The First Customer - Elevating Athlete Brands Through Game-Changing Moves with Founder Jack Adler

[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today. I'm lucky enough to be joined by Jack Adler. He's the founder and CEO of Out2Win Sports. very impressive organization. 

How you doing, Jack? 

[00:00:39] Jack: I'm doing well, Jay. How are you? Thanks for having me.

[00:00:41] Jay: I'm great, brother. I'm great. You're a Villanova, born guy. You're up in Syracuse now.

Tell me, where did you grow up around that area and did you have any, you know, influence of being an entrepreneur growing up?

[00:00:53] Jack: Yeah, no, so I grew up in Bluebell. I moved to Villanova when I was 15, right around the time when they're winning championships, out there. So a lot of parades outside my house. And, I think that my influence, just following an entrepreneurial path really didn't start until COVID. And the more people I've talked to, I've heard that COVID was, something that either shifted their like kind of kind direction. and I fall into that bucket of, I was stuck in my house and I was bored out of my mind and I needed to find something to do. And I actually, I started a fundraiser for COVID 19 relief with my twin sister. and what started as just like a video we posted on Instagram ended up turning into us raising, tens of thousands of dollars through 3 donations. it was this challenge that ended up going viral on social media and. From everything that came from it. I kind of, you know, of course this was, nonprofit related, but, all the success and impact we were able to create, kind of led me to realizing that I wanted to do more And, I had a massive passion for sports entrepreneurship. that entrepreneurship that stemmed from this, one experience and it all led into the inception of Out2Win, in 2021.

[00:02:11] Jay: Wow.very cool. and you went to Syracuse University? 

[00:02:15] Jack: Yeah. Once the Syracuse graduated this past May, and upon graduation, ended up finalizing a partnership with the university to become their official partners. within NIL, within the athletic department.

[00:02:28] Jay: So what's Out2Win? 

[00:02:30] Jack: So we're a sports marketing firm, that really sits at the epicenter of the NIL space, helping brands connect with athletes,empowering universities to provide resources to their athletes. so, it's currently,many different things that we have our hands in, at the moment, our main focus is a software that we're currently development of, that streamlines the way brands are discovering and vetting athlete creators. And this terminology that we follow "athlete creator" is really focused on those athletes who are performing off the field, in regard to their social media presence, their content creator abilities and, in our in the space, we recognize that's really where the brands are focused when it comes to NIL partnerships.

It's which athletes can drive conversion through social media activations.

[00:03:22] Jay: Beautiful. I mean, and just looking at the website, you've got some really heavy hidden partnerships. I mean, Nerf I saw in there, I think, and, you know, a bunch of other kind of household names. How did you start getting these partnerships and how did, you know, how to, especially as a, younger guy and, kind of getting into the space, how did you get them to pay attention to you? 

[00:03:40] Jack: Yeah. So, I mean, I know the, title of the podcast is First Customer and, it started with a local small gym,smoothie shop, local Syracuse small businesses. I would, dress up in a suit and I would walk around the city of Syracuse pitching businesses with a little one pager that said, Hey, here's my name.

Here's what I do. Here's what NIL is. And here's how you can get involved. Here are the benefits it can bring to your business. And, what we did was it's a kind of a unique approach to NIL because so many of the partnerships we'd sit, we'd seen where athletes holding a thumb up with a product in their other hand saying, I'm excited to announce my partnership with blank, go buy it.

And there it was driving zero conversion. So the approach we took was more content driven, pitching brands on the idea of us building out creative campaigns. through our own internal creative team, production team, and, what eventually, you know, started initially as some local Syracuse businesses ended up, transitioning into larger businesses based on the content that we were able to create from a grassroots initiative, through these smaller businesses at Syracuse, we were able to catch the eyes of other businesses.

And of course, just always utilizing the network of Syracuse and, really along the way, building more and more relationships and never necessarily thinking of them from a transactional sense, but more so relational and, relationships turned into collaborations, which have turned into great partnerships.

[00:05:09] Jay: I mean, I can't tell you how much I love, kind of owning your backyard, right? I mean, you started somewhere and, I think a lot of business owners, feel like they're limiting themselves by sticking to a geographic region that's close to them because they think, Oh my God, I gotta be statewide, national, international, whatever.

And in reality, like you are passing up the opportunity to, I mean, I always call it the hometown discount, right? Like if you're in a place and you go to a place that's near you and go, Hey, I live here or I work here. I go to school here. I'd love to partner with you to do this, or here's a service I provide.

That person's at least going to, you know, let you stick your foot in the door because you're from that same area. And it sounds like, and I also, I love the way you said you dressed up in a suit as if like, that wasn't something you normally do. Like it was more of a costume for you than a normal attire, but I love the owning your backyard and then kind of using that as a, you know, a foundation to kind of build this bigger thing on.

So that's awesome. 

[00:06:06] Jack: When I was a costume, I was a sophomore in college. I barely wore one suit before.

