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I've always looked at any sector that I've been interested in as how do I get in there and find my place in this space?
Right?
I think, especially for a lot of us that come from our communities, you don't see yourself in certain situations, so you think it's not for you, right or you think, oh, man, I don't have a background that matches what I've seen traditionally, So let me go look somewhere else and where I've kind of always approached it like, well, if I don't see me in a certain area, that's an opportunity. Let me go in there and make a space for me,
and I can bring other people with me. Now I can build a motor around what I do because nobody here can can can match my skill set.
I'm Will Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money. I want to introduce you to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas.
If you're black and building.
For simply using text to secure your back, this podcast is feel Andrew Hawkins aka Hawk, is a former NFL wide receiver for having played six seasons in the league with teams like the Bengals, the Browns, and the Patriots. Today's immedia personality and co founder of status Pro, an athlete led technology company which makes software for training and consumer entertainment. Status Pro has raised more than five million dollars in both of enviable list of infastors like Lebron, James, Yo, Miosak,
mav Card Drake, and others. Post company is set to release NFL Pro Era, a VR game from Metaquest in PlayStation, the first officially licensed NFL VR title. I has talked with so many games becoming more lifelike. How important is real player data to the experience of gameplay?
I think if we're going to drill in on what you authenticity looks like in a gaming environment, it is important, you know, for people to really experience the speed of certain things. Now, obviously we want to slow it down for people to have fun, that's the chief goal of anything we do from a gaming product standpoint, but the ability to ramp up and really see how fast decisions need to be made when you're talking about an immersive
world like virtual reality, we think it's super important. Right, So we're gonna give you all the bells and whistles of the feeling you get in the tunnel when you're running out onto the field, and all the hoop lie and the kind of man, what if moments that people think about when they think of playing professional sports. But we're also gonna give you the actual data on the other side of it too, And I think it just helps rope in the entire loop of authenticity that we kind of preach a status.
Pro does that mean more than just the numbers, But Also, if a QB is slower, then the player in the game will actually be slower too.
Yes, so it's something we'll build upon.
I think, you know, I mean, I think VR in itself is it's it's a it's an emerging tech, and so we understand that our game maybe the first time a lot of people even experience VR, right, and so we're trying to make sure the product matures alongside the consumer. But to your point, yeah, that I mean, there's really an endless amount of data that we can put into our AI, which we've done so in a.
Very pointed way from.
You know, what plays a specific team would run, what kind of defenses. This is a coach like to call, right, And we've had the luxury of building that AI and machine learning and from the very beginning, and so it's going to mature with the more data sets that are available, you know, and we use a number of those things, including player speeds and data. And to your point that, you know, when you embody a player, eventually you will
match the attributes that they are as a player. And this first version we've kind of really draw down on you as the quarterback, so you will be the quarterback of your favorite team as opposed to taking on the attributes of other players.
But that's absolutely in the pipeline.
So every coach quarterback believes they could have made that pass at the quarterback blue, you know, on Sunday Football whatever, Monday Night football. Like, part of your effort, I believe is to help better understand what it takes to compete at the highest levels. You know, as you know, playing a first person game from a first person.
Perspective, does this help solve that?
Like, so all those people who believe, ah Man I could have made that, you know, does this help solve that problem for real athletes?
I would say yes and no. I would say yes and no.
I think we use it on the training side, right, so we could simulate that decision making for an NFL quarterback and things will move almost one to one at the speed that you would see in an actual game.
But if if people had the ability to process information and make those decisions that way, they wouldn't need a VR game to feel what it's like to be a NFL quarterback, because you would be that right, And even by NFL quarterback standards, there are quarterbacks that are starting quarterbacks that can't make decisions and process as fast as Tom Brady, right. So it's definitely a sliding scale. And so you know, we can simulate that for elite level athletes to be able to get as close to a
one to one experience as we can get. But I think for the gaming side of things, man, I mean, we want to have it fun.
Like I said, that is our chief goal with that. And yeah, it'll be intense.
You'll definitely get the feel of all the different factors that go in on every single play, and you will probably have a higher respect for quarterbacks.
But if you're not having fun, you're not going to come back.
So we definitely slow it down a little bit so that we can keep you coming back for more.
