Navy Discipline, Zombie Obstacle Courses, and Scaling to $55 Million, with Ryan Hogan

How does a 24-year Navy veteran go from throwing the first-ever zombie 5K to building a $55 million murder mystery empire?

In this episode of The Scalability Code, Matt Haney sits down with serial entrepreneur and military veteran Ryan Hogan. Ryan unpacks his wildly non-linear journey, revealing how he navigated massive failures—like the bankruptcy of his event company Run For Your Lives—and used those hard-learned lessons to scale Hunt A Killer to $55 million in just five years. In this episode, we discuss:

• The danger of making decisions too fast and why it's costing your business
• Why tracking leading indicators instead of lagging indicators is steering you wrong.
• The reality of a "rockstar on paper" who drives revenue but creates massive organizational toxicity
• The unforgettable advice Ryan received from his Navy commander about teamwork

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Transcript

Ryan Hogan 0:00

I always had the energy, the ambition. Like I always knew what I wanted, but I had no idea how to achieve those things. spoiler alert, I don't think anybody really does like, you just like the whole thing here is you just keep going. you keep the compass pointed in the direction you want to go and you just keep going

Speaker 0:16

Welcome to The Scalability Code, the podcast that helps you get out of the sh*t show and start growing your business. And now for your host, Matt Haney.

Matt Haney 0:25

All right, folks, here we are today. Another episode of the Scalability Code. Today joined by Ryan Hogan. Ryan, thanks for joining us I know you're used to being on the other side of the microphone interviewing folks, you've got a very successful podcast, and you've built some great businesses and are in the middle of building another one. I'm excited to chat with you today.

Ryan Hogan 0:44

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me, Matt. Appreciate it.

Matt Haney 0:47

So, uh, we start off the same way. I ask entrepreneurs to go back and think about people in their lives that were impactful for them on their entrepreneurial journey. Maybe it was a milkman that dropped milk off on your doorstep. Do they even do that anymore. Or somebody you, you were adjacent to, or a father or uncle or somebody that you saw as an entrepreneur that said, this person did it. That's really cool. I don't know how hard it is, but I wanna go do it. So anybody come to mind?

Ryan Hogan 1:14

Yeah. I mean for me, especially when it comes to entrepreneurship, I think my father and my uncle had probably the biggest impact in that.'cause when I think about. When, when did I get into trying to create value in this universe? it started in third grade selling creepy crawlers. And so for me it, it was like early exposure to, and it's not necessarily success, like my dad struggled in business, but I saw him keep taking the shot and, I watched as he learned from his mistakes and just kept moving forward. but between that, and then my uncle was a very successful architect in Baltimore, Maryland. and watching him. I like, just kind of look like he always had, not necessarily a fancy car, but he always had a new car. I was like, how does he do that? He's like, oh, it's a business expense. I was like, oh, what's that?

Matt Haney 1:59

That's the write off.

Ryan Hogan 2:01

and now, now I know. Um, but I think both of those together, which is, you know, one just not giving up. and like consistently and constantly trying to figure out a way to create value in this world. And then the other that. You know, very much more of a technician or, or, um, you know, he was the architect. Now he built a firm around himself, but he was still the architect at the end of the day, and so I kind of got, you know, both sides of that.

Matt Haney 2:28

love that story. I've asked that question 50 times and gotten 50 different answers. I've never actually had an entrepreneur around me like, oh, you're the first one. That's awesome. and then multi-generations and everywhere in the middle. this is a podcast about. scaling. you know, we had a chance to chat a little bit before this, so I have a kind of an understanding of your background. But I'd love for you to go back to your entrepreneurial journey and, give the listeners and viewers a chance to understand sort of where you were, where that got you, and sort of where you are today and your plans for the future in your current endeavor.

