How a Marine Officer Grew a $3M Business to $23M
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
At some point, once it starts working and people want to do business with you, again, they save time, they make more money. But that stuff doesn't happen overnight. You know, it kind of takes a minute to get my vision for a company in there.
Ryan Sturm is a disciplined, strategic and mission driven business leader and president of Wind Supply of Omaha. Drawing from his experience as a U.S. Marine Corps officer and executive, he leads with accountability, growth and a commitment to developing people.
The less I have to tell people what to do, and they just know what they need to get done, that's ideal.
What has been one of the biggest factors of your growth over the years? Was it expanding into the new market of HVACs, or was it growing your team? It's a matter of...
It spans the globe like a super high school internet Elvis! Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over until I win. The Living Your Legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy.
That's extraordinary. The impossible. Oh, that is sensational. Open. Chicago was the lead. You said Paul is the fastest man on the planet.
You can never beat him.
Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of living your legacy podcast. I'm your host again, Jay Slangen, and we're down here at the sunny Miami beach studios. And yeah, we got the privilege of speaking to some of the best entrepreneurs in the country, uh, the disruptors. And today, yeah, we got someone for our operation CEO show and let's have him introduce himself. What's your name? Uh, where are you from and what's your business?
My name is Ryan Sturm. I'm currently from Omaha, Nebraska, and I'm the president of Wind Supply of Omaha. So we are a PVF plumbing HVAC distributor there in Omaha.
Okay, okay. And so this is Operation CEO, right? So give us a brief background of your time in the military.
So I got in in 2006. The whole reason I got in was to be a pilot. Turns out when you get in a car accident and smash your skull open, they don't like that. So I ended up being a 3404 financial management officer. So I spent three years at Camp Pendleton, deployed once with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and then three years at the Recruit Depot helping train recruits. That's that's pretty much it. Luckily to be in San Diego pretty much the whole time.
OK, wow. And so, yeah, that means was the kind of transition into civilian life pretty easy for you
or. It was once we figured out what we were going to do, because, yeah, it's just weird when you get out of the military, you have no idea what you're going to do.
But I mean, it seems like they kind of trained you with financial skills and then leadership skills, while a lot of other people, they have the battlefield skills. And so that's why I'm asking about your transition. I still said that you still don't know what you wanted to do. So talk us through that transition a bit.
Well, luckily, I went through a headhunter alliance careers.
So
they put you in front of all these different companies looking for military officers to kind of improve the company's leadership. I ended up with the company at the time was called Wynn Wholesale. Now it's called Wynn Supply. let you let you run your own business the way you see fit like they're they kind of let entrepreneurs kind of do their own thing so it was a nice it was a nice smooth transition yeah my my mos and in the marine corps wasn't uh it's weird you don't learn like finance or anything like that you basically are just handling stuff within stuff with money within the military
that's kind of
interesting
yeah yeah it's different
it's definitely different
All right. And so how did you find this company? You know, like, were you just Googling or it was, you know, kind of shown to you by another someone else in the military?
Yeah, no, it was just, it was through that headhunter that they, you know, they put you in front of all these different companies. And it was the last, last interview I did.
So how'd you find the headhunter and why did you decide to go through the headhunter?
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