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Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis. Clay talks

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Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.

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Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Trevis. Welcome into the Wins and lost

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Speaker 1: his podcast. This is only our second edition of this podcast.

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Speaker 1: First a week was Jason Whitlock. We're gonna be joined

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Speaker 1: this week by Shannon Terry at sp Terry seven on Twitter.

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Speaker 1: I think you guys are gonna love his story and

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Speaker 1: I'm excited to dive in with him. Now we are

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Speaker 1: joined this week by Shannon Terry. For those of you

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Speaker 1: who do not know Shannon, he has built up the

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Speaker 1: Rivals Network and sold it to Yahoo. He has built

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Speaker 1: up seven Sports and sold it to CBS. He's got

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Speaker 1: another uh universe of the web that he has built

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Speaker 1: called pop culture dot com. We'll ask him all about

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Speaker 1: that comic book dot com. All different sorts of arenas there.

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Speaker 1: But the concept four wins and losses, if you have

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Speaker 1: not listened before, is I feel like a lot of

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Speaker 1: time we focus on the successes that people have in life,

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Speaker 1: and we don't talk about what they learned from losses

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Speaker 1: along the way, or even how close a win may

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Speaker 1: have felt to a loss or vice versa. I've known

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Speaker 1: Shannon for a while. I want to bring him in now. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He lives where I do in uh in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Speaker 1: He came up here, and I want to start there. Shannon,

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Speaker 1: you were an athlete who comes to Nashville. You grew

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Speaker 1: up in North Alabama. How did you find yourself kind

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Speaker 1: of growing up? What was your background like? And uh,

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Speaker 1: and I'll start there. So you're from North Alabama. What

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Speaker 1: was your hometown like, what was your early childhood like

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Speaker 1: when you were growing up? Yeah, so I grew up

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Speaker 1: in Woodville, which is about twenty miles east of Huntsville. Um,

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Speaker 1: in that Gunners little scotts Ware Huntsville, UH corridor. Really

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Speaker 1: really small town. I think I've said I think at

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Speaker 1: the time I was there is about three people. The

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Speaker 1: first I went to for eleven years, we had twenty

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Speaker 1: five and are graduating class. I transferred my senior year

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Speaker 1: because of athletics, farming community, you know, relatively, you know,

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Speaker 1: lower lower middle class. My mom was an assistant at

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Speaker 1: the red Stone Arsenal and Huntsville and retired and became

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Speaker 1: a sociute teacher. UM. I guess when I was in

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Speaker 1: the six or seventh grade and then my dad took

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Speaker 1: two jobs. He was a career farmer but also worked

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Speaker 1: at PPG Industries uh in Huntsville. So very very humble. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know beginnings, but you know, really strong you know

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Speaker 1: family unit and really good parents, grandparents. You grew up

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Speaker 1: on a farm. I grew up on a farm. Hey,

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Speaker 1: every minute you do chores like they had you out

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Speaker 1: like when you were a kid. Did you remember? I mean,

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Speaker 1: because I think for a lot of people will be listening.

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Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of almost a cliche idea now

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Speaker 1: that you grow up on a farm and obviously to

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Speaker 1: make a living in the tech industry like you do now.

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Speaker 1: But what what like what are your earliest memories of

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Speaker 1: growing up on the farm. Do you remember doing the

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Speaker 1: farm chores? I mean, what kind of lifestyle did you

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Speaker 1: have when you were a kid. Oh, I mean mine

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Speaker 1: is you know, the very cliche. I mean my you know,

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Speaker 1: my my dad worked uh second shift and third shift

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Speaker 1: at PVG so that he could, you know, work his farm.

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Speaker 1: He had on seven eight acres. My grandfather had a

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Speaker 1: couple of thousand you know, cattle farms, so we grew crops.

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Speaker 1: The crops were predominantly though, to feed to the herd,

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Speaker 1: the cows um and you know, from the moment I

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Speaker 1: could walk, you know, relatively well. You know, I was

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Speaker 1: doing everything, you know, cleaning out barns, bailing, hey, you know,

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Speaker 1: driving tractors, you know, you name it, and and quite honestly,

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Speaker 1: you know, I've always considered myself a hard worker, but

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm very lazy compared to you know,

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Speaker 1: my parents, their their parents. I mean they have a

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Speaker 1: completely different gear. And I think my interest in sports,

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Speaker 1: you know, my interests in technology, and some of the

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Speaker 1: interests that interested I picked up in other areas over

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Speaker 1: the years, you know, whether it's reading or whatever, was

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Speaker 1: because I didn't want to be a farmer. I mean

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Speaker 1: it was, you know, there was no there was nothing

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Speaker 1: glorious about what we were doing. I mean it was

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Speaker 1: always you know, equipment failure, you know, weather concerns, you know,

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Speaker 1: rising costs. I mean it was, you know, there's no joke.

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Speaker 1: I mean, being on a small farm was you know

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Speaker 1: a lot of hard work and a lot of struggles.

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Speaker 1: So you're waking up, do you remember having an epiphany

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Speaker 1: where you're like, man, I could never do this for

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Speaker 1: a living because a lot of people come into farming

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Speaker 1: and kind of take over from their parents, right and

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Speaker 1: end up doing exactly what they did. Do you remember

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Speaker 1: at a young age being and having that epiphany where

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Speaker 1: you said, I can't do this, I don't want to

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Speaker 1: do this. You know. My parents they were hard workers

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Speaker 1: and they were tough on me, but they were always good.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if if I had to go, you know,

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Speaker 1: do something for sports, you know, they there was always

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Speaker 1: no questions ask you know, you don't have to show up,

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Speaker 1: you know, do your do your chores. By the way,

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Speaker 1: I didn't get to allow with us, just did chores.

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Speaker 1: And so in my mind it was one of those

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Speaker 1: back of the mind kind of things. But I'll tell

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Speaker 1: you where where it really was just like, screw this,

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Speaker 1: I've had enough of it. My freshman year in college,

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Speaker 1: David liscom my red shirted and we had um. We

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Speaker 1: had some Belgian horses. We I think we had four

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Speaker 1: of them that my grandfather had. In the purpose of them,

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Speaker 1: it was that they were logging horses and he had

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Speaker 1: them for novelty and they ate the remnants of the soybean.

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Speaker 1: And I built hay all my life and it was

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Speaker 1: no big deal. But when you run a hay balor

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Speaker 1: behind a harveyist harvested soybean filled and and rake all

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Speaker 1: that and bail all that, You're talking hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: pounds of dust. And so for one summer straight, um

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Speaker 1: three or four times at different times we bail that

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Speaker 1: soybean remmant up. And I'm telling you, I ate more dust.

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Speaker 1: It messed up my sinuses. I think it took me

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Speaker 1: a year and a half of college to get over that.

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Speaker 1: And and that was it wasn't an epiphemey, but it

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Speaker 1: was a door slamming. You know. I wasn't the guy

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Speaker 1: that said, Hey, if I ever make it, I'm going

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Speaker 1: to go have one of those farms like to have

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Speaker 1: on TV. I was done with it. I was done

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Speaker 1: with the abuse, and I had moved on. So, you know,

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Speaker 1: as I've gotten older, I realized that I realized the

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Speaker 1: values that I learned, the freedom, the ability to just

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Speaker 1: you know, exist without the need for technology or being

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Speaker 1: around people. And I wish that, you know, I wish

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Speaker 1: my kids have got four kids now could experience a

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Speaker 1: lot of things that I experienced growing up. So when

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Speaker 1: did you so, you said, you kind of came into sports.