[00:06:11] Jay: Right. Yeah, I'm sure it's baggy and it was didn't fit, right? And I mean, it's just, I got the picture in my head of, you know, you going out there and just making it work. So, kind of side to this is, you know, ancillary to this is, your personal brand. Right. I mean, how much do you think about that?

How much do you just wrap that into what you do with Out2Win and your business? Is this something you actively kind of go after? How do you view, you know, kind of your personal brand versus your businesses that you run? 

[00:06:39] Jack: Yeah, I mean, I really view my personal brand as my network more than anything. Like I don't necessarily view myself as a creator, but I think because of the network I've been able to build through this business, and through just other ventures, like I mentioned the fundraiser as well, I've been able to build a really great network of people, relationships. And, I consider that more so my personal brand, like when I am posting content on LinkedIn,on Instagram, on any social media, I really think of it more so about like, how can I provide value to my community, my network more so than like how, you know, some creators are thinking about how can I grow? How can I, increase engagement? To me, it's more so just about like, how can I share my story in a really authentic way that's going to, resonate with my network and just stay kind of like in touch so I really value like staying in touch with people as well I've done a ton of networking and it's never just like a one off like hey nice to meet you but i'll wish them a happy new year and i'll stay i'll check in with them And when it's been six or eight months and say, Hey, how does everything go? And just wanted to check in. And I think that's a big part of personal branding that not a lot of people talk about is like, you know, it's a lot of it is really your network and your community that you're building.

[00:07:55] Jay: No, I love that. I think that makes a lot of sense. Do you use anything to keep track of those relationships? Do you use CRMs and stuff to kind of make sure you're keeping in touch with the right folks? I mean, I'm obviously not personally, you know, you're not putting your friends in a CRM, but I mean, do you, is there kind of a, some set of tools that you use to kind of make sure you're staying up with these folks? 

[00:08:16] Jack: Yeah. So I've always used the Google sheet on my, that I call like the Out2Win network. And it's every person that I've spoken to since the business began. but just recently I've, been forced to take the standard CRM route. So I, we just onboarded, actually a few weeks ago to Salesforce.

So we're, we moved over to the dark side where we're using a real CRM now. and I'm still, I've been telling my team who like got me to switch that I'm still in the habit. Like when I meet someone new, I go to my Google sheets still. I'm like, I gotta go to Salesforce and put it in there. Cause it's just a more collaborative way to, to build a network as a business more so than as an individual, like when you're putting a CRM that everyone can have their hands in.

[00:09:02] Jay: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I, uh, I'm, awful with both. I don't like spreadsheets and I don't use our CRM. So my team, yells at me for both. So I can, feel you on that. if you, had to start things over again tomorrow, just some of the stuff you've learned so far, what would be step one to kind of start this business off if you were going to go start it again,

[00:09:26] Jack: Well, I mentioned, the software that we're currently building, in the route to getting there was us expanding to different campus branches. So we hired,teams from different campuses. And we struggled mightily with the management process of. Having like a Michigan branches, Southern California branch and Oklahoma branch and having it be college students on different campuses. and the reality was like, I was, you know, looking to almost like clone myself in a way and put myself on different campuses and it was really difficult, to manage. I'd say that, in starting over, I would have looked at the solution that we're currently building and. And started it sooner. I would never take away anything that we've done over the last two years because of the relationships that have come from it and the experiences that have prepared us for the product that we're about to launch now. but it's hard not to think like, what if we had started billing this sooner and had gotten it to market sooner? who knows, but it's, you know, a thought that I have here and there.

[00:10:28] Jay: if you, I mean, there's a million different channels, I mean, obviously the main ones, how do you pick the right ones. How do you, change which channels you're going after LinkedIn or TikTok or, you know, Facebook or whatever it is. Do you, worry about that? Do you just kind of stick with the ones you have?

Like, how are you managing each of those channels and how much time you spend on each one of them? 

[00:10:48] Jack: Yeah, I honestly I feel like I spend too much time personally on LinkedIn because it's I really enjoy the content on there. It's very just like up my alley in terms of like business case studies and networking tips. whereas, you know, Tik Tok has a way of finding out what you like and putting it in your face on through its algorithm.

But, I, definitely spend the most time and focus on LinkedIn, especially just from a networking aspect of trying to build new relationships. But, there's also so many different like use cases for me being an athlete creator space. I'm always also. Almost like scouting on Tik Tok and looking for the next talents, to form relationships with. so I would say like my time is split up between business activities through mostly LinkedIn, Tik Tok, and then Instagram is our main channel when it comes to actually building our company's brand Out2Win.

[00:11:43] Jay: how are you actually forming relationships with these channels? You know, people who are up and coming or already popular. I mean, I'm assuming they get hit up with a lot of, you know, plenty of DMs and plenty of friend requests and plenty of whatever, how are you getting through to actually make, you know, meaningful partnerships with somebody who's maybe already, you know, pretty popular. 