Ryan Hogan 3:01

Yeah, and I guess a a, my journey's been really interesting because it's been this parallel path of like two very dissimilar, professional tracks. Number one, I've been in the Navy since I was 17. my mom signed my permission slip. so I've been in for 24 years now. I did 15 years active duty. I wound up going through a commissioning program and then I've been in the reserves for the last nine years. and so there's been like that track, which is very much the antithesis of entrepreneurship. So if entrepreneurship is like solving all these problems and there is no right answer and you're just trying to figure out the things that you need to solve in order to move the organization ahead, you compare that to the military where like. If you got a problem to solve, there is a 120 page, process, SOP, to like go through step by step. but from an entrepreneurship standpoint, it was, you know, selling creepy crawlers in third grade and then shoveling snow, mowing grass, doing all of those different things. the first real company that took off was called, Run for your lives. And so there was a lot of stuff leading up to run for your lives, but run for your Lives was the one that truly achieved some semblance of scale. It did not have a happy ending. but we did scale and that company went from zero to about 5 million in two years, and it was the first ever zombie infested 5K obstacle course race. So if you think back to like 2010, 2011, there was Warrior Dash, Spartan Race,

Matt Haney 4:24

Yep.

Ryan Hogan 4:25

uh, tough Mutter. Um, we were actually number three. we didn't get any of the press because we were just this weird experience that was traveling the country. but at the end of the day, we put 120,000 participants through in 2012, not a, uh, a happy story fairytale ending. I made every mistake in the book, and so hired all my best friends, not for competency or skills, but just because they made me

Matt Haney 4:48

were your bros.

Ryan Hogan 4:49

and I love them. Yeah. Um, you know, I, I didn't, I couldn't spell p and l and so in the event business. Everything is deferred revenue until the event actually happens. So when your bank account says, Hey, there's 2 million here, that there's not actually 2 million'cause you haven't incurred any of the expenses associated with that, with that, event. And so learned some very, very painful lessons that that ultimately ended in a bankruptcy. and then fast forward three years. So I, I wound up getting a commissioning in the Navy. I was going through a program. The company bankrupted, transferred out to San Diego, drove ships for a few years and then launched Hunt a killer. And hunt a killer, very, very strange journey in, in companies. But it was a, originally an event where it was part of escape room, and part immersive theater. So we transformed a 200 acre campground into a living crime scene and, we brought participants to kind of navigate their way through a murder mystery. And it was great, but the issue that we had was that you couldn't have thousands of people standing around crime scene. So when you think back to run for your lives, everything happens in waves. And we could put 15, 20,000 people through in any given weekend. Hunt a killer. The event we can only put 600 people through. And so we said, well, great, well we have product market fit. We sold out the event, but we don't have the right business model. And so we pivoted into the subscription box business model, that took us from zero to 55 million in about five years, and used a lot of lessons learned from the first company. Sold it two years ago and then got into talent acquisition six months later. Out of, out of all things.

Matt Haney 6:22

That's awesome. what did the transaction look like at sale? I mean, were you selling to a strategic where somebody wanted to operate or what was that? What did that look like?

Ryan Hogan 6:30

Yeah, we sold to a strategic, and so we ran a very kind of typical investment banker led process. We had raised about 12 million bucks. we had a board in place, so like it was very much a true strategic investment banking process that we ran. we had three horses in the race at the end, and, now, uh, formerly known as, Relatable, uh, was the acquiring company of Hunter Killer.

Matt Haney 6:50

And they still have your business operating or a division of it in some capacity.

Ryan Hogan 6:54

Yeah, there's,

Matt Haney 6:55

Two years ago. I hope so.

Ryan Hogan 6:57

yeah, yeah. Every, everything's still there. The team's still there, the creative team. Now obviously the unfortunate reality of, of m and A is that especially with the strategic, there's a lot of overlap. Um, but the core competency and the things that they needed are still operating today.

