January 1, 2025 • 43 mins
Andrew Hawkins, aka Hawk, is a former NFL wide receiver, having played 6 seasons in the league with teams like Bengals, the Browns, and the Patriots. Today, he’s a media personality AND co-founder at StatusPro, an athlete led technology company, which makes software for training and consumer entertainment.
On this episode, Hawk speaks with AfroTech's Will Lucas about how to secure A-List celebrity investors, NFL contracts, and the future of VR gaming.
Follow Will Lucas on Instagram at @willlucas
Learn more at AfroTech.com https://instagram.com/afro.tech
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Always looked at any sector that I've been interested in
as how do I get in there and find my
place in this space?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Right?
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I think, especially for a lot of us that come
from our communities, you don't see yourself in certain situations,
so you think it's not for you, right or you think, oh, man,
I don't have a background that matches what I've seen traditionally,
So let me go look somewhere else. And where I've
kind of always approached it like, well, if I don't
see me in a certain area, that's an opportunity. Let
me go in there and make a space for me,
(00:27):
and I can bring other people with me. Now I
can build a motor around what I do because nobody
here can can match my skill set.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm Will Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money.
I want to introduce you to some of the biggest names,
some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
If you're black and building for.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Simply using text to security your back.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
This podcast is Feeling.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Andrew Hawkins aka Hawk. It's a former NFL wide receiver
for having played six seasons in the league with team
like the Bengals, the Browns, and the Patriots, today's immedia
personality and co founder of Status Pro, an athlete led
technology company which makes software for training and consumer entertainment.
Status Pro has raised more than five million dollars in
(01:14):
Boston enviable list of investors like Lebron, James leyo Mio, Soak,
mav Card Drake, and others. Hall's company is set to
release NFL pro Era, a VR game from Metaquest and PlayStation,
the first officially licensed NFL VR title. I has talked
with so many games becoming more lifelike. How important is
(01:34):
real player data to the experience of gameplay?
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I think if we're going to drill in on what
you know, authenticity looks like in a gaming environment, it
is important, you know, for people to really experience the
speed of certain things.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Now, obviously we want to slow it down for people
to have fun.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
That's that's the chief goal of anything we do from
a gaming product standpoint. But the ability to ramp up
and really see how fast decisions need to be made.
When you're talking about an immersive world like virtual reality,
we think it's super important, right, So we're gonna give
you all the bells and whistles of the feeling you
get in the tunnel when you're running out onto the
field and all the hoop lie and the kind of man,
(02:12):
what if moments that people think about when they think
of playing professional sports. But we're also going to give
you the actual data on the other side of it too,
And I think it just helps rope in the entire
loop of authenticity that we kind of preach a status.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Pro Does that mean more than just the numbers, but
also if a QB is slower, then the player in
the game will actually be slower too.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yes, So it's something we'll build upon.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I think, you know, I mean, I think VR in
itself is it's it's an emerging tech, and so we
understand that our game maybe the first time a lot
of people even experience VR right, and so we're trying
to make sure the product matures alongside the consumer. But
to your point, yeah, that, I mean, there's really an
endless amount of data that we can put into our AI,
(02:55):
which we've done so in a.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Very pointed way, from.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
You know, what plays a specific team would run, what
kind of defenses this is a coach like to call, right,
And we've had the luxury of building that AI, machine
learning and from the very beginning, and so it's going
to mature with the more data sets that are available,
you know, and we use a number of those things,
including player speeds and data. And to your point that
you know, when you embody a player, eventually you will
(03:24):
match the attributes that they are as a player. In
this first version, we've kind of really draw down on
you as the quarterback, so you will be the quarterback
of your favorite team as opposed to taking on the
attributes of other players.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
But that's absolutely in the pipeline.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
So every coach quarterback believes they could have made that
pass at the quarterback blue, you know, on Sunday football
or whatever, Monday night football. Like part of your effort,
I believe is to help better understand what it takes
to compete at the highest levels, you know, as you know,
playing a first person game from a first person perspective?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Does this help so that like so all those people who.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Believe, ah Man I could have made that, you know,
does this help solve that problem for real athletes?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I would say yes and no. I would say yes
and no.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I think we use it on the training side, right,
so we can simulate that decision making for an NFL quarterback,
and things will move almost one to one at the
speed that you would see in an actual game. But
if people had the ability to process information and make
those decisions that way, they wouldn't need a VR game
to feel what it's like to be a NFL quarterback
because you would be that right. And even by NFL
(04:31):
quarterback standards, there are quarterbacks that are starting quarterbacks that
can't make decisions and process as fast as Tom Brady, right.
So it's definitely a sliding scale. And so you know,
we can simulate that for elite level athletes to be
able to get as close to a one to one
experience as we can get. But I think for the
gaming side of things, man, I mean, we want to
(04:51):
have it fun. Like I said, that is our chief
goal with that, And yeah, it'll be intense. You'll definitely
get the feel of all the different factors that go
in on every single play, and you will probably have
a higher respect for quarterbacks. But if you're not having fun,
you're not gonna come back. So we definitely slow it
down a little bit so that we can keep you
coming back for more.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
So I've heard you say this a couple of times.
You know that you really want to help keep people
getting understanding for how fast the game moves for people
who won't will never have that experience of being on
an NFL you know, grid Iron talk about if you
can make it relatable to us, you know, how fast
the game actually moves versus what we see sitting in
the seats.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, And like I said, man, I'm gonna keep drilling
down on this, the speed of the game is ridiculous, man,
Like I mean, it's I would say, in snap second
you have to make decisions, and it's honestly even faster
than that.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So that's why you practice so much. You practice so much.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
In a professional sports environment that your instincts kick in
and that way you can react even faster than it
takes for you to cognitively think of what to do next.
But in the gaming for everybody, I think the thing
that you'll get most out of the experience that we're
creating with NFL Pro Era is that you just really
can see all the factors and it is very gratifying
to make a play. It is gratifying to you know,
(06:08):
complete a pass or throw a touchdown or get a
first down when you consider all the different factors that
are into a game, and so it won't be the
speeds of an NFL game, and you.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Have the ability to ramp it up or ramp it down.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
But again, all the different factors that go into each
and every game and the experience of the screaming fans.
You get the high points, you get the huge DN
coming right at you, and that's scary in and of itself.
So you have to think about what do I do
now in the face of the most fearful looking human
coming at me at car like speeds, right, And so
that's the really cool part is that that hasn't been
(06:43):
democratized before and us being able to us being former
athletes and being able to put other people in those
shoes is a really cool thing because you get to
show people the experience that you have had your whole
life and may.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Even be a second nature to you.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Just talk about this leap you've made, because there's not
a lot of athletes who make the leap from professional
sports into high tech and so if you can give
the bridge for us, like how you got here versus
where you were, and we're going to talk about your
sports career, but I want to talk about how you
made that leap.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Well, I mean that's a great question, and I think
they all kind of tie in together. And I would say,
how I got to tech, you know, high tech where
I'm at from my career, was that I feel like
in tech tech is you know, I talk about this
democratizing and experience, and I think I've always looked at
any sector that I've been interested in as how do
I get in there and find my place in this space?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Right?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I think especially for a lot of us that come
from our communities, you don't see yourself in certain situations,
so you think it's not for you, right, or you think, oh, man,
I don't have a background that matches what I've seen traditionally,
so let me go look somewhere else. And where I've
kind of always approached it like, well, if I don't
see me in a certain area, that's an opportunity. Let
me go in there and make a space for me,
(08:01):
and I could bring other people with me. Number one
and number two. Now I can build a mote around
what I do because nobody here can can match my
skill set. And so you know, when I was playing,
it was that same thing. It was like I saw
an opportunity that you know, I felt like me being
an athlete and wanting to work in sports business even
prior to me playing professional football, there was no value
(08:23):
add from the fact that I was an athlete. There
was nothing to say like, well, what about your experience
makes it special here?
Speaker 2 (08:28):
And so I was like, I'm gonna have to create that.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I'm gonna have to create a way to value the
expertise of somebody who has seen this from the ground
level and build a company that way, you know. And
so that's what originally got me there, And as you
would imagine, it was a long road of slowly putting
the pieces together to get to where we are today.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
And I'm glad you said that, because, you know, we've
heard these horror stories of athletes who you know, make
a bunch of money and then they got boys who
want to start businesses and invest in a whole bunch
of real estate that don't get scoped out and do
no due diligence and you know, rim shops and the
whole thing. So can you talk about how, from your perspective,
how athletes are getting smarter. Maybe it's the people around
(09:09):
them so that they're making better decisions with their capital
and to deploy that for actual wealth generation when they're
off the field.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
I think the norm has changed, and I think you
know that was always even my goal with what I
was doing.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
I wanted to, you.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Know, hopefully show other people that may be in a
similar situation of mind to be like, well, if he
can do that with his resources, or he can do
that with his stature of like profile of athletes, imagine
what I could do with mine, right, And I think
you see in a shift where before it was we
want our athletes just to be athletes. We want them
to focus on football, focus on basketball, focus on baseball,
(09:47):
track boxing, whatever it is, and that's what we That
is the norm, and anybody who does anything.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Outside of that was looked at sideways.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Well, I think now in this age of more than
an athlete and a lot of the work that has
been done and shown by athletes, from them being activists,
them being investors, them going back to school and all
these things, Now you look at an athlete that only
does their sport and you kind of look at them sideways, like, yo,
what are you waiting on?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
You better get going. This window is closing.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And I think you know that kind of maturation of
what the norm is for an athlete has shifted a
lot of things for the industry.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
What's making the norm change? Is it just representation to
people like you. I think everything develops. I think everything
people get smarter in any scenario. So if you look
at me right like I think, people sometimes think, oh, man,
this is a really smart guy because he was able
to do certain things.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
And I am smart. I do believe that. But at
the same time, I come from a family of athletes.
