Ryan Seekatz

Spent roughly a decade working the North Slope oil rigs in Alaska for BP and ConocoPhillips before walking away in his late twenties to build for himself. After running several small Alaska businesses — some that crashed and burned, some that did well — and a hunting guide operation, he moved into business acquisitions and bought a pool construction company on Florida's east coast that builds about 100 pools a year in the area's more affluent communities. One year in, he has already bolted on a lower-ticket renovation branch that sold eight or nine jobs in its first month.

Born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, where he was "killing before he could remember" — hunting ptarmigan, grouse, and rabbits before school on Rosie Creek Road with a little .410 break-action, then heading to daycare. Shot his first caribou at seven. A self-described "lazy hunter" who works game from a truck or four-wheeler, glasses from a small ridge, and has never sat a tree stand. Ran an Alaska guide business and processed his own meat — summer sausage and jerky — and can field-dress a caribou in under an hour.

Ryan's story is about burning the ships. The exact day he decided to leave the rigs, a 4th-of-July surf-and-turf dinner "tasted like ash" because he was so desperate to get home to his kids — and he never went back. He's candid about the key-person risk that got him a great deal on the pool company (and nearly buried him when the seller fell ill), why you can never take your foot off the gas, and why mentorship is the single multiplier that shortens every curve. The throughline: some people just aren't built for the box, and that's the whole advantage.