Tips for Entrepreneurs

Zero to One Million: Ryan Allis book outlines path to success
January 21, 2008
By Allan Maurer

RESEARCH TRIANGLE, NC—Ryan Allis, founder and CEO of email technology company iContact, say the primary purpose of his book, “Zero to One Million, How I built a company to $1 million in sales and how you can too,” is to help other entrepreneurs.

Allis started his own entrepreneurial career at age 11 when his parents declined to buy him some brand name t-shirts he wanted when he was in the 7th grade. He asked himself, “What am I good at?”

The answer: computers. Therefore, Allis started offering computer help for $5 an hour via printed cards he distributed to local businesses and soon had a growing business.

At 14, he added Web design, and at 16, Web marketing and search engine optimization services through his company, Virante. While a senior in high school he helped a man market a nutraceutical product for arthritis to nearly $1 million in sales via his Web marketing efforts.

Tips for entrepreneurs
His book, first self-published in 2003, the same year he founded iContact (then Broadwick), tells the story of his entrepreneurial adventures to date, while the second half is a ten-step process to help other entrepreneurs mirror his success.

It includes tips on how to evaluate a business idea, write a business plan, raise capital, get a product to market, hire great people, become a manager, scale operations of a company and build systems and processes.

About raising money, Allis tells TechJournal South, “You have to make sure you have a true business opportunity.” He provides what he calls the MRA evaluation method: market, advantages, and potential return. Once an entrepreneur goes through that process, he or she needs to decide whether to raise debt capital or equity financing and the book outlines the pros and cons of each through each stage of a company’s development.

Allis bootstrapped iContact for its first three years, then raised about $5.5 million over two rounds. The book explains, “How we were able to get started with $5,000 in debt capital.”

Like pushing a big wheel
Allis says he learned business “through trial and error.” One of the biggest lessons he’s learned has to do with management. “When we started hiring in 2003,” he says, “it was the first time I’d ever managed someone. My style was ‘tell me what you did and I’ll try to make it better.’ We had casual relationships with employees working right next to me.”

Now, managing his 82-person company, Allis says, “I had to learn not to micro-manage and how to structure criticism so that it’s seen as constructive. I had to train people then trust them to do their job.”

His company has had steady growth. “But in the beginning, it was difficult to get sales. The first year we had $12,000 in sales and $17,000 in expenses. It was hard for Aaron (his partner Aaron Houghton) and I to work a year and lose $5,000. I learned it’s hard to get going. It’s like pushing a big wheel. It’s tough to get momentum, but once you have it, it moves faster and faster by itself with each push.”

Another thing Allis concentrates on these days, he says, “Is speed of implementation. Getting things done. We continue to look at how we can create efficient processes and systems.”

Allis says his job has altered from the earliest days in the company when his it was essentially Web marketing and raising money. “Now we have a lot more people and my job is interacting with team members. We’ve built a big family-like culture here. I look forward to coming in to work in the morning because of the type of people who work here.”


On the Web: www.icontact.com

Amazon link to the book: http://tiny.cc/7MKFB