Spartan Ryan Schram leads premier provider of influencer marketing services for leading brands

<p>“I had the really fortunate opportunity to go to undergrad during what is now considered Web 1.0, Russ,” says <a href="https://izea.com/company/leadership/ryan-schram/">Schram</a>. It was the time when we all took our AOL dial-up internet experience and brought it to broadband. And actually, that's one of the reasons I chose to live at Holden Hall in South Campus. At that time, it was, I think, the first or second residence hall on campus to get wired ethernet, high-speed internet. And by high speed, I think it was at one or two megabytes at the time, but that was incredible at the time. I actually spent my experience in East Lansing working full-time.</p><p>“I grew up in a media family. A lot of my dad's contemporaries who ran radio and TV stations were looking for people to build them these new-fangled web pages. I had taught myself in high school very basic HTML and JavaScript and was fortunate to have this confluence of high-speed internet where I lived and worked. I was able to do that remotely. So way before this COVID economy, when we're all at home, I was doing it remotely. And I grew up in an industry that I loved, but I realized that I wasn't going to be the person to be behind the mic like my dad used to be when he was growing up in the business and that I could actually forge a new path by really embracing my history and marrying it with this future opportunity.”</p><p><a href="https://www.crainsdetroit.com/awards/ryan-schram">Schram</a> recalls how smartphones came online and we no longer had to be behind a laptop or desktop to interact with the internet. </p><p>“To be able to have these brand relationships with consumers that were on the go and harness all those tools just fascinated me and really stoked my curiosity. So after an incredible seven-and-a-half year run at ePrize, I met Ted Murphy from IZEA. And Ted actually was a partner of ours. He was talking early about social media endorsements. There wasn't a name for it yet. It wasn't called influencer marketing back then.” </p><p>Sch