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Speaker 1: When did you start to play sports and when did

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Speaker 1: you start to realize, hey, I'm pretty good at this.

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Speaker 1: I was, I was good at an early age. So, um,

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Speaker 1: I was good. I mean pretty much third fourth grade,

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Speaker 1: you know, or whatever. I mean again, a town of

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Speaker 1: three hundred people. I remember the day I got television

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Speaker 1: and we got got four or five channels that were

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Speaker 1: you know, it was like what W g En and TVs,

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Speaker 1: you know, outside of the Rabbity Ears. So I didn't

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Speaker 1: have a whole lot to do. Played baseball, played basketball,

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Speaker 1: and I mean for the most part, I was really

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Speaker 1: good at at basketball from the day I picked it up.

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Speaker 1: And so you start playing basketball, and at what time

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Speaker 1: do you start thinking, hey, I might be good enough

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Speaker 1: to go to college. Did your parents go to college?

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Speaker 1: People around you're in North Alabama? Uh, I think you

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Speaker 1: said twenty or thirty miles outside of Huntsville. When did

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Speaker 1: you start thinking, hey, my world could expand a little bit, um,

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Speaker 1: and I might be able to go to college and

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Speaker 1: and and it become a legitimate possibility through basketball. Sure.

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Speaker 1: Eighth grade, Um, eighth grade. I started playing a lot

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Speaker 1: with high school kids, you know, in the Huntsville area

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Speaker 1: in the Jackson County Masson County area, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of a lot of kids that were going on to

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Speaker 1: be college players. And I was, you know, holding my

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Speaker 1: own so to speak. So I think eighth or ninth grade.

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Speaker 1: It was it wasn't a matter of whether I was

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Speaker 1: going to be a college basketball player. It was it

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Speaker 1: was the level in which I was gonna play. My

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Speaker 1: junior year, I think I averaged on a thirty five

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Speaker 1: points a game or so. UM. I was m v

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Speaker 1: P of Vanderbilt's basketball camp. But it was, you know,

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Speaker 1: I was hoping to be I knew it wasn't an

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Speaker 1: SEC level because I was kind of a poor man's

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Speaker 1: more of a kind of a I was a stretch forward,

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Speaker 1: but you know, only about six four and a half.

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Speaker 1: So I was I was a little short to be

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Speaker 1: an SEC player for the style of play. UM. I

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Speaker 1: was hoping to be more, um, you know, that next

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Speaker 1: level down. But I ended up actually breaking my arm,

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Speaker 1: uh three or four weeks before my senior year. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That required two surgeries. Um, and so that sent me back.

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Speaker 1: I didn't come back, you know strong until several weeks

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Speaker 1: into the season. How do you break your arm this

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Speaker 1: goofing or on in the backyard and never had injured

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Speaker 1: my life and fail and shattered the main bone in

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Speaker 1: my arm, came out through the skin, big big mass.

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Speaker 1: Ended up having UH surgery at Houston Medical Clinic and

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Speaker 1: Columbus Georgia by James Andrews. It just started, Yes, he

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Speaker 1: had just started UM that practice. I think it just

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Speaker 1: left Auburn um at that time. Obviously I wasn't one

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Speaker 1: of his famous clients. But UM, they they fixed me

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Speaker 1: up and UM ended up coming back for the season

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Speaker 1: and and we had a really good senior year. We

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Speaker 1: lost by one point in the finals and state tournament

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Speaker 1: and silent Lipscombe later that year. So the minute you

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Speaker 1: hurt your arm, did you think, oh my god, like

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Speaker 1: I've ruined my basketball career. I mean, how quickly did

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Speaker 1: you have that thought? Almost instantaneously? Yeah, I mean, you know, here,

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Speaker 1: here's the thing. I wasn't an automatic going into my

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Speaker 1: senior year. I was one of those guys that was

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Speaker 1: gonna have to work to get a college costship. I

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Speaker 1: made really good grades in high school, so I wasn't

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Speaker 1: gonna go, you know, to some junk school and UM,

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Speaker 1: and so for me to play athletics. I was gonna

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Speaker 1: have to to get it done my senior year. And

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Speaker 1: then I guess a month and a half, I can't

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Speaker 1: remember us when you know, I had that bad break, um,

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Speaker 1: and so in my mind it was over. There was

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Speaker 1: no way to come back. Luckily it wasn't my shooting hand,

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Speaker 1: shooting arm. It was the other first play came back

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Speaker 1: though I dislocated my elbow. I had so much atrophy

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Speaker 1: in my arm. Um. You know, I had to fight

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Speaker 1: a lot of injuries my senior year. But um, you know,

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Speaker 1: all these things are just learning experiences. You don't trade. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, you learn as humans, we learn a lot

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Speaker 1: more from our losses and failures then I think we

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Speaker 1: do our successes. Um. So I think all of those

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Speaker 1: those things I went through in life made me a

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Speaker 1: AT or CEO, better leader, better entrepreneur as I developed,

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Speaker 1: you know, as I got ready for those opportunities in

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Speaker 1: my late twenties. Be sure to catch live editions if

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Speaker 1: I would kick the coverage with Clay Travis week days

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Speaker 1: at six am Eastern, three am Pacific. So you come

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Speaker 1: up to Nashville, how much time did you how much

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Speaker 1: traveling did you do growing up? Did you travel around

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Speaker 1: very much or did you spend any time much outside

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Speaker 1: of the area where you grew up? Did you know

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Speaker 1: anything about Nashville? I mean, because for a lot of

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Speaker 1: people who are listening right now that they're gonna, you know,

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Speaker 1: think North Alabama to Nashville is not that much of

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Speaker 1: a difference. I mean for people who haven't traveled in

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Speaker 1: that area, I mean, that's a big cultural difference to

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Speaker 1: go from rural Alabama to suddenly being in Nashville. How familiar,

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Speaker 1: how comfortable were you with that move? That's an awesome

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Speaker 1: statement because it brings excellent memory. So so to me,

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Speaker 1: the equivalent today would be my kids going to school

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Speaker 1: in Junea, Alaska, right, you know, I mean seriously, like

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Speaker 1: it is, it was Nashville was wasn't on the map.

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Speaker 1: I mean, now I will say this, um, two kind

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Speaker 1: of interesting points. I don't remember ever going on a

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Speaker 1: family vacation growing up. I'm trying to think, Um, you know,

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Speaker 1: I had an unbelievable childhood. My parents were amazing, you know.

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Speaker 1: I was that kid that felt loved. I was supported

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Speaker 1: in every way. My parents gave their shirt off the

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Speaker 1: back of their backs for you know, for me athletically

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Speaker 1: and academically. But I don't think we ever went on

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Speaker 1: a single family vacation. And that's mind boggling thinking how

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Speaker 1: many trips you take your kids, it's astounding. And you

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Speaker 1: take yours now and all the places you've been with them,

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Speaker 1: but when you were a kid, you didn't go anywhere.

