Greg McKeown:
Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Greg McKeown Podcast, where we deal, obviously, with the subject of what really matters and how to design a life that is of the highest quality so that we can make our highest point of contribution. Today, we’re joined by an exceptional guest whose life story reads like a script from an inspiring movie. This is Ryan Kubler.
Right from the start, Ryan’s passion for film, the storytelling was unmistakable. At 13 years old, he found himself wandering the iconic studio lots, absorbing every ounce of movie magic. Every ounce of movie magic. His curiosity and audacity led him to an extraordinary encounter on the set of the beloved TV show Cheers at Paramount Studios. There, a young Ryan articulated his dream of becoming a director to none other than Ted Danson, sparking an incredible opportunity. Ted, impressed by Ryan’s enthusiasm and clarity of vision, offered him the chance to write and direct his own short film.
The result was the question. Starring heavyweights like Ted Benson, Kirsty Alley, Woody Harrelson, and George Wendt, it’s an incredible feat at almost any age, never mind as a teenager. So you get a sense of how Ryan was thinking about his life from the beginning of his life. Since then, Ryan has not only sustained that fiery passion but also channeled it into a successful career spanning film, entrepreneurship, and strategic business development.
So his principles are simple; they’re profound: Be kind, communicate effectively, and never lose the drive to make things happen, no matter the scale of the challenge.
Today, Ryan is a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple successful ventures under his belt. And curiously, and I’m interested to get into this all at the same time. Not sure if it’s essentialist or not, but it might be. Maybe there’s something that will. We can all learn from it.
As we talk today, we’ll uncover the degree to which Ryan holds on to that youthful enthusiasm that anything’s possible, that anything’s achievable. So please join me in welcoming the visionary, the filmmaker, the entrepreneur, Mr. Ryan Kugler.
Ryan, welcome to the show.
Ryan Kugler:
Thank you. Thank you. And very well said. My God, that was magnificent intro. I appreciate it.
Greg McKeown:
Well, that’s kind of you, and I’m so glad to have you here. Just start from the top for us, maybe just even a little bit before the 13 year old adventure that you had. I mean, when was the very first time you thought, “It’s filmmaking? For me, that’s what it’s about for me.”
Ryan Kugler:
It’s a good question. So, my parents were divorced. My mother was in Los Angeles, so I would go visit her from Chicago. And on spring break, Christmas break, summer breaks, I would go see her, and she was actually in the film business, and she did PR for movies. There’s actually a title on the credit of every movie called Unit Publicist. So she would sometimes take me to the set of TV shows from old TV shows like Three’s Company. Yes. Ironically, that. On movie sets of B movies, like something called Mortuary Academy.
And I just thought it was very neat. So I’d go with her to these sets and just kind of hang out while she did work. And I was just a little kid then. I’d walk around, and I meet different stars and celebrities. Like, I saw them film the original Beetlejuice, which was just two sound stages away and saw Michael Keaton walking around in his outfit. And it was just always, always something exciting.
There is a vibe; there’s a harmonic. There’s something that happens when you’re around movies getting made. That’s just unbelievable, which is why so many people want to move to LA and be an actor, a writer or director. So I got the bug, I drank the Kool Aid and got into it.
Greg McKeown:
Define for anyone who hasn’t been on a set like that in a single word. What is that vibe?
Ryan Kugler:
Excitement.
Greg McKeown:
Is it?
Ryan Kugler:
Yeah, there’s just something, you know, you’re honest, you’re in this big building which, you know, is just four walls and a ceiling, and it’s got all these sets made of wood and couches and everything that’s there. And they’re filming, and there’s all these crews there, and there’s lights and just a lot. And then the actors are there and, I mean, the things I saw going to sets after that, which led up to me being 13, from Bruce Willis to, you know, Gregory Hines to Billy Crystal, just different sets I would walk on. It was just fascinating just to go there and watch it and just see it. And I was just a little kid, just like a little pest on a set and, you know, just watching. And that’s what led to the whole Ted Danson kids like, “Well, what are you doing here? Why are you here? You know, where’s your mom? Where’s your dad? Where’s your guardian? What are you doing here?”