So I've heard you say this a couple of times. You know that you really want to help keep people getting understanding for how fast the game moves for people who won't will never have that experience of being in a grid iron. Talk about if you can make it relatable to us, you know, how fast the game actually moves versus what we see sitting in the seats.
Yeah, and like I said, man, I'm gonna keep drilling down on this. The speed of the game is ridiculous, man, Like I mean, it's I would say, in snap second, you have to make decisions, and it's honestly even faster than that. So that's why you practice so much. You practice so much in a professional sports environment so that your instincts kick in and that way you can react even faster than it takes for you to cognitively think
of what to do next. But in the gaming for everybody, I think the thing that you'll get most out of the experience that we're creating with NFL Pro Era is that you just really can see all the factors and it is very gratifying to make a play. It's gratifying to you know, complete a pass or throw a touchdown or get a first down when you consider all the different factors that are into a game.
And so it won't be the speeds of an NFL game.
And you have the ability to ramp it up or ramp it down, but again, all the different factors that go into each and every game, and the experience of the screaming fans. You get the high points, you get the huge dn coming right at you, and that's scary in and of itself.
So you have to think.
About what do I do now in the face of the most fearful looking human coming at me at car like speeds. Right, And so that's the really cool part is that that hasn't been democratized before and us being able to us being former athletes, and being able to put other people in those shoes is a really cool thing because you get to show people the experience that you have had your whole life and may even be a second nature to you.
Let's talk about this leap you've made, because there's not a lot of athletes who make the leap from professional sports into high tech, and so if you can give the bridge for us, like how you got here versus where you were, and we're going to talk about your sports career, but I want to talk about how you made that leap.
Well, I mean that's a great question, and I think they all kind of tie in together. I would say, how I got to tech, you know, high tech where I'm at from my career was that I feel like in tech tech is you know, I talk about this democratizing and experience, and I think I've always looked at any sector that I've been interested in as how do I get in there and find my place in this space, right.
I think, especially for a lot of us that come from our communities, you don't see yourself in certain situations, so you think it's not for you, right, or you think, oh, man, I don't have a background I'm at matches what I've seen traditionally, So let me go look somewhere else, and where I've kind of always approached it like, well, if I don't see me in a certain area, that's an opportunity. Let me go in there and make a space for me, and I could bring other people with me number one
and number two. Now I can build a motor around what I do because nobody here can match my skill set. And so you know, when I was playing, it was that same thing. It was like I saw an opportunity that you know, I felt like me being an athlete and wanting to work in sports business. Even prior to me playing professional football, there was no value add from the fact that I was an athlete. There was nothing to say like, well, what about your experience makes it special here?
And so I was like, I'm gonna have to create that.
I'm gonna have to create a way to value the expertise to somebody who has seen this from the ground level and build a company that way, you know. And so that's what originally got me there, And as you would imagine, there was a long road of slowly putting the pieces together to get to where we are today.
And I'm glad you said that, because you know, we've heard these horror stories of athletes who you know, make a bunch of money and then they got boys who want to start businesses and invest in a whole bunch of real estate that don't get scoped out and do no due diligence and you know, rim shops and the whole thing. So can you talk about how, from your perspective,
how athletes are getting smarter? Maybe it's the people around them so that they're making better decisions with their capital and to deploy that for actual wealth generation when they're off the field.
I think the enormous changed. And I think, you know, that was always even my goal with what I was doing. I wanted to, you know, hopefully show other people that may be in a similar situation of mind to be like, well, if he can do that with his resources, or he can do that with his stature of like profile of athletes, imagine what I could do with mine, right, And I think you see in a shift where before it was
we want our athletes just to be athletes. We want them to focus on football, focus on basketball, focus on baseball, track boxing, whatever it is, and that's what we That is the norm, and anybody who does anything outside of that was looked at sideways. Well, I think now in this age of more than an athlete and a lot of the work that has been done and shown by athletes, from them being activists, them being investors, them going back
to school and all these things. Now you look at an athlete that only does their sport and you kind of look at them sideways, like, yo, what are you waiting on?
You better get going. This window is closing.
And I think you know that kind of maturation of what the norm is for an athlete league has shifted a lot of things for the industry.
What's making the norm change? Is it just representation to people like you?
