Hi, I'm

Ryan Miner

Who I Am I am a brand strategist, a systems builder, an investigative journalist, and the founder of Sentinel Silver. I have spent the last decade learning how to hear what organizations actually mean and translate it into language that lands.

What I Do I help businesses, nonprofits, healthcare organizations, and mission-driven leaders figure out who they really are, find out where their customers and audiences actually spend time, and build the marketing, messaging, and operations to reach them.

Why I Help People Find Their Story I have had good days and bad days, failures and breakthroughs, and all of it taught me the same lesson: people choose to work with someone because of an emotional connection, not a sales pitch. I learned how to find that connection and translate it into language that makes someone say, "Yes, I choose you."

How I Help You Find Yours I listen first. I sit down with the people who built the thing, whether that is a business, a nonprofit, a healthcare organization, or a one-person operation run out of a kitchen table, and I ask the questions that nobody else has thought to ask. Then I study the customers, dig into the data, and build a plan based on what is actually true instead of what sounds good in a meeting.

When When you are tired of sounding like everyone else. When the marketing is not working and you cannot figure out why. When you have something worth saying but the words are not there yet. That is when people call me.

Where I Operate Maryland is home. Western Maryland is where I started. But the work goes wherever the people are serious about it. I work with businesses and organizations across the state, across the country, and remotely when the fit is right. If the work matters, geography is not a barrier.

Quick Navigation Menu

How I Help The full breakdown: brand excavation, audience research, marketing audits, operational systems, AI architecture, and the specific industries and organizations I work with. My Story I write honestly and directly because I believe you should know who you are hiring before you decide. The journalism. The MBA. The failures. Why I started three businesses and what each one cost me. This is the real story, not the polished version. My Thoughts My blog. I write about branding, marketing, elder care, AI, small business strategy, and what I'm learning from the business owners I work with in Western Maryland and beyond. Can We Connect? No pitch. No proposal. Just a conversation about your business and what's not working. Email me directly or find me on LinkedIn.

Why Most Businesses Sound Exactly Like Their Competitors

Everybody Sounds the Same.

Open ten websites in your industry. Read the "About" pages. Strip the logos. You can't tell them apart. That's not a design failure. That's a depth failure.

Your Words Are Not Landing and You Can Feel It

You built something that matters. You know it matters. Your clients know it. Your team knows it. But the moment you try to explain it to someone new, something goes flat. Your brochure sounds like every other brochure. Your positioning statement could belong to any of your competitors. The language is technically accurate and emotionally empty.

This happens because most branding processes start at the surface: taglines, color palettes, mission statement workshops that produce consensus language instead of honest language. The result is messaging that has been smoothed, approved, and drained of everything that made it true.

Your Marketing Dollars Are Going to Places Your Customers Never Visit

Now look at where your marketing dollars are going. Instagram campaigns for an audience that lives on Google. Email blasts to a list that hasn't been cleaned in two years. Ad spend on platforms your customers have never opened. The strategy wasn't built on evidence about where your audience actually spends time. It was built on assumption.

Both Problems Have the Same Answer

The businesses that break through sound different because they are different. They found the specific conviction that only they can carry. They found out exactly where their customers make decisions. And they didn't hire someone to invent a brand. They found someone to excavate one.

That's what I do. I help you find what's already there, name it precisely, find your customers, and build the systems that carry it all into every conversation.

Four Things That Happen When You Work With Me

Before we touch a single piece of marketing, we answer two questions: who is this business, and who is the customer? Most people in my field start with the tagline. We start with the truth. The answers to those two questions are your brand. Everything else is typography.

I. We Find Your Story Instead of Making One Up

We don't invent your brand. We find it. The truth was there before the logo, before the tagline, before the first pitch deck. I bring the questions and the process. You bring the history and the conviction. We name it clearly enough that everyone in your organization can carry it into every conversation.

II. We Find Out Where Your Customers Actually Are

Most businesses guess where their customers spend time. We find out. I bring the research tools and the methodology. You bring the institutional knowledge. We map your reviews, your referral patterns, your competitors' audiences, and the platforms where your customers are making decisions before they ever call you. The business owner spending $2,000 a month on Instagram for an audience that lives on Google will finally see it in black and white.

III. We Build the Systems So Your Team Doesn't Drop the Ball

A great message that lives in a slide deck is worthless. We build operational frameworks so your brand language shows up in how your team answers the phone, writes an email, follows up with a lead, and walks into a meeting. You know how your team works. I know how to build systems that stick.