I'm a third generation athlete, right. My grandfather was a boxer.
My dad played Division one football and sign D one.
My older brother played ten years in the National Football Leager.
I got cousins, And so I've seen those horror stories
you've talked about.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I've seen them up close and personal.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
And I've always approach sport like a business, right, And
I've seen where a sport could use somebody up and
there's nothing to show for it, you know. And so
for me, when I went through my experience, it was like, well,
I'm gonna do it this way, and because I seen
somebody else make mistakes, I can kind of take those
answers to the test and re craft it for myself.
And I think for everybody else it's much of the same,
(11:21):
and now when you look at your peers, you could
see the.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Benefit of it.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Like my goal after five years of playing, I'm coming
up on five years of after retirement, I wanted to
I wanted people to know me and not know that
I played professional football.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
That was a goal that I had when I retired,
you know.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And it's really cool now for people to say that
and see like, oh man, I didn't know he played
in the NFL.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
That's crazy, right, that's because I'm hitting that goal.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And I think for other players, they see that and
they build upon it, right, And it's like, well, I
want to be known for something more than what people
are defining or is my skill set or what people
may have known me for the start.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
The institution that surrounds athletes when they come in the
league young, and we've heard, you know, horror stories around
like you know, player associations, and they weren't always set
up to help people thrive outside of the field, outside
of the court.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Are they are.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Player associations in your experience across all major sports? Are
they what's happening for them to do better to protect
and help educate those young athletes who come in with
little financial experience often and little, you know, familiar resources
to protect them.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Man, that's a great question. I think.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I think more can always be done, right, I think,
you know, like I said, as an athletes get smarter
as the game changes. And right now it's the wild,
wild West, man. I mean, you've got college athletes making
tens of millions of dollars in IL right and signing
for deals that you know, quite frankly, I barely made
as a professional athlete, you know, And so it's happened
earlier and earlier in the process. And so players associations
(12:54):
or anything set up to aid and in athletes development,
they they have a lot of work to do to
kind of catch up in that process, you know. I
think for young athletes, I always tell them, they, man,
take your time. It took a very long time for
you to make your money. I know it seems like
a nineteen or twenty two or whatever it is, that
the money came fast. But this is a lifelong process.
(13:16):
You started playing basketball or football when you were eight
years old. That's a decade, you know, And so it
would be silly to not try to put that same
kind of work in of how you should deploy that capital,
how you should protect that capital, how you should spend
that capital, or where you should develop your skills outside
of it, to make sure you're making the most out
of that capital or that opportunity. And unfortunately, in sports,
(13:39):
athletes are opportunities because they have the least amount of experience,
but they have the most amount of money. And if
you've ever tried to convince anybody to give you money,
it's a hard process. And the easiest people to convince
to give you money are people that don't know much
as much about the value or haven't had the experience
of understanding how hard already really was for them to
(14:01):
get that. And so to your point, there should be
more of a protection coming from people that are in
this space, especially for a lot of the kids, like
I said, that come from our communities, or black and
brown faces that don't come from a lot of finances.
You know, I think more things should be in place
not only to protect, but also teach and mature and
not make them choices. And it's tough to make people
with a lot of money do certain things. But at
(14:22):
the same time, it's so important in the overall and
longevity of their development and their protection of this incredible
opportunity that is playing professional sports.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, I mean I love that answer because I was
going to ask this question. I'm going to ask it,
but you just gave me a little slight twist to
the question I'm going to ask. Because you've got this
diamond list of investors who've put money in your own business,
people like lebron Naomi Osaka Drake and Jimmy I Bean,
mav Carter manim anymore. But it's an all star list
(14:55):
of investors. And I would imagine because we have this conversation,
these people are more than just deep pockets, but there's
some other use that they provide to the business. Because
you can probably get money in a lot of places,
but you want specific help. So can you talk about
how they may or may not be involved in helpful
to the company and to your mission.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, I mean, I.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Think they've been paramount to the successes not only my company,
I would even say me professionally a lot of those names,
because you know, like you said, these are people that
are respected business wise and the moves they make and
the things that they put their money in support behind,
and so that stamp of approval that carries weight when
you're going into certain rooms, you know. I mean, we
(15:40):
had venture capital firms or investors or companies that we've
tried to partner with early on that laught out out
of the room that are now sending us emails once
a week trying to talk to us merely off the
fact of who's involved now.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
And I want to chase what they're.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Getting into, because those people are successful, you know, And
I think we were very tactical and strategic and in
that way of just how we kind of approached them
and understood how do you make one plus one equal three?
How do you understand what people like that are looking,
where they're looking to go, and how you can aid
in that thing. And again, we are definitely the benefactors
(16:16):
in that relationship.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
But these are people that I've.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Worked with for years, and I think the reputation that
I had with them went a long way. And once
it was time to do our thing and we had
an offering I didn't they didn't have. They didn't question,
which is a big thing when you're investing, is well,
how do you work? How how much time are you
going to put in? How serious are you because of
(16:41):
what I had done for them and in those moments,
in my previous work responsibilities, that was out the gate.
So now we could just look at the opportunity, and
the opportunity in and of itself speaks for itself.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Yeah, So let's talk about that because I'm interested because
there are so many people who would love to have
and seizetrategically strategic reasons why a Drake on their cap
table makes sense or so I can make sense for them.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
How do you.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Position yourself to be successful when you're trying to approach
a celebrity investor?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
If you're not, it's a good question.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
If you're not, how do you That's a good question,
I would say, and I kind of alluded to it,
the one, the one plus one equal in three.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Right. Not every celebrity.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Is going to be good for your business. Not every
celebrity is going to be good for your business. Not
every celebrity is going to make sense for your business,
and vice versa. You're not going to make sense for them,
you know. I mean, as all stars our roster is,
we've had celebrities tell us no, not my thing, I'm good, right,
even though we see the strategic value so I think
(17:53):
it's understanding and being very self aware in that way
of how exactly this equation is going to come together,
and to your point, like making sure the value of
whatever you're looking to get matches up well with what
you already already have. We didn't approach any of those
names first. They weren't the first people we went to,
(18:14):
you know, And I think a lot of times when
you're approaching people of high name value, there has to
be an offering, like their name means something, and I
think that's why you approach them in the first place.
And so whatever the scenario is, the situation is, or
the opportunity is, it has to make sense.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
For where they are.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
And we were able to get some already really good investors.
They didn't have to take on a brunt of the
public value in their namesake to just carry the company
solely on their backs, and I think that matters, you know.
So I think it was getting the offering right first
before we approached them was probably the.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Best thing we could do.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
And in that it was the opportunity for you know,
getting an NFL license. We had that opportunity coming up
lined up, chasing it, you know, we had discussions with
some of the platforms in the VR companies who can
kind of confirm like, hey.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
This is a big opportunity.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
We had other VC firms that were lined up incredible
in this space, and so I think all those things
factored in to us landing where we ultimately did.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
You know, I love that you said, you know it's
one plus one equaling three. I remember there's an interview
mav car to have done with Magic Johnson, and I
don't know if you saw, but he was talking. Magic
was talking about like, you know, when you bring me
a deal, it's got to be a big deal because
for the amount of work I got to put in
to make something go from one hundred thousand to a million,
I might as well go from a million to a billion.
(19:38):
It's the same amount of work. So the deal size
has to be big enough. And so I'm equating that
with how you pitched you know, pro Era and like status,
Like how do you do that when you're pitching a
drake who's got you know, enough money or is there
such thing as enough money? Who's got a lot of money?
(19:59):
Or Lebron's a lot of money and you know a
couple of zeros don't move the needle for them. So
how do you pitch the grand opportunity here to people
who already.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Have all they you know, could need. Yeah, that's that's
another great question.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So I would say it in this way. If you
called me and say, hey, I want you to do
my podcast for and I'm gonna give you a dollar
right now, it's a deal. Now it's I'm gonna spend
a certain amount of time doing your podcast and you're
gonna give me a dollar, I'm gonna say no, right
because it's that the work doesn't seem to match what
the dollar amount is. It's one dollar, right, I could
(20:37):
do other things to get a dollar. If you said, hey,
I'm gonna go do this podcast with somebody else, and
when I do it, I'm gonna give you a dollar.
If you give me, you know, ten cent, that sounds
like it's worthy it because I don't got to do
much work for that dollar, right, it's on you.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
And if I think that.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
You're gonna do this podcast, you got that podcast lined up,
it's scheduled and it's going no matter what, and I don't.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Have to do much. That's what it means to be
an investor.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
I think a lot of times people approach the athletes
or the celebrities or the big time executives wanting them
to put the amount.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Of work into their product that a founder is doing.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Now, there is going to be some over the top value,
but there's value already in the namesake, because that's why
you're approaching them in the first place, because that dollar
is not the same as their dollar, because they have
a name value that also unlocks a lot of opportunities
for you. So that in and of itself is worth
the work, and you have to be able to know
the process and a plan for making that work for you.
