Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Marques Colston - Entrepreneur & Former NFL Player | Winning On and Off the Field

Transcript

Marques Colston - Entrepreneur & Former NFL Player | Winning On and Off the Field · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  So I was one of those guys, really, really good career numbers as a college player,
• 0:03
  but I played at a level that most people think is inferior. You put your best foot forward and
• 0:07
  ultimately all you're really looking for is a shot. Imagine being the underdog who rises to the top,
• 0:12
  but never quite gets the spot like you deserve. Marcus Colston went from a seventh round draft
• 0:16
  pick to a franchise icon, breaking records and defying expectations within New Orleans Saints.
• 0:21
  The first inflection point for me is getting drafted into the NFL. Most people think it kind of
• 0:26
  started this journey of duality for me. Football is a thing that I do that I'm really good at,
• 0:31
  but it doesn't defy who I am as a person. But it wasn't just the records or the
• 0:34
  Super Bowl ring that set marks apart. It's the journey, the grit, resilience, and quiet dominance
• 0:40
  of a player who built a legacy without the recognition most of his peers received. A lot of success is
• 0:45
  being prepared to get to the right place at the right time and do the right thing. As much as you
• 0:49
  know who you are and what you bring, you've got to understand what's going on around you to know
• 0:53
  where those pockets going to be that you can take advantage of. In this episode, Marcus opens up
• 0:58
  about redefining success, staying grounded through the highs and lows, and why being overlooked
• 1:03
  never stopped him from becoming one of the Saints all-time greats.
• 1:08
  Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clarity. The Success Story podcast is part of
• 1:13
  the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot has been a huge supporter of the show, and I'm happy day
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• 2:33
  Marcus, I'm excited. I'm excited you're here today. It's going to be a lot of fun.
• 2:37
  I want to just start off so people get to know you a little bit better. Give me the inflection point
• 2:42
  in your life. That's a big question. It's a load of questions. There's probably been lots of
• 2:49
  them. But if you look back through your crew, there have been tons of different seasons to your
• 2:53
  career. What would be one inflection point that stands out that pushed you on the path that
• 2:58
  pushed you down the path that you're on today? That's an amazing question to get started.
• 3:03
  I would have to say that the first inflection point for me is getting drafted into the NFL.
• 3:10
  Not for the reasons that most people think. It started this journey of duality for me.
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  Obviously, super fortunate and blessed to be one of the 260-some odd people to get drafted in that
• 3:26
  year. But for me, I was drafted. I was the fourth to the last pick. It created an opportunity.
• 3:34
  It created a mindset for me that took me throughout my whole NFL career. But it's
• 3:40
  kind of remained foundational to who I am and how I moved post football. It's one that coming in
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  and being picked 252 out of 256. I always knew that the pick didn't dictate the level of success
• 3:57
  that I could have or didn't dictate the potential or the ability that I had. But at the same time,
• 4:03
  it kind of gave me a... I entered the game in a place where the exit door was a lot closer
• 4:10
  than I wanted it to be. I never really got to a place where I had job security. I felt like I had
• 4:16
  job security. It kept me in this mentality where I never felt like I arrived, even when I was
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  having successful seasons as a pro. Again, that duality of just being happy and fortunate
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  blessed to be in that position. But also realizing really early on, literally from day one,
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  that it's not promised and there is no real security in it. It was an inflection point that
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  really, like I said, set the trajectory not just from my football career, but my business career as
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  well. Always wanting to be somebody that over-delivered. Always wanting to be somebody that my
• 4:54
  internal standard was higher than any external expectation that could be placed on me.
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  That's just kind of how I moved throughout the rest of my career.
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  You think that was, at the time, it probably was very stressful getting grafted in that particular
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  position where you said, I love that. The exit door is a little bit closer than you wanted it to
• 5:20
  be, but looking back, do you feel like that was actually a blessing to some degree?
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  I 100% percent. I say it all the time. It was pick 252. At pick 251, my career is drastically different.
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  Pick 253, my career is drastically different. A lot of success is getting being prepared to
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  get to the right place at the right time and do the right things. My career started in that
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  way and it was something that was always top of mind for me. If I had gone to another situation,
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  maybe with a different head coach, a different quarterback, different system, all of those things
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  matter. I think sometimes we get very self-centered around our success and we feel like we're the
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  reason all the time. That was a really good reminder from day one that you can be prepared and you
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  can put yourself in the right position, but ultimately there are some external factors that you
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  got to navigate on your way to success. I think it creates a mindset that would carry you through.
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  Even walking me through before, before you got drafted, was that expected that you were going to
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  end up in that position or do you think you were going to do a lot better than that? I thought I
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  would do a whole lot. I thought I would get drafted a whole lot sooner than I did. I came from
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  a smaller school, not a football powerhouse. I was one of those guys where I put up a really,
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  really good career numbers as a college player, but I played at a level that most people think is
• 6:53
  inferior. I wasn't playing against the Alabama's and the LSU's and the USC's. The knock was always,
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  yeah, he's playing well at this level, but is he just a big fish in a small pond? You
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  hear the noise and again, it's a game of duality. Yes, some of those things are true, but I can
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  also only play the people that are on my schedule. You dominate, you put your bestful forward and
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  ultimately all you're really looking for is a shot. You just got to be prepared once that shot
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  comes to go out and play your game your way and hope this enough. I've had this conversation with
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  other athletes before just about the seasons of their career and how they set themselves up
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  for success. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I would assume if you are earlier in the draft,
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  sometimes a little bit of ego creeps in. Then I think, because you're an athlete to blow through
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  their money and they end up, and there's some wild stats out there, but people that don't have
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  post-professional sport careers and it's just kind of sad that they can take so much money and then,
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  pardon the pun, they fumble it. They fuck it up. When you look at some of the people you played with,
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  I'm sure that you see stories, not everybody's successful post-career. What happens in this
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  situation where you're given the world at such a young age as an athlete and it could be
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  football. I mean, I have examples from hockey of people that screwed up post-career and they're almost
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  broken and I'm sure baseball, basketball, everything, there's always these examples. What happens
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  to the athlete? Walk me through that mindset of a young athlete who's just handed so much money
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  and fame and influence. It's not too dissimilar from a lottery winner. You live your everyday life
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  and all of a sudden there's this influx of cash. You get drafted and you kind of see it,
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  you kind of see it coming, but your life is not set up to receive that kind of notoriety,
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  it's not set up to receive that kind of income and ultimately more often not. I speak for myself,
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  so I came from a situation where I didn't have access to capital. I didn't have access to
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  entrepreneurship and high-level business and most of the people that I knew growing up and the
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  families that I knew were more blue collar. I just didn't have exposure to what that world looked
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  like. If you are 22 years old coming out of college, you give anybody this 22-year-old,
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  22 years old coming out of fresh out of college, you give them a couple of million dollars.
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  There's no telling what might happen. You take that same situation, you put them under the limelight
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  and you surround them with an ecosystem that is not necessarily set up to really give a
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  shit about your best interests. Your best interests are secured once somebody else's best interests are.
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  It becomes a really nuanced situation. You got somebody that has not had exposure,
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  typically your family and your inner circle still has not had that same exposure.
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  Now, you got to depend on people from outside of your inner circle. You got a higher in agent.
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  You got a higher financial advisor and it really becomes this game of, do I feel like I can trust
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  this person? Because at 22, I don't really know exactly what they do. I don't really have the
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  financial knowledge and expertise to even check them if they are doing something fucked up.
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  You get into this place where you're choosing people to play really pivotal roles in your career
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  and you don't really know how to evaluate and hire for a job. It lends itself to
• 11:02
  bad decisions and lends itself to making young people decisions, but it also lends itself to
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  being in a situation where you are more vulnerable than most because you just don't have that
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  you don't have that expertise and that exposure to be able to hold the people in your circle
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  accountable. The people that you trust the most, they don't have the experience and the education
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  to be able to do the same. So you kind of find yourself as the captain of this ship,
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  but you don't really know how to operate the ship. There's a lot of, I'm sure there's a lot of
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  great good ethical people out there that help athletes, but I think there's a lot of bullshit too.