Matt Haney 7:13

That's awesome. Well, uh, that segues to my next question, which is, you know, you are hiring and placing people for a living. I have myself done the same thing for majority of my career, which is helping people on their journey. An incredibly rewarding and heavy process at times. But go back through, either hunt a killer or even back in the military, any one or two people that stuck out to you specifically that dramatically impacted your journey, either good or bad, you can reference their name or not,

Ryan Hogan 7:41

Yeah. Um, I'll start with the, with the good mission critical, and, and it was, I mean, he was my boss and it was someone that I served with in the Navy. it's really interesting when, when I talk about my career, because like everything seems like this natural, like started at point A and then this normal trajectory where like it's up into the right to point B and that that was not it. Um, for

Matt Haney 8:05

that's not how it goes. That's what I read. That's the business books.

Ryan Hogan 8:09

it was, it was the opposite. But for context, like I was in E one twice and the only reason that you're in E one twice is because you got into trouble. And so I'd gotten into, some pretty big trouble, in the military in my first couple years and kind of the inflection point for me. I always had the energy, the ambition. Like I always knew what I wanted, but I had no idea how to achieve those things. spoiler alert, I don't think anybody really does like, you just like the whole thing here is you just keep going. you keep the compass pointed in the direction you want to go and you just keep going. I got into trouble and my commanding officer. Everybody that was getting to trouble,'cause I was still in the schoolhouse was getting kicked out of the program. So I started off as an air crewman. that's my helmet behind me. I flew in the back of MH 53 echo helicopters and then eventually did test development. And I was in this program where I was on a year, where post nine 11. And so it was a very high rate of recruiting for the military. And so a lot of the schools were jammed up. So I was sitting in a schoolhouse for a year. Just basically doing nothing. we would show up, we would swab the deck, and then we would go back to the barracks. And I was like, what a waste of like, I'm just wasting away here. I'm not growing profe, I'm not doing anything. and so I left and eventually came back, got smart, but anybody that was getting into trouble was just getting kicked outta this air crew program. And my captain at the time was basically like. I'm gonna retain you in the program. So I got all the things I got knocked down in rank, half months, pay times two, restriction for 60 days. Like I got the maximum of everything. But he kept me in the program and he basically said, I see something in you. And so I'm gonna give you a second chance when it comes to your career, but in the short term, like you're gonna feel the pain of, the consequences of what you did. And that was it, man, from that point forward, at least in that specific instance, like, I was like, I'm not gonna let this guy down, this guy. See, I don't know what he sees, but I'm not gonna let this person down. and the rest is history.

Matt Haney 10:01

That's awesome. is he still around and do you have a relationship with him still?

Ryan Hogan 10:05

I've been, I just went through this, What is it? It's called the artist way, and it's like this 12 week program. and like you, one of the exercises is to write a letter to someone that was meaningful. I was not able to locate him. but yeah, but I wrote him a letter, so, uh, maybe I'll

Matt Haney 10:19

did the letter, did you send it to him? Does he know how to, who knows.

Ryan Hogan 10:23

Yeah, yeah. who knows. I still have

Matt Haney 10:24

In today's world, you can't track this guy down.

Ryan Hogan 10:27

I, and we're a recruiter. I like, that's, I, I should just ask my team to plug it into the system. You're right, you're

Matt Haney 10:32

Yeah, I think there's some technology that can help you here. I'm just going out there, there might be a way. Well, that's awesome. I love it when people, um, see a special thing in someone and are willing to invest in that. I feel like sometimes that can go the other way where I'm working with a visionary entrepreneur who's locked in on helping someone and I'm constantly telling him, I'm the stranger in the room that's seeing this relationship being unhealthy. Like, you're so obsessed with fixing this person. They don't want what you're offering, you're just fixated on fixing them. But to your point, you were interested, willing, and curious, and so was the person that was working with you, and investing you. That's awesome. Um, my next question kind of goes back to the entrepreneurial journey. we've talked about, delayed decision making is something that I think is a very fascinating topic. Because there's certain circumstances where delaying a decision is going to cost you something. There's also certain circumstances where delaying a decision turns out to be the best thing that could have happened. And I'll give you a quick example of today. My oldest daughter lives in a boarding school. She's moving out to live with two of her friends. She's 16, by the way. She's an incredibly talented athlete operating at the highest level. We agreed to get her a place where she could move out of the housing of the boarding program. So we find this place. Literally. I get the lease yesterday afternoon and I get a phone call from the person this morning that said, someone booked in the middle of your lease. We can't lease it to you. And I was like, this was yesterday at four o'clock. I couldn't have done anything more to make that move forward other than like signing right away, which would've been frivolous and you know, irresponsible. And now here I am back to the drawing board. So a delayed decision that negatively impacted me, but I can promise you we'll find a solve. So I don't know, does anything come to mind where you look back and you're like, that was really good or really bad?

