Marques Colston - Entrepreneur & Former NFL Player | Winning On and Off the Field

So I was one of those guys, really, really good career numbers as a college player, but I played at a level that most people think is inferior. You put your best foot forward and ultimately all you're really looking for is a shot. Imagine being the underdog who rises to the top, but never quite gets the spot like you deserve. Marcus Colston went from a seventh round draft pick to a franchise icon, breaking records and defying expectations within New Orleans Saints. The first inflection point for me is getting drafted into the NFL. Most people think it kind of started this journey of duality for me. Football is a thing that I do that I'm really good at, but it doesn't defy who I am as a person. But it wasn't just the records or the Super Bowl ring that set marks apart. It's the journey, the grit, resilience, and quiet dominance of a player who built a legacy without the recognition most of his peers received. A lot of success is being prepared to get to the right place at the right time and do the right thing. As much as you know who you are and what you bring, you've got to understand what's going on around you to know where those pockets going to be that you can take advantage of. In this episode, Marcus opens up about redefining success, staying grounded through the highs and lows, and why being overlooked never stopped him from becoming one of the Saints all-time greats. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clarity. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot has been a huge supporter of the show, and I'm happy day because I'm a huge believer in HubSpot. I've used it for everything from this show to all the companies I've ever run in the past, and I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs in the audience, and let me ask you a question. 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Start making major moves with HubSpot. Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers to learn more. Marcus, I'm excited. I'm excited you're here today. It's going to be a lot of fun. I want to just start off so people get to know you a little bit better. Give me the inflection point in your life. That's a big question. It's a load of questions. There's probably been lots of them. But if you look back through your crew, there have been tons of different seasons to your career. What would be one inflection point that stands out that pushed you on the path that pushed you down the path that you're on today? That's an amazing question to get started. I would have to say that the first inflection point for me is getting drafted into the NFL. Not for the reasons that most people think. It started this journey of duality for me. Obviously, super fortunate and blessed to be one of the 260-some odd people to get drafted in that year. But for me, I was drafted. I was the fourth to the last pick. It created an opportunity. It created a mindset for me that took me throughout my whole NFL career. But it's kind of remained foundational to who I am and how I moved post football. It's one that coming in and being picked 252 out of 256. I always knew that the pick didn't dictate the level of success that I could have or didn't dictate the potential or the ability that I had. But at the same time, it kind of gave me a... I entered the game in a place where the exit door was a lot closer than I wanted it to be. I never really got to a place where I had job security. I felt like I had job security. It kept me in this mentality where I never felt like I arrived, even when I was having successful seasons as a pro. Again, that duality of just being happy and fortunate blessed to be in that position. But also realizing really early on, literally from day one, that it's not promised and there is no real security in it. It was an inflection point that really, like I said, set the trajectory not just from my football career, but my business career as well. Always wanting to be somebody that over-delivered. Always wanting to be somebody that my internal standard was higher than any external expectation that could be placed on me. That's just kind of how I moved throughout the rest of my career. You think that was, at the time, it probably was very stressful getting grafted in that particular position where you said, I love that. The exit door is a little bit closer than you wanted it to be, but looking back, do you feel like that was actually a blessing to some degree? I 100% percent. I say it all the time. It was pick 252. At pick 251, my career is drastically different. Pick 253, my career is drastically different. A lot of success is getting being prepared to get to the right place at the right time and do the right things. My career started in that way and it was something that was always top of mind for me. If I had gone to another situation, maybe with a different head coach, a different quarterback, different system, all of those things matter. I think sometimes we get very self-centered around our success and we feel like we're the reason all the time. That was a really good reminder from day one that you can be prepared and you can put yourself in the right position, but ultimately there are some external factors that you got to navigate on your way to success. I think it creates a mindset that would carry you through. Even walking me through before, before you got drafted, was that expected that you were going to end up in that position or do you think you were going to do a lot better than that? I thought I would do a whole lot. I thought I would get drafted a whole lot sooner than I did. I came from a smaller school, not a football powerhouse. I was one of those guys where I put up a really, really good career numbers as a college player, but I played at a level that most people think is inferior. I wasn't playing against the Alabama's and the LSU's and the USC's. The knock was always, yeah, he's playing well at this level, but is he just a big fish in a small pond? You hear the noise and again, it's a game of duality. Yes, some of those things are true, but I can also only play the people that are on my schedule. You dominate, you put your bestful forward and ultimately all you're really looking for is a shot. You just got to be prepared once that shot comes to go out and play your game your way and hope this enough. I've had this conversation with other athletes before just about the seasons of their career and how they set themselves up for success. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I would assume if you are earlier in the draft, sometimes a little bit of ego creeps in. Then I think, because you're an athlete to blow through their money and they end up, and there's some wild stats out there, but people that don't have post-professional sport careers and it's just kind of sad that they can take so much money and then, pardon the pun, they fumble it. They fuck it up. When you look at some of the people you played with, I'm sure that you see stories, not everybody's successful post-career. What happens in this situation where you're given the world at such a young age as an athlete and it could be football. I mean, I have examples from hockey of people that screwed up post-career and they're almost broken and I'm sure baseball, basketball, everything, there's always these examples. What happens to the athlete? Walk me through that mindset of a young athlete who's just handed so much money and fame and influence. It's not too dissimilar from a lottery winner. You live your everyday life and all of a sudden there's this influx of cash. You get drafted and you kind of see it, you kind of see it coming, but your life is not set up to receive that kind of notoriety, it's not set up to receive that kind of income and ultimately more often not. I speak for myself, so I came from a situation where I didn't have access to capital. I didn't have access to entrepreneurship and high-level business and most of the people that I knew growing up and the families that I knew were more blue collar. I just didn't have exposure to what that world looked like. If you are 22 years old coming out of college, you give anybody this 22-year-old, 22 years old coming out of fresh out of college, you give them a couple of million dollars. There's no telling what might happen. You take that same situation, you put them under the limelight and you surround them with an ecosystem that is not necessarily set up to really give a shit about your best interests. Your best interests are secured once somebody else's best interests are. It becomes a really nuanced situation. You got somebody that has not had exposure, typically your family and your inner circle still has not had that same exposure. Now, you got to depend on people from outside of your inner circle. You got a higher in agent. You got a higher financial advisor and it really becomes this game of, do I feel like I can trust this person? Because at 22, I don't really know exactly what they do. I don't really have the financial knowledge and expertise to even check them if they are doing something fucked up. You get into this place where