So it was just the excitement and energy of what was happening on a set.
Greg McKeown:
So you had exposure, and that exposure then just drew out of you a curiosity, although it didn’t necessarily have to do that because a different person could have had the same exposure and just not found that aspect interesting. They may have found some other element interesting. It’s hard to know quite what it is that draws us to certain things and away from other things. But then you snuck onto the set of Cheers, if I understand right.
Ryan Kugler:
Yeah, snuck onto the lot of Paramount. So, that was me going with my mother at a young age. And then, actually, my family moved to Los Angeles. My father, who I lived with, moved to Los Angeles. So now I have the best, best of both worlds. I lived in the city with my natural mother and my natural father, so I would. Then what happened is I had a bike, and I decided, hey, I have no plans for the summer of 87, which was when I was 13ish.
And why don’t I go ride around to all the movie studios and when all this there, you know, there was a lot of locations where they would film, and I decided just to walk on each location or walk on each studio lot, which you can’t do today because you need ID and passes and your name to be on a list. It’s much different.
Greg McKeown:
You can. But it takes. It takes an even higher level of initiative to make it happen and a higher risk.
Ryan Kugler:
Yes. Yeah, higher risk. I mean, trust me, I snuck onto a lot of studio lots, and I was kicked off of two because I walked in the wrong way. I changed my pattern and got caught. So you will get caught. It’s not something you can do today because I, you know, do business with some movie studios, and I go there, and your name has to be on a list, which has to be called in by executive ABC. So, yeah, I snuck onto the paramount lot and wandered, or I would go there for a whole day. Like, literally, I’d go on at 09:00 a.m. Park my bike, chain it up, and walk around and just go to each, you know, soundstage, which is the building they film shows at. And if there’s 25 sound stages, there’s 25 places to go.
Greg McKeown:
It sounds like not only a scene from but almost a section of The Fablemans movie.
Ryan Kugler:
Yes. Yes. People actually said that “Hey, there’s a similarity between you and Steven Spielberg because he went on to Universal and then wound up making Jaws, and here he is today.
Greg McKeown:
Yes. And so you watched the movie, I assume. And what did that bring to you? I mean, there are more than a few threads that seem to parallel the story that he’s describing, at least in those formative years.
Ryan Kugler:
Well, I won’t compare myself to Steven Spielberg. Number one, he is an artist, he’s a director, he’s an icon. As we progress through this story, I actually learned that my artistic side is not as great as other people, which is why I didn’t follow through to become a director of movies. I found myself more as someone who produces things and gets things done, which leads to this call, which leads to this podcast, which leads to this, what you’re doing, and the message you sent. So, well done.
But anyway, so, yeah, I saw some similarities there, but in the movie and Steven, he was a true artist and saw the beauty and aesthetic ness of everything.
Greg McKeown:
So I think in a sense you’re saying, well, that isn’t at all. That doesn’t really name it for me. There was some magic that overlaps, but there was a decision point in which you realized my competence isn’t the artistry. It’s what?
Ryan Kugler:
Getting things done. So, yes, it’s not the artistry. It was getting things done, which is another job, another hat, another post on a movie, which is called a producer, someone who arranges and makes the movie actually happen. He hires the artists; he hires the actors. You know, he hires the director, he hires the writer. I was more the guy who put everything together.
So with this little short that I made that’s only two and a half minutes long, three minutes long, I was the one that, you know, found the scene and got a buddy of mine to film it and got my other buddy to help write it and then made sure that Ted Danson and Kirstie Alley still wanted to do it because, you know, they’re pretty busy. And that was probably the biggest challenge is getting them to, getting them to confirm and hold, you know, into stick to the commitment of making it. Because, sure, it’s easy for someone to say, let’s go do this. And then it’s like actors can say, people can say anything they want, and then do they follow through with it, if you know what I mean?
Greg McKeown:
Yes, I do know what you mean. Are you still in touch with Ted Danson now?
Ryan Kugler:
No, I haven’t spoken to them since, and I don’t even know if it’s even in their mind. But I actually am going to put the video that I made finally and publicize it and promote it finally this year. But obviously I can’t charge for it. I can just put it on YouTube and see what happens.
