Uncommon Advice
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Uncommon Advice
Monetizing Newsletters, The Netflix Marketing Story, and Creating for YOURSELF
Are you ready to tackle the world of sports, marketing, and content creation? Join us as we kick off with discussions on the NFL schedules, Miami Heat, Julius Randall, Bryce Young, and the Panthers. We'll also take a trip down memory lane with the old series Behind the Music and shine a light on the crucial role of leads in any business venture.
As content creators continue to take center stage, we'll examine the need for them to own their communication channels, monetize their content, and separate themselves from the competition. We'll explore the concept of 'co-redge' and how to use it to boost growth and revenue. Plus, stick around as we delve into the world of docuseries and how they've become a go-to method for reaching wider audiences, with a particular focus on Formula One's success in the US.
Lastly, we'll discuss the importance of creating an environment you're proud to be a part of, whether that's through podcasts or youth sports programs. We'll share our experiences building a supportive community and nurturing young athletes, and touch on the Miami Heat's current performance and what it means for their playoff chances. Don't miss out on this action-packed episode!
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Nate:Miami, miami heat. They're gonna do it, they're gonna pull it off.
Zenen:Oh easy, i got buckets. Jimmy hit me, hit me, hit me buckets. Today I got them 35, 10 and 8 And they're gonna put a dagger and I don't even think it's gonna be a close. I say Miami wins by 10. I don't know if you guys heard, but Julius Randall's comment. They just want it more. It's true, miami does want it more.
Nate:So Question is are they gonna be able to get past the Sixers of the Celtics?
Zenen:you know, nate, can I just live my happy moment right now? We'll worry that, worry about that one next week, but we when we get this going. but also a big news is I think NFL released some schedules, so some of the schedules.
Nate:Yeah, they've got. The Amazon Game is Jets dolphins. I believe.
Zenen:Yeah, i'm black Friday, black Friday.
Nate:Yeah, pretty cool.
Zenen:They have the dolphins. I know I'm a dolphins fan too, so I know more of the dolphins. But I know the dolphins are also playing in Frankfurt against the Chiefs.
Nate:Yeah, that'll be a me Tyree kill back against his Old foals, yeah and then they got a couple Say the Jags are over over there twice as well. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see man. I see the the NFL sees coming out tomorrow rolls out the full full schedule. I Usually go to one or two games a year. Take the family down there, so we'll to the Panthers game. Go Panthers.
Zenen:So now, you being a Panthers man, what do you think? you think Bryce young should get the start right off at bat, or Should they give a give a shot to what was the other one, matt Corral or Andy Dalton?
Nate:So No, no.
Zenen:You give him pricey in the shot price. Young is number one thing, right?
Nate:Yeah, unless he shows. for some, i mean they talk about how, how smart he is out there right now, he's already NFL ready. I mean, we'll find out, so You know the question is that they're gonna have the line to protect them, because you want to keep them protected, right? You know a?
Nate:lot of times they throw these rookie quarterbacks out there and they may not be ready, but they pick them so high they feel like they got to play them correct and then they end up and Usually if you have the first pick, you have more holes than line. Then then just quarterback, yeah. So it'd be interesting to see. Hopefully he can, hopefully they can protect him So you can work magic like he, like he's done it and all his other stops that he's had. So but I think Panthers, super Bowl, super Bowl or bus man, it's gonna be Panthers first. It's gonna be Panthers versus the Cleveland Browns in a Super Bowl.
Zenen:I will. I will say this. I will say this they did put some good receivers around them, veteran receivers Adam Theland, good veteran Stephen out of Minnesota coming in. Dj Chark Play had a kind of couple good seasons with the Jaguars went downhill. But funny, you say that Trevor Lawrence actually went through something similar, where he gets picked one over number one overall. Kid has a cannon, he's an athlete, but he gets put behind this offensive line. That really can't protect them and it's, i mean, and then, and then the whole performance gets evaluated on the quarterback And not the offensive line. Well, as a media standpoint, right, we don't know what teams are doing. It's like they're seeing oh yeah, offensive line sucks, but in the media step was, like all, trevor Lawrence number one pig bus.
Nate:You get. You get, it's a better storyline right, it's a better storyline. It gets more engagement, more views right when you talk about it that way, because every day They want to build you up and then tear you down. But speaking of that, let's, let's go ahead and get in behind the marketing. So, as you know, we have some different segments we talk about and We like to go in and dive into stuff that we're doing currently in our Business on a day-to-day basis. We don't just talk to talk. We walk the talk in this office, and so we are here with the Uncommon Advice podcast. We're going behind the marketing. So I don't know if you if you know this series, but back in the day they used to have this series behind the music, which I used to watch all the time. Pretty cool series, but anyways. So now we got behind the marketing and we're gonna dive into some cool stuff That we're working on and ways that you can execute inside of your business going forward to get more leads.
