Today we’d like to introduce you to Sharon Naim Ourian.
Sharon, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
While in law school, I worked part-time for a test preparation company called TestMasters, where I took on a multitude of responsibilities, from creating marketing materials to booking facilities for live classes, giving seminars about the program, hiring employees, and building the Learning and Content Management system to host courses online. Within a few years, I witnessed the company’s astronomical growth and expansion into markets across the U.S. By the time I graduated from law school, TestMasters had become the largest and most popular LSAT course on the market so I decided to stay with the company and help continue to grow it, as this was more interesting and exciting to me than working as an attorney.
At TestMasters, I learned to pay attention to the problems around me and figure out creative ways to solve them. When my mom was issued a traffic ticket that required her to take traffic school, I wondered if such a concept existed online and I quickly found out that it did not. At that time, several businesses were transitioning and making their way to the internet. I knew I wanted to pursue an online venture early on—I just didn’t know what it would be. The moment I saw online traffic school was non-existent, I began researching how I would go about creating one.
I knew some software developers and I hired them to help me develop the software to run the traffic school courses online, store customer information, and issue completion certificates in compliance with court guidelines. Over the next few years, the business started taking off so I continued to hire more and more employees. At one point, we had over 100 people working for us. However, as we become more efficient each year, we have learned to run the same company with about 60 employees while continuing to grow.
Today, CyberActive offers online and app-based traffic safety programs including traffic school for ticket dismissal and insurance premium reduction, driver education for teens, adults, and mature drivers, and fleet training for commercial vehicle drivers in more than 30 states both direct to consumer and B2B.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Anyone who starts a business knows from the outset that there are going to be struggles and obstacles along the way. Some you can anticipate and try to manage early on, and others can surprise you because they are unexpected.
My first challenge was of course money. I had no clue how to raise capital or get investors, nor did I have credit to get a loan. The only way I could start my venture was to self-fund it. I didn’t realize that hiring software developers was remarkably expensive, especially at the time.
For some reason, I thought I could handle everything myself, which is the myth to which many entrepreneurs subscribe. Rather than spend the money I did have on hiring people who could properly wireframe the software for my program, I just planned and designed it myself with the developers. It’s akin to building a house and hiring an architect and telling him or her how to draw the plans and where to place the rooms and then finding out that you should not have put a room in a certain location because the plumbing can’t be taken there without spending a ton of money.
While I did learn a great deal from my mistakes and was able to manage my software development team more efficiently as my company grew, it was a big hindrance in the early days, as I ran through money rapidly. So the moral of the story is: when you start a company, put together a great team and assign each person a management role in their specialty. Don’t try to do it all yourself.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about CyberActive – what should we know?
We are known for inventing the online traffic school and driver education concept for adults and teens and for our contribution and lobbying efforts in this space. Many of the protocols and laws that govern online traffic school and driver education courses—measures to deter cheating, course timers, course activity monitors and various mechanisms to ensure course security were developed and implemented by my company. Now they are the approval guidelines.
Recently, we signed a contract with the largest education institution that provides content to school districts across the U.S. and internationally. This is a milestone for our team because it attests to the excellent quality of our courses and the customer satisfaction. My hope is that we can expand into other licensing and elective courses in addition to extending our geographical reach to international markets.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.CyberActiveOnline.com
- Instagram: @shenaim
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