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Speaker 1: Not one. I mean listen, not one single vacation. Now

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Speaker 1: we'll say this. I went to Lipscomb coach Myer's basketball

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Speaker 1: camp um for four years, I guess, starting either in

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Speaker 1: the eighth or ninth grade. I can't remember. Outside of

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Speaker 1: that trip, maybe a few trips for basketball a type

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Speaker 1: stuff in Birmingham. You know, that was it for me.

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Speaker 1: I mean I was I was a country boy, you know,

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Speaker 1: from Woodville, Alabama that you know, it was inconceivable from

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Speaker 1: my parents to spend their hard working dollars, you know,

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Speaker 1: at Disney are wherever, or even the beach. It's not

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Speaker 1: that far of a drive right to the beach from

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Speaker 1: North Alabama. You guys didn't take trips down to the

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Speaker 1: beach hardy, No, not hardly ever, didn't didn't happen. Didn't

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Speaker 1: didn't want it because it didn't know, you know, so

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Speaker 1: it wasn't you know, I didn't have a temptation to go,

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Speaker 1: didn't didn't mean anything, didn't register. So you know, I

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Speaker 1: I love looking back thinking, you know, you know how

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Speaker 1: how different life would be had I had the experiences,

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Speaker 1: you know, visiting the places that my children and visited.

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Speaker 1: But then again, who knows, you know, maybe you know

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Speaker 1: everything kind of maybe things happen for reasons. Who who knows?

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Speaker 1: Who cares? Uh? You so didn't come Don Meyer right, mean,

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Speaker 1: who is one of the most iconic basketball coaches of

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Speaker 1: all time. You show up your you know, country kid,

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Speaker 1: you haven't spent very much time living in any kind

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Speaker 1: of city at all. You show up in Nashville, you

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Speaker 1: enroll with David Lipscomb. How prepared were you to be there?

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Speaker 1: How quickly did it take you to get comfortable? You

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Speaker 1: said you read shirted, but in that in that cultural switch,

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Speaker 1: how long did it take you to feel comfortable at Lipscomb?

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Speaker 1: You know, I don't. I don't know that I ever

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Speaker 1: got comfortable. They're looking back. Um, you know, I think

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Speaker 1: I think my whole you know, I look at it,

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Speaker 1: and I did really well academically at Lipscombe, and I

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Speaker 1: enjoy my time and I think I adapted more from

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Speaker 1: coach Meyer than I adopted. I saw a lot of

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Speaker 1: his flaws, and but I wasn't the alpha leader, so

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Speaker 1: you know, I kind of just had to sit back

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Speaker 1: and and observe and take and take notes. I think

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Speaker 1: early on, I don't think coach Meyer liked me very much.

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Speaker 1: I don't think he I don't think he knew how

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Speaker 1: to how to react. I wasn't. I wasn't the type

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Speaker 1: that just say go do it. You know, you gotta

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Speaker 1: show it, I gotta see it. I'm not a you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm not a real breaker, but I'm not a I'm

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Speaker 1: not a real follower either, And you know, coach Meyer was.

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Speaker 1: It was a very brainwashed, very structured, you know type system,

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Speaker 1: which was good for me in one one sense. But

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Speaker 1: you know, I don't know that I ever really found

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Speaker 1: my place, you know, at Lipscombe. But but from a

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Speaker 1: from a athletics perspective. But everything that I learned during

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Speaker 1: that window helped shape the way that I managed, prepared,

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Speaker 1: the strategies that I built in the way that I

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Speaker 1: lead and build organizations. So you know, I really, looking

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Speaker 1: back think, you know, and I think I finished there

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Speaker 1: as a knife leading score in school history at the time.

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Speaker 1: You know, we you know in our my senior class

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Speaker 1: is a winning this class and history of college basketball,

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Speaker 1: and so it was. It was a great experience. I

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Speaker 1: think I would have personally had a much better experience

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Speaker 1: at a number of other schools. But I think the

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Speaker 1: reason that I was meant to be there was it

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Speaker 1: was really the start of my learning how to be

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Speaker 1: a leader and how to be an organizational builder. And

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Speaker 1: that's why coach Meyer was and I learned so much

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Speaker 1: from him. You know, I could never replace our substitute

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Speaker 1: those experiences. What you made your in it Litscomb as

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Speaker 1: a financi economics So what did you think you were

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Speaker 1: going to do when you I mean, because you go

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Speaker 1: to Lipscomb at that point, you're probably acknowledging, Hey, my

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Speaker 1: career at basketball is going to end. At this level.

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Speaker 1: It's a high level. You get a college scholarship, you're playing.

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Speaker 1: You said, you have a tremendous amount of success. But

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Speaker 1: it's not as if you get to college thinking oh,

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Speaker 1: maybe the next step is maybe you thought I could

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Speaker 1: I could play in Europe for a couple of years.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, or did you almost immediately say, hey,

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Speaker 1: I got four or five years here and then I've

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Speaker 1: got to figure out what I'm gonna do with the

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Speaker 1: rest of my life. Now I knew, you know, I

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Speaker 1: knew the minute that you know, I signed at Lipscombe.

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Speaker 1: You know, I had I had Lipscomb in a in

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Speaker 1: a few schools similar to Lipscombe, you know, every single

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Speaker 1: juco you could name. I knew the minute that I

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Speaker 1: went to Lipscomb versus you know, junior college route, that

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Speaker 1: there would be no professional sports. And I was, you know,

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Speaker 1: completely fun clay. My my dream and passion was to

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Speaker 1: always to build and run companies. So so I went

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Speaker 1: to Lipscomb the same reason, you know, I went to

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Speaker 1: Lipscomb to learn. I went to Lipscombe to to learn

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Speaker 1: how to build, you know, a better me and and

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Speaker 1: in hopes of someday either buying a business or starting

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Speaker 1: a business. And so I'm I am living you know,

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Speaker 1: from the day my parents will tell you, from the

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Speaker 1: days I could think of anything more than you know, cartoons,

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Speaker 1: I've always wanted to run and own a business. And

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Speaker 1: so where did that drive come from? Because you're it's

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Speaker 1: not like you grew up now, I mean, I know

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Speaker 1: your parents have a farm, and and that's a business

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Speaker 1: in and of itself. But where do you think that

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Speaker 1: drive to want to be involved in the business universe

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Speaker 1: came from? I don't know. I know this. I know

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Speaker 1: that that my mother and my father, and my grandmother

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Speaker 1: and my and my grandfather on the other side are

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Speaker 1: as competitive humans as there can be. And so you know,

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Speaker 1: I was raised. You know, I'll never forget. Here's a

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Speaker 1: great story about my dad. You know, we would they

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Speaker 1: come to every game at Lipscombe. After the game that

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Speaker 1: takes me, I think it. What was the name of

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Speaker 1: the restaurant, not Fridays, but the one on the corner

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Speaker 1: in Green Hills that I think is the Cooker. I'd

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Speaker 1: be close because they would always go the same place,

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Speaker 1: had the big salad bar Tuesdays, okay, yeah, and verything. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so we'd go there every time. We ventured the Crystal

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Speaker 1: one night and only forget this, so we ordered, we

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Speaker 1: get all the way back to the campus. My dad

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Speaker 1: starts going through his money. Crystal overpaid him like seventeen