Ryan Hogan 12:25

Yeah. it's so interesting. I have like a counter example to that of, uh, if I just did the opposite and I probably got sucked into a terrible lease because I was like, because no one else was probably even looking at it. I'm like, gotta get it. So literally just signed a lease yesterday for, for an office space. So we will, we'll see how that goes.

Matt Haney 12:42

Ooh. new recording studio.

Ryan Hogan 12:44

that's it. My background's gonna change. So if we do this again, one

Matt Haney 12:47

Nobody will know.

Ryan Hogan 12:49

be

Matt Haney 12:49

it. I love it.

Ryan Hogan 12:50

different. Um, you know what's really interesting? You just brought up this delayed decision making. And I think that's actually a problem that, that I have. and this is probably a part of where, where some of this conversation will go eventually on this podcast, but like, I'm very quick to make decisions. and like if there's a problem, I feel like I need to solve it. And I would say where I've been most detrimental in organizations has actually been. When an organization matures past a point, like delayed decision making, which I had no idea this was a concept, is probably more. Advantageous to the success versus their early days. And this has been kind of a self revelation over the last 12 months, maybe a little bit longer, but this idea of like, if I stay too long, then bad things start happening. And so, like my sweet spot in organizations is, is pre-product market fit and moving as fast as possible to get to that product market fit. And then now at least I know I need an off ramp. but delayed decision making as a, for instance of this. So relevant in the business service space. So I come from consumer space where we were spending up to$150,000 each day into Facebook advertising. when we have an idea or we want to test something within 24 hours, we would know if we have a new product idea, if we have a new button color, whatever the question was, we would have an answer for that within 24 hours. And so we could move very fast. Um, and so. That's not the case in business services. what we have realized is it takes six months to understand, if a decision that we made all the way back then is actually working to be able to get it through the snake and actually collect the data on it. Here's a great example. We have a podcast. It's called Confessions of an Implementer. We were six months into the podcast. I had signed a 12 month, agreement and I was like, this isn't working. Like our hypothesis has been blown out. Nobody's listening to the podcast, It's not doing anything good for us. So I went back to the, the firm We want out. it's not working. We're not, we're not getting any business from this. And they were like, well, you signed a 12 month contract. And so this whole like delayed decision making, the theory was like forced upon me because we were locked in. And literally like probably within 60 to 90 days after that conversation, things just took off for us. And like, that was like magic or happenstance. Like I didn't delay the decision. I went out of this contract, nothing's working. And then it took an extra three months and, what those situations have taught me is like this concept that you just brought up, delayed decision making is critically important based upon where you play the space and how long things to take to get the right data.

Matt Haney 15:34

Well, you said the last word, unscripted. You said data. You also mentioned in that comment about the, podcast you were, you had set your 12 month goal or contract three, six months in, you weren't hitting it, and then at some point it changed. So that whole process, decisions were made based on data. what were the metrics that you were using in that? Scenario that said, this is what I want, this is where I'm going. I'm not here and now I am here. Like, what? And you can't use revenue. And I think a podcast is a really good example of that.'cause revenue's obviously the easiest one. Right. But there's gotta be some other metrics that you are using. You obviously in your ad space, you were talking about the resilient metrics. But, what are some your favorite metrics that have helped you on the podcast side?

