How Athletes Can Make Money & An Impact with NIL (Footy4MySoul with guest Greg Glynn)

⚽ Empowering Athletes: The Name, Image, and Likeness Revolution.  The landscape of sports has entered a transformative era where athletes have the unprecedented ability to profit from their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). But beyond the headlines of endorsements and earnings lies a deeper narrative—one of purpose, empowerment, and responsibility.

⚽ Greg Glynn, the innovative mind behind Pliable Marketing and host of the Athlete Brand Advisor podcast, joins us to shed light on the evolving landscape of NIL.   Together, we explore how athletes from high school to Division I can harness the potential of NIL to build purpose-driven brands that not only bring financial rewards but also inspire community change. Greg's expert insights provide a roadmap for athletes and their families to navigate this dynamic environment with integrity and forward-thinking strategies.

⚽ About Pliable Marketing
https://pliablemarketing.com/
https://pliablemarketing.com/the-magic-cleats/

⚽ Learn more about Footy4MySoul:
https://www.footy4mysoul.com/ 

⚽ Read our Experiences Connected Journal on Substack
https://justinvantil.substack.com/

⚽ Chapters
00:00 - Exploring Name, Image, and Likeness Opportunities
13:33 - Navigating NIL Marketing as a Parent
26:28 - Impact of Butterfly Effect on NIL
39:06 - Evolution of Name, Image, Likeness
48:43 - Athlete Branding and Inspirational Impact
56:01 - Highlighting Beautiful Aspects of Sports

Transcript

00:02 - justin (Host)
Welcome to Footy4MySoul, where curiosity, caring, courage and creativity shape our exploration of this beautiful game, connecting experiences from the pitch to life. This is your space to learn and to be inspired, whether you're a player, coach, parent, mentor or anyone. Let us enjoy this journey of beautiful growth. Welcome to Footy for my Soul. Today, I'm excited to welcome Greg Glynn, the founder and CEO of Pliable Marketing, a company dedicated to helping athletes and organizations build stronger brands through innovative marketing, public relations and communication strategies. Greg is also the host of the Athlete Brand Advisor podcast, where he shares expert advice and interviews with athletes, coaches and influencers on the art and the impact of athlete branding. 

01:03
In this episode, we explore the transformative opportunities presented by name, image and likeness NIL. This is a $2 billion industry. Next year it's less than five years old. While NIL has significant impact today on Division I athletes, teams, conferences and the schools that they go to, its application spans every level now, including Division II and Division III, college athletes and schools, high school athletes. This is for sports of all kinds. We dig into NIL's financial impact. We're exploring how athletes can capitalize on their talent, their potential. We look at the market reach. Greg provides actionable insights and best practices into the keys to success in monetizing the brand, helping athletes and stakeholders navigate this exciting and it's a rapidly evolving landscape. Now, beyond the financial aspects, this conversation delves into the broader power of NIL to inspire altruism, foster community involvement and drive meaningful social impact. By focusing on the importance of instilling kindness and social responsibility in young athletes and all of us that support them, greg offers a hopeful vision for how purpose-driven branding can empower athletes to make a difference both on and off the field. 

02:23
This episode highlights the transformative role of NIL. We're shaping a future where success is defined not just by achievement, but by the positive change athletes can bring into their communities. Whether you're an athlete, a parent or simply interested in this evolving role of NIL in sports, this episode provides invaluable lessons into navigating this landscape, building personal brands. Don't forget to subscribe to Footy for my Soul for more episodes or connect with us on Substack. We can learn more about our analysis on this very, very important topic. I really want to thank Greg and everything he's doing in this industry. Thank you to all stakeholders. Enjoy, greg. Glenn, welcome to Footy from my Soul. 

03:11 - greg (Host)
Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here. 

03:13 - justin (Host)
Big topic on name, image and likeness. A legal right, a status. This is an era. A status this is an era Represents a form of freedom, fairness. Nil, so to speak, is a mechanism for compensation. Also, I think it's pretty tough to understand broadly. It needs someone to help sift through it. So, greg, could you take us through or paint that picture for us, the backdrop on NIL broadly, absolutely. 

03:50 - greg (Host)
And we'll go from there. That sounds great. So name, image and likeness is a key term that's been used to describe what's happening right now, with a lot of college athletes making money, and what we really need to do is take a step back to how did we get here? Because what ended up happening was there was a basketball player at O'Bannon who sued the NCAA over being in a video game for using his name, his image and his likeness. 

04:21 - justin (Host)
UCLA. Right, that's correct. He was nasty he was very good. What was that? It was the 90s, 90s, late 90s. 

04:28 - greg (Host)
Yeah, so he really started this in a way, and what happened is in 2021, finally, it got to the Supreme Court and they made a ruling that college athletes have the right to use their own name, image and likeness to be able to make money. And what ended up happening was that the NCAA had no idea this was going to happen. There was rumblings and you know how it is, but they didn't really think that this might actually happen, and so they had to quickly create an interim policy. Okay, over the summer of 2021, the next day to basically say, okay, we have a policy, but it wasn't a good policy. Nobody knew what was going on, and so what ended up happening is you had athletes hearing, oh, I can make money, and they just started to do whatever the heck they could to get their hands on it. 

05:28
Now, the Cavender twins are known as kind of being the first two athletes female athletes to at the stroke of midnight. Okay, because I've talked to their agent. They had deals lined up, ready to go, because a lot of the athletes and people in the know knew that this was going to eventually happen and when it did, they were ready to go Because a lot of the athletes and people in the know knew that this was going to eventually happen, and when it did, they were ready for it. We also have a lot of people out there right now, a lot of athletes, just learning about it for the first time. 

05:54 - justin (Host)
Still, Okay, If it's done right this is a tool for empowerment and growth, Absolutely, If it's done right. We have the athletes, the brands and those stakeholders colleges, parents, everybody, the agents and we'll talk about the agents, because that could mean a lot of different things. 

