Published: August 29, 2008 09:36 pm            

Young entrepreneur touts region’s potential

Ryan Gindlesperger has spent years chasing high expectations he’s been at least partly responsible for setting.

As a freshman at Bishop McCort High School in 1999, the Crushers hockey team won a state championship. Gindlesperger and his teammates spent the next three years chasing lofty expectations. He said he actually felt some disappointment in only finishing among the top four teams in the state each of the next three years.

Now, at age 24, Gindlesperger is the president and owner of a one-year-old company, 1sTeam Advertising, 107 Station St.,

Ferndale. And again, he’s setting the bar high for himself and expecting to win.

“We started out wanting to be a high-tech firm offering indoor digital advertising services,” said Gindlesperger, whose company has grown to two employees in addition to himself.

“The more we did that and the more clients we met, the more we were asked if we did anything else. Since then, it’s grown into a full-service advertising agency, and we’ve added media buying and some strategic planning services.”

Gindlesperger is younger than the average entrepreneur. But starting a business wasn’t his first exposure to the working world.

He interned for a staffing company based in Baltimore and spent his time learning more about how to run a business than about the staffing industry. After graduating from Penn State-Altoona in 2006 with a degree in business management, featuring a concentration in marketing, he went to work doing strategic marketing for a medical equipment sales company in State College.

He said he was initially turned off by the idea of being an entrepreneur because he knew the long hours it involved. But when he found himself putting in

50 to 60 hours of work per week, he began to wonder why he wasn’t doing it to build a business of his own.

“With the amount of work I was doing, I figured I could be doing this on my own and helping out a lot of other companies instead of just one,” Gindlesperger said. “At the same time, this allows me to sort of control my own destiny.”

Gindlesperger said he’s learned a lot about running a business from his dad, Dean, whom he refers to as his mentor.

Dean Gindlesperger and a partner founded Allegheny Manufacturing and Electrical Service Inc. in Ferndale more than a decade ago. Since then, the elder Gindlesperger has added two more businesses to what is now a portfolio of companies.

“I was exposed to a lot by my dad,” Gindlesperger said. “I’ve been able to learn a lot about successfully running a company firsthand from him.”

Another part of the reason Gindlesperger has gone into business for himself is because the Richland Township native wants to stay here in his hometown.

He believes that the region has nowhere to go but up.

He believes that the more companies in the region cooperate with one another, the more successful they can all be in helping to revitalize the region’s economy.

“Rather than trying to compete with one another on a daily basis, we should be partnering together and combining our services,” Gindlesperger said.

“If we try to do that and go outside the area and bring clients here, I think we can pull more revenue into the area. Ultimately, that will stimulate the economy, adding more jobs, and we will all experience growth as a result.”

        

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