The Bold, the Brave, and the Daring

Amy Rees Anderson
CEO of MediConnect Global

Amy Rees Anderson is going places—fast. The Utah-based entrepreneur is CEO of MediConnect, a global company that digitizes and delivers medical records. Under her leadership, the company has enjoyed spectacular growth at home and overseas. Revenues have more than doubled year after year. In one 36-month period, the company’s growth rate was a record 847.1%. She’s also managed to raise more than $50 million in capital, and the company was recently identified by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the country’s fastest growing women-led companies and one of the fastest growing private companies in America. All this has been achieved without any formal business training—Rees Anderson just went out and did it. The woman who now runs a company with more than 1,000 employees in two countries started out a little over a decade ago as nothing more than a way to support her two children.

Rees Anderson was 24 when she started her first business in the 1990s with $23,000 that she managed to source from her dad, brother, and uncle. She wanted to work from home to be with her baby daughter and three-year-old son, and eventually secured a license to sell and install scheduling records in doctors’ offices. The master plan was to earn enough money to pay the bills. She had no intention to go beyond that—at least initially. Surprisingly, the business took off like wildfire, so she hired more programmers to keep up with ever increasing demand.

Get out of the bathrobe

They soon grew too big for the living room, kitchen, and garage. Rees Anderson realized if the company was to progress to the next level, she had to act. “To get serious, I realized I had to get out of the bathrobe and curlers,” she said. Despite her lack of formal business education, Rees Anderson managed to secure $2 million in venture capital to help fund new premises.

She hit the Internet and absorbed as much information as she could about sourcing finance. At that time, Rees Anderson was so naïve that during investor meetings when asked how much she needed, she replied, “Well the payroll is on the 30th.” She had no idea how long the process would take and what was involved. Naivety aside, her backers were persuaded by her passion and the money was forthcoming. After many extremely profitable years, she sold the company in 2002.

MediConnect’s savior

When MediConnect asked her to step in and take over in 2004, the company was hemorrhaging $180,000 a month. Investors were not willing to put up any more capital. Less than one year later she had completely transformed the company that now generates annual revenues of more than $35 million.

When she arrived, she did three things instrumental in bringing about change. First, she talked to everyone on the ground level—people who knew what was going on yet had no voice in the higher echelons of the company. Then, she exercised the two options that Rees Anderson claims are the only options that make you money—cutting costs and boosting sales. She outsourced some of the staffing to India and used the money that was saved to invest in the best sales people.

Not afraid of failure

Rees Anderson has never felt hampered by her lack of business training. Rather than let training constrain her, she is more willing to think outside the box. While she doesn’t knock education, especially as she now teaches entrepreneurship at Brigham Young University, Utah, she does think learning can sometimes hinder business. “I believe you learn at a deeper level when you live through it,” she said. “Every time I fail, I get smarter.”

Family and the future

Rees Anderson is now happily married, but after divorcing her first husband, she was a single mom for nine years. She successfully juggled business and family responsibilities by following the advice of her uncle, who told her to “set your rules and stick to them.” So, she always made sure that not working weekends and turning up to PTA meetings and after-school activities protected her family time.

A key to her success is visualizing. Rees Anderson has a goal poster where she puts pictures of all the things she wants to achieve. So far she has met all her objectives. Stuck to the poster today are pictures of a private jet, several charities she wants to support, and the seven wonders of the world that she plans to visit with her children.