The Athlete Entrepreneur

Zachary Coleman | How Athletes Can Better Brand Themselves, the Impact of NIL, & Building a Legacy After Sports

December 13, 2021 Greg Spillane
The Athlete Entrepreneur
Zachary Coleman | How Athletes Can Better Brand Themselves, the Impact of NIL, & Building a Legacy After Sports
Show Notes Transcript

This episode of The Athlete Entrepreneur features Zachary Colman, the CEO of Creatitive

Creatitive is a sports branding agency based out of Arizona. They use their combined sports and web background to help athletes brand themselves, increase their value to sponsors, and help sports and athletic organizations increase their revenue. Founded in 2014 by Zach Colman, CEO and Creative Director; his father is a former NFL player.

Trademarked BrandBuild® process helps clients create customized branding, public relations and website strategies. Creatitive can also provide ongoing implementation as part of a long-term partnership.

Experience with a wide range of athletes and companies to develop their brands, including MLB’s Phil Coke and NFL’s Calvin Prior, and businesses such as the Phoenix Suns.

Connect with Zachary

Twitter: https://twitter.com/athletitic
Instagram: https://instagram.com/creatitive
Facebook: https://facebook.com/creatitive
Youtube: https://youtube.com/creatitive

Greg Spillane:

I mean, I'd love to hear a little bit more about the inspiration behind creative I saw that your your dad played in the NFL, so you've been around sports your whole entire life, but you know, what gave you the idea to start the company.

Zach Coleman:

You know, I mean, I don't want to go too much into it. But uh, you know, I you know, it's always a journey, it's always a journey overall. And I was in the corporate world for, for, you know, almost 10 years after I got my bachelor's in science, and on the visual communication side, and, you know, I moved up into the rankings moved up in the rankings. And while I was doing that, I, you know, in this industry, you know, you sometimes do freelance work on the side and, and I just, I was really passionate about helping people and being in the atmosphere of working with, you know, with how my dad grew up, and how he had me grow up and, you know, do certain things in sports in the grid and lifestyle and all that stuff, I, I really saw a need for athletes. Athletes, basically having quality, quality marketing and quality strategy. I, you know, as I continued to work into the corporate world, I just got to a point where I just, you know, I had, I would learn everything within like, three months of being there be doing 100 times more than, than the other employees on staff and nothing against them and their work ethic. But it was one of those situations where I was just like, you know, I could do, I prefer to be on my own at this point, I have more control over over what I'm going to do how I'm going to get there. And so when I went out on my own, you know, I spent about a year, you know, passionately wanting to work with athletes and athletic related businesses, but really kind of, you know, dabbled into the full service, in a broad aspect of things until I slowly knowing that I was going to get there, though, is knowing Hey, this takes time business takes time, I'm going to take it as I go. So it really hit me about a year, a year or so. But while I was still in the in the corporate world, before I left, and I got offered a gig to fly out to American Express in New York, and do a three month contract with them, and it was pretty good money and helping them do the wireframing and all that on their on their website, and I and I turned it down. And because of the fear of the fear of, oh, well, what am I gonna do after that three months, and about a week later, I contact them and said, Hey, I changed my mind, I want to do it and, and they told me, they already found someone else. But what that taught me was okay, one that I'm ready to go out on my own. And to just understanding that in the corporate world, there was no guarantee either, you know, there was no guarantee and through that whole rest of that year, I went through three or four bosses, they switched things up and processes up quite a bit lay people off, did you know sneaky things on on trying to bring lower people up to pay him last and all that nifty stuff, until eventually just got to a point where I'm like, You know what, I'm ready. So I spent that whole year, preparing and saving up a good cash flow, so that I could say, alright, now I can live about one year, very minimal income, just to get my feet on the ground and learn and to grow and ended to get where I need to be and everything, I'm not going to say worked out because business is business and as always growth patterns, but finally got to a point where, you know, I'm pretty stable and have a good, you know, growth pattern right now. And I think what really got me to work with athletes is because of my dad, and because of the situation and with with seeing these athletes, I saw a lot of athletes. They go through different patterns and the different patterns that they go through. And it's not the same for every athlete, but as a business owner, you know, you go through these patterns of you learn from your mistakes, you grow from those mistakes, and I see it the same with my prospects that come in the door, depending on where they're at price points, hiring someone you know, as a freelancer, hiring an agency, things of that nature, you learn from those, not mistakes, but you learn and grow from them as you continue to evolve your business and athletes don't have that have that have that at all. They usually come right out of the game and they're like, hey, I want to do this. And so I see them making the mistakes, but making the mistakes with the money compared to you know, businesses that got to a point where they under And the value of certain things and how to get there correctly, instead of trying to nitpick things. And so I, I tend to just see a whole bunch of gaps with a lot of the athletes that I've talked to where they would have a website, for instance, and they have shirts, and they would be like, Well, I haven't sold anything, you know, in two years, or dealing with traditional sports marketing agencies that are like, Oh, we don't really deal with strategy. And so trying to really hit that hit that gap of really helping the athletes basically, brand themselves and in a strategic way, and then grow and monetize their brands outside the game past the fact.

