Why Ryan Rausch Left a National PEO to Build a Better Alternative for Small Businesses

After watching large national firms leave small businesses behind, Ryan Rausch left a comfortable career to build Consolidated Employer Services, an HR company committed to showing up in person for the clients and employees who need it most.

By: Brody Howell

 

Follow Consolidated Employer Services on Socials: Facebook 

Tell me a bit about  Consolidated Employer Services. How’d you get it started?


Before starting Consolidated Employer Services, I left a large, national PEO. A PEO is a Professional Employer Organization. Generally, it’s tasked with handling human resources, employee benefits, and negotiating with brokers, among other things. They’re processing payroll with whoever their outsourcing partner is. It becomes a lot for someone who, most of the time, does not have a human resources background. 

Our company, CES, works with small businesses. Our average employer has about 30 employees. And if you think about those companies, of all different walks of life, it could be a landscaping company, an IT firm, or a marketing agency; it doesn’t really matter, but generally, those businesses are not going to have an HR function. They’ll generally have the owner and then maybe a controller, an office manager, something along those lines. 

Rather than hiring a full-time employee, we fill the gap with professional solutions for small businesses. 

 

What value does CES bring over someone wanting to keep things in-house?

For starters, retaining CES is less expensive than hiring someone in-house. Rather than a small business guessing if they are doing HR and payroll matters correctly, you have experts overseeing hundreds of other businesses.

We also bring a more personalized touch to our clients. 99% of our client base is within an hour of either our Cincinnati location or our Columbus headquarters. What that means is we’re not just over the phone; we’re not just a website where you talk to a bot or ask questions. Our clients know their HR business partners. They know their benefits managers. They know these people because they’re out on site helping their employees.

Another huge benefit that we bring is that our clients’ employees know who we are and what we do.

In a traditional PEO relationship, employees are told to go through their manager. We don’t like that philosophy. If we’re going to be an HR company, we should be an HR company for the employees as well.

Think about working at a large corporation. You know exactly how to reach HR, ask questions, and get help. Small business employees rarely have that. In a traditional PEO relationship, employees are directed to go through their manager. We don’t operate that way. If we’re going to be an HR company, we should be an HR company for the employees, not just the owner.

You mentioned your Cincinnati location. How many locations do you have currently?

We have two physical locations. Columbus is where we were founded and where our headquarters lie; we’re also in Sharonville, Northern Cincinnati. We are actively looking and going to move into the Cleveland market in 2026.

Was there a key moment where you saw your success and felt it was time to expand?

Expansion was never a singular moment for me; it’s just always been part of the plan. When I was at that large PEO, I was running two of their three locations. I understood the growth model early. At CES, it comes down to the relationship between sales and service. Our salespeople trust that when they bring on a client, the service team will take care of them. And our service people trust that the growth will create opportunities for them to advance. That synergy is what drives everything.

You were founded right here in Columbus. What does the city of Columbus itself mean to you and to your business?

Well, I was born and raised here. I was born and raised in Upper Arlington and then went to Ohio State. My wife graduated from Ohio State as well. That’s where we met. Both of my brothers went to Ohio State, and so did my dad. We’re ingrained in the community. 

I’m very grateful to be in a city I care about and love, but that is growing so quickly. Even though the headlines are companies like Intel, Cardinal Health, Huntington Bank, small businesses feed on this sort of growth. Our market is supporting small businesses. Columbus is an exciting market for our business model. 

What would you say is the most challenging part of running your business?

Navigating government regulations, particularly around health insurance. The core challenge for us, and for our clients, is finding solutions that treat small businesses fairly in the health insurance space while actually bringing costs down.

Have there ever been times when you’ve made a business decision that you’d do differently if given the chance?

Oh, absolutely. 

Thankfully, the majority of those were internal: The Software we chose to use, a relationship that we chose to go with. Every business experiences these sorts of things, and you learn and move on. 

I’m grateful that most internal issues never touch the clients. This is a testament to our team. 

Why do you think most small businesses fail, and what makes CES different?

I don’t think many of them place enough emphasis on building an educated, trained sales team. You can have the greatest service in the world, but if nobody knows about it and you don’t know how to get it out there, you’re going to fail. You can have the greatest restaurant in the world that serves the best sandwich anybody’s ever had, and if they don’t know how to promote and get it out there, nobody’s ever going to try it. 