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Speaker 1: cents or whatever. We got in the car and we

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Speaker 1: do we went back to Crystal to give them the

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Speaker 1: seventeen cents, and you know my parents were they were

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Speaker 1: just those people. They're just those people there. You know,

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Speaker 1: if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right, it's worth

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Speaker 1: doing ethical, um, you know. And no one on planning

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Speaker 1: is gonna outwork outworked those two and so I think,

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Speaker 1: you know, watching that, you know, watching a family that

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Speaker 1: they may not you know, been going to Duke or Harvard,

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Speaker 1: you know, but in their world they were the best

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Speaker 1: of the best. You know. I think created values in

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Speaker 1: the way that I looked in life and when I

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Speaker 1: wanted to try to be I just didn't know how

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Speaker 1: big the universe was. So you're at, let's come your

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Speaker 1: major in economic You're thinking you want to get involved

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Speaker 1: in business. When's the first time you ever got on

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Speaker 1: the internet. Oh, gosh, web crawler. I was married because

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Speaker 1: I remember when it happened. Um, someone showed me web crawler.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember that, that search engine. Um,

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Speaker 1: I mean it was amazing. I mean we we did

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Speaker 1: a search for something and you know, two or three

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Speaker 1: links came up. Um. But you know, before before web crawler,

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Speaker 1: you know, I was on the build bulletin boards and um,

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Speaker 1: you know all that stuff. I always had kind of

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Speaker 1: a you know, an eye for technology. So early on,

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Speaker 1: did you have a computer at your house in Alabama?

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Speaker 1: You know I didn't, but my yeah I did. I

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Speaker 1: did my senior year. Um, I think it was the

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Speaker 1: mac sc or. The Mac twenty was the first computer

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Speaker 1: that I thought it was when you had to change

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Speaker 1: the floppies out along the way. And then then I

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Speaker 1: got the mac sc or Mac twenty, which one of

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Speaker 1: them which had like a twenty meg hard drive that

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Speaker 1: I carted off to Lipscombe. So yeah, that's that's when

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Speaker 1: I got my first machine. So you I haven't even

389
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Speaker 1: asked you about this, but you grew up in Alabama.

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Speaker 1: You grew up a big fan of Alabama sports, Alabama football,

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Speaker 1: Alabama basketball. Were you watching and listening to those games

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Speaker 1: on the radio as a kid growing up? Yeah? And

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Speaker 1: you know one of the things my sixth grade basketball

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Speaker 1: coach I would ride actually to every Alabama game. He

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Speaker 1: had a van with I don't know, six or seven people,

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Speaker 1: and he allowed me to ride with him, so I

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Speaker 1: would go. I guess this started about the seventh or

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Speaker 1: eighth grade. I'd ride with him go scalp tickets and

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Speaker 1: you know, try to make enough money to buy from

400
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Speaker 1: my ticket I'd usually sit by myself. That's how it

401
00:21:45,280 --> 00:21:48,639
Speaker 1: worked I was then, But I would play with the

402
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Speaker 1: whole and I don't have a ticket, get one, and

403
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Speaker 1: then work my way up and hopefully leave the games

404
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Speaker 1: in Legion Field with a you know, a few twenties

405
00:21:57,080 --> 00:21:58,960
Speaker 1: in my pocket and free game ticket. I did that

406
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Speaker 1: for I did that until my senior year in high school.

407
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Speaker 1: So every would show up without a ticket, hope that

408
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Speaker 1: somebody gave you a ticket, and then trade up and

409
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Speaker 1: make money over the course at like scalping. Yeah, hustling

410
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Speaker 1: it every game, every game for five years. What was

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Speaker 1: That's amazing? What's the most you ever made? You remember

412
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Speaker 1: making like a hundred dollars for a game or something

413
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Speaker 1: like that. You know, my my subconsciousness and made like

414
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Speaker 1: one twenty one weekend. But you know everything, every story

415
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Speaker 1: gets more grand gets more grant over time. What was

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Speaker 1: the best What was the best game you saw there

417
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Speaker 1: in Legion Field as a kid. You can see me

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Speaker 1: on the kick Um, I'm in that video. I've seen

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Speaker 1: that one. I've I've seen them all. I saw you know,

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Speaker 1: uh he's shooler. I saw the game re Alabama came

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Speaker 1: back and tied. I saw the kick. I mean there

422
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Speaker 1: was I don't think I missed a home game from

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Speaker 1: about the seventh grade to my senior year, and I

424
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Speaker 1: changed school as my senior year, so I went there.

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Speaker 1: I went to all of them for people out there

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Speaker 1: who are younger, and there's gonna be a lot of

427
00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:02,639
Speaker 1: people who are younger. Before the Internet took off, and

428
00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:05,440
Speaker 1: before there were message boards, and before there was rivals

429
00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:09,080
Speaker 1: and seven and Scout and the recruiting industry in general,

430
00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:12,400
Speaker 1: there were one nine hundred phone numbers that you could

431
00:23:12,480 --> 00:23:15,880
Speaker 1: call to get updates on recruits when you were a kid,

432
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:18,199
Speaker 1: and as you're going to Lipscombe, were you one of

433
00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:20,879
Speaker 1: those people who was aware of that one d business

434
00:23:20,920 --> 00:23:23,959
Speaker 1: because there were tons there was tons of money that

435
00:23:24,040 --> 00:23:26,639
Speaker 1: was made off fans back then, but that was the

436
00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:29,119
Speaker 1: way you'd get the information. And then sports talk radio

437
00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:31,280
Speaker 1: has kind of started to grow. But where did you

438
00:23:31,320 --> 00:23:33,560
Speaker 1: did you get interested in recruiting? Were you aware of

439
00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:36,920
Speaker 1: that business, the one nine hundred call number. Yeah, that's

440
00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:39,879
Speaker 1: a great point, and I think that all these reasons

441
00:23:39,920 --> 00:23:41,720
Speaker 1: kind of set up into the industry that I was in.

442
00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:46,240
Speaker 1: So so I'm a I'm an SEC football addict. Okay,

443
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:51,560
Speaker 1: my family, you know, we're distant, distantly related to Phil former.

444
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:54,680
Speaker 1: I was a huge Tennessee fan. You know, hard to

445
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:57,840
Speaker 1: say that out loud, still a hit, and you know,

446
00:23:57,880 --> 00:24:00,320
Speaker 1: but how can you be both? Well, you there's a

447
00:24:00,359 --> 00:24:02,760
Speaker 1: lot of North Alabama a lot of times that happens. Actually, right,

448
00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:04,640
Speaker 1: you're close to the border with Tennessee for people who

449
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:07,040
Speaker 1: don't know the geography, and it's just a football and

450
00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:11,040
Speaker 1: it's a sports crazy area in general. It's sports crazy area.

451
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:12,920
Speaker 1: So I was, you know, so I was a huge

452
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: Alabama fan and then Tennessee, you know, was my was

453
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:18,160
Speaker 1: my second team, but I watched every SEC game win

454
00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 1: to them. So here we here, I go a cart

455
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: off to Lipscomb, and guess what Lipscomb is not. You know,

456
00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:27,119
Speaker 1: at that point in time, there's no internet, you know,

457
00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 1: no cable TV. And then furthermore, we have morning meetings, Um,

458
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:35,240
Speaker 1: we have naps, we have shoot arounds on Saturdays, we

459
00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:38,720
Speaker 1: have long bus trips on Saturdays. We have games on Saturdays.