Greg Spillane:

Yeah, so how is branding for an athlete or an athletic based business different than it is for you know, traditional business, right? There's a lot of, you know, different agencies out there a lot of branding agencies that do different things. You know, beyond the obvious, you know, what, what is, what is your approach that differs than it would be if I was just a corporation, or maybe a coach or a speaker or someone like that looking to build my own personal brand?

Zach Coleman:

Well, there of course, are a lot of similarities to it. I mean, if you dive into the difference between a personal brand and a corporate brand, for instance, I would say the real difference between the two is a personal brand is when you're evolving yourself in a corporate brand is about your employees in your atmosphere and values of everyone in the business and not just yourself. So for an athlete, they have this ability in what I always try to tell them is leverage your in game appearance, leverage what you're doing, a lot of business owners don't have that a business owners have to start from zero and grow an audience and figure out stuff out from nothing, we're so you as an athlete, you are kind of the next influencer in the fact that people are already seeing you in the game, people are already watching you play. And so you're able to leverage that in either the following or the ability to grow followers from previous media spots, or previous engagements that you've had with existing fan bases to be able to grow something unique and share your message and your story with the world. Now, with athletic businesses, it is somewhat similar but different. I mean, a lot of athletic business owners, like myself, you know, get into the business, because they're passionate about what they're selling, they're, they're really into the grid of you know, biking or playing football or, or it's, it's a lifestyle to them. And so they also have the ability to bring their passions of their business and to use it for their marketing and branding purposes and sharing their experiences with the world when it comes to selling their products or services. And there's always a intermingle there, I mean, you do have a lot of athletes that they do what they they love, you know, so they love to either, you know, do a nonprofit, around helping kids, they tend to open a gym, they want to start an e commerce Store and show their positive message to the world. So there's a little bit of overlap there. And sports is all connected in some way form or another, you know, so they just overall they have this ability to soft sell. And not really hard sell. And and I think that that really is bringing value to the end users more so than then I would say a traditional and yes, you can go deeper into that and say, you know, you're going b2b Or you're going B to C or, or anything like that there's a huge, there's a huge way that you have to communicate with them differently. But I think that's all part of the branding, the brand development and the brand discovery process on really figuring out who your fan true fan bases and, and bringing value to those fans.

Greg Spillane:

So you know, I mean, there's a lot of different types of athletes, right? I mean, stating the obvious, but, you know, let's, let's look at it from a fame in a monetary perspective. Right? You mean, you know, going to, you know, the Arizona Cardinals, I know you're based out in Phoenix, you get a guy like Carson Palmer, who, you know, retired from the NFL probably has $100 million in the bank. What he wants to do for the rest of his life is very different than you know, somebody who may have played four or five, six years in the NFL maybe made the team on special teams league minimum guy maybe signed one contract for a little bit of money. He gets out. And you know, he's got to work right? Like, I mean, yeah, he's got some money in the bank. Maybe he's got a little bit of fame and notoriety, but you know, you're not going to live on the money that you've put away. How do you look at those two titles? of athletes when you know somebody comes to you, you know, if I'm if I'm a kind of a middle of the road got a little bit of a name, I'm looking to set myself up for my career after sports versus a guy like, you know, whoever it might be DEVIN BOOKER or Chris Paul, who quite frankly, are going to retire and never need to work another day in their life.

Zach Coleman:

Yeah, well, I mean, that could go into your qualification matrix a little bit. And I think the difference with us working with athletes compared to, you know, let's just say, let's just say, financial, let's just say, you know, a branding firm that works at financial institutions, well, their matrix is really like, alright, let's just hit anyone with, you know, the psychographic trait of, you know, they make 500,000 more or so a year, we're an athlete, it's not really about the money. It's it's much more about their personality traits. And so we really try to limit the athletes we work with, with ones that have that, that want to leverage their business mindset. So the ones you know, the second to third string tier athletes that are at a point where they know Hey, what am I going to do after the game, I'm really so passionate about the sport, and that we don't even work on on large athletes really like Tom Brady or anything like that, we were really focused on helping those second and third string tier athletes, even first string that are close to retirement, that, what are we going to do after? And how do we invest in ourselves for the future and do it correctly, those smaller athletes, those smaller athletes that, let's say, have only been in the league one or two years, we will more so guide them towards, you know, doing certain things that may not be as expensive, so to say, so we might get him like, Hey, what are you passionate about? Why don't you focus on becoming a public speaker? Or why don't you focus on what attributes do you have that you can really value? And in helping, and still doing what you love to do? And I think every athlete is different still. And that's part of the matrix process is, what are you passionate about? What kind of values do you want? What kind of message do you want to bring to the world? And how do you want to help people? So I think that the overall strategy is different. But when it comes down to athletes that we work with, in particularly, excuse me, we work in particularly, we really like to just focus on those athletes that that are have that to have that business mindset and want to leverage that mindset that they have to grow something outside the game that they're passionate about.