I think everything develops. I think everything people get smarter in any scenario. So if you look at me right, like I think people sometimes think, oh man, this is a really smart guy because he was able to do certain things. And I am smart. I do believe that. But at the same time, I come from a family of athletes. I'm a third generation athlete, right. My grandfather was a boxer. My dad played Division one football and
signed D one. My older brother played ten years in the National Football I got cousins, And so I've seen those horror stories you've talked about. I've seen them up close and personal. And I've always approached sport like a business, right, And I've seen where a sport could use somebody up and there's nothing to show for it, you know. And so for me, when I went through my experience, it
was like, well, I'm gonna do it this way. And because I seen somebody else make mistakes, I can kind of take those answers to the test and re craft it for myself, and I think for everybody else it's much the same. And now when you look at your peers, you could see the benefit of it. Like my goal after five years of playing, I'm coming up on five years of after retirement, I wanted to I wanted people to know me and not know that I played professional football.
That was a goal that I had when I retired, you know. And it's really cool now for people to say that and see like, oh, man, I didn't know he played in the NFL.
That's crazy, right, that's because I'm hitting that goal.
And I think for other players, they see that and they build upon it, right, And it's like, well, I want to be known for something more than what people are defining or is my skill set or what people may have known me for the start.
The institution that surrounds athletes when they come in the league young, and we've heard you know, horror stories around like you know, player associations, and they weren't always set up to help people thrive outside of the field, Aull side of the court.
Are they are.
Player associations in your experience across all major sports? Are they what's happening for them to do better to protect and help educate those young athletes to come in with little financial experience often and little you know, familiar resources to protect them.
Man, that's a great question. I think I think more can always be done, right. I think, you know, like I said, as an athletes get smarter as the game changes, and right now it's the wild, wild West, man. I mean, you've got college athletes making tens of millions of dollars in IL right and signing for deals that you know, quite frankly, I barely made as a professional athlete, you know, And so it's happened earlier and earlier in the process.
And so players associations or anything set up to aid and in athletes development, they have a lot of work to do to kind of catch up in that process, you know. I think for young athletes, I always tell them they, man, take your time. It took a very long time for you to make your money. I know, it seems like a nineteen or twenty two or whatever it is that the money came fast, But this is a lifelong process. You started playing basketball or football when
you were eight years old. That's that's a that's a decade, you know, And so it would be silly to not try to put that same kind of work in of how you should deploy that capital, how you should protect that capital, how you should spend that capital, or where you should develop your skills outside of it, to make sure you're making the most out of that capital or
that opportunity. And unfortunately, in sports, athletes are opportunities because they have the least amount of experience, but they have the most amount of money. And if you've ever tried to convince anybody to give you money. It's a hard process, and the easiest people to convince to give you money are people that don't know much as much about the value or haven't had the experience of understanding how hard
it really was for them to get that. And so to your point, there should be more of a protection coming from people that are in this space, especially for a lot of the kids, like I said, that come from our communities, or black and brown faces that don't come from a lot of finances. You know, I think more things should be in place not only to protect, but also teach and mature and not make them choices. And it's tough to make people with a lot of
mone do certain things. At the same time, it's so important in the overall and longevity of their development and their protection of this incredible opportunity that is playing professional sports.
Yeah, I mean, I love that answer because I was I was gonna ask this question. I'm gonna ask it, but you just gave me a little slight twist to the question I'm.
Going to ask.
Because you've got this diamond list of investors who who've put money in your own business, people like lebron Naomi Osaka, drake A, Jimmy I, Beme av Carter Minim anymore. But it's an all star list of investors. And I would imagine because we have this conversation, these people are more than just deep pockets, but there's some other use that they provide to the business, because you can probably get money in a lot.
Of places, but you want specific help.
So can you talk.
About how they may or may not be involved in helpful to the company and to your mission.
Yeah, I mean I think there they've been paying amount to the successes not only my company. I would even say me professionally a lot of those names, because you know, like you said, these are people that are respected business wise and the moves they make and the things that they put their money in support behind, and so that stamp of approval that carries weight when you're going into
certain rooms, you know. I mean, we had venture capital firms or investors or companies that we've tried to partner with early on that laught out of the room that are now sending us emails once a week trying to talk to us merely off the fact of who's involved now. And I want to chase what they're getting into because those people are successful, you know, And I think we were very tactical and strategic in that way of just how we kind of approach them and understood how do
you make one plus one equal three? How do you understand what people like that are looking, where they're looking to go, and how you can aid in that thing. And again, we are definitely the benefactors in that relationship.
