NIL Undressed

About NIL Undressed

International best selling author, Ryan Schachtner and Dr. Cheney Robinson work with professional, college and high school athletes, universities and teams with personal development, NIL understanding, personal branding, personal finance and NIL deal development. Having a unique understanding of what businesses are looking for in student athletes because of their consulting work they love helping athletes create opportunities outside of athletics. At NIL Undressed we connect with those on the front line of Name, Image and Likeness, sports and business to debate the good, the bad, the ugly and the downright ridiculous with all things NIL.

Category

business · news · sports

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

15 May 2023

Latest episode

21 May 2024

Latest episodes

44 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 May 2024

   Staying Pliable in The New Era of College Sports With Greg Glynn

   Greg Glynn is the Founder & CEO of Pliable, a versatile marketing, public relations and broadcasting company in Augusta, Maine. Pliable specializes in athlete branding. With more than 20 years of experience in the sports industry, Greg Glynn, Founder & CEO of Pliable Marketing enjoys working side-by-side with high school, college and professional athletes to help them build their athlete brand. He is the creator of Pliable's 10-Step Athlete Branding Playbook, recognized as one of the industry’s most forward-thinking ideas for athletes to acquire the skills and tools to build their athlete brand, including securing name, image and likeness opportunities. He has been recognized in a variety of ways during his career, including being nominated for Mainebiz's 2023 Business Leader of the Year and Innovator of the Year. Ryan: Welcome to Nil Undressed. I'm Ryan Schachner, and along with Cheney Robinson, the mayor of Rock Hill, South Carolina, Football City, USA, he once threw eleven touchdowns in one football game and right after that, hit three home runs. That's right, high school. Greg: Yes, sir. Ryan: Cheney. Today, I'm really excited, right, because this world of nil is, is extremely cluttered and there's few good people that, you know, have the right intentions of the athletes. I mean, a lot of people are just trying to, you know, get a piece of the pie, right? And so today we have Greg Glenn. He's the founder and CEO of Pliable, a versatile marketing, public relations and broadcasting company in Augusta, Maine. So this is the first individual I've actually met from Maine that's something. Pliable specializes in athlete branding. With more than 20 years of experience in the sports industry, Greg Glenn, founder and CEO of Pliable Marketing, enjoys working side by side with high school, college, and professional athletes to help them build their athlete brand. He is the creator of Pliables ten step athlete branding playbook, recognized as one of the industry's most forward thinking ideas for athletes to acquire the skills and tools to build their athlete brand, including securing name, image, and likeness opportunities. He's been recognized in a variety of ways during his career, including being nominated for main business 2023, business leader of the year, and innovator of the year. Greg, welcome to Nil Undressed. Greg: Thank you very much, Ryan and Cheney. I'm excited to be with you guys today. There's a lot happening in this space, and I'm really excited to dive in. Ryan: Absolutely. Well, let's get it going. Right. So 20 years in the sports industry, and then nil comes around and you make that shift to really help these athletes with nil. So what prompted you to, to, you know, course adjust? Greg: Yeah, well, certainly my story is similar to yours, Ryan, in the sense that an injury ended up kind of leading me down a career path that I didn't see coming. I was actually in high school and I went in for my regular physical where, you know, you got to get cleared for camps in the year, and you're like, okay, I'll go. And, you know, my back had hurt, but I was just toughen it out. And they went in and they said, we'd like to get some x rays. And I'm like, okay. So they ended up seeing that I had a slipped disc. And I was told by the doctor at the time at, you know, 1415 years old that if I played hockey, I could get hit in a certain way and be paralyzed from the waist down. And at that moment, I mean, I knew my hockey career was over. You know, they're in a doctor's office, which is kind of tough as a 1415 year old to figure that out for sure. But I try to turn a negative into a positive. I've obviously, you know, kind of adopted that philosophy now, but as a teenager, you don't have that perspective. You're like, you're upset, you're probably crying. I mean, I was just devastated. But I, you know, tried to refocus, and I ended up starting to broadcast my high school hockey games because I had the knowledge, I had the skill, I had the passion. I just couldn't be on the ice. And so I ended up starting broadcasting the games, got the experience, got a competitive advantage, if you think about it. Cause I had two years of experience when I got to college. I went to Quinnipiac University, got in there as broadcasting mass communication school. And I actually was broadcasting games on the commercial radio station by the time I was ending my freshman year. Ryan: Wow, how fun. That's impressive. Greg: So I started broadcasting at Quinnipiac University my freshman year, I was actually on the commercial radio station, which doesn't happen, really. You're, you typically on the student radio station, you work your way up. But I had worked my way to WQUN at the time, which doesn't exist. That makes me feel really old right now. But the idea is that I used my opleet brand to basically, as a hockey player, have a career in broadcasting and then turn that into a career with the Portland Pirates, which is a minor league hockey team in Maine. So that's how I got to Maine, was through my broadcasting career, and I spent six seasons there. I saw pro sports up close and personal, and I was thinking to myself, holy smokes, these guys aren't getting media training. They need help with community relations. They need help, you know, with these appearances and everything. And I thought to myself, I kind of just planted the seed in the back of my head. I was like, wow, this is an untapped area now. That was back in like, 2006, 2009 range. Okay, so social media hadn't really come on the scene as much as it has now, right? And you throw in that into the mix, and you've got yourself a whole. Basically, you could have a PR person, if you really needed it at the pro level to be able to manage all this stuff, and you're building your brand. And I realized that. And what happened with me is I carried too much luggage into a hotel once because I was just wearing too many hats, tired and on the road and the whole nine yards. And my back eventually gave out. So I had to have a spinal surgery. That's when I realized I needed to slow things down. So I did. I met my wife and Augusta, Maine. I was at a PR agency after that because I couldn't be in sports. I couldn't be on buses 40 hours a week. Ended up basically there for 13 years. Gained pr experience, more marketing experience. I had a minor in marketing. And then when name, image and likeness came out and, you know, pandemic hit, I was like, if there's ever a time, Greg, this is the time. And it was game on from there. Ryan: That's really cool. So what types of athletes do you represent? Cause I think with the media, right. So hitting on media, it's, it's a lot of, we see football players and we get the, you know, basketball and it's these big, you know, high profile sports that get the attention. So what type of athletes, what sports do you work with right now? Greg: Yeah, it's a great question because I've seen that. And what I know from being around athletes is that I know my job, number one, is going to be easier if I'm working with people that are detail oriented, that are fully engaged, that understand the responsibilities. So what I decided when I started my company is that I'm going to have a motto and that is that I'm looking for good athletes that are great people. Because if I find great athletes that aren't good or great people, my job becomes really hard. Okay? So if I'm gonna help great people, what I need to do is build a team. I need people to have that team mentality which I know they're gonna have because they're athletes. So if I'm not gonna go get the biggest stars, I need to go and I need to find people that understand this is about more than just me, this is bigger than myself, this is Greg and pliable going out and finding opportunities for me. Even though I only have 2000 followers, how can I use my name, image and likeness to develop career opportunities so that I can leverage my athlete brand during and after my career. And those are the athletes that I want to work with. It's okay if you're a great athlete. I don't mind that, trust me. But I need you to be a great person first. That's the priority. Ryan: Gotcha. When you, when you reach out to athletes, when you're talking to the athletes that you represent, initially right. We're talking to, and I know you have female lacrosse players, you have a female hockey player that you work with. What are the biggest questions that they have? Because, you know, I think, again, we see so much in the media about nil being for those higher profile athletes and. But you're not necessarily going. You're going after the good people. Right. And so what are their initial questions, concerns, hesitations that, that they typically have. Greg: Yeah. So I've structured it interestingly so that I can build trust. So I would represent hundreds of athletes if I really wanted to. Right. Like that. That's an absolute possibility. I get emails every day. I could try and do that. But what I've set it up as is, like I talked about with that playbook and you mentioned at the top of the show, which is I've created this playbook for success. And I know having been in the media and on the media side, right. As a broadcaster, what I'm looking for is a way to build somebody to make them more marketable than anybody else. And quite honestly, the profiles that these athletes get when they go to college do them no justice. Like, if I'm trying to market myself, my stats from last year and my headshot and maybe where I went to high school and a few little stats about me, you know, are on that page, that doesn't make me marketable. Like, I've got, I've got to tell the story about how I faced adversity, how I overcame an injury. You know, look at Margo Norhad, who I just started working with. She had the number one goal on SportsCenter. Like, that's the marketable stuff. So if that's not in your profile, then you're missing a huge opportunity. So the first step in the process is an athlete profile. You need to have the stuff on there all in one place where a brand can look at you and go, wow, look at these academic achievements. Look at these athletic achievements. Look at the community relations. Look at the grade point average. I was talking to somebody the other day, you talk about businesses getting into this game. This is an online education company looking to try and help schools realize the potential of their academic platform. And the guy said to me, he said, what are the type of athletes you work with? And I said, this is going to be perfect for you because the athletes I work with, on average, I would say 80% of them have like a 3.8 GPa or higher. So that's going to be great for that brand because they literally have access to these academic all stars that are going to be, because I've recruited these great people, that's going to be a huge benefit to that company. And he didn't care about 80,000 followers. He cared about the academics and he cared about the access. If you think about access, if they've got 2000 followers, but they're all at that college, if you say there's this new academic platform that you should try, those 2000 followers that are in your same class sitting right next to you are probably going to be like, I should do what she's doing. Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So how do you, I mean, you're talking about getting an athlete to, you know, who's team focused. I'm part of a team helping the team humble, don't talk about myself. But in order to do this and build this, we need to highlight. You need to, you kind of have to bring some of that out. So how do you get them to, to process that? Greg: Yeah, so I love helping educate and empower them. So they need to understand the role of public relations. They need to understand the role of marketing. Think about this. Not a lot of these athletes are actually marketing students, right? So a lot of them are in a different type of major. I've got doctors, you know, they want to get into the health sciences. You look at a lot of these athletes that may want to get into finance or something else different than marketing. So, I mean, I enjoy working with a girl like Audrey Everett, okay, who comes to me, she learned about me through another athlete I work with, which shows you the networking, right? This thing's going to spread quickly. She says to me, Greg, I trust your opinion. Whatever you think looks good, sounds good. That's what I want to do. And that to me, is so valuable because if she's able to understand and values the 25 years of experience that I have, rather than trying to go off and do our own rogue thing, that's going to create so much more efficiency for us. And she has actually created a pretty cool concept because we did this together, is that she's created this brand called Journey behind the jersey. And so what it is, is it actually highlights the athlete's career by having the name on the back of a shirt that then has all these words that are associated with their career. And so now she's built this kind of template, and I'll be able to carry that over to other pliable athletes that are going to want to do this. Because the other thing about it is, it's not about Audrey, okay? It's about the athlete journey. It's not about her. And that's a great example of someone who realizes this is more than just about me. And the funny thing about Audrey and why, again, she's a great, pliable athlete. When I interviewed her about why she wants to work with pliable, the first thing that came to her mind was, I just want to help people. And I'm like, this interview is over. You're a pliable athlete. Like, I mean, this is done. You know, I'm dear. Yeah. So I was like, this is perfect. And so she's off and running. She's got now, like three or four nil partnerships in her first month. I mean, that's just because we've made her more marketable. Ryan: Yeah. So the athletes today, right, high school, college, and even pro, they've embraced nil. Right. This is a world that a lot of them are growing up in, right. But the parents grew up in an era where, you know, an amateur is an amateur and, you know, this is just so far off the reservation for them that it's hard for them to process. Right. I mean, we saw that all the media headlines were, nil is going to ruin college sports and all this kind of stuff. Right? So how, what kind of questions do parents have and how do you work with them to help kind of bring them up to speed on what nil is? Greg: Great question, Ryan, because it one of the barriers I have to entry, right? So athletes will hear about this. They'll be like, yeah, let's go. I'm ready to try and build my brand. And I enjoy having the parents on the call because, number one, it saves time. Because if they have to explain to their parents that they talk to some guy on the Internet over a Zoom