Greg McKeown:
Well, it’d be so curious to see that happen now. It’s a part of Americana in some ways. It’s a piece of history, a moment in time for these actors who have continued to go on and create and be a part of so many people’s memories, really.
Ryan Kugler:
Yes. I think Woody Harrelson is probably doing the best out of everyone. The guy’s in a famous hit movie every year.
Greg McKeown:
Now, how did you know that production was the thing for you producing? That’s where I want to focus.
Ryan Kugler:
Because I was able to get things done. I was able to make it happen. So, anyone else who was offered this opportunity by Ted Danson probably would have persisted and said, “Hey, can we do this? Can we do this?”
And Ted, you know, his schedule was very, what you read in the news about actors having a schedule, you know, conflicts, conflicting schedules, and very busy is true. So it was me getting ahold of him, and honestly, I somehow got his home number and called him at home and said, “Hey, let’s do this.”
After calling his office every single week, and then finally, you know, four or five months later, he gave me a day, which was a lunch hour he had, and said, “Let’s do this.”
So, I found that I was able to make this happen. And there’s the sequel to this, too, that I can explain after your question.
Greg McKeown:
Well, how did you get his number?
Ryan Kugler:
I have to go back in my memory. I think that his assistant got sick of me calling his office and just said, here’s his phone number. You just call him yourself. And she probably shouldn’t have done that. And he was not happy that I called him at home. Trust me, that was not good.
Greg McKeown:
Nevertheless, what you learned was if I just keep persisting enough, something can happen.
Ryan Kugler:
100% agree. 110% agree.
Greg McKeown:
That is happening.
Ryan Kugler:
It’s the key to anything. If you just keep persisting in your goal and your passion. So I had a goal. I had a passion. I wanted to make this movie because, at the time, I wanted to be a director. So I would still go to the Paramount lot on the weekend, and I would just walk up to his office and see if he was there. I would still go into the Cheers set. Oh, no, they’re already closed. They’re not filming anymore type thing.
And I was never, you know, so I just kept persisting. And then I got him to commit to a day in the winter of, you know, what is it, 1987 or 88? And we filmed it and literally took 1 hour, and we cut it down to, you know, two and a half minutes. And he got, you know, Kirstie Alley there. He got Woody Harrelson there. He got George Wendt there. They just read it on, you know, on there, and they kind of improvised a little bit, and they did it. I mean, it’s. It’s not the highest quality of writing or filming, but for a 13-year-old, it’s okay.
Greg McKeown:
It was like the original Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Ryan Kugler:
I haven’t seen the original, but sure, David Ernie had 10, 20, 30 years of acting and directing.
Greg McKeown:
Well, precisely. But all I mean to say is that that show is, is half scripted, half spontaneous, so you have an intent and have to figure it out as you go. And so it’s not just a free-for-all all, but it isn’t something that you’re just purely learning lines. And that’s part of what seems to have made it raw and made it work. So.
Ryan Kugler:
Yes.
Greg McKeown:
What did this lead to then? The encore for you?
Ryan Kugler:
The encore was, so, as I told you, I would go around to the studios. I made friends. I made friends in all these different departments at the studios because they’d all say, who are you, and what are you doing here? Entertainment Tonight, we all know that TV show. So I made friends with somebody there, and I happened to tell him what I did one day, and he went, “What?”
And he was just as shocked. So then they actually edited the video for me for free, and they were. Did an interview with me, and we’re going to air a whole segment on it during something called the writer’s strike. So they needed something to promote and show, but then, of course, their producer, they didn’t run it. But the point is, after you make a film or you make a video, you have to pay to have it edited, which cost 5,10, $20,000 in today’s times. Back then, it probably cost me $2,500, which, in the eighties, I didn’t have that money. I’m a 13-year-old kid. That’s a lot of lemonade. I have to sell a lemonade stand to edit this video.
So the encores, I got them again. Here I am, making something happen. I produced something, and I was able to organize and put it together for a national TV show to then edit it for me for free and then interview me on how it worked.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, it’s an extension of this. It’s not just initiative and it’s not just persistence. It is network persistence. It’s somebody who’s saying; I have the chutzpah to go to the place where the people are and to walk around meeting people.