Ryan Hogan 16:21

Yeah, and I'll say like we were tracking the wrong metrics outta the gate, It depends on where I'm looking at metrics. So if I'm sitting on the leadership team and I'm looking at metrics, I actually want lagging, indicators. and the reason for that is like, I wanna know what's happening in the business today. And we are very intentional about the leading indicators, are all at the core function areas. So like the operations team has leading indicators, the marketing team has leading indicators, and I can drop in and look at their leading indicators. At any point, how many calls do you have and how many this, how many that. But what I wanna know, like when I'm sitting, on the leadership team, is like, I wanna know what the outcomes of all of those different things that they're tracking and that they're setting goals against. What we were tracking in the early days, and this was the wrong thing, is we were tracking downloads. We were tracking how many people are consuming or listening to this because we believe that that was a leading indicator. Based upon how many people would eventually come to us and say, Hey, I have a recruiting need, therefore X, Y, Z. and we would get a client out of it. And what we realized is like there was a disparity. So we had the leading indicator that was growing. the audience was growing downloads were growing listenership was all growing. But the lagging indicator of like revenue, new client acquisition, all these different things wasn't moving. We're like, that's super interesting. And so that's when I pulled the handle and tried to punch outta the contract. What we realized is we were thinking about it all wrong. Generally when people have podcast strategies, it's about building relationships with the guest. And for us, it was never like that. That wasn't the true intention. We weren't measuring to that, um, because we thought that conversation would get in front of our ICPs. That's, that's not what it turned out to be. it did turn out to be the relationships. And so for us, what we started to track and start to turn is how many referrals are we getting? How many times are we reconnecting, with these podcast guests? are we nurturing those relationships? What is our process for nurturing those relationships? How do we do it in an authentic, genuine, and kind of go giver way where there's zero expectation, but we at least want to know the health of that. Once we started tracking that, we started to see numbers kind of pop out and we're like, oh, that's interesting. And then three months later, once we realized those numbers were going up. then new client acquisition started to go up, and so we were measuring and we were thinking about this completely the wrong way. Outcome completely better than we ever could have expected. However, the hypothesis was dead wrong going in.

matt-haney_2_02-06-2025_192447 18:51

You are listening to the Scalability Code. I'm your host, Matt Haney, founder of Sinclair Ventures, and we help visionary entrepreneurs like you get out of the shit show and focus on growing your business. We offer fractional COO and leadership coaching services that free up that brain of yours to focus on what's next. Learn more about us at SinclairVentures. com. Now back to it.

Matt Haney 19:12

As somebody who is also hosting a podcast surprise. Uh, that's what I'm doing. I've struggled, you know, candidly with. What does success look like for this? Because frankly, I enjoy it. It's obvious that you enjoy it as well, and that, for me is a metric of success. While it's a little bit subjective, you know? Okay. but my point is, is that I need to, I need, as, I need emo and dog food. That's one of my clients says, he's like, you need to go back, you know, eat your own dog food. So I'm, I'm eating my dog food now to go back and look at. My metrics for what success looks like here, other than just the fact that I enjoy it. You talked about this earlier, when referencing your buddies, um, I, I, I was on a Bad Boss confessional podcast. I don't know if you know Beth. She's in the EOS world and my bad. Boss moment was one of my favorite moments.'cause it was awful, but it was a great learning moment. So, I'm gonna flip this back to you. As somebody who's now in the recruiting as a service space, tell me your worst hiring decision, or you can even say one of the worst hiring decisions you've seen clients make, or there's gotta be some reason why you decided to get into recruiting as a service Hiring the right people is mission critical, but hiring the wrong person teaches you something. So give me something about wrong person that you've hired and the outcomes.