you're choosing people to play really pivotal roles in your career and you don't really know how to evaluate and hire for a job. It lends itself to bad decisions and lends itself to making young people decisions, but it also lends itself to being in a situation where you are more vulnerable than most because you just don't have that you don't have that expertise and that exposure to be able to hold the people in your circle accountable. The people that you trust the most, they don't have the experience and the education to be able to do the same. So you kind of find yourself as the captain of this ship, but you don't really know how to operate the ship. There's a lot of, I'm sure there's a lot of great good ethical people out there that help athletes, but I think there's a lot of bullshit too. I mean, I've spoken to Chris Prager, he's a good friend and he was like a very big hockey player. It's sort of like my reference point and he's spoken about some of the people that have not as agents throughout his career were good, but like people that have solicited investments and then he's had some that were just absolute misses and everybody's asking for money because every and also everybody sees the contract sizes, but I've also seen and I didn't even know this. He Chris did a really good job doing this and some other people on social do this when you break down like all after tax, after agent fees, after association fees, like it's still a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. It's more money than most people make out whatever 22, but you end up spending a lot of it before you actually have any in the bank and I think that you also just completely don't have the the understanding of what money is at that point and I think that's that's really where you screw up and I mean, I don't even know if you know stats. Maybe you do because you weren't athlete, but I've heard some ridiculous stats about how many professional athletes with you know seven figure age figure contracts are bankrupt and broke and after they after they finished playing. So just side, it's just very, very side. Yeah, and it is it is a nuanced conversation again because you know, I've seen this step for a decade and it's pissed me off every time I've seen it. It talks about 70% of NFL players are within five years of retirement or financial distress, right? So yes, there are some of the horror stories and I think by those stories becoming more and more visible, you know, past generations, I think I think this generation and future generations are going to be able to learn from those those challenges and those mistakes. But also big than those numbers is is the guy that that played two years and made lead league minimum, right? So what is your definition of financial distress? Because at the end of the day, you look at you look at a salary cap and you look at a roster, you know, the bulk of the money being paid out, it is going to the top five or six players. And then you've got 40 some odd people, you know, kind of splitting up the rest of the pie. And yes, you again, you see the horror stories and we have seen the horror stories over the years, but that number is is I would say that number is not it's a little bit more misleading than people realize because you have guys that are that have not been invested and they have not reached the status where they've getting benefits. You got guys that played one, two, three years that yes, it's really good money, but it's not, you know, kick my feet up and and retire for the rest of my life money. So, you know, the numbers are the numbers and you know, we know there's still work to be done, but it's a little bit more than what me serves. Even in your career, you were forward thinking, I think is the best way to put it. So, even walk me through your mindset when you get drafted, you weren't just waiting for your career to end to start building. So, what was the thing that made you realize like light bulb moment, maybe it was getting drafted at a higher number or whatnot, but what was it that made you realize that okay, so I want to set myself up for a success post career because I think some of your investments were made while you were still playing from non-mistake and correct. Yeah, I got started pretty, pretty early on in my career. So, I created that to I had two financial vibes as you were former players themselves who saw something in me and you just kind of pushed me to get out of the box. And for me, I've always kind of been a tinkerer. I've always been somebody who's been interested in technology, interested in more so electronics than anything else. And I've also known that football is the thing that I think that I do that I'm really good at, but it doesn't define who I am as a person. So, I think the combination of me just kind of have us some self-awareness and then having those two advisors that really pushed me out of my comfort zone and pushed me out of that box. I was able to get started early and just again, some of it just just being fortunate enough to stay healthy enough to play 10 years. I like to say I was able over that 10 year run, I was able to give myself a long and a runway to make some mistakes, get into some situations that I loved, get into some situations that I later realized that I hated it and didn't ever want to do again. But over the course of my playing career, when I was kind of at the top of my game from a brand perspective, I was able to get in and get some really, really boots on the ground of business experience that has kind of driven me in return. And the first, I mean, you said you had these two financial advisors, peers like players themselves, they knew the game, knew what you were going to have to deal with when you did retire. So, what was the first version of you investing, of you raising money, of, because you didn't come from an operator background, it's not like you had built a business and then you exited that and then you started investing in something you knew. So, now it's like every opportunity to invest is available, but you still lack a lot of operational experience in doing the thing. So, how do you bridge that gap? And I'm sure you had, listen, I'm sure you had some, some losses and some, and some things didn't work out so well as well with the investments, but talk me through like just as a player turning investor, what was the first version of that? So, really, really early on, it was just kind of angel investing. I tried to stay in a space where I had at least a new one part of the business, which was sports. So, I got started at the intersection of sports and technology. So, a lot of those early investments were kind of co-investments with our athletes and it was more just deploy the capital and kind of see what happens. But I'd say that the first investment that really was the first time that I rolled my sleeves up and got really engaged with the company, I invested in the indoor football team back in my hometown in, I want to say, 2010. And for me, it was an opportunity to learn the business side of the sport that I was playing. And it was also, it was in my hometown, so it was a really good platform for me to do some community outreach at scale. That's kind of how I viewed it. And, you know, I got in, I made the investment the first year, I was a passive investor, I just kind of watched the owner kind of kind of shadowed him and just watched what it looked like to run a team, to operate a team from soup to nuts. And in watching him for a year, I just, I got that itch. And after the first year, I ended up buying my partner out, taking over the team, a hundred sole ownership of the team. And I assumed the role of President and General Manager. And my role was literally everything in the organization at that time. You know, we had a small team. So, I was doing everything from, you know, selling sponsorships to put together, you know, ticket sales and marketing packages. I was actually running the game operations. I had the little headset on. I was directing the game. Then, okay, so you dove into this. That's how you figured it out. Yeah, that's how you figured out work. You just do everything. That's good. That's good. Yes. Yeah. No. And, you know, it was, it was one of those experiences. It was probably the toughest thing in my life at that point, just because everything was new. And I was drinking from the firehomes. But at the same time, I was right at home because as an athlete, you'd kind of make a living, finding discomfort and pushing through discomfort just to get to a place where you find more discomfort. So, that connection was really, it was really, you know, top of mind for me. So, it was, it was, it was difficult. It was challenging and fun at the same time. And that's kind of what it looked like. If you looked at some of the things that made you successful as an athlete, you just sort of alluded to one, what would be some others that would ally to succeed in the business arena? Because I believe this, I believe this fully too. I believe that athletes can make the best business leaders, entrepreneurs, and there's a whole bunch of personality traits to come with being a successful athlete