But these are people that I've.
Worked with for years, and I think the reputation that I had with them went a long way. And once it was time to do our thing and we had an offering I didn't they didn't have. They didn't question, which is a big thing when you're investing, is well, how do you work? How how much time are you
going to put in? How serious are you? Because of what I had done for them and in those moments, in my previous work responsibilities, that was out the gates, and now we could just look at the opportunity, and the opportunity in and of itself speaks for itself.
Yeah, So let's talk about that because I'm interested because there are so many people who would love to have and see strategically strategic reasons why a Drake on their cap table makes sense or they on so I can make sense for them.
How do you.
Position yourself to be successful when you're trying to approach a celebrity investor?
If you're not, it's a good question. If you're not, how do you That's a good question, I would say, and I kind of alluded to it, the one, the one plus one equal in three.
Right.
Not every celebrity is going to be good for your business. Not every celebrity is gonna be good for your business. Not every celebrity is going to make sense for your business, and vice versa, you're not going to make sense for them, you know. I mean, as all stars our roster is, we've had celebrities tell us no, not my thing, I'm good, right,
even though we see the strategic value. So I think it's understanding and being very self aware in that way of how exactly this equation is going to come together and to your point, like making sure the value of whatever you're looking to get matches up well with what you already already have. We didn't approach any of those
names first. They weren't the first people we went to, you know, And I think a lot of times when you're approaching people of of high name value, there has to be an offering, like their name means something, and I think that's why you approach them in the first place. And so whatever the scenario is, the situation is, or the opportunity is, it has to make sense.
For where they are.
And we were able to get some already really good investors. They didn't have to take on a brunt of the public value and their namesake to just carry the company solely on their backs, and I think that matters, you know, So it was I think it was getting the offering right first before we approached them was probably the best thing we could do. And in that it was the opportunity for you know, getting an NFL license. We had
that opportunity coming up lined up chasing it. You know, we had discussions with some of the platforms in the VR companies who can kind of confirm like, hey.
This is a big opportunity.
We had other VC firms that were that were lined up incredible in the space, and so I think all those things factored in to us landing where we ultimately did.
You know, I love that you said, you know, this is one plus one equaling three. I remember there's an interview mav car to have done with Magic Johnson, and I don't know if you saw, but he was talking. Magic was talking about like, you know, when you bring me a deal.
It's got to be a big deal.
Because for the amount of work I got to put in to make something go from one hundred thousand to a million, I might as well go from a million to a billion. It's the same amount of work. So the deal size has to be big enough. And so I'm equating that with how you pitched you know, pro era and like status, Like how do you do that when you're pitching a Drake who's got, you know, enough money? Or is there such thing as enough money? Who's got
a lot of money? Or Lebron who's got a lot of money, And you know a couple of zeros don't move the needle for them. So how do you pitch the grand opportunity here to people who already have.
All they you know, could need.
Yeah, that's another great question.
So I would say it in this way. If you called me and say, hey, I want you to do my podcast for and I'm gonna give you a dollar right now, it's a deal. Now it's I'm gonna spend a certain amount of time doing your podcast and you're gonna give me a dollar, I'm gonna say no, right, because that the work doesn't seem to match what the dollar amount is. It's one dollar, right, I could do
other things to get a dollar. If you said, hey, I'm gonna go do this podcast with somebody else, and when I do it, I'm gonna give you a dollar. If you give me, you know, ten cent, that sounds like it's worthy because I don't got to do much work for that dollar. Right, it's on you. And if I think that you're gonna do this podcast, and you got that podcast lined up, it's scheduled and it's going no matter what, and I don't have to do much
that That's what it means to be an investor. And I think a lot of times people approach the athletes or the celebrities or the big time executives wanting them to put the amount of work into their product that a founder is doing. Now, there is gonna be some over the top value, but there's value already in the namesake, because that's why you're approaching them in the first place. Because that is not the same as their dollar because they have a name value that also unlocks a lot
of opportunities for you. So that in and of itself is worth the work, and you have to be able to know the process and the plan for making that work for you. So I think with me and our investors specifically and my partner Truy, who is amazing, you know, I think that we are just two guys that.
