Meet Dan Doody of Doody Publishing in Oak Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Doody.

Dan, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started my company in Jan 1993, after having worked for two different corporations in the medical publishing business. The reasons for going out on my own were many, but the essential ones were work-life balance and trying to do something original and needed in a very crowded space.

We developed a medical book review company, and published the expert reviews first in a print journal and by 1995 on the web, selling access to them to medical librarians.

The market (libraries, publishers, and book intermediaries) found our product worthwhile, inspiring us to develop other information services for this audience.

We also developed a literature update service aimed at doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals in 1997. The space for such an update service was ultra-competitive, and we ultimately discontinued this business in 2015.

In response to request / demand from senior management at a few professional medical societies (e.g., American Academy of Pediatrics, American Pharmacists Association, we started a publishing consulting practice in 2004. That business has thrived to this day and now rivals the book review business in annual turnover.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s been a roller coaster ride without a doubt, and occasionally a white-knuckle ride at that. In the late ’90s, our main investors, who were the owners of our top customer, suffered significant financial reverses causing them to withdraw their ownership, and resulting in the loss of revenue from their company, which at the time represented about 35% of our total company revenue.

This occasioned us to hire an investment banking company to put us on the market. We went on the market positioned as an online medical publishing company in the waning days of the dot.com boom. Unfortunately, the sale of our company did not occur until after the dot.com boom days and at the beginning of the bust days.

We were purchased by a very well-funded Internet start-up. Unfortunately, within 18 months, that start-up had burned through more than $600 million and declared bankruptcy.

That prompted me to buy the assets of Doody Publishing back in June of 2003 following the bankruptcy proceedings. The assets had been severely damaged over the previous two years, so I decided that if I was not at breakeven within 12 months, I would close the business. We did achieve breakeven within that first 12-month period after getting our assets back.

The next difficult time was in the recession of 2008-201o. New business development was off the table. Renewal rates for our subscription and licensing products dipped to all-time lows. And the consulting business was fallow, a generous description. We weathered that storm and carried on. Finally, in 2015 we terminated all of our product offerings aimed at the consumer (which, for us, meant the healthcare professional). That proved to be a crucial tactic and has led to record-setting profits ever since.

Doody Publishing – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
The medical book reviews and other expert evaluations we place on the medical book literature is our differentiator. No one else owns this kind of content. And the content is highly valued by medical libraries, publishers, and other book intermediaries.

The company, Doody Publishing (aka Doody Enterprises) is eponymous, as are our most successful products – Doody’s Review Service, Doody’s Core Titles, Doody’s Digital Workshop, and Doody Consulting. The term “Doody” is synonymous in this narrow market niche with trustworthy, expert evaluation of newly-published medical books. So the establishment of this distinct brand is an accomplishment I’m proud of.

I recently wrote a book chronicling the first 25 years of the company. It consists of 8 chapters. The first, entitled Gratitude, is the longest. There are more than 300 people who have made vital contributions to the company’s success. Those people are the real story of Doody Publishing.

When in the early stages of writing the book, I thought long and hard about what was the single most important element to the survival of the company for 25 years. The answer was easy: the decency of people. At every crucial moment in the company’s history, when our future hung in the balance, someone intervened and did something extraordinary — oftentimes extraordinarily generous — to ensure that we could carry on. There are dozens of examples I could rattle off the top of my head of the genuine decency of people we interacted with.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
What I am most proud of is walking away from a very secure and well-established corporate career to put the interests of our family first by starting the company. We have been paid back in multiple ways throughout the years because my wife and I acted on this family-first priority.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.doody.com
• Email: sales@doody.com

Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.