call and he's ready to help get them nil deals, I mean, I'm thinking about that as a parent myself. I'm like, to my daughter. I'm like, I don't know about this. I wanna hear what this is all about. Right? So what I ended up doing was creating a very thorough contract in case I don't get the parent on the line, that then allows the athlete to go to the parent and say, look, this is what's happening. This is what I'm looking to try and do. And by having a standard nine page document that literally outlines everything that I'm going to do, that at least gives the parents, I think, some credibility either to say, sure, go for it. Like, okay, we trust the process, or let's at least get it on a phone call. You know what I mean, and vet me out. And I'm great with that. Like I said, I love talking to parents. Parents are sometimes my biggest advocate once they realize what I'm doing, because they're going to realize that this is about more than just sports. This is about the future of their career and career development opportunities. And they go, wow. Yeah. Like, this is a no brainer. Yeah, that's right. There's your networking right there. That's the networking. Absolutely. I think that's a great point, Cheney, is that once they realize what we're trying to do here, that then they're going to go tell four or five more of their friends or the parents that I need to be able to bring in. I'll give you a great story. So Ella Berger out in Minnesota, her dad reached out to me two years ago now and said, my daughter's going to St. Thomas. I want to kind of understand this nil thing. And I was like, absolutely. So he ends up letting me know that Ella's pretty good at hockey. Well, it turns out she was really good at hockey. She ended up winning Miss hockey out in Minnesota her senior year. Okay. Pretty good. Yeah. So it's very humbling. Right. So he was very humble about it. He didn't come across with, my daughter is going to win miss hockey, or like, she's the greatest hockey player out there. So I knew that this was going to be a good fit. And sure enough, since then, now Ella has brought me two of her teammates. So I've got three girls on the St. Thomas women's ice hockey team that I work with. They then told their friends Janessa and Juliana Gazdick, they became pliable athletes, which led me to Josie St. Martin, who's now a future Ohio State Buckeye, who just won a world championship gold medal. That's how it works, you know, like, I can benefit from having good parents promoting what pliable is doing and going and finding more good people and great athletes and, you know, continuing on with what I'm trying to do. Ryan: Absolutely. Well, but then at some point, you got to get the results right, so you've got to get nil deals. And so from my perspective, that's been, I mean, you saw, you see the big fortune 500 companies jumping in and just dumping money into this. Right. Which we knew they were going to do. Right. But you have other businesses that don't quite know if they fit, how they fit. So how do you help businesses understand how they can take advantage of Ni. How do you break through that, that barrier, that marketing barrier that. That most of them have. Greg: Yeah, it's. It's a challenge. So we talk about the barriers that I have to entry. We talked about one already. That's the parents number two. Then I've got to have the barrier to get through to the businesses where I think there's the biggest opportunity, quite honestly, is local. You know, the local pizza shop, the local car dealership, the local chiropractor, the local trainer who's literally been training you probably for 15 years of your life, and you have a really good relationship with. That's the opportunity that's at stake because you've already got a personal relationship. Now I just need to come in as a third party, which the parents really appreciate because the last thing they want to be doing is wheeling and dealing. Right. For their athlete who they've already had a relationship with. And it kind of gets weird. I've heard that a lot from these parents is we don't know enough to make this happen. Greg, we need you to come in and kind of help facilitate this. So that's been a big area where I can help. Contracts are so important. Right. This is not a handshake. This is not a. Oh, yeah, hey, this is what we'll do. That gets into a lot of problems because if you don't know how many social media posts you're supposed to make or what you're supposed to be doing, that's when relationships dissolve. Because you think you're doing more and you're not getting your fair share or that business asked you to do ten more posts and you're like, wait a second. How many was I supposed to do? You know? And so it's really important to have somebody that knows the rules, knows what a contract's supposed to look like and how you're supposed to execute and deliver on it. And as a full service marketing company, I have the skills and tools to empower these athletes, to have checklists, to have approval process on posts, what you're supposed to say, how to follow the Federal Trade Commission rules on influencer marketing. There are so many athletes out there right now that are breaking federal laws and they don't have a single clue. That's a huge problem. Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and it seems like you've created that again. You have that process and the checkpoints that help make sure that these athletes, that your athletes, the pliable athletes, are doing things the right way to, again, help them in the future, but also keep them out of trouble, you know, while they're. While they're doing all of it. Greg: Yeah, because, and again, like you said, the businesses I have to. What I do sometimes is I will go do an athlete outreach tour. So I will go on my own dime, because I know what's going to happen when I go into a business with Katie Shanahan on my left and I say, katie wants to work with you, Katie, explain what you're up to. And then, because she's been trained in this world, she's able to deliver her talking points. Confident young woman who says, this is what I want to do. This is what I have. This is how many followers I have. And that's when the magic happens. I am literally, guys, undefeated. When I go and I do these athlete outrage chores, I am nine and o, like, I will go to your college or to your hometown, and I will get you a partnership. I have no qualms about that. Ryan: Well, and I think you hit one of the big pieces, the communication piece. Right. Being able to separate yourselves through communication, to be able to highlight your strengths, the value that you're going to be able to bring. And that's important in nil deals. But it's also important for a lot of these high school athletes that are trying to get to that next level. And they're talking to coaches, and, uh, they have to now compete with these transfer portal athletes. And, you know, being able to separate yourself among the crowd and stand out by being able to communicate the right way is just so. I mean, it's a life skill, obviously. But the earlier they can learn it, the. The bigger opportunities, you know, not just in nil that they're going to have. Greg: Yeah. And I think a great example of this is Maddie Niles. So I started working with Maddie. Funny story. I was broadcasting her games, live streaming field hockey at Lawrence High School. And not this year, but the year before, she went off for 38 goals in a season. Okay. She only plays 18 games. Like, you know, that's ridiculous. And the funny thing is, if you know anything about field hockey, she did it on grass, so she wasn't even on turf. And I was like, this girl is amazing. And then I started to network to find out who her parents were. Things like that great kid heard all the right things. So I start working with Maddie. She's got, like, 400 followers. She had never made an Instagram post before. Okay. So we start working together, and she's, of course, like, I want to play division one field hockey. And she's up in Benton, Maine. And as I like to joke with people, there probably are 75% of the people here in Maine that don't know where Benton, Maine, is. Okay? So you've got to make yourself marketable if you're going to reach division one coaches in Benton, Maine, you're going to need to market yourself. And so she embraced that. Her parents embraced it. This was not about going to make money for Matty. What this was about was, let's use Nil partnerships as a way to get Maddie on the radar for these coaches and get her out there on Instagram, give her a social media presence that will allow them to find her. And if you do a YouTube search or a Google search for Maddie Niles, now, you've got at least 20 results that are about Maddie Niles because she's used name, image, and likeness to get a deal with a maple syrup company. She's a former Miss Mini Maple, by the way, in a beauty pageant, so that didn't hurt. Okay. But you've also got her now with Aroma Joe's, which is an up and coming, you know, coffee and energy drink company that she works with. So all it takes is just a little bit of that confidence, and, as I like to say, that swagger. Right? Like, let's give these kids some swagger and then see what happens. And she's an amazing athlete. She was actually the female pliable athlete of the year this year because of the. Not only the contributions, obviously, to her field hockey team and athletically, but her work in the community has been unbelievable. She raised with her team over $10,000 for. To raise awareness for domestic violence. She raised over $1,800 with her team and got together a team for the Travis Mills foundation that supports recalibrated veterans. This girl is outstanding. And here I am in Benton, Maine, finding what I would say is a huge diamond in the rough. Ryan: Absolutely. Well, I think that's kind of the. The, um. The part that's not talked about is a lot of these athletes, what they're doing for the community, uh, that doesn't. I mean, it. It goes, you know, unnoticed, uh, to. To the nil industry. Right. Greg: The impact. Ryan: I. You know, I'd be curious if you take. If you take the non football basketball players, right. And you say, all right, how much have. Have this other group done for the community? I would be interested to see what that number is. Cause I think. I think it would. I think it would beat the football basketball players. Greg: Yeah, I do. And the other thing that's really important, I think, here, is look at what nil can do for communities, what it can do for nonprofits people don't see that side enough. We see it a little bit around Thanksgiving. Guys or girls donating, you know, turkeys or raising money, donating to charity, you know, but there's so much more of this going on in our communities than we even hear about. And so I really try to help athletes. One thing I will say, aroma Joe's here in Maine. Up and coming company. I just mentioned them with Matty, but they have five pliable athletes they work with now. They're called community ambassadors. They are not out there saying, hey, buy this drink. They are literally out in the community. They now have a vehicle because a Roma Joe's is involved in the community, but they don't have the influencers to be able to say all the wonderful things they're doing. So when they match up with an athlete that's a pliable athlete that already is engaged and wants to do stuff in their community, it's a perfect fit. It's why Natalie Bowden, who, by the way, is at Lewiston High School, where they had those mass shootings in October, raised over $1,000 for those families selling t shirts that say, we are one Lewiston. And that is a great example of why she's a community ambassador. That earned her that opportunity. Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. All right, one last question and we'll let you get going. Greg: Yeah, no worries. Ryan: So, prediction on where nil goes from here? Because there's a lot of craziness and all that. Who's going to govern it and all that kind of stuff. But your prediction on maybe the next year or two in the nil space? Greg: I think that schools are going to try to have a little bit more education. We've seen that already. The NCA has said now, starting in August, they are going to have to provide more education. So that's going to open eyeballs for a lot more of these students. It's not going to be just the orientation thing. They're going to end up partnering with a lot of these nil platforms and providers that will increase the awareness. Then you're going to increase the awareness. The big question is going to be how much of a role will schools play in name, image and likeness and what power will they have. And obviously, right now, a lot of the talk is around collectives and what's going to happen to collectives. I also think keeping an eye on the unionization of athletes is going to be a huge thing. I will tell you this is, I'm disappointed that athletes right now, from the current talk, are only going to get dollar 600 to be in a video game, that's, that in my mind is not enough. And I think that that's certainly something we need to kind of keep an eye on because there will be more of these bulk deals that kind of start to happen. You're going to start to see some rogue athletes. I mean, if you watch the movie the national championship, I mean, that literally was about boycotting the national championship. Game over nil. So as more awareness comes to this topic, I think schools are going to have to get more involved because here's why. From a branding perspective, there's a lot at stake for them. A lot at stake. And every state is different with the rules and the laws. So I think we're gonna start to see some of these schools realize, and maybe the NCAA, depending on how long they have any power or control, because it's slipping away every day. I think you're going to see the pressure come back on the schools and they're going to realize we have to step up to the plate and they're going to have to realize that education is going to be the key to that. Ryan: Yeah, very good. Man, this was great. How can people look up pliable? How can they find you? Greg: Absolutely. So they can go to pliablemarketing.com. I have a lot of information there. Under the athletes tab, you'll be able to see all the pliable athletes that I work with. I also do recruitment videos. I really enjoy that because I can find my next athlete that way, which is great. The other thing I would encourage them to do is follow pliable marketing on social media. So p l I a b l e m k t g on Instagram, twitter, you can stay up to date on all these athletes and what I do. And then the other thing I'm just going to end with, because it is at the core of what pliable is all about, is mission e 50. So when I created my company, I started an initiative that is called mission E 50. And it is that I will always represent more than 50% female athletes. I have a twelve year old daughter. I've seen the inequality in women's sports. I've seen it through the athletes I work with. It is not cool. And so I've taken this on through name, image and likeness opportunities, quite honestly, that I know that's going to increase the popularity of women's sports. And I'm ready to take on that mission. And if you look up the hashtag mission E 50, take a look at the impact that we've made already in just two years. Ryan: Very cool. We will definitely check that out. Greg hey, this was a home run. We appreciate you coming on and thanks everybody for joining every as a reminder, every like subscribe, share and comment is greatly appreciated. Success Beyond Gameday https://successbeyondgameday.com Instagram https://instagram.com/amust.win LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanschachtner/