We come from nothing. We do everything ourselves.
We don't expect much like the terms of engagement are pretty straightforward. We're going to do the work and as long as an investor I feel like understands and sees that, then they get to see the opportunity because to the example you use with Magic, there's not that level of work that goes into it.
We're going to do the work.
And the moments we need you will give you a call, but they'll know that man, they're calling me. It's one of It's a situation that is going to only multiply what the opportunity is.
Can you just describe the timeline, you know, between your enterprise product that you licensed with NFL teams for their actual training and then the consumer product that will come out soon and then the timeline alongside when those investors came in, so did the Lebrons and Naomi Osaka's come in when they saw your enterprise product or this is fire. We got to get it in the Cowboys locker room, we gotta get it in the Lions locker room, or they saw you had that, and then they said there's
consumer play here. Can you talk about how that lined up?
Yeah, I would say they definitely came in for the opportunity for the consumer play, but it all ties together. So we started off on the enterprise level working with NFL teams to prepare them for NFL games, and you know, that gave us a base foundation for our technology and we just kind of continue to build that because that was something we knew so and so inherently from our experience of being athletes, of knowing exactly how a receiver
could get better with this technology. Troy is a quarterback, knowing how quarterback can get better. You know, I've spent time as a coach as a scout for the Detroit Lions, like understanding how the technology could help organizations. It helped us build a foundation and then as the opportunities arise, we know which way we can kind of craft and use the foundation to go into other spaces.
And on the.
Consumer play, it was essentially players would get in the headset and they wouldn't take it off, and they were like, Yo, this is fun, and that's not a statement you hear from a player that's typically watching film. This is fun and you're learning about what you're going to see on a Sunday. So that was like the indicator for us
that we knew we had something there. Because if a player who sees this scenario every day and has for fifteen years, it's saying that it's like it is on Sunday and it's fun, imagine what a consumer will play. So then, you know, after that was when we started to communicate that and started to show what the opportunity we felt was on the consumer side. And you know,
it's been years in the making. Troy and I first connected, i want to say, in twenty sixteen or seventeen, and here we are in twenty twenty two, you know, so it's been it's been that long of a process, that that long of us thinking about this craftiness, letting the market do what it does, and then also relying on a little bit of luck to put us in the right position.
So when you think about gamifying things, let's talk about gaming and training, you know, even at the consumer level, like, how do you think gamifying exercise and training? You know, when I'm if you're bringing up a kid to be, you know, an all star athlete, how do you imagine gamifying that experience in working out and training might evolve over time?
I think it becomes second nature a little bit. And there's a reason why we continue to drilling on the fun aspect of it, because you know, I view our consumers early on in our consumer product which will be coming out in fall twenty twenty two, they're much like I have a ten year old son who is obsessed with the game of football, naturally, because again we come
from a fan family of football players. But I am anyone who knows me knows I am not to push somebody to go play football and do this and do that. It's not my thing. But what happened was, you know, first, you let him have fun with it. I'm not out there making them run through drills at seven years old and making them run stadium steps to say, hey, you
got a legacy. It's not that you give him a ball and you let him play catch with his dad, and he enjoys playing catch with his dad and he's having fun, and because he has fun in it, it motivates him to get better. But he's passing the time by having fun, but he's naturally becoming better at what he's doing.
So I think when I look.
At the VR XR technology and specifically what we're doing in gaming and the training opportunity is I played football my whole life.
It kept me in shape.
As a thirty six year old man now who is not playing football every day, it is a lot harder for me to stay in shape and to focus on actually being in shape. I would love for a way for me to have fun in doing it. And so when you think about XR and training and that opportunity and getting better, if gamifying it embeds the fund right in it, and by embedding the fund that becomes the
chief focus. Anytime you're having fun, that's kind of where your mind goes to and you're not thinking about the calories you're burning, You're not thinking about how you're learning the sport, you're not thinking about how you're staying fit on a day to day because the game of it all is keeping your mind occupied, and then everything else becomes a value beyond.
