Child Entrepreneur Kevin Sproles: CEO Of Volusion (Part 3)

SM: In 2003 you did $130,000. What was your next phase of business evolution? How did you grow?

KS: From 2003 to 2004 I really learned how to build on the concepts of product and repeatable processes. I made a significant effort to leave custom work behind. That is what we are still doing today. It increases our profit margin and our ability to offer lower prices. On every call where the customer requests a feature or asks how to implement a capability, we annotate exactly that that request or concern was. We then focus on engineering our product to make it simpler for the customer to use.

In early 2003, there were too many places where customers could break their stores. Today we call it QA, but I did not know about that formal process back then. I just tried to work and make sure that we reduced the number of ways they could break their stores. The same applied to the Web design services. I really focused on the process for broadening and making it more efficient. We developed templates to make things ready to go.

SM: You were basically doing various keyword advertising and developing repeatable processes. How far did that get you? How did the business ramp up in 2004 and 2005?

KS: In 2004 I had only a couple hundred clients. At the time the company consisted of myself and two other people. I was doing sales, tech support, and installations. One of my clients called me, and I was on the phone a lot. He quickly realized what was behind the company and what we were doing. We started talking more about my business. He had had a successful career at Dell and was now trying to start a successful retail business.

He realized that I had a great opportunity that was much larger than what he was thinking of doing with his retail business. He flew out to California and we talked, eventually striking a deal. He now owns 20% of the business, and we opened up an office in Austin, where he lives. We had five people working there and five working here. That is what really jump-started the business at that point. He brought a ton of sales and marketing experience as well as the ability to execute on that. Even if I had a lot of great ideas, it still would have taken more effort, knowledge, and people management skills than I had at the time.

That is when I learned that you can’t just have an idea and expect it to happen. You have to drive it every day toward perfection. He started up sales and marketing, and I was able to focus more on the technology side of things. Today in 2010, we still operate that way. I head up technology and he heads up marketing. That is one thing that has really helped us grow fast, this separation of specialties.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Child Entrepreneur Kevin Sproles: CEO Of Volusion
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