A high school dropout, Ron Flavin went on to become a world traveling, accomplished global entrepreneur with three college degrees. He always knew that he wasn’t cut out for a traditional career path and first heeded his entrepreneurial calling at the age of 21, launching a chain of Midwestern stores with a business partner, pioneering an innovative 11-outlet seasonal retail concept, later starting a company that developed products for the mass market. He and his business partner took a concept from idea to multi-million dollar company with major customers such as Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Kroger and more in just 12 months.
Afterwards, he started helping other entrepreneurs launch their products nationally and even internationally and has landed products on the shelves of the some of the world’s largest retailers. He has engineered successful new product launches in both the United States and Europe, working with businesses of every size and was even able to help a small start-up health and beauty care manufacturer go from less than $100,000 in annual sales to knocking a billion-dollar global competitor off the shelves at Kroger—in just over a year.
Since then, Ron’s entrepreneurial path has taken many twists and turns over the years–sometimes good and sometimes difficult–but every step of the way he has discovered the keys to success, overcome whatever obstacles he faced, and flourished.
In the mid-90s he took up the craft of grant writing, working as a volunteer with a local social service organization. He was so successful at it that he went on to become one of the top-producing grant writers in the industry, bringing in more than $114 million in grants and cooperative agreements for his clients over a 10-year period, working with businesses, non-profit organizations, governmental agencies and educational institutions in the United States and abroad. His success led to his work as a professional reviewer of grant proposals for a variety of state and federal funding agencies.
His particular areas of expertise include: renewable energy; criminal justice; technology; telecommunications; grants for businesses; law enforcement; public safety; education and outreach; health care; Tribal issues; arts and culture; distance learning; sustainability; research and evaluation; commercialization of innovative technologies and processes; infrastructure development; Homeland Security; sustainable development; job creation, retention and training; Veterans, the environment; research and development; commercialization; program evaluation; and international projects.
Through his grant writing work Ron began honing his copywriting skills and today, he is an accomplished writer and ghost writer, researching and writing about diverse topics including renewable energy and the energy sector, telecommunications, government grants and financial incentives, entrepreneurship, new product launch, mass market retailing, business strategy, start-ups, small business marketing, management and finance, market development, international business, bodybuilding, fitness, nutrition and more. He published his book, Business Grants: Everything you need to know to connect with local, state and Federal grants for business was published in 2011.
His unique style and ability to write compelling copy has garnered national and international attention on media outlets including: CNN International; the nationally-broadcast television show Discoveries & Breakthroughs in Science; Parenting Magazine; Drugstore News; dozens of newspapers; local news feature stories in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Texas.
As a global business advisor, Ron provides strategic and operational consulting services across multiple industry sectors in the United States, South America, Europe, and other locations around the world. He assists his clients in: assessing markets, identifying new opportunities and developing and implementing strategic plans to achieve short- and long-term goals. Ron is fully bilingual and has worked in Colombia, Perú, Switzerland, Spain and the United Kingdom. He is currently engineering the launch of a start-up renewable energy firm in Germany.
Ron is a regular Expert Source for Journalists writing about the topic of renewable energy-related finance, government grants and incentives, international business, entrepreneurship, start-ups, small business management and new product launches. As a researcher, he combines high level skills and experience to prepare in-depth reports for the energy, technology, manufacturing, distribution and telecommunications sectors.
Throughout his entrepreneurial career, Ron has epitomized the personal achievement and professional accomplishment that comes from applying proven principles of success, leveraging his creativity, business savvy and professional experience. He is results-oriented and detail-minded, and brings integrity to every project on which he works. Ron has consistently met deadlines and commitments and delivers high quality results that contribute to his clients’ satisfaction and success.
In 2009, Ron embarked on a quest to combine his multiple career paths into a vocation with a single focus—helping others to achieve their goals by sharing his extensive body of knowledge, diverse range of experiences and unique global perspective. Today, he is an accomplished global consultant, speaker, writer, workshop facilitator and seminar leader with a passion for helping others to achieve their goals.
Ron attributes his unique ability to flourish in just about any industry sector to his zest for solving problems, an unrelenting desire to continue to learn and an unwavering faith in his capacity to unlock the keys to success in whatever field he pursues. Along the way, he has learned that there is no right or wrong career path and that mistakes and failures aren’t obstacles to be overcome, but rather they are the building blocks of sustainable success.
Ron is a relentless student of the factors that enable a person to become successful, even when faced with overwhelming odds or challenges. His strength stems from the fact that he knows what he is doing because he has studied what works. And as a consultant, speaker and workshop facilitator, his distinctive capability to teach others how to know what they’re doing and how to achieve the same degree of success is his unique gift that he enthusiastically shares with others.
His seminars, keynote speeches and workshops cover a broad range of topics including: grants, grant writing and government financial incentives; small business marketing; entrepreneurialism; start-ups; new product launch; international business and more.
Ron was born in Michigan but has lived all over the United States as well as in Spain and South America. He dropped out of high school at the age of 16 so he could work full-time but today, he holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, an MBA with a specialization in Management and most recently, he completed the coursework for his Doctorate in Business Administration with a specialization in International Business and Management.
