Sean Ryan, owner and president of American Drilling Inc. in Pensacola, Fla., founded his business in December 2015. He worked as a driller for an engineering company when he decided to start his own venture, and although he was ready to take on his first project in early January 2016, he didn’t land a job until mid-February. “I was holding on for dear life waiting for that job to come in,” Ryan says. “Then, oddly enough, my first job was a huge job with deep holes that, apparently some other drillers had turned down. I kind of took that as a learning experience, so now I want to be the guy that, when people don’t want to do the job, this guy will.”
Ryan says the inspiration to start his own drilling company came from his parents, Anne and Mike Sr., who owned and operated Environmental Technical Drilling Inc. in Farmingdale, N.J., which, today, is run by his brother, Mike Jr. Listening to his parents’ stories about the rough times and the grit it took to succeed made him proud.