06:14 - greg (Host)
That's why you're here. That's why. 

06:15 - justin (Host)
You're doing the great job of it, so that's why we want to do it footy for my soul, because we want to highlight what's beautiful and not to say we won't talk about what can be done better. But surely fairness, growth and empowerment are the objectives. So talk us through and look. It's always great to start with soccer, but I'm assuming college basketball, college football men early on driving the majority of the dollars. Can you start with a success story in soccer for us? 

06:48 - greg (Host)
Yeah, I can, interestingly enough. So here in Maine I had a contact in the public relations world. Her name is Linda Verrill and she had reached out to me saying hey, there's somebody I want you to talk to. His name is Dean Murray. He's got an athlete I'll play soccer. It was Max Murray, and Max Murray is 6'5 at the University of Vermont and is one heck of a soccer player, and so I reached out. I of course, had that mutual connection. You know how networking works. 

07:19
It's very hard in this business to try to approach an athlete if there isn't a level of trust, if they don't know who they're talking to or have another point of reference. Because, going back to your point about agents, agents typically have a pretty bad reputation, especially at the professional level, and so it was great to be able to have that personal contact. And Dean, his dad, understood that this is not get rich quick, right. He wanted to give his son this opportunity, this gateway, this opportunity to do something that they've never had to be able to do before, and so we met and through the process that I go through to vet athletes I'm just not opening the door to everybody and having them come in, because you can imagine I'd have a lot of people knocking on my door. So I vet every athlete that I work with and we decided it was a great fit for Max to be a pliable athlete and timing is everything in this especially early on. So Max and I started working together. I go over a profile, over a hundred questions, with these athletes that's 100 questions and I get to know them pretty closely through that process and then as I continue to work with them. And so what ended up happening was we put Max in a great position to be a successful athlete with NIL because he knew what he was doing and he knew what he could do, what he couldn't do, the rules and everything like that. 

08:46
And Folinos, which is a pizza shop in Burlington, vermont, had a brand ambassador program already rolled out, and this was in the early days of NIL. I was like Max I just found out there's a place right down the street that you could go do an NIL partnership. There's a place right down the street that you could go do an NIL partnership. And so, sure enough, max Murray signs with Folinos to be a brand ambassador. I think he ended up making like 500 in value. 

09:13
He had free pizzas. He had to make a few posts, but that was what he wanted to do because he was able to share that with his teammates. So it's not just Max getting free pizzas he was able to share that with his teammates. So it's not just Max getting free pizzas he was able to share it with his teammates, and I always encourage athletes when they do NIL find a way that this can benefit your teammates too, and so he was in the position to do it. We had ironclad contracts, which don't really exist in most cases. For some of this stuff going on right now, it's still very much all over the map. There's hoping to be some legislation that will clean that up and have standardized contracts. 

09:53
We'll see how that plays out, but the idea is that Max was ready, he understood what he could do and we worked together so that he could do it. 

10:01 - justin (Host)
So that example is great because it demonstrates the altruistic nature of benefits here, beyond the commercial element. 

10:08
Which now do we have to bifurcate the dialogue though between where we see it at the big Division I level, where you've got 20-something million a year per school for the major schools being doled out, where it might be tougher to have those altruistic kind of the rising tide lifts all boats, not just the player, and I guess the question to that has to do with the interaction. So when you say becoming NIL, right, so that's a status, that's a mechanism to be paid. Okay, that conversation was you and Max. How many of these conversations involve the parent with the agent We'll talk about agents later and the player? What is the process that they typically go through to find? How do they find you? Because you don't find them. You don't go around saying I'm going to go find another player, or do they? Or is it a pull? How does that work? 

11:02 - greg (Host)
It goes both ways. So I always give the example of Maddie Niles. Maddie Niles is a pliable athlete that I was literally broadcasting games on Epic View Studios for Lawrence High School up in Fairfield, maine, and I was doing her sophomore season. She scored 38 goals, set the school record. She did this on grass, by the way, and if you know anything about field hockey, playing on grass and playing on turf two totally different things, much harder on grass. So she goes and does that and I'm like I really would like to learn more about maddie, right, because I'm not going to just select her based on the 38 goals. I need to select her on. What type of person is she? What are her parents like? To your point about the parents, okay. 

11:43
So the funny thing that ended up happening was senior night came and they announced all the seniors and they would all say in their little speeches the person I would like to thank the most is Kim Niles. And I said, wait a second, you're choosing her over your parents as far as somebody you'd like to thank, right, like. And so I said I've got to meet kim niles and sure enough, kim niles is one of the most, um, amazing parents you will ever come across would do anything for her daughter or for the team. And when brian bork, who owns epic view studios, said, greg, I'd love to be able to make that introduction for you. There's again that chain link right, we had it with Max, we now have it with Maddie, and there was a trust that I knew what I was doing and that Kim trusted Brian, and then Kim could trust me, and then Maddie could trust me and Maddie Niles became a pliable athlete before she had her driver's license. 

12:44 - justin (Host)
It takes a lot of work, though, to build those bonds, and I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute, because, well, the question is how many other pliables are there around the world or within the United States? 

12:58 - greg (Host)
Because this is NIL's a US context, We'll talk about international in a bit I guess yeah, we will. 

13:04 - justin (Host)
But how does one provide that opportunity for the young athlete, with that interaction to the parent, because they're figuring out their journey together? Yep, when there's few, because high touch. 

13:19 - greg (Host)
Yep high touch. 

13:20 - justin (Host)
So there's challenges there as well, because that means it's really only available to a select few, and we want to make this available, hopefully, to as many as possible. So how do you think about those challenges? 