That, you know.
I kind of asked a question similar to this when we talked about, you know, getting a Lebron's attention or Drake's attention.
But there are people who believe that their tech.
Is good enough to get licensed by major partners, like you know, sports teams in any category. What levers do you imagine.
Are the fastest ways to success.
To getting the meeting and also being taken seriously?
Like what are the rolls for people who.
Are not getting not hawk you know, to how do you pick up the phone and call the Detroit Lions?
Like how does like, yeah, what happens there? Where do I need to be? What conference? Money to go to?
It's tough, It's tough.
I would say, a lot of it is learning, learning the industry, right, So I would love to think that my name rings so many bells I could just pick up the phone and call somebody and make it happen.
Unfortunately that wasn't the case.
Like I said, I started interning with the Detroit Lions and two thousand and eight I was a scouting intern, right and then beyond that, I went and played in the Canadian Football League, and throughout this whole process, I'm shaking hands.
I'm taking meetings.
I'm telling people when I'm get done playing, i want to do X, Y and Z in the off season. I'm building out the marketing materials for my sports agency, or for my agent's sports agency for him, I'm his marketing lead as well. I am also, you know, applying to Octagon's internships. I'm doing Under Armour's internships.
I'm going to.
Intern with Maverick Carter while I'm the number one receiver for the Cleveland Brownson an offseason. And it's not just in nature like I'm getting coffee. I'm people that I'm interning with. It takes them a month and a half to know that I play in the NFL. Because I'm doing all the things naturally that an intern would do. I'm setting those groundstick because I'm learning. I want to see how the process works. I want to shake the hands.
I want to understand this thing and come up with a plan and strategy because in this business, specifically in the sports business, you really only get one opportunity at it, right, and so it's probably not the best just to pick up the phone and call the Detroit Lions, because now they're always going to remember you just called the Detroit Lions. You had no idea what our process was, You don't know what our KPIs are, you don't know the right
people to talk to. You don't call it the scouting office trying to get a licensing deal, right, And so I would say engrossing yourself in the area that you're looking to get into and understand that it is very hard to make those calls and get those deals, and people are gonna want to see that you are a subject matter expert in the space that you're in. And I think that's what I've spent every minute that I
wasn't on a field over the last decade. That's what I've spent doing, and that's what my partner has been doing as well. And I think we've benefited greatly that it was time for us to do our thing. We had a track record, We had connections that people we connected with ten years ago are now in a position to make decisions or put us in the right place or confidently say, Yo, you should talk to Troy, you
should talk to Hawk. Because I've known them in their work for ten years and what they do and what they're about, and it's at least worth hearing them out.
So you did that.
So I'm excited about this game. I want you to talk about it a little bit and like what makes this metaquest and PlayStation VR game unlike other football arcade games, Like, you know, what's the difference.
I mean, besides the fact that it's NFL license, which is the big one, right, I would say the insights from it. I mean, this is this is a direct brain chout of me and my partner, and I think, you know, with the things I do creatively or the things that I'm into creatively, I want that extra level of authenticity to it, you know, Like I want to see the film about Detroit from a Detroit director. I want somebody who is in there giving me that film, right,
I want to see all those things. And in gaming and in sports specifically, that's what we were after.
This is our life. This is I'm trying to explain.
I remember, like the very first we're pitching it, I'm telling people about what it feels like to walk out of a tunnel. It's one of the coolest ex experiences I've ever had as an athlete is coming out to seventy thousand screaming fans, and in our game, we have the opportunity to bring that to life and show somebody that.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So I think the little things like that, that where we're giving you real insights from things we've experienced and putting them in creatively are the things that will make it different our company in and of itself. I mean we are I think roughly forty five now, and of the forty five, I think twenty one of them are former athletes, college are pro And that's from the systems engineer to the creative designer on the game, to the marketing to the
business dev I mean, it's permeated throughout the company. And the reason for that is we thought, like yo, if we can typically athletes don't have a voice in sports anything, especially sports gaming anywhere. But imagine if we had that insight as well as the experts of gamers, as well as the engineering expertise, as well as the marketing of all these places in one room where everyone has a voice, we can create something that is above the status quo.
That was the whole impetus around.
