#710 iContact Founder Returns To Mixergy After $169M Sale – with Ryan Allis

How does a wristband help a founder build a $169 million company?
Ryan Allis is the founder of iContact, a provider of email marketing tools for small businesses. And a company that was recently sold for $169 million to Vocus.
Here’s a quote from the last time I interviewed him, “we incorporated in July ’03, lived in the office, slept on futons, cooked on a George Foreman grill, did whatever we had to do to keep expenses low, while we built up revenue and customers, and improved the product.”
Those are the challenges for a startup and it was inspiring to hear his story from those days. This time, I want to ask him about the challenges of going from a successful startup to a company that generates tens of millions a year.
Ryan Allis is the Co-Founder of iContact, a provider of email marketing tools for small businesses.

Sponsored byRevolution Productions – Do you have a great product, but people aren’t trying it? You might have too much text on your site. Video, more than text, helps people understand what you’ve created and convinces them to buy it. I recommend you go to Revolution-Productions.com. When you do, talk directly to the founder, Anish Patel, and tell him I sent you. He’ll make sure you have a great video that convinces people to buy your product.
Walker Corporate Law – Scott Edward Walker is the lawyer entrepreneurs turn to when they want to raise money or sell their companies, but if you’re just getting started, his firm will help you launch properly. Watch this video to learn about him.
Grasshopper – Don’t make the mistake of comparing Grasshopper with other phone services. Check out their features and you’ll see why Grasshopper isn’t just a phone number, it’s the virtual phone system that entrepreneurs (like me) love.
More interviews - https://mixergy.com/moreint
Rate this interview - https://mixergy.com/rateint

Andrew: Are there any questions before I fire you up with another great interview? First, if you need a video for your site, to help increase conversions and make more sales, who do you turn to? Revolution Productions, their videos make it easy for customers to understand your product. And, even though they’re inexpensive, Revolution Productions uses animation techniques and high quality video production values to tell a compelling story. And, Revolution Productions is trusted by Sendgrid, SnapEngage, Freelancer and others. [??] Go to revolution-productions.com.

Next, did you know that adding a phone number from grasshopper.com to your site can increase your sales? Well, LessAccounting found that sales grew when they added a Grasshopper phone number to their site. Seeing a phone number for help, makes people feel safe. Flower AB [SP] tested having a phone number on their site from Grasshopper and not having one from Grasshopper. Look at how much impact it had, try it on your site, go to grasshopper.com.

Finally, will you trust me if I tell you that the lawyer that entrepreneurs should use is Scott Edward Walker, of Walker Corporate Law? Well, what if Jason Calacanis, Neil Patel, and these Founders tell you that they recommend Scott Walker of Walker Corporate Law? Well, you don’t have to take our word for it. If you are a start-up Founder who is looking for a lawyer, put a call in to Walker Corporate Law, and talk to them, you’ll know for yourself. walkercorporatelaw.com

All right, let’s get started. Hey, Freedom Fighters, my name is Andrew Warner. I am the Founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart, and home for over seven hundred interviews with proven entrepreneurs, who come here to tell you their stories, so that you can learn from them, and build your own success story. Today, in fact, before I even announce this interview, I’ve got to do a standing ovation over here. Hang on a second. Where’s the camera? There’s the camera. This standing ovation doesn’t work here. But, man, Ryan, do you deserve it. Man, do you deserve it.

Ryan: Thank you, Andrew. I’m glad to be here.

Andrew: Wow, almost two years since we did this interview. Last time I did an interview with Ryan Allis, he had a wristband on. This time I want to ask and answer this question in this interview. How did the wristband help a Founder build a $169 million company. Ryan Allis is the co-founder of iContact, a provider of email marketing tools for small businesses, and a company that was recently sold for a $169 million to Vocus. Here’s a quote that I pulled from last time that I interviewed him. Quote, he says, “We incorporated in July of ’03, lived in the office, slept on futons, cooked on a George Foreman grill, did whatever we had to do to keep expenses low, while we built up revenue and customers, and improve the product.”