460
00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:43,159
Speaker 1: For essentially five years, I don't remember seeing a college

461
00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 1: football game. And so what I did during that time

462
00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:51,680
Speaker 1: is I subscribed to the touchcal Loosen News. I subscribed

463
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:55,840
Speaker 1: to a print magazine called Obama mag at the time. UM.

464
00:24:55,880 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 1: I started reading the recruiting magazines. National recruiting Advisor Alan

465
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:06,240
Speaker 1: Wallace UM a lot of these, and then I was

466
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:10,320
Speaker 1: addicted to Bob Bell and Bill King's w LC M

467
00:25:10,520 --> 00:25:13,080
Speaker 1: a M Show because it was, you know, just a

468
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:17,960
Speaker 1: phenomenal message board of sorts UM, you know, for sec

469
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 1: discussion UM. And so, you know, losing that passion. I

470
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:29,160
Speaker 1: didn't lose the passion. I just didn't have. Yeah, we're

471
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 1: lipscom there are no listen. You know. I was an economics,

472
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: uh major academics where unbelievable important as me. I worked

473
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:42,280
Speaker 1: my ass off in school and then Coach Meyer had

474
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:45,520
Speaker 1: the most rigorous, you know program you could have. I

475
00:25:45,560 --> 00:25:50,359
Speaker 1: didn't have a free second one to even consider, you know,

476
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:52,160
Speaker 1: keeping up with it. But I did the best I could.

477
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 1: All that did when I got out of school, you know,

478
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:58,960
Speaker 1: a couple of years later, it made all the lights

479
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:01,240
Speaker 1: go off. And so when you know, when I started

480
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:04,200
Speaker 1: looking at the Internet, I'll never forget that first time

481
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 1: I looked at it and I said, this is the

482
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:13,639
Speaker 1: perfect perfect distribution vehicle UM for a combination of I

483
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:17,680
Speaker 1: and I. Don't never forget I likened UM or compared

484
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:21,000
Speaker 1: Bob Bill Bill King's radio show to a message board

485
00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:25,240
Speaker 1: and and you know, I didn't think at the time

486
00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:29,120
Speaker 1: newspapers were doing an exceptional job online and so there

487
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:32,160
Speaker 1: was an immediate opportunity to start covering the team. Um,

488
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:34,280
Speaker 1: you know, there were so many factors there. I was like,

489
00:26:35,800 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: this has no chance of losing, you know, because there's

490
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:41,640
Speaker 1: this huge demand for this sport. And now you've got

491
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:47,400
Speaker 1: a distribution type like no other. You know, there's there's

492
00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 1: no limit to you know what. I can tell you

493
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:51,320
Speaker 1: where we were when we started Rivals and how it's

494
00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:53,240
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, yeah, the first version of it, and how

495
00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:56,640
Speaker 1: it started, and in the day we started it. They

496
00:26:56,640 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 1: were literally thirty days after it was. There was never

497
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 1: a question it was going to be ultra successful. Be

498
00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 1: sure to catch live editions if I would kicked the

499
00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:07,960
Speaker 1: coverage with Clay Travis weekdays at six am Eastern three

500
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 1: am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio.

501
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 1: I So, yeah, tell me about Rivals. So you are

502
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 1: a recruiting obsessive, you're an SEC football fan. It's incredibly fertile.

503
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:22,160
Speaker 1: You get you graduate from Lipscomb and take another job.

504
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: What do you do directly when you graduate from Lipscomb,

505
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:28,680
Speaker 1: I work at First American National Bank, which I don't

506
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:30,639
Speaker 1: think it's around at this point time, but it was.

507
00:27:31,080 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 1: It was, you know, probably it was the the local

508
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: bank of its time, uh in Nashville. UM. I worked

509
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:42,360
Speaker 1: there for two years. I was a financial analyst for lenders.

510
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: So basically a relationship manager wants to lend money to

511
00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 1: a business, it's got to go through a you know,

512
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: a credit review and and financial review. And so I

513
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:56,919
Speaker 1: was the nerd behind the scenes that was, you know,

514
00:27:56,960 --> 00:28:01,200
Speaker 1: doing the twenty page analysis on whether um, that business

515
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:06,200
Speaker 1: um was worthy of that that loan by that bank.

516
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:10,600
Speaker 1: So I did that for two years. It was really

517
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:13,520
Speaker 1: really good for me because it was a it was

518
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 1: a training on you know, cash flow statements and you know,

519
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:21,760
Speaker 1: income statements are easy, you know, but basically, you know,

520
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:25,120
Speaker 1: it was is this company? Is this company a good risk?

521
00:28:25,320 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 1: You're basically just looking at balance sheets all the time

522
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:29,439
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out whether they're good risk for

523
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:31,760
Speaker 1: the bank. Yeah, that's it. And then and then you

524
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: got to articulated in words, which is, you know, it's

525
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: one thing looking at you know, all these financial reports.

526
00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:40,760
Speaker 1: But then when you've got to you know, back it up, um,

527
00:28:40,800 --> 00:28:44,560
Speaker 1: you know, with with with a reasonable well written thought,

528
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:46,520
Speaker 1: it's a it's a whole different game. So I did

529
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: that for two years. UM. Then I went to work

530
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:56,000
Speaker 1: um with as a freelance writer UM for a stock

531
00:28:56,080 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: market research company. And so I did that UM for

532
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 1: basically pennies on the dollar for access to level two

533
00:29:05,120 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 1: quotes and got into day trading. UM. So at that time,

534
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: how would you distribute your writing? Was that a written product,

535
00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: I mean a public like a print product that you

536
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:15,720
Speaker 1: guys would distribute or how did your how did your

537
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:18,960
Speaker 1: writing get out to the audience? Yeah, so they had

538
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: they had Quotetron, they had basic services. It was non

539
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 1: Internet at the time, so they had they had these

540
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: I think it was called level two quote machines, Bloomberg machines,

541
00:29:31,880 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 1: these type of machines that the financial community would get

542
00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 1: research and data from. And so the owner did deals

543
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:43,160
Speaker 1: to get to get these devices. What was interesting to

544
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 1: me was it was an opportunity at level two quotes.

545
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: I had built up an unbelievable nest egg from being

546
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 1: a farmer. UM. You know, I was an r A

547
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 1: in college. I rest games in college. I gave a

548
00:29:56,600 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 1: C T S A T adminis administration, you know. So

549
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 1: I was I was twenty three four years old and

550
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 1: had a boatload of money. Um, what would have the

551
00:30:08,680 --> 00:30:10,720
Speaker 1: money you have been to you at three or twenty four?

552
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:13,680
Speaker 1: I probably had an under grand So I would say,

553
00:30:13,720 --> 00:30:15,240
Speaker 1: I mean, you had saved up a time, like you

554
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: didn't have to pay for college you were getting you know, like,

555
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:20,000
Speaker 1: and you worked, and so you had saved up basically

556
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 1: everything you made. Where'd you live in Nashville at the time.