Ryan Hogan 20:28

Yeah, for this one, I'll intentionally leave names out. Um, but I, I've, um, but I, I'll give you a great example and it's one of the reasons that I got in into recruiting and not, I'm not a recruiter. Maybe that's, uh. Maybe that's something like I, I shouldn't be promoting, but like I find subject matter experts. I was not a game designer. I was not a, an obstacle course race designer. I find brilliant humans who have mastered the craft and then I partner with them, um, to go and execute. So when I've gotten hiring wrong again, not an expert recruiter, but like, I can ask questions, I can read books, I can figure this whole thing out. when I got recruiting wrong in the past, it's never been because I couldn't read a resume. it has never been because I didn't know what's the subject matter expertise that the organization needs Do they have a college education? Yeah, they do. Uh, were they in a similar sized company? Yes, they were. but 90% of the time when I've gotten hiring wrong, it's because I brought the wrong fit into the organization. I brought the wrong human, not evil. There's certain cultures that organizations take on. Generally, if they're smaller, it takes on the culture and the value set that the founder has or the founders have. But at the end of the day, like. That organization has a certain way of thinking and a certain way of, of operating a certain way of making decisions I have hired some rock stars on paper, like rock stars from SVPs, from huge production companies. I've hired, people that had been successful in entrepreneurship in their own right, but were looking to join something like Hunter Killer that they could be a part of and, and, and help, you know, help us grow. there was one person that truly did help us grow. this individual knew everything about how to navigate to the place we were going. when you think about let's look at, hunt to Killer, for instance, like getting hunt to killer into retail, there are like, you could call somebody, you could go hire a shop to help you out. But there is a very specific path to get on retail shelves. First is generate demand. but after you've generated the demand, like there's a clear cut path and process for how you open up those doors. We had no idea. And so, there's an individual that I had hired in the past that like knocked down all of the doors, like beyond my wildest expectations as far as what we were able to do from a company standpoint. On the other side, the amount of distrust, and the amount of friction that this person created inside of the organization was more detrimental than the success that we had led to from the other channels that we had opened.

Matt Haney 23:06

If in the revenue seat or in a revenue seat. ish?

Ryan Hogan 23:11

Ish, yeah.

Matt Haney 23:11

I see that a lot. the head salesperson's, the king of toxicity.

Ryan Hogan 23:16

To, that's, that's, that's it.

Matt Haney 23:19

the the entitlement and the protection and the protected class. And but the fear of the unknown is if I take them out of the equation, what's gonna fall apart? And I will say, you do take them, and I have many times taken them out of the equation. I would say eight outta 10 times. Everything has gone great, if not better, but there are times where you remove the head of the snake and the body dies. So I think, it's not easy, man. So what was the outcome? Did you probably lost a relationship over the deal, but what was the, was there a happy ending?

Ryan Hogan 23:52

Yeah, I mean, lost the relationship out of the deal. But the team rose to the occasion. and that's, I, I agree with you. I might call it nine outta 10 times. So from my observation, you've got the right culture. See, here's the other issue, and this might get to the point of the 20% where, where you cut the head off the snake and the snake dies, is like if they have had such a detrimental impact to the culture in, in which like the entire team has been watching, the leader in this case me tolerate someone that had been deviating like you've. It might not work, but if you've got the right culture and you're, somewhat fast to make decisions, when you start to see things going in a different direction, the amount of times that it's rebounded has been more often than not. but also like the longer that you tolerate that, the longer that it shows the entire organization that like these behaviors are acceptable and, and the further down the toilet the culture goes

Matt Haney 24:46

Could that go back to delaying decision making? Hmm.

Ryan Hogan 24:50

and that.

Matt Haney 24:51

interesting. Maybe there's a connection there

Ryan Hogan 24:54

Yep. And maybe that scenario, like, you know, there, and I think this was your point when we were talking about this, which is just brilliant. It's like what decision, it's almost like when you're framing a decision, it's like there's like a toggle switch of like, should we delay this decision or should we not? And I would make an argument that like if there's something that's impacting culture and it's through like toxic leadership or a toxic teammate. Like the switch for delayed decision goes off, and you do not delay that decision.