Zenen:Well, it's funny because, yeah, that wasn't in my times, so that that that's all you there on the behind the music. I can. I can just see Nate just.
Nate:Man, it was a doc. He says doc He's. There was a docu series talking about docusers. That's funny into that.
Zenen:We'll get into that a little more here, but the one I'm gonna jump off the bat first is gonna be American centrist. American centrist is a newsletter We jumped off about a month and a half ago which is no spin news. That's, that's our tagline on it. Right, our whole thing is like we're not going with the left, we're not going with the right, we're just giving people unbiased news, because nowadays everything is either one way or the other. So this whole newsletter jumped and we started off with zero, zero subscribers and we are sitting today at 30,573 subscribers as of today. So that growth, that's, that's amazing.
Nate:Yeah. So and I think it's a testament to a couple of things. One is It's not so much the size of the list, how fast it's growing, but it's a lot of it is the engagement that we're getting. Oh yeah, with that newsletter is super, super important, and so we're already starting to attract some advertising dollars, even with only 30,000 in there, which is pretty cool.
Nate:And it's because of I think there's a massive thirst For just no spin news.
Nate:I think people are really tired of the you're either here, or you're either here, either extreme right or extreme left, and if not, if you're in the middle, then then you're hurting everyone else, right, exactly So I think, and I think you know majority of people probably sly in the middle, whether it's You know, socially, economically, all that you know there's different ways, right, but I think it's and I think there's a large hunger for just no spin news, which is why it's truly growing the way it is, and and that the lesson in that is being able to pick markets and Pick, take what's going on in the marketplace and kind of fill a need. Right, we know there's a need. Now I can't say where you know we're, you're not the first No spin kind of brand out there, but people do like variety and they like different ways. So we've got our we. We do have no, you know our own way of Distilling the information, putting information out there right and tell the stories that people You know, and in the way that we present the information right that people are liking pose opposed to others, right.
Nate:So you know we're filling a need But we do have competitors. But every real market's gonna have some competitors in it.
Zenen:Mm-hmm. And, like Nate said, that it's unique, all of our newsletter designs are unique, right, we try to. We try to stand apart from the competition because at the end of the day, those other newsletters are competitors. So We'll keep you guys updated on American centers. We don't have much more off of that. But Nate put on a topic there on monetizing these newsletters and that's something we're doing right now.
Nate:Yeah, so part of you know a newsletter really is the baseline of having a million-dollar audience, building million-dollar audiences right, it's the baseline because you want to be able to control the Communication channel, whereas Instagram, facebook, some of these other channels you may not be able to control that channel They as much as you want, or if your account gets shut down, you're gone right Like there's nothing you can do about it. We've talked about that in a previous episode how our account, one of our brands, got deleted, lost. Our followers lost all their videos. We were able to save some of it, but we started from scratch with building followers. Luckily, we had an email subscriber base attached to that.
Nate:So kind of getting all this stuff in our audience, really owning all those assets right and getting them all communicating and helping them grow together, make it very You know everything flow, flow well, but I would say the biggest thing is when you own the audience, you can start monetizing it. And people, when people know You own the audience and that's why the creator economies becoming bigger and bigger man, that's why the Influencer sides getting bigger and bigger and people are paying his influencers for you know their audiences. So imagine if these influencers and these creators actually owned The email addresses and that communication channel from email to text. So yeah.
Nate:They're gonna pay you in a couple different ways. So we're in. The one way that we're gonna dive into today is The, the art of co-redge, so you can be on both sides of it, for growth and for rev rev.
Zenen:That's really cool. But, nate, going back to something you just said content creators. This is a conversation we've been having here in the office in the last week on on an idea that we dropped Earlier last week athlete factory Me and we've been having this conversation on how how can we help these content creators Get content for them to expose right, because, as a content creator, a couple things happen, as in our world. I'm gonna talk it this way. Let's say a trainer right, we have a.
Zenen:We have a gentleman, ashton, who started with us not too long ago. He's a trainer but as his full focus when he's training is making sure his athletes are getting the best Training possible right, making sure techniques are correct, fixing techniques. He is not. He's not thinking about creating the content. So that's something that we have been talking about of how can we help these people on. They can bring their people in and we will help them create that content. And I mean, you see nowadays destroying one of the big guys in and the athlete stuff. He's creating content and he had to pick between go keep hunting or Create content and look, i think he picked the the correct route on that so, yeah, now you're giving up really all our secrets.
Zenen:It's not all of them.