Ryan Kugler:
Yes.
Greg McKeown:
And sometimes that’s not going to work, and sometimes occasionally gets you into trouble. But a lot of the time you just meet the people and start having conversations you wouldn’t have before.
Ryan Kugler:
It’s like you and I go to a convention or conference, and you go to a networking event, and you walk up, and you got to have the chutzpah, like you said, to go up and go, “Hey, I’m Ryan. Nice to meet, meet you. This is what I do.” Which is not very common in, I think, a different generation today because most of it’s done online via, you know, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, where you send someone a message, say, I’m so and so. Can we do some business?
Where face-to-face door-knocking, as they called it in the old days. It takes a lot.
Greg McKeown:
What does it take in that moment, in your opinion?
Ryan Kugler:
Confront, decision, intention.
Greg McKeown:
But break it down to the, to the, to the millisecond. I mean, there’s a certain point at which you have to literally, in that case, get on the bike, go over to the place, put the bike somewhere, enter a building, meet somebody. I mean, what is it that, what is the thought process that allows you to let go of the fears that everybody else has or to persist, even though you feel exactly the same fears that others have?
Ryan Kugler:
It’s a good question, by the way. Very well put. I think that everyone has a gift, everyone has a talent. Everyone has coding, a chip inside of them that gets them to do something more or different or better than the other person. I didn’t have a fear of doing this at all, to be honest with you, and I still don’t. If I had to go into a building and go meet someone and just walk around, I have no problem with it. Where others might totally agree. So what? In the millisecond, it’s like, hey, what am I going to do today? I’m going to go and meet someone or learn about how a camera works. Because when I said I would go to the sets I was talking to the camera operators and going, “How does this Panavision camera work?”
“Well, this is how it works. This is what you do, and you turn this on”.
“Okay, cool. Now I know this.”
So, it was just something I wanted to do and something I wanted to learn. And anyone has a passion for something, whether it’s playing golf or playing basketball or creating some code that some new app, which probably I could never do, but they can do it, just like someone can play basketball and always get a three-pointer, which I can never do.
Greg McKeown:
There was an intent of real, genuine, unscripted curiosity.
Ryan Kugler:
Yes, I agree. And when I said before, if you have an intention and you have a purpose and you have a goal, you’re going to get what you want, and then you just have to persist and just keep going after it. And I think that’s what I’m gifted with. Or my talent is that like, I own an event business. If somebody calls me and says, “I want to do an event, and I want to have the space shuttle there, and I want it to have an explosion at the bottom, I want this.”
No fear, no problem. I’ll get it done.
Greg McKeown:
So transition is then to what it is that you do now, this three business integrated company of companies.
Ryan Kugler:
Yes. So basically, after I filmed that, I just went to school every day, and then my parents moved to Florida, so I kind of left LA. So therefore I kind of lost the oomph of making this because your listeners are going to go, wait a second, he made this short, and then it just went away. So, just a quick little five-second. I moved out of state and could no longer pursue my passion or gift or whatever to direct movies or make shorts with famous stars. I finished.
Greg McKeown:
It didn’t go away, you were taken away.
Ryan Kugler:
Thank you. I went away, and I just took a different path in life. Just like everyone gets to a crossroads, you know, the moving truck moves away, and you go, okay, I guess we’re going this way now.
Greg McKeown:
And so then?
Ryan Kugler:
Then I got out of school, and I worked for my father, who had a family business which was supplying videos, VHS videotapes, to video rental stores. So I kind of figured, well, I kind of want to be in the movie business, so this is kind of an interesting way to do this. Okay. So I’m like at the back end of the tail of the food chain of movie-making now. I’m now selling it to video stores so people can rent it.
So I got into that business, which is just basically buying and selling wholesaling movies, which to me is a widget, which is anything that’s sold. Obviously, people don’t buy DVDs anymore. It’s kind of gone, and they just stream it. But that is one of the businesses that just kept pivoting and pivoting where now that business is a wholesale business and distributes pretty much anything and everything from pens to phones to couches to whatever. I’m in the whole, I own a business, one of three that is in the wholesale business, and that is something I do.
