Navigating Leadership in International Markets: Insights from Ryan Hawley on Leadership Talks

Martin Rowinski (00:07.47)
Welcome, Ryan. It is great to have you on the show. Great to be here. I appreciate the invite. Absolutely. And I can’t I’m excited. I can’t wait to hear your journey. So to start with that, you have such an impressive background in international business development and leadership. Could you tell us and our listeners a little bit about your journey and how you came to lead out in industries? Sure.

So I’m a nurse by trade. I went through university to become a registered nurse and spent a good portion of my 20s in the back of an air ambulance. So I spent most of my 20s flying all over the world, bringing sick or injured people home on behalf of insurance companies. Around 2012, I think, I left the hospital and air ambulance world and entered hospital middle management. I was running an ICU in Niagara Falls.

And very quickly realized that it was not a hamster wheel that I wanted to be on. That it just, it wasn’t for me. So at that time I started a medical repatriation company as kind of a side gig. So we were focusing on bringing home snowbirds, sort of, you know, Canadians that had come down to Florida or Arizona, things of that nature. And it was a chase yourself to the bottom revenue model. And it just, it didn’t make any sense to me.

So I went to my assistance partners and said, you know, where are your biggest problems? Cause South Forerunners definitely not your biggest problem. Where are the parts that you’re really having struggles getting people out? And they said, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Western Africa. They said, you know, if you can solve that problem for us, we can charge higher rates. And you know, there’s a fair amount of business in these areas. So I started hiring military trained staff.

came up with safety protocols to be able to move these contractors out of these areas that are conflict or conflict adjacent. Developed that protocol became pretty good at it that we were doing hundreds of transports out of these areas on a pretty regular basis. Very serendipitously, we got into international case management. It was not something that we ever planned on doing.

Martin Rowinski (02:31.661)
I had a client reach out to me and asked me to get medical records in Chad. And I said, you know, I’ve got a security resource in Chad, but they’re not going to know anything about medical records. They said, we don’t need them to understand them. We just need them to get them. So I didn’t even know how to invoice it. I was just doing, I was just doing a client a favor. I sent the guy in Chad to the hospital. He picked up the medical records and you know, we were going to sort it out after. And he got it done.

Four hours later, they called me and asked me to do the same thing in Kampala. The light bulb went on that I can monetize this and we developed a program around it. So I traveled to Western Africa, started to build up resources there. I traveled into the Philippines where there’s a fair amount of cases. And I traveled into the former Yugoslavia into the Kosovo region to build what we term field agents. That went from a serendipitous phone call to pick up a couple of records in Chad to 50 to 60 ,000 in revenue a month.

One of the vendors that we used for that purpose bought the previous company in that capacity. That’s what brought my family and I back to the United States. We’re originally from the Toronto area in Canada. That’s how we ended up moving down here. I left that organization in 2020 and started Odin Industries. We’ve now partnered with, I believe, the largest security provider in the world for…

their medical needs. So acting as a sort of an adjacent service to their security services and continue to provide most of the major defense based act insurers and foreign voluntary insurers with our case management abilities globally. So we’re, you know, I mean, any given day working in eight to 10 countries and helping to solve a very specific niche problem.

for insurance companies that pretty much anybody in this space needs. They need reliable manpower in fairly difficult to operate areas. Well, that’s a very interesting journey, which you got to explore some of the world, maybe not the greatest parts, but… Me personally, I think I’m at 142 countries. So I’ve got three quarters of the world, give or take, I think there’s around 195 done.

Martin Rowinski (04:59.181)
Medical transport, medical management has allowed me to see parts of the world I never would have been able to see, you know, vacationing or just journeying myself. I’ve been all through the Middle East. I’ve been all through Africa. There’s places that, you know, I wouldn’t have booked a trip to go see myself that I’ve been lucky enough to experience. So literally your career journey was also a journey journey through the world. absolutely. Absolutely.

That’s awesome. So you’ve you’ve worked with multiple industries and build diverse teams across the globe. What have been some of the key strategies that have contributed to your success in international markets? I think the first strategy, if you can call it that, is listening to our customers needs, that not coming to our customers and telling them what they need and formulating that, that having the conversations and tailoring our services to meet the needs of our client.

has helped separate us from our competition. That the other, I guess, advice I could give to anyone along this journey is nobody can be the best at everything. That build your team around your weaknesses, not around your strengths. That, you know, there’s lots of people that have helped me along this journey that have skill sets that I just don’t possess. And hire for those skill sets.

train around the company culture, but have a team that is able to collaborate together and able to all provide their sort of unique piece of the end result that you’re giving to your customers. You do often emphasize that people are company’s greatest asset. And how do you actually engage your staff and create an environment that fosters collaboration and innovation? COVID provided sort of a…

Interesting, I guess, experiment on how to relate to your employees because everything was different. You’re not seeing each other in person, that you had to get used to developing a system remotely to keep culture with the people that are working with you. So I had always had an open door policy that anybody could come in and ask me a question at any time. It was now sort of a open meeting process.

