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Ryan Sullivan, PE - Financial & Business Planner

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Bozeman, MT
Ryan Sullivan, PE - Financial & Business Planner

I Craft Personalized Wealth Blueprints for Architects and Engineers | Engineer Turned Financial Planner

09/08/2026

🚨ANNOUNCEMENT🚨

I am excited to officially announce the launch of Off the Beaten Path Advisors!

When I started Off the Beaten Path Financial, the goal was clear:

Help architects and engineers build a life of freedom.

What I quickly realized was that for many firm owners, their business was both the vehicle to create that freedom...

and the thing getting in the way of it.

So I started leaning on my own experience building and running an engineering department to help clients improve their biggest asset.

✅ Profitability
✅ Cash Flow
✅ Pricing
✅ Financial Management
✅ Team Structure
✅ Exit Planning

Over time that work became a major part of how I help my clients.

It became clear that it deserved its own home.

So I created, Off the Beaten Path Advisors.

The goal is to help firm owners build a business that:

✅ Is more profitable
✅ Pays you well
✅ Creates predicatable cash flow
✅ Gives you more time and flexibility
✅ Builds value beyond just your own labor
✅ Creates more options for the future

I'm also excited to have Kimberly Galio joining me to provide bookkeeping services and back office support.

Our core focus is on:
✅ Strategic Advisory
✅ Exit Planning
✅ Bookkeeping
✅ Financial Management

As we grow, the goal is to continue systematizing and improving our process so clients can get better results, faster, with less friction.

Off the Beaten Path Financial will continue to focus on personal wealth and investment management.

Off the Beaten Path Advisors will focus on helping firm owners build the engine to create wealth and freedom.

Same mission.

More focused approach.

More ways to help architects and engineers build a life with No Limits.

09/04/2026

Most firms don’t have a marketing problem.

They have a positioning problem.

I was working with an architecture firm owner recently who was struggling to answer a pretty basic question:

“What are you actually best at?”

At first, the answers sounded like what you hear from almost every firm:

• Quality design
• Great service
• Strong relationships
• Construction knowledge
• Fair pricing

All true.

None of it particularly useful.

So we kept digging.

❓What does “quality design” actually mean?
❓What happens because you understand construction better?
❓Where have your projects created more value than someone else’s might have?
❓Which clients care the most about that?

And eventually, the picture became much clearer.

His real advantage wasn’t simply designing homes.

It was combining design, construction knowledge, cost awareness, and development experience to help investors create more value from a property.

That led us to a much more specific target client,

a much more valuable problem to solve,

and a much clearer way to talk about the business.

That’s the part I think a lot of A/E firms miss.

Specialization isn’t about deciding:

“We only design breweries.”

OR

“We only work with healthcare clients.”

The better question is:

Where does our accumulated experience allow us to create disproportionate value?

Then figure out:

❓Who values that the most?
❓What problem are they trying to solve?
❓And how should the business be built around it?

Your specialization is often already hiding inside the work you’re doing.

You just have to uncover it.

09/01/2026

Most firm owners want to know:

"What's my business worth?

But the better question is:

"Why is it worth that?"

Two firms can have the same revenue and completely different values.

One might have:
✅ Strong consistent margins
✅ Diversified clients
✅ Predictable backlog
✅ Capable leadership team
✅ Clean financials
✅ Low dependence on the owner

While another might have:
❌ Owner driving every client relationship
❌ A few clients making up the majority of revenue
❌ Inconsistent profitability
❌ Weak systems
❌ Limited management depth
❌ No obvious succession plan

Same revenue.
Very different business.
Very different value.

That's why I think valuation work is most useful years before you sell, not when you are ready to sell.

Because once you understand what is actually driving value, what is supressing it, you can start changing it.

You can:
📈 Reduce owner depedence
📈 Improve margins
📈 Build leadership depth
📈 Diversify clients
📈 Create more predictable revenue
📈 Strengthen systems
📈 Clean up the financials

And suddenly valuation becomes more than a number.