2. 

   14 May 2024

   Round Two With FSU and Kris White

   Dr. Kristopher White is the ultimate athlete development success story, like the ultimate story of using athletic skills to achieve and help others achieve success. Dr. Kristopher White, born into a not ideal situation, saw football as a way to success. In high school he was the team captain and played QB, running back, wide receiver, and linebacker which earned him a shot at Kent State University where he played WR and pursued the NFL dream. He finished up his Master’s degree and was named master’s student of the year his last year at Kent State. He then became the lead athletic academic mentor at a power 5 university, earned his PhD from one of the premier programs in the country, won teacher of the year his first year as a college professor, he’s a soon to be author and founder of athlete mentor academy and personal mentor for athletes of all sports at Florida State University. Dr. White’s insights and research is going to pave the way for athletes having life success for generations to come. Connect with Dr. Kristopher White Instagram @itskriswhite Twitter @itskriswhite Success Beyond Gameday https://successbeyondgameday.com Instagram https://instagram.com/amust.win LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanschachtner/ [00:16] Ryan: Welcome to Nil Undressed. I'm Ryan Schachner and we've got our first repeat guest. He's from down at Florida State. He was the professor of the year. He's an example for, for me and watching some of the stuff that he's been through. Champion of athletes, creating some new curriculum down there at FSU. Former Kent state football wide receiver, father, husband, all around. Just really good dude, Chris White, man. Chris, welcome back to Nil Undressed. [00:51] Kris: Wow. [00:51] Speaker C: Thank you so much. I needed, like, just call you in the morning and just get that good introduction. I mean, I don't feel as good this great every time until I hear, you know, what you have to talk, man. [01:01] Ryan: You know, sometimes you got to take, you know, take account of where you've been and what you've accomplished. [01:06] Speaker C: So, no, these intros are sensational. I appreciate it. You know, it boosts me. [01:11] Ryan: Absolutely. That's what we're here for. That's what we're here for. You know, I alluded to it a little bit. You recently went through some health, health challenges here, right? Yeah. And you've come out clean on the other side. But every, you know, as athletes, as people in general, we're going to face challenges that are, a lot of them are unexpected. They pop up at the least opportune moment most times. So tell us a little bit about what you've been through and then how did your development as an athlete over the years, what type of, how did that play into how you approached your issues? [01:55] Kris: Absolutely. [01:55] Speaker C: That's a really good question. So early in August, kind of the end of July last year, I found out that was diagnosed with cancer, which was like out of the nowhere surprise. And through the time that we went through, I feel like there was a lot of growth and we talked about it before, certainly had to go through a lot of challenges. But the interesting part was I do think that athletics, and really more so my faith, which kind of sustained me through athletics as well, helped me have this mindset of just knowing that through God, we're going to beat it. [02:31] Kris: Right. [02:31] Speaker C: And so I was able to have a peace that surpassed understanding and a strength and that all, all glory to God. I mean, that really, truly came from the moment that I found out. Like, after maybe about 30 minutes, I prayed as soon as I got the news and my mindset shifted from being kind of like, okay, this is like a. Kind of a scary moment. You know, this is your life and in peril to like, okay, how am I going to use this to first of all glorify God, but also get a purpose out of it to, you know, try to inspire others and to try encourage others and to, you know, have a positive sort of impact from it. And so just knowing, you know, the word, you know, reading in my Bible and knowing a lot of things that I had already been through, that adversity that I kind of already been through, I knew that this was something that, you know, through God, we could accomplish. And, you know, it was a beautiful blessing. I told you this before, it sounds odd to say, but this time was truly a blessing. Like, there was a lot of spiritual growth, a lot of intellectual growth. Like I said earlier, I feel like I gained, like, ten years worth of knowledge in about six months of time, just kind of going through a lot of the things that you have to when facing, you know, that sort of adversity. Like, you're. You're broken down to the very, very most basic elements of what it is to exist and be alive. And so you have to confront realities of, you know, what. What it means to even be alive, what's. What's the purpose of life and things like that. And so that's where I obviously drew from the word and, you know, drew from God, and I felt, you know, refueled and, you know, refined through the entire process. I just, you know, it was a interesting time, you know, but to directly relate it to athletics, I think that oftentimes, you know, when you're going through even something simple as, you know, summer conditioning, right, and you're like, you know, we got four more reps. How am I going to actually get through this, these last sprints? Like, I feel like I gave it all I had. [04:29] Kris: Right? [04:29] Speaker C: And being able to find that grit consistently, you know, throughout your career, is something that you can use to get through adversity, something that you can use to overcome challenges that might seem impossible. And so little things like that in athletics is, you know, I think gives athletes an edge in terms of the job force or in terms of being entrepreneurs or in terms of, you know, just attacking life in general. When you reach that elite level of competition, you have to have a mindset that affords you, you know, that opportunity. [05:03] Kris: Right. [05:03] Speaker C: There's not too many people who are able to kind of get out there and do that on a daily basis. Like, once you make it to the collegiate level and the professional level, everybody's talented, everybody's got the skill and athletic ability. What separates you oftentimes is your mindset, and once you understand that and how to get sort of a gritty mindset or get a mindset that allows you to overcome seemingly impossible challenges. A lot of the things that you face in life become a little bit easier, right? You have that mindset that is outside of the normal civilian sort of mindset of going through life. So athletics, of course, and, you know, number one is just my faith in God and him allowing me to have that peace and that strength through that process was something that got me through and better on the better on the end of it, for sure. [05:54] Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, I love what you said. It was, you know, a lot of times in athletics, whether it's, you know, spring, you know, spring practice or summer conditioning, all those sorts of things, you, you get broken down, right? You get you. The reality confronts you really quick, right? High school to college level, you are the star in high school, and now you're a freshman in college, reality hits. And so what are you going to do to overcome this situation? And that sounds like, I mean, you said it perfectly, right? I mean, that's kind of what you reverted back to that. You know, you probably had visions of, you know, summer conditioning and all that in your head and said, you know what? I got through that. I can get through it. And it's, you know, it's challenge accepted. [06:46] Kris: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. [06:47] Speaker C: I mean, it's a combination of that. And, you know, that first prayer that I had after finding out the news, I felt like God said that he had already ordained the victory, and the purpose of this was to glorify him. And by the grace of God, I was able to do that. But also, like, like you're saying, like, it was incredibly useful to have that mindset because it's, you know, a lot of people think it's kind of crazy to see some of these situations and you're confident in them. You're like, okay, you know, I can, I can accomplish this. I know that I'm going to win. I know I'm going to beat this. I know that I'm going to finish this rep or whatever it might be. Like, a lot of times, a lot of people might have a mindset that is, you know, pessimistic or, you know, not, you know, encouraged or not as confident about being able to accomplish those things. But you have to go into these things with the faith that, like, you know, I can do all things to Christ who strengthens me. I can do. I can accomplish this. I can accomplish the impossible. And so athletics gives you that crazy mindset, you know, oftentimes. So you need to have it, because you can't reach the impossible if you don't think that it is possible. So that's. That's where I'm at, for sure. [07:54] Ryan: Well, and then, and then, you know, the other thing I got was you have to have kind of a. A rock, right. A cornerstone somewhere to reset. And I think for a lot of people that, you know, aren't believers or, you know, no judgments, but they can't understand. Like, just because you made that prayer and you felt that, you know, hey, he's got me. I'm going to get this. Doesn't mean you didn't have down points throughout the process. [08:22] Speaker C: Right. [08:23] Ryan: It wasn't just this blanket optimism that you walk through. It was still hard to deal with. [08:29] Kris: Yeah. [08:30] Ryan: Oh, you know, how, again, how did you. How did you use God, the prayer, all that kind of stuff? And whether, again, whether or not people believe in that, how can you leverage, you know, rocks or people that are champions for you to get through tough situations? [08:50] Speaker C: Yeah, 100%. I mean, there was definitely a lot of challenging moments that. And I won't, you know, giving too many details with it, you know, going through something like that, there's a lot of moments where you have to really have a rock, like you're saying, and, you know, of course, like, just going back to the word and kind of getting to understand who God is, really was that rock for me. But also, I feel like he provided me with my wife, who was just incredible. I mean, the stuff that she went through during that time to provide me this stable, you know, faith based understanding, compassion and grace. I mean, she. She deserves an award, you know, I gotta. I gotta do something, you know. [09:34] Ryan: Well, she got a shout out on here, so. [09:36] Speaker C: There we go. There we go. Yeah, that's a good start. [09:40] Kris: I mean, she. [09:40] Speaker C: We just had a baby, too, so, like, she was taking care of our baby, taking care of me. Our dog actually passed away during the same time. Like, she was a real rock. So, you know, through relationships is rocks that you can have, right. Once you be able to understand what's real and what's, what's not and how to have good relationships, I think the maturity there affords you an opportunity to go back to their rock during times of challenge. [10:09] Kris: Right. [10:10] Speaker C: And kind of touch base, just like with God, touch base with reality and be able to say, okay, this is where I'm at, and I'm going to attack this situation with a level head. But also, I mean, truly, I mean, 100%, it was all God for me. I know I keep keep saying it, but it's like that. That was one of the main messages that I got through this time, was just going through his word and seeing all the things that at times seemed impossible for people that he was able to overcome and that, you know, it's. [10:37] Kris: It's. [10:37] Speaker C: It's easy for him. Like the creator of all things, this is. This is nothing for him, you know? And so being able to get back to that kind of rock there, for me was something that just allowed me to go back to, like, being positive and understanding. There's a purpose for all of this. So those are my two rocks, you know, my wife and my faith, for sure. [10:56] Ryan: Cool, man. I appreciate you sharing, sharing all that. All right, let's talk about some sports. Right, because you were mentioning you're coming up with this new class at Florida State, and it aligns with one of the questions I wanted to ask. So this is really cool to get insight on. So we've got a lot of changes in a short amount of time, right? I mean, you obviously have name, image, and likeness. You have transfer portal. The transfer portal is affecting how a lot of the big. Well, really everybody, but a lot of the big schools are recruiting. You've got the conference realignment. I mean, the ACC now has a west coast arm, which would have ever thought, you know, who'd ever thought that, right? [11:44] Kris: Yeah. Yeah. [11:44] Ryan: And so you have all these, uh, changes that are happening right now. How. How is that affecting the college athlete experience now, you know, from all the way, even from being recruited in high school, how do you see this, you know, panning out? I mean, I feel like we could talk for hours on this. [12:07] Speaker C: Yeah, we truly can. [12:08] Ryan: Your thoughts on all that? [12:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, let me pull up my crystal ball here. I mean, there's so much changing landscape in such a quick amount of time that it's. It's so. It's easy to even hard to kind of keep up with at times, right. Because there's so much change from a day to day basis, whether it's lawsuits or, you know, whether it's, you know, just nil deals that are kind of groundbreaking and things like that. So it's. It's really