Nate:It's just a little bit. So let's get into the behind the marketing piece here, and this is a tactic For you to start leveraging in your business if you're growing leads. You can use it in both ways. Number one is you can use it, and Co-redge is basically where, when you get a lead, you give someone an opportunity to actually opt into another newsletter, opt into someone else's information right, and What'll happen is the people you can. When someone to ops into your site, they opt into new newsletter, they opt in for your lead magnet, whatever it is on your site, you can say, hey, would you also like information from Zinnin's tips? right? and? and if they check that box, it automatically goes to Zina and he's now got that person on his newsletter and Zinnin and it's now paying us to get that subscriber right, so it does a couple things for you.
Nate:On the Co-redge One, let's just say you're the person that has people buying leads from you on the back end. It's a way for you to subsidize your marketing dollars, right? so if you're spending money to generate leads which, if you aren't, you should be and From those leads you have the ability to monetize some of them right out of the gate, right. So the biggest thing in marketing is how fast can you Recoup? what's the time frame for you to recoup your advertising dollars to become profitable? It's a super important piece of running any sort of business, right is how do you become profitable? Yeah, and so this is one tactic, one strategy that allows you to really Subsidize your marketing dollars right out of the gate.
Nate:So we've done Co-redge over the years many. I did my first Co-redge campaign in 2007 It's a while ago, and So with that though, like during that process, it was like you know we've done stuff where we've made dollar for dollar, every dollar we spend it all. Right, it's how to make a dollar back from Co-red. We've done stuff where our goals only to make if we're spending a dollar, we want to make 25 cents back on day one right, because we know we can make the other 75 cents back over the next 15 days. Right. So it's there's different ways to look at it, and but it's a great way and depending on the industry and for you, to generate revenue right out of the gate.
Zenen:Yeah, like Nate said, we're doing these with all these new newsletters that we've launched, we're doing and I think we already have a couple that have come in subscribers, helping them grow and also giving to others. So we'll keep you guys in the loop on all that.
Nate:But well, and the next piece on that. So let's talk about the flip side.
Zenen:Oh, that's right, we forgot, so I don't want to tell them that.
Nate:Like, oh, now I gotta hold it. Not, you know, i'm ready for it No. So I got a buddy. Actually would always say that to me I'd be talking about strategies and everything else, and then he would like kind of say something look at me, go, i don't think you're ready for that I.
Nate:Don't think you're ready, son of a, but it was The other side of it is you. It's a great way to grow your list as well. So a lot of times you might be. It's a great way for you to get subscribers and get people on your list that you can communicate with and in your audience You can communicate with, because it also is a cheaper way to get leads into your system.
Nate:So let's say, if I'm paying five dollars for a subscriber and I have someone on the co-reg and they're paying me a dollar for that Subscriber, so great news is usually, if you're, if you're on the co-reg side, right, and I'm paying five dollars for a lead, you're, i'm really gonna put stuff behind me that my audience is already going to want to hear and Communicate or learn about, right, and so for you, it becomes a way to I'm just using random numbers when I when I use these It's a way, on the co-reg, for you to buy leads and get them at a cheaper cost without having to run your own ad campaigns, without having to Optimize ads up, without having to build landing pages, all that kind of stuff that goes into generating leads.
Nate:If you're a business, so it's a great way for you to kind of partner with somebody, buy leads from them through that co-reg Process, so you can focus on the conversion side on the back end instead of. You know, maybe you're small team, you don't got the ability to go kind of build all these assets and stuff like we do to get those leads in the door.
Zenen:And they and for someone to starting what's a good platform to them to start. Start off on this at, you would say so in our a Link.
Nate:We'll have a link in the comments on this. But a beehive is one of our our favorite platforms. So that is you know what. We'll have a link in the comments. You can go click on that or you can go to, you know, nate Kennedy, comm forward, slash beehive, and that'll get you there too. But I would get the link in the comments. I'll take you over there.
Zenen:So yeah, absolutely That's our favorite tool, absolutely, and just a little snip on beehive guys. It's so easy, user friendly, like you don't. Like you don't need to know anything about Coding or building connection. Nothing, it's, it's all there for you. That leads us into blue chip or bus.
Zenen:So Nate, on Sunday, what it's considered now probably one of the biggest sports events that is happening in the US in the last two years, formula one, cricket, cricket, cricket, cricket, cricket, cricket is growing or polo, polo, but, um, formula one. Formula one is one of the biggest events that's happening in the US and I think I was talking with our camera guy Rob. He was telling me it's gotten more views than the Super Bowl, which is like crazy, because the Super Bowl is watched every like. I know people that in across country have a buddy who plays for the EFL and He, they, he says they rent his team, rent out a theater to watch the Super Bowl. Like overnight, it's like four in the morning there and they're all up watching the Super Bowl with their families in this theater. So it's crazy how it's grown and one of the big reasons it's grown is the docuseries They dropped back in what 2018, 2019, drive to drive to survive which Just blew up Formula one, and it is what it is today and it's gonna continue growing.