The company, and I think in our experience that's what's going to make the difference and what people will feel of when they take the headset off and say, dang, I do feel like I know what it's like to be in an NFL game now, right, And I mean that's our ultimate goal.
Yeah, I'm interested, you know, because you've played it at the professional level, and how much on field tech there is, like we see and we've heard, you know, they may mic somebody up and so now we get the experience of hearing what it sounds like, you know, when you're on the field or on the court, but from the stuff that the fan will never see or may never see, how much like actual on your body and on field technology is happening to you know, measure how fast somebody
is running or where they are on the field, or like what's happening that we don't get the shares to be exposed to.
Yeah, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of prototyping.
There's a lot of testing that goes on in both a practice and a game environment. The NFL is pretty innovative, I mean professional sports NBA is, I mean, they're extremely innovative as well. So and it's funny like that's kind of how I got my first foray in the tech. I would consult while I was playing for sports analytics companies that would create this incredible tech, you know, but it was always a gap between the tech and the people who were applying it, meaning the coaches who are
you know, it's just a very different world. They use a rabbit's foot more than they would use analytics in a game like this is my lucky underwear. That's what they use in a game environment, right, And so I would approach it like, okay, I can act as a bridge between understanding the technology and the people applying it. And I mean there is chips that every NFL player wears that measures their XI coordinates of where they are in the field, how fast they move, they're forced from
left to right, from right to left. I mean in a practice environment, we wear the same thing. There is cameras that also just are taking that footage and also gathering all that data. There is, you know, obviously the ability to do even more from a technology standpoint, but you want to make sure that the rules are still in place and fans are able to experience whatever it is they're doing. So all the things that they're testing and doing, even though they're not public, they will be eventually.
It's just a slow rollout for which actually possible. And I think that's the cool thing about what we're doing is because we do call ourselves the future of the field because we're combining a lot of those things and again giving it to a fan and that's a really cool thing.
So when you say like there's chips on players, I mean, are you saying like glorified like apple air tags or tiles are on players to measure these things?
Yeah, like RFID chips.
Every player in their shoulder pads has a dime sized chip that measures where they are at all times on the field and the speed of it and you could take that data. And originally how we start as a company is we had access to that data and just from the data alone, we were able to create three D simulated plays, So we didn't need any video. We didn't need to see what happened because we could just get the data from those chips and tell you exactly what's happening on the play.
Wow, that's pretty cool.
How do you because you're doing you know, media now, which I think is really interesting. Your great social media presence. How are you leveraging media for business success? Because I imagine that may be a play because when Lebron moved to LA, people were talking about, you know, this is you know, he's on the down side of his career, so LA is a smart move because he wants to be a media and TV so it wasn't just an
athletic decision. So I'm interested in the decisions you make in being on making TV shows or online internet web shows. What's the play for an athlete like yourself and what are you shooting for? If I can just say it.
Yeah, I love that. So I think two part number one. What I'm doing now has always been my goal since I've been a kid. I wanted to do business. I wanted to do business in an area that I felt like I was an expert at and that I knew more than anybody else, And I feel like sports is that thing. So when I retired, I actually wasn't going to go into media. My older brother went into media. I wasn't really into it at the time. There was a specific formula you had to follow to get an opportunity.
You had to speak a certain way, look a certain way, do a certain thing, and not that I'm not a chameleon and I can't do that. I just didn't really have the energy that if I want to be one way one day, I wanted the ability to do that,
so I wasn't going in the media. When I retired, I walked White in to start working with Maverick Carter after having intern for them while I was playing, and an opportunity came along, and he was the one that was like, YO, you should do it, because as someone who knows a lot of former athletes and I've gone through this with a lot of people, you might like it, and you might be good at it, and ultimately it also helps you keep a face card, which is important
when you're trying to make business move, which I know you inevitably want to do. So while I was playing in the NFL, I would take I would get fifty two, one hundred game jerseys every year after the season, and I would sign them and I would write handwritten letters to people that I wanted to connect with or that I was impressed by, and I would send it to him in the mail with an email like, YO, if you ever want to get coffee, let me know. And that was a networking thing for me because I knew
people thought it was cool. But you know, there's only two people that can say that the start receivers for the Cleveland Browns. There's thirty thousand people that can say they're former players. Right, So I'm like, well, let me do this now so that they'll remember when I was at my height where my mind was that, and so when I need them and they're at their height, you know, they'll keep that relationship going. So I was doing that, and then the media thing for me, it was like,
well that gave me that same kind of face card. Right, it's cool to get an email from someone you've seen on television or when we're in a meeting and I might be on the background somewhere. That helps me at least get an email back. So even if I'm asking for something or I'm trying to do a deal, and even if it's a no, a fast no is helpful to me, you at least give me that courtesy because
I have a certain face card to it. And so that's my original goal around media was to use it to benefit my business career and what we're doing now it's that is pro and I still think that's the same thing. And in that I just kind of made the decision that I'm just going to be me wherever
I decide that is. From a media standpoint, Eventually, it will again just be projects that are close to my heart that I think there's a need for, that I think there's a space for, and that Ultimately, I never wanted to get into the media side of things to have to hang on it solely and completely.