(21:35):
So I think with me and our investors specifically and
my partner Trure, who is amazing, you know, I think
that we are just two guys that we come from nothing.
We do everything ourselves. We don't expect much. Like the
terms of engagement are pretty straightforward. We're going to do
the work, and as long as an investor I feel
(21:58):
like understands and sees that and they get to see
the opportunity because to the example you use with magic,
there's not that level of work that goes into it.
We're gonna do the work and the moments we need you,
will give you a call, but they'll know that. Man,
they're calling me. It's one of It's a situation that
is going to only multiply what the opportunity is.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Can you describe the timeline, you know, between your enterprise
product that you licensed with NFL teams for their actual training,
and then the consumer product that will come out soon,
and then the timeline alongside when those investors came in,
so did the Lebrons, and then Naomi Osaka's come in
when they saw your enterprise product or this is fire,
we gotta get it in the Cowboys locker room, we
(22:42):
gotta get it in the Lion Lions locker room, or
they saw you had that and then they said, oh,
there's consumer play here. Can you talk about how that
lined up?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, I would say they definitely came in for the
opportunity for the consumer play, but it all ties together.
So we started off on the enterprise level working with
NFL teams to prepare them for NFL games, and you know,
that gave us a base foundation for our technology, and
we just kind of continue to build that because that
was something we knew and so inherently from our experience
of being athletes of knowing exactly how a receiver could
(23:15):
get better with this technology. Troy is a quarterback, knowing
how quarterback can get better. You know, I've spent time
as a coach as a scout for the Detroit Lions,
like understanding how the technology could help organizations. It helped
us build a foundation and then as the opportunities arise,
we know which way we can kind of craft and
use the foundation to go in other spaces. And on
(23:38):
the consumer play, it was essentially players would get in
the headset and they wouldn't take it off and they
were like, Yo, this is fun, and that's not a
statement you hear from a player that's typically watching film.
This is fun and you're learning about what you're going
to see on a Sunday. So that was like the
indicator for us that we knew we had something there.
Because if a player who sees this scenario every day
(23:59):
and had for fifteen years, it's saying that it's like
it is on Sunday and it's fun, imagine.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
What a consumer will place.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
And then you know, after that is when we started
to communicate that it started to to show what the
opportunity we felt was on the consumer side. And you know,
it's been years in the making. Troy and I first connected,
I want to say, in twenty sixteen or seventeen, and
here we are in twenty twenty two, you know, so
it's been it's been that long of a process, that
(24:29):
that long of us thinking about this craftiness, letting the
market do what it does, and then also relying on
a little bit of luck.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
To put us in the right position.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
So when you think about gamifying things, let's talk about
gaming and training. You know, even at the consumer level, like,
how do you think gamifying exercise and training? You know,
when I'm if you're bringing up a kid to be,
you know, an all star athlete, how do you imagine
gamifying that experience in working out and training might evolve
(24:59):
over time?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I think it becomes second nature a little bit. And
then there's a reason why we continue to drilling on
the fun aspect of it, because you know, I view
our consumers early on in our consumer product, which will
be coming out in fall twenty twenty two, they're much
like I have a ten year old son who is
obsessed with the game of football, naturally, because again we
come from a family of football players.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
But I am.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Anyone who knows me knows I am not to push
somebody to go play football and do this and do that.
It's not my thing. But what happened was, you know, first,
you let him have fun with it.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
I'm not out there making them run through drills at
seven years old and making them run stadium steps to say, hey,
you got a legacy. It's not that you give him
a ball and you let him play catch with his
dad and he enjoys playing catch with his dad, and
he's having fun. And because he has fun in it,
it motivates him to get better. But he's passing the
time by having fun, but he's naturally becoming better at
what he's doing. So I think when I look when
(25:55):
I look at the VR XR technology and specifically what
we're doing in gaming and the training opportunity is played
football my whole life.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
It kept me in shape.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
As a thirty six year old man now who is
not playing football every day, it is a lot harder
for me to stay in shape and to focus on
actually being in shape. I would love for a way
for me to have fun in doing it. And so
when you think about XR and training and that opportunity
and getting better if gamifying it embeds the fund right
in it, and by embedding the fund that becomes the
(26:25):
chief focus. Anytime you're having fun, that's kind of where
your mind goes to and you're not thinking about the
calories you're burning, You're not thinking about how you're learning
the sport, you're not thinking about how you're staying fit
on a day to day because the game of it
all is keeping your mind occupied, and then everything else
becomes a value beyond that.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You know. I kind of asked a question similar to
this when we talked about, you know, getting a Lebron's
attention or Drake's attention.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
But there are people who believe that their tech.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Is good enough to get licensed by major partners, like
you know, sports teams in any category. What levers do
you imagine are the fastest ways to success to getting
the meeting and also being taken seriously?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Like what are the in rolls for people who.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Are not getting not hawk you know, to how do
you pick up the phone and call the Detroit Lions?
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Like how does that happen? Like what happens there? Where
do I need to be? What conference do I need
to go to It's tough. It's tough. I would say
a lot of it is learning the industry, right.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So I would love to think that my name rings
so many bells I could just pick up the phone
and call somebody and make it happen.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Unfortunately that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Like I said, I started interning with the Detroit Lions,
and two thousand and eight I was a scouting intern
right and then beyond that I went and played in
the Canadian Football League. And throughout this whole process, I'm
shaking hands, I'm taking meetings. I'm telling people when I'm
get done playing, I want to do X, Y and
Z in the off season, olding out the marketing materials
(28:02):
for my sports agency or for my agent's sports agency
for him, I'm his marketing lead as well. I am also,
you know, applying to Octagon's internships. I'm doing Underarmer's internships.
I'm going to intern with Maverick Carter while I'm the
number one receiver for the Cleveland Browns in an offseason.
And it's not just in nature like I'm I'm getting coffee.
(28:24):
I'm people that I'm interning with. It takes them a
month and a half to know that I play in
the NFL because I'm I'm doing all the things naturally
that an intern would do. I'm setting those groundstick because
I'm learning. I want to see how the process works.
I want to shake the hands. I want to understand
this thing and come up with a plan and strategy
because in this business, specifically in the sports business, you
(28:46):
really only get one opportunity at it, right, And so
it's probably not the best just to pick up the
phone and call the Detroit Lions, because now they're always
gonna remember you just called the Detroit Lions. You had
no idea what our process was. You don't know what
our KPIs are, you don't know the right people to
talk to. You don't call it the scouting office trying
to get a licensing deal, right, And so I would
say engrossing yourself in the area that you're looking to
(29:09):
get into and understand that it is very hard to
make those calls and get those deals, and people are
gonna want to see that you are a subject matter
expert in the space that you're in.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
And I think that's what I've spent every minute.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
That I wasn't on a field over the last decade
That's what I've spent doing and that's what my partner
has been doing as well. And I think we've benefited
greatly that it was time for us to do our thing.
We had a track record, we had connections that people
we connected with ten years ago are now in a
position to make decisions or put us in the right
place or confidently say, Yo, you should talk to Troy,
(29:43):
you should talk to Hawk because I've known them in
their work for ten years and what they're doing, what
they're about, and it's at least worth hearing them out.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
So I did that.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
So I'm excited about this game. I want you to
talk about it a little bit and like what makes
this metaquest and PlayStation v our game unlike other football
arcade games, Like, you know, what's the difference.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
I mean, besides the fact that it's NFL license, which
is the big one, right, I would say the insights
from it. I mean, this is this is a direct
brainch out of me and my partner, and I think,
you know, with the things I do creatively or the
things that I'm into creatively, I want that extra level
of authenticity to it, you know, Like I want to
(30:27):
see the film about Detroit from a Detroit director.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I want somebody.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Who is in there giving me that film, right, I
want to see all those things. And in gaming and
in sports specifically, that's what we were after. This is
our life. This is I'm trying to explain. I remember,
like the very first one we're pitching it, I'm telling
people about what it feels like to walk out of
a tunnel. It's one of the coolest ex experiences I've
ever had as an athlete is coming out to seventy
(30:54):
thousand screaming fans.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And in our game, we have.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
The opportunity to bring that to life and show somebody that.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So I
think the little things like that that we're we're giving
you real insights from things we've experienced and putting them
in creatively are the things that will make it different.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Our company in and of itself.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I mean we are I think roughly forty five now,
and of the forty five, I think twenty one of
them are former athletes, college or pro. And that's from
the systems engineer to the creative designer on the game,
to the marketing to the business dev I mean it's
permeated throughout the company. And the reason for that is
we thought, like, yo, if we can typically athletes don't
(31:38):
have a voice in sports anything, especially sports gaming anywhere.
