Rob McElhenney Is Doing ‘More Better’

After playing an aggressive, self-obsessed wannabe badass for 16 seasons, Rob McElhenney's character in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has one signature line that best describes what the actor is building in Hollywood: "more better." The "more" part of it is obvious. McElhenney, ADWEEK’s 2024 Media Visionary, has only added to a growing roster of buzzy projects in recent years. This includes creating the Emmy-winning Welcome to Wrexham alongside Ryan Reynolds, as well as working on his other shows, Always Sunny (which also has a successful podcast) and Mythic Quest. He’s also founded companies, including Four Walls Whiskey with Always Sunny collaborators Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day, and tech company Adim. In addition, he's part of a $218 million investment in Formula 1. But to do everything “better,” he’s finally putting all his projects under one roof. The actor and entrepreneur is launching More Better Industries, a media conglomerate encompassing a full ecosystem of entertainment and creative services. That includes a production arm, More Better Productions; a strategy and creative executions arm, More Better Advisory; and a strategic investing arm, More Better Ventures. “It’s been a slow build,” McElhenney said, reflecting on his career. “It’s that old adage of things happening very slowly and then all at once.” The company exemplifies McElhenney’s mission: The actor wants to do more marketing, more production and more investment. But he wants to do it in a better way. Unlike companies that might profit off of shorting others, McElhenney is using his company to "bet on humanity," investing in new voices and bringing his years of experience in front of and behind the camera to drive storytelling. He's doing so in financially sustainable ways with a venture capital fund, and—above all—he's not afraid to walk away from potential partners if they seem like the wrong fit. When it comes to an upcoming initiative in partnership with Wrexham and another sports organization overseas, McElhenney told his team, "If they blink, if they say we're not really sure, then just pass. "It's no disrespect to [the organization] at all. It's that we hear all the time from people: 'We want to do something different.' But then when push comes to shove, they want to do what's worked in the past. And that's just not how we want to operate," McElhenney said of the future project, which is under wraps for now. To that point, doing things better also means putting all his projects under a microscope to see what's working and what needs to change. And that includes Always Sunny—the inspiration behind the new enterprise's name. What's in a name? For 16 seasons and counting, McElhenney’s character, Ronald “Mac” McDonald—known for saying things like, “Science is a liar sometimes,” and believing hamburgers come from the “hamburger store”—cemented the grammatically questionable and oft-quoted phrase “more better” into the American lexicon. “From the very beginning of Sunny, we tried to create a vernacular amongst the characters that very specifically gets the audience to understand how uneducated they are,” McElhenney said. “Because if they are paragons of virtue or people that we're suggesting should be celebrated, then we as the creators should probably go to prison.” Similar to how McElhenney’s frequent business partner Reynolds named his company Maximum Effort after a line in Deadpool, McElhenney drew upon the Always Sunny phrase for the new company moniker, retroactively planting the More Better name within past seasons of TV's longest-running live-action comedy, with Season 17 on the way. “We knocked around the idea of calling the company ‘The TV Store’ or ‘The Production Store,’ but we didn't think people would understand that as much as 'More Better.'” Wanting more In some ways, McElhenney’s career has always been leading to this point of launching his own business. The actor has worked in entertainment for years, finding himself in all kinds of surreal experiences, including smoking on set of his show Mythic Quest with Snoop Dogg at the rapper’s behest. It’s a wild career arc, considering one of his first gigs was a “Think. Don’t Smoke” commercial, which McElhenney noted “now lives on forever on the internet." “[The director] was smoking, and he was blowing smoke directly into my face. He was going for a method thing where he really wanted to disgust me,” McElhenney recalled. “I remember backing up and being like, ‘Look, I get it. I'm grossed out.’” Realizing that begging for jobs where directors smoke in your face isn't an ideal endgame, McElhenney learned early on to take agency over his career, ultimately leading to writing Always Sunny and eventually starting the new company. “I wanted to find fewer and fewer ways in which I had to ask people for permission to do things,” McElhenney said. “I want to go build my thing on my own.” Building better Of course, doing things on his own first and foremost meant surrounding himself with the right people, which McElhenney made a priority in More Better Industries. “There are some real monsters out there,” McElhenney said. “Or just people who don't see the world in the way that we do or are so damaged through reasons that may or may not be their fault, yet still create a level of toxicity and an environment that I just do not want to be a part of.” For Always Sunny, McElhenney found collaborators in Howerton and Day and a mentor and champion in FX head John Landgraf. For production arm More Better Productions (MBP) and its mission of providing support to a new generation of creatives, McElhenney is leaning on Nick Frenkel—who’s been