Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Founder Lessons From Scaling, Going Public, and Rebuilding | Rick Jordan

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

Ryan Alford talks with Rick Jordan about one of the hardest founder arcs to navigate: building real momentum, scaling quickly, and then being forced to confront what happens when part of that structure fails. Rick walks through taking his company public, the acquisitions that accelerated growth, and the liabilities that later turned those wins into a painful and expensive reset. The conversation is honest about the things founders do not always say out loud. Ryan and Rick unpack the emotional side of leadership, the tendency to internalize every failure, the danger of writing checks just to buy more time, and why entrepreneurs often carry burdens no one else inside the company truly feels. They also talk about what comes next: rebuilding with stronger structure, teaching other business owners what Rick learned the hard way, and focusing on scalable systems that can survive more than just the first burst of momentum. It is a candid, useful listen for anyone trying to grow without confusing speed for stability. Topics Covered Rick Jordan’s path from private business growth to public markets How acquisitions helped scale the company quickly What happens when acquired businesses bring hidden problems The legal and structural difference between buying stock and buying assets Why founders often over-own the pain of failure The cost of trying to save a business the wrong way Rebuilding with better structure and clearer boundaries Ryan Alford and Rick Jordan on scaling, scars, and second chances Links Right About Now https://www.ryanisright.com/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/right-about-now-legendary-business-advice/id1346054199 https://www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford Ryan Alford https://www.ryanalford.com/ https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford/ Rick Jordan https://www.mrrickjordan.com/ https://www.instagram.com/mrrickjordan/ https://www.youtube.com/@mrrickjordan ReachOut Technology https://www.reachoutit.com/ Frequency Holdings https://www.frequencyholdings.com/

I've been paying a lot more attention lately to what's actually going on inside my body. Because it's one thing to say you're working hard, training hard, eating hard, all that stuff. But if you don't know what's actually going on under the hood, you're still guessing. That's why I use function. And honestly, think you should too. Function gives you access to 160 plus lab tests a year so you can see what's really going on inside your body. Things like glucose, inflammation markers, hormone health, heart health markers, nutrients, and more. And that matters because you can be doing a lot of the right things and still feel like something's off.

Maybe your recovery is slower than it should be. Maybe your energy is not where you want it to be. Maybe you just want a clearer picture of where your health actually stands. For me, I'd rather know than to guess. Function helps you look at all the data, what's changing, get a much more complete view of your health. Function helps you look at the data, track what's changing, and get a much more complete view of your health. view of your health. Check your health the way I do. Function provides 160 plus lab test for a dollar a day and member pricing on MRI and CT scans. Join at functionhealth.com slash science or use

gift code science 25 for a $25 credit towards your membership. Let me tell you the biggest lesson that I learned is that if you have that thought cross your mind, oh, I could just go out and get this cash that puts the liability I need to put it in the company to keep it going. That's not the thing that needs to change in that moment. The cash flow into the company is not the thing that needs to change. It's the company itself, something within the company and how you got to that place to begin with is where the change needs to happen first. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is right about now with Ryan.

in Alford. What's up guys? Welcome. It's right about now. On today's episode, we talk to Rick Jordan. He's back on Right About Now, and this time we're getting into what happens after the big climb. Rick took his company public.

They scaled fast. They fell harder. Acquisitions can be tough. You got to rebuild. You got to live through the pressure. Today, we're talking failure, ego, resilience, and what it really takes to get back up when you run out of that rocket fuel, and you got to get up and give it your own. Rick, welcome.

right about now. What's shaking. Dude, it's good to be here again, man. You had already done a lot and taken off, but you're about to go towards this climb, and you've had it. Whatever stage of that there is, you know, I want you to share that. We all see and hear people talk, think that they won't be subject to things that others have, the failures, the wins, the highs and the lows.

I even put people sometimes in that. It's always highs for them, never lows. It's always, you know, sunny and not raining. Yeah. And then it's like, well, why can't I be like them, right? Exactly. We all have that a little bit. I try to live in my own lane. I've got to do that pretty well.

But at the same time, we all go through it. I'm excited for you to share a little bit of that. And I know we'll get into some rosier things. Just share what that journey's been like the last few years. I started an IT business 16 years ago now. And I got it to the point where it was doing a few million per year. And then I had gotten it to a few meaning like four million per year. Four million a year is a lot to a lot of people.

Truly, I thought it was a lot to me 15 years ago. Then in a matter of two-year time period, I took it from $4 million to $15 in just two years. It was right about that time that we went public, and that was through some M&A, through some acquisitions. Because I had built this thing, you know the movie The Founder with Michael Keaton. One of my favorites ever, right? And Michael Keaton is playing the role of Ray Kroc from McDonald's. And now he does the deal with the McDonald's brothers, a scene in there where he was on a tennis court. He was taping out masking tape on the tennis court where the different stations were going to go for the kitchen at the McDonald's.

The McDonald's brothers had this speedy system, and he was like, I think we can do it better. And he had people like bumping into each other, and then he would rearrange where things were supposed to go. It was really cool to watch that, especially because I worked at McDonald's. I was a shift manager when I was 16. Some of the best sales training to this day, DeWan fries with that, the best upsell line in the world, seriously. That's celebrity upsell, dude. The McDonald's brothers and Ray Croc made this thing scalable, where they could deploy tens of thousands of restaurants across the world because it was the same thing everywhere. And that's another thing I learned and that's what I did is I made this IT company scalable,

where I could take a rubber stamp and put it into other IT companies and clone it that way. Well, why would I want to start it from scratch in all these different places when I can accelerate super fast with some capital backing? And I could just use that stamp and clone this thing. And that's what I started to do. It was going really, really well. These acquisitions, they tanked, man. There was some bad actors involved. Customers were being taken back.

There was issues with invoice. clients that I had purchased and all of these other things. You're talking like lawsuits that were filed that I had filed, having it within a matter of about six months, this climb that I had started, that took probably about three years to get to the point to where I could make that climb. And then we accelerated it to $15 million. And it all crashed down in about six months. It's not just because we had gone public too. It wasn't just the revenue of the company. It was also the stock price, of course, because that kind of follows. The hate that comes after that. And I burrowed inside of me for a little while. What could I have done differently? Where did I make?

messed up. That's something I've always done. I've never been the blame guy to push it on other people. I've never played the role of the victim. That's not just in business. It's in relationships. It's in every aspect of my life. It's always I turn inward. It's like, where did I go wrong first? I kept getting the same answer, even from mentors, investors that were in the company or even guys on my board, Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank or David Meltzer from Jerry McGuire. All these guys are in my circles and literally on the board and they're like, we don't see anything that you did wrong. Do you know how hard it is to accept that? You want to blame something and it starts at the top usually, but sometimes it doesn't when it gets bigger than yourself. As we're recording this, there's going to be some really bad

tornadoes that are sweeping through Chicago. Part of my titles would be like storm chaser. I do. I actually literally chase them if you want to call it a hobby of mine, but that was going to be my first career when I was seven, by the way. Seven years old, I wanted to be a storm chaser. I still do it.