And then from there, I kept growing because as we’ve talked about, I had this intention, this purpose of just getting stuff done and basically just started doing some other things, which is create an event business, create a marketing business. And here we are today, and I’m open to your question. Sorry.
Greg McKeown:
So tell us about the event business. What does, you know, what can’t you do?
Ryan Kugler:
Well, I don’t want to do weddings and bar mitzvahs and stuff and holiday anniversary parties. But no, basically what happened is, so I have this wholesale business. I’m doing this. And then I had a friend basically say, “Hey, we’re putting on this charity run. We’re a nonprofit. Can you help us with this 5K charity run walk?”
Everyone’s going to a 5K run walk with their friend. I’m like, “Okay, I’ll help out.” And I started helping out, and then that passion, I guess, to get something done, to create something, to create an event. Like I did with making a movie a short back in 1987, 88 came back to reignited, and I said, “Huh? I know how to get people together. I know how to do this. I know how to get this to happen. I know how to get this person in place.” And started an event business because I did it so well that actually people in Los Angeles started calling and saying, “Hey, I heard you did this event. Can you help us with ours?”
And I went, “Well, I was doing this for free for a nonprofit, but sure, I guess I can do it, and I’ll charge you.” And then here I do 35 events all over the country now.
Greg McKeown:
No, you say 35 events. Is that per year? This is the number that you’re doing now?
Ryan Kugler:
Yeah, it’s average. It’s between 30 and 40.
Greg McKeown:
And so give us a sense of, like, you know, give me a sense of one of the most surprising events that you’ve put together.
Ryan Kugler:
So, we just did an event, actually, two weeks ago at the Burbank airport here in Los Angeles. Every airport is required to do a fire drill, basically a simulated plane crash. This is for the fire department to keep up their certification with the FAA to show that they know how to handle emergencies. So, we helped with the logistics of that event. So we brought in, we got a C-17 plane there. We hired 50 actors.
There’s a plane that’s a model plane that gets lit on fire. The fire department comes the big, you know, those big trucks that you see coming, and they put out the fire. All the firemen come out in the ambulance, and they come and check the people and make sure the 50 people are okay. And they do a triage center, you know, green, red, and yellow. That’s an interesting event.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, I mean, I’ve flown in and out of Burbank so many times. It’s an extremely easy-to-navigate airport. So, who hired you to do that?
Ryan Kugler:
The airport did. So because I’m local to Burbank and because I’m an event company, and we’ve done other events for them. They’re building a new airport there, so the next time you fly, in about three years, it’ll be a whole new terminal. So we did a groundbreaking event for them a couple of times. We’ve done this event for them before the FAA emergency. So this is just one of many. So because you asked for something kind of neat and cool.
This is neat and cool because we, you know, they’re bringing in 30 fire trucks, they’re bringing in ten ambulances, they’re bringing in planes and helicopters and a whole. It’s a whole production that takes about 2 hours. And we helped, you know, you bring in actors who have to have makeup, so this guy’s got to have a cut on his face so that the fire department sees that person goes, okay, in the triage, you’re in red because you got blood creeping out. And then we put some bodies, some fake bodies out, not real people, but plastic rubber bodies. And then they see those as dead people, and they decide what to do with them.
But anyway, so it’s a whole production. The airport hires us because they have to do this. And then we feed all the people, too. So we set up everything. Tents, tables, chairs, to all the other logistics that are needed.
Greg McKeown:
Is this just training for the emergency personnel or every employee that works at the airport?
Ryan Kugler:
Emergency personnel. And LA City. So, the LA city. Because if there is an actual real plane crash, you’re. It’s what you call a three-alarm fire, whatever. But everyone’s brought in, so everyone that’s local has to come in because if you have, you know, some. What were there? 20 dead bodies and 45 hurt people. That’s not just the airport. The fire department can handle that.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, I don’t know quite what to call it, but this is like a live movie, you know, this is. This is the event that you’re, you’re putting together and. Yeah, give us another example.