that I think carry over about what did you find when you, when you started to switch from athlete to business leader? I think the one thing that I had a level of mastery of that I didn't realize at the time was strategy, right? And strategy in this pure sense in that you take your uniqueness, you take your assets, your skills, abilities, talents, all of those things, and you put together a plan that allowed you to win, right? And, you know, from the athlete perspective, what that looks like is, is literally different from game to game. It's different from season to season. Yeah, I always talk about the things that I can do as a 22-year-old rookie with limited game experience. I was just out there on sheer athleticism for a couple of years, right? And, you know, over time as athleticism kind of starts to wane, what you, what you realize as an athlete is it doesn't really matter what your body feels like. It doesn't matter how your capabilities change, the standard is a standard or you give a place. Like, if my level of production is up here, I've got to manufacture a way to get to my, my production level up here. I don't care if my acre hurts, I don't care if my knee hurts, I don't care if I'm, you know, a nine-year vet, not a loss of step. So, I understood and I had this mastery of strategy in that I can take the self-awareness and take what I know to be true about myself in that moment in time and put together a plan to go and find that same level of performance. And once I got into business and I started to see how that matched like literally apples to apples. In talking about strategy, it was a light bulb moment that clicked in that a lot of people talk about the leadership aspects, they talk about the teamwork aspects, and they talk about these soft skills that athletes have that are transferable. But when I found that real tangible skill in strategy that was that was transferable, it unlocked something different in me that I've kind of led with ever since. I just want to take a second and thank the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story. Now, if you enjoy success story, you're going to love other podcasts in their network like Business Made Simple hosted by Donald Miller. If you've ever wondered why some businesses take off while many struggle, Donald Miller takes the mystery out of growing your business with actionable strategies you can implement today. Whether you're trying to build a stronger team, craft a clearer message or boost your bottom line, Business Made Simple delivers the frameworks that you need to succeed. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcast. It's almost like I love that, dude. I think it's like you're setting a North Star and whatever whatever shit is happening in I mean in a game or in your business, it's like you got to hit that North Star. And then you just set that point and you got to find a way to get there. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what's happening in the market. It doesn't matter if somebody just quit. You just got sued. You couldn't raise money. Whatever it is, revenues down, you got to hit it. I love that. I think it's a really healthy mindset. I mean, you speak a lot about, I mean, you mentioned some of the soft skills. You've spoken about like earning success every day is like as a metaphor for when you're a player, but also investor, business leader. So this is exactly what you're talking about. Like you have to be excellent all the time regardless of whatever life throws at you. And I think that's a very, very smart thing to carry over. I'm actually super curious is investing in a sports team like at a at a like a non professional or even professional levels that like a smart move because I don't know personally anybody who's done that. So outside of like the billionaires that like that put money up for like these these these these these teams that everybody knows, but a local sports team. How is that as an investment? It depends on how you evaluate it. How do you evaluate it? How do you I mean, doesn't if it was a if it was a win grade, if it wasn't, that's cool too. I'm just curious because that was your first major one. I would say financially it was not the smartest investment. And I ended up losing some money in that deal. But I'll say the the education, the confidence and the reps that I was able to extract from it. You know, it made it a huge win because it literally set the table for everything that I'm doing now in business. You know, so, you know, I kind of think of it in terms of, you know, that was my own to fly NBA. Right. So I was either going to pay institution to go get an NBA or I was going to pay into this this team and figure it out, but I got my NBA out of it. I love it. So okay, so you listen, it wasn't like a home run, but still like I mean, you learned everything about running a business. I think I actually think by you taking that opportunity and you do in the marketing and the sales and and and doing all the day to day shit, I think that probably makes you a much better investor now because, you know, I was talking before about bridging the gap between bridging that knowledge gap. Like when you were a player, you had no operational experience and then you did have operational experience. I say at that point, it's already setting you ahead of an NBA that tries to turn into an investor who has zero business experience. There's something to be said for just doing the shit yourself. I mean, like when I try and build a business, even myself, I'll try and do it all myself before I hire somebody to do it. And I think that gives you a massive edge. So okay, so at this point, you invested in this team, are you still playing at this point? I'm assuming when you're when you invest in this team. Yeah, okay, cool. In the fall, I play in New Orleans, I play my CS. You want the season in February and the Super Bowl, but most of the January at some point do do everything I need to do there to close up shopping and fly back north and start selling. I love that dude. That's like that's straight hustle. Okay, so when does it turn from just investing and actually before we just move into like raising the funds, that's that's sort of like a different part of your life. Talk to me about other things that did not go so well when you started to invest like things that you people, opportunities, anything that would be like a really good lesson for somebody that again is just sort of trying to get into the game. One thing that was very important that you said was you did leverage your experience. So you you understood one component of the business that you were investing into, but what were some things that didn't go well that you know maybe you don't want to redo them because they're they're really good lessons, but things that you should be aware of if you're going to start investing in anything really. I say the one common theme that I ran into and personally and I saw a lot of my colleagues and peers running into is is you know, just the most accessible investment opportunities are typically the riskiest, right? When you when you major in in early stage companies and startups, you are literally investing in the riskiest as a class that there is. And the challenge the challenge becomes when when you are an athlete and you have the visibility that that we have, but you don't necessarily have the access. You don't have the team that's set up to go find the quality deals. The deals end up finding you and you know, that that was a common theme that I that I kind of you know kind of had to work my way through was most of the deals are going to be early stage, which means the chances of them working and the chances of them becoming home runs are slim, but even in the companies that that you do quote unquote when the companies that do make it do they make it to a level that actually returned your capital. Right. So, you know, I saw it even in my portfolio, I saw a handful of my colleagues, it's you have these investments that are doing well on paper and the founders and everyone is out, you know, pounding the drum and you know, talking about how successful these things are, but as an investor, when you're not seeing the return come back in and that capital is just locked up, you sometimes you have capital locked up seven to ten years as a company is trying to mature through those different phases in a world where your career, your average career as an NFL player is three and a half years. Right. So, you play your three and a half years, you you've done the smart thing you tried to start investing, you maybe got into some early stage companies, you end up getting injured in year four, the income turns off, you now have this this gap, you have this liquidity crunch now, you have these assets over here that, you know, you got a ton of equity over here, but equity doesn't pay the bills. Right. So, just that misalignment and that that miseducation on, you know, what are the different stages of companies, what are the different types of asset classes that you can be in, you know, that was the biggest that was the biggest challenge is still remains a challenge just because, you know, there