challenging to keep up with, but I'm very, very excited for the future, and I think that what we're seeing is that the reality of the situation is finally catching up. [12:43] Kris: Right. [12:44] Speaker C: We've for a long time understood that collegiate athletics needs to break away from this idea of amateurism. [12:51] Kris: Right. [12:51] Speaker C: And so now that we're kind of facing that reality, with governance we're kind of seeing a lot of things unfold and since it's been way past due, there's a lot of consequences to that as well. And so I think a lot of things that we're going to see are going to be very similar to the professional models. I think we're going to end up seeing things like salary caps and trance reporters already operating like free agency. Nil is really just, if you think about it, endorsements. That's all it is. It's really getting to this understanding of where we've actually been at for the past however many years of what athletes bring in and the revenue that they bring in, the billions of dollars every year. And how does that actually look at our equitable sort of standpoint to allow players to reap the benefits of that over the things that they're producing. And so there's so many directions we could go with this. So I'll let you. [13:46] Ryan: Yeah, let's start. Let's start at the high school level, right. And we'll work our way up. So the high school level, you know, the transfer portal and we work with a number of high school athletes, you know, AAU teams, club teams that a lot of them want to make it to that college level, right. And they've got the I've got to go d one. Right. And their parents, some of which have played athletics in college, they were recruited under one model and like you said, that lots of changes, which just means there's a lot of catching up to how the real world works now that had to have happened. [14:29] Kris: Right. [14:29] Ryan: And so you have parents that were recruited and are coaching their kids to in the old way but now you have this new method of, you know, where you see a lot of the transfer portal guys that are coming from those mid majors that are getting opportunities and being able to figure out what is the right university for me, you know, power five, whatever it is. And so a lot of those changes. So if you were going back, right. [14:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [14:58] Ryan: Coming out as, as a senior in high school, you gotta commit and you know, you went to Kent State and you loved your, your time there. Very loyal. I mean all that stuff from the first 1st time you were on. [15:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [15:12] Ryan: How, like what would your mindset be knowing that this has changed? Like what advice would you give to high school athletes? [15:21] Speaker C: Yeah, it is. It's incredibly important to have some sort of advice from someone who understands the new landscape, to be honest. Because like you're saying the landscape has changed it like astronomically. It is, it is very different in terms of how things work, even the amount of scholarships and how hard it is to go. D one is different, right. It's harder, right. Because they can go ahead and get a transfer guy who's already proven at this level and can't compete, and they have film on them and say, you know, this is a much less of a risk for us to take this guy than a high school athlete who, you know, we don't really exactly know how, who's going to, how he's going to pan out on the collegiate level. And so it's actually harder to even go d one. It's harder to go to a collegiate, you know, program. But I think one of the things, in addition to having that understanding is seeing what they're offering you. Of course, within IO, I mean, that, I wouldn't say that might not be the number one thing, but it's still very important. But I think outside opportunities as well, in terms of how are you going to be set up for life after sports? And so looking at some of the academic programs, what are some of the percentages in terms of where do people major, right. And how are those majors and those degrees helping them be successful afterwards? What are their student athlete development look like? What are some of the things and resources that they bring in so that they can build skills like financial literacy or career building or communication skills or, you know, just other skills that you might need to be successful in your job? I think that you also want to make sure that you go somewhere that has good people, right? Have some people with you who is good at judging character, at least when you go on these, these campus visits and make sure that they are, you know, true to what they're saying, they're genuine, right? Someone who can kind of assess those things because sometimes, you know, you can get a sales pitch and as a 1718 year old, somebody you're talking to a 30 year old who's been in the game or 40, 50 year old who's been in the game for however long they can get you to, you know, answer things and think, think ways that aren't necessarily the reality of the situation. And so get somebody in there with you, have a good advisor, have somebody who you trust, and as we talked about before, have that rock, that relationship with someone who's going to allow you to see sort of what these relationships, these offers and what these universities are actually talking to you about and what it actually means for you in the future. So there's so many things that you kind of need to be aware of these days. Of course, playing time is one, too. I mean, what are, what are your goals? That's, that's one thing I think you might need to set out. What are your goals? What do you want to get out of your, your college experience? Do you want it? Is the league your only thing that you're thinking about? Is it, you know, league? But also I want to be set up afterwards in terms of my career opportunities, or am I trying to really take advantage of my education? What are the things you're looking to do? Do I want to play immediately? Am I willing to go to an organization that is, you know, maybe a better program that'll kind of train me and build me up and develop me for one or two years, then I'll get on the field and have my opportunity. So decide your goals. Figure out which university studios are going to offer that, and then go from there, but also have that awareness of, you know, what's, what the landscape is looking like. And so, you know, Nio is a whole other conversation, but that's, you know, I think that's, that's important as well, for sure. [18:44] Kris: Yeah. [18:44] Ryan: And I think, I mean, I think you hit on it. It's, it's, what are you, what is your main goal? [18:50] Kris: Right. [18:50] Ryan: Is it to be on a d one team or is it to play d one and then your goals after that? Right. It's, it's perfectly okay. You know, either, either path is okay. Right. You just want to be on a d one team, then going to that power five, if you're able to get a scholarship, because it's more competitive, there's, there's increased, uh, demand and there's the same amount of supply. [19:17] Kris: Right. [19:18] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [19:18] Ryan: It's more competitive, harder to get them. But if you're just cool being on that, uh, not seeing the field for two, maybe three years. [19:26] Kris: Yeah. [19:27] Ryan: Cool. [19:28] Kris: Right. [19:28] Ryan: Nothing wrong with that. But if you're really wanting to play an impact, it might be, you know, going to a junior college or going to a mid major, knowing that you're going to grow as a person, you're going to play a higher chance of playing right away. And that's typically the best way to develop as an athlete, is to be on the field, play. It's been a while since I played. [19:52] Speaker C: No, that doesn't change. [19:53] Kris: Yeah. Yeah. [19:54] Ryan: I mean, so, yeah, that's the consistent here thing in athletics. But knowing that you can transfer, you're going to know more about who you are. So where you might have gone to a Florida before now, we're looking at, hey, I know that I align more with Florida, Florida State and that's where I want to go. Right. Better fit for me not just as an athlete, but as a, as a, you know, person outside of being an athlete. Right. An education standpoint from a, you know, like you, all the things you mentioned, right. Player development and having the relationships in the network and that's going to carry me through life and all that stuff. [20:35] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. I mean, and I think you touched on a really good point too. Um, and before I say this, I definitely don't advise going somewhere with the mindset that you're going to transfer, but that opens up an opportunity nowadays to where you don't have to go to a Florida State or you don't have to go to one of these major power five schools because the transfer portal rules are a lot less stringent. [20:54] Kris: Right. [20:54] Speaker C: You can transfer whenever you need to. [20:56] Kris: Right. [20:57] Speaker C: And so if you can go to a place, a d, one place, wherever it might be and get on the field early and get some really good film, there's an opportunity to go to one of these, you know, big time schools. So, you know, just get some skin in the game, I suppose. But there's, it's, it's important to consider all of these, these things that we've talked about when a lot of people don't really have that wherewithal or, you know, people in their corner who are telling them these things. [21:22] Ryan: Well, we saw with Kenyan Mitchell, right, from Toledo, you can go to a mid major and you can be a first round pick, right? [21:30] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [21:31] Ryan: He wouldn't have been the same person that he is now had he not gone through some of that adversity. And then, you know, he stuck with Toledo. [21:39] Kris: Right. [21:39] Ryan: The coaching stayed the same, you know, and then you have, I think it was pennants, right. He was at Indiana and then came out the, the coaching staff changed and, you know, his coordinator and he needed to go where they could leverage and believed in his game and how, how to leverage that. And so you've got these options and starting at, you know, you, you could almost joke, you know, that Indiana alum are going to, you know, kill me over this one. But you could almost look at Indiana football as a mid major, right? I mean, yeah, you're in a power five, but from a performance standpoint that's unaware, you know, started and then took it to the next level. So. [22:21] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And that's, that's definitely what we're seeing. I mean, interesting kind of side quest to what you said. I mean, I think that we're actually seeing a benefit from nil in terms of people staying in school, but also something that people, it's kind of the antithesis what people thought was going to happen, which it's actually helping out players, I think, in terms of the NFL. [22:44] Kris: Right. [22:44] Speaker C: They thought it was going to take away from the NFL. And I think what we're seeing is like a lot more people are staying in college and becoming more polished and then going into the draft, and now it's much less of a risk. Whereas so, for example, say you had somebody who was, you know, going to go in the second round or third round or maybe even the fourth round. That's where their draft stock was. They before, maybe three years ago before nil, they would probably just enter their, their name to the draft. Like, hey, I got a shot, right? But now it's like, hey, I can stay in college and actually make some money, get a degree, polish my skills and boost my draft stock and then be able to go to NFL as well. And so what we've seen in terms of numbers is, I think, you know, three years ago we had maybe 120 or something around there, 120 underclassmen who entered the draft. And then, you know, two years after that or two years ago, we had around, you know, like 80 something. And now this past year we had 50 something underclassmen. And so we're seeing a lot more people who are staying in, taking advantage of these nil opportunities but also boosting their draft stock and which is actually a more polished product for the NFL. But this also, it's an odd thing. It kind of opens up the opportunity, like when you talk about Quinton Mitchell, it opens up the opportunity for mid major guys to be seen and go to the NFL because people are staying later and so they're getting drafted a little bit older. And the guys who were mid major might not have got drafted before because of all these underclassmen who are highly rated and have a good draft grade. We're taking some of those spots now. They're staying. And so mid major has more of an opportunity to actually get drafted. And so I think that's it's a win win for all organization, NFL professional, you know, collegiate and all these organizations. So I'm loving what I'm seeing. I'm loving it. [24:37] Ryan: Absolutely. Well, and so then the transition to nil, I think the other thing we saw was some of the interviews because working with XPe, I was, like, glued to the draft. Right. Guys going to go, did they move up and all this kind of stuff? But some of the interviews were, you know, what are you going to buy with your first check, right. And it always goes there. And you typically house all this type of stuff. But now you have athletes that have seen money, right? The check was smaller than the NFL check that they're going to get. And the smaller the check, the smaller the mistakes you make. [25:18] Kris: Right. [25:18] Ryan: The bigger the check, the bigger the mistakes. And so they already went through and they made their mistakes if they were going to make them. They got used to seeing commas in the bank account. And so now as