Build In Norfolk
Welcome to Build in Norfolk! This podcast is all about highlighting the builders, creators, and innovators shaping the future of Northeast Nebraska. Whether you’re a startup founder, small business owner, or just someone interested in the growing entrepreneurial ecosystem here, this podcast is for you.
Build In Norfolk
Builder at Heart: Ryan Ruff on Startup Mindsets & Tech in Rural Nebraska
Ryan Ruff brings his serial entrepreneur experience to Norfolk as Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Invest Nebraska, guiding early-stage founders through their startup journeys. His entrepreneurial spirit has deep family roots, leading him from selling Christmas greenery as a child to developing SpendPal, a financial tool using behavioral psychology to improve spending habits.
• Entrepreneurship runs in Ryan's family, with his early sales experience at 12 raising enough money to fund his Scout troop's camps for four years
• Ryan developed SpendPal to solve the problem of budget adherence using behavioral psychology rather than focusing on discipline
• Rural communities offer significant advantages for startups: lower living costs, less competition, and more accessible mentorship
• The Builder Bootcamp program provides a structured approach to entrepreneurship that minimizes risk while maximizing learning
• Everyone has entrepreneurial potential - defined by Ryan as problem-solving ability rather than business ownership
• Modern tools like video conferencing and AI have leveled the playing field, making rural entrepreneurship more viable than ever
• Community support and accountability are crucial factors in entrepreneurial success
• Focus first on solving a problem elegantly before worrying about business models
• Norfolk's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem creates momentum through regular meetups and collaborative learning
Check out our Builder Bootcamp program or stop into the coworking space if you have an idea or product you want to build. You don't have to do it alone!
Welcome back to Build in Norfolk. I'm Emma Bennett and today we're talking to someone who's been in the trenches of startup life scaled businesses and now helps others do the same right here in Norfolk. I'm joined by Ryan Ruff, a serial entrepreneur and currently serving as our entrepreneur-in-residence for Invest Nebraska. He leads our Builder Bootcamp program and plays a critical role in guiding early stage founders through their startup journey. We'll dig into what it means to be an entrepreneur in residence in a rural ecosystem, how the Builder Bootcamp is helping founders go from idea to action, and what Ryan sees as the most exciting opportunities in tech entrepreneurship. Thanks for being here today, ryan.
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, thanks for having me.
Emma Bennett:Yeah, you want to give us a quick intro and talk a little bit about your experience.
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, so I'm a serial entrepreneur. It's in my blood. It's something that you know my grandfather always worked for himself. My father always worked for himself. All of my uncles and aunts pretty much all of them all worked for themselves. So I don't know much different. It's just, it's been in my blood.
Emma Bennett:I love that. What is like? What's the first thing you remember? Like your first product, your first sale. Do you ever remember that?
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the first meaningful one was when I was like 13 or 14. I must've been, no, I must've been 12. I think I was 12 and we were trying to raise money for scout camp and so we were going around selling Christmas greenery and I just went ham on it, I went crazy and just kept selling, and selling and selling. Not only did I make enough to cover my trip, I made it enough to cover our whole troops trip for four years, four years.
Emma Bennett:Yeah, okay, I will say I give props Like any kid that actually comes out to our house and tries to sell us something for a fundraiser. I'm like I'll buy anything. You're here, you're actually doing it Like I'm going to give you credit for this. Yeah.
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, no, it was crazy. I mean I was 12 and my mom was just like following behind me. She's like I'll go out as long as you want, and like we were out till dark for like two weeks straight. I think I did like 30K worth of like cells.
Emma Bennett:Oh my God, it was crazy. Just greenery.
Ryan Ruff:Christmas green, like wreaths and, like you know, garlands, all that stuff, it was all real stuff. So this was when I was living in Northern California and they would like they all brought it in fresh. So like the whole troop had to like go, like deliver all the stuff that I had done it was insane.