Martin Rowinski (07:23.789)
that I talk with my staff every day, that we work through issues as far as the operations together, that a lot of my function as the CEO is sales and strategy. I’m looking to scale the business, looking to grow it. The tacit day -to -day operational challenges, which is the primary thing that our customers care about, I need the input of my staff to ensure that we’re running.

like a well -oiled machine, like we should be. So we’re not a commodity. We’re not something where the volumes are hundreds of thousands or millions of objects. We’re managing 30 to 50 cases a month, sometimes a little bit less, sometimes a little bit more, but predictably in that area. That gives me the time to work with my employees and to…

take anywhere where we’re having issue, be it a communication with a client, be it how we’re presenting things that I can sit with my staff, develop a solution to that. We’re also small enough that we have the ability to make changes quickly. Larger organizations, it’s like turning an aircraft carrier. To get anything to happen, you need a committee and a subcommittee and about seven people’s approval. We can look and go, I think this would better serve our clients.

make that change and implement it quickly. Being small sort of gives us the ability to be nimble and we’re not afraid to change our processes if we think that it’s going to better serve our customers. That everyone’s bought into the belief that we want to be the best at the very specific thing that we do. And what we do is a very, very specific niche.

It’s niche within the insurance world. It’s niche within the medical world. We do something very unique and very hard places. We don’t have a huge amount of competition in this space. Our end work product and that collaborative spirit to be the best at what we do helps set us apart from our competition and is the pathway to grow the company. That’s awesome. And you know, no one’s perfect. Every leader faces challenges at some point. I mean, that’s…

Martin Rowinski (09:40.109)
That’s how we all learn right from challenges. Can you share a significant challenge you encountered in your career and how you overcame it? Sure. So significant challenge was the previous company. You know, I had built it from an idea into five or six million in revenue a year and I sold it and very quickly found out that I should have just taken a check and not stayed on with the organization and you know, stayed on.

did four or five years post -sale and was very, very unhappy. That it was difficult to come to work, that the direction that I would have taken the company, the now owners of the company didn’t agree with that philosophy, but it wasn’t mine to make the decisions. And it was, it was a big struggle. And when I made the decision to leave that company, like any entrepreneurial,

Business. It’s kind of like leaving one of your kids. You’ve grown it, you know, you, you develop the logos, you develop the work processes, you built it and you saw it become something. And while walking away from that was a challenge, but it also provided some fodder for Odin to look at where were, I had made mistakes with my previous entity that allowed us to scale Odin quicker.

because I already had those lessons. I was coming from a place of experience and any business owner, any entrepreneur is going to make mistakes. Anybody that says that it’s an easy path to do any sort of entrepreneurial activity is crazy. It’s a lot like building the airplane while it’s already in the air. And that previous journey,

provided me with a lot of knowledge to scale Odin pretty quickly and look at how I could better serve my team because that’s one of my primary roles as a CEO is to serve my team and that allows the team that I have now to better serve my clients. I kind of subscribe to that Richard Branson theory that you know as the leader if you take care of your people the people will take care of your customers. Absolutely.

Martin Rowinski (12:05.037)
And yeah, if it was easy, then everybody be doing it right for sure. With experience in over 140 countries, as you said, 149, you have a unique global perspective. What do you think are some of the major differences between managing businesses domestically versus internationally? I think having to be very culturally aware of your your clients and your areas that.

even beyond international business of just working with other cultures, when we were doing the medical transport or we’re doing the case management, we actually have people on the ground that are having to interact in these countries on a day -to -day basis. And what could be a fairly simple or straightforward process here in America could involve multiple steps or sign -offs or different expertise in other companies.

that being flexible and being cognizant of those areas has been very, very important. Understanding how to operate in these various areas is important before we even bring it to our customers. That when our customers will look at an area where they’re starting to see an expansion of claims, a lot of our work is insurance claim driven, that it’s upon us to look and see what new challenges those areas may bring about.

say they come to us that we’re seeing an increased claim in Kenya. We’re going to want to understand what the challenges of operating in Kenya are before we go. Yes, we can do that and go to our customers. And then it ended up turning into a gong show. Got it. And Odin Industries. And obviously, as a CEO of Odin Industries, your focus is on revenue optimization.

and strategic business growth. What’s your vision for Odin Industries in the next, say, five years? So over the next five years, we have sort of a three pronged plan to grow the business. The first is growth through acquisition that we’re looking within the domestic workers comp market at. Right now, we’re looking at an indemnity ratings provider that we’re looking to acquire and a couple of other companies within the occupational health.