It becomes a business improvement tool.

A valuation should be a roadmap for increasing value, not just a price tag.

The goal isn't just to know what your firm is worth today.

The goal is to know what would make it worth substantially more 3-years from now.

08/26/2026

A 30% market decline when you're 35 is frustrating.

A 30% market decline when you're 52 and hoping to retire at 58 is something else entirely.

It's not just a money problem.

It's really a time problem.

Imagine you have built a $2M portfolio.

The market drops 30%.

Now you have $1.4M.

The conventional response is:

"Don't worry. The market will recover. Just stay the course."

And historically speaking, it probably will recover.

But that's not really the question anymore.

The question is: How long will it take to recover?

Because if you were planning to retire in six years, waiting several years for your portfolio to recover could materially change that plan.

58 becomes 60.
Or 62.
Or maybe later.

That's the part that gets missed when people talk about "just staying the course".

When your young, time is your biggest advantage.

As retiremement gets closer, time becomes your biggest constraint.

But I also don't think that just moving your portfolio to a higher concentration of bonds or cash is the answer.

You still need your portfolio to grow for another 20, 30, 40+ years.

So the goal changes.

It's not just "Grow the money".

It beomes: "Grow the money + protect the timeline".

That means being more intentional about the amount of risk you are taking and whether that level of risk makes sense for the environment you are investing in.

You can recover money.

You can't recover time.

Disclaimer: Not investment advice. Information provided for general education purposes only.

08/24/2026

Retirement is the wrong goal.

At least for most people.

The traditional version of retirement says:
❌ Work hard for 30-40 years
❌ Save as much as you can
❌ Hope you have enough

Then someday, stop working and finally enjoy your life.

That never made much sense to me.

Why wait until 65 to create freedom?

What if the real goal was not reitrement, but optionality?

✅ The ability to work because you want to
✅ The ability to take time off when you want to
✅ The ability to change careers
✅ The ability to step back from your business
✅ The ability to travel more
✅ The ability to say no
✅ The ability to design your life around what actually matters to you

This requires a different way of thinking about money.

Not just, "how much do I need to retire?"

But, "how much do I need to create more freedom now?"

That is the idea behind my guide, 𝘙𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘎𝘰𝘢𝘭.

It's about shifting from a retirement-first mindset to a freedom-first mindset.

The goal should not be to endure your life until some future life.

The goal should be to build enough financial strength that you gain more control over your life every year.

That is a better target.

And, in my opinion, a much better way to use your money.

Message me "Options" and I will share the guide.

08/20/2026

A client of mine just paid off all of her consumer debt.

• Personal credit cards
• Business credit cards
• Vehicle loan
• Personal loan she had taken out to cover past credit card debt

Eight months ago, things looked very different.

❌ Her business was bouncing between $15,000-30,000/month in revenue
❌ She didn't have predictable income for herself
❌ And she had racked up a signficant amount of debt

She felt like she was in a hole that was going to take decades to recover from.

Fast forward 8 months.

✅ Her business is now doing over $100,000/month in revenue
✅ She has a consistent (increasing) personal income
✅ And each month she has tens of thousands of dollars extra to allocate to paying down debt, building cash reserves up, investing, etc.

That transformation is why I love working with business owners.

Your business is a potential gold mine.

But only when it is actually designed to produce profit, income, and options for you.

A lot of firm owners are working incredibly hard inside businesses that aren't giving enough back.

The answer is not more hours.

✅ It is better focus
✅ Better pricing
✅ Better clients
✅ Better systems
✅ Better decisions about where your time and money go

When those things start working together, the trajectory can change very quickly.

Imagine going from feeling trapped by debt,

to having the ability to decide where tens of thousands of dollars go every month.

That is what financial progress should feel like.

Not just more revenue.

🦅 More control.
🦅 More stability.
🦅 More options.

That is the goal.

08/13/2026

Do you know the true cost of a decline in your portfolio?

Many investors think:

"𝘐𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘰 𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘴 30%, 𝘐 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘢 30% 𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳."