Zenen:I think right now, formula one if you saw just in Miami, every big, every big Celebrity name you can think of, was there. Tickets are like a thousand plus if you want to get in. Tickets are sold out. I think day one they came on. So it's like all this. This event has drawn so much attention due to one thing someone who decided I'm gonna make a docuseries on People driving really fast cars.
Nate:Well, the fast cars were driving. What they did is they're leveraging the docuseries to grow the ought, to expose more people. Right, so they understand that. Hey look, we've already got an audience and people that love the formula one. We know that in the it's it's not as big in America as it probably is in some of the other countries. Right, because am I wrong on that? I don't know.
Zenen:No, no, you're not, you're not so big and I think one stuff.
Nate:And so what they know. If they come to the US, we're obviously, you know, we've got we kind of dominate Sports that dominate, right, you've got the football, baseball, basketball, kind of the, the real big ones that Control a lot of the media and everything else in regards to, like, advertising dollars and everything that comes in, and so it's just They basically said, hey, how do we do something different Which is kind of a football? they do you know the hard knocks thing every year correct.
Nate:And so what they did is they take that and they do it in this formula. One thing and it all of a sudden, docu series are big, anyways, on Netflix and growing and all these other you know streaming platforms, so it exposes them to these people. Then they start talking about it and everything else.
Zenen:So yeah, and one thing was it was the perfect timing to because the racing industry was going downhill like 26, i think, start of 2016. You saw NASCAR was starting to die off and And NASCAR, i think, did something similar in the. So what formula one? and doing a docu series of Bobo Wallace? Tell the day good night.
Nate:No, you don't know, you haven't seen. Tell a day good night.
Zenen:But, uh, but with. I Don't know if I should be first.
Nate:I don't know, i don't know.
Zenen:I'm back to behind these, like just blowing up. But um, yeah, robin, you ain't racing Was funny. On 2016, nascar Roll racing not just NASCAR racing starts taking a downhill and NASCAR was one of them and they try to do something similar. They did something with Bobo Wallace and it didn't do as anywhere near as Formula one. And then formula one in 2018, this guy's like comes out. He's like I want to do one team And they sit down together and I was reading the article They sit down together and they're talking about how. He's like. The one of his production partners was like let's go big or go home. He's like let's do all of them, let's try to get as many teams as I want to jump in as possible. And they did, they did and that just launched it and The best part was it launched right in the pandemic when everybody was just sitting at home doing absolutely nothing. Season 5 dropped. They got renewed for season 6, so that's coming up here soon, but it's growing.
Zenen:Last year to races Texas, austin, texas and Miami, and now you got Austin, texas, miami and Las Vegas, which was funny. Last year I was out Las Vegas for a conference called SEMA and They were while the conference was going on that night in our hotel They filmed the, the commercial where you see the formula one car drive through the casino of the encore hotel and it was. It was sick. It was sick to see that and they also did something in the streets to like hype it up and everybody was just so go back to the Blue Tripper bus segment.
Nate:Here is what's important about it is they understood the value of the audience, right, correct, if they could grow it, they knew the advertising dollars would come. Not only did you say the celebrities and all that were there, but I venture to say, at that event, you're seeing Ferrari, you're seeing Rolex, you're seeing, you know, you're seeing all these luxury brands, name brands, big name brands that are all part of it as well. So those advertising dollars come because the audience is there Watching that right yeah, even there was a.
Zenen:There was a crypto coin, big crypto coin company that I think partnered with them to in Miami. I saw that. So it was an FTX. I Think FTX right now is a big problem. I don't think it's not no one them. But so to jump into this, what they did, let's let's jump into what what they did to really take them off.
Zenen:And Nate Put a, put a, put a dagger in this. It's a docuseries and how much the docuseries has, how big a docuseries has played in the last three to five years in these different industries. Now, you see, on Netflix You got the PGA one, they did one for tennis, so It's it's. It's become something where how do how do we reach your audience? They thought about it's like how do we reach other audiences that don't know us or are not really interested in us, or might be interested But never heard of us? So what they did is they first go and they make a docuseries and they put it on what's considered one of the biggest platforms Netflix. Everybody has Netflix. I know there's people, i know people that have Netflix, that are paying for Netflix and they don't even know They're paying for it. So Netflix becomes one of the biggest Docus, one of the biggest Streams to put these on. The growth is tremendous.
