Everyone can be Ryan Reynolds
Why mixing sharp business skills with finely tuned creative craft can be a better formula for success.
If you haven’t yet seen Steven Bartlett’s interview with Scott Galloway on his podcast Diary of a CEO (DOAC), it’s worth a watch. And one part, in particular, caught my attention.
Scott Galloway is Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the Prof G and Pivot Podcasts. His recent TED talk, “How the US is destroying young people's future”, quickly went viral.
He is the author of several books, the latest being The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Financial Security.
Galloway is definitely having his “moment”, as his media exposure is quite high due to all these activities. His business and financial acumen is matched only by his sensitive recognition of the challenges for younger generations and his down-to-earth view of the role of money in people’s lives. I enjoy hearing what he has to say quite a bit.
Steven asks what he would tell his kids if one says he wants to be a professional actor and the other a musician. His answer, simply put, is that he would support them for a defined period of time while they perused their “passion”, but eventually that support would come to an end, and if things didn’t work out, he would insist they put their attention towards a plan B. He cites statistics on the unemployment rates for actors and musician in the US, and shares his view that many people mistake their hobbies for their passions.
Galloway’s answer would be a familiar one to any of us who actually has had the experience of telling their parents that we wanted to pursue any such career field in media, art, or design. The reaction from parents is often one of protection and tentative support. And it demonstrates why it’s so important today to shine a light on the conditions and assumptions in both the interview question as well as Galloway’s answer.
If a young person were to share with me the same ambition of becoming an actor, the first question I would ask is why. If their response was that they wanted to be rich and famous, because those are the traits of who they see on film and TV, then I would tell them they are picking the wrong route to reach that goal. To be rich and famous, and presumably loved the way celebrated actors are, is a perfectly fine goal, if vague, but many other paths that don’t involve becoming an actor could achieve that goal. So, do they want to actually become an actor, or just be rich, famous, and loved? Or both? Someone like, say, Ryan Reynolds.
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Ryan Reynolds is a very capable actor, and also a fine human being, who somehow finds a balance between his intense work schedule and the high priority he places in his family. He is also very, very wealthy.
But here’s the thing: Reynolds’ wealth is not just because he’s an in-demand actor, it’s because he is a very smart businessperson. He and his companies have invested in or started an array of successful businesses, including ad agency Maximum Effort, Aviation Gin, Mint Mobile (which was sold to T-Mobile in 2023 for $1.35 billion), and the F1 Team Alpine. And let’s not forget the Wrexham Football Club. For these, he doesn’t work alone, but alongside other smart businesspeople and a core team who know their stuff. He knows his celebrity will help open doors to good partnership arrangements, because his personal brand – coming from his work as an actor – is a positive attribute of any venture he engages in.
One of the reasons there are so many out-of-work performers is because the strong likelihood is that the education they received only taught them how to act, not how to be an actor.
Do you think Ryan Reynolds learned about entrepreneurship in acting school? Not likely!
And this is where the context to the question posed to Scott Galloway is so important. One of the reasons there are so many out-of-work performers is because the strong likelihood is that the education they received only taught them how to act, not how to be an actor. And being an actor has many other applications than just acting. Being an actor means not just knowing how to memorize lines, hit your mark on stage, and perform. It means understanding what you offer in the fullest way possible for the largest number of sectors in the economy, how to access and make opportunities, how to market yourself as a small business, how to detect trends in culture that enable you to move with them, how to use technology to reach opportunities and audiences for your work. Being an actor requires a whole lot of other skills that many acting schools don’t teach. One of them is the business of acting. The other is learning how to leverage any success you do achieve for other opportunities.
If you want to maximize your skills as an actor, do a part-time MBA while you audition for your acting gigs. And while you’re at it, create space for your independently-created shows or films so that you can continue to get yourself out there.
The lack of business and career success education in most media, art, and design schools is another indicator of how the starving artist myth has come to embed itself in so many aspects of society.
Galloway’s answer assumed that, in this hypothetical scenario, his kids wanted to pursue acting and music in a traditional way: get training, and go out for gigs. In this respect, his answer was sound, as the number of opportunities for actors and musicians who try this traditional route is sparse. You’re essential a person-for-hire hoping that others will need what you offer. But today, more performers and other creative professionals learn to make their own opportunities, and for this they need skills in a domain that he would likely support: business and entrepreneurship.
The lack of business and career success education in most media, art, and design schools is another indicator of how the starving artist myth has come to embed itself in so many aspects of society, including the way we design education programs. Most programs are very good at teaching students the craft of their field, but in some of those schools, trying to even initiate a conversation about including relevant business and career success content in the curriculum can lead to opinions of promoting sell-out culture and watered-down artists. Their belief that true artists only the ones who operate outside of commercialism robs young talent of realizing the fruits of their full potential. With these biases in place, and the evidence of its impacts in the way many artists never come to achieve financial sustainability, Galloway’s response is completely understandable.
But there is another way. And honestly, if I were Scott Galloway’s child, I would be very interested in discovering what kind of music or acting career I might create for myself with the marketing intelligence and business foresight that my dad could share. The combination of the two – craft of a good performer with the business and finance knowledge of someone like him – would be a powerful combination. And it would be one that is especially needed in this time of upheaval across many of the creative industries who are struggling to arrive the next round of viability strategies.
It’s only by re-writing what it means today to be a thriving creative professional who is as much business-oriented as creatively-minded that a kid telling their parents they want to be an artist can be cause for excitement and anticipation.