working with him for more than 25 years—and producer Jackie Cohn. “The easy route would have been, let's go make a bunch of low-budget comedies or another sports documentary, but that would have felt just like an extension of something that I was already doing,” McElhenney said. “That doesn't interest me.” As of its launch, MBP has more than 30 projects in the works—encompassing everything from podcasts to series to films—with companies like HBO, Netflix and Amazon on board and major names attached, including Larry David, Elliot Page, Nzingha Stewart and Reynolds. Of course, one of the properties on the MBP roster is Welcome to Wrexham, the docuseries about McElhenney and Reynolds helping restore glory to struggling Welsh football club Wrexham A.F.C. It's already a global hit, with heavy business and brand cross-pollination. Branding better Though McElhenney’s ultimate goal is seeing his club reach the Premier League, the highest level of the English football league system, he said a meteoric rise without years of cultivating the proper infrastructure would be “catastrophic.” “Nobody wants to hear this because this is the unsexy version of it,” McElhenney said. “But we have to talk about building sustainable businesses.” Brands are already flocking to Wrexham A.F.C. in droves, which was always part of the business plan, but McElhenney noted that Reynolds helped inspire him to think about how to control the relationships and messaging in a way that feels organic to the club. That’s where the creative services of More Better Advisory come in, along with McElhenney’s chief strategy officer, Kelsey Trainor. Trainor, a seasoned lawyer, TV consultant and founder of Invest in Women, is looking to sustainably broaden McElhenney’s sports marketing endeavors, including growing Wrexham A.F.C.’s women’s team, which is kicking off a U.S. tour this summer with Ally Bank as a sponsor. Among other current projects, McElhenney’s More Better Advisory has helped Four Walls secure Series A financing, with investors including Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman's 35V. Plus, the company has upcoming projects with various organizations such as Adim, McElhenney’s company focused on centralizing creative IP and giving fans agency over narrative universes. Investing better To round out his business ecosystem, McElhenney added More Better Ventures as an investment arm for the More Better universe, allowing interested parties to be a part of what McElhenney and his team are building. An early project included working with Maximum Effort’s investment team to purchase that aforementioned $218 million stake in the Alpine F1 team owned by the Renault Group, with more teams and sports around the world being explored. “I don't want to be in the services business; I want to be in the ownership business,” McElhenney said. “But again, we recognize that, for as much appetite and ambition as we have, there's only so much bandwidth as well.” With so many projects under the More Better umbrella, bandwidth remains a major sticking point for all of McElhenney’s endeavors as the company looks to invest time better, and that includes investment in the show that started it all. More Better Industries More Better Productions: the film, television, multimedia development and production branch, providing access and support to the next generation of creatives More Better Advisory: the strategy and creative services branch, offering consulting, brand partnership and creative marketing services More Better Ventures: the investing arm of the More Better ecosystem, unlocking the value of brands through storytelling and strategic investment Always a spot for Sunny? For years, McElhenney has been adamant that Always Sunny will continue indefinitely; however, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t considered an exit plan, especially with so many other ventures in the works. In fact, McElhenney, Howerton and Day know exactly how the final scene will look. “We know what it is. We know how we're gonna end it,” McElhenney said. “We just don't know when it will be or if we'll ever do it. But we're all in agreement of how it will end.” Though an ending isn’t imminent, the Always Sunny creators have “talked about this quite a bit.” “Ten years ago, I came in and said, ‘Hey guys, I think I have an idea if we ever wanted to end it,’ and I started pitching it, and Charlie said, ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking,’ and then Glenn just finished it,” McElhenney said. “And we had realized that we had never talked about it, and all three of us had the same exact idea. We thought that's probably a pretty good sign.” For now, the series is renewed through Season 18, and McElhenney still thinks the show is funny and has something to say. They’ll keep making it until “it doesn’t check those boxes.” Regarding future projects, McElhenney isn’t in the business of creating cultural detritus, so every endeavor has its own list of requirements, including being lucrative, fun, making a positive impact or simply betting on someone else’s success. For McElhenney, that's the key to More Better. “That, to me, is finally coming around to my original goal, to never have to ask anybody for anything,” McElhenney said. “But more importantly, putting us in a position where we could bet on the success of other people. I can't think of a better way to spend my life.”

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Rob McElhenney Is Doing ‘More Better’ and Knows Exactly How Always Sunny Will End

ADWEEK’s 2024 Media Visionary launches More Better Industries, a full business ecosystem of production, marketing and investment

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