Everyone wants a piece of Ryan McDonald, the 31-year-old president/CEO of Impact Blue.

Backers, clients, employees – they were lining up to liaise with the youthful boss one recent afternoon. Running far behind, he apologetically begged off a scheduled interview.

“Let’s meet tomorrow. Look, I’m supposed to phone Charlie at 2 p.m.,” he pointed to his electronic calendar, exasperated. “I don’t have a clue who Charlie is.”

Founded in 1996, Impact Blue of Calgary was recently dubbed the fastest-growing private, technology-based company in Western Canada by Deloitte & Touche. The rankings are based on rate of revenue growth over a five-year span, through 2001.

But Impact Blue, an extraordinary software, e-commerce and communications multi-tasker, has already blown away those numbers.

Shannon Oatway, Business Edge
Ryan McDonald of Impact Blue says the ability to adapt to meet changing market conditions separates the winners from losers.

“This year, we’ve grown more than 100 per cent on top of that,” said McDonald, a lanky, scholarly looking product of Calgary’s Western Canada High School. “I guess we’re (currently) doing in and around $1 million a month.”

No doubt the Deloitte & Touche endorsement looks good on McDonald’s C.V., but he’s expecting more concrete benefits. “It makes things easier for our investors. Public recognition of our achievements is extremely valuable.”

Mere weeks ago, Impact Blue’s top shareholder (a former CEO of one of the world’s largest energy companies) told the fresh-faced McDonald that he had never felt more confident in his investment.

But despite a hot 2002, Impact Blue hasn’t exactly sailed through the global malaise that swept through both private and publicly traded tech companies. McDonald said the meltdown had a profoundly negative effect on Impact Blue’s ability to access capital, while temporarily dampening employee morale.

“But even with changing conditions in the marketplace, our ability to adapt quickly has allowed us to grow, where some of (our competitors) haven’t been able to,” he said.

Last February, the company added a full-service marketing and communications wing, hiring Jeff Robinson, formerly of MGM Calgary, to administer it. As a bonus, Robinson brought key clients with him.

Then last summer, Impact Blue acquired pathOne, a Calgary-based tech company that specialized in portals, content management and websites.

Now that he’s past 30 and the “wunderkind” talk has died down, Ryan McDonald remains one of the youngest genuine pioneers you’ll meet. One of the beardless visionaries who bought into the Internet from the get-go, he emerged from Queen’s University with an honours computer engineering degree and went straight into consulting.

But McDonald held an ace. If he was a computer nerd, he was a well-rounded one. Matter of fact, he’s been fascinated by the strategic side of the business world since his teen years.

In this, he was encouraged by his dad, Michael McDonald, chief financial officer at Talisman Energy, who sits on the board of Impact Blue.

“People who have already processed the information are the best source there is, the best search engines. Figure out who knows what they’re doing and go ask them,” reasoned Ryan, who cites his father as his No. 1 mentor.

Still, during his company’s formative years, he was frequently frustrated by the sales resistance of traditional corporations.

Subsequently, he learned the most effective way to sell dramatically new, web-based processes to skeptical corporate markets: start small, build trust and educate.

To illustrate, McDonald discussed Impact Blue’s strategy for winning three key clients:

* Talisman Energy. Obviously, Talisman’s CFO helped the team gain its first audience. But after that, Ryan and Co. were flying solo.

“We studied the organization, pitched them and got a small piece of work. It started with their website. Eventually, they told us we had a unique skillset in terms of our communications, creativity and technology. And the relationship grew.”

* General Electric Power Systems, GE’s second-largest division.

“We partnered with a technology group which was doing work for GE, but we weren’t having much success in the collaboration. So we ended up buying the firm and merged them into our organization. We then refocused on building the GE account. So we took the relationship from a very small piece of business to working directly with the GE power group head office in Atlanta.”

* Enmax. “We hired staff that already had relationships with Enmax. That opened the door and we won the advertising account. From there we branched into web-built applications and are doing more and more stuff all the time. It’s about educating the client to the value of integrated communication technology and how we can leverage those skills together.”

Whatever works, right?