[00:12:07] Jack: Yeah, we've taken such a unique path, from like an organic content standpoint, on our Out2Win socials, we've been putting out these athlete creator rankings and it's. Taking it spotlighting those who, you know, may not be scoring the most touchdowns and those goals, but they're they're creating the best social media content.

And it's kind of a foreshadowing of our product that's launching, in, in a couple of months. but it's looking at athletes as like featuring them based on their abilities as a content creator. And in a lot of cases, they aren't getting that spotlight, that type of recognition. Otherwise you're not seeing them at the top of the on three valuations. the NIL valuations there. So to be able to provide that recognition, it's led to great as well. it almost feels like social hacking in a way, because a lot of them just naturally share that content as well to their pages, and bring in, you know, growth for us, in terms of the audience we're reaching.

But like one example is destroying, who's, I mean, in my eyes, probably the pioneering athlete creator because of how he left Florida State, as a college football player to go pursue a career as a And, we posted an athlete creator rankings that he wasn't on. And he came and commented like a sad emoji in the, comment section.

And we posted an Instagram story saying was destroying snubbed. And just like from that, he followed us. He sent us a DM and we ended up having a conversation with him that just like kind of showed the power of, not only this content channel alone, but just The recognition, and the community that we have the power to build within this ecosystem of athlete creators.

[00:13:46] Jay: No, yeah, that's yeah, I mean, you know a lot of the everybody has a podcast these days you know, like michael parsons has got his popular one and like juju smith schuster is all over twitch and stuff I think for his streams and like a lot of folks I think don't connect the two and think that like, you know Because somebody's this popular athlete that they get all these accolades, but I think it's a very interesting approach to say Well, that's great that you do that, but here's how you stack up in the, other realm that you're, trying to put your foot in, which is streaming or whatever else.

And I love that kind of, it's not really guerrilla marketing, but it's, an interesting kind of, twist to get their attention. I love the rankings. so how else are you marketing? You guys spending ad

dollars these days? 

[00:14:27] Jack: No, we're not. we are entirely focused on building an organic community. Like we have an email newsletter that we push out, that's all focused more on the brand side. so brand marketers that are leading their athlete partnerships are within an email newsletter or LinkedIn, group community. and we're honestly just always brainstorming more ways that we can provide value to, that kind of, that network of brand marketers that are looking to enhance their athlete marketing partnerships,

[00:14:59] Jay: Give me, one goal, personal and one business, that's at the top of your list for 2024. 

[00:15:05] Jack: personal goal. I'm currently training for a half marathon, which is big for me because I can't run. Like I, and, the reason I'm doing it also is because. I, someone was talking about doing it and I was like, I can't do that. And I realized that I want to test my limits as to what I can and can't do. So I'm currently, I usually can't run more than a mile and a half at most.

And, I launched my training yesterday, ran two miles. sucked. tomorrow I'm running three miles. I'm going day on day off of like, kind of just, taking it a notch higher, trying to get to that 13. 1. so we'll see how that goes. I'll keep you posted. 

[00:15:44] Jay: Yeah. Let me know. I am interested because I'm also not a runner and have the same kind of thoughts. So yeah. Let me know how you do. 

[00:15:50] Jack: and then on a business side, we actually just opened up a pre seed round. So we're looking to raise funding. And my goal is to be able to close that round by April or May, and be able to focus entirely on, customers and sales more so than fundraising.

[00:16:09] Jay: Beautiful. All right, last question non business related and I'm gonna say non marathon related because I just stole that one from you. if you could do anything on earth and you knew you couldn't fail what would it be and not run a half marathon? 

[00:16:25] Jack: And I knew I couldn't fail. I'd probably, not even saying necessarily knew I can't fail cause I know I'd fail, but I'd probably play on the Syracuse basketball teams. They're starting point guard and carry us to a national championship.

[00:16:37] Jay: can't fail man. You can't fail So it's this is your dream to live. 

[00:16:41] Jack: I carry a championship. That's that'd be it.

[00:16:45] Jay: I love it All right, if people want to reach you, if they want to reach Out2Win, how do they do that? 

[00:16:50] Jack: Yeah. So our Instagram, at Out2Win O U T the number two W I N. and then my email, jack@out2win.net. We're working on, I'm getting that. net upgraded to that. com. But those guys, the guys that own that domain, if you're listening, please just give in already.

[00:17:08] Jay: I'm sure they're holding out until you get big and then they can charge you whatever they want. All right, man. Well Jack, very inspirational story, man. I love the kind of content creator to business owner to you know just I'm going to say it. I don't want to say it, but I'm going to say it.

Jack of all trades, you know, impressive guy. I love what you're doing, man. I'm going to keep following, best of luck on the product and, let's catch up again sooner. 

Thanks for being on, Jack. 

[00:17:30] Jack: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it, Jay.

[00:17:32] Jay: Appreciate it. Thank you, man. 

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