Greg Spillane:

And, you know, I know, we talked about this before, you can work with athletes that are a couple years out of the game, I know there's things you can do. And I know there's value you can bring. But it's really, it's really the sweet spot is working with that athlete before they leave the game, right preparing them for life after sports. Talk to me a little bit about that?

Zach Coleman:

Well, it's actually very hard because through a lot of our research, just a lot of years of trial and error, we have seen that a lot of athletes tend to be so focused in the game, which there's nothing wrong with that, that they say, hey, I'll wait till next year, I'm too busy with trying to get that next that that next contract or that next this and we try to really come in and say hey, you know, we're we're more of your branding and marketing management, you know, we really focused on all of that marketing efforts for you. And so it's good to have an agency like us on their side, because they don't have time they're there, you know, they they're their job right now, in their business is being a foot up, you know, a sports player. So, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, I tell a lot of athletes, hey, you need to start the you know, unfortunately, I have to say, hey, you need to start this now. You know, you do you need to start before you leave the game while you're still playing. I always recommend you know, do you have a financial person in place? Do you have, you know, a traditional sports marketer in place that's, that's helping you with those connections and with some sponsorship opportunities that you may be able to get that you should also use to invest in the future of growing your brand. Because without those set pieces in place, an athlete it's very similar to any business. If you don't have any certain prospects in place, then you're not going to really get there and I always recommend, hey, you know, work with your financial guy and make sure that you're, you know, pretty sure that this is the direction you want to go or if they already have Something going, how can we make it better? How can we improve it? But long story short? It is very important, especially with nail coming out right now I see a lot of professional athletes seeing that as well as a, hey, focus on this before you leave the game. Yes, you don't have to put 100% time and effort into it. But it's very much like someone that leaves the corporate world and starts a side business, you know, before they make the transition, it's very similar. But you you you need to start it sooner than later. If you're passionate about it.

Greg Spillane:

When you think about an athlete who's preparing to leave the game, and you think about the personal brand building, you know, where where do they usually take it? Like, is this something where it now becomes about becoming a, you know, a corporate speaker, or to do sort of personal life coaching or potentially opening I might be actually doing athletic coaching? Like, where is, from your experience? Where do most of these athletes who do this well go next?

Zach Coleman:

I see I see multiple models. And in of course, one of the main directions athletes go is is they invest in other companies. And there's, there's nothing wrong with that. But I always tell half the tell athletes, you know, there's nothing wrong with investing in other companies. But make sure you do your due diligence because 90% of businesses fail, and you have no control over the outcome of that business. I, I won't say names, but I had a company come to me, they had two athlete investors on staff, and they are coming to us about some online search capabilities. And, and I was looking over their follower account, and they had about a million followers, but they had like three likes per post. And they were like, oh, you know that our investors don't know the difference. We just paid for fake followers. And it's me, in my mind, I'm like, that's very, that's, that's, that's not a good way to start, you know, and, and so we'd actually turn them down to work with them, because we just didn't feel like it was an ethical and ethical client to work with. But back to your question was like what I said earlier, a lot of them tend to fall into certain patterns. And we will work with an athlete within within any industry they provide. But I think that it always comes back to one simple thing. They're, they're the personal brand around their business. And so if they're a public, you'd like we said earlier, they, they do tend to either open up a nonprofit foundation, or they tend to, you know, open a gym, they tend to have an e commerce Store, where they want to sell products. We're working with an athlete right now we're actually developing them their own backpack around his brand, his personality, and what he likes to do on the side, on his on his lifestyle side. And so it's one of those situations where we really try to help that athlete, you know, manage the marketing side effectively, so that they can make a good profit margins from that, because I've seen, the trends that I really see are that that's either they open a gym, they open a, a foundation, or they they want to start an e commerce Store, but there's always crypto crypto therapy's becoming a thing now, and things of that nature, one thing that athletes have, that a lot of other business owners don't have, is, is their, their, it's easier for them to connect with other people. And so they have the ability to make these partnerships and book these conferences and do this stuff, where normal businesses have to have a grind and have to pay a lot more money, you know, to get to that position. And so a lot of the trends I kind of see athletes doing right now is is in unfortunately, the traditional sports marketing environment is very old school, they, they'll just outsource stuff to freelancers not understanding how certain things work, and they'll tend to, you know, do what I told you what that one athlete where he had a store and wasn't selling anything or they they they look at affiliate marketing quite a bit to like, oh, I have these links, I'll just throw up some links. And I'm like, I have to explain to them the amount of effort they're putting into make 50 cents doesn't really benefit though the weight of costs there. So if if they just focused a little bit on strategy up front and bit during their process of building and understood the value of like you and I were talking about before the call painter doesn't paint their own house and so there's nothing wrong with them not understanding that stuff. But it's one of those situations where yes, you could be paying more for something, but at the end of the day, that's going to give you a much higher result than then you trying to nitpick these things from cheap solutions.

