For ECS Prepaid LLC President Derron Winfrey, business growth is as simple as sticking to your word, a business tenet he learned from his father upon joining the elder Winfrey's business nearly 12 years ago.
"All you have to do is show up on time and do what you say you're going to do, and the success will just come with it," said Derron Winfrey, the featured guest this morning for Springfield Business Journal's 12 People You Need to Know breakfast series. "It sounds so simple, but it's amazing how much you can grow by just doing what you're supposed to do."
The company worked its way to $82.1 million in 2010 revenues, landing the Springfield company at the No. 69 spot on last year's Inc. 500 list based on three-year revenue growth of 3,188 percent.
Winfrey acknowledged the national spotlight adds stress on a small business, but he said the company's roughly 11 employees can move forward by effectively managing its technology.
"You go from a level of acceptance to a level of expectance," Winfrey said, "because you have a lot of of eyes on you."
For ECS, started by Dennis Winfrey in 1997 as Electronic Check Services, growth meant breaking into the prepaid sector, and further, developing a network of independent agents. In 2007, ECS purchased a small technology company, which ECS named Softgate Systems, and it allowed retailers to offer prepaid cellular service, bill pay and gift cards via a single terminal. Though ECS sold the business 18 months later, its effects have been evident on ECS' success.
Winfrey said the company's business - largely made up of cellular phone and bill-pay services via terminals in convenience stores - have been expanded to more than 8,000 stores in all 50 states, compared to about 124 locations when he came on board at the company.
Winfrey lays that success at the feet of its first independent agent, a Baton Rouge, La., man who convinced ECS to let him manage 10 terminals on credit.
"He's the reason we have 8,000 stores now," Winfrey said, adding that following that initial hire, ECS' more than 300 independent agents were all signed based on agent inquiries. "Everything happens for a reason.
"We enhanced our software to allow for independent sales organizations," he added. "That's really where all the fuel for all this growth and this explosion came from was giving these folks a place that they could work, that they could be supported, that they would have good people who were honest with their business and helpful and weren't looking to really get anything from them other than the agreed arrangement."
Winfrey said the company is projecting 2012 revenues of $100 million, led, in part, by its smartphone app Bogo Fetch, a proximity-based coupon provider that also has been expanded to move money as a payment method.[[In-content Ad]]
Dame Chiropractic LLC emerged as the new name of Harshman Chiropractic Clinic LLC with the purchase of the business; Leo Kim added a second venture, Keikeu LLC, to 14 Mill Market; and Mercy Springfield Communities opened its second primary care clinic in Ozark.
