1/30/2024 0 Comments Reinvents yellow pages“ My thought process was that a franchise was more oriented to someone who needs help and guidance to run a business,” he said. With all that knowledge, you would think Robinson would be one of the last people to consider a franchise. “I had been in business for a long time, and I even had exposure to the lawn care business in the 1970s in Florida,” he said. “But then I learned their marketing was able to do some things I wasn’t able to do,” “ You have to be smart enough to get out of your own way and realize someone may be able to do better than you can,” he said. Solution: Despite years of experience, Robinson came to the conclusion he needed help. Idea: For his new lawn care endeavor to grow, Robinson knew he needed help connecting with customers and getting the word out about that side of his business. Problem: Robinson had plenty of experience running a successful business, but the changing marketing landscape was proving hard for the successful entrepreneur to master. Just like my friend Warren Buffet says, 'I tap dance to work every day'," concludes Gupta.īruce H.Background: After 40 years in the pest management business, Barry Robinson, of GBR Enterprises in Spotsylvania, Virginia, wanted to grow the lawn care side of his business that he had started in 2000. To me, work is a holiday compared to growing up in a village in India, with no running water, no toilet and working for $40 a month. Kharagpur-by donating $8 million of his own money. ![]() He set up a business and law school at his alma mater-I.I.T. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC and endows a number of schools in his native India. He is active in a number of charities, sits on the Board of Trustees of the John F. "I'm one month older than my friend Bill Clinton," says Gupta, who like the former President, continues to work and devote time and money to philanthropic activities. At 67 years old, Gupta has done and seen it all, yet he remains a man in perpetual motion. One might think time and great success would slow the irrepressible serial entrepreneur. Over the years, Gupta grew the company from a stack of Yellow Pages in his garage, acquired 45 companies, and took the company public in 1993. "I thought I was a millionaire," says Gupta. His first year in sales were $44,000 with a profit of over $22,000. He then decided to sell the list to others. His first created "sales list" sent 5,000 pages of Yellow Pages contact information via a WATTS line. I didn't know at the time that I was an entrepreneur," says Gupta. "The first time I was compiling Yellow Pages. He grew a database business from his garage with 4,800 yellow pages books and turned it into a multi-million dollar, NASDAQ-listed corporation. He built his start-up in the '70’s after arriving in the US with nothing more than $58 in his pocket. He earned both a master’s in engineering and a master’s in business administration from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. My goal is to have one million users paying $49.95 a month," continues Gupta.Īfter receiving his bachelor's degree in agriculture engineering IIT Kharagpur, Gupta immigrated to the United States to seek his higher education. If you have a good product, at a great price and you're proud of it-you just tell the truth. I'm no longer a prisoner to managing a board or investors. "It's run like a family company, which is the way I prefer it now. Having risen to success, he lost all independence in the running of his business and faced both shareholder law suits and an SEC investigation, following which he sold InfoUSA in 2010. He plans to keep InfoFree private. ![]() He was telling me how he was going to revolutionize the CRM business and how he was changing the enterprise software model from licensing to recurring subscription revenue. "I remember meeting Marc Benioff at the Aspen Institute 10 years ago. We're a self-service subscription model based in the Cloud," says Gupta. There are five million small businesses and 20 million sales people, that's the size of the market we are going after. We want to reach the least common denominator to develop the largest possible market. ![]() 90% of our customers didn't use a CRM, so we asked them what they needed. I call it 'CRM for Dummies' with 3-4 simple but powerful functions. Our customers find CRM packages like too complicated for their needs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |