From the NFL to Building Brands

0:00 Today, I'm sitting down with Ryan Keel, an NFL vet who found passion in building authentic brands. He's currently the managing partner at Chainable Corp and acting chief revenue officer at Q30 Innovations, the company behind the Q-caller, an FDA-cleared device that helps protect athletes' brains from repetitive head impacts. Before starting Chainable Corp, Ryan spent a decade at Under Armour where he ran global sports marketing and made one of the most celebrated talent bets in sports history, signing a 19-year-old Jordan Spieth before anyone knew who he was. And before any of that, he played 12 years in the NFL as a long

0:42 snapper, after teaching himself the position to survive as an undrafted free agent. What I find fascinating about Ryan is that his whole career is about evolution, reinventing yourself, reading the terrain, and refusing to skip steps, even when everyone's telling you to go faster. Ryan, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be having this conversation. Everything we went over in the prep call for this is just getting me so stoked to share this with our audience. I think one of the things that really stuck out with me, and I'd love to kick off with, you described your NFL career in terms of survival math. There's

1:20 only 53 jobs on a team. If you do two jobs, you become pretty valuable. So take me back to that moment when you realize you needed to teach yourself a completely different position, reinvent, evolve, just to stay in the league. Yeah, I mean, it's funny what survival forces you to do, right? As long as you're honest with yourself. As an undrafted guy, I played defensive lineman at the University of Virginia. It was an all-conference defensive lineman in my senior year, but I came to football late. I didn't play football until my freshman year in high school, so I was getting better when a lot of people may be flattened out

1:54 as they got older, which probably helped me outperform being undrafted. I thought I would get drafted, but I didn't. The 49ers called me. They had just won the Super Bowl. This is 1994, so I'm an old guy. Don't let the gray hair fool you. I'm as old as the gray hair looks. They'd won the Super Bowl, and they called after the draft, and they wanted to sign me. The scout had liked me, and I went out to San Francisco and played real well as an undrafted guy and made the practice squad there, which was really an accomplishment from my perspective, being, again, going to a Super Bowl champion. This is like Steve

2:27 Young and Jerry Rice. This is like playing with the Beatles. I'm the youngest guy on the team. Watching these guys' pros, again, learn, absorb what they're doing, keep your mouth shut, certainly listen more than talk. It really helped me then. I jumped to Washington after that, and I was playing defensive line, and I actually worked my way up to a point where in my second year in Washington, I started 12 games as a defensive lineman in 1997. I thought I played real well. The team, we were finished 9-7, and when I was in there, the defense played better. I was more of a run guy. I was playing defensive tackle and nose

3:05 tackle and stuff. I remember showing back up to Redskins Park, the Redskins back then, of course, commanders now, and I remember very distinctly, this is in March, and this is before like 365 day a year NFL draft coverage. It wasn't in your face all the time. The Washington Post came out with an article. This is probably a month before the draft. We had been there a couple weeks back working out because off seasons back then sort of started the first week in March. There was an article that came out how the Redskins really needed to invest in their defensive line, and they really needed to free agents draft if they had to upgrade

3:45 the defensive line. I remember very distinctly on the bike reading that article, and I thought, "Jesus, they're talking about me," and nobody else. Again, I took it very personally. This is me. I remember getting the guys together. We're in the D-line room, and I sort of dropped the article on the table, and I said, "Guys, we've got to watch out. We've got to get going. We've got to do some things. They're coming after us," and that's really, again, when you have the idea, like to your point, 53 jobs, so we're not going to expand rosters. We're not going to grow the defensive line room. They're going to replace, and I remember

4:19 my guys, and I loved them all, and they were like, "No, dog, we're good," and I said, "No, dog, we're not good." This is coming from somewhere. Somewhere in this building is leaking to that reporter, and that's what they led with, and so at that moment, I realized that as an undrafted guy, I was never going to be a Hall of Famer. I was never going to be a Pro Bowler. I just didn't have the ability. I was pretty clear on that, so I remember at that point thinking, "What else can I do?" and that's when I decided I think I can learn how to long snap. I'd done a little bit in high school. I'd done a little bit in college.

4:55 I've been playing so much defense and other things that I never really got a chance to do, but if I focused in on that and thought, "God, if I can play defensive, this is before." Now long snappers are our position, but this is before that. This is where guys played other positions. Maybe not great, but they could do it, and I thought, "Well, God, if I could have the ability to at least start or spot start on defense as well as snap, I don't need to be the best snapper, nor do I need the best defensive lineman. I just need to show the value of being able to do both of them at a high enough level where

5:25 I would free up the team for an extra roster spot and understanding that if I can do both those jobs, then all of a sudden they can keep an extra receiver, or they can keep an extra DB, or something else, and I become from a fringe guy, all of a sudden I become very valuable because no one else on the team is going to be able to create another roster spot. You're going to have a kicker and a punter. Those are going to be two quarterback stone. I could. That's what I really honed in and really drove and tried to really learn how to do it and spend a ton of time perfecting the craft. I eventually got to Cleveland,

6:01 that's when I finally started doing it where I was playing defense and snapping in Cleveland, and I went there on expansion in 1999, so I'm like barely in the league. I'm playing a little bit, undrafted, no money invested in me. I knew all that. I was very cognizant of that. I knew what I was fighting, so every practice, every lift, everything was like Super Bowl, Super Bowl, Super Bowl. That's my mentality. When I got to Cleveland, all of a sudden I started doing both, and all of a sudden multi-year contracts start to come, and then I signed as a free agent to New York in 2003 after they had had some issues

6:37 long snapping and in a playoff game. At that point, I'd gotten in a fight in practice and broke my hand. It's a whole story. We don't have time on this podcast, but by New York I was just snapping. I'd gotten old enough in the position that evolved where I became just a snapper, but without a doubt, that sort of hit you in the face moment around that article in The Washington Post after I'd just played 12 games. I had agents calling me trying to recruit me, and I thought I was sort of like hot shit, and you get the facts thrown in your face pretty fast. It's just a question of how you react, and I chose to react a certain way to increase my value.

7:21 It takes an immense amount of humility to react and take action the way you did. Maybe would be helpful for me. What did you do specifically in order to make sure you were ready to make that type of transition? Because it's one thing to say, "Okay, maybe I'll switch," but then I'm sure were there coaches you need to get? Were there certain training regiments that you did above and beyond typical practice? What did you have to do to pull it off? Yeah, it's time, invest time. You go to the special teams coach and say, "Hey, listen. I've done this a little bit. I want to start working on it." They would always be kicking

7:55 and punting in the off season and stuff like that. They'd have the starting snapper and the kickers and the punters that were in for camp or what have you. I just started going out and working on it and talking to the snapper that was there, a guy named Trevor Maddox. One guy, Dan Turk, who passed away as another guy, started talking to them, asking them questions about how they go about it, and then all of a sudden you just start working on it. Then all of a sudden the special teams coach, he realizes, "God, I want to show you're serious about it." Coach is coach. That's what they do. If they can find a new piece

8:29 of meat that they can mold, well, they're going to lean into you. You're willing, you're hardworking, you're diligent, all those things. They're going to lean into you and try to help you. That's what the coaches did in Washington and then going on to Cleveland. Once I got to Cleveland and started playing enough, I felt like I could do it pretty good. It really relied on me. A lot of self-teaching, a lot of asking questions, how it fit you. There's a lot of things that are nuanced to it. It's got to fit how you like to throw the ball and things like that. Once you get it in, then I play a lot of golf. Snapping is like

9:06 a golf swing. Once you groove it, however your swing is, every swing is a little different to golf. It's the same thing for the golfers out there. It's the same thing. Everybody throws the ball a little different, snaps a little different. As long as it's you and it fits you and you can repeat it, then it's just lean into that. That's what I try to do. One thing that you've also done an incredible job post-NFL, foresight to really tee up a career. Compared to most, the average tenure in the NFL is just around three years right now. For you to spend 12 seasons as an extensive career in the NFL, even with that, you still

9:50 teed up a next act. I think you did a lot of work to plan what that transition is. I know you work with a lot of current and previous players as well to help them prepare for that transition as well. I'm sure it comes so much faster than anybody is expecting. Walk us through that time period and how you teed up the next evolution of your career. Yeah, it's a good question. The first thing I did is everyone gives me a lot of credit. I got my MBA while I was playing and I spent the off-seasons doing that. I get a lot of credit for that, but in reality, that was my transition plan. I just figured at some

10:28 point I was going to get cut in August and I'd just go to school in September. I spent two years getting my MBA and lose some weight and get healthy. Whatever, I'll find a career. I was having to keep playing, so I just got my degree. That was the first phase. I believed in education. I felt that I got an NFL player. I was a finance undergrad at Virginia marketing finance combo. That would be cool. That's sort of unique. Well, let me throw the MBA on top of it. Well, that's really unique. Again, it's just that idea of differentiating yourself and understanding what you have in your quiver and what you don't have. I just

11:08 tried to keep loading things into the quiver so I could shoot an arrow or whatever I needed to sort of extend the analogy. I did that first. Really, what I spent my time doing was unfortunately in pro sports, playing a position or a sport, it becomes your whole identity. It's just hard to break that out. That's why guys and gals both have so much trouble moving on and getting out of the limelight and sort of being asked all the questions and doing things like interviews and podcasts and things. You're used to getting asked questions and it's an ego thing and whatever. What I tried to do with my time in the off-seasons

11:53 was not necessarily build an extensive network, but really drive deep four, five, six relationships and get deep with those. Find the people that I could learn from that maybe could help me that maybe they didn't even know they could help me and I certainly would never have asked, but I just felt if I continued to sort of be inquisitive and curious about what they're doing and asking questions, that eventually they'd say, "Well, let me help them out," whenever that time came. Because to your point, you never know when it's going to be over. I was fortunate. I got to year 12. I got hurt. I was always going to retire after my 12th

12:29 year. I ended up tearing my calf and my Achilles, which was super athletic by me, to do that in one step. I was like, "But I did," and that knocked me out for the rest of the year. I sort of knew 12 was, for some reason in my head, 12 is what I wanted to get to. Once I sort of got to like five, I'm like 12, which sounds like a cool number maybe. I just continued to sort of build out that network and really build relationships. I built a relationship with Kevin Plank, the founder of Under Armour, while I was playing, which eventually turned into a career. But that wasn't the initial idea when I started investing time into getting

13:05 to know Kevin and what he was doing under Armour. It was more just to learn. I did small things, Anthony. One thing I tried to tell the guys, I'm like, "When an athlete goes ask for time for somebody who's working, and it's your off season, where it means you have all the flexibility, they don't. You're asking for their time." Most athletes, again, getting their ass kissed. I was the bottom of the roster of guys, so it didn't really affect, but like other guys. They're sort of, again, used to getting catered to, to a certain degree. I always took the initiative, like, "If I got time on someone's calendar, I was going

13:40 to buy the lunch. I was going to buy the dinner." Even though athletes, I think, often think like, "They're spending time with me. They should take me to dinner." I always sort of flipped it. This was like, "I'm asking for their time. I'm going to take. I'm going to buy it." I actually thought it's a small thing, and a lot of the best practices I've sort of employed and others, I've told like, it's those small things that add up. Maybe that person, instead of just going back to the office going, "I just went out with this New York giant for lunch." That's cool, but the cooler thing is this New York giant just

14:15 bought me lunch. That's cooler, right? It's Cleveland Brown bought me lunch, right? There's so little things, right? It's those small things. I don't know how. I just sort of made an intuition or whatever. I just kept thinking, "I'm asking for their time. I should be hosting them, taking them out." Whatever it may be. If it was something else, it wasn't lunch, it wasn't dinner, whatever. Send them gifts, send them tickets. Nothing to ask. I appreciate the time two weeks ago that you want to come to a game, right? That's how I spent my time in building that network. I got to prepare for whenever that end of my career came, which

14:52 can happen as quickly as like a bad injury on a Sunday, right? You just got to continue to prepare. You can open as many doors as you can. It doesn't mean you got to walk through them, right? But you want them open so that you can walk through them if you choose to. That's, again, how I sort of looked at from a transition. The last thing I'll say on sort of transitioning. I think a lot of people, again, have this problem whether it's transitioning from football or anytime you're in a career or in a business for a long time, and it becomes sort of your identity. It's hard to sort of not look back, right? And so I have a Super

15:30 Bowl ring. I have a 12-year career. I don't ever talk about it except for things like this. I don't ever lead with it, right? I never look back. I didn't want to talk about it especially early in my career. Everybody knew it, right? I just didn't need to talk about it, right? I wanted to look forward, right? It's that whole old adage if you played any sports, right? You never run as fast as you can if you're looking back, right? You're looking forward. It's those spurters in the Olympics. And they're not looking side to side. They're looking forward. And so I always was like the day I retired, nobody cares.

16:06 The day I left a business under armor, nobody cares. I don't care. They don't care. Nobody else should care. Like we're moving on, right? And that's the mentality I always had. And a lot of athletes have problems with that because again, the ego and sort of it's been their life's work. And a lot of other people who've been in careers or in working with the same company for a long time have. Everybody's replaceable, and they don't care. You don't care. Nobody cares. We look forward. And that's how I looked at my NFL career and every stop I've had in my career since then. Yeah, I definitely don't think that's exclusive

16:43 to athletes. I think many people struggle with that. And it does. I'm sensing this humility thread in there as well. Even though you're in the position of an NFL player, Super Bowl ring, you're the one buying lunch. You're the one really taking the first step to initiate those relationships. And I think that type of mentality, people want to reciprocate. So when you're engaging that way with people, you're adding value first and then asking or usually it's just given at that point because I think it's so rare. But I think it's something a lot of people have a tough time actually doing in their day to day.

17:24 Yeah. I mean, to me, I think again, being a sports guy and a sports family, it's that service mentality of being on a team. You're going to serve your teammates. You're going to serve your colleagues and work. You're trying to build a relationship if you can have more of a service mentality than a taking mentality. That's why 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." And that's how it sort of goes, right? And then you work it out and you make sure. So yeah, I take

18:08 very much in my relationships and I'm fortunate I've got a lot of them that are very valuable to me and very great people that I've learned a lot from. I truly try to take a service mentality to those relationships to make sure that they know how much I value their inputs into my career, into my future. And I think it's worked out because hopefully I've given them enough solutions and help back that we all feel good about it. And that's how it sort of works for me. Yeah. And that service mentality, when people ask me, "Hey, what's the best way to get a promotion or how do I accelerate my career?" It's start doing the job without being asked

18:48 to do it. Just go start doing above and beyond of what's currently in front of you. Get your current work done and then go do more. And then when people are looking around to, "Oh, who should we promote or who should we get to lead this thing?" It's pretty obvious when you've already been doing it for however long. That's a good way to think about it, right? You get into putting limits on yourself or a ceiling. Don't do it. Just continue to try to evolve and learn and eventually you're going to continue to sort of work your way down the river. And that's, I think, a good way to think about it.

19:21 One thing that I thought was really interesting that I think you tie that service mentality to is your approach to how you serve the consumer. And I think a lot of people talk about it. A lot of people want to do it. But I think throughout your career, you've employed an immense level of empathy to really understand the consumer, what's driving them, why do they connect with your brand. And I think one of the marquee moments in your career after you transition into Under Armour is the signing of Jordan Speed and knowing what that would mean to Under Armour consumers.

20:05 I would love, I know we shared a little bit during the prep session, but just teaching that concept and teaching your mindset and framework for approaching getting in the mind of the consumer and matching what they're really looking for. Yeah, that's a good question and a good topic. I mean, listen, the consumer, the first thing I think in any CPG or what have you, whether it's your consumer is a B2B or B2C or whatever may be, everyone's got people they're trying to sell to in certain ways, services, products, whatever it may be. This is not nothing new, but people forget it. Consumer's not stupid.

20:48 Have respect for the consumer and understand that, we used to talk about a lot of UA. If you're in the CPG world and you have to get somebody to go into their purse or their wallet and pull out the credit card, that is something where they are, that is not an easy thing to do. If you think it's easy, you're going to fool yourself. Have respect for that decision that the consumer is making. Try to meet them as close to where you can. The second thing would be, I'm trying to meet the consumer as close to what their ideal situation is. Again, that's the idea of going toward them. Don't wait for them to come to you. Go toward

21:30 them. Figure out, sometimes, some of the best stories of consumer product goods, at least, is the consumer didn't even know they needed it or wanted it until they were told or shown. All of a sudden, they go, "Wow, that's pretty cool. Let's try that iPhone, camera and iPhone." That whole story of Blackberry and Apple. Blackberry says, "Oh, we don't need to put a camera in a phone." The consumer didn't even know they needed it. That's been the biggest. There's 1,000 examples. Understanding who you're trying to sell to, who's the purchaser, who's the consumer, and then, a lot of times, CBG or B2C stuff, who's the customer. You're

22:13 going to have a retailer or an online, whatever, maybe a virtual or B&M, brick and mortar in between. Understand each of the pressures that those three different individuals could have. Not pressure in a real sense, but just pressures on decisions. Is it timeliness, financial? Is there some structural issues? There's all sorts of things that could be putting, essentially, pressure or friction into making that decision that you're trying to get your product into. We're trying to remove friction. We're trying to make it easy to say, "Yes, easy for the customer, easy for the purchaser, easy for the consumer."

22:55 If we can eliminate that kind of friction by going toward them, understanding the different pressures that they could be under, it's making it easy for them to come meet you where you want them to meet you. I really try to think about, in those sense, from a consumer perspective, when I started the golf business at Under Armour, I signed Jordan. I was fortunate. Signing athletes was something that I got to be pretty good at. I think my athletic background probably helped quite a bit. Spieth was one of those guys I signed, Matt Fitzpatrick. He's won a major. I signed Gary Woodland. He won a major. I signed Cam Smith. All these kids

23:32 are under 21 years old. Jordan has been the most high profile, but Cam, Fitzy, and Gary have all had their moments on the biggest stage. Here's a football guy signing athletes. I'm starting a golf brand. We've been a sporting goods brand, and now we're trying to start a golf brand. Well, can sporting goods brands do it as well as golf brands can? We're competing against titleists, and TaylorMade, and Cobra, all these Puma, all these real golf brands, TaylorMade. Then you've got the smaller apparel brands, things like Johnny O and others that are in golf. We've got apparel at Under Armour. How can we differentiate ourselves? Sporting

24:20 goods to the consumer, to a golfer. Exporting goods are like a no-no. They want golf people. They want golf brands. If you're a serious golfer. What do you do? You study what Nike did. Nike had Tiger Woods and Rory McElroy, two top players in the world playing their clubs that couldn't sell a damn thing, club-wise. Couldn't sell a ball. Couldn't sell a club. How is that possible? Because it seems like that would work in any other circumstance. You can get the biggest superstars in anything. Yeah, so in sports, sort of endemic sports like that, like you really, again, this is understanding the consumer. The consumer wants

24:59 a golfer. If you know a golfer, and I'm reasonably good at golf. I belong here to a nice club in D.C., and we play a lot. I'm a single-digit guy, so I know enough. I've been around. But if you go look at those golfers who play Saturday, Sunday morning games for money, and every club's got them. They all have some nickname, and it's like 16 dudes. They get three tee times, 12 show up every Saturday and Sunday. They're gambling. They're playing for money. If you go watch those guys, what they're wearing, they're wearing golf brands. So a sporting goods brand, like a Nike or an Under Armour or an Audi or whatever, to get into that,

25:37 to get break into that circle, which are really the tastemakers in every club. You actually have to show people who are building their lives around it that you care. What Nike failed to do, in my opinion at least, is that they had the greatest athletes ever. They had an unbelievable roster. This Tiger alone would do it. He certainly did think, but they spent all this money trying to get into clubs, which is really like endemic stuff, like really authentic stuff. We stayed away from that, because I'm like, "If they can't sell clubs, we're not going to sell clubs." But the challenge, what we decided to do, and had a great group

26:14 of the team around me to do it, is that we said, "Okay, we're going to show the golfer that we're investing in the sport, that we're not just coming in to make money in the sport." So we invested. We titled the Junior PGA Championship. We partnered with the AJGA, American Junior Golf Association. Each of our athletes had their own tournament that we got named after. We showed that we were caring about the future of the sport. All of a sudden, well now if you're in golf, now all of a sudden they open your eyes to you and go, "Wow, look at this big brand comes in. They're actually doing things to help grow the game." So we started

26:52 getting the benefit of that. The retailers started going, "We're going to take you more seriously now." Then you layer on the good pro roster, the staff, and now we got at the highest level. Now we're sort of going high, low. Now everybody who's involved with the game is looking at us going, "Wow, this is great. They're investing in the game and they've got these great players that are showing up every Sunday in the final two or three groups." So that's how we tried to build it. We had our own logo. We did things that were away from Under Armour. We had a UA Golf logo that we put on our clothes. Anything we could do

27:27 to differentiate ourselves from being a sporting goods brand. Because we understood that the consumer, that's what the consumer was looking at. That's the insight. The insight was like consumers and golf, and it'd be the same thing if you went into swimming or cycling or any of these other smaller, what I call relatively "nitchy sports." Those people are passionate about it. They care about it. They spend their lives on it. They don't understand why more people don't play it. All those things. Tennis. So you have to understand that. So let's go meet them there. Let's show that we care. First, we're just some big brand sporting

28:04 goods brand coming in to sell a few golf shirts and make some money. That's how we really approached building that brand. I don't know. It really worked for us. We accelerated from essentially zero to north of $150 million bucks in three years before I switched jobs and Under Armour started running global sports. It had so much to understand. That golfer on that Saturday and Sunday morning, what's he wearing? What's she wearing? We're going to build stuff like that, and we're going to show them that we care about the sport that they care enough about that they're going to show up every Saturday and Sunday and play

28:37 for money. Then lie about it, basically how good they are afterwards. We're going to show we care. Then all of a sudden they're going to accept us in a different way that maybe they accepted Nike or Audi for that matter. I think like you said, you have to respect the consumer and know that they can sense if you're just trying to buy your way in versus 100%. You're actually trying to be part of the tribe of that sport. 100%. Listen, you started to interrupt the last point. What's your brand promise with your product? What is your product supposed to deliver? You can't fool them. I think I shared with you, we used

29:16 to laugh. When Under Armour was running hot 10 years ago, we could slap the logo on a coffee mug and told everybody it kept the coffee hotter for 20 more minutes. They would have believed us once, but when that mug didn't work and it didn't keep your coffee, you lose the brand. You got to cherish that relationship. If you're a premium brand and you go downstream and start selling downstream, you're basically breaking the value proposition of your brand and understand the risk of that. If you're a moderate price and you want to get it, you could generally go higher, you can't go lower. It's much harder from a price perspective,

29:58 but you just have to understand where your consumer is and what they value and what you're offering and don't ever forget that. If you put that on the back burner too much, eventually they turn you off. Once they turn you off, it's really, really hard to get them back, if not impossible. What are some questions that maybe businesses or people can ask themselves to understand if they're doing a good job of being where the consumer is and doing this in an authentic way? Because I think some people may be under the perception that they're doing that when they're really not. What's a good way to test

30:37 that? The best way I think is relatively simple, whether it's through post purchase survey or what have you. How much do your businesses refer? If you can find that out, if other people are advocating for you without you being in the room, essentially, you're doing a good job. If you can somehow measure, and a lot of people do it through post purchase survey, how much your business is referral business, then that consumer, whether it's a CPG or what have you, there's no better marketing in the world than having someone else tell a colleague, "You should try this." To me, if you're doing that, if that means the consumer

31:25 who's advocating for you feels confident enough in your brand and your position, the value you're delivering back to the consumer, to them, to vouch for you. To me, that's super important. It's a relatively easy way to figure it out. If you're getting that referral back and you can figure that and you're in the mid-signal digits, then you have a challenge on your hands. You have to get to a place where you want that number, 20%. If you get to 1/5 of your purchases are from referral in a post purchase survey, that is a really good number to think that 20% of your sales, the work is being done by somebody else. A

32:07 real easy way to figure out if you're meeting the consumer where they are and if they feel good about you is a statistic like something like that, something they did in that area. That's excellent. I really appreciate you sharing an actual way to measure that because I think sometimes people are trying to figure out if they're doing a good job and it's tough to know and I think that's an excellent way to do that. Something else that you mentioned during our prep that I really loved. You have a phrase, you took it from football but I think this applies pretty much anywhere. The big guy

32:41 in the sky doesn't lie and the camera doesn't lie. I'm curious, as you've gone into the business world, you've carved out a phenomenal career, executive, founder, fractionally executives for fast-growing companies. How do you see this applying in business? Well, I think the big guy in the sky doesn't lie is this idea of you can lie to a lot of people but when you're laying in bed at night and it's dark in the room and you're by yourself, there's nobody left to lie to. I've always believed that that's a really important position to keep yourself in with regards to honesty, transparency, how are you doing, some awareness,

33:42 all those type of things, EI for lack of a better term, people will fudge sale numbers. People I'm sure are listening to this, they've been in business situations where they've got some big initiative and they're either trying to champion it or they want to be a part of the team that's championing it. There's always that one individual that's sticking their toe into the pool when everyone else has jumped in and that person, they're hedging. Let's be honest because if it doesn't work out, they want to quickly pull or pull their toe out and say no, it wasn't me. That situation's happened all the time at UA, it used to drive

34:22 me crazy. In this idea of you can lie to yourself saying you're a part of that group or you did this or you did that or I drove this business or whatever else, but at some point, the truth comes out, the roosters come home. You as the individual, you have to be honest with yourself in terms of how much did I really do, how much did I really contribute, how much credit should I really have. In football, it's changed quite a bit because they've got so much technology on the sideline, but the saying from football is because in game, if you're playing defense and you don't have the videos that you do now where it's like instant feedback, but this is

35:01 again a different time. If you gave up a play and you jumped out of your gap, if everyone knows defense, you got a gap and you got to hold on that A gap or B gap or C gap or whatever it may be, and if you pop out of it and the runner runs through that gap and no one can figure it out, what happened? Well, and you're on the sideline, you learn really fast but you have to fess up. If not, the coach may not call that defense again and because he can't tell or maybe they didn't catch it and he thinks we got out schemes when in reality someone just screwed up, which is no big

35:34 deal. Like everybody screws up. There's never been an athlete that's played a perfect game, right? There's never been an individual that's never had a perfect record in a business, right? People make mistakes, right? And so you're fine, you should be fine with that. Just let's acknowledge them quickly. Let's acknowledge who screwed up, why they screwed up and get a change fast. Like that to me is in football, like you learn super quick, like if someone didn't speak up and then you saw it on film on Monday, you're like, man, we changed our whole scheme because that dude was getting blocked or jumped out of his gap and he never said anything.

36:09 Like it can ruin a game and it's the same thing in business, right? If you stick your toe in, not, you're supposed to take care of something or do this and you're not coming through and there's a reason why, like there has to be communication, there has to be accountability. If not, eventually it will come out and if it points to you, that's the end of you. And maybe not necessarily being fired per se, but in terms of your street cred inside of an organization, right? No one should want to be that person that's sort of, again, sticking their toe in, you know? If you don't

36:43 believe in the initiative, which is fine, speak up. Don't half-ass it because the only reason they're half-assed because if it goes well, they want to be able to say, look, I was a part of it a little bit. I'm hanging on, right? And so that's why they're trying to hedge, you know? So like either go all in or stay out and be transparent in your position because at some point that big eye in the sky is going, you know, that doesn't lie and people are going to find out and like, again, it may not mean your career at said company, but it's certainly going to use a lot

37:13 of street cred with your colleagues, which will eventually, you know, slow down your career and how fast you advance up. I know I've absolutely been walked off the edge when I'm in a meeting, it's 10 people in the room, nine people agree that this is exactly what we should be doing and probably not everyone put a lot of thought into it. And then that one person has said, Hey guys, time out. Can't do this because of this, this, this, and this. And I have avoided some catastrophe level decisions because that one person decided to speak up. And, and I think

37:48 you're right. People don't realize by hiding the full truth of what happened, you're robbing the people who need to make decisions of being able to make the best decisions possible. And, and in business, I mean, people may change structures, roles, process, all because they think, Hey, this must be broken because we're not executing well here. When maybe like you said, somebody just messed up the process is what we should be doing. We just need to execute. Well, there's always in businesses, right? There's generally always friction between marketing and sales.

38:23 Like let's take those two as examples, always friction is the marketing good enough or the salesmen good enough, right? Like when everyone's hitting their goals and everyone's great. And when everyone's not hitting their goals, all of a sudden people start doing this, right? And, and that's where you see it a lot. Where all of a sudden the marketer guy, marketing guys, wait a minute. I ran this plan, buy you sales guy. You were good with it then. Now all of a sudden it's not good enough or vice versa, right? You know, say, you know, Hey marketing, I told you

38:53 my plan, you know, I didn't, I didn't hear it. You know, you didn't, you didn't give me enough, uh, our returns to like, I got to get a ROAS or an ROI of three to one. And you're based on how much you're investing. You're not to get five to one. There's no way you're going to get that or eight to one, you know, whatever it may be. So there's always that friction. That's where you see it, you know, so alignment, being candid with where you've been, but it's all going, you know, when everything's coming up roses, no problems. It's when the way it's when you hit resistance, you know,

39:23 to me is when these kinds of things pop out. And, um, we talked about, and you know, this idea of, um, you know, the plan, right? The map. And you got to have one for sure. You know, that's what people do spend a lot of time on one, three and five year plans and quarterly plans and full year plans. And we're going to review last year's plan and stuff like that. I would argue that that's important of course, but at the end of the day, you're going to follow the terrain and the terrain hopefully matches the map, but most likely it's not. And that's where that's all sudden where again,

39:56 that comes back to this where different groups will start because they've got, they're viewing the terrain differently, right? And so let's just all get in a room and like be candid with ourselves. And if we're going to go all in as a team, then everybody should go all in. Don't have people, if you're a leader and you recognize that someone's sort of on the fringe, you know, there's a, there's a list of 10 tasks that need to be done. And there's three people in the room and two of them, one of them has five and the other one has four and there's a third person sitting at the

40:27 table. Well, they're probably, their toes probably in the water. It's not, they're not jumping in with two feet, right? A, they wouldn't let their colleagues on, you know, they're good teammates. You're not going to let their colleague do all the work, but they're probably purposely, you know, withdrawing because they don't really believe it. Find out why. Assuming they're, you respect them, they're on your team. You should want to know their opinion and maybe it's valuable. Maybe it's not, but you can't have people just sort of sticking their toe in. They all got, everyone's got to be

40:53 all in if you're going to go that way. And I'm sure that happens on almost every single play call in the NFL. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. There's going to be somebody who says we shouldn't be running this play. We shouldn't be to, Hey, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. We're running. Call your play plays, call, execute your jobs. You see this a lot. A lot of companies we work with are smaller emerging brands and, and, um, that's where series A series B finance sort of level, you know, from a revenue perspective. And, um, you see that a lot there, right? Like,

41:23 because they're small and you have a small team often, and a lot of people have opinions about things and the opinions are great. Cause they, if they come from a place of passion, that's fine. Right. If they come from a place of stupidity, that's not fine. Right. And so like, you know, so the ideas at some point, someone has said that, guys, this is the play we're running. Your job is to execute the play. We'll do a post-mortem after, and we'll find out who is right and who is wrong. And let's be honest in that. But like, once we call the play, the debate's over, right? We're going to execute the play. That's how you gotta be.

41:59 And don't half-ass the play. No, to prove your hypothesis. Well, that goes back to like, Anthony, that goes back to like the two feet in versus toe in, right? Like people that are all in are going to execute at a much higher level. That's why you can't have people on the fringes. As a leader, you gotta make sure if they're uncomfortable, find out why, you know, again, they're on your team. I'm going to assume you're going to respect them because they're on your team. You want everybody on your team pulling the rope in the same direction. You got to go address that right out of the gate. As a leader, you got to be reading the room,

42:30 have a little bit of, you know, what's going on here. And if you see someone that's not really engaging for in a variety of ways, then you got to find out why and let their voice be heard. This is a situation where I really appreciate the Bezos adage of disagree and commit. So it's okay. We actually celebrate disagree, share your opinions, full passion. But like you said, once the play is called, execute, give it your all. Debate is over once it's called. Yep. One thing I think it's related to this too. I think a lot of businesses have a difficult time bifurcating. I think a lot of people are, hey, we're results driven. It's all about the results.

43:13 Some people are in the process camp. It's just following the process, believe in the process. I think companies have a tough time managing that dichotomy of, you know, sometimes you run a bad process, but still get rewarded. This is maybe the mediocre sales rep sitting inside zoom right before the pandemic. And then they 10 X their quota just because everyone is needing video conferencing right away. Or in the same time, you have a commercial real estate agent who's doing an incredible job, also going through the pandemic and, you know, they're running a good process or doing everything they can, but the results just aren't showing.

