Watch this episode to hear a rare, unvarnished look at leadership in practice, not theory. Ryan Buchanan shares the real story behind scaling a company, surviving near-failure, and rebuilding with greater intention, offering candid lessons on resilience, values alignment, and the responsibility leaders have to shape more inclusive, community-centered organizations.
The ups and the downs are all part of it. It’s all a gift, especially in retrospect. When you’re going through it, it doesn’t feel like a gift. It feels like pain. – Ryan Buchanan
Suzanne Hanifin: President at Acumen Executive Search. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannehanifin/
Tanis Morris: Director of Business Development at Acumen Executive Search. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanis-morris-75a113266/
Ryan Buchanan: Founder at Thesis. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanbuchanan/
Acumen Executive Search Website: https://www.acumenexecutivesearch.com
Thesis Website: https://www.thesis.agency/
Hiring for Good Transcript
0:00 hello everyone we’re here with Hiring for Good podcast discussing leadership
0:05 and transformation and lessons learned along the way uh I’m Tanis Morris and
0:12 I’m here with my trusted friend and co-host Suzanne Hanifin good morning and
0:17 our guest today is Ryan uh Ryan Buchanan
with a thesis and um I’m just going to
0:24 say a few words about Ryan before we get going so um Ryan’s innate
0:30 entrepreneurial and leadership talents have shaped his career he has founded multiple companies I was trying to count
0:37 exactly how many I’m not sure if we include uh companies and industry
0:42 associations and board leadership positions and uh nonprofit board positions over um decades and he uh is
0:52 also founder and chairman of thesis a digital marketing agency who has extensive experience representing
0:58 national nationally recognized brands and uh in recent efforts um he has
1:04 founded we believe in Portland which is a Grassroots Community organization dedicated to a vibrant and thriving
1:13 Portland our home city and he also is the founder of The Script uh a an agency
1:20 or what a social Enterprise removing barriers for diverse talented young
1:26 people seeking their their future in the workplace is that sum it up that’s my
1:31 bio I like how you you’ve written and reframed my bio so it’s kind of nice I
1:37 was like keep going all right well I mean there’s a lot of content and and of course we’ll ask you
1:42 to speak to um a little bit about your background so go ahead and flesh out so what I said and I’m anxious to hear uh
1:50 you know your delivery of of this journey yeah and I’m going to throw in there you know because this is a
1:57 learning podcast you know let us know those aha moments and what you’ve
2:02 learned and and what you would do different possibly okay yeah I uh I grew
2:09 up in suburbs of DC and uh fell in love with the Northwest uh in college after
2:16 my freshman year I drove in my wood panel station wagon and worked as a night janitor at Glacier National Park
2:24 um at Lake McDonald Lodge and then the next summer a bunch of my buddies were a
2:29 little jealous cuz that was such an adventurous amazing summer not the cleaning out the deep friers but like
2:35 everything else in Glacier uh that we came out and worked at Black Butte Ranch
2:41 um so uh again not glorious job of like
2:46 the being a dishwasher or what have you but um just in just paradise um and uh
2:52 fell in love made a couple um weekend trips to Portland and knew I was going to end end
2:59 up there so after I went to the University of Virginia after college moved out I um got a job as a finance uh
3:08 Financial Analyst at Intel their relo package moved my two best buddies and me out here um since we’ve all married
3:16 older women have two daughters who are now heading off to college or mine are already both there um and and live still
3:24 live close by and still super close but yeah and then so fast forward to uh
3:31 leaving in early 2000 Intel and starting
3:36 what was GC Materials which was kind of like DocuSign meets um base camp or some
3:45 project management system or air table what have you for the construction industry and I was at a pitch event this
3:53 is what Tanis and I were chatting before this and uh I co-founded this entrepreneur kind of tough
4:00 uh support group called StarveUps not Starbucks but StarveUps we were all starving startups and our our logo was a
4:07 peanut butter that we could live off of a jar of peanut butter for you know for a long time I believe the tagline was
4:12 operating on 90% less Revenue than Bay Area companies or something yeah we were scrappy uh but uh
4:21 a couple of the guys in that group were I don’t know if you met Leaf and Lars um
4:27 with cooler email but we started so the construction software company wasn’t
4:33 really working out great because it was way too far before its time and I was
4:39 you know just stumbling along with that and um so I started reselling this uh
4:46 email marketing software a lot like MailChimp just not as pretty actually and uh
