Just finished speaking on a panel about Athlete Branding and wanted to expand more on this area in general as I think there is a narrative that exists that is rapidly being dispelled. This idea that the top 1% of athletes should be the only ones worrying about branding. (THREAD)
The idea that you can't document your journey to the show because of the idea that it would distract you from getting your work in is dismissive to this new world we live in where it has never been easier to brand yourself.
Athletes are told all the time that the only thing you should be focusing in on is your sport. What's to say you can't devote a small fraction of your day to documenting your journey -- what's to say that devoting all of your focus to your sport is actually working against you?
Why is it in other facets in our life, like finance, that we are told to distribute our wealth across different investments, but when it comes to being an athlete you should be devoting 100% of your time to 'making it'.
These are the questions we should be asking ourselves; we need to challenge ourselves to think outside of social norms that were built around ideas/technology that didn't exist back then.
A really good case study is Donald De La Haye Jr aka Deestroying on Youtube. If you don't know he was a kicker at UCF that was deemed ineligible because he was monetizing himself on Youtube. At the time, which was 2017, he had 90k subscribers. si.com/college/2017/0…
In a traditional way of thinking, none of us would ever think of Donald as a good candidate to brand himself since he's not on a top 5 team, not a playmaker, and wasn't even the starter on his team. The traditional route for him would be to play for 4 years and get a degree.
What instead happened was NCAA forbid him to make content surrounding himself as a kicker so he took a much different approach and left the school.
Donald now has 3.32 million subscribers on Youtube & I would estimate he is making above a million in revenue. It's possible Donald could have built this platform without playing in college but it definitely fast tracked him to get this audience of his. youtube.com/channel/UC4mLl…
With his situation he had to chose one or the other, but now with new NCAA legislation you don't have to, and if you're a pro athlete you never had an excuse.
The point I'm making is there are now simple ways to capitalize on being an athlete. Being an athlete won't last forever so taking advantage of this finite opportunity to set yourself up for life after your sport seems like a no brainer.
and if you make it the show? Cool, you now have amassed a core audience over the years that are even more committed to your story than ever before. It is a win-win situation.
Where do I start? First place to start is set up a Youtube/TikTok & start consistently documenting your daily routine on your phone when it comes to your sport & start posting it. Overtime you will see what does or doesn't work but the most important thing is to just get going.
If you made it this far in my thread please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions my DM's are open.
And we put our money where our mouth is, we just launched a 12 part documentary series following 6 minor league baseball players through the Arizona Fall League, give it a watch!
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