Martin Rowinski (14:33.549)
realm, that the retirement of boomers has produced a remarkable financial opportunity, that there’s more businesses that are generating decent amounts of revenue that fall just below where private equity would be interested, that are available, than there are customers to buy them. These are businesses that have processes, that have proprietary IP, that have profits, that you can get.

within our space, consulting medical, three to five times EBITDA to be able to bring in a cash flowing asset to bolt onto your business. So that’s the first part of our strategy. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort honing our domestic offering to look at SAM contracts with the federal government. The occupational health, medical management, case management is something that comes up in many, many, many different federal government.

agencies as sort of a side to that. We’re also registered in a number of states to provide government contracts at a state level as well as at the federal level. And then the third sort of, I guess, growth area that we’re looking at is to increase our domestic capabilities for nurse case management here within the U .S. We kind of did it backwards for most American entities that will start in the U .S. and move abroad.

We started in the former Yugoslavia and the Philippines and Peru and are now looking that each 50 states, each of the 50 states has different nuances for workers comp. Understanding those nuances and putting staff in place to be able to provide domestic nurse case management as well, that I think is a very significant growth opportunity for the company. Well, hopefully that third one is easier now that you’re doing it domestically and have international experience.

I hope so. I hope so. That’s the goal. And then as far as our five to seven year plan, by five year to seven year plan is to get us to 15 million market cap and quit. That I would like to get us to the point where private equity would be interested. That’s about the market cap that we would need to be. And, you know, I’m getting old, my beard’s starting to get a little bit gray and,

Martin Rowinski (16:56.877)
Five to seven years from now, I would like to probably leave full -time workforce and focus more on some of the boards that I sit on and enjoying my children while I’m still young enough to do so. That’s awesome. Yeah. The reason you don’t see a beard on me because it’s all gray. I hide it by shaving it.

So speaking of boards, you serve on the board of various organizations, including Defense of Democracy and the National Small Business Association. How do these roles, though, complement your work at Odin Industries and contribute to your personal and obviously professional growth? So from a professional standpoint, the NSBA is probably more linked to Odin than my work at Defense of Democracy. So.

The National Small Business Administration is the longest standing advocacy group for small business in the entirety of the United States. It allows us a platform to have lobbyists at our disposal to work with other like -minded business owners. There’s hundreds of us that meet on a monthly basis to be able to toss ideas off of each other.

It also provides direct access to our legislators to take issues that are very, very important to small businesses and be able to actually articulate our thoughts on these matters to the people that can make the changes. That I’ll be traveling to Washington, DC, I believe the 16th to the 18th of September. And NSBA has arranged for everyone that’s attending this trip to the Capitol.

to meet with their senators and their house representative in one -on -one meetings. So we’re not in a press scrum where you might get one or two questions that I have a sit -down meeting with Rick Scott. I have a sit -down meeting with Marco Rubio and I have a sit -down meeting with Jared Markowitz that I can talk about issues that impact Odin, issues that impact small businesses as a whole and have that direct one -on -one conversation.

Martin Rowinski (19:13.101)
beyond what the organization does itself, those one -on -one conversations are important. The organization itself, they have a full -time lobbyist on staff. Every year, the executive board decides what the functional priorities will be. They have very, very cool technology that allows members to send letters automatically to the president, to the vice president, to their senators, to their house members.

on these organizational priorities. It also has a full -time lobbyist that lives on the hill to act as sort of our voice for small business. So the last sort of major victory in that regard was our legal resources and our lobbyist group successfully sued the federal government regarding the Corporate Transparency Act. So for right now, that’s a big step.

impact on small business, which is pretty significant, is on hold pending an appeal by the government over that victory that NSBA had. But it’s a great advocacy group for focusing only on businesses like mine. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg don’t need the help. The smaller businesses, we need to have somebody fighting for us on the Hill. Yeah, no, I agree.

A little bit of subject, just because you mentioned right before we started recording, you did another podcast the other day. Obviously you’re active doing podcasts. Do you believe in executive branding, making yourself visible, putting yourself out there and has it impacted, has it helped Odin at all? How do you see that? I think it’s extremely important. I think for…

a small to mid -sized business for the leadership to be available and to be an extension of that public persona of company culture. That the CEO of any organization or managing partner, whatever the ownership is framed at, they’re sort of the basis and the direction of that company culture. That culture permeates through an organization on a top -down basis.