just aren't very many platforms that offer you access and that's that's one of the reasons that that our firm kind of came to be is is to try to help and fill that void. That's a really good advice, not just for athletes for anybody because there's so many different types of investment vehicles that even some of them cash flow. Right. Like with when you're talking about the kind of money that those pros are making like that, that for the average person is I built a business and now I exited a small exit kind of money. And if you put that money in the right spot, that cash flows, I mean, you could be pulling in a couple hundred thousand bucks a year just in an interest on that money. If you're smart, you could do real estate, you could do private equity, you could do reats, you could do funds, I mean, but I guess if you don't have the right people around you, it's it's easy for us to say that because we've been in this game for a minute and now we understand all the different opportunities. But if you didn't have the right people around, you sort of putting this stuff in front of you, I'm assuming you're getting hit up with all these like super sexy startup ideas because they they seem great, but then ultimately you get your money locked up and then they're not cash flowing and then that's when you think you're doing the right thing, but ultimately you're still stressed, like you're talking about with with your liquidity. So okay, so then you you start to move from you're doing some deals. I'm assuming everything that you're teaching you've experienced at some point in your own life. I feel that, but when did you start to raise a fund actually, as opposed to just as opposed to just investing, when do you actually build out something that you wanted to sort of give back to other players, raise a fund, educate all of that? So this is that was a lot later in the journey. Before the current fund, I tried my hand at a early stage fund that was more of a value ad platform. This is back in 2018. At the time I was in the arena football league, I had a ownership stake in the Philadelphia soul there and what we wanted to do was was find early stage technology companies to integrate them into the teams in the league there. It started out as kind of this value at consulting firm and then we realized that the early stage companies didn't have the capital to actually pay us, so then we started like, alright, can we raise a micro fund around this idea? We got some traction, it has some really good conversations, ultimately couldn't raise a fund. So in my mind, in 2018, but why do you think that is, I just want to why do you think that is? I think for a lot of different reasons. At that point in time, being in the face of a fund with no real track record outside of catching football from Drew Brees to the layman, I think that was one of the main drivers, but it's another one of those things. You're swimming in familiar waters and at that point the water is too cold. I had to retreat and kind of calibrate some things, but yeah, I think at that point, when that fund didn't work, I had some other things going on on a personal level and I never saw myself getting back into the fund business. Just because it took me so far out of my comfort zones, so far out of my wheelhouse of how I typically operate. I played receiver in one of the most visible positions on the field on Sundays, but I'm a super introvert and I like to play the background in my everyday life. So it took me super far out of my comfort zone, really good learning experience, personal development experience, all those things. But when I left that opportunity, I didn't see myself getting back into the fund business and from there, I kind of went into this mold where I wanted to try and educate and just create that exposure that I saw was lacking. So I actually wanted to, of all places, I went into higher education. I ended up had this idea for a program, ended up partnering with with a friend of mine and had a connection at Columbia Business School and we took this concept around teaching professional athletes, entrepreneurship and venture capital. We took that concept and we rolled it into and created an executive program at Columbia Business School that we ran for three years. And again, another chance to get outside of my introverted comfort zone in front of the class and actually talk to my peers about experiences and about, you know, cap tables and, you know, what is a, you know, convertible note, turn sheets and all these different things. And I kind of fell in love with the opportunity to create exposure, you know, to something that was new in a way that was, you know, it was kind of tailor made for us. You know, so that's kind of when the light bulb went off that, all right, there's something that I can do that's maybe not, you know, front facing on an investor's side, but there's something that I can do to help educate other players and my peers. And that kind of got, that program kind of got me started, you know, down this pathway that led to be ultimately going to get my Series 7 and my Series 66 to become a financial advisor and, you know, that's where, you know, I started to see some of the inner workings of financial services and where some of the gaps are, you know, so when I'm able to talk about, you know, some of the deficiencies in the teams that surround these athletes, I'm able to kind of talk about it from two different lenses as the player himself, but then also as a advisor who was, you know, felt handcuffed at times because I couldn't bring, I couldn't bring the right insights, I couldn't bring the right products that I knew my clients needed. I kind of had to stay in my lane as a broker. What are the, I mean, it's 2024, I would, I would assume like outside looking in that financial advisors should be helping people understand basically all the things that you built out in that program, which is wild to me that that didn't exist or wasn't like kind of like a league standard, like I feel like this is not, this is not new information for a lot of people in the business world. Why would a financial advisor? But I actually, you know what, when I say that, I have to, I have to check myself because even the financial advisor is that you get from a bank that would help like my mom retire, like I still have issue with some of the information they give her. So yeah, I guess I'm a little bit far down the rabbit hole as to why I think that it should be common knowledge and common sense, but I guess it isn't. So what is the, I mean, the average financial advisor that's helping an NFL player with millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, what's the advice that they're giving them or what products they allow to offer? Like what's the lane that you have to stay in? It really becomes this game of I can, I can sell you the products and services that my firm gets paid for, right? So think about it, think about it this way. When you think about the fee structure of a financial advisor, right, to get paid off of the assets under management. So if I'm managing 100% of your portfolio and most of it's in, you know, your typical equities and bonds and you might have some alternatives here and there, but they're more institutional alternatives. I'm getting paid a 1% fee off of everything that I manage. If you take money out of this, this, from, from under this, this management and you deploy it into a startup company, or you deploy it into this venture fund, I no longer have visibility into what's happening as an advisor, but I'm also not getting paid my fee on those, on those assets. So if it goes well, I don't get any of the credit. If it goes bad, I'm going to get the plan, right? So an advisor is literally misaligned with building this holistic portfolio that you know that, you know, 22 to 30 year old athletes have time to kind of build out and they need to be in somebody's alternative asset classes because that's what portfolio theory tells you at that age, right? You have time. So there, there's just some fundamental misalignments with the athlete community and the financial advisor community, which is one of the reasons you're starting to see more and more athletes kind of move into that. The ones that that are in a really good financial position, they're starting to move into that family office model because it offers more holistic solution. You still have to find that for a family office model, you still have to find the right people because because again, this is not, again, this is not based on your own experience. I mean, you can, you can, you can self educate and you can watch YouTube videos, you can listen to the podcast, you can go to school to learn, but you self dev the right people around you, even if you come from a business background to have a, a family office model, there's a really good chance you're going to fuck it up to some degree and then you're not going to understand how to look at a PNL or how to do due diligence or how to vet a founder or how to, how to vet an opportunity like it's, it's hard. It's very hard. And even for people that build businesses, one of the biggest mistakes I made was