Not even close.

The deeper the drop, the harder the climb.

That’s why risk management matters more than chasing returns.

It’s easy to get caught up in "growth mode" when markets are hot.

But 𝘩𝘰𝘸 your portfolio handles declines is what really determines long-term success.

The goal isn’t to avoid every dip, that’s impossible.

The goal is to have a strategy that limits significant losses and puts you in position to recover faster.

If you don’t know how much risk you’re actually taking, you could be one downturn away from a much longer road back than you expect.

08/11/2026

AE firms constantly struggle with balancing workload vs personnel.

You land a big project and you staff up.

A project goes on hold and suddenly you are overstaffed.

Most firms don't recognize the value that being in demand carries.

Saying "no" is one of the hardest but most important things a business owner can do.

How can you feel more comfortable turning away paid work?

By keeping demand for your services in excess of your capacity.

Instead of always leaping directly to hiring more staff to do more work,

focus first on building a profitable foundation.

By being more selective in the work you take on and more aggressive with your pricing, you can have higher margins, better cash flow, and less stress.

But it order to do that, you have to be comfortable saying no.

And the best way to be comfortable saying no, is to maintain higher demand than you have capacity.

From The Business of Expertise by David C. Baker

08/06/2026

Sometimes we wait and wait and wait for the perfect moment…

and still don’t get what we want.

My cat spent several minutes sitting at the bottom of a tree, watching a chipmunk run back and forth directly in front of him.

He was focused.
Patient.
Waiting for exactly the right opportunity.

Eventually, he lunged.

And missed.

The funny thing is, waiting did not eliminate the risk.

It only delayed the decision.

And had he waited much longer, the opportunity might have disappeared completely.

I see people do the same thing in life and business.

Waiting until they feel completely confident.
Waiting until the market improves.
Waiting until they understand every detail.
Waiting until the timing feels perfect.

But there is a cost to waiting.

The client chooses someone else.
The opportunity passes.
The market changes.
The employee leaves.
Another year goes by.

Life and business are not about eliminating risk.

That is impossible.

They are about understanding the risk, managing it, and deciding when the potential reward is worth making a move.

Sometimes that means acting before you feel perfectly ready.

You might still miss.
You might have to adjust.
You might learn something the hard way.

But waiting forever does not protect you from failure.

Sometimes it guarantees that you never get the chance.

You will not catch every opportunity.

But the ones worth pursuing rarely wait around until you feel completely ready.

What are you waiting for the "perfect moment" to do?

08/05/2026

A client of mine is under contract for his dream property.

Five months ago, it was barely even a goal.

When we first started working together, I had him go through a series of visioning exercises.

During that process he casually mentioned that someday he would like to own some land with a farmhouse.

It almost sounded like a throwaway comment.

A nice idea for the future.
Something that might happen eventually.

But as I pulled on that thread, it became clear that this was not just a passing thought.

It represented what he wanted next from life.

More space.
More privacy.
A different pace.
A place that felt like his.

So when he dug into his finances, I pushed him on it.

You have the money.
Your retirement is on track.

What exactly are you waiting for?

That question changed the conversation.

He contacted a broker.

A few months later, a listing caught his eye.

Now he is under contract and we are building the financing strategy to turn what felt like a distant dream into his actual life.

This is what good financial planning should do.

Not just tell you how much to save.
Not just project a retirement date.
Not just organize your accounts.

It should help you identify what matters, understand what is possible, and create a path to go get it.

Everyone has dreams.

Most people leave them vague enough that they never act on them.

The different is turning "someday" into something specific.

And then building the plan to make it real.

You get one shot at life.

The goal is not simply to accumulate as much money as possible.

It's to use that money to create the life you always dreamed of.

P.S. If your dream is to own land, send me a message. That's our speciality. 😁

Address

Bozeman, MT
59715

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 4pm
Tuesday	9am - 4pm
Wednesday	9am - 4pm
Thursday	9am - 4pm
Friday	9am - 4pm

Website

http://www.obpfinancial.com/

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