Zenen:I think on season one, when they launched, their growth of views and from the 35 to under was like a 77% increase in viewers 35 and under on season one alone I'm just formula one. So they went they. They went into an audience which people 35 and under you usually those people don't have money, right, because if you think of formula one and where it comes from it, you think about a lot of, like we said, a lot of money. You think about Monaco and all that Mercedes, ferrari, all that stuff. You're thinking about a lot of money and people like I Put it this way, people like, like me, i can't go out there and buy a Ferrari or or a Mercedes or Well, mercedes probably, but I don't want to or a Rolex, but one day it will be, but it's just like 35 and under those They're not interested in it. But now That's, that's one of the biggest viewers just off of season one. So it was crazy on on that.
Nate:So To expand upon it. Other ways that docu series are being done is Remit. I think it's remits set the he. I will teach you to be rich. I believe he now has a docu series on Netflix where he's going through and then going through that.
Nate:So he started as really a content creator, yeah right, and they've created this influencer and then you've got other like Mark Evans. So Mark Evans DM, close friend of mine, but he mind he's actually got a big event coming, a big charity event coming up in June at Called the Demo, like alive, but he actually created, is he invested in creating his own docu Documentary, not so much a docu series but more of a documentary, which was one to be able to tell your story. Right, so you can do this on us. You can take what they're doing on a bigger level of docu series and do that on a personal level and a documentary and Kind of create this stuff as well as kind of high production, really good stuff to tell your story And when you tell it.
Nate:This are the kind of the big lesson behind all this. Right, if you own the audience and all that, but it allows you to tell the story that people want to engage with. If you think about the social side, when You're posting and creating content, what story are you telling That's going to attract people to you so they want to continuously tune in?
Zenen:correct me and you were part of the actually. Well, you were part of the launch of the documentary there. You were there for the premiere. Well, what would you say? being a part of it and just seeing someone so close to you have being able to do something like that and have That success of pulling that off?
Nate:Well, i think it's. It's cool to see What he went through to do it and to be able to tell the story is. I think there's a lesson in that. But I think More importantly, i think the bigger piece, was the visionary side of understanding that, hey, if I create this and this is out there, more and more people start falling upon it, discovering it, watching it, sharing it. And then, or if somebody comes in and here's, here's a podcast of you, and then all of a sudden on that podcast They go search more and then they see this documentary and all of a sudden there people start becoming gravitating to you, to where you right They. It helps that audience grow and becomes more Tighter. It becomes a stronger community of people that want to be around you right and that you can influence and.
Nate:And grow, help grow.
Zenen:Oh yeah, do you think you're gonna drop one soon? No, a Lot of work, a lot of work behind.
Nate:Oh no, i mean I think You know I'm not. I think is really cool what he did. I do know that to do it right, to do it really right, your 250 to $500,000 kind of invested in something like that would be my guess From numbers, from talking. But I would say it's, you know, it's, it's a cool feature when the time is right.
Nate:Mm-hmm but you can also do it in a mini Segment. You can do it you. You can do kind of more of the home. You know, when you creating stories, you're creating content. Think of how you can tell your story within it, even if it's a one-minute video.
Zenen:Hmm right.
Nate:So docuSeries cool. I'm just trying to think, relate to it, like how you can leverage this in your everyday audience, building It outside of. Yeah, it's docuSeries.
Zenen:Well, yeah, it's, you said it's. You're building a story, you're building a brand, you're building interest. People, people find that interesting to see. It's like how did you come up, how did you do it? If you look at some of the other ones that are out there, like you said, it's like it's everybody's always starting. Nobody a lot of These docuSeries, nobody's always handed. You did a video, this a silver spoon. When, uh, when they start these docuSeries, they you go through struggles, you go through the fight, and people like seeing that because they can relate. Someone that might be 23, 24 years old might be watching Marks docuSeries and say, man, i can relate to that, i'm going through that right now, but look where this guy ended up 10 years from now, right. So it's it's people relate and they follow it and it's like how, what did he do next? Okay, he's doing this, can I do something similar to what he did next and what I'm doing? so it's, it's really cool on how that plays off.
Nate:Well, that leads into our kind of growth segment right yeah and That being.
Zenen:But before I got to give a shout out to Ashton because okay.
Nate:Yeah.
Zenen:I should ask and they come up at this is Ashton's topic? Well, i'm not, we're not, i'm not gonna take credit for it. I know Nate isn't going to either. This we got to give the credit to Ashton, which will probably jump him in in one of these podcasts one days, cool dude. But he came up with this podcast segment and it is really. It's. Sometimes you have to create What you want to be a part of. And when he said that to us, actually dropped in the slack channel that we have for work, we're sitting yesterday in our meeting and we're like That's, that's actually pretty, that's true.