Greg Spillane:

You mentioned crypto. And it's interesting, right? You're seeing athletes that are actually asking to get paid their salary or portions of their their salary and you know, Bitcoin or other different types of cryptocurrencies. There's obviously speculation, people who are just, you know, buying and holding and buying all these different kind of obscure Kryptos. And, you know, you see these Kryptos that are, you know, going up, you know, 14,000% a year, right. It's a little bit of a lottery ticket. But, you know, I saw a post the other day, I forgot the athlete was, but he was, he was discouraged because he sold, you know, $20,000 worth of Shibo. No, which would have been worth like $4 billion, if he held on to it or something to that extent. But the the, the part that I'm, I'm interested in, I want to hear your take on it is the growth of the NFT world, right? You have autographed at IDEO. that's out there. Now, I think Tom Brady is one of the investors and is on the board of directors there you see people like Tiger Woods, and you know, all these major athletes that are involved. You know, I've worked with a company actually based in Phoenix called the fen, they're doing a lot of work with juju, Juju Smith Schuster. I'd love to hear your thoughts on on how that NFT world plays into what you're doing and conversations you're having with athletes.

Zach Coleman:

I've actually had a couple talks with some NFT companies that are that are trying to get trying to get started. And I think that the there's nothing wrong with NF T's I think they're I think that they're, you know, a new fad, I'm not saying they're going to be good or bad. But it's something that you that you set on it that hit on a little bit ago, which, which I, to me is lottery. And, you know, 1% like that athlete, you said, yes, it would suck not to make $4 billion off of off of something. But I I'm not one I'm not one to fancy into to lotteries, situations, I think that you need to Yes, diversify, where your income comes in. And I don't see anything wrong with that ever, I'd Of course, talk to a financial person before anything like that. But I think that in business, you have control, you have control over the outcome, you pivot, you can do different things, you can have strategy, blah, blah, blah, but long story short is, is I think NF T and a piece can play a great situation in the outcome. One problem I am seeing through a lot of these NF T's is they're doing something very similar to what I said is, is there a lot of these designs, and a lot of these, these art pieces of art that they're making, they're not seeing the the cost benefit ratio, and so they're going out there and they're, they're creating something themselves, or they're creating something that is, you know, made for $100. And then they're expecting for it to sell for 100 times quite, you know, a million times more than that, when in reality, it just is it's just like business, you know, you have to put with anything, you have to put a solid investment in the thump something to get less risk to make more return, you know, so it's, I would just say, it's great, but I think that it's just another avenue, that's kind of diminishing good quality on on other fields. You know, like, like the design industry, and, you know, the development industry and things of that nature. But I definitely think it's, it's if an athlete talks to a financial advisor or something like that, and they want to invest in something that they see, it's up to the athlete with with risk, you know, so and like you you've mentioned, you know, if they have a good business plan, or they have a good, you know, a good portfolio, then, you know, that diminishes risk, so why not throw money into it, and, but I wouldn't make that your long term goal, I would probably use that as something. I mean, just like in business, you really thrive too, you're always striving to be better, you're always striving to, you know, just like a player does when they're playing the game, you're always striving to make things better to bring value to the end user to have passion in what you do and have a meaning. You know, and I think that that's more of something that I would say you would do on the side as you as you try to do something else with your with your life. So I

Greg Spillane:

know one of the things you guys have a creative is a brand build process, tried and true process that you put together. Talk to me a little bit about where the creative process starts. When you when you engage with a new athlete, let's say somebody who's fairly well known to come in towards the latter part of their career and you know, they're planning for life after sports. You know, where do you guys start?

Zach Coleman:

We usually start a lot with the brand, the part of the brand bill process is dived into three steps. And a lot of those three steps even has different situations that could arise depending on on the athlete and where they want to go. But how we usually start the first, the first step of brand build processes is the brand development side. And it's really, you know, developing, you know, brand discovery, figuring out working with the athlete to figure out who their true fan bases and doing workshops on, on developing their values and their copy in their messaging, their positioning statement, you know, their their graphics, and their brand language really coming down to how do we objectively and not subjectively, you know, provide branding collateral and branding solutions for you that can go for what your overall goal is. And so we first start off with that there's a huge, you know, it, you know, that that part usually takes between one or three months, depending on the part of the brand build process they're in and then, you know, we really focus on with athletes, I think one of the biggest things that I see a lot of is athletes tend to say, Hey, I just want a website. And I want to just throw up my stats. And I'm like, there's plenty of websites out there that IT companies can see your stats, but how does that help the end user? Like, what are you trying to use the website for, don't just look at it as a as a don't just look at it as a as you're, you're paying for something you're buying a product that people can just view you on? Look at it as, hey, what what value are you bringing to that end user? And how are you going to monetize that website in a way? So we really go through the second step is really the website discovery process, where we go through and we actually define what that what the end user would flow through on on the website, what what with the audience's that we've come up with, we're able to psychologically look at what kind of stuff information would they be looking up? What kind of value are you bringing into them, and we designed the website around that, and so that they can monetize it, for instance, we really think there's a huge aspect for a lot of these nonprofits to start using developing their own crowdfunding website. I mean, I look at JJ Watt, for instance. And when he did Hurricane Katrina, and you know, a lot of them just go up and they do a Kickstarter campaign, you know, and he made How much 14 million off of off of her a Katrina. And if he just spent 20 to 30 grand on developing his own crowdfunding website, he would have a platform that he could have. You know, he spent 1/10 of the cost that he had to pay Kickstarter to develop his own. And then he could add multiple campaigns he could have ran as he continued his his journey. And so that's just one example. But trying to find a way that we can bring all of your assets together that that your, your so many out, there is what we like to call your, your digital, your digital currency. And we try to say, hey, how do we bring all that together? And then how do we inform it give that information to your end user properly, because your website's meant to more so be That's yours. It's not like social media where, you know, you could get banned tomorrow, or, you know, they could do updates or situations. And so we like to use that as a place for your hub, if it be business, if it be, you know, anything. And then we saw, we go through that process seconds. And then once that's live and completed, then we come up with the market, we have the marketing strategy side, and we come up with solutions that we think are best going to fit your personality for one, but to where your end user is. And so one thing that I really tell athletes when they come to us, and they say, hey, well, we need to post more. And I have to tell them, well, which channels are your are your users on, I don't think that you need to be blasting every single social media channel, let's focus on quality, and focus on hitting those channels that your end users on with quality content and quality value. And so it varies but we pick a couple of channels we may pick, you know, depending on the user intent, we may focus on some paid marketing or we may focus on some organic search marketing as well if they're local or if they're, you know, an e commerce Store to help them bring in value and then we help tell their story through different aspects of marketing to kind of help them continually to grow the business from from that aspect and so those are usually the three phases and and of the brand build process. But it usually like I tell every client that comes to me if they don't have any sort of brand or or website or anything yet I usually have to back off and say Hey, man, you need this stuff first, or we're not going to be able to provide the value that you're, you're looking out of us. And so I always recommend athletes, you know, go through some brand discovery come up with some sort of strategy get to know themselves, it's really a way to get to know themselves and to get to know who they're passionate about, and who they want to help in the environment in

Greg Spillane:

today's world. Yeah, I mean, with any marketing, there's an authenticity that's so important, right? And and if you're, if you're trying to create a brand that isn't authentic to who you are, and what you believe in, it, just it's gonna fall flat. I think that one of the things with with JJ Watt. And you know, what he was able to do, as far as raising capital is, you could just feel like when he would talk that there was just a deep level of passion there. Right. It was, it was something he believed in he wanted to do he wanted to help with and I think that resonated, it's one of the reasons why he was able to raise the amount of money that he was able to raise. So I kind of a two part question here. You know, we've talked a little bit about that athlete, that maybe looking to figure out how they're going to be prepared for life after sports. So in nature, you're talking about people who are maybe towards the latter part of their careers. But, you know, you're starting to see this happen earlier and earlier and earlier. And we talked about this offline where, with the ability for amateur athletes to now monetize their, their, their name, likeness, etc. You know, we're starting to see it at the high school levels, right. Mikey Williams, basketball player, 17 years old, just signed a historic contract with Puma. I mean, Pumas, you know, basically basketball contracts, kids, not even in college yet, right? 5 million social followers across Instagram and Tik Tok and Twitter. So, you know, I guess the question really is, when do athletes need to start thinking about this mean? Is this something that like, I mean, you know, these top level high school guys, these top level college guys, like they got to already start to kind of think about the brand that they want to create, because we know how lucrative sponsorships can be just just from that level, we kind of have an idea of what what sponsors are looking for in athletes, but, you know, where would you recommend that that these conversations start to occur?

Zach Coleman:

I mean, the easy, the easy answer, I would say is yes, but but we've actually, we've actually been approached by in the last year alone, quite a bit of high school athletes and college athletes. And I think that they need to look at one, every state we're coming to realize with nail is different, depending on their laws. And so I think first and foremost, they really need to dive into where they're located, what the rules and regulations are for that, but I don't think athletes of high school or even maybe college, but not so as much high school should be worrying about sponsors, yet. I think that at the end of the day, their main focus should be on what kind of school do I want to go to? And how does that, you know, high school athletes, high school, when you're in high school, in general, you're all over the place, you know, you're, you're like, am I going to do this? Am I going to do that, you know, and things change. And so for one athlete we were working with, we're going through the brand build process that was in high school, a female soccer player, we were focusing much more on whatever her passions outside the game that she's getting passionate about with schooling. Because if we look at it that way, then who knows what's going to happen after college, who knows that she's going to become professional, who knows. And, and for her, for instance, she had a real true, real true passion for, for animals. And so she was thinking about becoming a veterinarian. So we're like, so how do we build your brand around you and your sport, but also be able to leverage this passion you have for for, for animals? And how do we push that in that direction. So things do shift over time, we can, you can kind of take it into a different direction. And maybe it's not sponsors at that point. Maybe it's just trying to, you know, grow your career as a veterinarian, you know, or a foundation towards animals or something of that nature. So, for high school athletes, it's really all about getting to know themselves in nurturing at the end of the day. This is meant not just for athletes, but for for athletic businesses for business in general. Social media is not meant for lead generation. It's just not it's it's it's meant for value and to nurture. So it's one of those situations where you want to build an audience and that's that's it, you want to bring value free content, be able to help people out. Very similar to this podcast, you're trying to bring value to To help people in what they're doing, give them advice, give them inspiration. And so for high school, it's much more about how do we get your name out there more, because you can't necessarily go out and reach out to recruiters, you can't. And I've had a few of them come to me and be like, Well, do you know this recruiter? Can you get us to this and like, even if we did, it wouldn't be appropriate, because that's not how it works. And with nil, you have to worry about that kind of stuff. And so let's build your brand early. If we can build you and nurture your following early enough. And you just look at it as a nurturing in a growth development situation, by the time that you get into college, or by the time you get into the into the sport that you're gonna be playing professionally, you will at least have a solid foundation of followers through the PR and the efforts that we provide. Now, depending on if they go into college, I'm seeing two things I'm seeing, it's forcing professional athletes to look back and say, Hey, maybe I could have took Junior took this seriously. But it's also I'm seeing a lot of college athletes getting sponsorship deals that they shouldn't be taking. Because these a lot of these corporate companies, not all but some are now looking at it as these are naive kids that don't know what they're that don't know what they're getting into. And we can pay him very little little money to, to sponsor for us. And so I'm seeing a lot of college kids actually getting taken advantage of, and getting sponsorship deals with things that just don't mesh with what they believe in. And so with college, finding your brand and finding who you are is very important, because it's going to help you find partnerships, not just regular sponsorships, but partnerships that could they could grow into a future aspect of who you are as a person and who you are. I mean, I had one come to me and say they got a sponsorship from McDonald's. And I'm like, like, dude, like, how does that work with your brand? You're all about health and fitness and in showing people inspiration, but McDonald's, you know, and like, how does that relate to your brand. And vice versa, I've had athletes come to me and say, Hey, I've been offered sponsorship deals where they're gonna pay me $600. And I have to post seven times forever, for the next year, every month. And I'm like, Dude, you're getting ripped off. You know, like, so I think they just have to take it with a grain of salt. And they just have to kind of look at it and say, hey, you know, these people are coming to them, let everyone come to you, I would say, Hey, don't worry about especially when you're in college, doing too much due diligence on trying to find sponsors focus on on your, your schooling and focus on your sport, and let these these people come to you, and then you can digest if any of those sponsorships are good for you or not. And, and leverage it that goes back to strategy. Like you said, if a high school player decides, hey, when I'm in sixth or seventh grade, I have found that my brand really resonates with and we'll just use it because everyone knows it Nike, and they are, you know, wearing their shoes, and they're looking at as a value proposition and sharing some content for them for free. You know, while they're young, then eventually they may get a sponsorship deal with with Nike. But use it as much more of a nurturing aspect and a much more of how do I build my brand now? And how do I build that brand awareness now so that by the time I get to college, schools will be looking at me, by the time I get to, by the time I get to the professional level, as you know. Sports things are tricky. It's a business to them. And so they Yes, having a player that's really good, is, is great, but having a player that is a people person, and you know, unfortunately, their team's their, their main goal is to bring in ticket sales, you know, so they can have a player that they know is genuine to what they do and genuine to who they are as a person. And they talk to their fans. They, they you know, I see a lot of athletes that talk about and preach about how they want to be on social media more, but they don't talk to their fans, they go on there and they'll either not comment at all they'll do just a thumbs up or they'll say thanks for the post. And it's like no talk to them. That's the whole point of social media is to show your quality that that's what you're providing value to them as an athlete is you're able to talk to them or other people can't so you know, just kind of take it as it goes and and expect that whole portion to be a nurturing aspect. And it's yes, it's going to take longer before you either go and open your own business or you either play in your career or but business doesn't happen overnight either. Neither should sponsorships. And I see a lot of athletes taking $5,000 sponsorship deals right now. You're taking those deals that don't really mesh with their brand just to make a quick$5,000. And I'm like, wouldn't you rather have $100,000 sponsorship with a company that has the same fan base as you, and that's really what marketing, marketing, but what really large companies look at is, hey, does this company resonate with our audience, and even if they have 10,000 followers, 50,000 compared to a million, what's gonna be that conversion rate, you know, and that's what companies look at, unfortunately, that just is because that's their goal is they want to make more sales. And so if you're passionate about something, and you're passionate about a product, and it follows your values and your in your, what you do as an athlete, those are the types of sponsorships you should be taking.