But imagine if we had that insight, as well as
the experts of gamers, as well as the engineering expertise,
as well as the marketing of all these places in
one room where everyone has a voice, we can create
something that is above the status quo. That was the
whole impetus around the company, and I think in our
(32:00):
experience that's what's going to make the difference and what
people will feel of when they take the headset off
and say, dang, I do feel like I know what
it's like to be in the NFL game now, right,
And I mean that's our ultimate goal.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
You know, I'm interested, you know, because you've played it
at the professional level and how much on field tech
there is, like we see and we've heard, you know,
they may mic somebody up, and so now we get
the experience of hearing what it sounds like, you know,
when you're on the field or on the court, but
from the stuff that the fan will never see or
(32:33):
may never see, how much like actual on your body
and on field technology is happening to, you know, measure
how fast somebody is running or where they are on
the field, or like what's happening that we don't get
a chance to be exposed to.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of prototyping.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
There's a lot of testing that goes on in both
a practice and a game environment.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
The NFL is pretty innovative.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
I mean professional sports NBA is, I mean, they're extremely
innovative as well.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
So and it's funny like that's kind of how I
got my first foray in the tech.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
I would consult while I was playing for sports analytics
companies that would create this incredible tech, you know, but
it was always a gap between the tech and the
people who were applying it, meaning the coaches who are
you know, it's just a very different world. They use
a rabbit's foot more than they would use analytics in
a game like this is my lucky underwear.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
That's what they use in a game environment.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Right, And so I would approach it like, okay, I
can act as a bridge between understanding the technology and
the people applying it.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
And I mean there is chips that.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Every NFL player wears that measures their XI coordinates of
where they are in the field, how fast they move,
they're forced from left to right, from right to left.
I mean in a practice environment, we wear the same thing.
There is cameras that also just are taking that footage
and also gathering.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
All that data.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
There is, you know, obviously the ability to do even
more from a technology standpoint, but you want to make
sure that the rules are still in place and fans
are able to experience whatever it is they're doing. So
all the things that they're testing and doing, even though
they're not public, they will be eventually. It's just a
slow rollout for which acts actually possible. And I think
(34:22):
that's the cool thing about what we're doing is because
we do call ourselves the future of the field because
we're combining a lot of those things and again giving
it to a fan and that's a really cool thing.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
So when you say like there's chips on players, I mean,
are you saying like glorified like apple air tags or
tiles are on players to measure these things? Yeah, like
RFID chips.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Every player in their shoulder pads has a dime sized
chip that measures where they are at all times on
the field and the speed of it and you could
take that data. And originally how we start as a
company is we had access to that data and just
in the data alone, we were able to create three
D simulated plays.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
So we didn't need any video.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
We didn't need to see what happened because we could
just get the data from those chips and tell you
exactly what's happening on the play.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Wow, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
How do you because you're doing you know, media now,
which I think is really interesting, your great social media presence.
How are you leveraging media for business success? Because I
imagine that may be a play because when Lebron moved
to LA, people were talking about, you know, this is
you know, he's on the down side of his career,
so LA is a smart move because he wants to
(35:38):
be a media and TV so it wasn't just an
athletic decision. So I'm interested in the decisions you make
and being on making TV shows or online internet web shows.
What's the play for an athlete like yourself and what
are you shooting for? If I can just say.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
It, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
So I think two part number one, what I'm doing
now has always been my goal since I've been a kid,
I wanted to do business. I wanted to do business
in an area that I felt like I was an
expert at and that I knew more than anybody else,
and I feel like sports is that thing. So when
I retired, I actually wasn't going to go in the media.
My older brother went into media. I wasn't really into
(36:19):
it at the time. There was a specific formula you
had to follow to get an opportunity. You had to
speak a certain way, look a certain way, do a
certain thing. And not that I'm not a chameleon and
I can't do that. I just didn't really have the
energy that if I want to be one way one day,
I wanted the ability to do that. So I wasn't
going in the media. When I retired, I walked White
in to start working with Maver Carter after having intern
(36:40):
for them while I was playing, and an opportunity came along,
and he was the one that was like, yo, you
should do it because as someone who knows a lot
of former athletes and I've gone through this with a
lot of people, you might like it and you might
be good at it, and ultimately it also helps you
keep a face card, which is important when you're trying
to make business move, which I know you inevitably want
to do. So while I was playing in the NFL,
(37:02):
I would take I would get fifty two one hundred
game jerseys every year after the season, and I would
sign them and I would write handwritten letters to people
that I wanted to connect with or that I was
impressed by, and I would send it to them in
the mail with an email like, YO, if you ever
want to get coffee, let me know. And that was
a networking thing for me because I thought I knew
people thought it was cool that you know, there's only
(37:23):
two people that could say to the start receivers for
the Cleveland Browns, there's thirty thousand people that can say
they're former players, right, So I'm like, well, let me
do this now so that they'll remember when I was
at my height, where my mind was at, and so
when I need them and they're at their height.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
You know, they'll keep that relationship going.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
So I was doing that, and then the media thing
for me, it was like, well, that gave me that
same kind of face card. Right, It's cool to get
an email from someone you've seen on television or wear
in a meeting and I might be on the background
somewhere that helps me at least get an email back.
So even if I'm asking for something or I'm trying
to do a deal, and even if it's a no,
a fast no is helpful to me, you at least
give me that courtesy because I have a certain face
(38:02):
card to it.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
And so that's what was my original goal around.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Media, was to use it to benefit my business career,
and I'm what we're doing now is status pro and
I still think that's the same thing. And in that
I just kind of made the decision that I'm just
gonna be me wherever I decide that is from a
media standpoint. Eventually, it will again just be projects that
are close to my heart that I think there's a
(38:28):
need for, that I think there's a space for, and
that Ultimately, I never wanted to get into the media
side of things to have to hang on it solely
and completely.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
As a football.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Player, you are hired and fired very very frequently, and
you have no say so of when your family picks
up and moves, and so when I got into the
media side, I was just very adamant that I didn't
want that career to be that way. I wanted to
have the freedom to say and do what I wanted
when I wanted, and so I passed up on a
lot of great deals media wise, because I don't want
(39:00):
to get into the rat race of Hey, we love
you today, Tomorrow we don't like you anymore. Now you
don't have a job, right, So.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
I want to dig one level deeper before we get
out of here. And you mentioned earlier that you know
a dollar from a Lebron James is not just a
dollar because his name has value, and that thing there
I want to equate to what you just talked about
with media and how you're leveraging that for a business success.
Outside of media, there's so many folks who are building
(39:31):
businesses and it's all really comes down to storytelling. There's
so many folks who are building businesses that if they
could figure out how to leverage stories and personalities in
social on stage, in front of people, etc. That could
help their business. And So if you could leave us
with some wisdom on how people who might be funny,
(39:54):
who might be good looking, who might be what charismatic,
how they should see that as a value or find
that value to add that to the puzzle of building
a successful company.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Absolutely, man, I think you you kind of nailed it, right,
Like you have to use all those things that are
at your disposal.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
To get to where you are.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
And a lot of time, especially early on your company,
is you're there, they are various synonymous people are gonna
follow those things. Or it's like an artist when you
when you find an artist nobody has heard about, and
you like their store and you like where they come from,
you write where they represent. You're telling everybody about the
artists you gotta check You gotta check her out, man,
she's amazing, right, or whatever that is.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
And eventually they hit mainstream and you.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Know you you probably now looking for the next one. Right.
Businesses are the same way, right, They want to they
want to connect with you and your story number one.
But using your talents to hit those pillars are super important.
And I say for businesses, there's three things that you
got to hit to make yourself a home run. Number
one is it do you have an incredible product? Is
(40:58):
your product better than everybody else's?
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Right?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Do you have something that is just the home run
of a product that's aggress Number one?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Number two is do you have an ability to get
the deals done.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
And we've talked about all these things on this podcast
so far as do you understand the industry that you're in,
can you make those calls, do you know the right
people to talk to to continue to push that ball
down the court, because those things are important in those deals.
And number three is your ability to amplify. Do you
have an ability to when you say something, get it
out in front of people right, because then those people
(41:30):
are going to follow the check marks of is your
product great? And some people can be successful with two
of those things. You've seen people with terrible products, but
they got the right investors and the right amplication and
they got the right deals.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
You see people with.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Great deals, great product, and nobody to amplify it, but
eventually it bubbles up. If you have one of three,
it's gonna be tough. You need at least two or three.
If you have three of three, you got the home run.
And when you use your talents for whether you're good looking,
whether you have other talents, whether you're funny, to push
to your product, that helps you in the amplification side
(42:03):
of things.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
And it's a very very important, important pillar. And that
kind of determines its speed. I wish you scale or
become ubiquitous.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro
Tech on the Black Effect podcast network in iHeartMedia. It's
produced by Morgan Debonn and me Will Lucas, with additional
production support by Love Beachim and Rissus Lewis. Special thank
you to Michael Davis, Jermaine hall I, Vanessa Serrano. Learn
more about my guests and other tech dis reps and
innovators at afrotech dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
The video first of this episode will drop the Black Tech.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
Green Money on YouTube next week, So tap in enjoining
Black Tech Green Money, leave us a five star rating
on iTunes, Go get your money, Piece of Love. Check
me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast Festival happening Saturday,
April twenty seventh in Atlanta. Live podcasts are on deck
(43:12):
from some of your favorite shows, including this one, Black
Tech Green Money, and also some of the best podcasts
in the game like Deeply Well with Debbie Brown and
Carefully Reckless. Atlanta is one of my favorite cities in
the world. I've lived there for two years actually. In
my worldview, seeing us successful in every industry and not
having any limits on our potential largely was shaved by
Atlanta to to be there with you doing this podcast
(43:33):
talking about how we build or leverage technology to build wealth.