IV. We Find Out Why People Choose One Business Over Another

How do people actually decide to trust you? Not the marketing theory. The research. We study what makes someone lean in and what makes them walk away. Then we test everything against real human comprehension. If your grandmother wouldn't understand your mission statement, it doesn't work.

Here's What the Experience Actually Looks Like

The four methods above aren't abstract ideas. Here's what each one looks like in practice, so you know exactly what to expect before we ever have a conversation.

We Sit Down, and I Ask the Questions Nobody Else Has Asked You

I don't start with your website or your logo. I start with you. Why did you start this business? What promise did you make to yourself? What do your best customers say about you when you're not in the room? What would your employees say makes this place different? The answers to those questions are your brand. Most business owners have never been asked them. Bring your team, your leadership, whoever needs to be in the room. This conversation belongs to everyone who carries the work forward.

I Do the Research, Then We Go Through Every Finding

I read every Google review, not for star ratings but for the specific words your customers use to describe what you do. I analyze where your best referrals come from and what those people have in common. I look at your competitors' audiences to find out who's choosing them and why. I study the platforms and searches your customers use before they ever call you. Then we sit down and walk through everything I found, because you know things about your business that no amount of research can replace.

We Build the Plan, the Message, and the Systems

Once we know who you are and who your customer is, we build. Your founding narrative in your own voice. Your messaging in language your team can actually use. Your marketing plan built around where your customers are, not where you hope they are. Your follow-up systems, your intake process, your CRM workflows. Everything connected, everything measurable, everything designed so your business runs on structure instead of memory.

I Stay Until It Works, and We Measure the Results

I don't hand over a PDF and disappear. I stay to make sure your team can execute, the systems are running, and the results are measurable. If something isn't working, we fix it together. If the market shifts, we adjust. You get timelines, metrics, and accountability, because "trust the process" isn't a business strategy. We look at the same numbers and we make decisions based on what's real.

The Business Owners and Organizations I Love Working With

If you share a specific frustration, that the work you do is meaningful but the words are not landing and the business is not growing the way it should, you are exactly who I built this practice for.

Small Businesses, Local Companies, Service-Based Organizations

You built something real, but your website sounds like it was written by a committee. Your customers cannot tell what makes you different from the three competitors they are also considering.

Founders, Executive Directors, Marketing Leaders Tired of Starting Over

You have tried agencies, freelancers, and internal brainstorms, and nothing sticks because nobody understood your business deeply enough to get it right.

Nonprofits, Mission-Driven Organizations, Advocacy Groups

You know there is an emotional truth underneath your work, but every time your leadership tries to write it down, it comes out sounding like everyone else in the industry.

Medical Practices, Senior Living, Home Care, Hospice, Behavioral Health

You serve people who deserve to be spoken to with dignity, and you refuse to sound like every other provider doing it wrong.

Three Live Seminars I Deliver to Businesses and Organizations

I teach three sessions. Each one is built around a specific problem that the people I work with deal with every day. Each one produces something the audience takes with them and uses immediately. No pitch at the end. No upsell. The seminar is the product.

Your Business Has a Story. You've Never Put It Into Words. Let's Fix That in 90 Minutes.

Every business was founded on a conviction. Something that made the owner put everything on the line because they believed in it deeply enough to risk failure. That conviction is still there. But somewhere between the first customer and the fiftieth, it got buried under operational language, industry jargon, and messaging written by committee.

This session is a guided excavation. Not a lecture. Not a workshop where people write taglines on sticky notes and pretend to feel inspired. A real conversation using three stories, a plain white notecard, and one question that most business owners have never been asked in their entire career. You will say things out loud that you have been carrying in your head for years but never knew how to express.

Every attendee leaves with their founding narrative written in their own words, tested against real comprehension, and ready to carry into their next conversation with a customer, an employee, or a banker.

How This Session Will Change the Way You Talk About Your Business

You will stop stumbling through your elevator pitch. You will stop defaulting to industry language that makes you sound like everyone else. You will have a story that is yours alone, and you will feel the difference the first time you tell it to someone and watch their face change. The business owners who go through this session tell me the same thing afterward: they have known this about their business for years but never heard anyone say it back to them in words that actually work.

Built For These Organizations

Chambers of Commerce, small business development centers, business incubators, Rotary and Kiwanis chapters, restaurant associations, local business owner groups, professional services firms, solo practitioners, startup accelerators, and any organization whose members are good at what they do but struggle to explain why anyone should care.