thinking that because I built a business, I could invest and it's not the same. It's just not the same. Like, it's another game you have to learn. So I can only imagine without any business experience, I don't even know where I'd start. I'd be stressed as hell. And I was, I was doing all the things that I had to look for and I still screwed it up. So it's not easy. It's really, and I mean, like, this is probably what you're, you're learning too, because then you, you're operating in a business, you go into financial advising. It's not, you know, incentives are not aligned. You're like, listen, I can, I can be ethical and good for the people that I'm consulting, but ultimately are advising. But ultimately, there's like, I'm only giving you like 20% of the things that I should be able to talk to you about. I'm assuming that's what, yeah, what's your deal? Okay. So, um, obviously, it's probably frustrating as hell for you. Okay. So what's the, yeah, right? Okay. So then, um, so you, you tried to raise a fund didn't, you were educating financial advising. Um, but at some point, you're like, listen, I actually want to, I want to, the people that I'm working with, I want to help them in the way that actually best serves them, not just the one percent that I'm going to paid from my, my brokerage or my firm to sell the product, right? Yeah. And, and, you know, it's kind of going down that pathway when I, when I left my, my gig is in the Pfizer. Um, I spent, I spent a handful of years, um, like executive coaching involved things. So what, what's interesting about my journey is there, there are a handful of pieces that look like they have no real connection to each other. Um, but in what I'm building now, they all, I'm able to bring all those experiences and all those skillsets to the table. Um, so I left financial advisor. I started the executive coach, um, fortunate enough to land on a platform. I was coaching execs from Nike, Jordan, uh, both house farms did a little bit of work with, uh, with McKinsey and company. And again, I really was not focused on venture. I was not focused on, on anything around the fund business. I was very comfortable and, and cool with this executive coaching role. But I kind of, I, I started getting that itch around sports. I, I, I've been retired from the game for a while. Um, was not really doing anything heavy in the sports world. And that's when I reconnected with, um, my, my co-founder and, and champion venture partners, uh, Nick Edwards. Um, we, we've known each other for about five or six years now, uh, from the start of the world. He had a sports tech startup he was working on. I had when I was working on, we, we ended up, uh, meeting just around, you know, similarities and, and trying to figure out how to partner and, and join venture with each other. Um, but we just started down as this rabbit hole of, of, you know, just talking about investing in, and, and was there a way that we could do something and build something that was different, right? So we, he's a former athlete, former MMA fighter. Um, so we've seen our peers kind of go through these different challenges. And you know, we just started to, to kind of, you know, whiteboards and stuff out. And, and we ended up landing on this concept to to create this fun vehicle that check all the boxes. So, so if we knew that one of the biggest challenges was investing in startups. So we said, all right, let's, let's move, let's kick the can down the road a little bit and let's look at growth stage companies. Um, we as former athletes, you know, we, we got started in the sports business. All right, let's, let's take a look at, at sports, right? Most of the investment conversation around sports is, you know, teams and leagues, you know, the NFL NBA, you know, the big five leaks, right? So we know there's only a handful of humans on earth to have enough capital to, to cut checks that move the needle in those deals. So let's push those to the side and let's look at the rest of the value chain of sports. What's here? We got sports technology. We've got, we got sports media content. Um, we've got fan engagement platforms. We've got player performance platforms. We've got real estate hospitality. Um, when you start looking at the value chain of sports, you see a lot of different opportunities. Um, that, you know, have different investment, have different return profiles on them, have different maybe liquidity profiles. So we started to look at that value chain and say, how can we, how can we take all these different assets and pull them together to create our own version of Berkshire Atheway for sports? And that's, once we got to that point, that's, that's when kind of the thesis of, of, of the fund started to write itself. Um, so what we landed on was champion venture partners, which is a, a, an asset management and, and, and investment firm that we invest across the value chain of sports, uh, we invest in growth stage companies, getting away from the startup. So we remove some of that risk. Um, we get into companies that, you know, have a, have a track record, you know, they, they have revenue, uh, they have their product market shit. And our ideal company is at that obsession point, typically around series A, where most series A companies, they have all those things and they're raising that series A to, to go in and hire headcount, go in and, you know, find those, those headhunters to take them to the next level. So we'll invest in, we can be those headhunters. So we have a management team and we've built out, um, with, you know, former, uh, SVP of MLS as a part of the management team. Um, the guy that, that runs our management team is, is ran the Comcast venture, uh, the Comcast sports, uh, tech accelerator for, uh, for four years. Um, we've got a, a, a really successful private marketing firm as part of the management team. And then we've got a guy that is, uh, former, Amazon net, former Netflix, former, uh, head of innovation and Nike on our management team. And the vision is, I have this team, it just goes in because after this, they're solving for people problem at that point. Yep. So we, we, we find these growth stage companies that are at that inflection point, uh, we deploy the capital, we deploy the management team kind of as our built-in KMG model. And, um, our vision is to really build this, this evergreen portfolio, our own bird shark pathway for sports. Um, and eventually we'll, we'll get to a place where we're able to invest in, uh, some of these teams in emerging leagues and, you know, at some point, we'll be able to get to the big five. But, you know, our vision is, is always, it, it's always value at. It's, even if we invest in a team, how can we bring the rest of our technology portfolio to stand at team up and accelerate the group? I want to take a second and thank Range Rover Sports for supporting today's episode. Now, let's talk about tools that match your ambition, that match the ambition of everybody who's listening today, who has taken risks, who has upleveled their personal professional development, who's tried to build their own thing. Everybody listening gets it. There is a moment when the thing you're trying to build, the challenge that you're taking on, it finally starts to take off. There is like this rush of excitement and possibility and that feeling, that feeling that you get when you get behind of the wheel of a Range Rover Sport, because we've all had that perfect drive when the road, the car, and you, you're all in perfect harmony. But that's not just by chance. The Range Rover Sport is designed to make every drive feel that way. And the Range Rover Sport is not just for impressing others, it's how you feel behind the wheel. It's how you feel when things are going the way they're supposed to go. Whether or not you're navigating city streets, you're exploring back roads, the Range Rover Sport combines refinement with a sense of adventure. It matches your own versatile lifestyle with features like adaptive off-road cruise control, you can tackle challenging terrain with confidence, the dynamic air suspension always makes sure you get a smooth ride, it responds to road conditions for optimal performance. So from daily commutes to weekend getaways, the Range Rover Sport is ready for whatever you have planned. It's more than just a vehicle. It is a companion for all of your journey. So if you're ready to elevate your driving experience, visit Land Rover USA.com and configure your Range Rover Sport today. I love that. That's a very smart strategy. You talk about Series A, so what, just so people understand, by the way, there's only been one raise, like one fund or has there been multiple by this point. So we just launched January one of this year, so we're in a raising right now. Yeah, we're raising right now. We're trying to close out a private round. I guess I'm going to capital deploy. So when you look at the thesis, so you're looking at Series A, what kind of average check size goes into these companies. So right now, we're anywhere from about $250,000, typically to about $2.5 million, depending on the opportunity, we might go up to five. Okay, cool. And then you have a couple different categories that you're investing into, like sort of like all adjacent and when you look at Series A, what are the things that you're looking for? Outside of the size and the fact that you're adjacent to sports, you mentioned a couple different types of companies that you look at. I mean, founders always important. I mean, that's that's huge. Maybe speak to who you look for as a good entrepreneur because you mentioned, they do have a little bit of product market fit, but I'm sure you want to look at the people too and other things that you look at, just things that are maybe specific to sports and what you invest in, but also just maybe some best practices for what you look at in general for a company at a Series A. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you hit you hit, you know, check box one for us right on the head. It's people. It's the founding team and, you know, again, back to our sports background, we know and understand the value of team, right? So, you know, finding really good founders that are open to ideas that have enough, you know, they have the combination of confidence and humility, right? They're confident in their idea, they're confident in their abilities, they're confident in their teams abilities, but they're also humble enough to realize that they can't they can't do it alone, right? So if they if they find value in what we bring as a value at investment platform, that that's that's the starting point, you know, obviously we evaluate the team and the just the capabilities and the capacity of the existing team and how can we not how can we come in in this place, but how can we come in an augment, right? So that's that's our mentality. So if their energy kind of matches our energy around that piece that that's huge and then as we evaluate the businesses, you know, in sports, it's very it's one of those industries where you can show success early but be really really top heavy in your client base, right? And what I mean by that is specifically in sports, you can go out and be a young company and get that one anchor client that gives you all the press gives you all the visibility and it kind of becomes a catalyst for your growth, but what we come in and do is we we try to evaluate is this growth sustainable, right? If there's one anchor client goes away, what happens to the business, right? So we we look at not just what is the revenue, but what is the quality of that revenue? What is the diversity of that revenue? And everyone has their performers what they're showing growth on growth of course that's all it's all up and to the right. So we see that and what we try to evaluate is is, you know, based on your quality of revenue, how realistic is it that you, you know, maintain this growth trajectory that you've laid out? So if we can check those those boxes, you know, we feel really good about obviously we go through technology, you go through the whole technical due diligence process and that's, you know, that's what the management team, you know, comes in and helps us do. But if they check those boxes for us on the people side, on the revenue side, on the product market fit side, there's a conversation worth happening and then we just figure out how can we come in our capital ads value in one way? How can we, you know, as a management team add value in another way? And the third of final pieces is really we need every company that we invest in to kind of create intrinsic value within the entire portfolio, right? So the standalone company for us, the standalone unicorn is not what we're looking for. We want to find that payment processing technology that integrates well with this fan engagement technology over here to where we create the rising tide effect in the entire portfolio. That's smart. Is there anything, because I've never had never put money into sports and it's always such a, such like a, like a sexy industry and it seems like it's so much fun, but again, I don't know it. And based on my experience, if I don't know it, I usually end up screwing it up more than anything and not, and then I'm losing money. So if somebody didn't want to, if somebody didn't want to invest in sports and sports tech, what are the things that they have to think about that maybe aren't so obvious, like not the, not the, not the best practices for every industry, but what are the things that are like specific to sports? You mentioned one thing that was very interesting. You can land these like whale clients and they can make your company seem like it's a lot healthier than it is, but it would be some other things like that that are a little bit more specific to sports that an investor would have to pay attention to. I think depending on the investment seasonality, right? If you have a company that is really heavy in the football, you know that the seasonality that business is going to be all upswing on the fall through the winter, but then it might get, you know, it might get quiet in the springtime, right? Summer and spring. That they're showing you numbers, that they're showing you numbers and like, in like the fall, like winter fall, then maybe those, that's not, yeah, I see what you're saying, it's not going to carry through all year. Okay, gotcha. So, so there's just there's there's there's certain things that are industry specific seasonality is one of them. You mentioned anchor clients. You know, we see a lot of companies that are just gung-hole in getting into like the big five leagues as like that's that's their strategy, but the reality is I say this all the time like if you were able to find an NFL client and your product was was amazing and you were able to sign every NFL team of the client. You now have 32 clients. Is that going to be enough to get to your business goals and aspirations? Right? So, if if you are to laser focus in one industry, it can become problematic just because it's always going to be it's always going to be hyper competitive at the top. And there's only so many places to go. So, do you have a strategy that can, you know, either play into other sports or play up and down the sports levels to where you might be an NFL, can you get into college football? Right? Can you get into big top college football? Can you get into maybe division one, double a or division two football? Can you play into new sports? So, there's there's some some different verticals within within the actual sport that, you know, if you can kind of bridge those gaps and then you set yourself up for sustainable success. I guess if you're building in this space, you have you kind of have a bias to like the big five leagues. It's hard to look other places, but that's what you're saying. It's it's you have to. It's a good best practice because there's so much other money out there. I mean, if you look at college college sports, my god, I was actually looking at the math and college college budgets for some for some teams are bigger than professional leagues, professional teams, some professional teams in Canada. So, I mean, you got you got you got some money there. You got some real money there. And if you're an entrepreneur, you got to figure out a tap into that. If you, when I look at investment, I always look at somebody who has sort of lived in the industry and then builds a solution for the industry. Is that the case in sports? Do are some of the best entrepreneurs athletes or are they people that are just trying to build something for an industry? Because I feel like athletes would know this better than anyone else. They they know what works and what doesn't. They know the ecosystem, but I'm curious when you look at sort of the people that you're you're speaking to are they athlete entrepreneurs or they just entrepreneurs trying to build something for for the industry coming from the outside in. It's a mixed bag. And yeah, it becomes a mixed bag because you you will see some technical founders that have really, really good solutions. And the only thing that they're missing is a little bit of context, right? But then on the other side, you might have an athlete founder that has a really good idea of how to deploy, but they might not have that technical skillset to build the product. You know, so so the best marriages that I've seen are the ones that you can you can combine technical founders and you know, folks that really know sports in a meaningful way. You know, that that leverages the insights and experiences of both sides. Those partnerships are few and far between. You see much more of the athlete as a mascot or brand ambassador role, but secretly hoping that that you start to see more equal equal footing in some of these partnerships with between athletes and technical founders. At athlete, yes, they can be a brand ambassador because that's also an interesting piece of this. Actually, I'm curious about this because you have I'm assuming when you raise you raise from athletes as well, like this is this is the the group, the the people that you want to serve and you want to help them understand how to get access to these opportunities and you want to put good options in front of them. So even your investors and your LPs technically, they're all