13:33 - greg (Host)
So when I think we talk about high touch, I work with high school, college and professional athletes. Whenever I'm working with a high school athlete, I really try to set it up so that the parent is involved the entire way, and that can mean a group text chat. So when I ask an athlete to do something, the parents are aware that I'm asking them to do something, because I also like to say I need boots on the ground, especially at that age. I need to know that the parent's going to tell me when Maddie has her SATs coming up right and she's stressed over those and now's not a good time to be making posts right. I need to know that because I can't tell everything every day. I'm not there right. And so when you have all of these athletes in all these different locations and they're going through each different time period in their life or their schooling, it really helps to have good parents be able to help me do the best job that I can do. 

14:28 - justin (Host)
So now let's give an example. I was just looking at an ACC women's soccer program of a school that a number of players I know are going to play for, so I said I'm going to go just check out the site and I saw this thing that said NIL Marketplace. I had never heard of that and of course I'm prepping for this discussion and I said, well, let's go look at their top score. And then so you click, you see the score and you see NIL marketplace and it's like 14 bucks for a shout out and $54 if you want an appearance, and it's like a marketplace, but it's $54 plus. So I'd have to then click on that as a consumer to get access to that athlete under this NIL framework. 

15:11
I'm leading back to parents actually We'll talk later about that. So as a parent and I see that my daughter's now worth $54, do I have any say in that? I mean, how does that where, um, all the kids get it? Or does the parent have to opt in to approve? Or because the kids, the players, going for free on a scholarship that's assumed, like it seems to be a more difficult to kind of navigate as a parent for a moment. Yeah, how do you think about it. I mean what? What am I missing? 

15:41 - greg (Host)
yeah, so basically it's, as people have said, the wild, wild west. Okay, so an athlete can go on to a marketplace. There are several different platforms where they can go. I'm just going to put Open Doors out. There is probably one of the most popular ones and they can go onto a website and, basically, on Open Doors, talk about how much they think they're worth. So, appearances, autographs, anything you want to put on there, shout outs birthday shout outs. 

16:06 - justin (Host)
They set the price. 

16:07 - greg (Host)
They set the price. Oh, brilliant. Okay, I don't know if that is brilliant. 

16:11 - justin (Host)
That's concerning at some level, but it's the free market, though, so you think it would Right. 

16:16 - greg (Host)
So here's the thing, though I find that athletes devalue themselves more than they value themselves. So what happens is, if they don't have an agent, they are probably going to not get as much as they could if they had one. There's actually stats out there that say you can earn up to 3.5 times as much if you have an agent, because the agent knows the current rate of what that athlete is. 

16:46 - justin (Host)
quote unquote worth right is the worth based on how good they are relatively on the pitch or the field, or how much is that value creation tied to stuff like posts and how good looking they are and all that other stuff? 

16:59 - greg (Host)
that must be a tough, tough one so what I like to say is it's based on the three Ps. Okay, three Ps you have. Number one their potential. How much of a potential they have to go pro, potential to be amazing, be on TV, right? Are your games on ESPN Plus? Or are you on NBC every weekend? Right? That kind of thing, because that's going to give you the exposure, the eyeballs that you need. 

17:23
Okay, number two you've got to have personality. I even say that Bill Belichick has personality. It doesn't matter. You don't need to be over the top. You don't need to be basically like Bill Belichick. You could be pretty stiff, but that's still his personality and you can market that. If you don't have a personality, if you don't know yourself well enough to have the confidence to know who you are, then it's going to be a lot harder to do NIL. And number three you've got to have the passion. It can be the passion for your sport. It can be the passion to work with brands. It can be the passion for your sport. It can be the passion to work with brands. It can be the passion for your community. That passion is what absolutely drives how much and how well the athlete will do with NIL. 

18:16 - justin (Host)
Most parents believe their child relative athlete is closer to pro than they are in reality right, I mean, that's just how it's absolutely. 

18:26 - greg (Host)
You should see the emails I get my kids always the next, yeah, yeah, the next, la marta right, um. 

18:32 - justin (Host)
So that must make it difficult, because if they know the numbers, oh well, I will do better, my child will do better, my if 3x, if they get an agent yeah so then I you'd think in the market there'd be an inundation, an influx of represent my child Mm-hmm. 

18:47
Now that means it's tough to figure out who to trust. Yeah, the one thing we only spoke a few minutes before the episode here One lasting thing was that the lack of registration standards to be an agent, your amazing comment that it was tougher to get a driver's license than to become an agent in a market that next year, within D1 alone, is $2.2 billion and whatever rate, commission rate, you want to put success rate one or 20, doesn't matter massive number right, so fraught with potential problem. 

19:30
This isn't even the conversation of moral hazard. We're just talking about abuse or poor outcomes, which is the worst thing. Poor outcomes about abuse or poor outcomes, which is the worst thing poor outcomes, so this question again is in the context of a parent or a mentor or a caregiver looking out for the best interest of that younger athlete, absolutely. How do they navigate it? What advice do you give them? 

19:53 - greg (Host)
Yeah, so I think that it's really important to know there are not a lot of nil marketing agents right now. A lot more are going to come on the scene because they realize and, like you said, they're going to realize how easy it is, which I think now is probably the time to dive into the discussion about what an agent is. 

20:12 - justin (Host)
Exactly. 

20:13 - greg (Host)
Please do so. You've got professional sports agents who have always existed. Exactly, please do so. You've got professional sports agents who have always existed. They've existed to, in most cases, get football and basketball players to the next level to play professional sports. Those agents are going through a process, whether it's through the NFLPA, through the NBA right, to go and get their agent's license in those sports to be able to represent those players. So in that case that's a lot more difficult than it is to get any opportunity just to be an athlete agent. 

