have you ever received a promotion or newsletter in your email inbox chances are the company that sent it to you used an email marketing service like I contact to send you and hundreds or thousands of its customers those emails but what makes I contact unique is that it was started when its Founders were still in college and now their idea has rocketed ey contact to over $15 million in sales this year alone the business environment is always changing and with that change comes opportunities for entrepreneurs business success often starts with finding a need and filling it entrepreneurs Ryan Alice and Aaron hton of ey contact wanted to revolutionize email marketing and in doing so it became more successful than they ever imagined what we saw was that entrepreneurs and small business owners needed an easy way to send out their newsletters it was simply too complicated for the average business owner to send out an email newsletter to their customers this allows small businesses to compete with big businesses online and basically use uh the same type of tools that larger corporations use to promote themselves and to build relationships with their customers what we wanted to provide was a simple onstop solution to allow anyone to manage their online marketing and Communications and that's what we did with eye contact businesses sell products or services to make money or Revenue if the revenue is greater than the cost that business incurs then the business makes a profit if the costs are greater than the revenue the business incurs a loss obviously the goal is to be profitable over time when we got started we really didn't have any Capital ourselves I I remember I had about $122,000 to my name and it was going down by about $11,000 a month so in our first year of business uh we did about $117,000 in sales over the entire year so I knew I had about a year to figure out how to make things work we had uh two employees uh really throughout most of that year which was Ryan and I um in our second year we uh broke $200,000 in Revenue um and for the last 5 years we've uh significantly more uh than doubled the revenue every year here we today are not yet a profitable company we are growing so fast that we've chosen to go out and raise investment Capital so that we can fund that rapid growth so that we can be profitable in the future in 2007 our Revenue was uh a little bit south of uh 10 million um and we expect to be able to double that number this year uh and are still tracking to double that uh in 2009 as well starting a business is one of the best ways to achieve success but with with that success comes risk risk is defined as the chance an entrepreneur invests time and money into a business that may not be profitable not all businesses are equally successful but those that take the biggest risks often end up making the most profit there was very little actually to risk um because of just the the lack of kind of resources and net worth we had at the time but then you could also look at the fact that the product was built for a paying customer which limited a lot of risk UPF front what we calculated was our customer acquisition cost how much money we had to spend in advertising in order to get a customer to sign up which was about $300 we calculated the lifetime value of our customer which was about $2,000 and we figured out that that was a good metric we invest 300 we get back 2,000 Ryan new marketing products I had built the product to serve um companies that wanted to Market themselves online I think we felt like we had the domain expertise and a working product and almost nothing to lose so it was an easy choice successful businesses also contribute greatly to the standard of living and quality of life for all the US has one of the world's highest standards of living largely because of the wealth created by its businesses this wealth along with the freedoms Education Health Care fair tax code and natural environment we enjoy leads to a high quality of life I think we have one of the most friendly uh climates for business for small business and for entrepreneurship in the world and I've benefited a lot by being an American being able to have the infrastructure and investments in education and Healthcare and Technology this business I contact for me is just a way to uh provide something of value create jobs here in North Carolina and be able to gain in leadership ability for the future such that I can uh be able to make an even bigger difference businesses also struggle to meet the needs of their stakeholders in addition to being profitable stakeholders can be customers employees stockholders suppliers the surrounding community Comm environmentalist and such for example profitability is weighed against employees needs to make more money cutting costs May mean not being environmentally friendly Outsourcing overseas could hurt the local community the stakeholders that we find very interesting are the community as well our local community which we're very involved in we support a number of Charities uh throughout North Carolina and the world actually and then I think there's also the environment I think we all have to consider what the impact of our business is on the world uh overall uh a lot of clients that move to us are leaving from things like Direct Mail uh and printed media where there's actually ink waste and uh paper waste our clients send about 650 million emails a month um with their brand name on them uh through our system and for the most part those are pieces of uh information that uh would have been in print entrepreneurs play a big role in the creation of wealth there are five factors of production that contribute to wealth land or natural resources labor Capital entrepreneurship and knowledge the difference between what makes a rich country rich and a poor country poor is mainly the proliferant of Entrepreneurship and the effective use of knowledge great ideas are sometimes a dime a dozen uh especially in the technology world and it really comes down to uh execution and resources so do you have the time do you have the money to put behind it and then you have the discipline to stay focused on the goal and to actually see it through to completion the business business environment refers to all the factors that affect the development of businesses there are five elements in the business environment the economic and legal technological competitive social and the global business environment let's look at each one briefly the economic and legal environment directly affects the risk of starting a business if taxes regulations and interference with free markets is minimized businesses have a much better chance of success the laws in this country uh I think are set up to allow certain types of resources for entrepreneurs and a certain freedom to um be focused on any specific thing that that an entrepreneur might want to pursue um and I think the resources that uh that we have available to us here really cause uh people to succeed in manyways the technological environment includes the internet and other technologies that allow businesses to operate much more effectively and efficiently than ever before they can do more with less which means they are more productive the internet computers Information Technology have been absolutely critical to our capability to start eye contact and to grow eye contact UM and by getting that do name and building a business behind it we're able to uh kind of get credibility uh instantly and access across the world not only do we have a web-based software product but about 95% of our marketing is done online so really without the web we would not exist as a business to today the competitive environment is greater than ever customers want more and more and exceeding those expectations is how businesses compete to win businesses must be nimble able to restructure quickly and Empower their employees and managers to make decisions that enable them to beat the competition we Empower our employees and our team members to achieve their goals and their dreams and allow them to work hard we tend to avoid micromanagement we tend to hire smart people train them and then let them go let them free to achieve uh within their own uh organization within their own departments managing diversity means more than hiring minorities and women age sexual preference religion marital status disabilities and cultural differences are all issues in the social environment that businesses must deal with sensitively not only with employees but also with customers having people from different backgrounds uh with different skill sets and experiences is important to making sure that we understand understand um how our product affects our customers which come from U just as diverse of a background as we hope to have uh people on our team here the last element is the global environment globalization and World Trade have exploded because better distribution and communication systems have made the world a much smaller place but other adverse factors such as War terrorism and global warming can also have a big impact on how businesses operate in the future being an online company from the beginning about 20% of our sales have been International without any special marketing to different countries without any special support for those countries just having an online product in English allows you to get another nice additional percentage of the globe uh able to use the product in in a very seamless fashion so we've learned that there are many factors that affect the business environment we've also learned that entrepreneurs like Ryan Alice and Aaron hton are free to pursue their dreams if they are determined enough the success of new businesses like eye contact is a result of the evolution of businesses in the United States what the future holds in store is nothing short of amazing the question is what will your part in that future be if you had a vision and you communicated that Vision if you respected people people would follow you people would be part of your family part of your team I wish there was a simple answer to how you get from a couple of guys living in an office and um you know sleeping on a futon and eating on a George Foreman grill to uh a multi-million dollar company with 100 plus employees if you can be happy make money help others all at the same time that's really when you'll achieve your your definition of [Music] success [Music] pap