Nate:Yeah, so just the concept of creating what you want to be a part of, because a lot of times you might find yourself in an environment You don't like, you don't want to be in and you're not sure where to go. So you just create your own environment and get movement and and Surround yourself with the people that you want to be around and It's. It's much, much better than finding yourself following, right, it's so. Sometimes you got to create the environment we're part of, which is a leadership piece, right, yeah, it's so, and we're doing that with a couple things like a Think about a podcast could actually be a small way of creating environment You want to be a part of. So for me and I kind of relate it to this podcast I struggled in the very beginning.
Nate:I've been doing podcasts for two to three years now and I would start a show. I'd get a bunch done, they'd launch, i'd start another show and I'm like You know it just wasn't like me just doing a conversation. I was like man, i was like I like the idea of a podcast piece, but what I need is to create a spot where I can actually Communicate with someone. And then, as Zina and I started working together and doing more stuff. I was like, man, that's perfect, right. So we've kind of curated this environment on the podcast right between us Because we want to be a part of it and be able to be part of the podcast movement. But we need to do it in our own way and, and for me, just sitting here talking and going on and on and on as, like, i don't like my voice that much, but So being able to have more of a banter and a conversation back and forth was creating that environment for us to be able to have more success.
Zenen:Absolutely, and something else that that we actually have created and built and I'm actually very proud and I can say that I'm a part of is. We talked about this before, but it's our football program and the impact we've made. Like I Don't have kids, like a lot of people always ask me like, why are you coaching and Do you have kids? and I'm like, no, i don't, i don't have kids. It's like, so why are you spending so much time? I'm like because I care those there They're. I care about athletes and their growth because I was an athlete who I have my parents support, right, but it's a difference between the parents support and a coach of support. Like your parents are always gonna support you. I feel like they just have to support you. They're your parents, but a coach, a coach you can have, like we talked about, you can have a good coach and a bad coach, and a bad coach can basically end the experience for a kid And I've always just wanted to be a part of it.
Zenen:I started doing. I started coaching back in 20, 2019, 19 I was 19 years old actually when I started doing. It was for the organization or Lake Norman Giants, and I build such a great relationship with those parents. But more than all the players, i still have players nowadays that still want to come play with me actually gave one to Nate in this last tournament. That did great for them, but But we created something that we wanted to be a part of but it's just not being a part of. But we wanted to make An impact and we're making you. After my eyes, we're making a huge impact for a lot of these kids From what we're doing and and that's that's something I'm actually very proud of yeah, and that's I'm glad you brought that up.
Nate:So, champions, football is one of our nonprofit that we have and we were building the. We knew that was something We had to build, that we wanted to be a part of right, and the reason being is youth sports is a different environment today's. When I grew up, your sports is big business. You sports is One of those things where some of these sports you have to have a lot of money just to get in Football a a bad coach can ruin the game for you Exactly. So I think being able to create an environment, our biggest thing was, and a lot of times what happens now in these rec leagues is that You hear the term all the time daddy ball, yeah and and when daddy balls played.
Nate:What that really means is hey, my son's not that good, but I'm gonna volunteer to coach so he starts at whatever position he wants to start at, as opposed to me building, helping these kids become the best players and best team they can become. And Daddy ball is another thing that ruins an experience for a lot of people as well And it's tough to get away from. But our big goal with this, one of the big goals was like look, we want kids from all over that can come in. We don't want it to cost them our mental leg. And And we've got sponsors, people that came in and sponsored our vision of what we're doing. And we've created this community And we're building. And we've got people now reaching out To some of our coaches saying, hey, can I join you guys next year? Can I join you now? Can I join you next year? and because we've really focused on the experience for the kids, we've focused on building a community and the environment that we want to be in.
Nate:We don't want dad ball. We don't want, you know, we're trying to bring in great coaches like Zee here, who are, are in it for the right reasons, in it for the kids right, like to help these kids. Not only just Be good on the field, mm-hmm, but off the field, right. These lessons that you can learn and life in general, like Lessons that you can learn in general off the field, that on the field that you can equate to off the field. You know, winning is an attitude, winning is a mentality right. And if, if you teach people how to win and then at the same time, had that hunger to win.
Nate:They build competitiveness for them to go out and succeed in life. But also our team. We have a, the team that I'm a part of coaching as well. My son does not play both ways, he's on the team but he does come out too. So that was a big thing for me is? I actually had two other coaches that coached with me And I stepped back and said, hey, i just want to be kind of help with personnel and kind of game management, let them do their coaching, and I'm so glad I did.