20:49
When I say it's easy, a lot of these are mandated by the Secretary of State in each state. So that means that you have to register to be a sports agent. That means you can be one, but you've got to go get credentials if you're going to specialize in a sport. The next thing becomes okay, well, those agents typically get about 3% to 8%—8% is pretty high—on the professional sports contract that that athlete would sign, on the professional sports contract that that athlete would sign. What happens now with NIL is that you can have a nil marketing agent and that agent needs to be an athlete agent because they're serving the same purpose. They are making money when an athlete makes money and they are representing them when they go to a business, presenting them when they go to a business. So states are now giving out these agent licenses to people that apply to be an agent because they got to be a nil marketing agent. 

21:46
I will also say that a lot of nil marketing agents don't know they need to be registered in the state where the athlete is from, where their domicile and where they go to school. Now the other thing that's interesting to know is that in each state it's different, so that adds a whole nother layer to the complexity of becoming a nil marketing agent versus being a traditional sports agent. And in this sense, I explain what about nil marketing agents? There aren't that many. I'm hoping that we can clean up the process so that there will be a test to take, a validation process, for a parent to know that this person is worth trusting. 

22:28
Now I will give a huge shout out to athletesorg, because they are going to become the first college athlete players association. Excellent, okay. And they are vetting these agents, their vendors that they're working with, and they are providing resources for, during and after, the career of these athletes, which is something that pliable has always done. I've always said that from day one, I will represent the player during and after their career, because why would I abandon them when they're going to need me the most? 

23:00 - justin (Host)
Okay, so in that, let's get real now. The nicest thing someone said about you for the work, and then, whether it's perceived or a specific statement, what's the worst thing someone said, even when you had the best interests in mind? 

23:16 - greg (Host)
I think that one that sticks out to me was Kara Sajevic worst thing, someone said even when you had the best interests in mind. I think that one that sticks out to me was Kara Sajevic. She's at University of St Thomas on the women's ice hockey team and in a basically message to me she said you're one of the hardest working people. I know and I know that you do a lot that I don't even get to see working people. I know and I know that you do a lot that I don't even get to see. And she's right and I was like she gets it and to me that was a moment where I felt like they appreciate it, because the other thing that I always say about pliable athletes, what I'm looking for, we talk about the P's that'll make you successful. 

23:56 - justin (Host)
When. 

23:56 - greg (Host)
I look for a pliable athlete. I'm looking for three things. I'm looking for a we talk about the P's that'll make you successful. When I look for a pliable athlete, I'm looking for three things. I'm looking for a good attitude. I'm looking for gratitude and I'm looking for effort and if I see those things in an athlete, I know we're going to be successful. Because I've worked in pro sports, I've seen the other side a little bit and it's tough sometimes. 

24:15
So the idea is that when she said that to me, that really stuck out and I thought that was amazing. The other thing I do want to say is that came as part of a book that my daughter last Christmas reached out. She, by the way, I call her my business advisor because she knows everything about the business. 

24:34 - justin (Host)
I got the same on my side. Okay, good to say. 

24:36 - greg (Host)
Good. She reached out. The same on my side okay, good side, good. So what ended up happening is without my knowledge. She reached out to every single pliable athlete and said what would you say about what my dad has done for you? And they wrote in this. They wrote back emails, they wrote back text messages. They wrote back all these things. She put them in a scrapbook. I still have the book. I'll keep it forever. The idea is that all those things they said are in that book and it was powerful, I think, not only for me to see it, but for my daughter to see how much they appreciate it. 

25:06 - justin (Host)
Now what's the worst? 

25:07 - greg (Host)
So the worst. I think it was a situation where it was early on I was about a year in I was talking with an athlete Interestingly enough it was soccer and I was trying to have a conversation with the athlete. And then it was time to talk to the parents and I sensed that and I was like, okay, this athlete wants to do it. Are the parents going to be on board? I always like to say this I don't recruit, just the player. 

25:35 - justin (Host)
I recruit the whole family. 

25:37 - greg (Host)
It comes along with the territory. Okay, yep, so I actually had the parent. When I think she got on the call, she was worried that this was a scam and I really it was very hard for me to hear that because I have worked so hard and, like I you, about agents. We have this bad reputation sometimes about taking people's money and all this kind of stuff. That was an eye-opener for me that I was going to have to change the perception of what an agent is before I'm going to be able to start working. And now I didn't know her right. I didn't have a connection. We talk about a chain link. I didn't have a chain link to be able to connect me with the athlete and the family. So there wasn't that trust and that was why that didn't go so well and they ended up not working with me and that was a decision they made. 

26:28 - justin (Host)
So one thing we've done we will for every podcast at Footy for my Soul is we speak to the butterfly effect and in the context of a random act of kindness of somebody in your life that did something unbeknownst to them or maybe they just did it because they love you and they just wanted to give you an opportunity by flapping their wings it impacted you, but who then impacted others? Yep, so I mean, we're going to get to this at the end, because that, I think, ultimately, is the soul of what you've built. But who's impacted you to do this? Because the reason I'm asking it now is because, ultimately, it came back, the greatest accomplishment or the nicest thing was really about caring. It's one thing to be effective. 

27:13
It's another thing to deeply care. So where did that come from? 

27:18 - greg (Host)
I think it comes from my parents. I'll be very straightforward and tell you that my mom's an educator, so I have that in me, you know. And then my dad is the sports side Got it, so I have that hybrid mix. I also think that when you talk about somebody that's had an impact, my dad was actually a sports agent. 

27:36 - justin (Host)
Okay. 

27:36 - greg (Host)
So he was traveling around, he was representing hockey players and I remember we had hockey players staying in my basement when I was a kid, you know, because they were trying out for the Bruins and they needed a place to stay and they didn't have a lot of money and so we would take them in and he was not ultimately successful in the business. 

27:56 - justin (Host)
Was there anyone else, whether it be an event or a person, looking back to young Greg, to current business professional Greg, where something happened that led you outside of your dad? Yeah, my dad's an economist, I became studied economics you want to follow in the footsteps of your parents. 