557
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:26,120
Speaker 1: I had just gotten married, So I was living in

558
00:30:26,200 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 1: Burton Hills in a condom in a condo there, so,

559
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:35,480
Speaker 1: you know, so I made a bunch of successful stock

560
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: investments at the time. I wrote Walmart, you know, through

561
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: one of its its big you know runs. There were

562
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: there were several other you know, back in the day.

563
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 1: And so I'm like, well, I need these quotes. I'll

564
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:52,040
Speaker 1: go over here. He would assigned me basically very similar

565
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 1: to the bank. I do analysis, um and and submit him.

566
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 1: He would then offer them whatever. He ended up getting

567
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:04,800
Speaker 1: sued by the Scuries Exchange Commission. I was looped into

568
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:10,280
Speaker 1: that lawsuit. Um, and so I quit. And then after

569
00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:15,880
Speaker 1: I guess about a year of of basically, you know,

570
00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: getting back on my feet, so to speak. Um, I

571
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 1: started rivals and so so hold on your twenty four

572
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 1: or five. You're a kid, You get investigated by the

573
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 1: SEC you know, for the day trading basically, I mean,

574
00:31:30,120 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 1: what years this, three, something like that. What year we're

575
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: talking about? I think four? And they all kind of

576
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 1: run together, Yeah, somewhere around that time. Okay, So then

577
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:42,479
Speaker 1: you have to get that all cleaned up. I mean

578
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: that has to be crazy to be a kid and

579
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:46,000
Speaker 1: suddenly have all that over your head, right, I mean

580
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 1: you at that point in time you said your dad

581
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:50,840
Speaker 1: returned seventeen cents from crystal. You had to be like,

582
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: oh my god, what have I gotten myself into? You

583
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 1: get that resolved, and and along that time you start

584
00:31:56,560 --> 00:31:58,120
Speaker 1: thinking what am I going to do next? Is that

585
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:02,360
Speaker 1: kind of the game plan? I never you know, my

586
00:32:02,400 --> 00:32:05,040
Speaker 1: attention was never to be in the financial sector. You

587
00:32:05,080 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 1: know again, you know that was the that was the

588
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: last thing. So it wasn't it wasn't difficult at all

589
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:14,360
Speaker 1: transitioning you know out, And the whole time I was there,

590
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: I was, you know, trying to decide, you know, what

591
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:20,120
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. You know, in my in my

592
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:23,280
Speaker 1: next career. But you know, once the once the civil

593
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:30,760
Speaker 1: suit from my perspective, um was was um settled. Um,

594
00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:33,160
Speaker 1: you know it's it's here. I have I've got a

595
00:32:33,760 --> 00:32:37,640
Speaker 1: daughter at the time, uh married. You know, no one's

596
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:40,520
Speaker 1: gonna feel sorry for yourself. So you know, you just

597
00:32:40,560 --> 00:32:43,760
Speaker 1: put your head down and grind again. All of these,

598
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: all of these things that you know, the good, the bad,

599
00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 1: the winds of losses are what set me up to

600
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: to crush these next you know, three decades and so

601
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: you know, they were they were ready. I I remember

602
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:05,960
Speaker 1: I called my college friend who was he had just

603
00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:09,240
Speaker 1: left Anderson or a center or whatever, and he was

604
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 1: working at fed X in Memphis and he's a brilliant guy,

605
00:33:12,560 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 1: an engineer. I called him. I said, hey, greg Um,

606
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:18,320
Speaker 1: this was shortly there after. I've got an idea on

607
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 1: something will make us a lot of money. He said,

608
00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 1: let's go to lunch, and so I met him in

609
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:28,960
Speaker 1: Cool Springs at the Italian Place on the proverbial napkin.

610
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:33,280
Speaker 1: I drew out a plan um for arrivals, which at

611
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 1: the time of the line of sports, and I said,

612
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: but I'm going to need thirty thousand dollars from you

613
00:33:37,880 --> 00:33:39,760
Speaker 1: if you want to own half of it, and he said,

614
00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 1: got it, And so we put sixty dollars in a

615
00:33:43,760 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 1: in a bank account and we started building UM, which

616
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 1: I think was the genius of that play as we

617
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 1: built the first dynamic content management system. And what I

618
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: mean by that is you take for granted going on

619
00:33:56,520 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter and making an update and update rights

620
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 1: to the database and immediately appears to the world. We

621
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 1: wrote one of those systems about and we did it

622
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 1: with multiple layers of permission, and so it allowed me

623
00:34:12,640 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 1: to take that content management system and go set up

624
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 1: thirteen team sites with twenty something writers in different areas

625
00:34:22,160 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 1: of the country that could post automatically to the web

626
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 1: with different labels of permission, different levels of user access

627
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:37,400
Speaker 1: UM to actually start building these these individual publications. And

628
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:43,760
Speaker 1: that was with alling sports. Okay, so how did you, Lawn,

629
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:45,799
Speaker 1: Did you know the tech of how to build? Did

630
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:47,799
Speaker 1: you hire people? How did you even come up with

631
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:52,000
Speaker 1: the idea of what what the Because now a days

632
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:54,759
Speaker 1: to people who are listening to us now, the existence

633
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:58,239
Speaker 1: of message boards in the world of sports are so

634
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 1: commonplace that it's to think about how they were originally designed.

635
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 1: If that makes sense, I think there's probably a lot

636
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:06,239
Speaker 1: of people out there who understand this question, even though

637
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:09,319
Speaker 1: it's not been artfully phrased yet. How do you decide

638
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:14,040
Speaker 1: what a internet website focused on a team will be? Like? Like,

639
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:18,320
Speaker 1: what was your game plan to make that decision even possible? So,

640
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:20,200
Speaker 1: so here's the thing. So I grew up on a farm,

641
00:35:20,520 --> 00:35:24,120
Speaker 1: and we had we always had lots of lumber, lots

642
00:35:24,160 --> 00:35:28,520
Speaker 1: of steel. Um, we always had lots of raw materials,

643
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: and and so I spent a decade learning how to

644
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 1: build things, you know, like, you can't do this until

645
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:38,880
Speaker 1: you do this, and physically build things, physically build things

646
00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 1: from gates to two trailers to whatever. I watched my dad,

647
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:48,680
Speaker 1: who's a mechanical genius, you know, do these things. And

648
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:52,360
Speaker 1: so everything has an order, you know, in a in

649
00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 1: a practical use, you know form, And so I knew

650
00:35:56,680 --> 00:36:02,000
Speaker 1: how to to architect things. Greg taught me some very

651
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:08,600
Speaker 1: basic coating strategies early on, and then enough to work

652
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:11,200
Speaker 1: with engineers. I mean, could I have gone and learned

653
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,160
Speaker 1: and been an engineer shirt? I mean that wasn't that

654
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:16,440
Speaker 1: wasn't the path that I wanted to go on. But

655
00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:20,399
Speaker 1: I could speak their language, and so I knew enough

656
00:36:20,440 --> 00:36:23,440
Speaker 1: to be dangerous, you know, until even to this day,

657
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:26,000
Speaker 1: I still run product development for all of our brands

658
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:29,840
Speaker 1: and built all the products at Rivals seven that you

659
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: see today, and so I've always had my hand in that,

660
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:36,319
Speaker 1: you know, the last twenty years, I just basically work

661
00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 1: with people that are great at what they do. But so,

662
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:42,919
Speaker 1: you know, I started mapping out those products, and then

663
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:47,839
Speaker 1: we hired two superstar coders. I mean they just phenomenal

664
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 1: coders that built an unbelievable content management system, a great

665
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:58,480
Speaker 1: message board, and the very first recruiting database for Alliance

666
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 1: Sports and a line sports. Just to put in perspective,

667
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:05,120
Speaker 1: we launched that thing without a single eyeball, and in

668
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:07,160
Speaker 1: four years it had grown to a couple of million

669
00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:11,279
Speaker 1: in sales and was just a beast. That thing made

670
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:14,520
Speaker 1: so much money. It never had a day where we

671
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:17,840
Speaker 1: were concerned about sailing. We just didn't know. We didn't

672
00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 1: know we were at the forefront of the Internet revolution.