Come on, man, doesn't get better. I want to see
you there. Get your tickets today at Black Effect dot
comback Slash Podcast Festival
Always looked at any sector that I've been interested in
as how do I get in there and find my
place in this space?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Right?
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I think, especially for a lot of us that come
from our communities, you don't see yourself in certain situations,
so you think it's not for you, right or you think, oh, man,
I don't have a background that matches what I've seen traditionally,
So let me go look somewhere else. And where I've
kind of always approached it like, well, if I don't
see me in a certain area, that's an opportunity. Let
me go in there and make a space for me,
(00:27):
and I can bring other people with me. Now I
can build a motor around what I do because nobody
here can can match my skill set.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm Will Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money.
I want to introduce you to some of the biggest names,
some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
If you're black and building for.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Simply using text to security your back.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
This podcast is Feeling.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Andrew Hawkins aka Hawk. It's a former NFL wide receiver
for having played six seasons in the league with team
like the Bengals, the Browns, and the Patriots, today's immedia
personality and co founder of Status Pro, an athlete led
technology company which makes software for training and consumer entertainment.
Status Pro has raised more than five million dollars in
(01:14):
Boston enviable list of investors like Lebron, James leyo Mio, Soak,
mav Card Drake, and others. Hall's company is set to
release NFL pro Era, a VR game from Metaquest and PlayStation,
the first officially licensed NFL VR title. I has talked
with so many games becoming more lifelike. How important is
(01:34):
real player data to the experience of gameplay?
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I think if we're going to drill in on what
you know, authenticity looks like in a gaming environment, it
is important, you know, for people to really experience the
speed of certain things.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Now, obviously we want to slow it down for people
to have fun.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
That's that's the chief goal of anything we do from
a gaming product standpoint. But the ability to ramp up
and really see how fast decisions need to be made.
When you're talking about an immersive world like virtual reality,
we think it's super important, right, So we're gonna give
you all the bells and whistles of the feeling you
get in the tunnel when you're running out onto the
field and all the hoop lie and the kind of man,
(02:12):
what if moments that people think about when they think
of playing professional sports. But we're also going to give
you the actual data on the other side of it too,
And I think it just helps rope in the entire
loop of authenticity that we kind of preach a status.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Pro Does that mean more than just the numbers, but
also if a QB is slower, then the player in
the game will actually be slower too.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yes, So it's something we'll build upon.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I think, you know, I mean, I think VR in
itself is it's it's an emerging tech, and so we
understand that our game maybe the first time a lot
of people even experience VR right, and so we're trying
to make sure the product matures alongside the consumer. But
to your point, yeah, that, I mean, there's really an
endless amount of data that we can put into our AI,
(02:55):
which we've done so in a.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Very pointed way, from.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
You know, what plays a specific team would run, what
kind of defenses this is a coach like to call, right,
And we've had the luxury of building that AI, machine
learning and from the very beginning, and so it's going
to mature with the more data sets that are available,
you know, and we use a number of those things,
including player speeds and data. And to your point that
you know, when you embody a player, eventually you will
(03:24):
match the attributes that they are as a player. In
this first version, we've kind of really draw down on
you as the quarterback, so you will be the quarterback
of your favorite team as opposed to taking on the
attributes of other players.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
But that's absolutely in the pipeline.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
So every coach quarterback believes they could have made that
pass at the quarterback blue, you know, on Sunday football
or whatever, Monday night football. Like part of your effort,
I believe is to help better understand what it takes
to compete at the highest levels, you know, as you know,
playing a first person game from a first person perspective?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Does this help so that like so all those people who.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Believe, ah Man I could have made that, you know,
does this help solve that problem for real athletes?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I would say yes and no. I would say yes
and no.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I think we use it on the training side, right,
so we can simulate that decision making for an NFL quarterback,
and things will move almost one to one at the
speed that you would see in an actual game. But
if people had the ability to process information and make
those decisions that way, they wouldn't need a VR game
to feel what it's like to be a NFL quarterback
because you would be that right. And even by NFL
(04:31):
quarterback standards, there are quarterbacks that are starting quarterbacks that
can't make decisions and process as fast as Tom Brady, right.
So it's definitely a sliding scale. And so you know,
we can simulate that for elite level athletes to be
able to get as close to a one to one
experience as we can get. But I think for the
gaming side of things, man, I mean, we want to
(04:51):
have it fun. Like I said, that is our chief
goal with that, And yeah, it'll be intense. You'll definitely
get the feel of all the different factors that go
in on every single play, and you will probably have
a higher respect for quarterbacks. But if you're not having fun,
you're not gonna come back. So we definitely slow it
down a little bit so that we can keep you
coming back for more.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
So I've heard you say this a couple of times.
You know that you really want to help keep people
getting understanding for how fast the game moves for people
who won't will never have that experience of being on
an NFL you know, grid Iron talk about if you
can make it relatable to us, you know, how fast
the game actually moves versus what we see sitting in
the seats.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, And like I said, man, I'm gonna keep drilling
down on this, the speed of the game is ridiculous, man,
Like I mean, it's I would say, in snap second
you have to make decisions, and it's honestly even faster
than that.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So that's why you practice so much. You practice so much.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
In a professional sports environment that your instincts kick in
and that way you can react even faster than it
takes for you to cognitively think of what to do next.
But in the gaming for everybody, I think the thing
that you'll get most out of the experience that we're
creating with NFL Pro Era is that you just really
can see all the factors and it is very gratifying
to make a play. It is gratifying to you know,
(06:08):
complete a pass or throw a touchdown or get a
first down when you consider all the different factors that
are into a game, and so it won't be the
speeds of an NFL game, and you.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Have the ability to ramp it up or ramp it down.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
But again, all the different factors that go into each
and every game and the experience of the screaming fans.
You get the high points, you get the huge DN
coming right at you, and that's scary in and of itself.
So you have to think about what do I do
now in the face of the most fearful looking human
coming at me at car like speeds, right, And so
that's the really cool part is that that hasn't been
(06:43):
democratized before and us being able to us being former
athletes and being able to put other people in those
shoes is a really cool thing because you get to
show people the experience that you have had your whole
life and may.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Even be a second nature to you.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Just talk about this leap you've made, because there's not
a lot of athletes who make the leap from professional
sports into high tech and so if you can give
the bridge for us, like how you got here versus
where you were, and we're going to talk about your
sports career, but I want to talk about how you
made that leap.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Well, I mean that's a great question, and I think
they all kind of tie in together. And I would say,
how I got to tech, you know, high tech where
I'm at from my career, was that I feel like
in tech tech is you know, I talk about this
democratizing and experience, and I think I've always looked at
any sector that I've been interested in as how do
I get in there and find my place in this space?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Right?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I think especially for a lot of us that come
from our communities, you don't see yourself in certain situations,
so you think it's not for you, right, or you think, oh, man,
I don't have a background that matches what I've seen traditionally,
so let me go look somewhere else. And where I've
kind of always approached it like, well, if I don't
see me in a certain area, that's an opportunity. Let
me go in there and make a space for me,
(08:01):
and I could bring other people with me. Number one
and number two. Now I can build a mote around
what I do because nobody here can can match my
skill set. And so you know, when I was playing,
it was that same thing. It was like I saw
an opportunity that you know, I felt like me being
an athlete and wanting to work in sports business even
prior to me playing professional football, there was no value
(08:23):
add from the fact that I was an athlete. There
was nothing to say like, well, what about your experience
makes it special here?
Speaker 2 (08:28):
And so I was like, I'm gonna have to create that.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I'm gonna have to create a way to value the
expertise of somebody who has seen this from the ground
level and build a company that way, you know. And
so that's what originally got me there, And as you
would imagine, it was a long road of slowly putting
the pieces together to get to where we are today.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
And I'm glad you said that, because, you know, we've
heard these horror stories of athletes who you know, make
a bunch of money and then they got boys who
want to start businesses and invest in a whole bunch
of real estate that don't get scoped out and do
no due diligence and you know, rim shops and the
whole thing. So can you talk about how, from your perspective,
how athletes are getting smarter. Maybe it's the people around
(09:09):
them so that they're making better decisions with their capital
and to deploy that for actual wealth generation when they're
off the field.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
I think the norm has changed, and I think you
know that was always even my goal with what I
was doing.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
I wanted to, you.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Know, hopefully show other people that may be in a
similar situation of mind to be like, well, if he
can do that with his resources, or he can do
that with his stature of like profile of athletes, imagine
what I could do with mine, right, And I think
you see in a shift where before it was we
want our athletes just to be athletes. We want them
to focus on football, focus on basketball, focus on baseball,
(09:47):
track boxing, whatever it is, and that's what we That
is the norm, and anybody who does anything.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Outside of that was looked at sideways.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Well, I think now in this age of more than
an athlete and a lot of the work that has
been done and shown by athletes, from them being activists,
them being investors, them going back to school and all
these things, Now you look at an athlete that only
does their sport and you kind of look at them sideways, like, yo,
what are you waiting on?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
You better get going. This window is closing.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And I think you know that kind of maturation of
what the norm is for an athlete has shifted a
lot of things for the industry.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
What's making the norm change? Is it just representation to
people like you. I think everything develops. I think everything
people get smarter in any scenario. So if you look
at me right like I think, people sometimes think, oh, man,
this is a really smart guy because he was able
to do certain things.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
And I am smart. I do believe that. But at
the same time, I come from a family of athletes.
