Speaking to a packed room of chief executives at YPO’s Global Business Summit in Los Angeles, movie-star-turned-entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds pitched a different kind of script — one that shows how he used collaboration, creativity and humor to turn “Deadpool” into a franchise, Aviation Gin into a massive success and Wrexham into a global brand.
The real differentiator in business, he says, is emotional intelligence. “When people believe in you, everything else follows,” he told the nearly 1,000 YPO members assembled. Reynolds’ playbook fuses empathy with accountability while making real human connections because, he says, he believes emotional investment always outlasts financial investment.
In a conversation that felt part business master class and part Hollywood adventure story, Reynolds offered his leadership philosophy and challenged traditional notions of control and scale — urging leaders to blend storytelling with strategy, lead with humility and build trust through direct human contact.
Lessons he’s learned
Ryan Reynolds told the room that some of his most important business lessons didn’t come from boardrooms; they came from film sets. When making “Deadpool,” he learned that innovation often hides inside constraints. Each time the studio cut his budget, he looked at it as an opportunity instead of a setback, and the film got stronger. Constraints pushed him to invent the iconic “12 bullets” sequence in the first “Deadpool.”
“Every dollar they took away forced me to replace spectacle with character,” he says.
As an owner of Aviation Gin and co-founder of Maximum Effort, Reynolds says running companies refined the same instincts. He discovered that success depends less on marketing spend than on relationships — being accessible, accountable and genuinely curious.
“If you want people to believe in you, don’t hide behind reps — call them yourself,” he urges.
In that same vein, he framed leadership not as authority, but as a process of continuous learning and shared accountability.
“The best leaders say, ‘I don’t know,’ but they have integrity and a willingness to learn,” he says. Along his journey, he’s said those words more than once. And that direct, honest communication accelerated trust and success in his multiple businesses.
Creating the joy
Great companies, like great films, work when people feel something. For chief executives, Reynolds says, that means cultivating connection — with employees, customers and investors — around purpose and shared joy.
“Joy and togetherness are scarce resources today,” he says.
But joy is the “one thing” that will bring people back over and over again — to movies, to businesses, to sporting events, Reynolds adds.
— Ryan Reynolds, Founder, Maximum Effort; Entrepreneur, Film Producer, Actor share
“Every time I go to the stadium to watch a Wrexham game. I certainly don’t know everybody’s name at the stadium. There’s 13,000 people there. But I do know that that guy’s a Labourer, that guy’s a Tory, and they go through the gate, putting their arms around each other and wearing the same shirt. They start singing the same filthy, filthy song. And I think that’s beautiful. That’s what I would like to see more of.”
And that’s what Reynolds hopes to keep creating with every new film and every new business venture — a lasting sense of joy — both for himself and his audience.