they transition to a bigger check, a lot of that youth and have fun with the money has been dealt with. They're over it. [25:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [25:42] Ryan: You know, I think we'll see, you know, prediction here, my crystal ball. I think we're going to see athletes that are, you know, doing at a younger age in their career, smarter things with their money. Yeah. Because that temptation has been, you know, it's been dealt with. [25:58] Speaker C: Yeah, 100%. I mean, experience trumps a lot of things. [26:02] Kris: Right? [26:03] Speaker C: So being able to see what to do with the money that you get at earlier age is only going to be helpful to their development. And I completely agree. I think it's important. It's way past due, right. It only makes sense to allow them to reap the benefits of what they're producing. And so them getting at it at an earlier age is going to be helpful in terms of their financial decisions and financial literacy. And I think one thing to really kind of drive home here is that these athletes need some good people in their corner, right? Those rocks or some representation, whether it's a legal advisor, to make sure that they're not getting into some of these nil deals that are going to actually hurt them and harm them in the future or whether it's, you know, understanding how to brand themselves or what to do with their money. A financial advisor. [26:53] Kris: Right. [26:54] Speaker C: And so we need to start affording a lot of athletes some of these, you know, these opportunities are some of these representation, I would say, to help them take advantage of these opportunities and not go through a lot of those poor decisions that someone who never had any money before and now they have millions of dollars and they don't really know what to do and they have sharks in the water, right. Trying to come at them and, you know, hey, here's this business ******* and all this stuff. They're not keeping the athletes best interests at heart. So surrounding these guys with these guys or women whatever it might be with the right, you know, kind of crowd or the right, you know, representation is going to be extremely helpful financially and developmentally and all these different things. [27:37] Ryan: Even if it's just a mentor. [27:38] Kris: Right. [27:38] Ryan: A mentor, like. Like you. Like, you're really big on. [27:42] Kris: Right. [27:42] Ryan: That. Where you can, you know, the only. The only interest they have in you is seeing you be successful. [27:50] Kris: Yeah. [27:51] Ryan: Getting paid on anything. There's no financial gain there. Somebody that you can trust their opinion and. And. And go back to with those, you know, with the questions and scenarios that present themselves. [28:03] Speaker C: 100%. 100%. And I'm. I wonder, you know, I want to say, like, athletic departments, they have a lot of stuff that they're dealing with, but this is something that I think that they really need to heavily consider. And I think a lot of places are considering. Like, we have mentors here, but not to the capacity that we're discussing right now. Like, we need to have people who have possibly gone to the NFL or done other things from your school possibly coming back and being mentors to these athletes who are experiencing some of those same things and, um, someone that they can trust. [28:38] Kris: Right. It's. [28:38] Speaker C: It's easier to trust somebody who's gone through something that you're. You're currently going through, and they. They found a way to be successful. And so I think that we need to kind of afford these athletes, those. Those mentors. [28:49] Kris: Right. [28:50] Speaker C: And also, what we're seeing with a lot of, you know, in terms of collectives, I think we're seeing some of these things. [28:57] Kris: Right. [28:57] Speaker C: We're seeing people who are coming on, advising them on nil deals and garnering nil deals for them. But also, what's going to be something I think needs to be a standard is having some attorneys on your team or in your department, in your collective or whatever it might be, who are making sure that these contracts are to the benefit of the athlete and they're not getting taken advantage of or exploited. And so advisors in terms of attorneys, but advisors in terms of maybe some financial people also who are being brought on as staff for these collectives or these universities, whether it's in house or out of house, I think are going to be imperative to kind of make sure that these athletes are, you know, doing the best that they can for themselves. [29:46] Ryan: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. You mentioned one thing, revenue sharing. Before. It was. It was a little. So where. Where do you see that going? And is there a way to make it work? And then we saw, I forget. I think it was Dartmouth, the men's basketball team trying to unionize and all that type of stuff. So two issues that are there, college athletics sometimes don't. One gets more pressed than the other. But your thoughts on those two? [30:21] Speaker C: I think it's inevitable at this point that we see the athletes being compensated through revenue share. I need to. It's hard, like I said, it's hard to keep up to date with all the things that are happening. We had something come out with Virginia and their laws coming out with just was it schools are allowed to directly pay the athletes now? And so there's cases out in California with the Johnson case that are fighting for employment. There's several cases out that are suing the NCAA to make sure that we're able to pay the athletes with revenue sharing and things like that. And so I think, you know, very soon here, we're going to see some decisions made in terms of which way we're going to be going one way or the other. And at this point, if you look at a lot of what the experts are saying, a lot of, you know, lawyers, a lot of people who are in athletics been there for a long time, who are working in conferences, we see them preparing for a future with revenue share. And the universities and departments that aren't preparing for it, I think are going to be at a disadvantage, to be honest, once some of these changes do go into place because they're not going to have the infrastructure, the framework to make it happen for however many years. And so the people who are making sure that those changes are happening now in their department are going to have a huge advantage in terms of recruiting or just allowing their athletes to get opportunities. But exactly how it's gonna happen, that's, I have no idea how it's exactly gonna happen, but I do see it coming, you know, to fruition here. Finally, the athletes are gonna get some. [31:59] Ryan: What it looks like is, who knows? [32:02] Speaker C: But it changed week by week, month by month. I mean, I'm every day trying to, I'm scouring Twitter, I'm scouring law cases. You know, I'm following people who are, like, in the courtrooms arguing for these things. And, you know, it's changing all the time. So even with my collegiate athletics course I'm going to teach, I can't even, you know, get a set thing until, like, probably the day before the day of. [32:24] Kris: Right. [32:25] Speaker C: So I'm still, I'm keeping up with the things, but it's, it's a lot. [32:29] Kris: It's. [32:29] Speaker C: It's a complicated and fluid situation that has sort of this inevitable end, but no one's going to be able to tell you exactly how it's going to happen for sure. [32:39] Ryan: So what about this Dartmouth and the unionizing and all that type of stuff? And it was on the nil premise, I think this is. To me, this is a tough one for them to justify. I get what they're trying to do, but I don't know. What are your thoughts on it? [32:59] Speaker C: I have. With all the things coming out and with sort of what I was going through, it's been hard to keep up with a lot of these. But Dartmouth, I know it's a private institution. [33:08] Kris: Right. [33:09] Speaker C: And so it's. It's going to be different how that plays out with a lot of other public universities, but also, it's Ivy League school that, you know, necessarily doesn't bring in the revenue that a lot of these power five schools do. And so I think that it's just kind of. It's going to help in terms of setting the stage for the standard of collegiate athletics. Whether the Dartmouth athletes have the. You know, I don't know. It's hard to say because I'm. I'm all for it. You know, anything that works towards athletes being able to benefit from some of the things they're producing, I'm all for. But some of the specifics, I can't. [33:46] Kris: I don't know. I don't. [33:47] Speaker C: Can't dive too deep into it since I haven't. I've kept too close attention to the Dartmouth case. Yeah. [33:52] Kris: Yeah. [33:52] Ryan: Well, you know, I think if it leads to the Ivy League saying, yes, you can. You can participate in nil, because right now, they. I believe they have or still have that. The hands off. Right. Like, you can't. You know, you can't participate in it. [34:08] Kris: Yeah. [34:08] Ryan: It's to that. Great. Because. And I don't know why they. It's just, you know, hard to. Hard to imagine why they wouldn't. Right. Just from a competitive side of things. Yeah, but, you know, you said before, it's endorsements. That's what nil is. [34:25] Kris: Right. [34:26] Ryan: So how can you put a price on a nil activity that's blanket across sport, you know, a gender. [34:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [34:39] Ryan: I mean, the value is different to each business. The athletes, you know, don't have the same value from a marketing standpoint. And so I just don't know how. You know, I don't know how you do that. [34:55] Kris: You know? Yeah. [34:56] Ryan: Like saying the same thing in the NFL, like, if you're gonna sign up, you know, you know, a deodorant commercial or, you know, the Troy Palamalu the head and shoulders commercial. Everybody that does that gets the same amount of money. I mean, it's. I don't know how you can. You can, you know, do that. [35:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm 100% with you. I don't think there's a good way to go about a generalized law or rule for all nil deals. [35:25] Kris: Right. [35:25] Speaker C: Cause it just doesn't make sense. The magnitude of the value of the athlete is way different in different markets and different genders and different sports and different positions. And so there's too many variables and dynamics that you have to take into account to write even a contract. [35:41] Kris: Right. [35:41] Speaker C: And so I think that a blanket rule or law is just not, you know, what you want to do. The interesting thing is that there are so many different laws, though, across the board in terms of state laws that it gets really tricky for brands and corporations to actually get involved because what they do in Florida might not necessarily be okay for them to engage with an athlete in, you know, Nevada or wherever it might be. [36:09] Kris: Right. [36:09] Speaker C: And so it. That's, I think, the only good argument right now in terms of having a blanket law. [36:17] Kris: Right. [36:17] Speaker C: But I don't think that they should even with that. [36:20] Kris: Right. [36:20] Speaker C: It's just the brands are. Have to figure it out because it only make. It only helps them, obviously, to be able to be. Have that. That flexibility to create a different. A deal or endorsement deal with athletes. So that's a tricky part about it. But, yeah, there's a blanket law would only be too restrictive on athletes, just like we're trying to break away from now with a lot of things. [36:43] Ryan: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. So I've got to bring it up, man. Is the. Is the missing the football playoff, is that fueling the team this year to. To make it back up to the top? [36:59] Speaker C: Oh, I imagine it is. I imagine it is. I mean, I'm. I don't want to say for. I've been a mentor to a lot of the guys over there, and they're hungry. I mean, that's. That's something like we talked about before when it just being a competitor at an elite level and the mindset that you have that you have to have that doesn't stop when you get denied. That only gets, you know, hungry. It only gets stronger. [37:25] Kris: Right. [37:25] Speaker C: And so I imagine the team as a whole is preparing for something that is going to perhaps shock the world to a degree that's like, okay, yeah, we actually need to make sure that they are in this playoffs which the expansion. I highly doubt that they won't be there anyways, but to just not leave a doubt in people's mind that they obviously deserve to be there. But I think this year is certainly going to be a statement, I believe, and we're gearing up to do it. We got a lot of good players and still with the same, you know, coaching staff, coach Norvell is doing huge. [38:02] Ryan: Right. There's a lot of movement, there's a lot of. A lot of rumors and, oh, this is where I want to be, so. [38:09] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. There's. There's a good mindset, just like we talked about before with Jim Harbaugh's sort of contagious attitude and mindset and understanding of the game and understanding what it takes to be elite. I think Norvell has a very similar effect on the culture as a whole in terms of athletics. But of course, with the players, and I think they are on one accord, they're climbing to the victory here and trying to figure out how to win a championship. The CFP here, I think they have what it takes to do it for sure. [38:44] Ryan: Well, I'm looking forward to watching, man. Chris, I appreciate you. I appreciate your time. I'm so happy for you that you got that battle out of the way and all the learning that you derived from it, but appreciate you coming on. Until next time.