Emma Bennett:So you sold it and then had to deliver it. No, I remember we didn't have that nice of stuff to sell. Like we had cookie dough, which again not bad, but it's not something that you can actually be like. This is useful for you. Yeah, not that cookies aren't useful.
Ryan Ruff:But that was a good crucible, that was a good learning experience for me and I've been hooked on sales and entrepreneurship ever since.
Emma Bennett:Talk to me a little bit about your first big company or the story behind some of your ventures there, what you started, why you started them where your passions were what you, what you started, why you started them, where your passions were.
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, I think, um, for me, I've always cared more about the passion, and you know what can I do to make something good, that's valuable, that makes this world a better place? That's like been my main motive. And then how to make money on that has been something you know on the side. So, for me, the big thing, that was the thing that I became most proud of that I did. It was a company called SpendPal, and what it is is it nudges you into naturally making smarter spending decisions, using little behavioral psychology tricks, so you don't have to stick to a budget. And that was interesting for me because it was a really, really tough problem to solve.
Ryan Ruff:Right now, even today, three out of four people don't stick to a budget and originally, like when I was asking around all the gurus and stuff that I had access to, they're like oh, it's all about discipline.
Ryan Ruff:People just need to have discipline and they need to do it. But I had clients when I was working for my dad's company that were doctors and they were lawyers and they were high income earners, disciplined people who had gone through medical school and law school. I mean these were disciplined people. None of them were able to stick to a budget. So I was like I don't think this is a discipline issue. This is like there's something else at play here and I just dug in and just ate, slept, drank, everything budgeting and why budgeting sucks. And then I eventually came up with oh well, there's this way that you can manage your money where you don't have to stick to a budget and you can use behavioral psychology nudges to nudge you into naturally spending smarter. So for me it was more about how can I really add value in this space where there's a big problem, and then how can we make money is like the second thing.
Emma Bennett:I love that and we we talked to Dustin earlier today and we've talked with founders all the time of like solving a problem versus just building a solution first, and so it's always good to hear and reinforces that you know theology of, you know build the solve the problem instead of just build the solution that maybe nobody has has the problem for. So, um, with your background, uh, you're a perfect fit for an entrepreneur in residence. So talk to me a little bit about what that means and I can talk you through it too. But you know, as we as an Invest Nebraska, as we looked at the programming we wanted to build in Norfolk and what we wanted to do in rural communities, we wanted to follow kind of Bradfeld's methodology of like having founders and having startups lead that initiative, and so one way we do that is through our entrepreneurs and residents. So talk to me a little bit about that and what that means to you and what you're working on with that.
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, well, I mean the underlying thing. I'm a little bit crazy, right? There's a lot of people think that entrepreneurship, most people think that entrepreneurship is something that a subset of people do or want to do. Right, I have a different opinion and I understand everyone else disagrees with me, but I have an opinion that everyone is an entrepreneur, and what I define as an entrepreneur is someone who's interested in finding solutions to problems.
Ryan Ruff:Right, an entrepreneur like, as far as I think, people get scared or nervous or have low risk tolerance for, oh, I don't want to go throw a bunch of money at some idea that's going to fail.
Ryan Ruff:Or I don't want to be a manager or a boss and manage people. I like the safety of my job right, those are all fine. You can still be an entrepreneur at heart. If you like my job right, those are all fine. You can still be an entrepreneur at heart if you like doing puzzles right, a puzzle is solving a problem, right? So for me, the underlying foundation of what we're doing here is helping people tap into their inner entrepreneur, their love for solving problems around something that they're passionate about, and there are ways that you can tap into that, and for just three or four hours a week. Hone your skill of solving problems and validating ideas in a way where you're not spending more than 20 bucks a month 40 bucks a month, right and you can do this on the side and slowly work your way into creating a business or something of value that could replace your current income.