I'm a third generation athlete, right. My grandfather was a boxer.
My dad played Division one football and sign D one.
My older brother played ten years in the National Football Leager.
I got cousins, And so I've seen those horror stories
you've talked about.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I've seen them up close and personal.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
And I've always approach sport like a business, right, And
I've seen where a sport could use somebody up and
there's nothing to show for it, you know. And so
for me, when I went through my experience, it was like, well,
I'm gonna do it this way, and because I seen
somebody else make mistakes, I can kind of take those
answers to the test and re craft it for myself.
And I think for everybody else it's much of the same,
(11:21):
and now when you look at your peers, you could
see the.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Benefit of it.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Like my goal after five years of playing, I'm coming
up on five years of after retirement, I wanted to
I wanted people to know me and not know that
I played professional football.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
That was a goal that I had when I retired,
you know.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And it's really cool now for people to say that
and see like, oh man, I didn't know he played
in the NFL.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
That's crazy, right, that's because I'm hitting that goal.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And I think for other players, they see that and
they build upon it, right, And it's like, well, I
want to be known for something more than what people
are defining or is my skill set or what people
may have known me for the start.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
The institution that surrounds athletes when they come in the
league young, and we've heard, you know, horror stories around
like you know, player associations, and they weren't always set
up to help people thrive outside of the field, outside
of the court.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Are they are.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Player associations in your experience across all major sports? Are
they what's happening for them to do better to protect
and help educate those young athletes who come in with
little financial experience often and little, you know, familiar resources
to protect them.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Man, that's a great question. I think.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I think more can always be done, right, I think,
you know, like I said, as an athletes get smarter
as the game changes. And right now it's the wild,
wild West, man. I mean, you've got college athletes making
tens of millions of dollars in IL right and signing
for deals that you know, quite frankly, I barely made
as a professional athlete, you know, And so it's happened
earlier and earlier in the process. And so players associations
(12:54):
or anything set up to aid and in athletes development,
they they have a lot of work to do to
kind of catch up in that process, you know. I
think for young athletes, I always tell them, they, man,
take your time. It took a very long time for
you to make your money. I know it seems like
a nineteen or twenty two or whatever it is, that
the money came fast. But this is a lifelong process.
(13:16):
You started playing basketball or football when you were eight
years old. That's a decade, you know, And so it
would be silly to not try to put that same
kind of work in of how you should deploy that capital,
how you should protect that capital, how you should spend
that capital, or where you should develop your skills outside
of it, to make sure you're making the most out
of that capital or that opportunity. And unfortunately, in sports,
(13:39):
athletes are opportunities because they have the least amount of experience,
but they have the most amount of money. And if
you've ever tried to convince anybody to give you money,
it's a hard process. And the easiest people to convince
to give you money are people that don't know much
as much about the value or haven't had the experience
of understanding how hard already really was for them to
(14:01):
get that. And so to your point, there should be
more of a protection coming from people that are in
this space, especially for a lot of the kids, like
I said, that come from our communities, or black and
brown faces that don't come from a lot of finances.
You know, I think more things should be in place
not only to protect, but also teach and mature and
not make them choices. And it's tough to make people
with a lot of money do certain things. But at
(14:22):
the same time, it's so important in the overall and
longevity of their development and their protection of this incredible
opportunity that is playing professional sports.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, I mean I love that answer because I was
going to ask this question. I'm going to ask it,
but you just gave me a little slight twist to
the question I'm going to ask. Because you've got this
diamond list of investors who've put money in your own business,
people like lebron Naomi Osaka Drake and Jimmy I Bean,
mav Carter manim anymore. But it's an all star list
(14:55):
of investors. And I would imagine because we have this conversation,
these people are more than just deep pockets, but there's
some other use that they provide to the business. Because
you can probably get money in a lot of places,
but you want specific help. So can you talk about
how they may or may not be involved in helpful
to the company and to your mission.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, I mean, I.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Think they've been paramount to the successes not only my company,
I would even say me professionally a lot of those names,
because you know, like you said, these are people that
are respected business wise and the moves they make and
the things that they put their money in support behind,
and so that stamp of approval that carries weight when
you're going into certain rooms, you know. I mean, we
(15:40):
had venture capital firms or investors or companies that we've
tried to partner with early on that laught out out
of the room that are now sending us emails once
a week trying to talk to us merely off the
fact of who's involved now.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
And I want to chase what they're.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Getting into, because those people are successful, you know, And
I think we were very tactical and strategic and in
that way of just how we kind of approached them
and understood how do you make one plus one equal three?
How do you understand what people like that are looking,
where they're looking to go, and how you can aid
in that thing. And again, we are definitely the benefactors
(16:16):
in that relationship.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
But these are people that I've.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Worked with for years, and I think the reputation that
I had with them went a long way. And once
it was time to do our thing and we had
an offering I didn't they didn't have. They didn't question,
which is a big thing when you're investing, is well,
how do you work? How how much time are you
going to put in? How serious are you because of
(16:41):
what I had done for them and in those moments,
in my previous work responsibilities, that was out the gate.
So now we could just look at the opportunity, and
the opportunity in and of itself speaks for itself.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Yeah, So let's talk about that because I'm interested because
there are so many people who would love to have
and seizetrategically strategic reasons why a Drake on their cap
table makes sense or so I can make sense for them.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
How do you.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Position yourself to be successful when you're trying to approach
a celebrity investor?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
If you're not, it's a good question.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
If you're not, how do you That's a good question,
I would say, and I kind of alluded to it,
the one, the one plus one equal in three.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Right. Not every celebrity.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Is going to be good for your business. Not every
celebrity is going to be good for your business. Not
every celebrity is going to make sense for your business,
and vice versa. You're not going to make sense for them,
you know. I mean, as all stars our roster is,
we've had celebrities tell us no, not my thing, I'm good, right,
even though we see the strategic value so I think
(17:53):
it's understanding and being very self aware in that way
of how exactly this equation is going to come together,
and to your point, like making sure the value of
whatever you're looking to get matches up well with what
you already already have. We didn't approach any of those
names first. They weren't the first people we went to,
(18:14):
you know, And I think a lot of times when
you're approaching people of high name value, there has to
be an offering, like their name means something, and I
think that's why you approach them in the first place.
And so whatever the scenario is, the situation is, or
the opportunity is, it has to make sense.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
For where they are.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
And we were able to get some already really good investors.
They didn't have to take on a brunt of the
public value in their namesake to just carry the company
solely on their backs, and I think that matters, you know.
So I think it was getting the offering right first
before we approached them was probably the.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Best thing we could do.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
And in that it was the opportunity for you know,
getting an NFL license. We had that opportunity coming up
lined up, chasing it, you know, we had discussions with
some of the platforms in the VR companies who can
kind of confirm like, hey.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
This is a big opportunity.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
We had other VC firms that were lined up incredible
in this space, and so I think all those things
factored in to us landing where we ultimately did.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
You know, I love that you said, you know it's
one plus one equaling three. I remember there's an interview
mav car to have done with Magic Johnson, and I
don't know if you saw, but he was talking. Magic
was talking about like, you know, when you bring me
a deal, it's got to be a big deal because
for the amount of work I got to put in
to make something go from one hundred thousand to a million,
I might as well go from a million to a billion.
(19:38):
It's the same amount of work. So the deal size
has to be big enough. And so I'm equating that
with how you pitched you know, pro Era and like status,
Like how do you do that when you're pitching a
drake who's got you know, enough money or is there
such thing as enough money? Who's got a lot of money?
(19:59):
Or Lebron's a lot of money and you know a
couple of zeros don't move the needle for them. So
how do you pitch the grand opportunity here to people
who already.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Have all they you know, could need. Yeah, that's that's
another great question.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So I would say it in this way. If you
called me and say, hey, I want you to do
my podcast for and I'm gonna give you a dollar
right now, it's a deal. Now it's I'm gonna spend
a certain amount of time doing your podcast and you're
gonna give me a dollar, I'm gonna say no, right
because it's that the work doesn't seem to match what
the dollar amount is. It's one dollar, right, I could
(20:37):
do other things to get a dollar. If you said, hey,
I'm gonna go do this podcast with somebody else, and
when I do it, I'm gonna give you a dollar.
If you give me, you know, ten cent, that sounds
like it's worthy it because I don't got to do
much work for that dollar, right, it's on you.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
And if I think that.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
You're gonna do this podcast, you got that podcast lined up,
it's scheduled and it's going no matter what, and I don't.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Have to do much. That's what it means to be
an investor.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
I think a lot of times people approach the athletes
or the celebrities or the big time executives wanting them
to put the amount.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Of work into their product that a founder is doing.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Now, there is going to be some over the top value,
but there's value already in the namesake, because that's why
you're approaching them in the first place, because that dollar
is not the same as their dollar, because they have
a name value that also unlocks a lot of opportunities
for you. So that in and of itself is worth
the work, and you have to be able to know
the process and a plan for making that work for you.