Now, those are the challenges of a start-up, and man, did he get past them. It was inspiring to hear, Ryan, how you did get past them. In this interview I want to go to the next level. What happens when you get past the challenges of a start-up, and have to build a bigger and bigger company? You got into the tens of millions of dollars. And, the second thing is that I’d like to talk about is the mind set. That wristband did something to you. It’s part of the way of thinking of the world that I want to learn from you about. So, first of all, thanks for doing this interview, especially so soon after getting acquired. I know that, usually, after getting acquired you want to take a step back and not do media. I appreciate you coming here doing this interview. And second, for anyone who didn’t see that wristband, can you explain what it was? What was on your wrist?

Ryan: Absolutely. Well, I’ll show it to you now, because I still have it right here. I had two wristbands on two years ago. One said, ‘Make Poverty History’ which is a passion of mine to use business and entrepreneurship to create sustainable economic growth in the developing world. That’s something I hope to pursue for the next three or four decades ahead. The other wristband said, ‘One Hundred Million in 2012, iContact’. And, that to me was a personal goal, to either get to one hundred million in revenue, or get acquired for north of a hundred million this year, in 2012.

We started the business in 2003, and you’re right, we did everything we could to keep expenses low. Sleeping on futons, eating lots of Ramen noodles as we built up iContact over the years to seventy thousand customers, a little over forty seven million in revenue, and over a million users, in email marketing and social media marketing. So, it was great adventure. But, certainly, having two primary life goals on your wrist is a very visible way of focusing your efforts on achieving them.

Andrew: So, let’s learn about how you come up with the goals and how it helps you to get there. How wearing them on your wrist and being so open about it gets you there. First, how did you pull $100 million? Where did that come from?

Ryan: Well, let me do it the other way. Let me tell you about the process first, because I think that will answer the second question, how do you get the specific goal. I learned a process from a book almost everyone’s read, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Once a year, at minimum, take – and what I do is the last five days of every year, so from December 26th to December 31st every year – I don’t work, I’m generally at my parents’ house in Florida, and I make sure I take some time to reflect, to write a reflection on what I did that year. What I achieved on my goals, what I did not achieve on my goals, and I always like to hit about 50% of my goals. If I hit more than 50%, then my goals aren’t ambitious enough.

I go through the process of actually writing down what I want to achieve in the year ahead. And they tend to be about ten goals per year, and maybe one or two big ones. So I do it on a 12-month period, so I have a 1-year set of goals, a set of goals for 5 years, and a set of sort of lifetime goals. So within those three categories, every year I update that list. And I ensure that what I’m doing on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis, is aligning toward the primary goals I want to achieve that year, and the longer term lifetime goals.

Andrew: First of all, how do you come up with the list of goals? The thing is, when I sit down, I’m not, well, in fact…I’m having a hard time coming up with the right questions here. I’m really excited to be doing in this interview, and it’s showing in my voice. I should be so much more professional and so much more composed than I am right now. But, can you give me an example of what’s on the list? What kind of things would you have on the list beyond building a $100 million company by 2012?

Ryan: Sure. Some of them might be travel, countries that I want to visit that year. It’d be the personal traits and values I want to build into my character over time and work on improving, it might be experiences. For example, last year one of my goals was to go skydiving for the first time and check that off the list. Often times, it might be educational. And often times many are within the realm of business and entrepreneurship. In terms of the process of setting the goals, you have these categories, you know, family, personal, experiential, educational, and professional and business. And you put in a couple of goals for each, and it really doesn’t take that long. It really takes maybe a couple of hours to do at most, every year. And then I have a personal Wiki, which is a password protected sort of like Wikipedia, just for me. And I keep my goals going all the way back to 2002, when I was 18, to the present, by year. And every couple, two or three times a week, I go in and do a journal update to see how I’m progressing each week and whatever I’m learning. So that’s the p

[...]

Original source