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V O L . X X I I I N O. X X S E P T E M B E R 4 , 2 0 1 7 26 S TA R T U P S / E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P F O C U S O ne year of high school German never struck a chord with Greg Greuel, who didn't like the rote learning. Long after saying auf wieder- sehen to learning foreign tongues, he is now in the business of producing textbooks — in digital and print — for secondary school language instruction. "We're trying to help teachers help their students become more, and better, aware of their surround- ings, and how do you do that? You do that through immersive communication," says Greuel, president of Wayside Publishing in Freeport. In practice, that means a textbook would reference an authentic poster about a concert or other event that took place in a Spanish-speaking country — "not just something that's made up in the classroom, but something that is authentically from whatever region it is that you're studying," he says. "All of these things and more are combined in our text. No other publisher has that, and it's all based on the latest research." Wayside's new Spanish 1-2-3 series, "EntreCulturas" (Between Cultures), which came out this spring, is its fi rst based on standards put out by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in 2015. In its World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, the Alexandria, Va.-based group stresses interpersonal and interpretive communication over vocabulary lists, grammar exercises and verb conju- gations like the ones that were a turnoff for Greuel back in high school. "I had nothing against the teacher, but I think it comes back to the approach of how to learn," he says. "It just didn't connect with me, the rote memorization." Wayside Publishing, the company he bought from his uncle in 2010 when it was a one-man regional operation with $500,000 in annual sales, employs 18 people in Freeport with plans to hire eight more this year, mainly in sales and marketing. e fast-growing company has gotten large orders from Illinois, Florida, Texas and California, and expects $7 million in sales this year. A U.S. Navy veteran with a background in information technology, the 50-year-old moved the company from Cape Cod to Maine when he bought it. He still runs it like a startup, launching new products "as fast as we can." Brunswick High School teacher Jane Lienau, who penned Wayside's newly released Latin textbook, says that she wishes that she had had better resources when she started teaching 25 years ago. "Wayside tries very hard with its textbooks to make sure that the resources are available for all teachers that tend to be a part of our goals anyway." Her book aims to prepare students for the sight-reading portion of the Advanced Placement Latin test. Wayside focuses on grades six to 12. Spanish textbooks account for 60% of its revenues, a refl ec- tion of the language's popularity across the coun- try. Two recent surveys cited by Education Week show 62.91% of K-12 students enrolled in Spanish in 2014-15, far outshining French and German, No. 2 and No. 3, respectively (see chart on Page 28). Besides Spanish and Latin, Wayside has titles in French, Italian, German, English and history. Class act Textbook maker Wayside Publishing expecting $7M in revenues this year B y R e n e e C o r d e s KatahdinTrust.com | 1-800-221-2542 Ask us how we can help your business grow. SBA PREFERRED LENDER Print is not dead. Print is not dead. Print is not dead. Print is not dead. Print is not dead. Print is not dead. Print is not dead. Print is not dead. Print is not dead. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. It's part of the package. — Greg Greuel Wayside Publishing

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