43:56 In your experience, how have you navigated that dichotomy of using results as a signal to know if the process is the problem and if it needs to be reinvented or if we need to just stick with it? Well, listen, I'm a believer in process over results. Like I, again, going back to sports and when you coach, you don't coach, you don't coach coach results. You coach process, right? Are you, you know, are you playing the game the right way? Is your technique good? All of those things. If you do the right, the sort of basics, well, you're going to, the results will come, right? That's how I, from an internal, because a lot of things

44:43 enter into results to your point. External influences, things out of your control, good and bad, right? And you can't really measure those. You can, you can measure them after the fact, but not, you can't plan for them often. So I try to really invest, like we have great products, you know, do we have the right messaging? Do we believe in what we're saying? We are, is our brand in good standing? Do we have the right talent on the team? And, you know, are we aligned in terms of how we're approaching this quarter, this year, whatever it may be? Then I think you should feel good about the plan that you build. Is our,

45:15 is our financial plan sound? All those things, are the assumptions good? All of that. If you're in a planning stages, I believe if you, if you approach those things with the right level of awareness and, and sort of authenticity to sort of a mission with like, oh, you know, sort of open heart, like just like open to like, you'll get to a right place. And then let's see when we execute, that's what goes back to read the terrain a lot on the execution side. I think, you know, a lot of businesses want to go fast. And I think going fast gets you really results sort of focused and they forget about things like brand or culture or other

45:55 things that have to come along with a growing business. And I've said this before, and I shared it with you earlier, like, you know, when you're building a company, like it is building a house and you can build it faster. You just can't skip steps. Right. And so, and that's a really important distinction, right? Speed is not the thing. You just can't skip steps. Right. So, you know, if it, if the nail, if you're supposed to took, you know, I'm not a builder, but if you're supposed to nail four nails into the step, you know, the nail four nails into the step before

46:32 you, you know, in the woods as you're building the steps, don't put two in because it's faster. Right. Put four and just go faster to put four in. Right. And that way you can, like, I just feel like a lot of people when they start zeroing in on results, they think, you know, they skip a lot of things. And the groups that I've worked with and tried to help, I think an Under Armour, we did a really good job of earning our way as we grew. And we went for 26 straight quarters of 20% growth. Right. Like, you know, publicly traded with all the pressures that were in, like,

47:06 and for a long time, we never skipped steps. Now, it got hairy at the end. I wasn't a part of a lot of those decisions, but we made a lot of bad decisions at the end in terms of where we were selling and price point and things like that. But, you know, for a long time, you had to earn your way there. Right. And you just, we just said, just go fast. Right. So that's like, again, look at sports. Like, if you're in a tennis player or a golfer, right? Like, there's nothing stopping you from going in the rankings faster. If you play great, you're going to move up. Right. If you want

47:39 to turn in early, you're going to move up fast, but you still got to go play the tournament. You know, like, you know, so like, you can't just say I'm now top 10 in the world. Like, you got to earn your way there. Right. But there's no one's holding you back on how fast you want to go. You know, if you put in the right process, you prepare well, you're healthy, you have confidence in what you're doing. Like, and you can make a few putts, right? You're going to win the tournaments and you're going to move up fast. So a lot of businesses that results, I get scared of that. You got to have result oriented goals. I understand that. But if you

48:12 are preparing and coaching around results versus process, I really get worried about what your, even if you get to the results you want to, what does your business look like? You know, what's your culture look like? What can you retain people? Right. What's your future? Again, you want to shoot up and shoot down. You want to build this thing for a 20 year run. Right. Like, you know, again, all of those things, I feel like those are much more sort of up and downs. And there's plenty of examples, big examples, Peloton, right? Nothing, nothing, nothing, shot up. Whoa, back down. Right. Like, you know, like, you know, they, they struggled for a long

48:50 time and you know, they, they got COVID to your point around like external issue, you know, all of a sudden bikes in the house became a thing and you could stream this workouts in and everyone was buying them and they shot up and they didn't, they didn't, they didn't, clearly they didn't handle that well. Right. Like my hunch is that they got results oriented versus stayed true to the process of how they wanted to build their business. That makes sense. It makes a ton of sense. And especially coming from your experience of competing at the absolute highest level pinnacle, one of the most results, scrutinized industries

49:24 in the world, hearing you say, Hey, use results as a signal, but, you know, coach the process. I think if that's the mentality coming out of the NFL, I can't imagine anything else

49:42 when you translate that to the business world too. Yeah. I mean, listen to you. It's a fair point. NFL, I'll have pros for their results oriented businesses. And I get that, but you still got to coach the process. You got to prepare. And if you hear any of these interviews, we had a great week of practice. We had a great game plan. Right. We got healthy. Like they, they always want to win. You see, you know, they get on the stage, they got their hat on their Gatorade, whatever. And they're always, almost always referring to like how well they prepared in some form or fashion, great week of preparation,

50:12 knew what they were going to do. Our coaches were on it. They told us the tips, whatever may be. Right. Because they realized that it's processed. Like that's the process part. And when you do that, well, the wins take care of themselves. Right. And that's, and that's, and wins is the result. Right. So like, that's where I think people sometimes get that confused or a little bit. Like it's, it's the process that leads up to that for, for any win for sure. Yeah. Everybody's always looking for a shortcut or how to build those houses with missing steps, but it always catches up to you.

