler, who spent much of his time on the road when expanding his earlier franchise operations, has been working from a home office since 2008. He has no plans to retire—again.

“I have the energy, and my brain still works fairly well,” he says. “My ultimate goal is to be wheeled out of here horizontally with a smile on my face.”