(21:35):
So I think with me and our investors specifically and
my partner Trure, who is amazing, you know, I think
that we are just two guys that we come from nothing.
We do everything ourselves. We don't expect much. Like the
terms of engagement are pretty straightforward. We're going to do
the work, and as long as an investor I feel
(21:58):
like understands and sees that and they get to see
the opportunity because to the example you use with magic,
there's not that level of work that goes into it.
We're gonna do the work and the moments we need you,
will give you a call, but they'll know that. Man,
they're calling me. It's one of It's a situation that
is going to only multiply what the opportunity is.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Can you describe the timeline, you know, between your enterprise
product that you licensed with NFL teams for their actual training,
and then the consumer product that will come out soon,
and then the timeline alongside when those investors came in,
so did the Lebrons, and then Naomi Osaka's come in
when they saw your enterprise product or this is fire,
we gotta get it in the Cowboys locker room, we
(22:42):
gotta get it in the Lion Lions locker room, or
they saw you had that and then they said, oh,
there's consumer play here. Can you talk about how that
lined up?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, I would say they definitely came in for the
opportunity for the consumer play, but it all ties together.
So we started off on the enterprise level working with
NFL teams to prepare them for NFL games, and you know,
that gave us a base foundation for our technology, and
we just kind of continue to build that because that
was something we knew and so inherently from our experience
of being athletes of knowing exactly how a receiver could
(23:15):
get better with this technology. Troy is a quarterback, knowing
how quarterback can get better. You know, I've spent time
as a coach as a scout for the Detroit Lions,
like understanding how the technology could help organizations. It helped
us build a foundation and then as the opportunities arise,
we know which way we can kind of craft and
use the foundation to go in other spaces. And on
(23:38):
the consumer play, it was essentially players would get in
the headset and they wouldn't take it off and they
were like, Yo, this is fun, and that's not a
statement you hear from a player that's typically watching film.
This is fun and you're learning about what you're going
to see on a Sunday. So that was like the
indicator for us that we knew we had something there.
Because if a player who sees this scenario every day
(23:59):
and had for fifteen years, it's saying that it's like
it is on Sunday and it's fun, imagine.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
What a consumer will place.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
And then you know, after that is when we started
to communicate that it started to to show what the
opportunity we felt was on the consumer side. And you know,
it's been years in the making. Troy and I first connected,
I want to say, in twenty sixteen or seventeen, and
here we are in twenty twenty two, you know, so
it's been it's been that long of a process, that
(24:29):
that long of us thinking about this craftiness, letting the
market do what it does, and then also relying on
a little bit of luck.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
To put us in the right position.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
So when you think about gamifying things, let's talk about
gaming and training. You know, even at the consumer level, like,
how do you think gamifying exercise and training? You know,
when I'm if you're bringing up a kid to be,
you know, an all star athlete, how do you imagine
gamifying that experience in working out and training might evolve
(24:59):
over time?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I think it becomes second nature a little bit. And
then there's a reason why we continue to drilling on
the fun aspect of it, because you know, I view
our consumers early on in our consumer product, which will
be coming out in fall twenty twenty two, they're much
like I have a ten year old son who is
obsessed with the game of football, naturally, because again we
come from a family of football players.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
But I am.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Anyone who knows me knows I am not to push
somebody to go play football and do this and do that.
It's not my thing. But what happened was, you know, first,
you let him have fun with it.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
I'm not out there making them run through drills at
seven years old and making them run stadium steps to say, hey,
you got a legacy. It's not that you give him
a ball and you let him play catch with his
dad and he enjoys playing catch with his dad, and
he's having fun. And because he has fun in it,
it motivates him to get better. But he's passing the
time by having fun, but he's naturally becoming better at
what he's doing. So I think when I look when
(25:55):
I look at the VR XR technology and specifically what
we're doing in gaming and the training opportunity is played
football my whole life.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
It kept me in shape.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
As a thirty six year old man now who is
not playing football every day, it is a lot harder
for me to stay in shape and to focus on
actually being in shape. I would love for a way
for me to have fun in doing it. And so
when you think about XR and training and that opportunity
and getting better if gamifying it embeds the fund right
in it, and by embedding the fund that becomes the
(26:25):
chief focus. Anytime you're having fun, that's kind of where
your mind goes to and you're not thinking about the
calories you're burning, You're not thinking about how you're learning
the sport, you're not thinking about how you're staying fit
on a day to day because the game of it
all is keeping your mind occupied, and then everything else
becomes a value beyond that.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You know. I kind of asked a question similar to
this when we talked about, you know, getting a Lebron's
attention or Drake's attention.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
But there are people who believe that their tech.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Is good enough to get licensed by major partners, like
you know, sports teams in any category. What levers do
you imagine are the fastest ways to success to getting
the meeting and also being taken seriously?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Like what are the in rolls for people who.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Are not getting not hawk you know, to how do
you pick up the phone and call the Detroit Lions?
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Like how does that happen? Like what happens there? Where
do I need to be? What conference do I need
to go to It's tough. It's tough. I would say
a lot of it is learning the industry, right.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So I would love to think that my name rings
so many bells I could just pick up the phone
and call somebody and make it happen.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Unfortunately that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Like I said, I started interning with the Detroit Lions,
and two thousand and eight I was a scouting intern
right and then beyond that I went and played in
the Canadian Football League. And throughout this whole process, I'm
shaking hands, I'm taking meetings. I'm telling people when I'm
get done playing, I want to do X, Y and
Z in the off season, olding out the marketing materials
(28:02):
for my sports agency or for my agent's sports agency
for him, I'm his marketing lead as well. I am also,
you know, applying to Octagon's internships. I'm doing Underarmer's internships.
I'm going to intern with Maverick Carter while I'm the
number one receiver for the Cleveland Browns in an offseason.
And it's not just in nature like I'm I'm getting coffee.
(28:24):
I'm people that I'm interning with. It takes them a
month and a half to know that I play in
the NFL because I'm I'm doing all the things naturally
that an intern would do. I'm setting those groundstick because
I'm learning. I want to see how the process works.
I want to shake the hands. I want to understand
this thing and come up with a plan and strategy
because in this business, specifically in the sports business, you
(28:46):
really only get one opportunity at it, right, And so
it's probably not the best just to pick up the
phone and call the Detroit Lions, because now they're always
gonna remember you just called the Detroit Lions. You had
no idea what our process was. You don't know what
our KPIs are, you don't know the right people to
talk to. You don't call it the scouting office trying
to get a licensing deal, right, And so I would
say engrossing yourself in the area that you're looking to
(29:09):
get into and understand that it is very hard to
make those calls and get those deals, and people are
gonna want to see that you are a subject matter
expert in the space that you're in.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
And I think that's what I've spent every minute.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
That I wasn't on a field over the last decade
That's what I've spent doing and that's what my partner
has been doing as well. And I think we've benefited
greatly that it was time for us to do our thing.
We had a track record, we had connections that people
we connected with ten years ago are now in a
position to make decisions or put us in the right
place or confidently say, Yo, you should talk to Troy,
(29:43):
you should talk to Hawk because I've known them in
their work for ten years and what they're doing, what
they're about, and it's at least worth hearing them out.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
So I did that.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
So I'm excited about this game. I want you to
talk about it a little bit and like what makes
this metaquest and PlayStation v our game unlike other football
arcade games, Like, you know, what's the difference.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
I mean, besides the fact that it's NFL license, which
is the big one, right, I would say the insights
from it. I mean, this is this is a direct
brainch out of me and my partner, and I think,
you know, with the things I do creatively or the
things that I'm into creatively, I want that extra level
of authenticity to it, you know, Like I want to
(30:27):
see the film about Detroit from a Detroit director.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I want somebody.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Who is in there giving me that film, right, I
want to see all those things. And in gaming and
in sports specifically, that's what we were after. This is
our life. This is I'm trying to explain. I remember,
like the very first one we're pitching it, I'm telling
people about what it feels like to walk out of
a tunnel. It's one of the coolest ex experiences I've
ever had as an athlete is coming out to seventy
(30:54):
thousand screaming fans.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And in our game, we have.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
The opportunity to bring that to life and show somebody that.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So I
think the little things like that that we're we're giving
you real insights from things we've experienced and putting them
in creatively are the things that will make it different.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Our company in and of itself.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I mean we are I think roughly forty five now,
and of the forty five, I think twenty one of
them are former athletes, college or pro. And that's from
the systems engineer to the creative designer on the game,
to the marketing to the business dev I mean it's
permeated throughout the company. And the reason for that is
we thought, like, yo, if we can typically athletes don't
(31:38):
have a voice in sports anything, especially sports gaming anywhere.
