Ryan Blair (born July 14, 1977) is an American entrepreneur and author. He is the former co-founder and chief executive officer of the

multi-level marketing Multi-level marketing (MLM), also called network marketing or pyramid selling, is a controversial and sometimes illegal marketing strategy for the sale of products or services in which the revenue of the MLM company is derived from a non-salarie ...

company ViSalus Sciences, a subsidiary of the publicly traded company Blyth, Inc. In 2011, he wrote a book titled ''Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur'' which reached ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list for hardcover business books.

Ernst & Young EY, previously known as Ernst & Young, is a multinational corporation, multinational professional services partnership, network based in London, United Kingdom. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, it is one of the Big Four accounting firms, Big F ...

named Blair as Entrepreneur of the Year for Michigan & Northwest Ohio in 2012.

Early life

Blair was raised in

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...

. A product of a broken family, at the early age of 13, "he was already heavily 'involved in stuff' after his father succumbed to drug addiction," Blair told Business Insider in an interview. He dropped out of high school in the 9th grade, left home, and became a gang member in his home-town of Los Angeles. When he was 18, Blair's mother began dating a successful real-estate entrepreneur who became Blair's mentor and gave him his first job at Logix Development, a computer technical support provider. At age 21, after serving as vice president of Logix Development he founded the technical-support firm 24/7 Tech.

Business and writing

In 2005, Blair became the CEO of the

company ViSalus Sciences. In 2008, ViSalus was in debt and facing bankruptcy. That year, Blyth Inc. began a multi-stage takeover, paying the three owners $105.7 million and stock valued at $143.2 million for an 80 percent share of the company. Blair remained as CEO. In 2010, Blair won the DSN Global Turn Around Award "when he actually turned the company around from a $6 million debt in early 2008 to $150 million in revenue 16 months later." In 2011, Blair released an autobiography, ''Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur''. The book was ranked 3rd in ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list for August 2011 and was a number one New York Times Hardcover Business Book bestseller in September of that year. As of 2012, ViSalus was valued at $600 million. Revenue subsequently declined and the company operated at a loss for 2013 and the first two-quarters of 2014. Blair and his fellow co-founders re-acquired 90 percent of the company that year, eliminating Blyth's obligation to pay for the stock acquired in 2008. In 2016, Blair released his second book, titled ''Rock Bottom To Rock Star''. The book focuses on teaching individuals how they can become rock-star entrepreneurs, by redefining what rock-star means. "It isn't the celebrations that make you a rock star, it is the hard work" says Blair. In 2018, Kasi Head, a former beauty queen and longtime girlfriend to Blair, filed a restraining order against Blair and alleged the entrepreneur broke her nose and knocked out her teeth.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blair, Ryan 1977 births 21st-century American businesspeople Living people People associated with direct selling Former gang members