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  I mean, I've spoken to Chris Prager, he's a good friend and he was like a very big hockey player.
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  It's sort of like my reference point and he's spoken about some of the people that have not
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  as agents throughout his career were good, but like people that have solicited investments and
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  then he's had some that were just absolute misses and everybody's asking for money because every
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  and also everybody sees the contract sizes, but I've also seen and I didn't even know this. He
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  Chris did a really good job doing this and some other people on social do this when you break down
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  like all after tax, after agent fees, after association fees, like it's still a lot of money. Don't
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  get me wrong. It's more money than most people make out whatever 22, but you end up spending a lot of
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  it before you actually have any in the bank and I think that you also just completely don't have
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  the the understanding of what money is at that point and I think that's that's really where you
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  screw up and I mean, I don't even know if you know stats. Maybe you do because you weren't athlete,
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  but I've heard some ridiculous stats about how many professional athletes with you know seven
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  figure age figure contracts are bankrupt and broke and after they after they finished playing. So
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  just side, it's just very, very side. Yeah, and it is it is a nuanced conversation again because
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  you know, I've seen this step for a decade and it's pissed me off every time I've seen it. It
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  talks about 70% of NFL players are within five years of retirement or financial distress,
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  right? So yes, there are some of the horror stories and I think by those stories becoming more
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  and more visible, you know, past generations, I think I think this generation and future generations
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  are going to be able to learn from those those challenges and those mistakes. But also
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  big than those numbers is is the guy that that played two years and made lead league minimum,
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  right? So what is your definition of financial distress? Because at the end of the day, you look at
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  you look at a salary cap and you look at a roster, you know, the bulk of the money being paid out,
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  it is going to the top five or six players. And then you've got 40 some odd people, you know,
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  kind of splitting up the rest of the pie. And yes, you again, you see the horror stories and we
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  have seen the horror stories over the years, but that number is is I would say that number is not
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  it's a little bit more misleading than people realize because you have guys that are that have
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  not been invested and they have not reached the status where they've getting benefits. You got
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  guys that played one, two, three years that yes, it's really good money, but it's not, you know,
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  kick my feet up and and retire for the rest of my life money. So, you know, the numbers are the
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  numbers and you know, we know there's still work to be done, but it's a little bit more than what
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  me serves. Even in your career, you were forward thinking, I think is the best way to put it. So,
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  even walk me through your mindset when you get drafted, you weren't just waiting for your career
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  to end to start building. So, what was the thing that made you realize like light bulb moment,
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  maybe it was getting drafted at a higher number or whatnot, but what was it that made you realize
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  that okay, so I want to set myself up for a success post career because I think some of your
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  investments were made while you were still playing from non-mistake and correct. Yeah, I got started
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  pretty, pretty early on in my career. So, I created that to I had two financial vibes as
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  you were former players themselves who saw something in me and you just kind of pushed me to get
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  out of the box. And for me, I've always kind of been a tinkerer. I've always been somebody who's
• 15:33
  been interested in technology, interested in more so electronics than anything else.
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  And I've also known that football is the thing that I think that I do that I'm really good at,
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  but it doesn't define who I am as a person. So, I think the combination of me just kind of have
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  us some self-awareness and then having those two advisors that really pushed me out of my comfort
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  zone and pushed me out of that box. I was able to get started early and just again,
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  some of it just just being fortunate enough to stay healthy enough to play 10 years.
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  I like to say I was able over that 10 year run, I was able to give myself a long and a runway
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  to make some mistakes, get into some situations that I loved, get into some situations that I
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  later realized that I hated it and didn't ever want to do again. But over the course of my
• 16:27
  playing career, when I was kind of at the top of my game from a brand perspective, I was able to
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  get in and get some really, really boots on the ground of business experience that has kind of
• 16:37
  driven me in return. And the first, I mean, you said you had these two financial advisors,
• 16:46
  peers like players themselves, they knew the game, knew what you were going to have to deal with
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  when you did retire. So, what was the first version of you investing, of you raising money,
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  of, because you didn't come from an operator background, it's not like you had built a business
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  and then you exited that and then you started investing in something you knew. So, now it's like
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  every opportunity to invest is available, but you still lack a lot of operational experience
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  in doing the thing. So, how do you bridge that gap? And I'm sure you had, listen, I'm sure you
• 17:22
  had some, some losses and some, and some things didn't work out so well as well with the investments,
• 17:27
  but talk me through like just as a player turning investor, what was the first version of that?
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  So, really, really early on, it was just kind of angel investing. I tried to stay in a space where
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  I had at least a new one part of the business, which was sports. So, I got started at the intersection
• 17:46
  of sports and technology. So, a lot of those early investments were kind of co-investments
• 17:52
  with our athletes and it was more just deploy the capital and kind of see what happens.
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  But I'd say that the first investment that really was the first time that I rolled my sleeves
• 18:06
  up and got really engaged with the company, I invested in the indoor football team back in my
• 18:12
  hometown in, I want to say, 2010. And for me, it was an opportunity to learn the business side of
• 18:24
  the sport that I was playing. And it was also, it was in my hometown, so it was a really good platform
• 18:30
  for me to do some community outreach at scale. That's kind of how I viewed it. And, you know, I got
• 18:35
  in, I made the investment the first year, I was a passive investor, I just kind of watched the
• 18:40
  owner kind of kind of shadowed him and just watched what it looked like to run a team, to operate
• 18:46
  a team from soup to nuts. And in watching him for a year, I just, I got that itch. And after
• 18:55
  the first year, I ended up buying my partner out, taking over the team, a hundred sole ownership
• 18:59
  of the team. And I assumed the role of President and General Manager. And my role was literally
• 19:05
  everything in the organization at that time. You know, we had a small team. So, I was doing everything
• 19:11
  from, you know, selling sponsorships to put together, you know, ticket sales and marketing packages.
• 19:17
  I was actually running the game operations. I had the little headset on. I was directing the game.
• 19:22
  Then, okay, so you dove into this. That's how you figured it out. Yeah, that's how you figured
• 19:26
  out work. You just do everything. That's good. That's good. Yes. Yeah. No. And, you know, it was,
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  it was one of those experiences. It was probably the toughest thing in my life at that point,
• 19:37
  just because everything was new. And I was drinking from the firehomes. But at the same time,
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  I was right at home because as an athlete, you'd kind of make a living, finding discomfort and
• 19:48
  pushing through discomfort just to get to a place where you find more discomfort. So, that
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  connection was really, it was really, you know, top of mind for me. So, it was, it was, it was
• 19:58
  difficult. It was challenging and fun at the same time. And that's kind of what it looked like.
• 20:02
  If you looked at some of the things that made you successful as an athlete, you just sort of
• 20:07
  alluded to one, what would be some others that would ally to succeed in the business arena?
• 20:12
  Because I believe this, I believe this fully too. I believe that athletes can make the best
• 20:16
  business leaders, entrepreneurs, and there's a whole bunch of personality traits to come with
• 20:21
  being a successful athlete that I think carry over about what did you find when you, when you started
• 20:25
  to switch from athlete to business leader? I think the one thing that I had a level of mastery of
• 20:30
  that I didn't realize at the time was strategy, right? And strategy in this pure sense in that
• 20:36
  you take your uniqueness, you take your assets, your skills, abilities, talents, all of those things,
• 20:43
  and you put together a plan that allowed you to win, right? And, you know, from the athlete
• 20:48
  perspective, what that looks like is, is literally different from game to game. It's different from
• 20:54
  season to season. Yeah, I always talk about the things that I can do as a 22-year-old rookie
• 21:01
  with limited game experience. I was just out there on sheer athleticism for a couple of years,
• 21:07
  right? And, you know, over time as athleticism kind of starts to wane, what you,
• 21:13
  what you realize as an athlete is it doesn't really matter what your body feels like. It doesn't
• 21:19
  matter how your capabilities change, the standard is a standard or you give a place. Like,
• 21:24
  if my level of production is up here, I've got to manufacture a way to get to my, my production
• 21:29
  level up here. I don't care if my acre hurts, I don't care if my knee hurts, I don't care if I'm,
• 21:34
  you know, a nine-year vet, not a loss of step. So, I understood and I had this mastery of strategy
• 21:41
  in that I can take the self-awareness and take what I know to be true about myself in that moment
• 21:47
  in time and put together a plan to go and find that same level of performance. And once I got
• 21:54
  into business and I started to see how that matched like literally apples to apples.