28:15 - greg (Host)
Yeah, so I think it's important for me to mention that when I saw that he didn't succeed. That drives me, because I learned from what he did Interesting, so there's a motivation there that's deep for me. The other thing that I think drives what I do and I think that maybe a moment I guess in my life that I think drives what I do for these athletes and why I work so hard is because I ended up going in my sophomore year for a physical. Okay, hey, can I do camps? Can I, you know, get approval? Right, we all go through it. Can I play sports this year again? Yeah, the doctor just checked you off the list. 

28:53
Well, I went in and I actually was told that I had a slipped disc in my back. And the doctor said to me you really shouldn't play hockey again. And I was like, are you kidding me? And I was 14 years old and all I wanted to do was play hockey, you know. And so in that moment, dr Rangaswamy was her name she told me that my hockey career was over and I was like devastated. And that's the moment Well, I didn't realize it at the time. I certainly realize it now is that I was an athlete, I will always be an athlete, and these athletes need to understand there's going to be a time when it comes to an end. 

29:31 - justin (Host)
Well, sometimes the butterfly effect isn't done on purpose. So you think about? The butterfly flaps its wings and there's a hurricane around the world. The doctor flapped his wings and by her telling her that you can't play hockey anymore, that was the hurricane that created pliable marketing. So I'm going to go down that path. Because if you think about these unintended consequences, right, that happened. 

29:52
I didn't think about it at the time. Greg might have said when you were 15, you didn't say, but now, today you can look back. I think it's really important to think back and reflect about those events or impacts Now. That random act of kindness may not have been what you wanted to share with you. You probably wanted to say, greg, you're going to go play a pro Instead you're not anymore Right. But it's important. Okay, I want to take this conversation into the other sports that can be impacted by. 

30:20
NIL Every sport, yes, or can it be more than sports? And this is what's interesting to me. So I look at a lot of different levels. So we really want to take this outside of the big D1 Power 4 conferences. To the vast majority of you know athletes, okay, um, but you'd think about college sports. What about college club sports? What about dance? What about music? 

30:50
the model's the same, it just happens to be all the money started right, the edo band and money became because of basketball, and then they monetized that 20 some odd years later, same could apply to music or dance, right? 

31:04 - greg (Host)
Yeah. So that's actually the example that I give when a lot of people will criticize how can these athletes be making all this money? This is ridiculous and oh, they don't deserve this and they're getting too much money. I always sit there and say there's some 8-year-old YouTube star that's opening up toys and is making millions, and if you don't think that these athletes work 20 times harder than that 8-year-old, you're wrong. They work extremely hard and they deserve to have this opportunity. They don't have time to have a job. They are literally spending all of their waking hours in some way whether it's school, getting a scholarship, whatever it is to play the sport they love, and they should have the opportunity to do just like you're talking about. In the music industry. Someone can have a hit single. Look at Taylor Swift, right, look at what she did. Well, she wasn't an athlete, so didn't she have to worry about NIL? Okay, she was able to simply go out and do it, because there was no Supreme Court case ruling that was going to prevent her from doing it. 

32:09 - justin (Host)
I have two questions I want to ask at the same time. Okay, all right. So, greg, a player comes in at the D1 level to start a superstar, but they get injured and they can never play again. 

32:21 - greg (Host)
Okay. 

32:21 - justin (Host)
Do they lose their NIL opportunity? 

32:23 - greg (Host)
No, here's why I say that it comes down to your athlete brand. 

32:27 - justin (Host)
Okay, okay. 

32:29 - greg (Host)
So my advice, one of my pieces of advice today, for anybody that's listening and watching is that you need to build your athlete brand. Before you start securing nil opportunities, you need to know what you stand for, what are your core values, so that then, if that player does get injured, maybe they had a few opportunities that may have set them on a path right, like I had with my back surgery. I could speak now to recovery products. I'll talk to you about electrolytes, how I try to stay in shape. All these things I do because I had that situation and if this is this big name athlete, they should still have the equity that they had as an athlete when they were playing, and they still have now that they're done. 

33:17 - justin (Host)
Look at shaquille o'neal sure how long he's been done and he's what he's doing the devil's advocate to be, that's, in the eye of the beholder, of some coach. So some division one coach thought that that soccer player was better than the other soccer players, so she or he got this opportunity to go to big acc school and not the d3 program. Yep, okay, so the player and they'll just say they're equal players just someone's opinion. 

33:42 - greg (Host)
Yeah, yeah. 

33:42 - justin (Host)
So the player that goes to the D1 school, gets injured, doesn't play for three years, hence doesn't do the work. 

33:49 - greg (Host)
I'm just going down the angle to work for a second. Yeah, yeah go ahead. 

33:51 - justin (Host)
Yeah, totally curious. I don't know if this makes any sense. Then you got a d3 player who ends up starting for four years but they don't have the big sum of money because of the future of broadcast revenue sharing and all that stuff. Is it fair? That's more of a question and maybe maybe that's the wrong question, but is it fair to that d3 player that worked so hard that they don't have that same opportunity as the d1 player that just got hurt and didn't do anything their last three years? How do you think about that? 

34:21 - greg (Host)
I think about it this way you create your own opportunities. If that athlete at the D3 level wants to do NIL, they can absolutely do it. 

34:31
And if they have somebody who knows what they're doing, to educate, empower them to do that, they can absolutely do it and they can probably even do it better than the other athlete who didn't do the work and wasn't willing to put in the time and wasn't playing. Because if you've got somebody who's playing, I think there's a lot more equity there, because even though they might not be on national TV and all that, they still are playing and they are relevant Relevancy matters. And so if you build your audience and you can, I mean it's amazing what you can do now on TikTok and Instagram to make yourself marketable. 