4:52 we so and we also had freelancers that would help branded email templates and
4:59 tell that story and so we I really did a lot of networking in um in all these
5:06 business associations in Portland and so I got quite networked with a ton of CEOs and marketers to start um and started a
5:14 company called Email Roi that became EROI that then finally five years ago we
5:20 named it that with a with a real name Thesis uh that had more meaning to it
5:27 and um so we really we really grew in the small to midsize business place and
5:34 uh it was so it was through StarveUps that it really kind of um was able to use that as a platform to grow and then
5:42 some some major milestones of like almost business death failure of trying
5:49 to become a software company ourselves and um over the course of a
5:56 couple years realizing that that million and a half investment was not going to
6:02 work and we um yeah so when when I
6:08 officially pulled the plug on that effort we went from 41 employees down to about
6:14 12 and and a lot of that wasn’t layoff it was just a you know people saw the
6:20 writing on the wall the culture became toxic and I was you know perceived as a
6:26 pretty smart leader before and then I was now like the the dumbest CEO on the planet for allowing that to fail and and
6:35 I started to have many panic attacks I had tasted iron in the back of my throat almost had a heart attack all this stuff
6:41 and um I had to pay the bank back a half million dollars right and so I and pay
6:48 investors back and all this stuff so I basically it took five years to um dig
6:53 out of that hole and we went back to being to being much more transparent about being a digital agency and licensing
6:59 software instead of representing it as ourselves and then a couple years after
7:07 that low low point um you know didn’t have a heart attack all you know
7:12 survived we I used link like LinkedIn is a beautiful tool and so a friend actually
7:20 one of my sister’s close friends I saw through Linkedin that he was in a pivotal spot at Nike and that he was
7:26 even in Portland so just you know kind kind of struck you know hey you’re like let’s hang out and that led to us
7:34 becoming pretty quickly Nike’s email agency of record and since then we’ve grown significantly there and we’re now
7:41 almost 300 employees and and and we pivoted from having 300 plus small to
7:48 midsize uh business clients to having about a dozen that the Nike Taco Bell
7:54 Spotify a lot of major major Global um consumer brands and a few others and
8:02 then the other key milestone to bring up and then we’ll get to your questions um is I was at a um a business event that
8:13 was not I wasn’t hosting but 90 business owners in the room a lot of them my
8:18 friends again from um from doing all the networking and something that seems so obvious in retrospect but it really hit
8:26 me uh about half hour into the into the this important event I look around the
8:32 room and 85 of us are white men and uh three women and two men of color and I
8:39 was it was like a voice ca..coming to me and was like you are part of the problem
8:44 a big part of the problem because I had not used my network I hadn’t been
8:49 intentional about creating relationships in communities of color um and really
8:55 just there was just no intentionality so my company like almost like most
9:00 companies um not only in Portland but in every city reflect the the comfortable
9:07 networks that we have and not the you know intentional like life-giving you
9:12 know learning networks that we could have if we were more intentional and so I wrote a blog post called business
9:18 Portland um Portland business community two white two male and the effort was I
9:25 had gone to a friend of mine who uh guy named Ben sand and uh a few months later one of our one of
9:32 my entrepreneur friends Sue Embry joined as co-founding this nonprofit called The Script where um that that blog post was
9:40 basically a call to action to CEOs of like hey you know why don’t you participate in this program thought we’d
9:45 get like maybe a half dozen and we had 35 wow companies sign up that first
9:51 summer and since then we place about uh anywhere from 100 to 150 college so we’ve placed over the
9:58 past 8 years 800 60 college students and recent College grads of color at um 150
10:04 Portland companies so and that’s led to some really rich relationships um close
10:10 friendships and the last thing I’d say on that is I launched uh about five months ago a um
10:20 entrepreneurs CEOs of color small group called Blueprint Founder Circle focused
10:26 on building generational wealth and we have um we have folks like Rakyah Adams
10:32 and um and Alice Tang come in as uh as
10:38 guest speakers and just really foster really a sense of empowerment and um how
10:43 do we build value not only in our companies real estate and the things that make up wealth but you know shift
10:50 our mindset and support one another as we grow our businesses so it’s been it’s
10:55 been an awesome journey and uh here we are at Thesis I guess the last main point is I um a couple years ago I uh
