From Gang Member to Millionaire Chief Executive: The Inspirational Story of Ryan Blair

Ryan Blair lost his Dad at 13. He joined the wrong crowd; was thrown in a juvenile institution; dropped out of school; got a job as an assistant (man Friday) at 17; started his own business at 21 and is now a multi-millionaire, CEO, author and mentor. His is another amazing grass-to-grace story. Ryan’s story exemplifies what eventually becomes of a person who decides to turn around his negative background to his advantage. In 2011, he published a bestselling book titled Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur.

One of the things that helped Ryan was his dissatisfaction with the way his life was going. He wanted a good life. "I was in and out of trouble all the time, but I didn't like it. I didn't want that life," he says. At just 16 years old, he had been arrested 10 times.

A looming four-year jail sentence was what made him decide to turn his life around and he begged the judge for leniency. His mother introduced him to a real estate entrepreneur who hired him as an assistant. This contact with the wealthy made a huge impact on him and he decided he would like to make money through legal means.

At 21, he established his first company, 24-7 Tech. Since then, he has created and actively invested in multiple start-ups and has become a self-made multimillionaire. He later became the CEO of ViSalus. In 2008, the company was in debt to the tune of $6 million but in less than two years, Ryan was able to turn the financial fortunes of the company around to $150 million in revenue.

It becomes interesting when one learns that Ryan had attention deficit disorder (ADD) and dyslexia and because of this, never got past the 9th grade. A career counsellor in high school told him he didn’t have the intellect or aptitude to become a doctor or a lawyer. Trade school, construction or a vocation that required him to work with his hands were suggested to him. But the irony is that today, he employs plenty of doctors and lawyers and he asks this question: ‘Would you rather be a doctor or a lawyer, or a guy who writes a check to doctors and lawyers?’

This is what Ryan thinks about having a college degree: ‘As an entrepreneur, having a college degree or getting classroom training won't hurt your chances for starting a successful business, but it's ultimately not necessary. In Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers," he makes a point that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master a skill set at a professional level. That means experience, over traditional education.'

While in incarceration at the juvenile home, Ryan says he learned some lessons which are helping him in the business world today. These are some of them:

• If you give people the impression that you can be taken, you will be.
• Adaptation is the key to survival. ‘Darwin was absolutely right — survival is a matter of how you respond to change,’ he adds.
• The last lesson I got from jail is that you have to learn how to read people. You don't know who to trust. 

Some of the lessons we can learn from Ryan’s story are:

• Others may write you off, don’t write yourself off.
• Refusing to be satisfied with a certain way of life will cause you to eventually come up with a way or ways by which you can improve your life.
• Learn life lessons from whatever situation you find yourself; you don’t know when they will be useful.

NOBODY CAN WRITE YOU OFF EXCEPT YOURSELF.