35:07 - justin (Host)
Okay. 

35:08 - greg (Host)
And so that has opened up a whole nother world that there's no way to say, oh, you're going to be limited in what you can do. The only limit you set is for yourself. 

35:24 - justin (Host)
Okay. So the other one would just be to understand the groupings of sports. So football, basketball at the top Is soccer, baseball, volleyball. Field hockey the tier two. How do you group them? Field hockey the tier two. Like, how do you group them? And what happens when it's the, uh, the, the sports that just got cut by the college and now we're a club program. 

35:44 - greg (Host)
Okay. So let's break that down two ways. One, yes, you're absolutely right, football, basketball top of the list. Okay, um, I will say that volleyball is surging. Um, I think you also have to look at baseball is coming up pretty quickly. The reason those are typically going to be at the top of the list is because most of the time, those are American-born players. 

36:09
Now, where I'm going to go with this is to answer your next thing, which we're going to open up a whole other can of worms. We're going to open up a whole other can of worms, which is going to be you've got a whole bunch of international sports and athletes that are waiting for international athletes to be able to make money using their name, image and likeness. Short story right now is that basically, there's legislation that's going to be required, with the visa issues, to be able to get them to be able to make money in the States and do NIL. So why is soccer not higher on the list? Well, one of the reasons is because you have a lot of international players who come to the States to play soccer and they can't do. 

36:47 - justin (Host)
NIL Exactly. 

36:47 - greg (Host)
Fair. So that's one thing. They don't have that opportunity. Now you ask about club. Interestingly enough, there are players that are out there right now that are on club teams. I know one specifically from the University of Michigan. Okay, that is out there and doing NIL and doing it very well. 

37:08 - justin (Host)
There are club teams that travel as if they're the Boston Celtics, absolutely In team buses, with uniforms and endorsements and so forth which is incredible in team buses with uniforms and endorsements and so forth, which is incredible. 

37:22
Okay, so we're now going to take it into the dark side of soccer and the history of soccer and I'm going to read this because I'm going to probably mangle it 2015, the US Department of Justice indicted several FIFA officials and sports marketing executives for fraud, money laundering and bribery to the tune of $150 million that was misused within soccer. That wasn't very long ago, no, okay, why did we bring it up? So, transparency, ethical practices, frameworks, oversight regulation ethical practices, frameworks, oversight regulation uh, how do we make sure this doesn't have what happened in soccer and I'm assuming, well, we don't need to go to other sports right now. What do you do from pliable standpoint and what is the industry doing at large to make sure that, when money of the sums and the important part of this question the reason it really happened at fifa, if we go back, it went from zero to 100 money there was no money in the sport to massive amounts of money. Adidas, I believe, was the first one that did a deal with the sports marketing company and the second. 

38:31
Money got into soccer, destroyed and the bad incentives and the game, and it took 20 years later before people ended up in jail. Okay, not the making the game more beautiful context. We have footy for myself, but I want to dispel the myth. Tell me why, in today's society, this isn't going to happen with this $2.2 billion spent. Tell me how we avoid misuse of funds and what is Pliable's role to make sure that this industry stays above the board. 

39:05 - greg (Host)
Yep, so I think. Number one it comes down to reporting. So all of these schools now have compliance departments, and I feel for those compliance departments because three years ago they didn't have to deal with a single thing related to NIL. That wasn't their job, it was never their job, it was never in their job description. 

39:23
Now, instead of making sure a player is eligible with grades and all the other things that a compliance department would do, is they are now in charge of NIL and making sure that the athlete is disclosing. What they're doing for a brand partnership, okay. So now you have these athletes, much like we talked about Open Doors earlier, where $54 for an autograph, whatever it may be Tracked Right. They then have to disclose that through that platform, and I think technology has come a long way and I think that will play a role here in disclosing is that they will then disclose it to the schools and we will have a more accurate, more accurate I'm not saying it's going to be perfect, because there are going to probably be some things that happen that are not going to be reported. 

40:10 - justin (Host)
That's my concern, that is your concern. The D1, I think, is going to be overregulated because that's where all the money is D1. The D1, I think, is going to be over-regulated because that's where all the money is. But I'm thinking about the expansiveness of this to other sports, to clubs, to other colleges, etc. How do we that don't have compliance departments on nil? How do we do it? 

40:26 - greg (Host)
They're going to. That's how they're going to have to do this. I will say it's not very popular right now. Let's take a look at it from a popularity standpoint. Division 1, it's happening. It's happening all over the place. We know that okay. Division two not so much, really. Honestly, there are, there are not a lot of d2 players doing nil, and even if you go to d3, you're going to get fine, even less okay, because they don't believe that they can do it, because there is that perception that we talked about, which is oh, this is for d1, it's for basketball, it for football. That's what a lot of people believe. 

40:58 - justin (Host)
Do you believe that's going to be the case? Crystal ball five years from now. Do you think we've made that comment? It? 

41:02 - greg (Host)
will always be where the most eyeballs are. Okay, so those sports right now are on television. Okay, it's going to be TV related. Okay, now here's what's going to happen. You take the Professional Women's Hockey League okay, going to happen. You take the Professional Women's Hockey League, the PWHL, you put that on TV, which is going to start to happen more and more. It already has. Look at what's going to happen with college women's ice hockey. Because now they believe that they can go and play pro, they will want to do more name, image and likeness opportunities, and the reason is is because they can actually make more money with NIL than they can play and be a professional women's ice hockey player. 

41:42 - justin (Host)
Let's take it. We want to connect experiences on this podcast to other episodes. We had the commissioner of the United Women's Soccer. 

41:49 - greg (Host)
Yes, soccer is a great example. 