11:05 shifted things over to my now business partner a woman named Keelie York who run
11:10 is now CEO of Thesis been around for 22 years but she’s really been instrumental
11:17 and way more skilled operationally than I am um and we have a good chemistry
11:23 she’s just has incredible business intuition and um
11:29 and is like uh can read a room well it’s a little skeptical of um certain
11:35 situations where I’m like this annoying optimist so we have this good balance
11:41 that meets in the middle and um so I think she’s been a big part of why we’ve grown so much recently um and then we
11:49 the last thing I’d say is that we moved into this 40,000 ft Mass Timber
11:55 beautiful building that we want to be the hub of community so we we partner with a lot of other uh events we’ve had
12:01 are we believe in Portland Afterparty with a couple hundred people there and um moved into that building five months
12:07 ago um in on the edge of Slabtown okay wonderful I think that is amazing and
12:13 again talk about this journey and lessons you were at a ultimate low and
12:21 and really you said it took five years to kind of pay it off and to keep building talk to me about other
12:29 formative lessons you’ve learned because that’s a huge learning to go from 40
12:35 employees you said down to 12 yep and now 300 yeah so I did kind of a top 10
12:43 list of uh learning from failure and I I actually really enjoyed talking about failure because it was so painful at
12:51 least I can have some nuggets to talk about and not like uh just drown in my
12:57 tears but um I the biggest lesson is um be careful who
13:05 your heroes are and uh that is like when I create when we shifted to
13:13 become uh more of a software company I looked to build my board and I
13:18 looked at a lot of um uh like really successful software
13:24 entrepreneurs whose values didn’t align with mine at all but I was so a gamed
13:29 with their business success that I um yeah so I just you know looked up to
13:37 these folks who scale these you know big you know companies and all that and then
13:43 I didn’t really take stock in like oh they got divorced right after they sold
13:48 their company they like um they just did a lot of immoral things you know like
13:54 things like that and you know that isn’t uh it just created
14:00 I realize instead of like looking up to the not only folks within my network but
14:06 also the Steve Jobs of the world and all of that like really my heroes are more people like my dad like my mom who are
14:13 entrepreneurs who just you know were in it for the long haul they um they just
14:19 have really really strong values and uh they built community all along the way
14:24 so really my um my goal has always been
14:30 to use thesis as a platform for good in the community and that’s what you know
14:37 with we believe in Portland with the script I can be so much more successful
14:42 attached to uh my company and you know inspire and influence 300 employees to
14:50 role model it for the city rather than sell the company and be just
14:57 another not not I don’t want to paint the picture of like all like you know
15:03 middle-aged white men who sell their companies are then depressed but like I just would like I think there is
15:09 actually a pretty high you’re not off yeah but just to ha…
15:14 just think that there’s real power in the long-term commitment to community
15:21 into place and to to people um to to lift them up and inspire you know
15:27 inspire city but also goal and in my life now is really to try to be more
15:33 behind the scenes more on boards and like you know you have other people um
15:39 lead the way and me to be kind of a right you know right behind the scenes
15:45 doesn’t always work out like that with we believe in Portland and stuff like that I you know um but I’m trying to
15:51 find someone to like you know be out in front so anyway it’s a work in progress
15:56 well and it’s interesting because in recruiting you know we talk about this match between values and cultures and and
16:04 goals and in as an employee employer if those are off it doesn’t last a long you
16:11 know the longevity is not there that’s interesting that you brought it up for board members because again it is that
16:19 relationship that critical relationship has to be there and that alignment I me it’s power structures too right so yeah
16:27 and I I think another they I think CEOs are the limiting factor of the health and growth of
16:35 companies and as one gains more self-awareness for example one of my
16:41 weaknesses is I when I was CEO I would
16:47 allow um often newer exacts uh manage up
16:52 really well to me and not be and so I was fooled that they were doing a good
16:59 job when really their teams were suffering and because they weren’t managing their teams well um and
17:06 sometimes their the values alignment was off so it’s sometimes it’s hard in a podcast when you’re listening of like
17:14 getting generic um you need to communicate better you need to have values alignment it’s it’s hard to see
