March 27, 2025

This paid piece is sponsored by The First National Bank in Sioux Falls.

Samantha Russell was newly 21 and on a Florida spring break trip with her friends.

Ryan Russell was visiting his aunt and uncle in the sleepy town of Siesta Key that same week.

“We met then and just had one of those connections that you just hit it off,” said Samantha Russell, chief evangelist at FMG Suite. “And we dated long distance for almost two years before I ended up moving to where he was because he had already gotten a tenure-track position at Penn State University.”

As you likely concluded by the last names, Samantha and Ryan eventually married.

Something else they later did was start a business together.

“So many people hear that, and their immediate reaction is ‘I would be divorced. Like, I could never work with my spouse,’” Russell said.

On a recent episode of the Sioux Falls podcast “Common Cents on the Prairie,”™ Russell chronicled the couple’s journey as both business partners and life partners.

And just like the bestselling children’s book Ryan published in 2023, Russell’s story offers some valuable lessons for readers to take away.

‘Entrepreneur at heart’

Growing up, Russell saw firsthand the impact of her father losing his job.

He worked in an IT role for almost 30 years, but having never gotten a college degree, he couldn’t get back into the field after that.

But instead of pushing Russell toward wanting to be her own boss, that early experience had the opposite effect.

“I felt like all I ever heard was stories of entrepreneurs failing,” Russell said.

Instead of following an entrepreneurial path, she chose to focus on her continuing education.

“I wanted to find a really secure job and make myself completely indispensable,” she said. “And I think, because my father couldn’t ever get back into that field because of his lack of education, I was like: ‘I need to go to the best college. I need to get multiple degrees. I need to have certifications and apprenticeships.’”

On the other hand, she said, “I think Ryan was very much an entrepreneur at heart.”

The couple built a software as a service, or SaaS, company to help financial advisors with their marketing.

“The idea for it started for him all the way back in 2013,” Russell said. “I think we had our first iteration in 2015.”

“It took like two years to build because he and two other founders, really, they bootstrapped the whole thing,” she added. “They never took any outside capital. And then he brought these folks on, so he always retained 51 percent.”

When the company was ready to go to market, Russell joined as its first official employee.

“Between … 2015 and 2017, it was really almost like a side hustle for me too,” she said.

According to Russell, the couple had an ideal balance as business partners.

“He was very all about the numbers, the pro forma, thinking about investments and capital and all that stuff. And I was more the creative. How do we promote it? How do we build relationships with the right stakeholders?

“So because we had such different skill sets, it was really nice. We kind of got to stay in our own lane.”

The business started to gain more traction in 2017, and they sold in 2020.

“It was like a rocket ship in five years,” Russell said.

Making the decision to sell a business

“Before we even sold, Ryan was like, ‘And then we can do this business next.’ … And we got to a point where we had 40 employees, we were all across the United States and Canada, and it was time to take it to the next level.”

They received an “amazing” offer from FMG Suite that, according to Russell, the couple was fortunate to get.

“They were so aligned with us in the way we thought about the clients we served,” Russell said. “They wanted to keep our entire staff, which is like unheard of. I really got to … take all the things that I love to do, my favorite parts of the role, and build my own position within the company.”

After selling their company at the end of 2020, the couple began thinking about their next steps — not as business partners this time, but as life partners.

“I was like, ‘Hey, if we’re going to have a third kid, now’s the time to do it,’” Russell said.

But shortly after their new son was born, Ryan began experiencing health issues: headaches and vision problems.

“He ended up having stage four brain cancer,” Russell said. “Glioblastoma.”

He was taken to a larger hospital, and they spent 17 months “just trying to get him the best treatment as possible.”

“So it was a massive shift,” Russell said. “We were partners in business, and now it was like we were partners in getting him healed.”

Selling their business when they did, Russell found, was a blessing for their family.

“Because we really could be so head-down and just focused on his health and making memories as a family.”

Moral to every story

“It was always his dream to write a children’s book,” Russell said, “and he had started the process when he was in grad school.”

While undergoing treatments, Ryan would bring his laptop to the hospital and work on his passion project.

The final product was the children’s book “My Annoying, Irritating, Always-in-the-way Shadow.”

It follows a little girl who feels pestered by her shadow everywhere she goes.

“But when you get to the end of the book,” Russell said, “you turn it around, and you read it from the shadow’s point of view. And you see that everything that the little girl thought, the shadow was interpreting it completely different.”

The book sold almost 20,000 copies and spent multiple weeks at No. 1 on the Amazon bestseller list for children’s books.

“He got to see that before he passed away,” Russell said.

Since then, she has become a passionate advocate for estate planning while continuing her work at FMG Suite.

“What I’ve really come to learn over the years is that an estate plan is so much more than your money,” Russell said.

“If I can share my story and get someone to realize if it could happen to me, it could happen to them, then I will do it.”

So just as Ryan’s legacy will live on through the lessons learned from a young girl and her shadow, it also will live on through Russell’s story of life after loss.

“Ryan had this saying that he would always say to our kids, which is ‘It’s not what happens to you; it’s how you react to it and how you interpret it.’”

You can hear more of Samantha Russell’s story by listening to the full episode of “Common Cents on the Prairie” at the player below.

And if you’re ready to have a conversation about estate planning, reach out to the team at First National Wealth Management. They’d be happy to put you on the right path!

 Any comments, insights, or strategies discussed in this article are intended to be general in nature and, therefore, may not be suitable for you and your situation, whatever that may be. Before acting on anything written here, please consult with your attorney, CPA and/or your financial advisor.