The Thrive Story

As an employee, our president was an entrepreneur. She worked for businesses, both large and small, public and private, and treated them like they were her own business, whether she was in sales or marketing.

The inspiration for Thrive Marketing came from two of those companies. Both organization were private, self-funded, founded in 1997 by two partners, and experienced rapid growth.

The first company was an education firm where Christie served as the sole Marketing Manager. When she started, the company only had only 4 employees and less than $200,000 in revenue. They had a 5-page website, black and white Word documents for brochures, and an 800#.

They were humble indeed. And the marketing was entirely her responsibility.

She worked to improve the brochures. She added more content pages to the website, launched their first website redesign, started an email newsletter (growing it from 15,000 subscribers to 60,000 in just one year), placed web advertisements and print advertisements, attended small tradeshows and fairs -- all while on a very limited marketing budget.

One year later, this company made their first cumulative million. That was a big milestone and the four employees celebrated over dinner.

The next year, Christie hired one person - who served as half of a graphic designer and half writer. Together, they continued to improve the marketing and attract more clients.

In the following years, as their annual revenue soared, she hired 4 more marketing staff members. She turned their brochure into a 200-page catalog, which she personally wrote. They began PR efforts and landed publications in The Business Journal, Wall Street Journal and other well-known publications. They also grew their website to 5,000 static and dynamic pages and ranked on the first page of Google for most of their popular keyword phrases. At the end of five years, they were billing $11 million a year and ranked #67 in the INC. 500.

After 5 years, Christie felt like she had reached a plateau - she had mastered every major marketing piece at the company and wanted a new challenge. Although she felt like she was letting go of "her baby", she knew she needed a change.

Consequently, she accepted a position as Director of Marketing at another company that started in 1997. It was much like the former company, except this one had grown 20 times larger -- to $200 million in revenue.

Christie started a new product line, a joint venture between her employer and another well-known public company. It was a brand new product -- one that had never been tried before.

With no marketing staff, she dove into the marketing and worked closely with the company's President. The new product was tested in 3 markets. She tried different marketing approaches - tested wording on flyers, public announcements, selling approaches, signage and premiums.

Finally, the marketing formula worked effortlessly. After the first 6 months, the product generated $10 million in revenue and just three months later, $15 million.

Shortly thereafter, she was approached by three companies wanting marketing services from her, so she decided to finally pursue her dream of becoming an entrepreneur.

She started Thrive Marketing in 2004 with the vision of helping other entrepreneurs position themselves to thrive. The clients working with Thrive Marketing have something in common with her former employers - they are entrepreneurial, progressive, and want to grow quickly. They have a dream. They want to grow. They want to thrive. And, Thrive wants to help them.