Emma Bennett:I think, something that I'm really passionate about. Obviously it's in my job too, but bringing some of those resources and that education and awareness to people who maybe don't identify as an entrepreneur. I think we see that a ton in rural communities of well, I just did this to solve the problem. Well, right, you solved the problem. So is there a possibility of making that into a real business, into a thing? So talk about that, maybe with the lens of the rural community piece of it, and how that's beneficial to where we are physically too.
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, if you want to start a business and you are in downtown San Francisco or you're in New York, good luck. I mean, honestly, you're up against some really, really stiff competition. You go talk to an investor there and the two meetings they had before you were people who had a hundred million dollar exits before and now they're looking for their third check Right. And then also, your rent is like you're trying to rent a little studio and you're paying four grand a month Right.
Ryan Ruff:We have an incredible advantage that a lot of people don't realize and that is that it doesn't cost nearly as much to live out here right, and we have access to all kinds of wildlife and fun things to do to disconnect and go out and run. When it's like frustrating and it's hard. You can go out and disconnect right. But the other thing that's interesting is there are people out here that are hungry to help you. And it's that whole idea of being a big fish in a small pond right, because this is a smaller pond, we're a rural area and there is opportunities, if you look out there, for a few big fish to come, take you under their wing and help you to build your business.
Emma Bennett:Yeah, and kind of leaning on some of the background knowledge here. But you didn't. You're not from here. You ended up here. But how has that? I mean you have, like you said, you have really good experience of what maybe coastal startup ecosystems look like, to what rural communities have and what we have here. So I think that's really important to understand that. There are those people out there. If you could say anything to our community maybe people who don't identify as a founder or don't think of themselves as a startup founder or even a supporter in our ecosystem what would you encourage them to do?
Ryan Ruff:What I would encourage them to do is just come out and participate in some of our fun events.
Ryan Ruff:I mean, we have really cool events. There's other entrepreneurs that need you to come and be in the audience and give them feedback, and come and talk to them and encourage them, and there's something you can learn from it. Right, it's like it's just like anything like when you go to the gym and you're you're flexing your muscles and you're you're working out and you're building those muscles. There's things that you can do to build your mind and learn how to be a better, innovative person. And even if you don't ever become an entrepreneur, if you're flexing these muscles and you're learning how to solve problems, you'll become a better employee, and maybe this is the difference that makes to get that raise or that promotion, because you were able to solve a problem internally at your job, because you've been working on these skills. So I think this is a very valuable thing. Whether you're a supporter, whether you're going to be an entrepreneur, whether you want to be a mentor or an advisor, there's room for everyone here, and we just want to have you come out and experience it.
Emma Bennett:Yeah, I love that. Let's move that then perfectly into kind of the big thing you're working on now, so our builder bootcamp, the curriculum, all the things, even even what you're building too to to support that. So what kind of what was that created for and and how was that curriculum Like? Where did we start with that? Talk about that.
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, this is, you know, decades of failure and running into doing the wrong things and figuring out, ok, well, what can we do to lean startup?
Ryan Ruff:And this concept of lean startup is how can we build something and de-risk it for the least amount of money as possible, as quickly as possible, so we don't end up wasting a ton of time or money on something that's not going to work right? And so we've taken all of these lessons from the lean startup technology and then also from, you know, some of these accelerator programs that I've been through and mentors and things, and I've seen startup founders that make mistakes and end up spending a year to two years building something that they probably shouldn't have. So what we've done with this curriculum is we've kind of put entrepreneurship on on bumpers right, like if you go, it's a. This is the bumper lane version of starting a company. That makes it so that you can really easily start throwing strikes and it's not going to cost you a ton of time or energy. It's more of like, hey, this is a hobby, maybe I can make a little bit of money with this and I'm not going to risk my own capital to do this.