17:21 that when you’re in it yeah so it has been helpful to step back a little bit
17:28 from well not in the day-to-day at all but to you can see things more clearly
17:34 when you’re when you’re not because I’m so uh I so love people I can just look
17:41 past certain things and focus on their you know what I really love about
17:46 someone um but their teams you know can suffer when that when that happens so I
17:53 I’m trying to get more self-aware yeah well I mean I think it it’s really interesting hearing hearing
17:59 you so humbly speak about um some of the areas that you’ve experienced you know
18:05 opportunities for growth or or that have been challenging or even dark times you know everybody goes through that really
18:12 and those those are where we learn you already kind of touched on it without us even asking you but um when you go
18:21 through these experiences they really crystallize what your values are so at thesis and then in on the boards that
18:28 you sit on you know what are the personal values that you hold that um
18:34 you Tred to instill in the organizations you participate with yeah I think I mean
18:40 one of the ones that again I’ve been I think it’s more
18:45 instinctively Keelie’s role modeled it really really well and I’ve gotten better at it and still not quite as good
18:51 as her at it is having uh is healthy conflict like having hard conversations
18:57 with grace I think is humans and especially Portland nice like there’s a
19:02 lot of um you know trying hard to be nice when that doesn’t benefit uh it
19:10 really exacerbates and allows for a situation to to build up and get worse
19:17 versus like nipping it in the bud and just calling it out um and especially in
19:23 a creative agency where your product is your people and um a lot of uh sometimes
19:32 in an agency atmosphere it’s becomes a lot of feelings management instead of like how
19:39 is like how is this helping the company and how is this helping our clients um
19:45 and so there’s a balance there of empathy um balance with accountability
19:52 and that serves everyone well so I don’t I don’t know if I fully answered your
19:57 question but I just think that that one value I think is one that we’re trying to put as much effort into as possible
20:04 and so when you’re looking about building teams and expanding beyond your you know
20:12 your mission what’s the approach and how do you take those values to scale and to
20:20 operationalize um so I mean one one of the under like if you go to our website
20:27 at thesis we’re really trying to highlight the humans behind the work and
20:33 and a lot of times um agencies across the country I
20:39 think the averages is like it’s 88% white employees and yet the
20:45 consumers that we serve like we’re the country is going to be a minority majority in the next you know 15 years
20:53
so our project teams should reflect the consumers that we serve and they don’t
20:58 and so we really want to highlight um the people making the work and um and
21:05 you know the get the human often times the best marketing message that comes
21:11 out is the origin story of that company of where that product is really coming
21:16 from the people behind it so um so anyway uh I got lost on that one on that
21:25 one thought I don’t think I fully answered your question well and previous to starting this podcast
21:32 you said that in your industry it’s a two-year long longevity of employment
21:38 yeah there’s a lot of turnover right so when you’re looking at building teams and especially on your leadership team
21:45 you know matching the who your customers are that’s important but what other aspects do you bring in when you are
21:55 hiring so our industry is you know there’s some is going through a tough
22:01 time like especially in Portland you probably saw Weiden and Kennedy did massive layoffs instrument and few others we’ve
22:08 had to do some small adjustments um with Workforce reduction but have made some
22:16 adjustments and and communicated really transparently along the way I think um you know when we’re in
22:27 that tough spot from from an executive standpoint hiring Executives who’ve been
22:33 through hard things um uh there’s a book uh the hard thing about hard things I
22:39 mean it it’s much more helpful because otherwise if someone hasn’t been
22:47 through um a tough thing like a layoff or what have you there it’s going to be
22:53 such a shock to the system that it’s uh they like aren’t going to
22:59 stick around long um I’m giving you very topical uh things of like the in the
23:07 moment and I’m I I’m realizing that I’m really focusing on the hard things but I think that you know we we went through a
23:15 pandemic and then business-wise certain um Industries like our company actually
23:23 really benefited uh we we tripled in size in two years um um in 21 and 22 and
23:31 then at the end of 22 it was like wow we went from hiring 175 people per year um
23:39 for two years to like we got caught up in the lack of accountability and not
23:46 being close to maybe our more mid-level managers that were saying we need to