Nate:They've done a great job and we've. We've been to four championships, six tournaments, four championships And I we won our first one. We lost the last two, some bitter defeats. These kids were just Tore up about these bitter defeats we took in this past week and they came back and won it all. So they, you know They're learning adversity, how to overcome adversity and how not to quit like, yeah, you lost, but they all put into work to make sure they won the next one correct, correct, and and Goes back to this is when you create something you want to be a part of.
Zenen:There's never a time that you're like Man, i got to do this, or man.
Zenen:I got to do that, right. You always, you always look at how can I be, how can it be better? Like we, we're talking about it here. I was three actions, also part of this organization. We're talking about like What's next year, what's next? you're gonna look like what, how are we gonna make this better? What? because the problem is we, we went into this. When we first started this. This actually wasn't even part.
Zenen:Nate was when we first started this. Nate came in and he's, he saw the vision, he saw the goal, he saw what we wanted to do and he was actually our first sponsor, first and only sponsor, last year when we started this, and This year he went gun-ho with us. He was like, hey, i'm coming in, i want to help you guys out. And he did, he did, and then it's, it's, it's blown up, since, i mean, we went from 30 kids at a tryout to 100 something kids at a tryout and we're making impacts in these kids lives And we, like I said, we created something that we want to be a part of.
Zenen:But those families and those kids also, those kids, the message I haven't been a group check coach, we're practicing today. Hey, coach, what time we got to be there, coach this because they're having fun. We created a fun environment, and that does always go back to is Create something you want to be a part of, and we're actually doing that with a couple other brands. We're working on that. I'm not gonna get too in depth with it, but we're doing that too is we're creating something that we all believe in. And one thing that in this office, i would say we all believe in the sports. I'm just gonna say sports. Sports hits us all and we can all sit down here and talk sports for hours. It can be you can give me, you can. We can talk about a stick in a ball, and it was that conversation will go for two hours because sports is just something we believe in so so deep That we're building stuff around that now.
Nate:Yeah, yeah. That's the the lesson of Building something you want. What eventually happens and what we're seeing is happening with this. This, the nonprofit is Families that came on board are already now recruiting other families to come join us.
Nate:Exactly so they're like man, they're like I love what you're doing. I've already got five people I'm bringing next year to come be a part of this right. So pretty cool that you know That we're doing the best we can now. Now Don't get me wrong, like there's not. There's things we did wrong this season, correct, and. But we're, we've reached out, we've asked, we've talked, we've had meetings like how do we make it better, how do we make this the elite best experience for the kids in the community, the kids in the families in our, in our community, going forward, and what are the things that we can do to do that? So we're, you know we we're gonna be next year. You know the experience will be even better just because we'll fix all the little things that we know we did wrong this year. But you know, but the fact that people, parents, are coming to us saying, hey, i've got other families I'm bringing next year because they tried us out this year, mm-hmm, those, we were doing something right and building the right community.
Zenen:Yeah, and if and going back to this is, you don't always have to create.
Zenen:I'm gonna say this You can join something that you believe that you can be a part of and help it grow And build relationships, because I wouldn't be where I am today with out joining the 7-on-7 with Nate because I would, they would not know me, i would not be here working with Nate, and That's something people always think is like you don't have to create, you don't have to be the guy with the idea.
Zenen:Well, you can be the guy who supports it, helps it grow and put your time and effort and Things always come back right when you put in, like I put into this football, this is volunteer hours, this is coming, my it's, it's it's again, it's my gas money, it's my food, travel, all that stuff is coming from here. But I don't do that in the pays like, oh, i'm gonna get paid back one day, i'm gonna make money off of this one day. I do it just because I love the game and I love being with the kids and I didn't. I didn't create it. I did not create this. So it's just you don't always have to be the creator.
Nate:You can be the supporter and part of the growing one thing to point out that you did, too, is so we, we basically built in, through some of the sponsors that we had, we're able to build in a payment for the coaches, for the coaches that were contributing their time, and he was one of the first ones to say I don't, i don't want to paycheck, i don't, i'm not doing this for the money, and so, like you know, we had some coaches that took payments and I mean I'm happy, we were happy to pay them right, correct, they are donating their time and energy to kind of impact the, the, the kids, but you know, he was like no man, toss that money back into the, into the pool, and let's see what else we can do with it. So, which is which is pretty cool exactly.
Zenen:So, yeah, the whole thing about this is yeah, i know we're mentioning create, but you can also be a part of something, and it can be something in sports, it can be something you love, it can be Something you just want to start. Just just do it. Just do it. Basically, like Nike says, just do it.
