Ryan Kuehl is managing partner of Chainable Corp and acting Chief Revenue Officer of Q30 Innovations, maker of the FDA-cleared Q-Collar. He spent 12 seasons in the NFL — teaching himself to long snap after going undrafted out of the University of Virginia so he could hold two jobs on a 53-man roster — then roughly a decade at Under Armour, where he built the golf business from scratch to more than $150M in three years, signed a 19-year-old Jordan Spieth before he was famous, and later ran global sports marketing. Today he advises founders of emerging sports, health, and consumer brands ($2M–$50M revenue), bringing 'a little gray hair in the room' and the peripheral vision to help owner-operators avoid potholes. His through-line across football and business is relentless reinvention, radical self-honesty, and building fast without ever skipping steps.
“It's funny what survival forces you to do — as long as you're honest with yourself.”
“I don't need to be the best snapper, nor the best defensive lineman. I just need to show the value of doing both — and all of a sudden I become very valuable, because no one else on the team can create another roster spot.”
“You can open as many doors as you can. It doesn't mean you've got to walk through them — but you want them open so you can walk through them if you choose to.”
“The day I retired, nobody cares. The day I left Under Armour, nobody cares. I don't care, they don't care, nobody else should care. We're moving on.”
“I never asked for jobs. I never asked for things. I just keep talking and keep trying to help and keep offering up solutions. And then eventually someone says, 'Maybe he could help us.'”
“The consumer's not stupid. Have respect for the consumer.”
“You actually have to show people who are building their lives around it that you care.”
“If they can't sell clubs, we're not going to sell clubs.”