3. 

   13 Feb 2024

   Kicking it With SammI From Miami

   Samantha Card is a former NCAA Division 1 athlete, MBA graduate, bestselling author, Fortune 100 company trailblazer, and “level up” expert. She’s on an unwavering global mission to help inspire, empower, and support athletes, coaches, administrators, active military, veterans and corporate athletes to extend their skills and impact beyond their roles. She brings out the high performance mindset in others and prepares them to GO Pro In Life by identifying opportunities, taking swift action, failing fast often and applying an ALL IN mindset. Samantha never grew up with traditional work experience because she played year-round, excelling on the field and becoming one of the top 5% of competitive athletes to play in Division 1 sports. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry, she experienced a full-blown identity crisis. “Who am I outside of sports?” Recovering from high functioning anxiety that followed the transition beyond the game, Samantha “grew through what she went through” despite the outside world thinking she had it all together! Samantha tapped into her athletic building blocks, reestablished a routine, and found ways to leverage her sports vehicle by repackaging her experiential skill sets she amassed through her athletic career. She graduated with an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh Katz School of Business. In 2022, Samantha left her corporate career to help inspire, empower, and support athletes, coaches, administrators, active military, veterans and corporate athletes to extend their skills and impact beyond their roles. She currently lives in Florida. Connect with Samantha at SuccessBeyondGameday.com [00:16] Ryan: Welcome to Nil Undressed. I'm Ryan Schlauchner and I'm sitting here with the doc, right, the future mayor of Rock Hill, South Carolina. I threw at one point in high school. He threw eleven touchdowns in one game and scored eleven goals in the soccer match afterwards. Doctor Chaney Robinson. [00:36] Cheney: That's right. And Al Bundy was my running back behind me. [00:40] Ryan: Hey, doc, today we're going to do things a little bit different, right? We're going to flip. We're going to give you the reins of everything and we're going to talk about some player development. [00:51] Cheney: Yeah. [00:52] Ryan: So here you go. [00:53] Cheney: We got a great guest today. We've been talking about doing this for a while now, so I'm glad we're able to get it together and be able to do it. So, Ryan, our guest today, Rockstar. I'm going to give the brief bio, okay, because it would take the whole show, with all that she's done and accomplished it, literally take the whole show to go through it. So I'm going to give the brief bio so we can get into it. Samantha Card is a former NCAA Division one athlete, NBA graduate, bestselling author, Fortune 100 company trailblazer and level up expert. She's on an unwavering global mission to help inspire, empower and support athletes, coaches, administrators, active military veterans and corporate athletes to extend their skills and impact beyond their roles. She brings out the high performance mindset in others and prepares them to go pro in life by identifying opportunities, taking swift action, failing fast often, and applying an all in mindset. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce Samantha card. Sam, welcome to the show. [02:01] Sam: Thanks for having me. [02:02] Speaker D: It was kind of like I couldn't have wrote that better for you. [02:07] Cheney: I know. It just kind of came together nicely, didn't it? [02:10] Sam: Yeah. [02:11] Speaker D: No, I appreciate that. It means a lot coming from you and I'm excited. Ryan and I have been talking about getting on the show for quite some time. So finally we're here. [02:21] Cheney: Here we are. Let's dig in. All right, Sam, you're first. Talk about your experience as a collegiate athlete and what was your biggest takeaway? [02:31] Speaker D: Good. Been. I've always been that athlete. That was part of a ground up build. [02:39] Sam: Right? [02:40] Speaker D: A foundational build. I didn't go to a program that already had a bunch of national championships, although it did seem appetizing to go down the path to roll tide, roll right. But I didn't. And I knew long term softball wasn't going to be my forever thing. Although I would love and aspire to play in the Olympics, I knew I needed to go to a college. That really helped me parallel path my education. [03:07] Sam: Right. [03:08] Speaker D: It's just women's sports are not where men's sports are. And from that point I chose Pitt has a really good science research institution and I majored in chemistry. So it was great because I was every bit of a scholar athlete in college. And I think the biggest takeaway for me, you can do all things right, you can be the nerd and lean into that and you also can be a high performance athlete on the field. And because I was immersed in that type of environment, I always kind of saw myself in and out of sport relatively earlier than most. [03:48] Cheney: Now you're known as Sammy from how, how did you get to landlocked Pennsylvania? [03:57] Speaker D: Well, when they pay for your school, you go, there you go right now. I mean, I had never seen snow. The first year I was there, I had 9ft of snow and I had a mustang. So when I tell you, fail often, fail fast. Boy, did I learn that I had to put bricks in the back of my car so it didn't spin out. There's all types of life lessons, but yeah, it's important to get uncomfortable. I can get out of your ecosystem and bubble. I was playing year round, never saw snow. And then next thing you know, I'm playing in season with snow coming down as a catcher, wasn't know you do hard. [04:36] Cheney: So there you go. All right, Wisconsin native, how about you? [04:41] Ryan: Yeah, I mean, I was the exact opposite. Baseball was my thing. School was completely secondary. Like Sam said, there's vast differences between men, the opportunities for men's and women's sports from a financial level, right. And so that was my focus. I needed to get stronger in order to make it to the next level. I needed to add weight and so I was in the gym nonstop in between games, after doubleheaders, when we get back from the road. And then all of a sudden one day I couldn't play. It blew up my shoulder and it forced retirement. And I think at that point is when I realized what athletics has brought me because up until that point, I was all in on making it to major league baseball. And again, school was somehow I spent past spanish class in college, going to it one time and never taking a test, right. So I was that person and I was happy about it. Right. That was a c that I would take. So it wasn't until I didn't have athletics as that fallback, as that main focus that I then had to understand the skills that athletics taught me that applied into life after sports. [06:10] Cheney: Well, let's continue with that. What was next? Because sports ended abruptly for you? Right. So what was next for you? [06:17] Ryan: Well, I mean, I think like a lot of athletes go through, whether they retire on their terms or are forced to retire. I spent a year and now, luckily, this was my sophomore year in college, right? So it was studying and rehab and all that, but I spent a year trying to figure out what am I going to do for the rest of my life. My option is taken away. What are my options now? And again, school was not my focus. So I was like, I need to get an internship that is at least elevated. And so that was probably the first lesson of the network that athletics provides because I got an internship and had success in that internship, largely because of the connections I had through baseball and people that would vouch for me and knew that I was going to work hard. I got opportunities because of athletics and those connections that I probably shouldn't have for grade point averages and all that sort of stuff. So I got an internship in the financial services space and extremely competitive industry, and it was kind of like that. Athletics minus the physical aspects of it. Yeah. [07:44] Cheney: Sam, for you, softball is coming to an end now. You've got to grow up. We've got to start adulting. What was. [07:53] Speaker D: That's. It's interesting because I had a different front end experience than Ryan did and know a different experience on the back end of it. So although I knew I wasn't going to play pro forever in sport or not forever, but really make a career out of it, I had this fancy chemistry degree and I had zero internship, a bleak resume. And I was like, okay, well, I checked it off the list, but I don't know who I am. And sport ended, but my full identity crisis picked up. It felt like a cliff dive. So, although at the front end I knew I was more than my sport, I still was so all in to sport and being the best scholar athlete possible that I was really struggling to figure out how to connect the dots. [08:46] Sam: Right. [08:47] Speaker D: So it's like I have all the individual siloed pieces, but how did I learn how to make it congruent together? It really was rough and I had to go back home. And a lot of athletes are going to be like, oh, my God, I got to go back home. I've been living by myself and you have like an ego blow. And I did. [09:06] Sam: Right. [09:06] Speaker D: And I really know ego has no place here and I gave myself two weeks. I really am a firm believer that when you get knocked down. Take your 8 seconds. Muhammad Ali did it, right? It's like you need to feel it, because if you just go on and move to the next thing, you just now put it in a compartment that's going to boil know in your subconscious side. So I gave myself two weeks, and like Ryan, I did lean into the athletic network, primarily our life skills. So Pitt had one of the leading life skills program early on. I was there during year one and year two of the implementation. [09:42] Sam: Right. [09:43] Speaker D: I'm an athlete. That was always part of a first. [09:45] Sam: Right. [09:45] Speaker D: Foundational build. So I just said, hey, look, I don't need an easy yes. All I need is a door, which is the athlete in me, right? If you give me the door, I'll crush through it and I'll figure it out. [09:58] Sam: Right? [09:59] Speaker D: And that's what ended up happening where I realized I needed more business Acumen, right? So I had this chemistry degree. No on paper experience, but I had all these experiential skills as a leader, captain of the team. So I'm like, well, why don't I go get my MBA? And at that point, Pitt didn't have any athletes going to