He Lost His Whole Sales Team on One Trip to Africa. Then He Rebuilt the Company Around AI.

Ryan Bush was gone on a humanitarian trip in Africa, and a few people were keeping his marketing agency running while he was away.

He came home to a different company. One salesperson was moving across the country with his wife for a great job. The other, Ryan says, had been lying and stealing from him. Two salespeople, then none. Nothing new coming in the door.

Most owners in that spot start scrambling for replacements. Ryan looked at what he already had. His agency, Sambal Media, had been running about two and a half years, mostly doing digital marketing for contractors and construction companies. Some of those clients were already asking for help adding AI. So he made the call. No more new marketing clients. Find businesses that need AI systems installed. A few months later, Sambal Media is Sambal AI.

Stu, who has been mentoring Ryan for a while, uses this episode to pull apart how he got here. Not the pivot. The habits that put Ryan in rooms most 20-somethings never see.

The Ticket He Didn't Win

The first habit is how they met.

Stu posted on LinkedIn that he was giving away a free ticket to one of his Island Park retreats. Ryan entered. Stu then filmed a video, FaceTimed the winner, and scrolled through comments to pick one. He picked the guy right above Ryan.

Plenty of people would let it go there. Ryan sent a message anyway. He said he'd still love to come, he had a camera, and he could shoot video of the event. Stu thanked him and said he already had a videographer. Ryan moved on with his life.

Then, the day before the event, Stu texted. The videographer couldn't make it. Could Ryan be in Island Park by tomorrow morning?

Ryan said yes, packed up, and left at 4 a.m.

I'd point at two things. First, Ryan didn't concede when he lost. He found a reason to reach back out that had something to offer, which made it easy for Stu to say yes later. Second, he cleared his schedule instead of dismissing the opportunity because it wasn't already on the calendar. Stu pointed to "Rework," the book from the founders of 37signals, which makes the same point: sometimes you just have to get on the plane.

Ryan thinks the whole thing was a hinge point in his life. He didn't win a ticket. He got a seat by offering a skill.

A Goal He Almost Didn't Post

At a later retreat, everyone went around the room sharing where they were in business and one thing they wanted in the next year. Several people on Ryan's left said they were looking at buying private jets. Ryan was surprised. These were normal, kind people who'd been giving him advice all weekend.

So at the start of the year, he set a goal. By the end of September, he wanted to get on a private jet. The point wasn't the ride. He wanted to become valuable enough that someone with a jet would invite him along.

He wrote a LinkedIn post and went back and forth for 30 minutes over whether to publish it. It seemed a little silly. He posted it anyway. Stu commented and tagged Chad Willard, who has a jet and was in Southern California.

Here's the part that matters. Stu didn't ask Chad for a favor. He told Chad that Ryan had come to a retreat, shot a video that turned out great, and could vouch for him. Chad was doing a family trip and might want content, and Ryan could trade video for the ride. Seven days later, Ryan was flying from Utah to California with Chad's family. Goal done.

Cold DMs work, Stu says, and Ryan's story proves it, but only when you bring something. Stu gets a flood of messages from strangers that say, here's my startup, want to invest? It never works. The message that works says, here's what I can do for you.

Ryan's lesson from all of it: being around people who've already done the thing changes what looks like a roadblock. Problems that stop you look like obstacles to them.

Caught, Not Taught

Ryan isn't a parent, but he repeated something he's heard: lessons you teach your kids are caught, not taught. He thinks the same applies to rooms full of experienced founders. Some of what he's learned on trips with Stu isn't in any business book. It's the certainty that things will work out. It's how a problem gets handled. It's the kind of conversation you hear, which is almost always about what problem we're solving and almost never about other people.

Stu added a story from Ryan Smith of Qualtrics. Smith was under 40 when he got an offer of $500 million for the company his dad had founded. Everyone around him told him he was crazy not to sell. He went to a mentor and said, you're the only one not telling me to sell. The mentor asked how many of those people had ever sold a business for half a billion dollars. None, Smith said. That was the moment.

Stu applies it to private jets. The people who tell him not to buy one are mostly financial advisors, friends, or family who don't own one. The people who own them call it a time machine. Stu says it gives him time with his family and lets him make deals he couldn't otherwise. It's not for everyone. He's also clear that when he was Ryan's age, he'd have been the one asking who needs a jet.