23:52 hire more more more because our people are overworked when in fact um the data
23:58 didn’t really support that and so um so that’s why I’m getting to this place
24:05 where they’re not only within thesis but you know I mentioned other agencies and
24:11 then I’m actually a judge for uh Ernst & Young entrepreneur of the Year award and so across the whole Mountain West States
24:18 and so I have like 70 different data points of applications of um of the best
24:25 of the best companies like all really going through hard things and 23 and then still uncertainty um in the first
24:32 half of this year so I I I really value executives who’ve been through hard
24:37 things well and you mentioned three big core values and I’m going to repeat them
24:44 um as you take this approach of scaling growing or rightsizing your organization
24:50 and you mentioned empathy a few times sure transparency and
24:56 accountability and it’s those are big topics and hard words
25:01 to operationalize right but when you’re looking at these 70 Ernst & Young
25:08 entrepreneurs a year do you take those type of qualities and is that part of the measurement or is it just on revenue
25:16 and scale I mean it’s half and half you look at my takeaway is looking at these
25:24 applications and all these executive teams doing the
25:31 hard things but it may not show up in the financial numbers for several years
25:36 because it takes a while to um for that to turn around the bottom line um but we
25:46 not only within organizations but I think city governments and cascaded throughout the country there was this
25:54 you know initially with the pandemic is we’re all going to die and then it’s
26:00 like okay we’re going to live um but uh we have to drastically change how we
26:06 work and I I think hybrid um in terms of remote versus in inperson work is like
26:13 the the future um but I just think and especially for those of us who
26:21 have a lot of you know 20s and 30 somethings employees I think learning what
26:28 accountability really looks like is a really tough process to go through and I think we’re in that right now across all
26:36 organizations absolutely that’s really interesting well our last question that we ask is um what does hiring for good
26:43 mean to you yeah I mean so a huge uh part of our values we a b Corp and um we
26:52 believe that business is a Force for good which we’ve also gotten the
26:57 positive affirm that employees new employees like seek us out and our existing employees like
27:04 really appreciate that we have a third party like um borp you know kind of
27:09 validate that um not only of how we treat our people but um how we show for the planet and all that um but yeah I
27:17 just think hiring for good is I I’m going to try really hard not to
27:23 not give the platitude but it is like the values alignment that is you
27:29 know are employees going to show up to volunteer are they are they but
27:38 also are they going to be motivated to show up for clients and like you know if
27:44 there are some setbacks with their cat getting sick or what have you that
27:50 they’re not going to take the month off like they might have like I’m like exaggerating but but you know when in
27:56 2020 um so I think um hiring for good is
28:03 just hiring like really well balanced employees who and executives who are you
28:11 know willing to do the hard things but then show up
28:16 for their community and and get outside of the office walls to like engage in
28:24 community efforts um so that’s what it means to me I think I think it can mean a ton of things to different people but
28:30 I I love the that you’re planting the seed of you know thoughts become things
28:37 and so if you’re having all these interviews with different execs to think
28:42 about every hire that they make is like how am I hiring for good I think that’s a good reminder well and I’m gonna ask one
28:48 more question if I can because you’ve had such a journey and ups and downs
28:54 what advice would you have given your 20-year-old self
29:00 I you know I think it’s the ups and the downs are all part
29:06 of it and I think it’s all a gift especially in retrospect because when
29:12 you’re going through it it is not a gift um it is pain um but yeah I don’t think
29:19 I’d do anything differently because it’s all led me to where I am so I love that
29:26 what a great journey yeah thanks thank you so much it was such a pleasure we just um really I knew this was going
29:34 to be a really interesting interview and um you did not disappoint wonderful some great
29:40 takeaways and I think for our audience as well so yes appreciate you all right thanks y thanks for joining us today at
29:47 hiring for good if you were inspired by our conversation don’t forget to like follow And subscribe wherever you get
29:53 your podcast and if you want to learn more about our executive Search services check us out at www.hiringforgood.net
30:01 or our company website Acumen Executive Search thanks so much and
30:06 don’t forget to join us next time for another in-depth conversation about transformational leadership till then
30:12 have fun