Emma Bennett:Yeah, I think even the people we've talked to that I talked to in in our converse, my conversations with founders or people who have an idea. Getting over that risk is huge. It's not. I think the number one problem people have is they don't think they can do it and the number two is they don't want to spend money on it. They're scared to spend money on it and I think people don't understand the resources we have. I think it's Hunter who quotes all the time like you can, you can learn from wisdom and you can learn from pain and might as well take advantage of learning from that wisdom. You know you want to take advantage of that. You have so much of that experience. So I think it's something people really would. It's just to take advantage of it. You know like it's really good. I'm not saying that just because I know it and I see it, but it is.
Emma Bennett:it's a really good curriculum and I love that analogy of of it being on bumpers.
Ryan Ruff:A fun, a fun little anecdote. I had a student the other day who had come in and he'd gone through. I think he was like on the second stage and he was just his mind was blown. He's like I've never thought about, you know, running companies this way. And he's like wait a second now. So, like, all of this training is free. I get to come here and experience all this. I'm not having to pay anything. And at the time we were running a promotion where, if they completed all the steps and did the right things, that there was a $500 credit that they would get towards building their MVP. He's like and I'm going to get paid for this? He's like, I'm going to get $500?. He's like how are you guys making money? But it's just so much value that people just don't know about and they're just floored by it, right? So yeah, it's a fun thing. And people don't know what, just don't know about and they're just floored by it, right? So yeah, it's, it's a.
Emma Bennett:It's a fun thing and it's people don't know what they don't know, but if you come out you'll find out, right? Um, I don't know if this has anything to do with some of the behavioral um classes you, you and information you've been able to to go through, but can you talk about the benefit of having like that hand-on guidance, the hands-on guidance, the tools and that structured process of like helping people stick to something? You know it's not quite personal finance but it is still bringing in spending three to four hours a week working on a project. Talk about that a little.
Ryan Ruff:Oh that I mean I could talk for days on this stuff. This stuff is really, really fun, but it's, I mean, what we're talking about there. There's an element of social proof, right, where it's like people want to fit in, whether it's your church, whether it's your school, whether it's, you know, whatever community it is. There's strength in being part of a community. The way Jim Rohn put it, you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with, right? The way Scott Henderson down in Lincoln, he always says you know, great trees never grow alone, right?
Ryan Ruff:So we're creating a version of that here too, where you're part of a cohort and you can come out on Tuesdays or Thursday nights and you see other people building and it gets that buzz going. And then we also employ some things where we help you teach other people in the cohort some of the principles. And if I have to go out and teach somebody about how to go get evangelists to help validate their idea, guess what I'm going to go do? I'm going to learn it. I'm going to go out and do it myself, because I'm telling this person here's how you do it, right? So by employing some of these things, we can create an environment where your natural instincts is to just push forward and you're feeling like there's this inertia pushing you forward, and so it makes it a lot easier to be successful when you see others around you doing these things.
Emma Bennett:Absolutely. Would you have gone through this course, this boot camp, when you started?
Ryan Ruff:if you were, if you could start back over.
Emma Bennett:If I could start back over, I would love this. Yeah, that's awesome, let's. Are there any other like standouts or stories, even some breakthroughs from some of the students that were participants that are not necessarily student students, but participants in the program?
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, I mean we've had some great ones. You were talking about Dustin earlier. What an incredible product that he's building and an incredible mission, I mean, if you're talking about something that is going to be impactful for a community and do good. I mean what he's doing with Museum Go and his art passport is just. I'm so excited about that because, you know we do.
Ryan Ruff:I do resonate with the idea that we've lost our third spaces. It used to be churches. A lot of people used to be religious. A lot of people have left religion and they didn't. It's not like they left religion and then went to this other thing. Everybody just kind of well, they kind left religion and then went to this other thing. Everybody just kind of well, they kind of did. They went to TikTok and Facebook, right, Right, and it's something where people can get stuck in doom, scrolling and you know, in these online echo chambers where, with what he's doing, with bringing this art centers and these kinds of spaces as a third space, where someone with blue hair can get together with someone, you know, with their cowboy hat on and still enjoy art together and, you know, not feel like they're oh, you're the other side, right?