• 22:00
  In talking about strategy, it was a light bulb moment that clicked in that a lot of people talk
• 22:06
  about the leadership aspects, they talk about the teamwork aspects, and they talk about these
• 22:10
  soft skills that athletes have that are transferable. But when I found that real tangible
• 22:17
  skill in strategy that was that was transferable, it unlocked something different in me that I've
• 22:24
  kind of led with ever since. I just want to take a second and thank the HubSpot podcast network
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  podcast. It's almost like I love that, dude. I think it's like you're setting a North Star and
• 23:01
  whatever whatever shit is happening in I mean in a game or in your business, it's like you got to
• 23:07
  hit that North Star. And then you just set that point and you got to find a way to get there. It
• 23:12
  doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what's happening in the market. It doesn't matter if somebody
• 23:16
  just quit. You just got sued. You couldn't raise money. Whatever it is, revenues down, you got to hit
• 23:21
  it. I love that. I think it's a really healthy mindset. I mean, you speak a lot about, I mean,
• 23:26
  you mentioned some of the soft skills. You've spoken about like earning success every day is like
• 23:32
  as a metaphor for when you're a player, but also investor, business leader. So this is exactly
• 23:41
  what you're talking about. Like you have to be excellent all the time regardless of whatever
• 23:46
  life throws at you. And I think that's a very, very smart thing to carry over. I'm actually super
• 23:51
  curious is investing in a sports team like at a at a like a non professional or even professional
• 23:59
  levels that like a smart move because I don't know personally anybody who's done that. So outside
• 24:04
  of like the billionaires that like that put money up for like these these these these these
• 24:09
  teams that everybody knows, but a local sports team. How is that as an investment? It depends on
• 24:16
  how you evaluate it. How do you evaluate it? How do you I mean, doesn't if it was a if it was a
• 24:22
  win grade, if it wasn't, that's cool too. I'm just curious because that was your first major one.
• 24:26
  I would say financially it was not the smartest investment. And I ended up losing some money in
• 24:33
  that deal. But I'll say the the education, the confidence and the reps that I was able to extract
• 24:39
  from it. You know, it made it a huge win because it literally set the table for everything that I'm
• 24:46
  doing now in business. You know, so, you know, I kind of think of it in terms of, you know,
• 24:52
  that was my own to fly NBA. Right. So I was either going to pay institution to go get an NBA or
• 24:58
  I was going to pay into this this team and figure it out, but I got my NBA out of it. I love it.
• 25:02
  So okay, so you listen, it wasn't like a home run, but still like I mean, you learned everything
• 25:06
  about running a business. I think I actually think by you taking that opportunity and you do
• 25:13
  in the marketing and the sales and and and doing all the day to day shit, I think that probably
• 25:18
  makes you a much better investor now because, you know, I was talking before about bridging the
• 25:24
  gap between bridging that knowledge gap. Like when you were a player, you had no operational
• 25:29
  experience and then you did have operational experience. I say at that point, it's already
• 25:33
  setting you ahead of an NBA that tries to turn into an investor who has zero business experience.
• 25:38
  There's something to be said for just doing the shit yourself. I mean, like when I try and build
• 25:41
  a business, even myself, I'll try and do it all myself before I hire somebody to do it.
• 25:47
  And I think that gives you a massive edge. So okay, so at this point, you invested in this team,
• 25:53
  are you still playing at this point? I'm assuming when you're when you invest in this team.
• 25:57
  Yeah, okay, cool. In the fall, I play in New Orleans, I play my CS. You want the season in February
• 26:02
  and the Super Bowl, but most of the January at some point do do everything I need to do there to
• 26:07
  close up shopping and fly back north and start selling. I love that dude. That's like that's
• 26:12
  straight hustle. Okay, so when does it turn from just investing and actually before we just move
• 26:18
  into like raising the funds, that's that's sort of like a different part of your life.
• 26:22
  Talk to me about other things that did not go so well when you started to invest like things that
• 26:29
  you people, opportunities, anything that would be like a really good lesson for somebody that
• 26:37
  again is just sort of trying to get into the game. One thing that was very important that you said
• 26:41
  was you did leverage your experience. So you you understood one component of the business that you
• 26:46
  were investing into, but what were some things that didn't go well that you know maybe you don't
• 26:51
  want to redo them because they're they're really good lessons, but things that you should
• 26:55
  be aware of if you're going to start investing in anything really. I say the one common theme that I
• 27:00
  ran into and personally and I saw a lot of my colleagues and peers running into is is you know, just
• 27:07
  the most accessible investment opportunities are typically the riskiest, right? When you when you
• 27:17
  major in in early stage companies and startups, you are literally investing in the riskiest as a
• 27:24
  class that there is. And the challenge the challenge becomes when when you are an athlete and you
• 27:30
  have the visibility that that we have, but you don't necessarily have the access. You don't have
• 27:35
  the team that's set up to go find the quality deals. The deals end up finding you and you know,
• 27:42
  that that was a common theme that I that I kind of you know kind of had to work my way through was
• 27:47
  most of the deals are going to be early stage, which means the chances of them working and the
• 27:53
  chances of them becoming home runs are slim, but even in the companies that that you do quote unquote
• 28:00
  when the companies that do make it do they make it to a level that actually returned your capital.
• 28:08
  Right. So, you know, I saw it even in my portfolio, I saw a handful of my colleagues, it's you have
• 28:14
  these investments that are doing well on paper and the founders and everyone is out, you know,
• 28:19
  pounding the drum and you know, talking about how successful these things are, but as an investor,
• 28:26
  when you're not seeing the return come back in and that capital is just locked up,
• 28:31
  you sometimes you have capital locked up seven to ten years as a company is trying to mature through
• 28:36
  those different phases in a world where your career, your average career as an NFL player is three and a
• 28:42
  half years. Right. So, you play your three and a half years, you you've done the smart thing you
• 28:47
  tried to start investing, you maybe got into some early stage companies, you end up getting injured
• 28:53
  in year four, the income turns off, you now have this this gap, you have this liquidity crunch now,
• 29:00
  you have these assets over here that, you know, you got a ton of equity over here, but equity
• 29:04
  doesn't pay the bills. Right. So, just that misalignment and that that miseducation on, you know,
• 29:12
  what are the different stages of companies, what are the different types of asset classes that you
• 29:17
  can be in, you know, that was the biggest that was the biggest challenge is still remains a
• 29:22
  challenge just because, you know, there just aren't very many platforms that offer you access and
• 29:28
  that's that's one of the reasons that that our firm kind of came to be is is to try to help and
• 29:32
  fill that void. That's a really good advice, not just for athletes for anybody because there's
• 29:38
  so many different types of investment vehicles that even some of them cash flow. Right. Like with
• 29:43
  when you're talking about the kind of money that those pros are making like that, that for the
• 29:47
  average person is I built a business and now I exited a small exit kind of money. And if you put
• 29:53
  that money in the right spot, that cash flows, I mean, you could be pulling in a couple hundred
• 29:57
  thousand bucks a year just in an interest on that money. If you're smart, you could do real estate,
• 30:03
  you could do private equity, you could do reats, you could do funds, I mean, but I guess
• 30:08
  if you don't have the right people around you, it's it's easy for us to say that because we've
• 30:13
  been in this game for a minute and now we understand all the different opportunities. But if you
• 30:17
  didn't have the right people around, you sort of putting this stuff in front of you, I'm assuming
• 30:20
  you're getting hit up with all these like super sexy startup ideas because they they seem great,
• 30:27
  but then ultimately you get your money locked up and then they're not cash flowing and then
• 30:31
  that's when you think you're doing the right thing, but ultimately you're still stressed,
• 30:35
  like you're talking about with with your liquidity. So okay, so then you you start to move from
• 30:42
  you're doing some deals. I'm assuming everything that you're teaching you've experienced
• 30:47
  at some point in your own life. I feel that, but when did you start to raise a fund actually,
• 30:54
  as opposed to just as opposed to just investing, when do you actually build out something that you
• 30:58
  wanted to sort of give back to other players, raise a fund, educate all of that? So this is
• 31:03
  that was a lot later in the journey. Before the current fund, I tried my hand at a
• 31:11
  early stage fund that was more of a value ad platform. This is back in 2018.
