Ryan Tansom
About Our Guest
Ryan Tansom started his entrepreneurial career at his family business where he was the executive vice president and responsible for the strategic, operational, and financial strategy of the $21 million company. Ryan helped turn the company around and bring intentional focus to the right strategies, which enabled it to be sold for 8 figures to a local competitor in 2014.
Ryan took his experience and founded Arkona to create the Intentional Growth™ Framework, which helps business owners grow the value of their company – with the end in mind – through educational training, fractional CFO services, and strategic planning.
Ryan is a passionate, energetic, and highly skilled communicator who loves his work and the message he delivers. Since founding Arkona, he has been able to teach other entrepreneurs and business owners what he wishes he would have known before they sold their company, which is how to clarify a path to a more valuable business so business owners can turn their visions into reality.
Ryan also hosts the popular Intentional Growth™ Podcast, which has 280+ episodes, 380k+ downloads with Todd Herman, Bo Burlingham, Jack Stack, Gino Wickman, John Warrillow, Dan Martell, and Alan Beaulieu.
For most of its 18 years, Imaging Path was a successful business, growing from a photocopier sales dealership into a fully integrated IT services contractor with more than $16 million in sales.
About this Episode
Selling Your Family Business: What Can Go Wrong?
For Ryan Tansom, the family business came calling when he turned 19.
He put on a suit and hit the pavement embarking on his first challenge: Learning how to sell.
Fast forward 18 years later, after some tough conversations with his father about the strategic direction of the company and future vision, Ryan had helped propel ‘Imaging Path’ to huge growth and the possibility of an eight-figure sale.
In this latest episode, Ryan covers a wide variety of topics, including how you can successfully manage the tension that exists in family businesses, why you should not solve for annual income, and how misalignment of a company’s future vision could spell disaster.
Listen in to hear some insightful advice about how he grew, sold, and then started it all again in a new venture with those crucial business lessons in mind.
What you will learn in this episode
In this episode we’ll cover everything from:
- Why separating ownership from management roles is crucial for business success
- How comparing the intrinsic financial value of a company VS strategic transaction value can help you get to that magic number
- How to deal with the tension that exists between two family business partners with a sizeable difference in age and experience
- Why business owners need to ask themselves – what kind of life do I want?
- How the driving factors of becoming an entrepreneur might not be present when selling a business
Connect with Ryan Tansom
Website: https://arkona.io/
International Growth Financial Statement: https://arkona.io/intentional-growth-financial-assessment/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-tansom-4a440710/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RyanTansom
Show Notes
(13:16) Ryan and his father were butting heads over the business a lot. Listen here to learn how they came to an understanding and grew the business further.
(15:52) Ryan is “professionally unemployable”. Find out why.
(17:05) Separating ownership and management roles especially in a family-run business is crucial to its success. Ryan explains why here.
(32:02) As a 7-figure EBITDA company, Ryan’s dad decided he wanted out and explains his reasonings here.
(53:07) Ryan now consults as a fractional CFO to help other business owners on their journey. Here’s how he adds value to companies from that perspective.