Ryan Ruff:If we can foster community in third spaces like that, I think it's an incredible thing. So, you know, Dustin's doing some great stuff, Coach Command's doing some amazing stuff. We have a lot of really, really cool things being built. Rv Rangers is kind of like this Uber style app, but it's for RV owners to connect with mechanics RV mechanics and like the things we're doing are going to make the community a better place and we're helping to promote the, the, the ecosystem, the economic system, here as well.
Emma Bennett:True, very true, kind of leaning into. You know, I wouldn't say we, we definitely don't screen people and only require them to have, like a passion-filled solution or whatever. You know, it's not like that's a requirement, but it seems like that's very consistent. What is something you see consistently with some of our founders? Is it with those ideas that work or that are would keep them going? Is there a consistent theme you see on that?
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, I mean there is in each stage, there's some, but if I was going to say across all the stages, I think the most interesting thing is the hardest thing is getting started on what you don't know and you don't you know it's just.
Ryan Ruff:Someone once told me and I did this for running right and for exercise it's like if I convince myself I need to just run 100 yards every day, that's easy to do, right, like anyone can do 100 yards right. Right, I, like anyone can do a hundred yards right. And if you just set yourself up like, okay, I can do this 100 yards, and then you get to the end of the 100 yards, it's like I can go a little bit further. But it what I'm seeing with a lot of these founders is they just don't know what they need to do and then if we can point them in the right direction and get them started and get them over that hump of that learning curve and they were doing something new they're like, wow, this is actually fun and they just explode Like some of the stuff that these guys have built. It's insane.
Emma Bennett:Well, and it's also inspiring.
Ryan Ruff:I mean I talked to Dustin.
Emma Bennett:It's like two weeks ago now when he started his Passport app and immediately after I talked to him I spent 45 minutes building something of my own in replit. I'm like I wouldn't have done that. I've spent zero dollars. I need to fine-tune it and finish it, but it's still, it's a tool and it's it's that inspiration I feel like very much the same of training to run yeah running groups like how do I if I have to convince myself to run?
Emma Bennett:it's a lot harder than if I'm like well, sally's waiting for me to run too.
Ryan Ruff:So that's that social proof.
Emma Bennett:It really is. So you know, you kind of talked about having that, that piece. Is there anything you look for in founders like a personality trait, or is there anything you you kind of encourage them to develop as you're working with them?
Ryan Ruff:I know that's kind of something you're excited about.
Emma Bennett:I do. I do like that you love that I don't.
Ryan Ruff:What I want to do is just kind of see where they naturally gravitate towards, right. And so I think in a way we're both kind of driving at the same thing. You have your little survey thing that they take, which is helpful in kind of signaling where they can go, but for me I want them to kind of naturally gravitate to where they want to be, because at the end of the day, if it's going to become a successful business, you're not going to be able to do it all alone, right? And so if you're more business minded, you're going to have to hire someone who's more technical minded to hire to do certain things. If you're more business minded, you're going to have to hire someone who's more technical minded to hire to do certain things. If you're more technical minded, then you're going to have to hire someone more business minded, right. So wherever they land, the other spots are all going to need to be filled with other people anyway. So I don't really mind where they land.
Ryan Ruff:Where I see problems sometimes is where if people are trying to start something and there's two or three people and they all have the exact same skill sets and they're kind of overlapping on each other. That's one thing I try to say. Hey, maybe we all should kind of do our own thing because our skill sets are too overlapping here and we need complimentary skill sets. The good thing is there's lots of opportunities right now. With AI out there, pretty much everything can be reinvented and done in a better way with some sort of AI element to it implemented in, and so there's more opportunities than you can shake a stick at right now. So everybody can kind of be working on their own thing and then, once it starts to get traction, they can start bringing in other community members that have different skill sets to build a team.