• 31:17
  At the time I was in the arena football league, I had a ownership stake in the Philadelphia
• 31:22
  soul there and what we wanted to do was was find early stage technology companies to integrate
• 31:28
  them into the teams in the league there. It started out as kind of this value at consulting firm
• 31:35
  and then we realized that the early stage companies didn't have the capital to actually pay us,
• 31:39
  so then we started like, alright, can we raise a micro fund around this idea?
• 31:44
  We got some traction, it has some really good conversations, ultimately couldn't raise a fund.
• 31:49
  So in my mind, in 2018, but why do you think that is, I just want to why do you think that is?
• 31:54
  I think for a lot of different reasons. At that point in time, being in the face of a fund
• 32:02
  with no real track record outside of catching football from Drew Brees to the layman,
• 32:11
  I think that was one of the main drivers, but it's another one of those things.
• 32:16
  You're swimming in familiar waters and at that point the water is too cold. I had to retreat
• 32:22
  and kind of calibrate some things, but yeah, I think at that point, when that fund didn't work,
• 32:31
  I had some other things going on on a personal level and I never saw myself getting back into
• 32:38
  the fund business. Just because it took me so far out of my comfort zones, so far out of my
• 32:45
  wheelhouse of how I typically operate. I played receiver in one of the most visible positions on
• 32:52
  the field on Sundays, but I'm a super introvert and I like to play the background in my everyday life.
• 33:00
  So it took me super far out of my comfort zone, really good learning experience, personal development
• 33:04
  experience, all those things. But when I left that opportunity, I didn't see myself getting back into
• 33:09
  the fund business and from there, I kind of went into this mold where I wanted to try and educate
• 33:16
  and just create that exposure that I saw was lacking. So I actually wanted to, of all places,
• 33:23
  I went into higher education. I ended up had this idea for a program, ended up partnering with
• 33:31
  with a friend of mine and had a connection at Columbia Business School and we took this concept
• 33:38
  around teaching professional athletes, entrepreneurship and venture capital. We took that concept and
• 33:44
  we rolled it into and created an executive program at Columbia Business School that we ran for three years.
• 33:51
  And again, another chance to get outside of my introverted comfort zone in front of the class and
• 33:58
  actually talk to my peers about experiences and about, you know, cap tables and, you know, what is
• 34:05
  a, you know, convertible note, turn sheets and all these different things. And I kind of fell in
• 34:11
  love with the opportunity to create exposure, you know, to something that was new in a way that was,
• 34:17
  you know, it was kind of tailor made for us. You know, so that's kind of when the light bulb went off
• 34:23
  that, all right, there's something that I can do that's maybe not, you know, front facing on an
• 34:29
  investor's side, but there's something that I can do to help educate other players and my peers.
• 34:34
  And that kind of got, that program kind of got me started, you know, down this pathway that led to
• 34:39
  be ultimately going to get my Series 7 and my Series 66 to become a financial advisor and,
• 34:46
  you know, that's where, you know, I started to see some of the inner workings of financial
• 34:49
  services and where some of the gaps are, you know, so when I'm able to talk about, you know,
• 34:55
  some of the deficiencies in the teams that surround these athletes, I'm able to kind of talk about it
• 35:00
  from two different lenses as the player himself, but then also as a advisor who was, you know,
• 35:06
  felt handcuffed at times because I couldn't bring, I couldn't bring the right insights, I couldn't
• 35:11
  bring the right products that I knew my clients needed. I kind of had to stay in my lane as a
• 35:15
  broker. What are the, I mean, it's 2024, I would, I would assume like outside looking in
• 35:22
  that financial advisors should be helping people understand basically all the things that you
• 35:27
  built out in that program, which is wild to me that that didn't exist or wasn't like kind of like
• 35:34
  a league standard, like I feel like this is not, this is not new information for a lot of people
• 35:39
  in the business world. Why would a financial advisor? But I actually, you know what, when I say that,
• 35:45
  I have to, I have to check myself because even the financial advisor is that you get from a bank
• 35:51
  that would help like my mom retire, like I still have issue with some of the information they give
• 35:56
  her. So yeah, I guess I'm a little bit far down the rabbit hole as to why I think that it should be
• 36:02
  common knowledge and common sense, but I guess it isn't. So what is the, I mean, the average financial
• 36:06
  advisor that's helping an NFL player with millions, if not tens of millions of dollars,
• 36:12
  what's the advice that they're giving them or what products they allow to offer? Like what's the
• 36:16
  lane that you have to stay in? It really becomes this game of I can, I can sell you the products and
• 36:23
  services that my firm gets paid for, right? So think about it, think about it this way. When you
• 36:29
  think about the fee structure of a financial advisor, right, to get paid off of the assets under
• 36:34
  management. So if I'm managing 100% of your portfolio and most of it's in, you know, your typical
• 36:41
  equities and bonds and you might have some alternatives here and there, but they're more
• 36:46
  institutional alternatives. I'm getting paid a 1% fee off of everything that I manage.
• 36:52
  If you take money out of this, this, from, from under this, this management and you deploy it
• 36:58
  into a startup company, or you deploy it into this venture fund, I no longer have visibility
• 37:04
  into what's happening as an advisor, but I'm also not getting paid my fee on those, on those assets.
• 37:11
  So if it goes well, I don't get any of the credit. If it goes bad, I'm going to get the
• 37:16
  plan, right? So an advisor is literally misaligned with building this holistic portfolio that you
• 37:24
  know that, you know, 22 to 30 year old athletes have time to kind of build out and they need to be
• 37:30
  in somebody's alternative asset classes because that's what portfolio theory tells you at that age,
• 37:37
  right? You have time. So there, there's just some fundamental misalignments with the athlete
• 37:43
  community and the financial advisor community, which is one of the reasons you're starting to see
• 37:47
  more and more athletes kind of move into that. The ones that that are in a really good financial
• 37:52
  position, they're starting to move into that family office model because it offers more holistic
• 37:57
  solution. You still have to find that for a family office model, you still have to find the right
• 38:01
  people because because again, this is not, again, this is not based on your own experience. I mean,
• 38:07
  you can, you can, you can self educate and you can watch YouTube videos, you can listen to
• 38:11
  the podcast, you can go to school to learn, but you self dev the right people around you,
• 38:15
  even if you come from a business background to have a, a family office model, there's a really
• 38:20
  good chance you're going to fuck it up to some degree and then you're not going to understand
• 38:25
  how to look at a PNL or how to do due diligence or how to vet a founder or how to,
• 38:30
  how to vet an opportunity like it's, it's hard. It's very hard. And even for people that build
• 38:34
  businesses, one of the biggest mistakes I made was thinking that because I built a business,
• 38:39
  I could invest and it's not the same. It's just not the same. Like, it's another game you have
• 38:44
  to learn. So I can only imagine without any business experience, I don't even know where I'd
• 38:51
  start. I'd be stressed as hell. And I was, I was doing all the things that I had to look for and I
• 38:56
  still screwed it up. So it's not easy. It's really, and I mean, like, this is probably what you're,
• 39:00
  you're learning too, because then you, you're operating in a business, you go into financial
• 39:04
  advising. It's not, you know, incentives are not aligned. You're like, listen, I can, I can
• 39:11
  be ethical and good for the people that I'm consulting, but ultimately are advising. But ultimately,
• 39:17
  there's like, I'm only giving you like 20% of the things that I should be able to talk to you about.
