In this episode of Behavioral Profit, Debbie Longo speaks with Haren Bhakta about business failure, leadership behavior, investment management, company culture, and the lessons that came from losing a business during COVID.

Haren shares how he left Morgan Stanley to start his own investment fund focused on micro-cap companies. After investing heavily into a Las Vegas ticketing company and joining its board, he believed he could help improve operations, leadership, and business performance. However, when COVID shut down the Las Vegas entertainment industry, the company eventually went bankrupt.

Throughout the conversation, Haren explains that the company’s collapse was not caused solely by COVID. He describes how poor leadership decisions, excessive legal spending, lack of preparation, weak communication, and failure to modernize the business created deeper behavioral and operational problems long before the pandemic happened.

One major issue was that the company relied entirely on physical ticket kiosks on the Las Vegas Strip and failed to build an online ticket-selling platform despite changing consumer behavior. Haren also explains how disconnected leadership became from employees and how poor internal behavior created long-term instability inside the business.

Despite the financial loss and stress, Haren explains how the experience ultimately led him to create his new company, Inside Ownership Index. The failure forced him to rethink investing, leadership, and long-term business strategy. Instead of trying to “fix” struggling companies, he shifted toward investing alongside successful leaders and creating a lower-cost investment model designed to benefit individual investors more directly.

Debbie and Haren also discuss Warren Buffett, Kodak, business pivots, organizational behavior, company culture, risk management, and how many businesses fail because they continue investing energy into systems and behaviors that are no longer working. The conversation reinforces that business problems are often behavioral problems first, and that leadership decisions directly impact company survival and profitability.

This episode explores leadership, business behavior, resilience, failure, investment strategy, organizational culture, decision-making, risk management, company growth, and the importance of adapting before problems become irreversible. It reinforces the idea that failure itself is not always the end — sometimes it becomes the foundation for building something stronger and more aligned long term.

Contact Debbie Longo, Executive Behavioral Coach:

Website: https://www.debbielongo.com/

Email: debbie@lifeinbloomny.net

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbie-longo-life-in-bloom-ny/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debbie.longo.2025

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbie.life.in.bloom.ny/?hl=en

Contact Haren Bhakta:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harenbhakta/

Email: haren@insideownership.com