Nate:And I would say that's kind of how I got involved, right, like you already said, you guys two years ago had a team Mm-hmm. I sponsored it. I'm like why I want to get more involved. I knew like I'm not the smartest football guy in the world and I'll claim that and I claimed it on day one. But I do know marketing, i do know curating community, i do know How to get in front of people, i do know how to kind of build that vision piece of it, and so I think that's for me I would venture to say I kind of that's how I got involved was like I why can bring this to the table? I believe in what you guys are trying to get to and I think I can bring something to the table to help us get there. And so you know you don't always have to be the leader of it. You can always just be someone who pops in, like you just said and like it's something talents and something they brought up.
Zenen:Brought up is like May is someone who's had success and has built companies to be successful and is someone who's Wealthy and successful. He didn't come into this thinking about how am I gonna make a dollar. No, i think they. The Nate's investment has been huge into this and helping these kids grow and It was it's like I, like he said, it's like he came in as marketing as this and they never asked Is that, how am I gonna make my dollar, my money back?
Zenen:Because, I don't know. I came in as like here's how much we're gonna give.
Nate:And here's yeah.
Zenen:If it costs more, i guess it costs more and he came in because he loves, first thing, he wants to make an impact in the community and kids and, like I said, we all love sports right over. We're in it for the sports. So That's uh, that's my take on this. It's uh, it's pretty cool when you don't always have to create But you can join to be a part of it and if you do create something, go do it.
Zenen:It's gonna be a fun journey Oh yeah, absolutely, and it's not gonna be successful. Just any, you know, our first, our first year in this program, specifically that we had 36 kids at tryout. Second year we dyke.
Zenen:Triple the number and we had over 200 registered and then next year We're predicting we're gonna Double that number. So it's been crazy the the journey with this, but that's. that's a little story on on our stuff and how we're uh, how I would say we created it or went into Something yeah, we built something that we wanted to be a part of and how other people are attracted to.
Zenen:So, and we got something out. We got more stuff for building, so that's gonna be that's. there's some exciting stuff That's definitely cooking in the oven just right now. It's like on low heat.
Nate:Yeah, simmering, it's exactly, it's on the simmer, but I, yeah, i'm excited about that. So, and that's a wrap, i mean this is uh.
Zenen:That's it, man. I say Miami in five. Let's do a gentleman sweep against, against the Bucks, now the Knicks and then Philly Boston. They don't want that smoke. They're gonna go to game seven. Something's gonna happen. Beats They're gonna be all beaten up and Miami's gonna. It's gonna be, it's gonna be. You know what. You know, remember the bubble when everybody's like it's just the bubble, just about it's watching. It's gonna be the Lakers heat in the finals. You think, oh man, and I'm gonna love it because BAM will lock down Davis Man, you think.
Nate:You think the Lakers can make it. I don't know me ever is on fire. Denver is playing really well that.
Zenen:I think I mean pushing coaches and everything. Hey, he tapped him up yesterday before the game, but um, that's gonna be a Lakers nuggets, that's if the so you got.
Nate:uh, so you have Lakers heat In the finals you got BAM locking up, anthony Davis and the in the heat, winning it all. Yeah, do you think that has any any biased opinion at all. Yeah you think that has any any biased opinion at all based on that, because you're a Miami fan from Miami.
Zenen:No, I don't think there's. I think that's that's just facts.
Zenen:That's just a fact. No, but uh. But hey, listen, everybody keeps telling me this ready, you're talking about a Miami heat team that got destroyed by the Hawks, was losing by seven points to the Bulls with three minutes left in the last playing game to get the eighth spot. Everybody says, oh, but yon is set out for a game and a half, it's a two games, whatever they call this like. So what? this team barely passed. They lost to the Hawks. They barely beat Chicago. They have no Tyler here or no Victor Lodipo, and all they have right now is him, me, him, me buckets, jimmy f'ing buckets, so so yeah, now it's gonna be.
Nate:We will be back next week to see if that prediction has Has moved forward, go heat baby.
Zenen:Hey, miami, we're listening to this.
Nate:I'll take tickets, so Any game oh hey, do us a favor Like, comment and share. It's the bro code.
Zenen:Yeah, guys, come on, like, comment and share. like Nate said, we we do this to help you guys to give some information of what we're, what we've done failed, success, lame, some topics of stuff that's going on and and give you guys some stories. So let's um, let's like and share. man, we're not asking for much, we're not asking to pay anything. It's just you click a button, here we are pay the toll.
Nate:Well, pay the toll. The toll is comment, share, subscribe. Let us know what you know. Let us know what you want to hear more about on the marketing side.
Zenen:Sounds good. Don't forget submit your marketing.