When Mark Esho set up his internet company 10 years ago, it was one of only four of its kind in the United Kingdom (UK).
But setting up the business was a big challenge. He claims the fact he was black and had a disability – he is unable to walk long distances because of childhood polio – made getting the venture off the ground much harder.
“I got zero support,” he said. “It was a new technology and people didn’t understand what I was trying to do.
“I started my business off on a credit card and I had to work for three months without pay while I built up my portfolio. It was pretty hard.
“If you are black and disabled you have two things going against you. What people tend to do is base their opinions on what they see.
“That’s why I’ve always been driven to prove myself.”
A decade on, and his company, Easy Internet Services, in Westleigh Road, Leicester, employs 17 people and boasts 50,000 customers.
“When we started up in 2000 there were only four of us in the UK doing search engine optimisation (SEO),” he said.
Esho’s taste for business came when he decided to do a MBA while drifting from job to job in London.
He came back to his home city in 1994 and enrolled at the University of Leicester. He then worked at city disabled charity Mosaic for a while before taking the plunge.
“The internet was a hobby for me,” he said. “I thought I’d go for it. It also gave me flexible hours.”
As a result of his polio Esho suffers from chronic fatigue. “I get it two or three times a month,” he said. “I get really, really tired. That’s why I’m better suited to running my own business.”
The business expanded quickly and before long had moved from his home in Thorpe Astley to premises in Ross Walk, Belgrave. It then moved to a larger office at the LCB depot in Rutland Street before ending up in Westleigh Road.
Eight of the company’s staff are in India and the Philippines because of lower labour costs and difficulty finding the right people in the UK.
“A really good server technician would cost you £30,000 a year,” he said. “A technician with similar skills in India would cost you a third of that. In the Philippines a junior optimiser will cost you a fifth of what it does in the UK.”
Esho said he had become frustrated after training staff only to see them move on.
The firm’s customers are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Of its 50,000 web-hosting customers, 25,000 of them are paying, while the company has around 200 SEO clients. The company previously worked with larger clients such as The Guardian newspaper and the Co-op.
“The problem was they accounted for 50 per cent of turnover and it caused all sorts of problems in terms of getting payments,” explained Esho. “So in 2004 we decided to concentrate on the SME market.”
The company has had a turnover around the £1 million mark over the past three years.
“We have increased profits by 10 to 15 per cent in the past three years despite the recession,” he said.
The company has lost around a quarter of its search engine optimisation work in the past two years as clients cut their marketing budgets. But it is seeing some of them return.
Esho helps other entrepreneurs as a panelist on Foxes’ Den, a Sunday evening version of BBC TV’s Dragons’ Den on BBC Radio Leicester.
He said that, despite a more crowded market and an uncertain economic future, there was still a lot of potential for growth.
However, the 48-year-old father-of-two is looking to take things easier.
“The market is starting to pick up again and hopefully we will be looking to increase our turnover,” he said. “But I’ve got to the stage where I’m not pushing as aggressively as I was before. I am going for steady growth. I think it’s important to have a work-life balance. I want to spend more time with myfamily.’’
- culled from .”http://www.disabledentrepreneurs.co.uk/team_member/mark-esho/