• 39:23
  I'm assuming that's what, yeah, what's your deal? Okay. So, um, obviously, it's probably
• 39:29
  frustrating as hell for you. Okay. So what's the, yeah, right? Okay. So then, um, so you, you
• 39:38
  tried to raise a fund didn't, you were educating financial advising. Um, but at some point,
• 39:45
  you're like, listen, I actually want to, I want to, the people that I'm working with, I want to
• 39:49
  help them in the way that actually best serves them, not just the one percent that I'm going to
• 39:54
  paid from my, my brokerage or my firm to sell the product, right? Yeah. And, and, you know,
• 40:00
  it's kind of going down that pathway when I, when I left my, my gig is in the Pfizer. Um,
• 40:07
  I spent, I spent a handful of years, um, like executive coaching involved things. So what,
• 40:12
  what's interesting about my journey is there, there are a handful of pieces that look like they have
• 40:18
  no real connection to each other. Um, but in what I'm building now, they all, I'm able to bring all
• 40:26
  those experiences and all those skillsets to the table. Um, so I left financial advisor. I started
• 40:33
  the executive coach, um, fortunate enough to land on a platform. I was coaching execs from Nike,
• 40:38
  Jordan, uh, both house farms did a little bit of work with, uh, with McKinsey and company.
• 40:44
  And again, I really was not focused on venture. I was not focused on, on anything around the
• 40:51
  fund business. I was very comfortable and, and cool with this executive coaching role. But I
• 40:56
  kind of, I, I started getting that itch around sports. I, I, I've been retired from the game for a
• 41:01
  while. Um, was not really doing anything heavy in the sports world. And that's when I reconnected
• 41:08
  with, um, my, my co-founder and, and champion venture partners, uh, Nick Edwards. Um, we, we've
• 41:14
  known each other for about five or six years now, uh, from the start of the world. He had a sports
• 41:18
  tech startup he was working on. I had when I was working on, we, we ended up, uh, meeting just
• 41:24
  around, you know, similarities and, and trying to figure out how to partner and, and join venture
• 41:28
  with each other. Um, but we just started down as this rabbit hole of, of, you know, just talking
• 41:33
  about investing in, and, and was there a way that we could do something and build something
• 41:39
  that was different, right? So we, he's a former athlete, former MMA fighter. Um, so we've seen our
• 41:45
  peers kind of go through these different challenges. And you know, we just started to, to kind of,
• 41:51
  you know, whiteboards and stuff out. And, and we ended up landing on this concept to
• 41:56
  to create this fun vehicle that check all the boxes. So, so if we knew that one of the biggest
• 42:04
  challenges was investing in startups. So we said, all right, let's, let's move, let's kick the
• 42:08
  can down the road a little bit and let's look at growth stage companies. Um, we as former athletes,
• 42:14
  you know, we, we got started in the sports business. All right, let's, let's take a look at,
• 42:19
  at sports, right? Most of the investment conversation around sports is, you know, teams and leagues,
• 42:26
  you know, the NFL NBA, you know, the big five leaks, right? So we know there's only a handful of
• 42:32
  humans on earth to have enough capital to, to cut checks that move the needle in those deals. So
• 42:37
  let's push those to the side and let's look at the rest of the value chain of sports. What's here?
• 42:42
  We got sports technology. We've got, we got sports media content. Um, we've got fan engagement
• 42:48
  platforms. We've got player performance platforms. We've got real estate hospitality. Um,
• 42:53
  when you start looking at the value chain of sports, you see a lot of different opportunities.
• 42:58
  Um, that, you know, have different investment, have different return profiles on them,
• 43:03
  have different maybe liquidity profiles. So we started to look at that value chain and say,
• 43:09
  how can we, how can we take all these different assets and pull them together to create our own
• 43:13
  version of Berkshire Atheway for sports? And that's, once we got to that point, that's,
• 43:18
  that's when kind of the thesis of, of, of the fund started to write itself. Um, so what we landed
• 43:24
  on was champion venture partners, which is a, a, an asset management and, and, and investment firm
• 43:32
  that we invest across the value chain of sports, uh, we invest in growth stage companies,
• 43:39
  getting away from the startup. So we remove some of that risk. Um, we get into companies that,
• 43:45
  you know, have a, have a track record, you know, they, they have revenue, uh, they have their
• 43:49
  product market shit. And our ideal company is at that obsession point, typically around series A,
• 43:56
  where most series A companies, they have all those things and they're raising that series A to,
• 44:01
  to go in and hire headcount, go in and, you know, find those, those headhunters to take them to the
• 44:06
  next level. So we'll invest in, we can be those headhunters. So we have a management team and
• 44:12
  we've built out, um, with, you know, former, uh, SVP of MLS as a part of the management team.
• 44:19
  Um, the guy that, that runs our management team is, is ran the Comcast venture, uh, the Comcast
• 44:25
  sports, uh, tech accelerator for, uh, for four years. Um, we've got a, a, a really successful private
• 44:32
  marketing firm as part of the management team. And then we've got a guy that is, uh, former,
• 44:37
  Amazon net, former Netflix, former, uh, head of innovation and Nike on our management team.
• 44:43
  And the vision is, I have this team, it just goes in because after this, they're solving for
• 44:47
  people problem at that point. Yep. So we, we, we find these growth stage companies that are at
• 44:52
  that inflection point, uh, we deploy the capital, we deploy the management team kind of as our
• 44:57
  built-in KMG model. And, um, our vision is to really build this, this evergreen portfolio,
• 45:04
  our own bird shark pathway for sports. Um, and eventually we'll, we'll get to a place where we're
• 45:09
  able to invest in, uh, some of these teams in emerging leagues and, you know, at some point,
• 45:14
  we'll be able to get to the big five. But, you know, our vision is, is always, it, it's always
• 45:19
  value at. It's, even if we invest in a team, how can we bring the rest of our technology portfolio
• 45:25
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• 47:01
  Sport today. I love that. That's a very smart strategy. You talk about Series A, so what,
• 47:07
  just so people understand, by the way, there's only been one raise, like one fund or has there
• 47:15
  been multiple by this point. So we just launched January one of this year, so we're in a raising
• 47:24
  right now. Yeah, we're raising right now. We're trying to close out a private round. I guess I'm
• 47:28
  going to capital deploy. So when you look at the thesis, so you're looking at Series A,
• 47:34
  what kind of average check size goes into these companies. So right now, we're anywhere from about
• 47:42
  $250,000, typically to about $2.5 million, depending on the opportunity, we might go up to five.
• 47:50
  Okay, cool. And then you have a couple different categories that you're investing into,
• 47:57
  like sort of like all adjacent and when you look at Series A, what are the things that you're
• 48:02
  looking for? Outside of the size and the fact that you're adjacent to sports, you mentioned a
• 48:07
  couple different types of companies that you look at. I mean, founders always important.