I'd keep the principle and skip the jet. Check who you're taking advice from, and ask whether they've done what you're about to do.

The Business Card Pile

Stu held up a stack of business cards on camera and said he has never dialed a number off one. They're a pile of people who shook his hand and said they appreciated his talk.

What works is the reverse. Someone meets him, then connects on LinkedIn, then shares an idea they want his opinion on. Now the connection is worth his time.

Ryan's version is practical. Skip the business card. If you swap numbers, take a selfie and text it. Send a quick video about something they said. Connect on social media so you see each other's posts. And, he says, a random phone call after you've talked works better than people think. He added that he still doesn't think he's great at this, because it's hard to remember every good conversation.

Stu's examples are better than any advice. After a golf trip a friend invited him to, he was added to a group chat full of strangers. He didn't introduce himself. He posted a photo of the friend holding up a hole-in-one ball he'd just seen him hit. That started a conversation. Two weeks later he sent a funny photo from the trip. And when he saw a t-shirt that said "Sawtooth" and knew a new friend loved the Sawtooth Mountains, he took a picture and texted it. The friend wrote back that he needed it. Stu bought it and handed it over next time. The friend, Stu says, is his own buddy now, not just a friend of the guy who invited him on the trip. They've never done business, and might never.

That's the point. Don't push the business part. If it's only for money, people see through it.

Do It for Free First

Ryan chose a service business because the barrier is low, and he wanted something to sell. He could build websites and run some ads, and he figured he could learn the rest. His first real customers came from cold calls. He'd call businesses, build a mock-up website, then get on a call a couple of days later and show it to them.

His advice to people who message him on LinkedIn asking how to start is blunt. Go do it for free. Find somebody and do the work, to prove to yourself that your service has value. Work out a testimonial or case study in return.

Stu did exactly that. His first customer at his first company, a Google Ads agency, was his brother-in-law's dental practice. He ran ads free for three months. The practice had three record-breaking months for new patients, which gave him the courage to go ask others. At Stu Kent, his ed tech company, the first customer was the BYU Marriott School of Management, in a free pilot. They liked it enough to use it again and pay. Then Oregon State and the University of Minnesota agreed to try it, because three schools made it easy for the next to say yes.

There's also the joke from Ryan's BYU entrepreneurship teacher: when a client asks how many customers you have, say you plus five others makes six of you, and keep talking.

"Every Business Needs AI" Is Not a Target

Then Ryan asked Stu a direct question. If Stu joined Sambal AI full time for two years, what would change? He'd even walked up to Alex Hormozi's Acquisition.com office to look for answers, where a guard told him members only. Stu loved the hustle.

His answer was one word. Focus.

Stu admitted he's bad at it himself. At his first company, Get Found First, everyone needed Google Ads, so they took everyone. An e-commerce brand spending $100,000 a quarter. A dentist who called. They did fine work and never knew which customer to chase, so they never could say how much it cost to acquire one and what that customer was worth.

At Stu Kent, he picked digital marketing professors. Not marketing professors in general. That narrowness meant they could be the only company in the world building something for that group, and when a professor asked for something, they could build it for everyone like them. Seven years later, he can give his exact numbers. About $1,000 to acquire a customer. $2,000 in year one. $4,000 in year two. $16,000 by year four, and doubling after that.

Ryan's worry was scarcity. If he narrows, will there be enough clients? Stu's answer is Under Armour. They didn't start with tennis shoes or hoodies. They started with a sweat-wicking undershirt for football players, hockey players, and baseball players, a product Nike and Adidas didn't make. They expanded later. Focus earns the right to a bigger audience.

His specific advice: pick one industry's conference, show up, and keep showing up. Stu admits that at Get Found First he got underwhelmed and wanted bigger results faster. If he'd stayed, he says, and kept improving the booth every year, it would have paid off.

What Stuck With Me

Ryan Bush is new. He says so himself. He doesn't have a long business history to lean on, and Stu keeps calling him a little brother. The interesting part is how deliberately he puts himself in front of people who are ahead of him, and how he always shows up with something in his hands.

A camera. A video. A made-up website. A free month of work.

That's the whole system. It isn't clever. It just requires you to be useful before you're asked.

The best move in the whole episode was Ryan's last question. He asked someone who had already done it what he'd change about the business. Most people never ask. Fewer still ask someone who will answer honestly.

Recorded for the Startups with Stu podcast. More at startupswithstu.com.



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