fxh
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TWO of the Shoalhaven’s youngest professionals are achieving outstanding success and growth right here in Nowra.
Matt Ozolins, 17, and 19-year-old Ory Purhonen have started digital marketing and web design company Webics and are already being given charge of marketing budgets up to $200,000 in the brave new world of digital media. Based in an office at Nowra, the two young entrepreneurs are not alone, employing a graphic designer and search engine optimiser based in the United Kingdom, along with a Shoalhaven-based programmer working part-time. They are all part of a detailed management system that swings into action analysing business structures and client needs.
Amazingly, “Not one person who works for Webics has finished high school,” Mr Ozolins said.
Mr Purhonen started the company while he was in year 10 at St John’s and started setting up websites on the side.
“I saw a niche market there,” he said. “There was no one delivering a website that looked good, at a good price, and then marketing and maintaining it.”
As the business grew Mr Purhonen left school after gaining an early entry to university, but later abandoned his tertiary studies after finding he was being taught only what others had done, and not about his own possibilities and potential. “School doesn’t teach you how to be an entrepreneur, and the skills you need,” Mr Ozolins added. He has learnt skills by studying the life of Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, and was confident he had a chance or emulating Sir Richard’s success. Mr Ozolins pointed out the early days of Webics were similar to the early days of other companies that had gone on to become household names, with similar early growth.
“If we keep growing the way we are growing, the possibilities are huge,” added Mr Purhonen. Mr Ozolins said the pair was ideally placed to manage companies’ forays into digital media and marketing, because “we’ve grown up with these forms of marketing”, that included advertisements on Facebook and ensuring customers were quickly able to find a company’s website through the major search engines.