• 48:14
  I mean, that's that's huge. Maybe speak to who you look for as a good entrepreneur because
• 48:19
  you mentioned, they do have a little bit of product market fit, but I'm sure you want to look at
• 48:23
  the people too and other things that you look at, just things that are maybe specific to sports and
• 48:29
  what you invest in, but also just maybe some best practices for what you look at in general for
• 48:36
  a company at a Series A. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you hit you hit, you know, check box one for us
• 48:43
  right on the head. It's people. It's the founding team and, you know, again, back to our sports
• 48:48
  background, we know and understand the value of team, right? So, you know, finding really good
• 48:54
  founders that are open to ideas that have enough, you know, they have the combination of confidence
• 49:02
  and humility, right? They're confident in their idea, they're confident in their abilities,
• 49:06
  they're confident in their teams abilities, but they're also humble enough to realize that
• 49:11
  they can't they can't do it alone, right? So if they if they find value in what we bring as a value
• 49:18
  at investment platform, that that's that's the starting point, you know, obviously we evaluate
• 49:25
  the team and the just the capabilities and the capacity of the existing team and how can we not
• 49:30
  how can we come in in this place, but how can we come in an augment, right? So that's that's our
• 49:36
  mentality. So if their energy kind of matches our energy around that piece that that's huge
• 49:40
  and then as we evaluate the businesses, you know, in sports, it's very it's one of those industries
• 49:48
  where you can show success early but be really really top heavy in your client base, right? And what
• 49:55
  I mean by that is specifically in sports, you can go out and be a young company and get that one
• 50:01
  anchor client that gives you all the press gives you all the visibility and it kind of becomes a
• 50:06
  catalyst for your growth, but what we come in and do is we we try to evaluate is this growth
• 50:11
  sustainable, right? If there's one anchor client goes away, what happens to the business, right? So
• 50:18
  we we look at not just what is the revenue, but what is the quality of that revenue? What is the
• 50:25
  diversity of that revenue? And everyone has their performers what they're showing growth on growth
• 50:32
  of course that's all it's all up and to the right. So we see that and what we try to evaluate is
• 50:39
  is, you know, based on your quality of revenue, how realistic is it that you, you know, maintain
• 50:45
  this growth trajectory that you've laid out? So if we can check those those boxes, you know, we
• 50:52
  feel really good about obviously we go through technology, you go through the whole technical
• 50:57
  due diligence process and that's, you know, that's what the management team, you know, comes in and
• 51:01
  helps us do. But if they check those boxes for us on the people side, on the revenue side, on the
• 51:08
  product market fit side, there's a conversation worth happening and then we just figure out how can we
• 51:14
  come in our capital ads value in one way? How can we, you know, as a management team add value in
• 51:19
  another way? And the third of final pieces is really we need every company that we invest in
• 51:28
  to kind of create intrinsic value within the entire portfolio, right? So the standalone company
• 51:34
  for us, the standalone unicorn is not what we're looking for. We want to find that payment processing
• 51:41
  technology that integrates well with this fan engagement technology over here to where we create
• 51:46
  the rising tide effect in the entire portfolio. That's smart. Is there anything, because I've never
• 51:53
  had never put money into sports and it's always such a, such like a, like a sexy industry and it seems
• 51:59
  like it's so much fun, but again, I don't know it. And based on my experience, if I don't know it,
• 52:04
  I usually end up screwing it up more than anything and not, and then I'm losing money. So if somebody
• 52:09
  didn't want to, if somebody didn't want to invest in sports and sports tech, what are the things
• 52:15
  that they have to think about that maybe aren't so obvious, like not the, not the, not the best
• 52:21
  practices for every industry, but what are the things that are like specific to sports? You
• 52:24
  mentioned one thing that was very interesting. You can land these like whale clients and they can
• 52:30
  make your company seem like it's a lot healthier than it is, but it would be some other things like
• 52:34
  that that are a little bit more specific to sports that an investor would have to pay attention to.
• 52:38
  I think depending on the investment seasonality, right? If you have a company that is really heavy
• 52:47
  in the football, you know that the seasonality that business is going to be all upswing on the fall
• 52:52
  through the winter, but then it might get, you know, it might get quiet in the springtime, right?
• 52:58
  Summer and spring. That they're showing you numbers, that they're showing you numbers and like,
• 53:01
  in like the fall, like winter fall, then maybe those, that's not, yeah, I see what you're saying,
• 53:07
  it's not going to carry through all year. Okay, gotcha. So, so there's just there's there's
• 53:10
  there's certain things that are industry specific seasonality is one of them. You mentioned anchor
• 53:15
  clients. You know, we see a lot of companies that are just gung-hole in getting into like the big
• 53:25
  five leagues as like that's that's their strategy, but the reality is I say this all the time like
• 53:32
  if you were able to find an NFL client and your product was was amazing and
• 53:39
  you were able to sign every NFL team of the client. You now have 32 clients.
• 53:44
  Is that going to be enough to get to your business goals and aspirations?
• 53:48
  Right? So, if if you are to laser focus in one industry, it can become problematic just because
• 53:56
  it's always going to be it's always going to be hyper competitive at the top.
• 54:00
  And there's only so many places to go. So, do you have a strategy that can, you know, either
• 54:08
  play into other sports or play up and down the sports levels to where you might be an NFL,
• 54:15
  can you get into college football? Right? Can you get into big top college football? Can you get into
• 54:20
  maybe division one, double a or division two football? Can you play into new sports? So,
• 54:25
  there's there's some some different verticals within within the actual sport that, you know,
• 54:32
  if you can kind of bridge those gaps and then you set yourself up for sustainable success.
• 54:36
  I guess if you're building in this space, you have you kind of have a bias to like the big five
• 54:41
  leagues. It's hard to look other places, but that's what you're saying. It's it's you have to.
• 54:47
  It's a good best practice because there's so much other money out there. I mean, if you look at
• 54:51
  college college sports, my god, I was actually looking at the math and college college budgets for some
• 54:59
  for some teams are bigger than professional leagues, professional teams, some professional teams in
• 55:04
  Canada. So, I mean, you got you got you got some money there. You got some real money there. And
• 55:10
  if you're an entrepreneur, you got to figure out a tap into that. If you, when I look at investment,
• 55:16
  I always look at somebody who has sort of lived in the industry and then builds a solution for
• 55:25
  the industry. Is that the case in sports? Do are some of the best entrepreneurs athletes or are
• 55:30
  they people that are just trying to build something for an industry? Because I feel like athletes
• 55:35
  would know this better than anyone else. They they know what works and what doesn't. They know
• 55:40
  the ecosystem, but I'm curious when you look at sort of the people that you're you're speaking to
• 55:44
  are they athlete entrepreneurs or they just entrepreneurs trying to build something for for the industry
• 55:49
  coming from the outside in. It's a mixed bag. And yeah, it becomes a mixed bag because you you will
• 55:56
  see some technical founders that have really, really good solutions. And the only thing that they're
• 56:01
  missing is a little bit of context, right? But then on the other side, you might have an
• 56:08
  athlete founder that has a really good idea of how to deploy, but they might not have that
• 56:14
  technical skillset to build the product. You know, so so the best marriages that I've seen are the
• 56:20
  ones that you can you can combine technical founders and you know, folks that really know sports
• 56:26
  in a meaningful way. You know, that that leverages the insights and experiences of both sides.
• 56:34
  Those partnerships are few and far between. You see much more of the athlete as a mascot or
• 56:42
  brand ambassador role, but secretly hoping that that you start to see more equal equal footing in
• 56:48
  some of these partnerships with between athletes and technical founders. At athlete, yes,
• 56:53
  they can be a brand ambassador because that's also an interesting piece of this. Actually,
• 56:57
  I'm curious about this because you have I'm assuming when you raise you raise from athletes as
• 57:02
  well, like this is this is the the group, the the people that you want to serve and you want to
• 57:06
  help them understand how to get access to these opportunities and you want to put good options
• 57:10
  in front of them. So even your investors and your LPs technically, they're all marketing channels
• 57:15
  too, which is which is wild because I can guarantee you if you do like a real estate fund, the people
• 57:20
  putting money into that are not marketing channels. So it's a totally different dynamic right
• 57:24
  than just somebody with a capital capital plus access plus influence. So do you is there is there a
• 57:32
  playbook where you leverage that? Is it useful? Is it irrelevant? Like how does that play into the
• 57:37
  whole strategy? No, it's it's a really good question. It is very useful, but it's it's a it's a
• 57:44
  personalized approach, right? And and I'll I'll just keep speaking from my own perspective.
• 57:50
  They're I probably not probably I know that I left a lot of money on the table and some
• 57:56
  probals and and all of that stuff on the table just being who I am, right? I'm not a I'm not a
• 58:01
  I'm not a marketing I'm not an outwardly marketing person. You know, so every athlete
• 58:09
  that has visibility doesn't necessarily want to use it in a marketing from a marketing perspective.
