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,’” Samantha said.

On a recent episode of our podcast, Common Cents on the Prairie™, Samantha chronicled her and her late husband’s journey as both business partners and life partners.

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

“An entrepreneur at heart”

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

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

But instead of pushing Samantha 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,” Samantha 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, you know, 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 (SaaS) company to help financial advisors with their marketing.

“The idea for it started, for him, all the way back in 2013,” Samantha 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%.”

When the company was ready to go to market, Samantha 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 Samantha, the couple had an ideal balance as business partners.

“He was very all about the numbers, the pro forma, you know. 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 skillsets,” she said, “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,” Samantha said.

Making the decision to sell a business

“Before we even sold,” Samantha said, “[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 Samantha, the couple was fortunate to get.

“They were so aligned with us in the way we thought about the clients we served,” Samantha 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,’” Samantha 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,” Samantha 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,” Samantha said. “We were partners in business, and now it was like we were partners in getting him healed.”

Selling their business when they did, Samantha 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,” she said.

A moral to every story

“It was always his dream to write a children’s book,” Samantha 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 a children’s book called 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,” Samantha 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 nearly 20,000 copies and spent multiple weeks at number one on the Amazon bestseller list for children’s books.

“He got to see that before he passed away,” Samantha 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,” Samantha 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 will also live on through Samantha’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 our team at First National Wealth Management. We’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.