Ep. 014: Ryan Walsh and the Week That Took Everything He Had

Mar 24, 2026

Five things disappeared in one week. His mom got diagnosed with breast cancer right before Christmas. His transmission blew out on the highway on the way to tell his wife. When he finally got home and they sat down to talk, the very first thing out of her mouth was: "I don't know if it helps or hurts the scenario, but I want a divorce."

He was a former CIA operative trained to run operations in some of the most hostile environments on earth. None of that training covered this week.

Ryan Walsh spent six years with the CIA, starting in 2007 straight out of Indiana University. He spent two years embedded with the Cambodian government in a position that had never existed before, and ran operations across Asia, Europe, and beyond. He was the person you'd point at in a room and say was built for hard things. From the outside, that was accurate.

On the inside, he was dealing with suicidal ideation during his intelligence career while projecting complete control. He made it through, got married, nearly lost his arm to a botched surgery, and thought he had finally landed somewhere solid. Then Christmas 2020 arrived and stripped everything away in the same seven days. Mom's cancer diagnosis. The transmission. The divorce conversation. Moving out of his house with no car on the day of his mom's second surgery. He had cleared a three-year reapproval process to return to the CIA. He had to walk away from that too.

What Ryan built back from that rubble: a sports memorabilia business doing seven figures, two radio shows on Jethro FM, and a 3PL operation in Grand Rapids. That's the second half of this conversation. The mental mechanics he used to get there are the part that will stay with you.

What You'll Learn:

The one thing you always have control over when everything else disappears, and why Ryan says it was the first place he looked when five things collapsed in the same week
How CIA training shaped and failed Ryan when his personal life imploded: what the experience transferred and what it could not touch
Building margins before you need them: why Ryan compares this to cancer treatment and calls it the most neglected strategy most people are sitting on
What Ryan did in a Tennessee cabin between his mom's surgeries that became the launch point for a seven-figure business and two radio shows
The batching system Ryan built from CIA protocols, and why he says every task switch is a hidden productivity tax most people never see on the balance sheet

About Ryan Walsh:

Ryan Walsh is a former CIA operative, author, and founder of Encore Business Group in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He spent six years in intelligence work including a two-year embedded assignment with the Cambodian government, then rebuilt his entire life after losing five critical things in one week at the end of 2020. He now runs a 3PL operation, co-hosts two shows on Jethro FM, and builds businesses around the kind of margin and discipline the government doesn't put on a resume.

This episode sits in the Ownership pillar of The Reforged framework. Ownership is the phase where you stop waiting for circumstances to cooperate and take full authorship of the one thing you've always had: your response.

Ryan couldn't control his mom's diagnosis. The divorce had already spoken for itself. And the CIA door had closed before he could fight for it. What he controlled was where he looked next. He wrote a book. He studied a market. He built systems. Not because the timing was right, but because he decided the next decision belonged to him and not to the week.

That is not resilience as a feeling. That is ownership as a practice.

The 5-Day Reforge Challenge was built for people standing in exactly that gap: after the losses, before the rebuild, looking for a framework to take the first real move. Five days. One step at a time.

Join the next LIVE Reforge Challenge →

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