get their MBA, so someone had to be the first. So I've always just leaned into that, and then the world opened up for me. Once I did that, I lived abroad and then started working for Honeywell. And the list goes on. [10:29] Cheney: There you go. So, a pioneer by all forms and fashions of it. So, this fast forward a little bit. Success beyond game day. What was the motivation in starting success beyond game day? [10:47] Speaker D: It's an interesting question, and I've thought about it a lot. [10:50] Sam: Right. [10:51] Speaker D: So, as athletes, power, success. We want to win. We want to get to the highest levels. We want to win the natty. We want to win the Super bowl. We want to win the title. But you can look left and right and be alone after you get it, because success is an infinite game. [11:11] Sam: Right? [11:11] Speaker D: And what I started to realize was, if I truly wanted to leave my mark and add value into society and really be a community ambassador that I talk about, like, how could I walk it? I started to realize, well, I needed to put my ego to the side. And it's not about power and success. It's really about how can I contribute and live a life of fulfillment well beyond my time on this earth, right? So that mentality shift was a huge component because then it catalyzed into, well, sports is not who I am. It is what I did, and it is a vehicle to parallel path a whole host of things so because I was thinking about it in that way, I thought everybody was. Well, I started to realize when I was mentoring, Pitt has a formal mentoring program, and two athletes became over 100 athletes. So when that organically happens and you're getting the pool across a multitude of sports, different backgrounds, perspectives. Oh, could you talk to my friend over at Syracuse, Stanford? And then it started to get bigger and bigger. I knew it was bigger than me, and I was the one kind of tapped on. And then from that point, I always just would mentor. But where it got really loud is when two football players in particular had some mental health issues, and they're like, you need to be doing this full time, and you'd be grossly, kind of negligent to. Not without them saying those words. That's kind of how it came out. Which then was catalyst for the book. It was just a book. That's the easiest way to scale. So, for me, contribute, put something out there. I'm not an author. That's fine. Do hard things right. [12:51] Sam: That's. [12:51] Speaker D: The athlete in me ended up becoming a bestseller with being self published. [12:55] Sam: Right? [12:56] Speaker D: Which said, okay, well, there's some real pool here. And then it became an idea to put it into a business, and then now it's headed to an enterprise. So one conversation turned into a book, turned into a business, and is now headed towards an enterprise structure. [13:11] Cheney: That's awesome. That's so cool. Ryan, same question. You'd worked in financial planning for years, right, with your own firm, and then did a little bit of a pivot with a must win. Talk about the motivation behind that. [13:26] Ryan: Yeah, I think you can be successful at something and not fulfilled in it. And so 24, 25 years of being successful in an industry that has extremely high failure rate. My kind of switch happened when Covid kind of slowed everyone down because that gave me opportunity to think. Right. Because I think so often, we get so caught up in our day to day in accomplishing things that we don't take time to survey the landscape and just think through, hey, am I doing what I'm really supposed to be doing? If not, then what is that? And so, like Sam, I wrote a book. I've been kind know, prodded from time to time by some athletes to do a financial literacy book for athletes. And I did that again, self published, just like Sam, it became a bestseller. And then that kind of got me in that world. And as I connected to more and more of these athletes, I just realized that they were super successful. Yes, athletically, but in life after athletics. And what was that? Journey and what percentage of them have success. There's guys that are pro bowlers that have taken companies from two states and 20 employees to 30 states and 2000 employees without going back and getting a formal education. So there's some foundational things that athletics has taught them. And that started to connect me with my journey is, yeah, I leveraged a lot of these things that athletics has taught me to be successful in this. And so connecting with a lot of these athletes and hearing the stories about those that were left behind that didn't make it pro, spent the five to ten years trying to figure out who they were job hopping or went back to the neighborhoods that they came from. And in some of those cases, that's not a positive situation. And then identifying through their friends that, hey, they were smarter than me, they had more talent, and they weren't able to connect the dots. They weren't shown how to connect those dots. And so it just kind of hit that, hey, now is the time to make a switch. It's kind of a nice pause in life, and how can we just be fulfilled in what we're doing and make the impact that will last, like Sam last beyond me on this earth and get people to achieve their natural potential outside of athletics. [16:32] Cheney: There you go. So you guys are partnered together now. The companies have come together and you've helped revolutionize athlete development. And it's been said that you've created the missing link. What are you all doing? How did you all help create, fill this void and create this void of the missing lake? Whoever wants me to take it, I'll start. [17:01] Ryan: You can fill in. So I think we started out on individual paths. We've come together, which takes being able to adapt on the fly. Right. We were in the industry, we saw what was being produced and what competition was doing, and we said, well, we've got to figure out a way to really provide value here. Right? So I think it was being able to adapt and being able to think through what is really going to add value and have that. And Sam says this all the time. The we not me mindset of who can we pull in that's already doing some really great things. And how do we take a bunch of siloed great things, bring them together to make one amazing thing that can really impact athletes like they need. Right. That can really serve those needs. [18:11] Sam: Yeah. [18:12] Speaker D: So I'll piggyback on that. The word community gets thrown around a lot, right? The concept of impact gets thrown around a lot. Ryan was the only other human that embodied what I embodied in terms of impact. So in order to get to levels that are far beyond your own individual contribution, you really need a team of people that bring in expertise in certain spaces and you've got to let them go. [18:47] Sam: Right? [18:48] Speaker D: And what I started to realize is these businesses were getting put up, but it was really income before impact, but they would hide behind the concept of impact for athletes. And I wasn't cool with, you know, a lot of athletes don't know what they don't know, but you can't keep it gray enough to just keep you reoccurring in there. Sometimes your impact is a season, sometimes it's a lifetime. Ryan and I are okay with either or because they both matter. [19:21] Sam: Right. [19:22] Speaker D: Some don't want help now because they think it's a distraction when in reality it's going to help them. We understand we're not going to be everything to everyone every time we talk, right. And we also understand that when we say impact, that means putting our own success criteria, our ambitions, kind of on the back burner to really drive a community forward approach, right? So for athlete, bi athlete, we may want to do it a certain way, but we've redone the program with rapid prototyping throughout what I would say is like the last twelve months, to a point where now I feel extremely confident that we've created something that is a safe ecosystem that we can drive the impact, get the income to make the impact even more. So it's, it becomes this recycled wheel that a lot of companies are just going for their top line and bottom line. Well, Ryan and I own the business and we're doing that on know. It's the battle of do you, um, a small piece of a huge pile or do you want a big piece of a small pile? Well, we want a huge impact, but in order to get to that point, we need to lay the right foundation down and you need to have the right people in so you can expand to include. So that's what kind of Ryan and I have done in a unique way. We've done a lot of focus groups. We don't claim to know it all and we bring everybody on board, right. And that doesn't mean we take every single little detail and incorporate it. But we have put our money in this because we are that serious about the impact. We want to drive and do it differently than it's ever been done. Someone has to be the first, right? So we've kind of taken the responsibility on is it easy all the time? No. Is it fun all the time? But it's stressful. [21:16] Sam: All right? [21:16] Speaker D: So it would be like any other business that you would think you would need to create and stuff like that. But at some point it starts to go, and right now it's going because the athletes are leaning in because it really is a we, not me. [21:33] Cheney: It's establishing that firm foundation in whatever it is that you're doing. [21:38] Ryan: And I think the bulk of, if I look at the landscape of athlete development, player development, stuff that's out there, a lot of it gets masked with nil at the college level of let's help them get deals and then let's throw some financial literacy or leadership courses up there, right? And it's this one size fits all mentality that they're bringing to player development. When the reality is each person is unique, they're going to have their unique impact on the world. They could look at the exact same thing and the whole team can see it differently and will interpret it differently. And so how do we recognize and help these athletes identify how they're unique, help them understand that so that they can articulate that, so that then that's an advantage to them because now they know how they see the world, they know how their teammates see the world. They can interact better, and we can create a completely customized development path for each athlete based on what's relevant to them. And so it's really figuring out, all right, how do we customize at an individual level and be able to scale that to where we can have that impact across all of athletics, from high school, college, to