Matt Haney 25:22

right. And I will agree with that. But man, it's the hardest thing to do is to disrupt something that's working. Right. Revenue's there, we're doing something right. Yeah. But you know, you're putting at risk potentially these awesome people that are on your team that are, you know, helping row the boat with you. give an example of when you were the bottleneck. Because I deal with visionary entrepreneurs you deal with, you know, have, you are a visionary entrepreneur. You also work with a lot of visionary entrepreneurs hiring for them. you're hiring entrepreneurs to run sales teams. give me an example of when you knew you were the bottleneck or you know, now you were the bottleneck. And rapid it in a bow that says, somehow to help people not be the bottleneck or be aware of when they are.

Ryan Hogan 26:06

Yeah, I think like for me, I've been very fortunate just by circumstance of I haven't had the opportunity to not delegate and I don't say that of like, I'm a professional delegator. I say that because every company that I had ever started. Including Talent Harbor. I was activated when, when we launched Talent Harbor, but every company, I've always been, active duty, meaning that like I had a full-time job and like this was some sort of side hustle. And so very quickly I had to figure out like how to get other people to do the things that I would've done. So in that respect, I think I've been very fortunate just based upon the circumstances in which I've launched companies. Bottleneck as far as like, detriment to the company. One thing that I've learned about myself is it goes back to the delayed decision is like, I delay no decisions. and that is, yes, and that is a problem. in the early days when it's startup and all of these different things, like you wanna get the product market fit as fast as humanly possible.'cause you gotta keep the lights on once you get the product market fit. and it depends on how you define it. So, you know, product market fit could just be like, oh, you've got sales. It could be like, you know, your goal was recurring revenue, therefore you've been able to find some sort of recurring, like however you define product market fit. But there's a market. There's a product and it's selling great. What I've realized is that after that, not delaying any decisions becomes completely detrimental to the organization. And I've seen it like there's a

Matt Haney 27:40

Oh, well all the time you're like, I'm dealing with it right now. I'm changing point of sale softwares for a retail company. I'm like, we, I told you not to, and now you're unpacking this bag that you've already packed. It's a mess. Should have delayed that decision. So

Ryan Hogan 27:56

I'm actually putting this on our issues list, by the way,

Matt Haney 27:58

You're, Hey, you're welcome.

Ryan Hogan 28:01

I

Matt Haney 28:01

are

Ryan Hogan 28:01

you for this because I've never heard it and, and like, I'm gonna brief the team on delayed decision and I'm gonna make that a part of the process of when we frame an issue, is this a delayed decision or is this not?

Matt Haney 28:12

Yeah, man, I didn't even think about adding it to the IDS list, but it's something. Okay, two more questions. and one of my favorites. think back, to somebody when you were a young teen in the military screwing up who gave you a solid piece of advice. Maybe it wasn't him, maybe it was someone else, maybe it was your spouse. but are there any solid pieces of advice that stick with you? and I'll tell you mine before you tell me yours. back to my reference to the Bad Bad Boss podcast with Beth, I was on talking about a decision that I made. That I, impacted. I was letting someone go, a senior employee, 25 year employee, and I came in as some young arrogant asshole that said, you know, you're fired. and this woman who is much senior to me, said, Hey, you have to remember the words you say you can't put back in your mouth, and the tone in which you deliver them is important. I will never forget her saying that to me. This is not the person I fired. This is another person who is. adjacent to this story, and I was like, wow, you're right. I went in, it was the right decision for the business, but I didn't handle it the right way. And the words I said came off in a way that I'm not proud of. Obviously, I'm still dealing with it today, 10 years later, but that sound advice that was given to me was, you can't put the words back in. Make sure what you're saying is intentional. does, any one nugget or tidbit that someone gave you along the way, stick out to you? Or a theme? Maybe not.

Ryan Hogan 29:34

his name is Jy, G-E-R-V-Y. Jy Alota. A LI think it's just one L-A-L-O-T-A. we'll keep it there, but go look him up on LinkedIn if you're listening to this. He's got a million followers. And he's basically like the super influencer of the Navy now.

Matt Haney 29:51

Oh, cool.