673
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:23,319
Speaker 1: We didn't know that. You know, when we seld that

674
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:27,799
Speaker 1: business for three million dollars in we probably could have

675
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:31,920
Speaker 1: sold it for you know, I didn't know, We had

676
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:33,839
Speaker 1: no clue, you know, we didn't know what we were

677
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:37,239
Speaker 1: we just need to build a business and didn't run one.

678
00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:41,520
Speaker 1: We didn't know what we really had. So so how

679
00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:44,759
Speaker 1: do you decide, Okay, so you're starting Alliance Sports, how

680
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 1: do you decide what teams to focus on? How do

681
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:50,319
Speaker 1: you find writers? And how do you hit on the

682
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 1: business model which ended up being so incredibly successful. I

683
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:58,960
Speaker 1: mean there's still media companies, like all the newspaper companies

684
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: collapsed and everything else. You guys hit on something that

685
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:04,239
Speaker 1: the athletics trying to do now, which was, hey, we're

686
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:08,360
Speaker 1: going to charge people a monthly fee. And at the time,

687
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:10,160
Speaker 1: I mean, this is pretty revolutionary because a lot of

688
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:12,719
Speaker 1: the Internet is everything is supposed to be free, right,

689
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:16,400
Speaker 1: Like that's what there's preaching, certainly back in the late nineties.

690
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:19,840
Speaker 1: How do you come up with that idea teams to follow,

691
00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:22,760
Speaker 1: how the business model will work, how do you find writers?

692
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:26,399
Speaker 1: All of those things where teams are easy, teams where

693
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:29,520
Speaker 1: you know who has the big eCOM or you know,

694
00:38:29,640 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 1: merchandise deals, largest alumni base, most passionate following, largest athletic budgets.

695
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:37,120
Speaker 1: I mean, those those were easy. I mean, and you

696
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:39,120
Speaker 1: got a big football stadium, you should have your own

697
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:40,719
Speaker 1: internet side. I mean and it's an easy way that

698
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:42,239
Speaker 1: you guys would have picked the teams that you did.

699
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 1: But were you focused almost exclusively in the Southeast at

700
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 1: the time, or were you Ohio State? Do you have

701
00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 1: big ten schools? Like which schools did you start with? SEC?

702
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:52,600
Speaker 1: Texas and Texas A and M. So we were we

703
00:38:52,600 --> 00:38:55,920
Speaker 1: were working that corridor um and then we we we

704
00:38:55,960 --> 00:38:57,680
Speaker 1: didn't do anything in North Carolina at the time, but

705
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:00,239
Speaker 1: we tried Clemson and Florida State. So we're trying to

706
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:03,480
Speaker 1: work you know, what we would consider you know, the

707
00:39:03,520 --> 00:39:10,399
Speaker 1: South where the socioeconomics, you know, we're people people. Look,

708
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 1: I don't know how to say this without being disrespectful,

709
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:15,880
Speaker 1: and I'm certainly not meaning to, but you know, people

710
00:39:15,920 --> 00:39:18,120
Speaker 1: in Birmingham, out of them, I don't have as much

711
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:23,359
Speaker 1: to do as people in Manhattan. So you know, so

712
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:28,399
Speaker 1: you know a large piece of of people's identities are

713
00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:31,360
Speaker 1: around the teams that they follow in college and that

714
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: you know, these these Southern schools and some of these

715
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:39,040
Speaker 1: you know, big power of behind schools are just right

716
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:42,520
Speaker 1: to cultivate that passion. And I think that's what we've

717
00:39:42,520 --> 00:39:45,400
Speaker 1: done over the years. We've you know, we've fed the

718
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:48,600
Speaker 1: beast and helped create you know, create the Beast. So

719
00:39:48,640 --> 00:39:52,400
Speaker 1: it was that that was easy to figure out. As

720
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:54,839
Speaker 1: it relates to the model. You know, we started out

721
00:39:55,640 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 1: free to the idea that you were going to make

722
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:00,000
Speaker 1: you were gonna make money off ads. It was probably

723
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:04,160
Speaker 1: your initial plan, right. Well, we knew we were going

724
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:07,840
Speaker 1: to make enough. We we wanted we wanted to scale.

725
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:12,880
Speaker 1: And so once we we saw scale, slow down. Because

726
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:15,759
Speaker 1: you're gonna gonna remember in those days you went to

727
00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 1: a website by tiving it in. There was no such

728
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:26,000
Speaker 1: thing as is distribution through Facebook, you know, read it, Twitter,

729
00:40:26,760 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 1: Google or search correct. And so it made sense that, okay,

730
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: what we'll do is we'll create a club in these

731
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:39,040
Speaker 1: message boards, and people want to be a part of

732
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:40,720
Speaker 1: a club. They want to be a part of something.

733
00:40:41,239 --> 00:40:43,759
Speaker 1: And so we actually sold the club more than we

734
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:48,279
Speaker 1: sold Breaking news. And so if you look at you know,

735
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:51,279
Speaker 1: you look at the sales model for the for the membership,

736
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 1: it was really around joined this club. Then it was

737
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 1: exclusive recruiting, scoop um, you know, let's own recruiting. And

738
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:02,680
Speaker 1: then it was team news you know, as the third piece,

739
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:06,600
Speaker 1: and we found guess what, you didn't have Netflix to

740
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:09,359
Speaker 1: compete with you didn't have right now, I don't even

741
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:12,080
Speaker 1: want to know all the things I subscribed to in

742
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:14,800
Speaker 1: those days. You may or may not have s I print,

743
00:41:15,560 --> 00:41:18,400
Speaker 1: you may or may not have a newspaper. You didn't

744
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 1: have many coming out of your bank segment every month.

745
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:27,600
Speaker 1: So it wasn't that difficult to build that, you know,

746
00:41:28,040 --> 00:41:32,680
Speaker 1: free and premium model. And again, you know, the reason

747
00:41:32,880 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 1: Rivals was so successful, and it was a joke successful

748
00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:40,120
Speaker 1: is because we had four and a half years, four

749
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:45,920
Speaker 1: years with Alliance Sports making every mistake at a small

750
00:41:45,960 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 1: scale level. That when we got Rivals in what every

751
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:55,000
Speaker 1: year that was two thousand four or throughout I mean

752
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:58,880
Speaker 1: remember they all run together. You know, it was just okay,

753
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 1: here's our strategy. Buy into it or get out of the

754
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:05,840
Speaker 1: the way we're going. And you know, we didn't deviate

755
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:09,719
Speaker 1: much from it. So the script was written, be sure

756
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: to catch live editions if I would kick the coverage

757
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:14,839
Speaker 1: with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern three

758
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:17,919
Speaker 1: am Pacific. So initially, that first time when you flip

759
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:20,279
Speaker 1: the switch on Alliance, how do you go find out?

