Entrepreneurial Superstars

Company: NewsLetters Plus

Location: Tucker

Business Began: 1985

Start-Up Cost: None

1996 Sales: $10 million

1997 Projections: $15 million

Can a company make $10 million a year just from publishing newsletters? Yes-if, like Moira Shanahan's firm, it mails out more than 50 million of them a year for clients including hospitals, doctors and American Express.

Shanahan's success is no surprise, given her ability to survive setbacks such as the recession that threatened her business in 1991. "[Clients] didn't have money to market with," explains Shanahan, 41. "We were on the chopping block."

So she put a twist on the newsletter concept by creating a product neither her clients nor her company had to pay for. For example, she designed a newsletter that was customized for specific hospitals. Then she got all the production and distribution costs paid for by a large pharmaceutical company.

As the name implies, NewsLetters Plus goes above and beyond: The 45-employee firm handles all newsletter mailing, fulfillment and response management for its clients. Now, that's something to write home about!

This article was originally published in the April 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Entrepreneurial Superstars.