Today we’d like to introduce you to Evan Islam.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My story begins with my family immigrating to the United States (Houston, TX) in 1993 from Bangladesh. As a first-generation immigrant, we had to do everything the hard way. We lived off of Food Stamps and had 9 people in a 3-bedroom apartment in the first year. We know what it is like to be at the bottom of the food chain in US. Of course, we worked our way up the American Dream and now I own multiple rental properties and live in a nice home in Trophy Club.
I started getting hooked on the online game back in 1997 with AOL ONLINE. I went to an art school so, in order to show off my artwork, I had to put them on web pages so I could share them with friends online. I built my first full website in 1999 and I took 1 HTML class in school. Everything else I learned was from trying things, failing and testing. It has been a passion to build sites for various small projects for numerous people but never expected to get paid. In 2004, I graduated from Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and I got a job at Dating Chemistry building a dating website. I actually got PAID to build and work on websites and that was the turning point in my career. This was a passion that turned into paid passion and I have found success along the way.
I got my big break in 2006 when I got a job in Connecticut working for a company called Basement Systems. They had 350 dealers throughout US, Canada and UK where the dealers sold and installed Basement Systems products. I responsibility was to help dealers generate leads from their own website. So, we had to created systems to manage all dealer sites and leads. I was there for 6 years and our web team grew from 2 people to 42 people. I had some great mentors in that company and had a lot of support from our dealer network to grow our lead generation program.
I then went to work for Pitney Bowes as their SEO (search engine optimization) manager. I wanted my Fortune 500 experience and learned that I enjoyed working with small businesses better. In 2013, I moved to Dallas, TX area to start Central Station Marketing with financial help from owners of Dalworth companies. Started as 1 man show in the Dalworth office and now we have 28 people in our team with 175 clients throughout United States where we generate leads for their businesses. We have no moved to our own office in the Dalworth Campus where we converted a 3-room office with garage. So, we like to think our startup started in a garage.
Key to our business model is we build and manage client websites for FREE and they pay us ONLY when they generate qualified leads through their website. We focus on home improvement contractors mostly and like to stay in that niche. We have developed a platform where agencies or dealer networks can offer lead generation services within our software. We haven’t had issues with clients leaving our program because they don’t pay us if we don’t generate leads. We are now getting into other industries and also creating different packages for clients that don’t need lead generation.
Last year we have won Mid-Size Business of the Year from HEB Chamber of Commerce. As a company, we try to get involved in the community as much as we can. Our team has been involved in mentoring programs in local HEB high school, we have done volunteer work with 6 stones and Volunteers of America. I also sit on the Board of Directors at Austin BBB where I was involved in merger between Fort Worth BBB & Austin BBB. Last 4 years has been a joy running a startup and trying to make it to a REAL company.
Has it been a smooth road?
Absolutely NOT. I had to learn about the lesson of CASH FLOW the hard way. When you work for a company you don’t think about these things. You get a pay check at the end of the week. When you run a company, the stress of cash is real.
Other challenge I had to overcome is hiring people that may not be a culture fit. I hired some talented people but they did not know how to play nice with other team members. This is a NO NO in today’s market. It’s really hard to fire talented people but I had to do so a few times which I am not used to. It’s a learning process.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Central Station Marketing story. Tell us more about the business.
Central Station Marketing is an online marketing company. We generate leads for our home improvement clients. We have created a propitiatory platform that allows us to manage hundreds of sites with one login and make changes to them very efficiently. Our platform allows clients to manage their own website content, upload reviews, testimonials, city pages, case studies and other content and automatically optimizes on the site for local search ranking.
That is the secret sauce. That allows us to scale and continue to get good ranking and ultimately generate leads for our clients.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Internet Marketing is the future. Most industries are going digital. There are lots of disruptions coming as Google, Bing, Amazon, Uber build better technology. Advertising in the digital age is getting more and more precise and effective. That being said, things change at a rapid pace so as a tech company, we need to stay up with those changes and focus on the next big trends.
It’s very disruptive. Companies don’t know what to do with all the changes that are going around and they need companies like us to guide them the right way.
Pricing:
- Our site building packages start from $2,500. We build all custom sites with hundreds of pages with unique content to rank in the search engines.
- On a month to month we charge anywhere from $25 to $200 per qualified lead to continue to work on the site and generate leads.
- Our agencies can white label our platform for $300/month/site and they can charge clients to generate leads or manage client sites.
Contact Info:
- Address: 12750 S Pipeline Rd
Unit 1C
Euless, TX 76040 - Website: http://www.centralstationmarketing.com
- Phone: 2035023245
- Email: evan@centralstationmarketing.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/centralstationmarketing/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/central-station-marketing-euless
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