As a football player.
You are hired and fired very very frequently, and you have no say so when your family picks up and moves. And so when I got into the media side, I was just very adamant that I didn't want that career to be that way. I wanted to have the freedom to say and do what I wanted when I wanted, and so I passed up on a lot of great deals media wise, because I don't want to get into the rat race of Hey, we love you today, tomorrow we don't like you anymore.
Now you don't have a job, right so.
I want to dig one level deeper before we get out of here. And is absolutely you mentioned earlier that you know a dollar from a Lebron James is not just a dollar because his name has value. That thing there I want to equate to what you just talked about with media and how you're leveraging that for a business success. Outside of media, there's so many folks who are building businesses and it's all really comes down to storytelling.
There's so many folks who are building businesses that if they could figure out how to leverage stories and personalities in social on stage, in front.
Of people, etc. That could help their business.
And So if you could leave us with some wisdom on how people who might be funny, who might be good looking, who might be what charismatic.
How they should see that as.
A value or find that value. To add that to the puzzle of building a successful company.
Absolutely, man, I think you got to nailed it right. Like you have to use all those things that are at your disposal to get to where you are. And a lot of time, especially early on your company, is you they are various, synonymous, PEP, We're going to follow those things. Or it's like an artist when you when you find an artist nobody has heard about, and you like their store and you like where they come from, you write where they represent.
You're telling everybody about the artists.
You gotta check you got to check her out, man, she's amazing, right, or whatever that is.
And eventually they hit mainstream and you.
Know you you probably now looking for the next one.
Right.
Businesses are the same way. Right, they want to they want to connect with you and your story number one. But using your talents to hit those pillars are super important. And I say for businesses, there's three things that you got to hit to make yourself a home run. Number one is it do you have an incredible product? Is your product better than everybody else's?
Right?
Do you have something that is just a home run of a product that's aggress number one? Number two is do you have an ability to get the deals done? And we've talked about all these things on this podcast so far as do you understand the industry that you're in, can you make those calls? Do you know the right people to talk to to keep continue to push that ball down the court because those things are important in those deals. And number three is your ability to amplify it.
Do you have an ability to when you say something, get it out in front of people, right, Because then those people who are gonna follow the check marks of is your product great?
And some people can be successful with two of those things.
You've seen people with terrible products, but they got the right investors and the right amplification and they got the right deals. You see people with great deals, great product and nobody to amplify it, but eventually it bubbles up. If you have one of three, it's gonna be tough. You need at least two or three. If you have
three of three, you got the home run. And when you use your talents for whether you're good looking, whether you have other talents, whether you're funny, to push through your product, that helps you in the amplification side of things. And it's a very very important, important pillar, and that kind of determines the speed at which you scale or becomes ubiquitous.
Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast.
Network in iHeartMedia.
Is produced by Morgan Debonne and me Will Lucas, with additional production support by Love.
Beach Him and Rissus Lewis.
Special thank you to Michael Davis Jermaine Hall. If that's a Serrano. Learn more about my guests and other tech This repors and innovators at afrotech dot com. The video person of this episode will drop the Black Tech Green Money on YouTube next week, So tap in, join your Black Tech Green Money, leave us a five star rating on iTunes, Go get your money, peace and love. Check me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast Festival, happening Saturday,
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