• 58:16
  So it's it's it's having an insight to create those different pathways to where if this is what I
• 58:22
  want to do and I want to be visible, I want to be out front of a company and I want to support in
• 58:27
  that way. Here's a pathway to do that. If I want to learn how to become more technical, if I want
• 58:33
  to get engaged in the actual, you know, business operations, there's a pathway for that, right? So
• 58:40
  so it's it's kind of creating this platform that allows people to not just play where they're at
• 58:46
  today, but also, you know, form form pathways so that they can get the exposure that they're
• 58:51
  ultimately looking for so that they can take the next step. So now while your finances are
• 58:56
  grown within the fund, you as a personal professional are getting opportunities to grow in ways that
• 59:01
  you really find valuable. And I think it's also important not to not to over index on on
• 59:07
  payment info into somebody does want to use it. You don't like listening. No, you don't and you
• 59:13
  you saw have to have core like business fundamentals like I'll give you a give you an extreme
• 59:18
  example like Kim Kardashian. I think she had trouble raising her fund. So I mean, yes, you can
• 59:23
  push a product, but I don't think that even when I don't even know how much you spend on an
• 59:27
  Instagram post with her, but I don't think the the the money spent on an Instagram post with
• 59:33
  Kim Kardashian, who's obviously like we a bit of me of of of fame and influence, right? Everybody
• 59:38
  knows her name, but you're not getting positive return on investment on that money spent. You're
• 59:44
  just getting you're getting association. So I can only imagine like if if a technical co founder
• 59:50
  or an investor is betting on a product that say has like an athlete founder, an athlete founder
• 59:54
  alone is not going to make that product successful. And I think that's actually very important
• 59:58
  because it's again, if you're in this space, you understand it and you're like, listen,
• 1:00:03
  it takes more than a name to build a company. But from the outside in, it is surprising to me how
• 1:00:09
  many people just assume if you have a following a good company is going to come from that following.
• 1:00:15
  It takes like it takes it takes a while to build a brand that resonates takes a while to build
• 1:00:20
  the fundamentals that make a good company. And I think that you can over index on that fame
• 1:00:26
  to to your detriment 100% it gets you in the game, but ultimately you got to stay there. Yeah,
• 1:00:32
  definitely. So I want to just understand because even before we press record, the way that you
• 1:00:37
  raise the fund, you're doing a very specific kind of raise. And I think it's really interesting.
• 1:00:42
  So talk to me about how you structured this fund. We know the thesis. We know the types of people
• 1:00:48
  or the types of companies you're looking at. How did you structure the fund? What was the style of
• 1:00:54
  fund? How much you're raising, rolling fund? Is it a one, the raising X million and then you're
• 1:00:59
  going to deploy it? Or are you going to constantly be raising? So just like the framework behind the scenes.
• 1:01:05
  So we raised in really a two phase approach, right? So we are in the final stages of phase one,
• 1:01:11
  which is raising into the holding company, which is our virtue at the way. So so we raised
• 1:01:18
  raise a hundred million in equity in this fund to be able to go out and start to deploy into some
• 1:01:23
  investments. Come January one, we've already filed people, we've already gotten the process started
• 1:01:31
  to launch January one. What's called an interval fund? And what makes an interval fund slightly
• 1:01:38
  different than been most other venture funds is is, you know, there's a handful of pieces,
• 1:01:45
  a handful of features. The first is a typical venture fund is is only accessible by accredited
• 1:01:54
  investors and qualified purchases. The interval fund by design allows us to raise capital from
• 1:02:03
  institutions, but also all the way down the investor line to retail investors. So athletes,
• 1:02:10
  retail investors, accredited investors, institutions, any, any and everybody can get into into this fund.
• 1:02:20
  The second feature that makes it that makes it really, it's just different. It's just different
• 1:02:25
  than most other funds is the interval, the interval fund interval speaks to what we chose is a
• 1:02:32
  quarterly interval where you as an investor in the fund can actually change your position.
• 1:02:38
  Right. So we talked about earlier, you know, you might be into it into an individual company,
• 1:02:44
  your capital is locked up for seven years, eight years, you might get into a fund and has a 10-year
• 1:02:49
  holding period, your money is locked up for that 10 years. In this interval fund structure,
• 1:02:54
  you have the ability to change your position every quarter and the fund can actually redeem those
• 1:03:01
  shares. So again, it's a little bit more built-in liquidity. It's kind of built for
• 1:03:08
  that retail invested athlete that might have, you know, some liquidity crunch or some
• 1:03:14
  something that they need to take some dollars out. They need to pull some of that equity that
• 1:03:19
  they've gained and put it to work somewhere else. You can do that on a quarterly basis.
• 1:03:24
  Well, we'll also have an interval fund is a secondary trading platform to where even in between
• 1:03:31
  those quarterly intervals, we basically have our own private exchange, right. It's hosted and
• 1:03:37
  ran by a company we partner with called Templum. And again, as a shareholder in the fund,
• 1:03:44
  you have access to liquidity, right. So if you ever needed to pull down some of your equity,
• 1:03:50
  you have that opportunity. And the main feature of the Hairable Fund is we're not bound by time
• 1:04:00
  and we're not bound by a ceiling that we can raise against, right. So we can literally raise
• 1:04:07
  an unlimited amount of funds and the fact that we're not bound by time allows us to be patient
• 1:04:12
  capital. So we're not, we're not on a 10 year time horizon. We don't have to, you know,
• 1:04:18
  we don't have to close this fund out in 10 years. So we can actually invest in assets that we see
• 1:04:24
  growing for the long haul and really build this evergreen portfolio in a way that allows us
• 1:04:30
  if we get to a billion or two or three or five billion, we're not, we're not beholden by time
• 1:04:36
  or, you know, ceiling. So it's, it's a, innable funds have been around for a while. This is just a
• 1:04:45
  a relatively new application of innable fund. I think it's super, I mean, for the investor,
• 1:04:51
  it seems so like such a friendly investor friendly fund. And it, I didn't know these existed,
• 1:04:58
  to be honest. I have never heard of these before. As somebody is raising the fund, does it not
• 1:05:04
  cause like a little bit of stress or, I don't know, like, if you, if you have people that are
• 1:05:13
  switching their allocations quarterly as a fund manager and obviously the majority of people
• 1:05:20
  here are investors. So they're like, well, that sounds great for me. But for you as a fund manager,
• 1:05:24
  how do you manage that? If money's getting pulled out of businesses, being put somewhere else,
• 1:05:29
  how do you build plans around that? How do you, how do you create stability around that?
• 1:05:33
  So part of it is, is reserving a good amount of capital. About 20% of the fund will be kind of
• 1:05:38
  reserved for redemptions. Right. So that's, that's kind of phase one. But phase two, phase two,
• 1:05:45
  that is, it's really, if we believe in what we're doing and we believe in the growth in what we're
• 1:05:50
  doing, we'll gladly repurpose those shares because we know where they're going. Yeah. No, that makes
• 1:05:54
  sense. It's just something I've never, and it's just like the type of raises that I know are like
• 1:06:01
  reg A, you reg CF, like, this is just another one of those. Is it just like another legal structure?
• 1:06:08
  If somebody wants to set this up, it seems like the perfect solution. Yeah. I mean, there is some,
• 1:06:13
  it can become a little bit administratively intensive. And that's one of the reasons we partnered
• 1:06:19
  with. There's a group called Sweater that we partnered with to literally run the back into the
• 1:06:23
  fund. So we trade the shares as you, as you either redeem them or liquidate their,
• 1:06:31
  their based on the net asset value of the fund itself. So Sweater and Templum, they are responsible
• 1:06:37
  for coming out with that. We got a third party group to come out that net asset value on a
• 1:06:42
  nightly basis. So what we've done is, is we've strategically all flowed as some of the more
• 1:06:47
  administrative pieces to people that this is what they do, which allows us to go in and be,
• 1:06:54
  you know, the sports asset chain people and go in and find those companies, go and build that value.
• 1:07:00
  So we've taken a really collaborative approach to kind of mitigate some of those hurdles that
• 1:07:06
  you're talking about. But ultimately for us, it's really centers our access. And it really centers
• 1:07:14
  around, you know, making this asset class accessible to the masses, you know, because if you think
• 1:07:21
  about it, sports is one of the things that connects us all, right? And whether you pay it in,
• 1:07:30
  like athletes will bless sweat and tears, or whether you're a parent that's paying into these
• 1:07:35
  clubs and travel leagues, there's a lot of people paying into the sports ecosystem. But don't really
• 1:07:42
  have the ability to get a financial return back out of it. You know, this fun represents an
• 1:07:46
  opportunity for everyone to, you know, go out and get a meaningful ownership stake in the sports
• 1:07:53
  and the ecosystem that they love. I think that's like the last thing that we could just talk about,
• 1:07:58
  because I think it's something that's important for you. It's just access to access to opportunities
• 1:08:04
  outside of what you're doing. And this has sort of been like a theme that we've spoken about a
• 1:08:10
  little bit throughout the, you know, last hour and a bit. But what are the biggest issues with
• 1:08:14
  access to opportunities for, I mean, maybe underserved, underrepresented communities?