Your Customers Are Making Decisions Right Now. Do You Know Where They Are When They Make Them?

Right now, someone in your market is deciding between you and your competitor. They are reading reviews, searching Google, asking friends, scrolling through a platform you may not even know exists for your industry. And most businesses have no idea where that decision is happening, which means they are spending money in places their customers never go.

This session teaches you how to stop guessing and start finding out. You will learn how to read your own Google reviews for what customers actually want, not just what they rated you. How to trace where your best referrals come from and what those people have in common. How to identify the exact websites, searches, and platforms your audience uses in the minutes before they pick up the phone. And how to evaluate whether your current marketing dollars are reaching the people who actually buy, or just producing activity that feels productive.

Every attendee leaves with a completed audience map of their own business: who their customer is, where that customer goes before calling, what that customer needs to hear, and which current marketing channels are producing results versus producing noise.

How This Session Will Change the Way You Spend Your Marketing Dollars

You will stop paying for marketing based on what sounds reasonable and start paying based on where your customers actually are. The mismatches between spend and audience will be undeniable once you see them on paper. The dentist who has been ignoring their Google reviews will realize those reviews are doing more selling than their entire website. You will not just learn a theory. You will walk out of the room knowing exactly where your money should go tomorrow morning.

Built For These Organizations

Medical practices, dental offices, med spas, senior living communities, home health agencies, mental health practices, retail associations, restaurant groups, nonprofit boards, and any organization that has spent money on marketing without knowing whether it reached the people who actually buy.

III

Your Marketing Brings People In. Your Follow-Up Loses Them Before They Become Customers. Here's How to Fix It.

The phone rings. Someone fills out the contact form. A referral walks through the door. And then nothing happens. Or it happens three days later. Or the wrong person follows up with the wrong information. Or nobody follows up at all because everyone assumed someone else did. This is the most expensive problem in business, because you already paid to get that person's attention and you are losing them for free.

This session traces exactly where customers go from first contact to first dollar inside your business, finds the exact spots where people disappear, and builds a follow-up process that runs on a system instead of one person's memory. You will learn how to audit your own intake process, how to identify the three to five places where people are falling through the cracks, and how to build fixes that do not require hiring anyone or buying expensive software.

Every attendee leaves with an audit of their own business: where people come in, where they disappear, what is catching them or not, and three specific fixes they can put in place within thirty days.

How This Session Will Change the Way Your Business Operates

You will stop wondering why the marketing seems to be working but revenue is not growing. You will see, clearly and specifically, where people are falling out of your pipeline. And you will leave with a plan you can implement this month, not a strategy deck that collects dust. The business owners who go through this session typically find that the fix is not more marketing. The fix is catching the people who were already interested and making sure someone actually picks up the phone.

Built For These Organizations

Healthcare organizations, senior living communities, home care agencies, professional services firms, businesses with multiple locations, franchise operators, nonprofit leadership teams, and any business owner who has said the marketing is working but the phone still is not ringing and cannot figure out why.

All three seminars are offered at no cost to Maryland senior services organizations. To book a seminar for your organization, business group, or industry association, email Ryan@RyanRMiner.com or call (240) 244-7075.

How Much Does It Cost to Work With Me?

You're reading this page and wondering what it costs to work with me. That's the right question, and I'm not going to dodge it.

I don't publish a price list because every business is different. A solo practitioner who needs a founding narrative and a website audit is a different engagement than a senior living community that needs a full brand excavation, audience research, operational systems, and staff training. Putting one number on both would either overcharge the first or undervalue the second.

Here's what I will tell you. I'm not an agency. There's no overhead for a team of twelve people you'll never meet. There are no retainer traps where you're paying monthly for work that stopped producing results in month two. I scope every engagement to the specific problem, I give you a clear number before we start, and I don't bill for a single hour beyond what we agreed to.

I work with small businesses, solo operators, and organizations of every size. I know what budgets look like. I am not here to price anyone out of getting the help their business actually needs.

The fastest way to find out what your specific situation would cost is to call me at (240) 244-7075 or email me at Ryan@RyanRMiner.com. I'll ask you a few questions about your business, tell you honestly whether I can help, and give you a straight answer on what it would look like. No pitch. No pressure. If it's not the right fit, I'll tell you that too.

Can We Connect?

No pitch. No proposal. Just a conversation about your business and what's not working.

Ryan@RyanRMiner.com

(240) 244-7075