growth. [23:12] Sam: Yeah. [23:12] Speaker D: And I will say this, right, most people shy away when you say customizability, right? Because it seems not cost effective, but it's only impossible until it's done. Someone else's insecurity or inability is not ours. But at the same time, we're not afraid to fail. And if something doesn't work, boom, we move on, right? And we've had many reiterations, and this is not like, oh, perfection on the first period. But I will say this, it's a very interesting component that once you get athletes at the table, it just changes. [23:54] Sam: Right? [23:55] Speaker D: Fish, school, birds, flock, people, tribe, you hang with people that have your shared values, but yet we never create anything. Talking about your why behind the you out and feel comfortable to thrive in that, not survive. [24:12] Sam: Right. [24:12] Speaker D: So what we're doing is we are really focusing on the individual from the inside out to actually brands identify who they are, why they matter, how they can represent themselves in the best way. But in the same token, help them cross pollinate and cross train with other athletes across the country. So if you have the ability to do that, but also customize how an athlete can come and say, I'm okay being myself, wow, I'm a vegan, I am not going to take this nil deal. That seems like a lot of money with this beef company and having the courage and grace for yourself to say, not aligned. [24:54] Sam: Right. [24:55] Speaker D: Not all money is good money. [24:56] Sam: Right. [24:56] Speaker D: Not all opportunities are the right opportunities. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. So we provide that ecosystem to kind of elevate what player development really should be and make it affordable and scalable and really no athlete left behind. And we're finding creative ways to be able to finance it at every level. So that's the key, too, is also providing the proximity and access. [25:22] Cheney: Right. And you talk about not every opportunity is the right opportunity. Who is success beyond game day? Who do you typically work with? [25:32] Speaker D: So it's interesting, it started off with just the traditional Olympic athletes, right? And it was like, okay, Olympic athletes at the high school, collegiate, pro and Olympic levels. But then we kind of took a step back and said, well, hold on a minute. You've also have an uptick in esports. Well, they're athletes, too. Well, wait, hold on a minute. How did I connect the dots to go and work for Honeywall, Fortune 100 company, a $40 billion company, do all these things by 26? I don't even really talk about that. But that's an important connection. [26:08] Sam: Right? [26:08] Speaker D: So how do you do that? Well, you've got to carry those experiential skills with you and transition it. Okay, well, what does that mean? Well, you need to drive corporate athleticism. So then we're like, okay, why are we only focusing on the athlete in school? Hold on. It's bigger than four to six years. We want the 20 to 40 year horizon. So that means at every stage in the process, right? So from high school, right, 95% don't go play collegiately. Well, you still have amassed a bunch of experiential skills, right? Then when you get to the collegiate level, right, you've got, what, like 98% that don't go play pro in sport, quote unquote, plus or minus, depending on the sport, right? So what are you going to do? Help transition that period, right. And then those that actually go play a career out of it, well, guess what? They feel like sports is who they are and what they do, right? So how do you get them to parallel path their brand identification outside of sport to Ryan's point to build franchises, to think bigger and also leverage that sports. And then, you know, once an athlete gets into a business, whether they want their own business or they want to get some work experience in a big company, a small, medium cap company, who's providing that pipeline access. [27:28] Sam: Right. [27:29] Speaker D: So that is where success beyond game day started with kind of. I would say. I wouldn't say singular, but a very focused view on Olympic sports that then expanded to. Wait, hold on a minute. All athletes. And what does all athletes truly mean? And the adjacency that has since come from that is also active service members. [27:49] Sam: Right. [27:50] Speaker D: And veterans. Transition post battlefield, you can't leave anyone behind, but you can't be everything to everyone. So you have to be very meticulous on how you roll it out and see where you could adapt and reframe certain concepts that are congruent across all of them to provide the resources instead of waiting. But you also have to be mindful that you've got to keep the high quality and engagement levels. [28:18] Cheney: Yeah. [28:19] Ryan: So really it's meant to be the life of the athlete, starting at the high school all the way through pro, but also having the connections with the corporate world to help them transition once their athletic career is done. It's being able to provide programming and resources to help them continue to develop who they are, connect with brands that are with shared values at an early stage as possible so that they can have jobs when they know what opportunities are out there, they're aligned with a company, they may have a mentor in that company. Athletes in the military. There's a lot of similarities in mindset. Right. And so it's being able to, again, it's a transition. It's helping people identify who they are, being able to put words to that, articulate that, and see how that then aligns to different types of careers versus saying, all right, my athletic or my military career is done. Now what do I do? Who am I? It's being able to help them figure that out in an extremely safe place, connect them to people that have gone through and walked that journey before to help them along, but then also help place them in opportunities that are aligned with their skill sets. [29:47] Sam: Yeah. [29:48] Speaker D: And if I may add one more thing. [29:50] Sam: Right. [29:51] Speaker D: It seems like a lot. Wow. How can you stay so focused on all of those buckets and individuals? It's a great question. [30:00] Sam: Right. [30:01] Speaker D: That doesn't mean we're the ones always leading it. So if we're going to help support the veteran community, there are amazing organizations out there doing it at the highest and best levels. Why would we not add tool sets into their toolbox? We don't need to recreate the wheel. We have no ego in this game. It's just about the impact. And if others need a catalyst to further their impact, then we're going to be that arm for them, that tool for them. If a community doesn't have anyone that wants to take a best bet on them, we will actively come in and bridge the gap. [30:38] Sam: Right. [30:39] Speaker D: And then also we have such an amazing community. So a lot of athletes that have retired from sport and have gone pro and they're going pro in life and all they need is a tap on the shoulder. No one's asked them. The only time they get asked is to donate to a school. How would you feel if you graduated four to six years and you've made this career and now you're in the alumni kind of list of donors, you've made enough where it makes sense for you to be a silver sponsor and you don't feel seen, heard and valued. So one of the things that we're doing is when we go to different schools, we're really bringing athletes that have walked those halls. [31:21] Sam: Right. [31:22] Speaker D: Sometimes we need others that look like us, that talk like. Right. And Ryan and. [31:28] Sam: Right. [31:29] Speaker D: We're just one piece of a huge pie of an amazing community and we just happen know create the pathways. Sometimes it's just powered by success beyond game day, sometimes it's led by success beyond game day. But no matter which way it shakes, it's about the impact to the community on scale. That's how we're able to kind of curate and do it at a very high level. [31:52] Cheney: That's awesome. All right. And you both have hit on this a little bit as you've been sharing, but what's the big picture? Broad brush. What's the vision for success beyond game day? [32:05] Speaker D: Well, for me it's empowering over a billion athletes. And when we say athletes, we say the gamut, all of it. [32:12] Sam: Right. [32:12] Speaker D: The long term view of an athlete to extend their impact and skills beyond the game. [32:17] Sam: Right. [32:18] Speaker D: So help be their door, which then becomes a door for someone else and then it becomes extremely scalable. [32:23] Sam: Right. [32:23] Speaker D: We're putting information out there, brothers, to take it, make it their own and then build upon it. This is not a. We only want to share one piece of it. So you keep coming back if you need to come back. We'll be here if you got what you need. Fantastic. So it's really know, empowering a billion athletes to extend the impact and skills beyond the game. [32:44] Ryan: Yeah, globally. [32:47] Cheney: There you go. All right. As we're finishing out today, Sam, thank you very much for taking the time. One last question. How can the listeners learn more about success beyond game day? How can they get in touch? [33:01] Speaker D: We have a wide array of different channels, so whatever's comfortable for them. Our website is successbeyondgameday.com. It's real simple. It says the why, the what and the how, and the different offerings and programs that we have. We have our Instagram channel success beyond game day, as well as my personal Instagram, I actively manage it. Samantha Escard. And then Ryan has his. [33:31] Sam: So. [33:33] Speaker D: It'S been great because there's so many different ways you can reach us. And if you go to the website, it'll automatically connect you to the socials. I feel that's kind of your first, best step, and we're pretty responsive and get back. So if you're a coach, if you're a parent of an athlete, if you're an actual athlete, you all have a place here in different capacities, so don't be afraid to ask. All I say is have the courage to ask for support. [34:00] Sam: Right. [34:00] Speaker D: And we'll figure out how to make it happen. Don't not do something because you don't think you could afford it. Well, have the question before you make that decision. [34:09] Sam: Right. [34:10] Speaker D: Is the key takeaway for me. [34:13] Ryan: Absolutely. [34:14] Cheney: There you go. Thank you for joining us on Nio and dress. And as always, every like, subscribe and share is greatly appreciated.

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