marketing channels too, which is which is wild because I can guarantee you if you do like a real estate fund, the people putting money into that are not marketing channels. So it's a totally different dynamic right than just somebody with a capital capital plus access plus influence. So do you is there is there a playbook where you leverage that? Is it useful? Is it irrelevant? Like how does that play into the whole strategy? No, it's it's a really good question. It is very useful, but it's it's a it's a personalized approach, right? And and I'll I'll just keep speaking from my own perspective. They're I probably not probably I know that I left a lot of money on the table and some probals and and all of that stuff on the table just being who I am, right? I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a marketing I'm not an outwardly marketing person. You know, so every athlete that has visibility doesn't necessarily want to use it in a marketing from a marketing perspective. So it's it's it's having an insight to create those different pathways to where if this is what I want to do and I want to be visible, I want to be out front of a company and I want to support in that way. Here's a pathway to do that. If I want to learn how to become more technical, if I want to get engaged in the actual, you know, business operations, there's a pathway for that, right? So so it's it's kind of creating this platform that allows people to not just play where they're at today, but also, you know, form form pathways so that they can get the exposure that they're ultimately looking for so that they can take the next step. So now while your finances are grown within the fund, you as a personal professional are getting opportunities to grow in ways that you really find valuable. And I think it's also important not to not to over index on on payment info into somebody does want to use it. You don't like listening. No, you don't and you you saw have to have core like business fundamentals like I'll give you a give you an extreme example like Kim Kardashian. I think she had trouble raising her fund. So I mean, yes, you can push a product, but I don't think that even when I don't even know how much you spend on an Instagram post with her, but I don't think the the the money spent on an Instagram post with Kim Kardashian, who's obviously like we a bit of me of of of fame and influence, right? Everybody knows her name, but you're not getting positive return on investment on that money spent. You're just getting you're getting association. So I can only imagine like if if a technical co founder or an investor is betting on a product that say has like an athlete founder, an athlete founder alone is not going to make that product successful. And I think that's actually very important because it's again, if you're in this space, you understand it and you're like, listen, it takes more than a name to build a company. But from the outside in, it is surprising to me how many people just assume if you have a following a good company is going to come from that following. It takes like it takes it takes a while to build a brand that resonates takes a while to build the fundamentals that make a good company. And I think that you can over index on that fame to to your detriment 100% it gets you in the game, but ultimately you got to stay there. Yeah, definitely. So I want to just understand because even before we press record, the way that you raise the fund, you're doing a very specific kind of raise. And I think it's really interesting. So talk to me about how you structured this fund. We know the thesis. We know the types of people or the types of companies you're looking at. How did you structure the fund? What was the style of fund? How much you're raising, rolling fund? Is it a one, the raising X million and then you're going to deploy it? Or are you going to constantly be raising? So just like the framework behind the scenes. So we raised in really a two phase approach, right? So we are in the final stages of phase one, which is raising into the holding company, which is our virtue at the way. So so we raised raise a hundred million in equity in this fund to be able to go out and start to deploy into some investments. Come January one, we've already filed people, we've already gotten the process started to launch January one. What's called an interval fund? And what makes an interval fund slightly different than been most other venture funds is is, you know, there's a handful of pieces, a handful of features. The first is a typical venture fund is is only accessible by accredited investors and qualified purchases. The interval fund by design allows us to raise capital from institutions, but also all the way down the investor line to retail investors. So athletes, retail investors, accredited investors, institutions, any, any and everybody can get into into this fund. The second feature that makes it that makes it really, it's just different. It's just different than most other funds is the interval, the interval fund interval speaks to what we chose is a quarterly interval where you as an investor in the fund can actually change your position. Right. So we talked about earlier, you know, you might be into it into an individual company, your capital is locked up for seven years, eight years, you might get into a fund and has a 10-year holding period, your money is locked up for that 10 years. In this interval fund structure, you have the ability to change your position every quarter and the fund can actually redeem those shares. So again, it's a little bit more built-in liquidity. It's kind of built for that retail invested athlete that might have, you know, some liquidity crunch or some something that they need to take some dollars out. They need to pull some of that equity that they've gained and put it to work somewhere else. You can do that on a quarterly basis. Well, we'll also have an interval fund is a secondary trading platform to where even in between those quarterly intervals, we basically have our own private exchange, right. It's hosted and ran by a company we partner with called Templum. And again, as a shareholder in the fund, you have access to liquidity, right. So if you ever needed to pull down some of your equity, you have that opportunity. And the main feature of the Hairable Fund is we're not bound by time and we're not bound by a ceiling that we can raise against, right. So we can literally raise an unlimited amount of funds and the fact that we're not bound by time allows us to be patient capital. So we're not, we're not on a 10 year time horizon. We don't have to, you know, we don't have to close this fund out in 10 years. So we can actually invest in assets that we see growing for the long haul and really build this evergreen portfolio in a way that allows us if we get to a billion or two or three or five billion, we're not, we're not beholden by time or, you know, ceiling. So it's, it's a, innable funds have been around for a while. This is just a a relatively new application of innable fund. I think it's super, I mean, for the investor, it seems so like such a friendly investor friendly fund. And it, I didn't know these existed, to be honest. I have never heard of these before. As somebody is raising the fund, does it not cause like a little bit of stress or, I don't know, like, if you, if you have people that are switching their allocations quarterly as a fund manager and obviously the majority of people here are investors. So they're like, well, that sounds great for me. But for you as a fund manager, how do you manage that? If money's getting pulled out of businesses, being put somewhere else, how do you build plans around that? How do you, how do you create stability around that? So part of it is, is reserving a good amount of capital. About 20% of the fund will be kind of reserved for redemptions. Right. So that's, that's kind of phase one. But phase two, phase two, that is, it's really, if we believe in what we're doing and we believe in the growth in what we're doing, we'll gladly repurpose those shares because we know where they're going. Yeah. No, that makes sense. It's just something I've never, and it's just like the type of raises that I know are like reg A, you reg CF, like, this is just another one of those. Is it just like another legal structure? If somebody wants to set this up, it seems like the perfect solution. Yeah. I mean, there is some, it can become a little bit administratively intensive. And that's one of the reasons we partnered with. There's a group called Sweater that we partnered with to literally run the back into the fund. So we trade the shares as you, as you either redeem them or liquidate their, their based on the net asset value of the fund itself. So Sweater and Templum, they are responsible for coming out with that. We got a third party group to come out that net asset value on a nightly basis. So what we've done is, is we've strategically all flowed as some of the more administrative pieces to people that this is what they do, which allows us to go in and be, you know, the sports asset chain people and go in and find those companies, go and build