Millionaire Lesson No. 2

Don’t be afraid to go out on your own if you possess the competence and know people who can help you reach your goal.

Mark Wilson had been managing Dun & Bradstreet’s call centers for 15 years when the company decided to outsource the business in 2001. Sensing an opportunity, Wilson immediately asked to be considered. There was only one catch: Wilson didn’t actually own a call-center business at the time. "I didn’t think I had that good a shot," he says. "But I did have my reputation." Wilson won the contract.

To get up and running quickly, he partnered with an established call center in Houston. At the same time, Mark and his wife, Shelly, worked on a business plan and recruited two former D&B colleagues, a technology expert and a training expert, to help launch the business.

Then Wilson knocked on doors to get help with funding. "Everybody was conservative about investing in a company with little or no revenue yet," he says. But he did attract the attention of a community-development venture-capital fund, which invested $700,000.

Ryla Teleservices opened in June 2002 and rapidly accumulated big-money contracts. Revenues topped $3 million in the first full year of business, more than doubled the next and were up to $17 million in 2007. After another round of financing, the company is going through another growth spurt and projects more than $30 million in revenues this year.

Why is Ryla so successful? As a domestic call center based in Ken­nesaw, Ga., the company attracts clients that have had bad experiences with call centers offshore. And some government clients, such as the Veterans Administration and the State Department, can’t send their call centers out of the U.S. Plus, being an early adopter of voice-over-Internet-protocol, or VoIP, technology has helped Ryla lower costs.

But the biggest edge, says Wilson, comes from the company’s workers. "We want this to be the best job they’ve ever had," he says. Turnover in the call-center industry generally runs from 60% to 70% per year. But Ryla’s turnover is just 30%, and many of the company’s original employees remain.

Ryla pays at least 60% of the cost of health insurance for the company’s 400 regular employees, and it sponsors budgeting and personal-development seminars. Wilson keeps morale high with his regular "huddles," where he stands in the middle of a circle of workers and gives them an update on the state of the company. "The key asset of any business is its people, and we’ve never lost sight of that," he says.

EIGHT MILLIONAIRE PROFILES

1. The Video That Took on a Life of Its Own

2. Know When to Make the Call

3. Pounce When the Time Is Right

4. It Started Over Cocktails

5. A Thirty-Year Plan to Make a Mil

6. Breaking With Family Tradition

7. Accumulating A Fortune on $11 a Hour

8. Suddenly It Clicks

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POSTED BY: Rose (May 20, 2008 12:42 PM)
While I can believe the revenue that has been taken in by RYLA, the question that should be asked is how that revenue is derived. I worked for RYLA Teleservice for a almost a year...It was the worst working enviroment that I have ever been in...Their is no one in the organiztion that is on the side of the employee or laborer.

POSTED BY: Eric Wilson (May 29, 2008 01:58 PM)
Great story and quite inspiring to those who may have ambitions to turn experiences they have gained from the workplace into their own product or service offering.

POSTED BY: Anonymous (June 26, 2008 02:56 PM)
I, too, was an employee at Ryla for 4 years, from the early days to the first big revenue year. It was a very demanding and, oftentimes, demeaning working environment...

POSTED BY: Nita (July 01, 2008 10:51 AM)
I am a current employee at Ryla and it is the " Best Job that I have ever had" I have been an employee for over 3 years and the thing that I love the most about the job is the open door. policy. If you feel that your working enviorment and surroundings are not up to the standard that they should be, it is nothing to walk into Shelly or Mark's office and voice your concern. So many companies don't even give their employees that opportunity and though the outcome may not be what you feel it should, more often than not, something is done. The reason people write bad things about Ryla is because of the negitive attitude that was displayed in their comments and or actions at Ryla. As any employee with any company things are not going to be perfect but, if you trust the company you work for and also believe that you can do what you were called to do, you will be sucessful. I should hope that what ever company that you choose to work for upon your leaving Ryla that you take all the good with you and learn from the not so good.

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