Emma Bennett:That's awesome and that makes total sense. It leads right into the next question I have is like do you think that there's much of a difference, or what's the difference between, like I have an idea and I want this to be a business, like is there a difference to you in that, or how would you overcome that? I feel like I talked to so many people like, well, I have this idea, but I don't think it's really a business. How do you overcome that?
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, um, I would say let's focus on I have the idea and, um, and I would even say let's not focus on I have the idea. Let's focus on what is the underlying problem that we're solving here and really narrow in on that, and then let's try to figure out what the most elegant solution is for that. And there's a number of ways we can do that through getting feedback from other people who identify with that problem. I think people put way too much emphasis on how do I turn this into a business way too early For sure.
Ryan Ruff:Because, at the end of the day, this used to be a problem. I would say, like pre-internet, it was a problem, or even in the early stages of the internet and everything you could build something that was a solution. But how are you going to monetize this? It was a hard question, but now that everyone has a smartphone in their pocket and everyone's connected at all times to the internet, finding a community of people that have the problem that you're solving is easier than it's ever been. You show me something that is a better solution to a problem. We're going to find a way to monetize that Like if you're I mean, even if it's a small subset of people doing something really strange. There's probably enough people on this planet that have that problem that we could monetize it, and so I would rather you focus on finding elegant solutions to a problem and if you've found that, we can brainstorm together a good way to turn it into a business, that's going to be easy.
Emma Bennett:Yeah, I love that it is and I think it's true. It's having that idea, solving that problem. That's where we kind of start everybody at what are some tools or trends like AI, but mostly tools that really make rural innovation more accessible to people, make this type of entrepreneurship more accessible.
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, I mean more accessible is an understatement, I mean absolutely accessible. Where it was like not even possible before is tools like video conferencing and stuff, especially um post covid. Right, like before covid, like you could hop on zoom meetings or google meet, and it was kind of like people would do it if they had to. But but now it's like it's almost like there's there's so many people that that's just they're just on zoom meetings all day long and they're used to it now. So with those kinds of technologies, I can be getting advice from a mentor in New York and then my very next meeting is someone from Los Angeles that I'm getting advice from, and because all you need is access to the internet for that to work, we now can do that. It changes the math and these rural places are, in a lot of ways, better than the coast now for building a startup. So that's one.
Ryan Ruff:Obviously, ai cannot be understated. It's incredible what can be done with it. But there's a lot of people who just don't know what they don't know, and so if we can kind of brainstorm together and get connected to other people who have used it for similar use cases and we see that we can kind of stand on their shoulders to come up. Instead of having to figure it all out from ground zero, we can say oh well, so-and-so did that. In that space I could do the same thing, and I just add this widget and this widget. And now, all of a sudden it works for my solution.
Emma Bennett:Yeah, absolutely. To close this out, let's talk a little bit about the momentum that we've got going here. You know, in Norfolk rural communities and what makes those rural areas a strategic place to start their companies.
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, we've got some momentum. We've got people coming out Tuesdays and Thursday nights and we're looking at even opening up more opportunities. But there's just a buzz going on and we're just looking for more people to come catch the wave.
Emma Bennett:I love it. We don't have a ton of surfing here, but we have. We have the river.
Ryan Ruff:Yeah, we do. You know, I've surfed on it. It's fun See there you go.
Emma Bennett:What more do you need? No, I love it. I think we could talk and we probably will talk again about really diving into some of those core principles of the bootcamp, because it's an endless conversation and something both of us really enjoy talking about.
Emma Bennett:So I want to thank you for being on today and thanks for everything you do to support founders in this community. If you're listening to this and you have an idea, a product or just a gut feeling that you want to build, check out our Builder Bootcamp program or just stop into the coworking space. You don't have to do it alone. That's the best part. You know like we're here here. We're here to support you. So, if you're listening, make sure to subscribe to build in norfolk and keep following along as we highlight more founders, mentors and change makers shaping the future of rural entrepreneurship let's go boom.