Ryan Kugler:
Well, we do runs. We’ve done okay, so we did the STEM. So there’s, you know, the whole thing in the last five years about STEM, which is science, research, all that. So, the LA Clippers basketball team here in LA hosted a STEM convention for kids. So, with an event like that, it’s at the LA Convention Center. They brought in some 15,000 kids a day from all of the public schools. So we had to bust them all in. We had to get them into the convention center, get them cycled through, get them back out two, 3 hours later, and back onto their buses and out.
So these are the types of events we do. So we had to go arrange 150 buses, shut down roads, get the kids in security, food, get them all back out, get them, you know, and then clear everything up. So that’s just another event. So that was for 30,000 people. So we’re doing different events. You know, we do running events where we have to. We do so at the LA marathon or any marathon that happens, there are always school groups that participate in these runs as kind of a nonprofit type thing.
And we help train the kids in Los Angeles to do the run. There are about 4000 of them. So, a similar thing. We do five training races. We shut down 18 miles of road in LA. So we’re hiring 50 parking enforcement, ambulances, fire trucks, police, everything. So, the event business is far and wide. So it’s a little bigger than the short I made with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson, because there I just filmed it on the lot and it was just a few people and it was pretty simple. So I’ve escalated my career into having the passion to getting something done and achieving a goal of, you know, putting out an event for tens of thousands of people.
Greg McKeown:
I’ve spent a few years working with, living in LA, and working with Hollywood companies. And one of the unusual things about the industry is the speed with which you build an organism that exists only for a moment. In a sense, they’re heartbeat corporations. You know, there is this willingness and not just willingness; it’s the structure of the industry that the vast majority of people are independent, and so they are brought together to create, hopefully, magic, and then they disappear off. And so, it is a network-reliant industry more than any other industry. And I think it creates a lot of dysfunction, actually. I think there’s a lot of dysfunction in Hollywood that I’ve observed distinct and different from the hundreds of industries that I’ve worked with over the last 25 years.
Nevertheless, this part is quite magical. The willingness for people to trust people based on previous experiences and then trust them, hey, this is a good gig. I’ll come and join and put this together. And of course, everybody sees this from a distance in any major movie that they watch because look at the credits, and these days they’re just hundreds or thousands of people are involved. So it’s, I call it a heartbeat corporation, but you could call it like an Insta city.
Ryan Kugler:
I agree with you. That was very well put in how you said it. And I never thought of it that way because, yes, I do. Events all over the country. LA is the city where you can get the assets, get the logistics that you need 24 hours a day. Trust me, what you see happen in event hours at three in the morning is amazing. And we do; we set up a whole event at three, four, and five in the morning. Everyone shows up at six, seven. They’re all gone by 10,11. The whole thing is done at twelve.
And it’s funny, when we do events like that, people, you take a picture of the before and after, you go, wait, there was nothing here 6 hours ago, and then you had a circus here, and then it’s all gone 6 hours later and you go, yep, that’s the beauty of the event business.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, but that’s it right there, isn’t it? It’s a circus tent mentality. And we think of it now as motion pictures or, you know, there’s different ways of thinking about the industry. It’s one of the only industries in the world, as far as I am concerned. The studios themselves do not contain or own the execution function of their own business. The executives are going out into that networked system and saying, well, would you, “What’s your idea? Give me your okay. Yes, well, we’ll pick somebody to produce it, and we’ll put a team together, a director, and then they do their magic through their networks.”
I mean, it’s a very unusual industry to have so much of the creative function not being under the management of the brand that’s initiating it. But it seems like you have tapped into part of that industry competence and muscle memory that exists in that system to be able to create events. You’re calling them events, and I’m not sure that you need to change that word. But really, as you’re describing them, they’re not really events in the way that maybe people would typically think about them. They’re there, you know, it’s like spontaneous movies. They’re instant production sets, something like that.
Ryan Kugler:
Yeah, I completely agree. And I like your view on it. And yes, it is something that is, you know, we’re doing an event in about three weeks in Hawaii. So we’re doing this for a thousand people. It’s sporting activities, and we’re importing 1015 people, meaning we’re bringing in our staff, and then we’re hiring another 30 or 40 people. And it’s just everything. I mean, we’re getting everything from kayaks to hundreds of bikes to outriggers to everything.