I will always say this because I’m a salesperson at heart, but I pride myself on hiring very good people who are a lot smarter than I am in areas of the business that I don’t know a lot about, and I don’t want to know about because I don’t need to get in their way. They know what they’re doing, and my job is to leave them alone and advise when they ask. 

What’s the biggest testament showing how far your company has come? 

If I didn’t come to the office for three weeks or four weeks, the place would run just fine. It’s not because I don’t help, advise, or love the conversations; I still do all that because I love it. But if God forbid something happened to me, medically or something else, the company is set up to be a hundred percent successful. I don’t need to micromanage. I feel like this is the sign of a health company. 

Now that you’re in this position, where you can be quite a bit more hands-off than you probably were when you started, what does it mean to you to be an entrepreneur? 

There are two aspects to it for me. First, I love building. I love every little detail, even something like evaluating new software. I was never in finance, but looking at financial tools fascinates me because it’s all just another puzzle piece in building something better.

The second part is that it feels like a sport. I grew up playing football, basketball, hockey, and lacrosse. Entrepreneurship has that same competitive energy. Setting a goal, getting with your team, and figuring out how to hit it, that’s the fun part for me.”

As a fellow sports fan, I know that sometimes I can get a little overly competitive and that might be one of my bigger flaws. What would you say is one of your bigger flaws as a business owner?

My employees will tell you, or at least all our key leaders, that I’m never happy. Never. If we reach our goal, I’m happy for five minutes. And then it’s, “Well, we aren’t here. And then we aren’t here.” So I think my biggest flaw is I never can step back and actually appreciate the success. I don’t say that to other people; it’s more internal.

Speaking of driven people, who are some entrepreneurs that inspire you?

I certainly think the first name, if you talk around Columbus, is Cameron Mitchell. He’s an inspiration, first and foremost, because of his story.

I got like a 2.3 GPA in high school. I didn’t care. I enjoyed playing sports. I enjoyed being around friends. It never interested me, the history, the English, it just didn’t interest me. The same thing happened in college when I went to Ohio State. I think I graduated with a 2.6 GPA. But in accounting, economics, and astronomy, I got an A+ in all of them, because they were of great interest to me.  

Cameron Mitchell had a similar background: he wasn’t great at school, dropped out, and found his passion for cooking, opening restaurants, and entrepreneurship.

Where do you see CES in 10 years?

We have a five-year plan. It’s aggressive, but get to ten locations. We’ll open in Cleveland this year. We’re looking at Indianapolis, Detroit, Louisville, Pittsburgh, and Charlotte.

But ten years? Let’s call it 15 locations. The reason I emphasize locations is to go back to what I said when we originally started. Our job is to basically be an HR firm for our clients, so we need to be local. If we open an office in Louisville, we need boots on the ground there to take care of our clients. So it’s not an internet-based solution for clients.

Do you see yourself passing on your company and it becoming a family business? 

That’s a great question. I have two daughters. I have an eleven-year-old and an eight-year-old. My goal is to just grow this business into the best operation possible. They’re going to pursue whatever path interests them most, and that’s how it should be. If they want to work in the business, fantastic, but ultimately, I want them to take the path that makes them most happy. 

But what’s better than building something valuable to help your children?  

What advice would you give to a first-time business owner?

My advice to them is very simple: Pick up the phone. There are so many businesses out there that are willing and able to help. Not only with advice, but boots on the ground. People too often are afraid to ask for help and try to go at it on their own. 

If you’re a restaurant, your food distributor has a vested interest in you selling food. If you call them and say, “Hey man, can you come out and do a demo of where this meat comes from and what’s the story behind it? I’m going to host a party. I want to get people in here.” I’m assuming they’re not going to go, “you figure it out. You’re running the restaurant.” They’re going to say, “Yeah, let’s figure it out. We’ll help you out.” So that’s my biggest advice. Just pick up the phone, call people, and explain what you’re trying to do. And they’ll help you out. It’s pretty amazing how nice people are when you explain what you’re trying to do.

As Ryan Rausch sets his sights on Cleveland and eventually a dozen cities beyond, the foundation he has built in Columbus tells you everything about how he plans to get there. Good salespeople who trust good service people. Boots on the ground. Clients who know your name. He will be the first to tell you he is never satisfied, that the next goal is always already forming before the current one is reached. But look at what has grown out of that relentlessness: a company his employees could run without him, a culture his clients feel the difference of, and a city he has loved his whole life that keeps giving him reasons to grow. The next chapter is already being written.