About the Founder | SQUAWKS Business Advisors

The Idea Behind SQUAWKS

Built to Find What Business Owners Are Too Close to See

Businesses often lose revenue through a collection of small, disconnected problems rather than one obvious failure. In aviation, a squawk is a discrepancy a pilot reports and logs against the aircraft, and it does not fly again until that squawk is inspected and resolved, or formally deferred. SQUAWKS Business Advisors brings that same standard to the revenue path: a fixed checklist, outside eyes, and a corrective action for every finding. The idea grew from more than two decades of finding operational and customer-path problems through family businesses, retail development, business recovery, and later aviation. Aviation sharpened the discipline and systemization; it did not create the instinct.

Learning Business From the Inside

A Career Built on Details That Matter

1987

The Family Businesses

My parents opened a neighborhood grocery store and deli, one of the family businesses I helped open, develop, and run. I learned the lesson that still guides SQUAWKS: revenue comes from understanding customers and removing friction, not from effort alone.

Early Career

Restaurant Equipment, 15 Product Lines

I entered the restaurant-equipment industry as a broker and manufacturers' representative, working with independent operators and national companies, and learned how successful companies convert opportunities into results.

Growth

An Overlooked Asset Became 26 Storefronts

I identified excess inventory that was no longer producing value and built a secondary market to sell it. That effort grew into a retail business with 26 permanent storefronts.

Florida

Rebuilding a Struggling Sales Organization

Moving to Florida to pursue aviation, I rebuilt a struggling company's sales process and helped return it to profitability. That income helped fund my aviation education.

Embry-Riddle

A Four-Year Degree in Two Years, Five Months

I completed my bachelor's degree at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in two years and five months, graduated with a 3.7 GPA, was named Flight Student of the Year, and became a university flight instructor after graduation.

Airline Career

More Than Two Decades in the Airline Industry

I have built more than two decades of airline experience, including more than 11 years as a captain, on structured analysis, careful preparation, and procedural discipline.

Why I Founded SQUAWKS

The Inspection That Became a Company

Throughout my aviation career, colleagues and business owners kept asking me to examine problems in their companies: why a profitable service was not growing, where prospective customers were disappearing, why sales activity was not producing results. I repeatedly found the same answer. It was rarely one dramatic failure.

Businesses often lose revenue through a collection of small, disconnected problems rather than one obvious failure.

The defining case came when an established business owner asked me to take a hard look at their online presence. An intensive review uncovered more than 20 pages of documented, actionable corrections across the company's website, online listings, search presence, customer information, and customer pathway. The findings were prioritized so the owner could address the most serious revenue leaks first.

That first inspection became what SQUAWKS now calls the Heavy Check, the branded name for the Revenue Pathway Audit. It included a focused five-day action plan, during which the owner corrected many of the Critical Squawks identified. About 30 days later, the first Monthly Flight Check reviewed those corrections and produced a Cruise Checklist: what was completed, what was not, new quick wins, and a competitor review.

That process could not end with a one-time inspection. Businesses, competitors, and customer expectations keep changing. The original findings became a systematic corrective process, and the foundation for SQUAWKS Business Advisors.

What to Expect

What SQUAWKS Inspects, and What It Does Not Promise

I inspect the actual path a customer follows, from the first search, recommendation, or referral through the decision to contact, schedule, purchase, or walk away: website messaging and usability, search presence and online directories, Google Business Profile information, calls to action and contact forms, lead response and follow-up, service and pricing clarity, and competitive positioning.

SQUAWKS does not present its work as legal, tax, public-accounting, investment, engineering, or other licensed professional advice. SQUAWKS does not guarantee revenue growth. The role is to inspect the full customer pathway, identify the small and disconnected problems that collectively suppress revenue, prioritize the most important corrections, and give the owner a clear path forward. What happens next depends on implementation, market conditions, and the owner's own decisions.

Who I Built This For

Focused on Owner-Operated Businesses

SQUAWKS generally serves owner-led service and professional businesses with up to approximately 150 employees, though fit depends more on operational complexity and access to decision-makers than on a strict headcount. A large corporation can assign a conversion problem to a department or a committee. In an owner-led business, the same problem can affect the owner's income, employees, family, and future. That is why this work matters to me: I want SQUAWKS to help good business owners stop losing opportunities they have already worked hard to earn.

SQUAWKS is based in the Orlando area and serves business owners nationwide with revenue leak inspections.

Shawn Ryan