Young Entrepreneur Shares Story of His Business Success
Written by JEAN TARBETT HARDIMAN – The Herald-Dispatch.
HUNTINGTON — As a kid growing up in California, Ryan Blair was rewarded through compensation. His father, Huntington native Jerry Blair, would give him $5 to wash the car. One dollar per bag of weeds that he pulled. A new batting glove for a base hit in Little League.
In telling his life story, Blair will tell you that his father had plenty of flaws. But Ryan Blair can also tell you that his dad helped him learn that work pays off, and his father’s mistakes became other valuable life lessons.
Blair, now a 32-year-old entrepreneur who has founded six companies and made millions, brought his story to Huntington Tuesday night, speaking to a group of fellow entrepreneurs. He’s now CEO of ViSalus Sciences, a network marketing business that promotes nutrition products and programs.
Huntington is one of many stops Blair has made throughout the country to share his path to success. But it’s special because of his roots here, he said. Not only was his father from Huntington, but he has family members in the area. His great-grandparents ran a cafeteria at a bus station, he said.
When he first came, “I knew my family by accent,” he said. “I really identify with West Virginia as being half my roots.”
His father, he’s forgiven, Blair said. Now father to a 9-month-old son himself — Ryan Reagan Blair — Blair is in the midst of trying to share his story as a way of helping others.
“By the grace of God, I realize I’ve weathered these storms so I can help other people do the same,” he said.
Blair said the low point of his rags-to-riches story was when his father, addicted to drugs, left him and his mother when Blair was 13. They lost their house in California to foreclosure and cars to repossession. His mom got a job at a deli, they moved into a one-bedroom house in a gang neighborhood, and he dropped out of school and did odd jobs. He’ll tell you about his gang tattoos, and what it sounds like when someone fires a gun at you.
Then, Blair’s mother started dating and eventually married a wealthy real estate investor, and at 18, Blair and his mother moved in with him. It was at that point, Blair said, that he could say he’d known three different “systems” in life: poverty and life on the street; middle class life; and “the most ideal system to run in,” entrepreneurship.
His stepfather, Robert Hunt, had the same work ethic as Blair’s middle-class father and the same hustle as the street kids Blair knew, but Hunt was working in a different system, Blair said he realized.
Blair did odd jobs for minimum wage for his stepfather, everything from manual labor like cleaning his boats to informing tenants of his properties of their eviction. Hunt allowed Blair to shadow his investments to learn about the trade. Blair — who had been held back in second grade and told he suffered from attention deficit disorder as a child — got his GED and eventually made the dean’s list in college.
He got a job at a call center, then went into the company’s IT department and within a couple years had 60 full-time employees under him. At age 21, he founded his own first business, 24/7 Tech, and he’s since owned six.
He started out in fear that people would find out about his background, but since has embraced it and hopes that sharing his story with others encourages them to turn their lives around.
He said he’d always been taught that the more you sow, the more you reap, but there was no way of calculating the magnitude of the rewards, he said.
“The duty of the person who is wealthy is to give back,” he said.
His latest business is ViSalus, which was just bought by Blyth Inc., and has started a 90 Day Challenge weight loss program, along with selling a variety of wellness products.
Originally posted on The Herald-Dispatch
