Bootstrapping an Evergreen Business From Oregon: Kirstin Quinlan, CEO of Certified Languages International (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Where are you right now revenue-wise?

Kristin Quinlan: Last year, we were at $23.2 million. We’re on course to do, at least, $27 million this year. We can be as high as $30 million.

Sramana Mitra: Is this a highly profitable business?

Kristin Quinlan: Yes, it’s highly profitable. All of our growth has been self-funded. We had no investment capital whatsoever. In the early years, it was really lean. We depended upon $100,000 rotating loan at the bank for interpreter pay every month. There were many lean years where we were really tight but we had never gone to any outside funding. It was really important that we grow at the rate that we could fund. Part of our growth was slower. Our cost was being managed really tightly. At one point, things became leaner and leaner. Today, there isn’t anything we can’t do or anything we won’t fund. We have shown incredibly strong profitability. We have significant investments in technologically developing our business.

Sramana Mitra: How do you manage this company? I got the fact that you didn’t raise any outside money. You’re a 100% family-owned business. When you manage your P&L and make decisions on how to invest in growth versus how much of the proceeds you distribute out as dividends, how do you manage the company? What is your philosophy around managing a self-financed bootstrapped business like this?

Kristin Quinlan: Outside of annual bonuses to our management and executive staff, we haven’t done any dividend disbursements. We keep the money in several pockets, if you will. Because this is a family-owned company, we have an account in which we are depositing significant sums every year that is going to go towards philanthropic causes that the family deems important. Our company continues to be very philanthropic.

Employees have the ability to suggest where we can donate money. Our investment goes into technology and reserves. We probably have too much money sitting out there and not being utilized to the best of its efforts.

Sramana Mitra: The point is you have cash sitting in your balance sheet.

Kristin Quinlan: Significant cash. We grew strong. We also grew really quickly. We’re big enough that we probably should be looking at things in a larger way. To be honest, our management team and our executive team has been here through the entire journey. We have never ever lost a manager or an executive player. We promote very heavily within the company. Our turnover is next to nil.

It’s been us kids watching the company grow and having a blast growing it. At one point you turn around and say, “For crying out loud, we’re going to do $30 million this year. Shouldn’t we be more mature and thoughtful in how we approach our executive planning?” That’s something we’re sitting down to analyze.

Our father made a declaration that we were going to grow the company to $10 million under my watch. At $10 million, we’re getting out. We blew past $10 million without knowing it happened. From then on, we’ve just been having a really great time doing what we’re doing.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Bootstrapping an Evergreen Business From Oregon: Kirstin Quinlan, CEO of Certified Languages International
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