50:47 Always catches up to you. You gotta, again, you can go fast. Just don't skip a step. Tell me a little bit as we, as we wrap up, everything you're doing at chainable, how people can get in touch with you through chainable and, and what this new mission is for you. Yeah. It's been, it's been fascinating the last six years. You know, I thought that when I left UA in 2019 or 2019 was January, 2019. I try to think back to like the best time I had at UA. And I had big teams and small teams and big budgets, you know, a couple of hundred million bucks to small budgets and, and, you know, teams all over the globe and things like that. And,

51:29 and did a lot of really cool, fun stuff and, and the sports world and building the golf business and stuff. But when I thought back to what was my favorite time, it was building the golf business and building that from scratch where I had started with a team of eight. And I had to create my own space. So like we, I literally was like telling the facilities guy, I want a flat screen TV next to this conference table. And I wanted the golf channel only on that. Like I didn't want to, we couldn't put on ESPN and golf channel, right? Like, like, and we were selling barely anything. We essentially at the time had polos that we called golf shirts that

52:05 were really built for college football coaches to wear on the sideline. Like that was, we had four, four colors, right? And getting that small team together and getting everybody, you know, believing in what we were trying to do and growing that thing as fast as we did with a great group of people, that's when I had my most fun. And so what I've done in, in sort of acknowledging that place is really started to lean in. My partner and I lean in on small emerging businesses. Like I said, you know, we work with companies that are from $2 million to, you know, $50 million in revenue, right? Getting them ready, trying to bring in some help,

52:46 really investing in them and helping them grow, right? And putting a little bit of gray hair in the room and saying, Hey, listen, like here's some, here's some other ways to think about things. And, and the, the scopes can be anything like at Q30 with the Q caller. I'm, I'm the chief revenue officer to just being a strategic advisor or being part of the biz dev group or looking at structure or looking at investments and getting ready for, again, for series A or series B financing, whatever it may be. We do a lot of work in the health and wellness space. We do a lot of work

53:19 in sports technology. And we've had a lot of fun doing it. We've, you know, we've sort of stabilized at roughly eight to 10 clients at any given time. And it's myself, my partner, a couple of employees and a development team in Argentina and really trying to get those owner operators, right? The senior leadership of these small, like, like, again, that's, that it's hard when you're growing and trying to establish, like people are fighting their butt off to try to establish their business, get it growing, like, and it just sometimes helps to put a little bit

53:53 of perspective in the room. And, and it just, you know, it can calm things. It can clarify things. There's a lot of ways that we can help them. If they're having a challenge in a given area, we've both got enough experience in multiple areas that we can help. And it's been great. It's been very, very rewarding to try to help people that have a dream, have a goal, you know, in terms of what, you know, they start this business and it's their baby. And like, if you can help them along, it's been super rewarding. And it's hard to believe I've been doing this now for almost six years,

54:28 you know, so it's been a really a lot of fun and I've learned a ton of from a really a ton of smart people. And, you know, for a guy, I sort of always say I want to be the dumbest guy in the room, you know, and people say that all the time, but I'm, I'm actually am most of the time. And, and that's in that to me is, is, you know, energizing to be around these these teams and as they grow and, and hit these milestones when you can, you know, open up retail for somebody or you can create, you know, get them international, or you can create the structure that helps them expand faster, or

55:04 there's a back end issue with with delivery or factory or warehousing or whatever it may be. And you can provide that that solution that all of a sudden unlocks growth. I mean, that's pretty cool. Like who doesn't like to do that, you know, and there are generally in growth mindsets and growth mindsets are great because you should be in a growth mindset going fast, and you're going to make mistakes. And as long as you make mistake fast and you correct it quickly, then there's no problem, you know, there's no guarantee if you wait three months to make a

55:32 decision, you're going to make the right decision. All you're going to do is lose time. So make the best decisions you can with the information you have at the time and, and if they're wrong, be a confident enough and honest enough with yourself to change. And that's what we're really preaching and we've had some success with our partners doing that. As a fellow entrepreneur, I know how valuable it is to have confidence in making a good decision and helping getting help to peek around a corner and have someone to help you avoid a pothole. 100%. There's a lot of them

56:07 out there on your business building journey. Um, so I think that type of work. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of, you know, that whole idea of tunnel vision versus peripheral vision. A lot of owner operators, founders, they've got this tunnel vision because they just have such passion and belief in what they're doing. And if you can add just a little bit of peripheral vision, you can, I like the pothole analogy, like that peripheral vision is, is really super important and you just, you just got to look to side to side because sometimes it could be right there.

56:34 Like it could be like, and then, and then it's this, right? And then it's going right there. Like now somebody go, wow, yeah, this is easy. Like, yeah, you just picked up, you know, eight, 10, $12 million in revenue. If we just do this, like let's do it. So, um, it's fun. It's a lot of fun to do. No doubt. Well, Ryan, I'm unbelievably impressed. I love the threat of reinventing yourself throughout your entire career, going from the NFL, the pinnacle of competition and performance, and then taking that moving into the business world as an executive, helping build brands and now the work that you're doing today. Um, I think anybody can take a lesson

57:15 on constantly evolving yourself. And I think what enabled you to do that, at least what I'm picking up in the conversation is that immense level of humility that you've really displayed throughout your career and gave you those opportunities to make those next steps. So I just want to thank you so much. This is so cool. And I appreciate you being here. Yeah. No, thanks very much. I enjoyed talking about it and I appreciate your, the kind words and, um, I'm sure we'll see each other down the road here soon enough. Perfect. Well, I'm going to be watching chainable,

57:46 appreciate all the work you're doing and can't wait to see how you evolve and what you do next. We're going to evolve. That's for sure. Thanks very much.