41:52 - justin (Host)
So I was involved in a team that had a. I was the general manager of a team that was in the league and we had the games were on TV, it was broadcasting it through and we had 1,000 people watching it 500 at the match, 1,000 people watching and the commissioner and I were talking about that. How many players? Because he has his own team and he's starting to have players that have NIL First couple have rolled in and he's starting to have players to have NIL First couple have rolled in. Now most of the players that play it at kind of pre-professional women's soccer are D1, so they're learning about it today. 

42:25
Okay, but there's just as many two and three in that group, now Cisco. So play it forward. As pre-professional sports becomes more commonplace, it's easier to showcase on television. It's not just ESPN+. You couldn't watch college soccer on ESPN a few years ago, so that's pretty recent right so now, let's say pre-professionals. 

42:45
on television there's 1,000 people watching a season of 10 games. This player wants to have an NIL approach. Do you think, going forward on this, that's going to be commonplace, three years, five years out, that those players that are not the D1 names that the eyeballs are following are going to have an NIL relationship? 

43:08 - greg (Host)
I think it's yes, just by talking to you. If they've got the talent because, again, go back to the potential if they have the potential to play pro, some brand is going to see that. And if the athlete's doing their part, and if they have an agent, the agent should be doing their part to basically market the athlete, to say this is their trajectory and this is why you want to get in now, because if you look at someone in their infancy, you're going to pay a lot less than you are once they go and become the number one draft pick. 

43:39 - justin (Host)
Okay, Well, and is it also super regionalized? Because if you think about that example of a team that has a thousand eyeballs, there's companies in that area that, with marketing budgets that would say thousand eyeballs for a sport like soccer. 

43:52 - greg (Host)
I'll spend a whole bunch of money. 

43:54 - justin (Host)
I'll take that Right. It's like a mini ecosystem, a little mini economy that's being developed out here with NIL. That's what I was trying to get at. 

44:03 - greg (Host)
And then what I do is I break this down into what the potential is for an NIL possibility. Are they going to go get national deals? Probably not. Could they get regional? It's possible. Could they get local? Absolutely Okay, and that's what I always say to a lot of the athletes I work with We've got to start local. That's going to allow you to show people you can do it, how good you are at it, how much can you market a product or a service? And then what's going to happen is other brands are going to start to notice. They're going to see you doing it and they're going to see how good you are and if you're good, you're going to get offers. If you're going to not be so great at marketing a product, a brand or a service, or you don't believe in it and you're not passionate about it, you're not going to go very far. 

44:44 - justin (Host)
So I want to take this now to the purpose, or the altruism, involvement of this, because I was just again that example of the marketplace where I could spend my 14 bucks for a shout out as somebody seeing that like a brand, it's skin deep. There's no depth to that relationship At the little, micro, small or regional level. Somebody that's representing a local brand. You see about them there's substance, there's depth, like you see who they are as a person. Other brands can see that and it's more than they scored three goals or they might have been on TV. What a great representative this person is of my brand. 

45:25
So do you have examples locally? And we're in Maine, for those that watch the podcast, which is in the Northeast of the United States, for those listening in Africa and a lot of folks in Europe are listening? Now is cool, yeah, people all over the world listening to this, but I sometimes forget that we're in the northeast of the united states. But in the northeast of the united states, in the state of maine, in a, in the community we're at, and we have an athlete. Do you have some success stories where it goes beyond some money? But they've demonstrated like they've represented themselves and the brand so well that you think that's going to have some pile-on effects and growth because of who they are versus what they can do on the field you know what I'm asking? 

46:07 - greg (Host)
Yep, absolutely. So this is where I go and I say, all right, when I'm looking for a pliable athlete, I'm looking, as I told you, attitude, gratitude and effort. But I'm also looking for I want to find a good athlete that is a great person. If you end up being a great athlete, so be it. I work with a bunch of those as well. But the point is, when I sat across the table from Alyssa Bork, she was the first college athlete that I sat down with, did the profile, and I said to her I said what brands do you want to work with? And she said to me I would do anything to work with Aroma Joe's, great coffee. And I was like I thought to myself huge brand and I don't know how long that's going to take, right? So I'm thinking to myself all right, good game on, let's see what we can do, let's make it happen. 

46:57
So, sure enough, I started to have conversations with Crystal Brown as a community marketing manager for Aroma Joe's, and it took over a year. But we built. We built together. We built the Aroma Joe's community Ambassador Program. Now I emphasize the word community because it's exactly what you're talking about is, if you're a great person. There's a lot of value in that. What you've done in your community, how much people respect you, the effort that you put in right and all the good things you've done to give back that is marketable because they know what the brand is going to get, they don't have a risk of. Well, what did you do for community service when you were in high school? And someone says nothing. 

47:45 - justin (Host)
I hope players are listening to this because this is inspiring, because all too often we talk about that pyramid and you don't get to that top of the pyramid and you think all those opportunities are no longer there because I'm not good enough, right, well, we want to invert the pyramid. So the more you're in your sport, the more opportunities. 

48:04
So, yes, just because I'm going to put words in your mouth. I am going to put words in your mouth. Even if you're not the best player on the team, you can still be involved and make a difference as an NIL athlete. 

48:14 - greg (Host)
Absolutely, still be involved and make a difference as an NIL athlete, absolutely. 

48:15 - justin (Host)
And I don't think people think that. I don't think that's understood in the marketplace. 

48:19 - greg (Host)
Right Now. I want to just make sure that I articulate that you can't expect to make millions, like gets talked about in the media. That you're going to make Can you absolutely make, depending on where you go with your career. Could you make a decent amount of money and feel like, hey, I'm making it? 

48:38 - justin (Host)
Yes. 

48:38 - greg (Host)
Okay, depends on who you are, where you go, all these variables, okay. But back to Alyssa's situation and how inspired I was by that. She said I wanted to work with Aroma Joes. I said, great, it took us a year to get there. We built the program. Today there are more than nine community ambassadors for Aroma Joes and Aroma Joes has built this program on finding good athletes that are great people and you would be amazed to see the number of people that want to work with Aroma Joes because it is very popular and it's great products and kids are obsessed with it, right. 

