We recently connected with Ryan Stewart and have shared our conversation below.

Ryan, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

I run a number of companies, all of them are service based businesses. Service businesses run on people, people are a wild card for a number of reasons. In regards to this questions, the biggest challenge to profitability is balancing smart, talented individuals with the ballooning salary requests. Inflation is real. People need more money just to earn a decent wage. In the past few years we’ve seen salary requests jump 30 – 40%, which doesn’t exactly map to how much more we’re able to charge.

Ryan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I classify myself as a marketing entrepreneur, someone who has built 6 companies over the last 10 years, all of which are in the marketing space. Of the 6 companies, 1 failed, 3 were sold and I currently operate the other 2.

Right now my focus is growing my agency (WEBRIS) and my agency consulting business (The Blueprint Training). Both of these companies do multiple 7 figures in revenue and have full time staff of 10+ amazing people.

Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.

I’ve sold 3 businesses.

1. A small software company, Capture & Convert. C&C is a WordPress plugin that helps website’s quickly setup email and social capture forms.

2. WEBRIS, an SEO agency. I repurchased the rights to the agency 2 years ago.

3. Laces Out, an ecommerce store that sold shoelaces for sneakerheads.

Most businesses don’t sell, mainly because they aren’y sellable. There’s so many factors that go into selling a business I’d be lying if I told you I had a formula. The reason my businesses sold was part luck, part having a great network and part having businesses that ran without my direct input.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Something I’m weirdly proud of is I’ve never taken a dollar in investment. Everything I have is self funded, mainly with sweat equity. This has allowed me to build businesses on my terms. When you take other people’s money, it’s no longer your business – you have fiduciary duties to investors to make them money. This can put unnecessary pressure on the business, and stress on you as a leader, forcing your hand to make decisions that you otherwise would not have to make.

Now, I’m not saying that taking money is a bad thing. Some business models require it, you simply can’t grow without a cash infusion. In those cases, just be careful of whose money you’re taking. It can end up really nasty if you rush into it and don’t do your due diligence on the person behind the money.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ryanwashere.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan.was.here/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thedigitalmarketingconsultant/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanwashere
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0RQ0xqm3WHqa5ilpUe1FAg