Greg Spillane:

You know, I, I come from an era where athletes, you know, college athletes at the time weren't even allowed to have part time jobs, you know, we we weren't allowed to go get a job, you know, delivering pizzas. So I've, I've actually been a supporter of, you know, this, this, this movement, where amateur athletes are able to monetize themselves. I mean, you just look at the billions of dollars that are created in you know, NCAA sports, whether it's the tournament basketball, whether it's the BCS and football. And you know, at the end of the day, like the product or the players on the field, and and I get it, yeah, they get a scholarship and all those types of things. But, I mean, you know, the fact that the coaches are making $10 million a year, I don't know, where the money goes, I mean, who is the NCAA? Exactly, like, I'd love to ever put my thumb on exactly what that cartel looks like, but, so I've been supportive of that. But I do think it is going to change everything. And I don't think it's always going to change things for the best, right. I mean, you know, you look at Mikey Williams, you know, we talked about him earlier signed a deal with Puma. You know, Mikey Williams isn't the number one basketball player in the country right now. I think he's ranked like 10th, or something that extent you know, of where he sits in his age class, who he is, the reason he got a contract is because he's got 5 million followers, and it's going to continue to grow, right. And we all know that they can monetize their followers, and every time he's wearing his Puma shoes, or his Puma shirts, there's value that he's going to bring to the corporate level. So then, you know, it begs the question of, you know, are athletes now going to be more focused with doing things that? You know, it's kind of like what you see with like, the Kim Kardashian world, right? Are the the Jake Paul's of the world where it's like, it's not even about what you do. It's about doing something that creates a little bit of controversy and gets you more followers and helps kind of get your social presence and helps you go viral? Where reality like, are you really focused even on training or being the best athlete you can be? So I don't know. We'll see how that goes. Well, listen, I, you know, the show the show, when I started this show, it wasn't just about athletes, per se. And what they were going to do afterwards I look at athlete, entrepreneurship as as an approach, it's like a mindset. And it's the way you approach entrepreneurship. So, before we go, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask some questions about your own entrepreneurial journey, right? I mean, you're, you talked about it, you were in the corporate world for a really long time, you could easily be at some big agency right now. You're an extremely talented marketer, visual designer, art director, all those types of things, but you decided to go out on your own. So I'd love to hear you just give me a quick rundown of maybe some of the lessons you've learned or some of the biggest lessons you've learned on your own entrepreneurial journey.

Zach Coleman:

Yeah, I think that I think one, it doesn't happen overnight. I think that I mean, I think that's, there's a lot of people out there now preaching that, that they have to understand that business doesn't happen overnight. And it's hard as a business owner that you and you're passionate to look at something one year, two years, three years from now and say, I think I should be further than this. But then you look back at a year and you're like, Oh, I'm actually further than I thought I was. And it's it's that mindset that you said, I'm very similar view in that way, where I look at an athlete's lifestyle and their mindset towards becoming an athlete very similar to entrepreneurship. And opening your own business is i i came to the realization quite fast that my whole goal in the business is yes to help athletes, but to help athletes understand that time doesn't equal money, money equals time. And so you want that you want to be able to hang out with your family. You want to be able to take care of your kids, you want to be able to do that, but do it you could still do it with something that's fun. And that's one thing that I learned quite early on is hey, you're going to have expenses you're going to have you know to bring the quality you want to bring To these people, you're going to have to hire the best that there is out there to help you along your way. I'm I am, I'll say that I'm a master of I'm a master of none. And I'm a, you know, what's the what's the term Master of None but, but whatever everybody wants right now, jack of all trades, yeah. But what I learned from that is I learned enough to say, hey, now I know how to hire this person, you know, and say, Hey, I'm gonna bring this person, he does better at it than I do. But I know enough to, to make that 10 times better with my end user. So I would say expenses, and I'd say, you know, not being nitpicky, but also don't follow, you know, fake gurus, there's so much content out there these days that talk about certain things, like, Hey, you can make a million dollars tomorrow, if you just do this, or you can, you can do this. And this, you can make a million dollars in anything you just have to. Business is hard, you you know, business and just like being a player is hard, you it's gonna take time, it's gonna take effort, it's gonna take a lot of uncomfortable situations that you have to learn pass. And that's what I love about business is, I realized I wanted to get into it, because I like change. And business is always learning, it's always changing. And I'm always learning something new. And some of the things I do have to, you know, do want a daily basis is, you know, my mindset, it wasn't until my agency was bigger, that I realized how important mindset was, and so really focusing on knowing that there's going to be days that I'm depressed, you know, because I'm not far enough. But also realizing that that's just part of the business mindset. And and that I'll get, I'll get over it and things are going to come up with millions of different things that you're going to have to tackle on a day to day basis. Finding people that you can talk to or grow with. I'm part of a huge organizations that that's not not really about networking, but more about its support group for business owners, business owners think alike. And so being able to talk to people that may be in different industries, or different situations that can help you understand they're going through similar pain points, it's a very different mindset. And so that's a pain point, pivoting, of course, with COVID. I mean, I'm in the, I'm in the marketing world, and I'm in the, in the sports realm, so I got hit twice when it came to COVID. You know, and so, really learning how to pivot and be able to move things when necessary to grow, but also stick into gun with your passions. I've had multiple business developers in the past, and all of them said, don't work with athletes, you know, athletes, athletes, it's gonna be hard to niche on athletes can be hard to get in front of athletes. But if you hit a tree in the same spot long enough, you're gonna you're gonna get somewhere. So just learning to grow from past mistakes and grow from them is huge. But I wouldn't say overall, you have to love it. And with loving it comes the tedious work sometimes knowing that you're going to have to hand things off, you're going to have to learn new skill sets, but you're going to have to hand those off to to other companies or to employees that probably do it better than you do.