• 1:08:20
  I mean, it's, you know, it's not like an easy answer, but access period. It's getting, it's not
• 1:08:26
  just getting opportunities to invest. It's getting opportunities to really understand the different
• 1:08:34
  aspects of the sports ecosystem of the, of the business ecosystem. And if you're somebody like
• 1:08:40
  myself that, you know, I'm, again, I'm, I try to be very self-aware and I know that the reason that
• 1:08:48
  I'm in this position and that, and I have the access that I have is because of what I used to do
• 1:08:51
  for a living. And I know, I know how, how rare that, that positioning is, you know, so to be able to,
• 1:09:01
  you know, create a platform that, that, you know, it just creates those access points. It creates it,
• 1:09:08
  you know, maybe a different investor conversation. It creates maybe a different avenue for someone
• 1:09:15
  to build wealth in an area that they know and love and understand. You know, all of those things
• 1:09:21
  are really important to me as an individual and it's important to our team because we all have a
• 1:09:26
  background in sports and, and we've all, you know, we've all seen and, and we've all kind of had to
• 1:09:32
  carve our tea, you know, carve our skill sets out and a bunch of these different backdoor ways
• 1:09:38
  because simply because we spent most of our lives with a singular focus, you know, try to become
• 1:09:44
  a lead athlete and, you know, for better or worse, there's some, some people in the world respect,
• 1:09:52
  respect that process and other people in the world see, see us as entertainers and, and, you know,
• 1:09:57
  they, they kind of respect the product, but they don't really pay much attention to the process.
• 1:10:02
  So, you know, being people that, that, you know, really earned our stripes in a different way,
• 1:10:09
  you know, it'd be in a position to create access for other people to not have to go those,
• 1:10:13
  those crazy routes to get to the same place is really important to us.
• 1:10:17
  What are the, I mean, so what you're doing, you're creating, you're creating access, you're going to
• 1:10:22
  create not just access to opportunities, but when you do that, you teach, you educate, which
• 1:10:31
  creates a whole other, I mean, just creates this whole group of people that understand how to invest
• 1:10:36
  and then I think it's like a little bit of like a flywheel that you start to create when you create
• 1:10:40
  funds like this, which is great and it has to happen. When you think about the industry at large,
• 1:10:46
  what are some changes about financial education, about investment, about access things that
• 1:10:52
  you sort of saw before you built what you built that were the most frustrating things that you
• 1:10:59
  would like to see change if possible. The biggest challenge is just a monolithic approach.
• 1:11:06
  You know, whether it be the financial services industry, whether it be the types of investments,
• 1:11:12
  whether it be, you know, how most athletes are typically treated in these environments,
• 1:11:18
  there's just been this monolithic approach that does not allow for nuance.
• 1:11:24
  And the reality is, you know, we all have different skill sets, we all have different lived
• 1:11:30
  experiences, we all have different perspectives that make us who we are. And if the financial
• 1:11:37
  opportunities don't speak to that and don't resonate with that, you get excluded from the conversation
• 1:11:43
  historically. And, you know, I think the more diverse faces, the more diverse voices,
• 1:11:50
  perspectives that we can have around the table, avenues, conversations, creating these platforms,
• 1:11:56
  which allows for, you know, more nuanced pathways, more nuanced conversations,
• 1:12:02
  the more that we have those, the more that we create those access points that everybody feels like
• 1:12:06
  they have a seat at the table. And, you know, that's the aim game, that's the aim game for us.
• 1:12:11
  So we just want to play a small part in making that happen. I love that, dude. What's, I mean,
• 1:12:17
  we've gone through a lot. What's something that I should have asked you about that I didn't know
• 1:12:22
  to ask you something that you use, that you feel is for the audience listening, for entrepreneurs,
• 1:12:28
  for investors, for athletes, something that's really changed your life that they should hear.
• 1:12:34
  Man, I would expect this one.
• 1:12:39
  We've gone through a lot. That's why we've gone through. We've gone through a lot today. But,
• 1:12:42
  no, I'm just, I'm just wondering if, because again, we've gone through really, I'm just taking a
• 1:12:46
  look at everything we've gone through your career, we've gone through investment, we've gone through
• 1:12:50
  your fund, we've gone, we've spoken about sort of access and inclusivity, spoken about education,
• 1:12:55
  spoken about a lot. So if there's no like other topics, maybe just like some lessons over your life
• 1:13:01
  that have been the most impactful. No, I say, I say this, man, it's, we kind of talked about
• 1:13:09
  earning success every day. But to me, the thing that I've learned throughout every phase of the
• 1:13:18
  journey is there's really like these two, there's these three levels of awareness that are really
• 1:13:24
  driven opportunities that I've seen and been able to execute against. It's self-awareness and
• 1:13:31
  really understanding who you are, what it is that you bring to the table, why you want to bring it
• 1:13:36
  to the table. And just being very clear on the value proposition that you bring, regardless of
• 1:13:45
  what the outside world tells you that value proposition is. If you're confident and if you're confident
• 1:13:52
  in your value proposition, that's always the 11 starting point. From there, it's around what I
• 1:13:58
  call progressive awareness. It's, I'm sorry, a peripheral awareness. It's no matter who you are,
• 1:14:04
  what value you bring, there's always going to be outside factors that kind of play a role in
• 1:14:10
  whether or not you get a chance to show that value or you get a platform to execute against that
• 1:14:17
  value. So as much as you know who you are and what you bring, you've got to understand what's
• 1:14:22
  going on around you to know where those pockets are going to be that you can take advantage of.
• 1:14:28
  And then the third piece is situational awareness, right? And that's where you get those mental reps
• 1:14:33
  around. How do I fit into this situation based on it could be something around what's going on
• 1:14:44
  in the economy, like these macro factors that really drive opportunity. And if you can understand
• 1:14:54
  what you're trying to get accomplished on those three different levels,
• 1:14:57
  you put yourself in a position to show up as the best and highest use of your talents,
• 1:15:03
  but in a way that's very strategic and is right size for the moment, right? Because a lot of success,
• 1:15:10
  again, all the way back to the draft story, a lot of successes is around
• 1:15:15
  getting to the right place at the right time with the right value. And interestingly enough,
• 1:15:21
  what I just talked you through was my whole thought process around running routes.
• 1:15:26
  I love it. That's so far. It applies everywhere. 100% that applies everywhere. Where
• 1:15:34
  if people want to take a look at like the fund you're raising, if they want to take
• 1:15:38
  like sort of just consume more like your content, where do you want to send them your website,
• 1:15:42
  social, all that. And I'll put in show notes as well, but just drop it so people can hear it.
• 1:15:46
  Perfect. Yeah. If you want to learn more about champion venture partners,
• 1:15:50
  you check out our website, it's championventuapartners.com. You can also find its own LinkedIn.
• 1:15:58
  And our handle on Instagram and Twitter is cvpinvest.
• 1:16:02
  Just on a personal level, my website is Marcus Colson.xyz.
• 1:16:08
  Somebody got me for the dot com, but I got the last laugh.
• 1:16:13
  And then you can find me on Twitter, Instagram. My hand was just my name.
• 1:16:17
  If people are listening and they want to invest, what should they know? Who are you looking for?
• 1:16:23
  Where do they go to take a look at what the work you're doing outside of like the website?
• 1:16:26
  But say they actually want to put money in. Where do they go?
• 1:16:28
  You can actually reach right on the website. We've got a form in there that we'll take all
• 1:16:33
  of your information and one of our team members will reach out and just get an idea of exactly
• 1:16:41
  what you're looking to do, just from a dollar size, from a what your interests are.
• 1:16:46
  And once we get you in the flywheel, we will always send you opportunities that are relevant
• 1:16:52
  to what you're looking to get accomplished.