Ryan Hogan 29:52

he is hands down. one of the best leaders that I've ever worked for. He's still in the Navy. I think he's Captain Alota and I gotta be very careful about that'cause I'm still in the Navy. So he is, he is, a

Matt Haney 30:01

you a direct report?

Ryan Hogan 30:03

I was, I was, he was my exo. Yeah.

Matt Haney 30:05

That's amazing.

Ryan Hogan 30:07

So he was XO and it was a dream team. This was one of the best commands that I'd ever worked with. It was Captain Sson or Commander Taten at the time, and then Jovi was XO and they were a dream team. Like one was good at setting the vision. The other was good at like getting, getting shit done. And, I, like, I worked very, very hard, at that command and very, very hard for both of them. And One of the things that was interesting is like, I already had 10 ish years, 11 ish years in the military when I, when I commissioned. And so like, there's all these incidents just coming out of, the academy and just coming outta school and like, I'd been deployed, I'd done stuff, hurricane Katrina, I'd been all over Japan and Asia and, and, fifth Fleet and everywhere else. And so like I, I had a, a little bit ahead, like I knew how to, to work the process and, and run things. And so when it was time to get qualifications, like I just did it. so we were deployed and I was like, I'm gonna get my qualifications as fast as humanly possible. And I did, and I pissed off a lot of people, um, that I worked around. And like on the good side, I was the number one ensin and, and got the fit rep. And so that was great. And when he was giving me, My fit rep debrief, he said, the one thing you need to work on is you need to figure out how to bring your peers along with you. And I was like, holy crap. and it's not like I wasn't necessarily looking at it as competition, but I was like, these are peers? Like I'm gonna get

Matt Haney 31:27

I gotta go, I'm gonna get it done. Yeah. Yeah. But in the process, you unintentionally, you know, left some folks behind, and yes, you were the shining star, but they could have been shining stars with you.

Ryan Hogan 31:39

Yeah.

Matt Haney 31:40

What a great piece of advice.

Ryan Hogan 31:42

incredibly impactful

Matt Haney 31:43

out a way to bring your team with you. Awesome. Jeremy. I'm gonna ask you for a tag with your 1 million followers on that quote.

Ryan Hogan 31:51

yeah. It should definitely do it.

Matt Haney 31:53

Okay. Last question. What makes you tick outside of work? Like what gives you, I know you're on, on, on all the time, that's your personality. You've said that. I can obviously read that in the room, but what do you do outside of work that hopefully you don't have to perform in.

Ryan Hogan 32:07

Yeah, I mean, focus a lot on, I've got four kids, and so for me it's like focusing on being a good dad and like the hardest thing for me to shut my brain off. And so like, I try and be incredibly intentional of when I'm with. My kids and like, we just got back, we went to, uh, Joshua Tree this past weekend. didn't even open the phone. We just drove out there. It's about two and a half hours from where we're at. We drove around on Easter Day. we picked up some street food, which was like, oh my gosh, it was so good. Um, and we came back same day. But like for me, it's really about, and I'm not, I'm not good at, or I'm not even near perfect at this, but like shutting the brain off and really trying to enjoy time.

Matt Haney 32:45

That's awesome. Yeah. I have three. You can see they're, they're older now. 16, 14, and 10. How old are yours?

Ryan Hogan 32:52

Uh, 21, 17, 13, and 11.

Matt Haney 32:55

Okay. Wow, you got a span. That's awesome.

Ryan Hogan 32:58

Yeah. They come with your seabag. That's what happens when you enlist. They just, they just you're like, oh, they

Matt Haney 33:03

Hey,

Ryan Hogan 33:03

whole time.

Matt Haney 33:04

there's people behind me, Ryan Hogan. What a fun interview, man. great energy, great story. lots of humility and success. So, many congrats to you on what you've built and the people around you that, have helped you get there. Thanks for joining us today on the scalability Code.

Ryan Hogan 33:19

Thanks Matt. Appreciate it.

Speaker 2 33:20

Thank you for listening to The Scalability Code. If you made it this far, please follow the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get out of the sh*t show together. We'll see you next time on The Scalability Code.