But imagine if we had that insight, as well as
the experts of gamers, as well as the engineering expertise,
as well as the marketing of all these places in
one room where everyone has a voice, we can create
something that is above the status quo. That was the
whole impetus around the company, and I think in our
(32:00):
experience that's what's going to make the difference and what
people will feel of when they take the headset off
and say, dang, I do feel like I know what
it's like to be in the NFL game now, right,
And I mean that's our ultimate goal.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
You know, I'm interested, you know, because you've played it
at the professional level and how much on field tech
there is, like we see and we've heard, you know,
they may mic somebody up, and so now we get
the experience of hearing what it sounds like, you know,
when you're on the field or on the court, but
from the stuff that the fan will never see or
(32:33):
may never see, how much like actual on your body
and on field technology is happening to, you know, measure
how fast somebody is running or where they are on
the field, or like what's happening that we don't get
a chance to be exposed to.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of prototyping.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
There's a lot of testing that goes on in both
a practice and a game environment.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
The NFL is pretty innovative.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
I mean professional sports NBA is, I mean, they're extremely
innovative as well.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
So and it's funny like that's kind of how I
got my first foray in the tech.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
I would consult while I was playing for sports analytics
companies that would create this incredible tech, you know, but
it was always a gap between the tech and the
people who were applying it, meaning the coaches who are
you know, it's just a very different world. They use
a rabbit's foot more than they would use analytics in
a game like this is my lucky underwear.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
That's what they use in a game environment.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Right, And so I would approach it like, okay, I
can act as a bridge between understanding the technology and
the people applying it.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
And I mean there is chips that.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Every NFL player wears that measures their XI coordinates of
where they are in the field, how fast they move,
they're forced from left to right, from right to left.
I mean in a practice environment, we wear the same thing.
There is cameras that also just are taking that footage
and also gathering.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
All that data.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
There is, you know, obviously the ability to do even
more from a technology standpoint, but you want to make
sure that the rules are still in place and fans
are able to experience whatever it is they're doing. So
all the things that they're testing and doing, even though
they're not public, they will be eventually. It's just a
slow rollout for which acts actually possible. And I think
(34:22):
that's the cool thing about what we're doing is because
we do call ourselves the future of the field because
we're combining a lot of those things and again giving
it to a fan and that's a really cool thing.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
So when you say like there's chips on players, I mean,
are you saying like glorified like apple air tags or
tiles are on players to measure these things? Yeah, like
RFID chips.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Every player in their shoulder pads has a dime sized
chip that measures where they are at all times on
the field and the speed of it and you could
take that data. And originally how we start as a
company is we had access to that data and just
in the data alone, we were able to create three
D simulated plays.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
So we didn't need any video.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
We didn't need to see what happened because we could
just get the data from those chips and tell you
exactly what's happening on the play.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Wow, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
How do you because you're doing you know, media now,
which I think is really interesting, your great social media presence.
How are you leveraging media for business success? Because I
imagine that may be a play because when Lebron moved
to LA, people were talking about, you know, this is
you know, he's on the down side of his career,
so LA is a smart move because he wants to
(35:38):
be a media and TV so it wasn't just an
athletic decision. So I'm interested in the decisions you make
and being on making TV shows or online internet web shows.
What's the play for an athlete like yourself and what
are you shooting for? If I can just say.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
It, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
So I think two part number one, what I'm doing
now has always been my goal since I've been a kid,
I wanted to do business. I wanted to do business
in an area that I felt like I was an
expert at and that I knew more than anybody else,
and I feel like sports is that thing. So when
I retired, I actually wasn't going to go in the media.
My older brother went into media. I wasn't really into
(36:19):
it at the time. There was a specific formula you
had to follow to get an opportunity. You had to
speak a certain way, look a certain way, do a
certain thing. And not that I'm not a chameleon and
I can't do that. I just didn't really have the
energy that if I want to be one way one day,
I wanted the ability to do that. So I wasn't
going in the media. When I retired, I walked White
in to start working with Maver Carter after having intern
(36:40):
for them while I was playing, and an opportunity came along,
and he was the one that was like, yo, you
should do it because as someone who knows a lot
of former athletes and I've gone through this with a
lot of people, you might like it and you might
be good at it, and ultimately it also helps you
keep a face card, which is important when you're trying
to make business move, which I know you inevitably want
to do. So while I was playing in the NFL,
(37:02):
I would take I would get fifty two one hundred
game jerseys every year after the season, and I would
sign them and I would write handwritten letters to people
that I wanted to connect with or that I was
impressed by, and I would send it to them in
the mail with an email like, YO, if you ever
want to get coffee, let me know. And that was
a networking thing for me because I thought I knew
people thought it was cool that you know, there's only
(37:23):
two people that could say to the start receivers for
the Cleveland Browns, there's thirty thousand people that can say
they're former players, right, So I'm like, well, let me
do this now so that they'll remember when I was
at my height, where my mind was at, and so
when I need them and they're at their height.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
You know, they'll keep that relationship going.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
So I was doing that, and then the media thing
for me, it was like, well, that gave me that
same kind of face card. Right, It's cool to get
an email from someone you've seen on television or wear
in a meeting and I might be on the background
somewhere that helps me at least get an email back.
So even if I'm asking for something or I'm trying
to do a deal, and even if it's a no,
a fast no is helpful to me, you at least
give me that courtesy because I have a certain face
(38:02):
card to it.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
And so that's what was my original goal around.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Media, was to use it to benefit my business career,
and I'm what we're doing now is status pro and
I still think that's the same thing. And in that
I just kind of made the decision that I'm just
gonna be me wherever I decide that is from a
media standpoint. Eventually, it will again just be projects that
are close to my heart that I think there's a
(38:28):
need for, that I think there's a space for, and
that Ultimately, I never wanted to get into the media
side of things to have to hang on it solely
and completely.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
As a football.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Player, you are hired and fired very very frequently, and
you have no say so of when your family picks
up and moves, and so when I got into the
media side, I was just very adamant that I didn't
want that career to be that way. I wanted to
have the freedom to say and do what I wanted
when I wanted, and so I passed up on a
lot of great deals media wise, because I don't want
(39:00):
to get into the rat race of Hey, we love
you today, Tomorrow we don't like you anymore. Now you
don't have a job, right, So.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
I want to dig one level deeper before we get
out of here. And you mentioned earlier that you know
a dollar from a Lebron James is not just a
dollar because his name has value, and that thing there
I want to equate to what you just talked about
with media and how you're leveraging that for a business success.
Outside of media, there's so many folks who are building
(39:31):
businesses and it's all really comes down to storytelling. There's
so many folks who are building businesses that if they
could figure out how to leverage stories and personalities in
social on stage, in front of people, etc. That could
help their business. And So if you could leave us
with some wisdom on how people who might be funny,
(39:54):
who might be good looking, who might be what charismatic,
how they should see that as a value or find
that value to add that to the puzzle of building
a successful company.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Absolutely, man, I think you you kind of nailed it, right,
Like you have to use all those things that are
at your disposal.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
To get to where you are.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
And a lot of time, especially early on your company,
is you're there, they are various synonymous people are gonna
follow those things. Or it's like an artist when you
when you find an artist nobody has heard about, and
you like their store and you like where they come from,
you write where they represent. You're telling everybody about the
artists you gotta check You gotta check her out, man,
she's amazing, right, or whatever that is.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
And eventually they hit mainstream and you.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Know you you probably now looking for the next one. Right.
Businesses are the same way, right, They want to they
want to connect with you and your story number one.
But using your talents to hit those pillars are super important.
And I say for businesses, there's three things that you
got to hit to make yourself a home run. Number
one is it do you have an incredible product? Is
(40:58):
your product better than everybody else's?
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Right?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Do you have something that is just the home run
of a product that's aggress Number one?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Number two is do you have an ability to get
the deals done.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
And we've talked about all these things on this podcast
so far as do you understand the industry that you're in,
can you make those calls, do you know the right
people to talk to to continue to push that ball
down the court, because those things are important in those deals.
And number three is your ability to amplify. Do you
have an ability to when you say something, get it
out in front of people right, because then those people
(41:30):
are going to follow the check marks of is your
product great? And some people can be successful with two
of those things. You've seen people with terrible products, but
they got the right investors and the right amplication and
they got the right deals.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
You see people with.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Great deals, great product, and nobody to amplify it, but
eventually it bubbles up. If you have one of three,
it's gonna be tough. You need at least two or three.
If you have three of three, you got the home run.
And when you use your talents for whether you're good looking,
whether you have other talents, whether you're funny, to push
to your product, that helps you in the amplification side
(42:03):
of things.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
And it's a very very important, important pillar. And that
kind of determines its speed. I wish you scale or
become ubiquitous.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro
Tech on the Black Effect podcast network in iHeartMedia. It's
produced by Morgan Debonn and me Will Lucas, with additional
production support by Love Beachim and Rissus Lewis. Special thank
you to Michael Davis, Jermaine hall I, Vanessa Serrano. Learn
more about my guests and other tech dis reps and
innovators at afrotech dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
The video first of this episode will drop the Black Tech.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
Green Money on YouTube next week, So tap in enjoining
Black Tech Green Money, leave us a five star rating
on iTunes, Go get your money, Piece of Love. Check
me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast Festival happening Saturday,
April twenty seventh in Atlanta. Live podcasts are on deck
(43:12):
from some of your favorite shows, including this one, Black
Tech Green Money, and also some of the best podcasts
in the game like Deeply Well with Debbie Brown and
Carefully Reckless. Atlanta is one of my favorite cities in
the world. I've lived there for two years actually. In
my worldview, seeing us successful in every industry and not
having any limits on our potential largely was shaved by
Atlanta to to be there with you doing this podcast
(43:33):
talking about how we build or leverage technology to build wealth.
Come on, man, doesn't get better. I want to see
you there. Get your tickets today at Black Effect dot
comback Slash Podcast Festival
Host
Will Lucas
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