Ernst & Young ENTREPRENEUR Of The YEAR

NICK GREER
CEO — One on One Marketing

Nick Greer started One on One Marketing in 2002 with only $2,000 in the bank. With a successful strategy for generating leads online for national companies, One on One Marketing posted revenues of more than $50 million in 2010—and it’s aiming for $100 million in 2011.

The company focuses on the education market, generating leads for major colleges and universities through multiple online channels, including email, banner ads, search engines and more. One on One is also expanding into other sectors, like insurance, mortgage and home security.

“Everyday life decisions,” explains Greer. “We’re helping them make those decisions through the tools and the websites we’ve created.”

The focus of the company is not on making money, but helping people improve their lives, he says. “When you actually come to our site, we’re helping you make the smart choice, the right choice. We’re not forcing you down a path.”

SUSAN W. PREATOR
CEO and President — Imagine Learning, Inc.

In the first three and a half years of collecting funding for Imagine Learning, Inc., Susan Preator raised $6.5 million just through private investors including many of her employees, family and friends. Still, she says if she could do one thing differently on her path to entrepreneurial success, she would have taken out more loans to invest more in the business—which makes sense considering the company broke the $20 million revenue mark in 2011 despite severe nationwide budget cuts to public education funding, the primary source of the company’s revenue.

Preator, who graduated from college when she was 53 years old and started Imagine Learning a year later, has enjoyed “the excitement, challenge and satisfaction of seeing a company grow from merely an exciting concept to a thriving enterprise made up of hundreds of people serving thousands of customers.”

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

Blake Roney
Chairman of the Board — Nu Skin Enterprises  

In 1984, Blake Roney, Sandie Tillotson and Steve Lunch joined together to build a company that would offer life-changing health and beauty products. Their venture, Nu Skin, has since become a billion-dollar business that is impacting the entire world.

Roney, who now serves as chairman of the company’s board, says Nu Skin was founded on a belief that anything is possible. “We were outside of the box. We put everything on the planet that was good and nothing that was bad in the products, and that was really strange to people,” Roney says. “Experts would tell us, ‘That probably won’t work.’ We had to ignore people who were smarter than us and plunge ahead.” They plunged ahead, but their success didn’t come without obstacles. “We’d wake up every morning and there’d be a new fire in the building and we’d have to figure out some creative way to overcome it.”

Roney advises entrepreneurs to never give up on their dream and to learn something from everyone. “I’ve found that almost every person I’ve met is better than me at something, so everybody serves to some degree as a mentor.”