And it’s just, and it’s spread across four different properties in Hawaii. And so it’s a production is what I’m getting to, like you’re saying, and it’s all brought together for a brief moment in time, and then it all just disbands, and it’s all gone.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. And it’s like what your core competence is. And you’ve already tried to articulate this in different words, but it’s like you’re an executionist, you know, oh, we can’t make this happen. Well, here’s an executionist, so it’ll be done. And so none of these different locations or events concerns you because even though you don’t know necessarily the area, you know, you’re willing to do these events in any location anywhere in the world if it’s the right kind of opportunity.
You have a sense of confidence based on this competence. I can find the people. I can put out my, you know, my asset net. You know, what do we need? Well, who has that? Somebody will have those assets. Somebody will have those connections, and if they don’t, they’ll put me in touch with somebody. A high confidence. I can make this happen.
Ryan Kugler:
Yes. Yes, I can. So that that’s the core of what we’re saying is, yes, I can get it done. I can make it happen. We did another event where we had to land a helicopter in Griffith Park, and it was hilarious. It was a city helicopter, and the people who wanted it was the government, and there was just one person blocking it, which was the park. And I was like, “Guys, the city owns you. You’re the park. We’re going to land the helicopter.”
“Well, this is what you need to do.”
“Okay, great. So we make a helicopter pad. Not a problem.”
“Well, it needs to be this, this and this. We need a fire, you know, a fire truck there in case it crashes.”
“Great. We’re going to get a fire truck.”
So that is the key to this podcast and what we’re explaining, you just persist. You have purpose; you have intention. It’s there. You’re going to get it done. You can get it done. Anyone can get it done.
Greg McKeown:
Well, you can get it done.
Ryan Kugler:
Well, there are other people. Get other things done. LeBron James can win a championship, you know. You know, Mark Zuckerberg can build a social media app that takes over the world. Elon can make a car that’s a submarine, you know.
Greg McKeown:
Yes, but this is. I just watched an old classic video of Steve Jobs talking about this, and he expressed words to this effect. “There is a disease that people can, that sometimes infects people where they believe that 90% of the job is having a great idea.” And he said.
Ryan Kugler:
I think I remember hearing this.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. He said, “Nothing in my experience shows that to be true. It’s a disease of thinking. He said, what it really is is you have that great idea that does matter. But then it’s holding,” he said, “5000 different things in your head. All these different trade offs, constant learning. Because suddenly one day you realize, well, that thing that we thought would happen or that we could do, we can’t do because there’s a limit in the glass manufacturing process or the engineering just isn’t at the point that we can achieve it. But suddenly, there’s a new opportunity that’s come along.” And he said, “You never produce at the end exactly what you imagined at the beginning, but you collect all of these people, great talent.” He says you need the best talent in the world. And then, he used a beautiful metaphor.
He said, “Close to where he used to live, there was this man at the end of the road who looked pretty scary and kind of kept to himself and was a bit of a weird guy. But he went over to his garage one time and in the garage there, he showed him this machine that he had. And it’s just a little machine. And he just took just normal stones from the garden, put it in this machine and started running it.”
“And so it made this terrible noise, and it’s just running and running.” And he said he just ran it all night long. And so he came back the next day. Steve comes back the next day, and all of these normal stones everywhere else are now these beautifully shined, polished gems, almost.
And he loved that as a metaphor for the execution process. Execution. It’s about bringing all this talent together and all these connections together who work on the thing, and they knock off all the edges and all the things that get in the way. And eventually, you’ve got something that’s polished and it’s beautiful, and then you’ve executed it. I thought that this was a very lovely, succinct, even way of describing what the execution process looks like. Your reaction?
Ryan Kugler:
I agree with you. I actually am going to Google this later to see if I can watch it. But I 100% agree. Agree. And I do. Yes, you bring resources together, whether it’s people and you’re delegating or not and you put it all together to achieve the common goal, what needs to be done.
