Meet Ryan Doyle

We recently connected with Ryan Doyle and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ryan, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

For me, work ethic comes from the mental visualization comparison of a life I want to live compared to a life I don’t want to live. I always had a drive in me because I was raised to reach for it all. But there is nothing quite like looking at the reality of life when you begin your professional path and asking yourself, “what do I desire?”

I remember sitting in my dad’s car, looking at my rickety apartment and wondering how I was going to make rent this month. The short term fear was real, but the long-term reality was incredibly motivating. I wanted an enormous life. I wanted unimaginable experiences. I wanted endless freedom. And when staring at the jobless market of 2008 (famously named the “housing crisis”), I decided out loud that I was going to have to create it myself. So, I went inside my janky apartment, passing my empty refrigerator, opting against the expense of my air conditioning unit, sat down on my freebie recliner and got to work.

And I never stopped creating what I visualized on that day.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

From the beginning, my professional career has always been guided by my personal desires and dreams. I wanted to monetize my own fun. I began my entrepreneurial career by helping people through a self created non-profit organization called Live to Give Foundation. I didn’t have any business experience and I had just changed directions from my 2-year effort to apply to the University of Michigan Business School. My mentality was, “no one can be mad at a guy who doesn’t know how to run a business, but who just wants to help people.” So I did. And I helped a LOT of people by raising over a million dollars with my group of college misfit party pros. it was my first business success…even though I didn’t earn a dollar for myself.

While I was running my non-profit, I needed a videographer to capture the stories of people we were helping. I couldn’t find anyone, so like a true entrepreneur, I bought a cheapo camera and fulfilled the need myself. Turns out I liked it. And I thought I could eventually be great at it. So, after 6 years of running my non-profit, I decided to close down and focus on building my career running a video production company, named Video Vision 360.

I bootstrapped the company with no startup capital, very little knowledge and the gut-feeling that these platforms called Youtube, Facebook and Instagram were going to be huge websites that would get my work out far and wide. Turns out, I was correct haha. So to get started, I filmed my best friends who were very eclectic: a future NFL star, a former NFL star, a technology genius, a rapper and a world traveler. By filming these people that I loved who were doing things that I loved, I broke into all these industries. I traveled to 50+ countries filming fundraisers and viral content. I ran out of tunnels and filmed 300-pound super humans. I would stage dive with incredibly famous musicians. And I captured the early stages of e-learning, robotics, and AI. I was the story-teller to my wildly ambitious and talented buddies.

Along the way, I expanded my energies to help build startups and lock-in equity deals. I found ways to get published by National Geographic and seen on Netflix. I captured the eyes of the world with a billion views of my wildly luxurious and awe-inspiring vacations. I because a guy who could live the life on my dreams on my own terms, with the wildest people in any country on the planet.

After 15 years of running my video production company, I got a phone call from a woman who hired me as a camp counselor 22 years prior. She followed my journey, loved who she was watching and asked me create the marketing for her new summer camp franchise. I told her I would film for her at half cost if she would entertain an idea I had for her. She agreed. Now, I am an equity partner in her summer camp franchise business and to sweeten the deal, she gave my wife and I our own summer camp to operate.

Now, I would say I have the heart of a non-profiteer, the vision of a videographer, the goofiness of a camp director, the mind of a business builder and the dream of sharing all of it with the world.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Quality One: Dreamer

I was born a dreamer. We are all born dreamers. I do believe that dreams whither and die if you don’t exercise the dream muscles. You have to take leaps, challenge yourself, get outside of your comfort zone, and be risky…and I do think its key to do these things early in life; wait for nothing. It’s easy to bounce back when you are young, wild and free. It is much harder when you enter into the phases of life that present a certain lifestyle, income and family.

Quality Two: Pursue Passion not Logic

Life is long. And life is REALLY long, if you don’t like how you spend your days. Follow what you are passionate about, even if you don’t know how it can possibility turn into a profession. We live in a time that truly has unlimited possibilities for so many things that once upon a time could never manifest into income. If you love something and you become great at it, you can find a way to turn it into a lifelong profession. Start with pursuit of passion, not the logical choice. Lead with the heart, not the brain.

Quality Three: Naivety

Being naive is a superpower that gets overlooked. It helps to have no experience and no knowledge of how things can work or fail. Taking the leap is often the hardest part and our “grown up” responsibilities and life experience can get in the way of you jumping into the unknown. Jump out of the plane and then figure out how to assemble the parachute.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

Nowadays, I think it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed and stressed. In the States, we have a very imbalanced, unhealthy, fast-paced, never enough, get-there-faster, beat the competition, sleep when I die mentality. I work incredibly hard and I always have, but it was always on my own terms and with a balance that served my entire self…holistically.

However, being met with stress and anxiety is inevitable. I have practiced deep breathing, meditation and other self serving practices my entire life, which of course help. But my true north to reducing the feelings of being overwhelmed lives in a deep-rooted trust of process.

My favorite quote from Eckhart Tolle is, “rest quietly in your heart with the knowledge that all things are happening with perfection.” I find extreme comfort in knowing that all things (even the “bad” things) are happening perfectly.

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