Martin Rowinski (21:37.037)
in almost every organization. And I think it’s very important that the company’s values and the company’s public persona is shown through the leader. That I’m sort of the face of Odin Industries. That certainly doesn’t mean that the people that I’m working with are important. But when people think of the company, I’m the face that’s attached to it. I think opportunities like this are very, very

good from a branding perspective and put that company values and structure out into the ethos that is there a huge monetary comeback from it? I honestly don’t know, but I know that it’s important that if somebody’s looking up my company, that there’s an online presence that I’m out talking the talk and walking the walk.

and that we’re not the sort of mysterious entity that people can’t look at that. We’re out talking about what we do, talking about how we serve our customers and talking how we better serve the communities. I love it. I feel like I handed you a script and you read it. Thank you. No worries. Just so everybody knows I did not do that, but you played right into it because the reason I brought it up is,

mainly because you said something about doing a podcast and I, three years ago, I went on the mission of, you know, obviously being a face of boards. I, I’m doing podcasts, writing articles. I ended up writing a book and you’re correct. The ROI is difficult to figure out on it, but I think setting up your company as being authority in that industry, there’s no other way to do it, but through branding. For sure.

and setting up yourself as an executive. For example, what we experienced was that people that have done branding look a lot more attractive to prospective companies that are looking for board members or advisors. And we have seen that we’ve been doing this for seven years. It just took us five years of having enough data to go back and figure out, holy cow, the people that are getting the interviews are the people that have set themselves up with authority. So.

Martin Rowinski (24:00.365)
One more off shoot question and I’ll kind of get back to what we were talking about. But if you were given a platform where you can, in addition to doing podcasts, you could write articles. Would that be something you think that would also obviously? Podcasts are great. Absolutely. That I think you stop. I think any time that you can touch the public is a good thing. Be it the, you know, weighing on this topic on LinkedIn.

which the app is doing on a regular basis, writing white papers about whatever your area of expertise is that be it articles, be it podcasts, that any touch point is a good thing. That being in front of the general public is a good thing. Showing yourself as an expert in whatever your niche is, is a good thing. All of these things are equally important. And the…

you sort of touched on it when you said to position yourself as an expert. The only way to do that is to be in front of the public. You can’t position yourself as the expert in the dark. The only way to position yourself as an expert is to be out talking the talk and walking the walk. Awesome. I love it. I’m so happy you said that and I’m glad I asked because…

We just launched a new product, which is we call it the board suite and it includes executive branding and obviously board education, but it includes executive branding as part of it, helping leaders do exactly what we’re doing here, which is stand out. So awesome. Thank you. So getting back to what we were talking about and more specific, maybe not on, on Odin, but.

What advice would you give to aspiring leaders who want to make an impact in the global business development space? I think knowing your customers is the biggest advice that I can give anybody, global or domestically, that don’t go into business with an idea in your head of this is what people need, because a lot of businesses, a lot of products fail because there’s not a market for it.

Martin Rowinski (26:13.165)
that do those conversations prior to changing your product offering. The other, I guess, advice that served me well is don’t be afraid to fail. The old adage of fortune favors the bold is definitely true. I think the biggest issue with a lot of young entrepreneurs or a lot of people entering business,

is almost analysis paralysis. That sometimes you need to just find whatever willpower it is, reach out and grab that and take, take the chance to do it. That entrepreneurs are, are weird breed. There’s that old saying that you’d rather work 80 hours in your own business and to work 40 hours for someone else. There’s a, there’s a unique.

sort of mindset within entrepreneurs. But I think there’s a lot of tools available to help you build those skillsets. And for people that are starting an entrepreneurship, a lot of people from my business background will ask me, you know, what are some things that I should do? There’s a book called The E Myth that I tell every new entrepreneur to read. That tells a very interesting sort of story.

about you’ve got this good product, you’ve got this good service, clients are telling you they don’t know how they lived without you. And then all those balls that you’re juggling in the air because you’re doing this all yourself start to fall because you haven’t started to build that team around you. I think that lesson of understanding that you can’t do everything and that you need help and that those people that you’re adding to your team are essential in

going from a hobby business or, you know, replacing a job where you don’t have a boss, but you’re essentially beholden to your customers 24 hours a day. That’s not really a company either. That’s just a job that doesn’t have, you know, an HR or structure. To be able to scale it, you know, you need teams, you need a plan.

