Most athletes spend their careers wearing someone else's logo.
I'd love to see more of them build something with their own.
This isn't a sponsorship. It's an athlete-owned coffee business. The athlete owns the brand and online store. Partners roast and ship the coffee.
Athletes don’t need more polished brand shoots.
They need real people actually using the product.
The athlete gets people to look.
The customer makes the product believable.
That’s when it stops being “an athlete brand” and starts becoming a real brand.
#SportsBusiness
Most athletes are building a brand for a sponsor that drops them the second they get hurt.
You're optimizing for attention you don't own.
Unpopular take: more content + no equity = still an employee with better lighting.
Women’s sport doesn’t have an attention problem anymore.
It has an ownership problem.
Everyone is monetising the growth.
The athletes creating it should own more of the upside.
#WomensSport#SportsBusiness
I want to be someone’s first customer this week.
Drop your startup in one sentence below.I’ll reply to as many as I can and buy from at least one.
One sentence only.
What you sell + who it’s for.
Who’s building?
#Startups#BuildingInPublic
@Kenneth_Walker9 spending hours signing hundreds of helmets after starting the season like this is actually crazy.
Imagine becoming one of the best players in the #NFL and part of the job is still sitting there signing your name 500 times 😂
Nick Daicos just won the Brownlow with 47 votes.
Peak attention.
This is when I’d be thinking way bigger than another brand deal.
Build something you own while everyone’s watching.
LA28 could generate up to $40.6B.
The athletes create the attention.
Sponsors, broadcasters, suppliers and local businesses will monetise it.
My question:
How many athletes will build something they still own when the Games are over?
If you’re 20 and broke, learning sales is more valuable than getting another qualification.
You can hate that take.
But knowing how to make someone care, trust you and buy from you will pay you for the rest of your life.
Most people don’t need another business idea.
They need to pick one, stay with it for 12 months, and survive the period where nobody cares.
That boring stretch is where almost everyone quits.
Which is exactly why it works.
Imagine spending your whole life becoming one thing.
Then one day it’s gone.
No team. No routine. No competition. No identity waiting on the other side.
We call athlete retirement a career change.
For many, it’s much bigger than that.
Most people don’t need a better idea.
They need to stop abandoning every idea after 2 weeks because it didn’t work instantly.
The boring part is usually where the money starts.
Denzel Ward just joined the Guardians’ ownership group. Travis Kelce did the same in May.
Athletes used to leave sport with a name. Increasingly, they’re leaving with equity.
That shift is only getting started.
Player development is changing.
@NFLPA is teaching rookies about business and branding. @PFA has built a Business School for players.
Developing the athlete increasingly means developing the person too.
#SportsBusiness
The @49ers haven’t played a snap at the MCG yet and they’ve already won something in Australia: fans.
They showed up early, embraced Melbourne and gave people a reason to care.
Friday is one game. The fans they create this week could last decades.
#NFLMelbourne#NFLAustralia
A coaching business should let you impact people regardless of their budget, location or how they want to learn.
You choose how you coach, when you coach and what your time is worth.
The business works around your career, not against it.
That’s how we build for athletes.
The most dangerous sentence in professional sport:
"I'll worry about business when I retire."
You're basically saying:
I'll start using my leverage once I have less of it.