that value. So we've taken a really collaborative approach to kind of mitigate some of those hurdles that you're talking about. But ultimately for us, it's really centers our access. And it really centers around, you know, making this asset class accessible to the masses, you know, because if you think about it, sports is one of the things that connects us all, right? And whether you pay it in, like athletes will bless sweat and tears, or whether you're a parent that's paying into these clubs and travel leagues, there's a lot of people paying into the sports ecosystem. But don't really have the ability to get a financial return back out of it. You know, this fun represents an opportunity for everyone to, you know, go out and get a meaningful ownership stake in the sports and the ecosystem that they love. I think that's like the last thing that we could just talk about, because I think it's something that's important for you. It's just access to access to opportunities outside of what you're doing. And this has sort of been like a theme that we've spoken about a little bit throughout the, you know, last hour and a bit. But what are the biggest issues with access to opportunities for, I mean, maybe underserved, underrepresented communities? I mean, it's, you know, it's not like an easy answer, but access period. It's getting, it's not just getting opportunities to invest. It's getting opportunities to really understand the different aspects of the sports ecosystem of the, of the business ecosystem. And if you're somebody like myself that, you know, I'm, again, I'm, I try to be very self-aware and I know that the reason that I'm in this position and that, and I have the access that I have is because of what I used to do for a living. And I know, I know how, how rare that, that positioning is, you know, so to be able to, you know, create a platform that, that, you know, it just creates those access points. It creates it, you know, maybe a different investor conversation. It creates maybe a different avenue for someone to build wealth in an area that they know and love and understand. You know, all of those things are really important to me as an individual and it's important to our team because we all have a background in sports and, and we've all, you know, we've all seen and, and we've all kind of had to carve our tea, you know, carve our skill sets out and a bunch of these different backdoor ways because simply because we spent most of our lives with a singular focus, you know, try to become a lead athlete and, you know, for better or worse, there's some, some people in the world respect, respect that process and other people in the world see, see us as entertainers and, and, you know, they, they kind of respect the product, but they don't really pay much attention to the process. So, you know, being people that, that, you know, really earned our stripes in a different way, you know, it'd be in a position to create access for other people to not have to go those, those crazy routes to get to the same place is really important to us. What are the, I mean, so what you're doing, you're creating, you're creating access, you're going to create not just access to opportunities, but when you do that, you teach, you educate, which creates a whole other, I mean, just creates this whole group of people that understand how to invest and then I think it's like a little bit of like a flywheel that you start to create when you create funds like this, which is great and it has to happen. When you think about the industry at large, what are some changes about financial education, about investment, about access things that you sort of saw before you built what you built that were the most frustrating things that you would like to see change if possible. The biggest challenge is just a monolithic approach. You know, whether it be the financial services industry, whether it be the types of investments, whether it be, you know, how most athletes are typically treated in these environments, there's just been this monolithic approach that does not allow for nuance. And the reality is, you know, we all have different skill sets, we all have different lived experiences, we all have different perspectives that make us who we are. And if the financial opportunities don't speak to that and don't resonate with that, you get excluded from the conversation historically. And, you know, I think the more diverse faces, the more diverse voices, perspectives that we can have around the table, avenues, conversations, creating these platforms, which allows for, you know, more nuanced pathways, more nuanced conversations, the more that we have those, the more that we create those access points that everybody feels like they have a seat at the table. And, you know, that's the aim game, that's the aim game for us. So we just want to play a small part in making that happen. I love that, dude. What's, I mean, we've gone through a lot. What's something that I should have asked you about that I didn't know to ask you something that you use, that you feel is for the audience listening, for entrepreneurs, for investors, for athletes, something that's really changed your life that they should hear. Man, I would expect this one. We've gone through a lot. That's why we've gone through. We've gone through a lot today. But, no, I'm just, I'm just wondering if, because again, we've gone through really, I'm just taking a look at everything we've gone through your career, we've gone through investment, we've gone through your fund, we've gone, we've spoken about sort of access and inclusivity, spoken about education, spoken about a lot. So if there's no like other topics, maybe just like some lessons over your life that have been the most impactful. No, I say, I say this, man, it's, we kind of talked about earning success every day. But to me, the thing that I've learned throughout every phase of the journey is there's really like these two, there's these three levels of awareness that are really driven opportunities that I've seen and been able to execute against. It's self-awareness and really understanding who you are, what it is that you bring to the table, why you want to bring it to the table. And just being very clear on the value proposition that you bring, regardless of what the outside world tells you that value proposition is. If you're confident and if you're confident in your value proposition, that's always the 11 starting point. From there, it's around what I call progressive awareness. It's, I'm sorry, a peripheral awareness. It's no matter who you are, what value you bring, there's always going to be outside factors that kind of play a role in whether or not you get a chance to show that value or you get a platform to execute against that value. So as much as you know who you are and what you bring, you've got to understand what's going on around you to know where those pockets are going to be that you can take advantage of. And then the third piece is situational awareness, right? And that's where you get those mental reps around. How do I fit into this situation based on it could be something around what's going on in the economy, like these macro factors that really drive opportunity. And if you can understand what you're trying to get accomplished on those three different levels, you put yourself in a position to show up as the best and highest use of your talents, but in a way that's very strategic and is right size for the moment, right? Because a lot of success, again, all the way back to the draft story, a lot of successes is around getting to the right place at the right time with the right value. And interestingly enough, what I just talked you through was my whole thought process around running routes. I love it. That's so far. It applies everywhere. 100% that applies everywhere. Where if people want to take a look at like the fund you're raising, if they want to take like sort of just consume more like your content, where do you want to send them your website, social, all that. And I'll put in show notes as well, but just drop it so people can hear it. Perfect. Yeah. If you want to learn more about champion venture partners, you check out our website, it's championventuapartners.com. You can also find its own LinkedIn. And our handle on Instagram and Twitter is cvpinvest. Just on a personal level, my website is Marcus Colson.xyz. Somebody got me for the dot com, but I got the last laugh. And then you can find me on Twitter, Instagram. My hand was just my name. If people are listening and they want to invest, what should they know? Who are you looking for? Where do they go to take a look at what the work you're doing outside of like the website? But say they actually want to put money in. Where do they go? You can actually reach right on the website. We've got a form in there that we'll take all of your information and one of our team members will reach out and just get an idea of exactly what you're looking to do, just from a dollar size, from a what your interests are. And once we get you in the flywheel, we will always send you opportunities that are relevant to what you're looking to get accomplished.