Martin Rowinski (28:37.101)
you need to be able to execute that plan. You need to understand that you’re going to need people with different skill sets than just you to be able to execute that plan. Awesome. Yeah. I always say, I’d rather live 80 hour days or weeks building my dream than 40 hours of building somebody else’s. Absolutely. And that’s there. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of wisdom to that statement. That’s, okay. To lighten things up.

I got a couple of fun questions. Sure. Let our listeners get to know you a little bit better through these. But what’s a fun fact about you that most people wouldn’t know? A fun fact about me that most people wouldn’t know. Stumper. Yeah, I wasn’t prepared for this one. That’s the point. I wasn’t prepared for this one. I.

Don’t think most people would know that I’m a now adoptive parent of a foster child. We have two biological children and then had a foster child in our home for about four and a half years. And just this past October sort of made the final adoption process, getting stamped and signed off by the judge. And we now have a…

a third child is officially part of the family. So that’s sort of a interesting, I don’t know if that’s fun. My daughter’s favorite fact about me is that I injured myself skateboarding off my parents roof in my youth, thinking that I could go from the roof to the pool and found out that I could almost go to the pool and that almost really hurt. So,

Yeah, that would hurt. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. She tells anyone that will listen that story. So. Well, you survived, so that’s good. Since you’ve traveled a lot, if you could travel anywhere in the world right now, you’re getting on a plane tonight. Yeah. Where would you go and why? My favorite city in the world that I’ve experienced is Prague in the Czech Republic. That’s.

Martin Rowinski (30:59.533)
It got through both World Wars without ever being bombed. So the architecture within the city is absolutely amazing. It’s got great food. It’s affordable. It’s a city that I would need no arm twisting at all to go and experience. If we’re looking at places that I haven’t experienced yet, I’ve always wanted to go to Bali.

see pictures of it. It looks so remarkably beautiful and it’s somewhere I haven’t got yet. That if somebody told me to pack a bag tonight and we were heading to Bali, much like going to Prague, it wouldn’t take much arm twisting to get me there. Well, you hit close to home. I’m from Warsaw, Poland. Very cool. Very cool. We actually have a client heading to Warsaw tomorrow. okay. There you go. They’re going from Toronto to Warsaw tomorrow. So.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? Have a mentor. When I was starting out in business, I talked to a lot of people that had done it, to a lot of people that had already gone on their entrepreneurial journeys to try and understand what this looked like, because I really didn’t know. I had had jobs that there was always a structure, there was always a boss, there was always that…

every two week guarantee of salary that was sort of your safety net and entering into this world where there’s none of that, that you are the boss and whatever policies and procedures need to be developed, you’re going to do it. And if the business doesn’t succeed, that there’s no paycheck coming. Yeah. If there’s not revenue coming in, then you’re cooked. And…

You know, I’ve been lucky enough to have some very good mentors throughout my business career. And that would be the best advice that I could tell anybody. That if you’re just starting in the journey, if you’re 10 years into the journey, if you’re close to retirement, have somebody that inspires you within the business space that you can sit down and open a bottle of wine and have a conversation about.

Martin Rowinski (33:20.429)
any challenges you’re facing, any big decisions that are coming up, similar to, you know, a function of what you would do on a board. Yep. Yeah. That’s what I tell people. If you, if you don’t have that mentor, then look up Boards. I am, we’ll find you an advisor. Yeah. Buddy up with them. I agree. Ryan, it’s been fantastic having you on the show, but before we wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners or?

Maybe I’d like, what’s the easiest way to find you? Is it LinkedIn? Anything you’d like to add? LinkedIn’s under Brian L. Hawley, that there’s a British actor of some soap opera that shares my name that made it difficult. I knew you looked familiar. Yeah, that made it difficult for people to find me. So we added the L, that it was easier to find me. The webpage is odinindustriesllc .com.

the LLC, we had to add there’s an entity that I’m still watching that’s had odinindustries .com and not done anything with it since 2019. So I’m hoping to snag it when it comes, but right now it’s odinindustriesllc .com. That’s our webpage. We’re active on SAM, the Federal Government Portal. There’s a whole list of our capabilities of what we can do there.

Our webpage outlines that and then we’re also Odin Industries. I think it’s odin underscore industries on Instagram. We’ve got about 25 or 30 ,000 followers on Instagram that follow the business. Beyond that on social media, I will say that’s one skill set that I’m not very good at. I am. Awesome. Thank you so much, Ryan. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to Boards Eye Leadership Talks.

Be sure to subscribe and stay updated for insightful conversations with leaders who are making a difference. And until next time, Ryan again, thank you. Appreciate you, thanks a lot. Thank you for tuning into Leadership Talks. Don’t forget to subscribe for more insightful conversations with industry leaders. Your support means a lot to us.