As a kid I always wanted to own a sports business. Many of my family members are entrepreneurs and business owners. There are a few attractive things that come with being a business owner. Number one is you don’t have a boss. Also being a business owner appears to give you lifestyle freedom. This can be true, but it can also soak up all your time, energy and money.
By the way, more than half of the people we help don’t have a “sports business” nor did they play pro or even in college…
So we’re here to help you regardless of your business or past experience as an athlete.
Passion and experience
My passion is to help entrepreneurs and former athletes start and grow a sports business.
Just as important I love helping people grow in life. For many years people would ask me for help in business.
My wife and I both helped dozens of people, but then decided to bring our business academy online in 2018.
Below you’ll find out a simple, yet important outline on what you need to think about before starting.
Why do you own a sports business?
When I ask people who come through Elite Sports Business Academy ‘why do you want to own a business’.
Most of the time they have a great response that makes sense why. Often times it’s something that helps with a past experience they had.
Sometimes is from a positive and sometimes it’s from a negative past experience.
Others respond with “to make more money”. Making money is fine and of course a need for business. You just want to be careful in making it your #1 reason.
If 55k isn’t enough, will 80k or 100k be enough?
If you make $300,000 per year, will you end up buying a million dollar home? It’s not wrong. It could be a business expense.
My point is you need to ask yourself what is enough. If a recession happens what will you do?
Often times people spend too much money on personal wants, which affect their business.
If you are young or new business owner, you have to put your business over wants. It’s like middle school when you learn about wants and needs. A house is a need, while a house with granite counter tops, flooring and most expensive everything is a want.
Excavation process is deep
This is the process that most people skip and never even think about.
When you read or hear about starting a business, you hear about a foundation…
While a firm foundation is important, excavation must come first.
If you’re building a house, you’ll want some plumbing right?
My soccer training blog wouldn’t have become the #8 of the top 100 soccer training blogs worldwide, if we didn’t excavate.
Excavation is the part you never really see, unless there was a problem while building this step.
Some new homes have plumbing problems in the first few years.
If done the right way, you shouldn’t have problems with major plumbing ever.
Sure there might be a few times your kids flush the wrong things down the toilet, but that’s a once in a lifetime thing – you hope.
Worse, you could build with no plumbing. Just pour the concrete, build walls and make it look great from the outside. How will you cook, use the bathroom, shower?
Some of the excavation for business is finding out the roots to the issues in your life. Not only currently, but from when you were a kid. Maybe it’s something with your mom or dad.
A lot of the times these root issues are things we’ve buried. These emotional issues can help you solve problems in and outside of business.
Laying a foundation for your sports business
Just like building a house, the foundation is what keeps everything strong and lasting.
You want to build so that our business can last forever. Imagine having a business for 10 years and then losing it.
This happens often.
Ask my law friends Scott Reib (attorney) and Rachel Brenke (lawyer). These two are contributors in my online courses in Elite Sports Business Academy. They both have stories of business owners who lost everything because the owners didn’t protect their business.
Building or paying for a proper website is vital. Almost everyone has a website nowadays. Most businesses don’t have a good one. You might be thinking good, as in looks okay.
A good site is mostly what’s on the inside. Of course you want your site to look nice on the outside too. We need the outside to flow so clients can buy easily and find what they need.
Therefore, if your website is working great on the inside you’ll find more customers at no additional cost.
Building the first floor in business
The “first floor” is also important. This is what people see when they first come to your sports business.
There are many things we need to have in this part of your business. Like a home, you have the walls, kitchen, bedrooms, paint, closets, electric.
Then there’s the pretty part, like your decorations. This would be your social media. Now as you already know, there several platforms. You want to at one point have at least 3 of the top platforms, 4 or 5 if you can.
The top 5 social media platforms. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest. Some would argue that LinkedIn should be top 5. I wouldn’t argue with them.
A lot of it depends on your social media audience. Is your client base on social media, young, older, women, men?
These things matter.
First start off with 1 or 2 and focus on building it up.
If you have extra capital you could hire a VA (virtual assistant). VA’s can do your social media post, create picture, copy and more.
Scaling your sports business BRAND
Some people think a 2 story or 3 story home is best… Well, it’s looks bigger and better and can be.
For many people a one story is perfect and works for their needs. So don’t think you have to have all the extra fancy stuff that you see others having. That’s keeping up with the Joneses.
Getting a 2 story could force you to clean space you won’t use.
For business owners who are looking to scale and use the 2nd floor space, I got you.
There are tons of successful business owners who are making good business moves, but missing easy points.
Example: The ones who have a big email list, social media following with high engagement. How much of that traffic is making you money? Sure, you’ll get some new clients who see your great content. You’re still missing out.
Most of the time, it’s more important to push traffic to your website/blog. Once you get x-amount of people visiting your blog, you can make money from ads. On top of that you can sell online products. If you don’t have online products, you’re straight up a local, when you could be worldwide.
If you have online courses, you can be nationwide or worldwide.
Affiliates is another way to make extra income.
My team at ESBA can help you with all of this!
Earn money with a digital sports business
Digital products/online courses is what I think of when talking about a 2nd floor. I see some really successful businesses, but they are missing out on so much money.
There are too many sports businesses who focus on social media more than they should.
Even if you social media following is large, it’s hard to earn a lot of money that way. Sure some people make a full living from social media.
Blogging is one way you can really scale your business. You don’t have to be a great writer. More important is knowing how to make google happy. SEO is another way to grow your blog.
Again, you will learn all this online in Elite Sports Business Academy.
Don’t compare yourself to other entrepreneurs
Comparison can rob you of your joy.
It’s one thing to get ideas from people or see what others are doing, but be careful. You don’t want to lose your creativity and originality. There is only one you.
You can do what nobody else can do.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s okay to want to reach a certain level or goal in business.
Just remember not to compare your 2nd year with someone else’s 8th year. Comparing could make you feel discouraged.
Most important don’t copy others. Something they are doing could be great for them and terrible for you. Hopefully you are starting or restarting your excavation and foundation right.
By understanding and knowing your beginning, you just have to keep learning and going in order.
Learning from experts in their business fields
I can’t tell you how many courses and masterminds I have been in. Learning from experts who have been where you want to go can help you skip years of mistakes.
You need to surround yourself with others who know what you don’t.
It is said, Don’t go to war without wise guidance, victory depends on having many advisers. Business and life is war. It’s not that we go and fight a physical battle, but a mental one.
Stick with what you believe and know
As long as you’re doing the step above [learning] along with working hard, you’ll be fine.
If you’re an athlete, you know how to work hard. What most athlete business owners do well with is a game plan. You’re used to following a plan. If you stick with the plan you’ll see the fruit.
The challenge is that the plan is long. The good news is you don’t have to learn everything right away. First it’s the basics and then on to the more advanced pieces.
Some entrepreneurs get desperate for money and start to go off route. You don’t want to be the ex-football pro who is teaching soccer skills. Why would you do that, besides you just don’t have enough football players to teach?
You have a niche, which is doing something different from everyone else.
Set yourself apart from everyone else in that you teach only a few main things, not everything. You don’t want to be the guy offering birthday parties when your passion is teaching.
Stay humble and keep working to grow your business
One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a business owner or athlete is big success.
Many people stop working as hard as they were when they first started.
Pride and arrogance will end your journey so fast. Sure you might see others who are prideful. But remember, there’s only one you.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
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