Greg Spillane:

Yeah, yeah, I, you know, a lot of times I'll hire people, or I'll be interviewing people and recruiting them, and I have to explain to them like, listen, I yeah, I'm in this role within this company, but you have to, you're better, you're better than me at this job I'm bringing you in, right, like, I can't be better than you at marketing, I can't be better than you and finance if you're going to run finance for this organization. And I think that's that's, that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs need to get comfortable with the fact that you have to hire great people, you have to hire people around you that are better than you and I think for some I know earlier in my career in leadership roles, you know, I think you feel like you have to be this superhero to be a CEO of a company or to be a founder right and you have to almost put up this front of I know more than everybody here nobody knows as much as me and and you can almost get a little bit self conscious self-conscious If you feel like you're you're maybe not as smart as somebody else that's around you that's in the room. You always feel like the smartest person in the room and I think with with experience and wisdom you realize if you're going to be a successful entrepreneur, like you have to bring people to the table that are that are better than you insert things right like that's that's how your team grows.

Zach Coleman:

And I think that it's funny you say that because I've had this happen with not just people in and I think this happens a lot with athletes because like I said, They come out and they want to do everything themselves because of that passion and that and not understanding certain pain points up front. But I see it with corporate businesses too, I've had a couple, I've had a couple come to me that are small, and they're moving to the medium size realm, and they're like, Hey, I'm going to hire everyone in house. And I have to sit down with them. And I have to say, I love your goal to get there to like, I want to be like McDonald's, I want to have a marketing department, I want to do this, do that, like you have one location right now. I'm like, let's sit down and look at what employees I have to get this job done it a marketing person is not just someone that does everything, they're not a jack of all trades, they need to have someone that specializes, specifically works on like search engine optimization, for instance, social media, content, writing, graphic design, you know, and, and that there's, there's multiple local fields in there. And so I agree with you, I think that a lot of people really don't understand that it's an evolutionary direction. And yeah, I do agree, hey, don't hire those people, if you're not ready, but you want to get the best, but you also have to pay for the best. And so you have to wait till you get to a certain spot and a certain point in your business to do that you may be doing stuff yourself for a while. But what my biggest thing is that I started doing is we've really started pushing our hiring process lately, is what keeps me up at night. Like what keeps me up at night with my clients? What stuff makes it where and I'm a business owner. So a lot of stuff keeps me up at night. But what are the main things of that I can, I can hand off to someone, just so I don't have to have that emotional connection between certain things going wrong or certain right, and I could have my employee be the one that that doesn't bring on that burden, but you know, helps alleviate and bring more quality to that. And I think that really helped me at the beginning, as I started saying what is really appropriate before I actually sat down and created a matrix of my hiring and who I had. But 100% agree with you it's it's something that everyone needs to somewhat look at, especially athletes, like I said, we try not to even work with athletes that that don't have some sort of financial institution that they're working with and or. And or a traditional sports marketer that could somewhat help them because we don't do sponsorships, that's not our thing. We say, hey, we'll help bring you more value to existing sponsors or future sponsors. So that you can get paid more money and you can kind of move into the direction of your fan base. But we don't do that. Because we're not we are a full service marketing and branding agency. But there's only so much we can do within what we do. So we bring partners on for that because we know that we can't do everything in the world.

Greg Spillane:

Yeah, that makes sense. So it looks like we're where can people go to learn more about you and what you're working on?

Zach Coleman:

Anywhere? I mean, they can go YouTube, you can find us at just search creative on YouTube, Instagram, at creative, our websites creative in our LinkedIn business profile is creative as well.

Greg Spillane:

Awesome. It'll all include that all in the show notes. So if you're listening to this, you can go down and click on those links, but I appreciate you coming on man. Really, really fun conversation. I think you you bring a very different perspective to people out there listening to this, you know, not coming necessarily from from the athlete side of it, but actually thinking about how do you advise these athletes in which of these athletes be thinking about is, as you know, they're there. They're looking to think about life after sports. Well, I appreciate you having me on