49:16 - justin (Host)
Starbucks has to watch out. They're taking over the whole East Coast of the United States. 

49:22 - greg (Host)
And so the funny thing about it is that that nil program is going to be one of the best in the country. And it's not because they're out there saying buy Aroma Joes, they're out there leveraging the fact that they are involved in their community and they're giving back, and that's why they've had this opportunity. That's a powerful, powerful thing. 

49:48 - justin (Host)
Well, put a bow on that with the magic cleats. Yeah, if you would. 

49:53 - greg (Host)
So I will, because one of the first stories, as I started Pliable, I was starting to network and I had to find the athletes right. It's like I'm building a team. It's almost like a general manager. I'm building a team of athletes that I want to work with. I don't have a roster limit, quite honestly, by the way. I can go find as many as I want, but I've got to find the Certain number of hours in the day. 

50:15 - justin (Host)
You have that limit, right. So here's where. 

50:17 - greg (Host)
I'm going with that, but I've got to find the right ones, right. So I started. Actually, I found this on Instagram it's called the Athlete Mentor, okay, and Chandler Gull ran the Athlete Mentor. I reached out to him. I said you work with amazing athletes. I can tell they want to give back and the mentors basically would help high school athletes figure out how they're going to go to college and mentor them. So I said to him I said I'd love to be able to learn more. So what ended up happening is he said you've got to talk to these two girls. I said okay, who are they? Hannah Dukeman and Emma Eubank. They're from Ball State University on the softball team. 

50:57
I said okay, he said they want to cure childhood cancer. I was like, right there, I knew there was a story and I was like I don't know if I can get bigger than that. Right, like if I'm thinking about things, ways to give back have an impact. So what ends up happening is I walked them through the pliable athlete process. They both wanted to do it and I said to them I said you guys want to cure childhood cancer. I said that's absolutely amazing and we need to tell the world about that. 

51:27
And so I said what if you guys became the first athletes in the country to use your name, image and likeness to raise awareness and funds for childhood cancer? They said that sounds great. I said let's create cleats that you're going to wear on your feet and people will notice those, and more people will notice, and more people will notice. And they did so. We designed cleats that were hashtag cure cancer cleats. They look like this right here, as you can see and as the audience can get a look at and the link will be in the bio for this book. 

52:01
So what ends up happening is they create these cleats, they wear them, they get news stories, they get tv stories, they're on podcasts, they're doing the whole nine yards and I ended up connecting them with saint jude because that's where the money was going to go. And they got invited to the National Childhood Cancer Awareness Walk right in Indiana. I had no idea where it was. It was right in Indiana, right where they are. I'm like we don't even have to fly anywhere. This is great, and the funny thing about it is where that walk was was right in front of the NCAA headquarters, was right in front of the NCAA headquarters, literally, and I thought to myself what a powerful statement this is to have two girls from Ball State that I had never even heard of Ball State before, literally in front of the NCAA offices doing true NIL, not to make money but to donate money. They had raised over $4,500 by the time they were done. 

53:03
That was incredible. And then to take that another step. Why this is part of an athlete brand is because when Emma graduated, she was, by the way, the head lab technician at Ball State to find a cure for childhood cancer. She graduated and she is now at Vanderbilt University one of the top in the entire country to find a cure for childhood cancer and get her PhD. Now I strongly believe that part of her getting into Vanderbilt was the fact that she showed the world how passionate she is about curing childhood cancer. That's how you build an athlete brand and this story. 

53:43
This is not how to make money with NIL. This is not tips for your next Instagram reel. The reason I wanted to write a children's book is because I believe that if we can have more children grow up believing they can make the world a better place with their money or their NIL, then we're going to be in a much better place, and that's why I wrote this. I wrote it with my 12-year-old daughter and she is a huge part of why I did this, but she's also a huge part of Mission E50, which I'm just going to quickly explain. Mission E50 is the initiative I started when I started Pliable, that I will always represent more than 50% female athletes and I'm going to increase the popularity of women's sports. Because, to tie this all back together, this stems from when I sat literally at the basement of my girlfriend's house in high school. She was on the soccer team. It was 1999. We watched the women's team win the gold medal. 

54:52 - justin (Host)
Brandi Chastain take off her shirt. 

54:53 - greg (Host)
Incredible moment. Incredible moment. I sat there with the entire girls' soccer team at Lincoln-Sudbury High School watching that game. I was the only male in that room. That moment, to me, transcended sports, and that's why the women's soccer team has led the way with this whole thing, because they're fighting for equal pay, which they absolutely deserve, and Mission E50 stems from that. It stems from the first athlete I worked with, kaylin Bork, who was wearing a jersey that didn't even have her team name on it. And it stems from all of these female athletes that I talk to on a regular basis that just want to have equality, and we don't have enough of it. And I'll also tell you something else that women's sports is going to take off because of NIL, because women really understand that they're the underdogs here. They have something to play for, they've always had something to play for, and now they have an opportunity that they've never had. 

56:01 - justin (Host)
I love the fact that you answered our last question brilliantly already about your legacy and the soul and why you did all this. I was going to ask you exactly about your daughter and you put it in a bow. You did it so perfectly that there are no more questions, uh, except a statement from everybody that uh supports footy. For my soul and myself as a creator, and a small team around us that are doing this, uh to give back as a service. It's not a commercial interest, it's one we care about deeply, and that means we just want to bring to light people, processes, programs that make the game more beautiful. In this case, the game isn't only the game of soccer, it's every game, and it's men and women and soon to be, international and US. Yes, right, so thank you so much for your time, greg. It was awesome Pleasure. 

57:04 - greg (Host)
Thank you.