760
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 1: But you said, because I think that's interesting for a

761
00:42:21,920 --> 00:42:24,160
Speaker 1: lot of people who are listening to us, right now.

762
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 1: There's no Google, there's no Facebook, you know, there's no Twitter.

763
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 1: There's no existing social networks really on the Internet outside

764
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:35,720
Speaker 1: of maybe people would go to Yahoo dot com early

765
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:37,800
Speaker 1: day's Internet, maybe you would go to a O L

766
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 1: dot com. How did you get the word out that

767
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: your sites existed? Oh, Radio, I mean our guys, we

768
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 1: I ran. I was the and say this part. I

769
00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 1: was the content provider for the Alabama site in the

770
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:57,319
Speaker 1: midst of all this. So I was the lead. You know,

771
00:42:57,400 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 1: I was the expert, so to speak, and so I

772
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: had an intimate knowledge of how to run the business

773
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 1: from being the boots on the street, just like you've

774
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:11,319
Speaker 1: done all these years. You know, I ran it from

775
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:14,799
Speaker 1: the top down, in the bottom up. And so I

776
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:18,879
Speaker 1: took that experience and started hiring the J school graduates

777
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:20,839
Speaker 1: that were about two years out of school that we're

778
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 1: working with these small county papers, you know that that

779
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 1: sold ads wrote copy edited copy updating their own stories,

780
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:32,360
Speaker 1: you know. And so I took these kind of multi

781
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 1: tool you know, low low cost players and train them

782
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:40,400
Speaker 1: how to be publishers on the web in these markets.

783
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:44,720
Speaker 1: And then we used our professional collateral of the brand

784
00:43:44,840 --> 00:43:47,160
Speaker 1: and got them on help get them on radio and

785
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:51,240
Speaker 1: their local markets. And so I would say the local

786
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 1: radio did more for growing. And then the beauty of

787
00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:57,920
Speaker 1: our model is once a consumer a user found us,

788
00:43:58,360 --> 00:44:00,759
Speaker 1: we had a chance of them sticking because of these

789
00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 1: message board communities. Right. You know, you are a writer,

790
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:06,359
Speaker 1: can write two or three things a day if that's

791
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:09,600
Speaker 1: all you've got the users dipping in and out. But

792
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: if you've got a community users that come in and

793
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:15,520
Speaker 1: check that thing ten times a day created an incredible

794
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 1: sticky experience that allowed us to to build these communities

795
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:26,000
Speaker 1: when there wasn't social and search as the distribution are.

796
00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 1: So when you start charging, all right, you've built alliance,

797
00:44:29,480 --> 00:44:31,520
Speaker 1: you start to you have that moment where you're gonna say,

798
00:44:31,560 --> 00:44:33,719
Speaker 1: what was your initial monthly charge or what was your

799
00:44:33,760 --> 00:44:37,720
Speaker 1: subscription cost? I want to say we were twenty nine annual,

800
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 1: but I think we think we up at pretty quick.

801
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:46,200
Speaker 1: So that moment where you start to charge. Everybody who

802
00:44:46,239 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 1: has ever started a business has that moment where they

803
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 1: have to wait, do you remember, Like I've read a

804
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:53,319
Speaker 1: lot of different stories about businesses where they have like

805
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:55,439
Speaker 1: a little bell that will that will ding every time.

806
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:57,279
Speaker 1: I think that was at Amazon every time they got

807
00:44:57,280 --> 00:45:01,160
Speaker 1: an order, you know, something woulding. How quickly did you realize, okay,

808
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:03,640
Speaker 1: people are going to pay for this? Well this is

809
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:06,719
Speaker 1: this is also embarrassing to say, Okay, we had you know,

810
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:10,600
Speaker 1: thousands of subscribers, but the credit cards and the renewals

811
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 1: were run by Greg Golf and myself. Now Greg probably

812
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:18,279
Speaker 1: ran of them and I ran the other. Now, what

813
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:22,040
Speaker 1: that physically means is that we would take the credit

814
00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 1: cards um off the secure server and actually entered them

815
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:30,840
Speaker 1: into the into the device, and so we knew we

816
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:33,400
Speaker 1: had a business when we were spending hours upon hours

817
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:38,279
Speaker 1: actually physically manually in putting all the data, I mean

818
00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 1: in the credit card data. So you did that yourself,

819
00:45:40,600 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 1: You wouldn't unemployee Like it wasn't like you had PayPal

820
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 1: or you know, Square or something like that. Like you

821
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:48,600
Speaker 1: guys had to put in all those numbers, like you

822
00:45:48,640 --> 00:45:50,799
Speaker 1: did it all. We did it all. We did, We

823
00:45:50,840 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 1: did it all. Wrote wrote it, wrote the system, ran

824
00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 1: the credit cards, managed the writers. My case ran was

825
00:45:59,040 --> 00:46:01,879
Speaker 1: was a report or we did it all. And so

826
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:04,880
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, when we when we left

827
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:08,600
Speaker 1: Alliance after four years and had the opportunity to buy

828
00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:12,520
Speaker 1: the rival's asset out of bankruptcy. We didn't come at

829
00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:17,719
Speaker 1: it with just this CEO mental. We came at it

830
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:21,400
Speaker 1: with a skill package and an experienced package of doing

831
00:46:21,480 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 1: everything from sweeping the floors two budgeting and forecast and capital.

832
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:31,480
Speaker 1: We had done it all, not not necessarily great, but

833
00:46:31,560 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 1: there wasn't a job function that we didn't physically do.

834
00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:37,840
Speaker 1: How many people are working at Alliance at the time

835
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:41,080
Speaker 1: When you guys start to pivot to start Rivals. Greg

836
00:46:41,160 --> 00:46:45,239
Speaker 1: and I owned essentially fifty fifty. We were the hunt

837
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:49,720
Speaker 1: We were the shareholders. We had three developers if I recall,

838
00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:53,080
Speaker 1: and I think we had about fifteen riders, and you're

839
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:55,720
Speaker 1: running that that business out of were at the time.

840
00:46:56,880 --> 00:47:00,319
Speaker 1: I had a Timberton office and Greg's may have been

841
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:03,960
Speaker 1: a little larger because he he came from Arthur Anderson

842
00:47:03,960 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 1: and definitely was a higher socio economic than me at

843
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: the time. So you guys sell that first business, that

844
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:13,200
Speaker 1: first recruiting business. Who did you sell to? We sold

845
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:17,399
Speaker 1: to basically as a company called Rival Networks, which were

846
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:20,279
Speaker 1: was the first group that started Rivals, And so they

847
00:47:20,280 --> 00:47:22,160
Speaker 1: were trying to put together like and that you were

848
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:23,719
Speaker 1: the South at the time, and they're trying to put

849
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:27,160
Speaker 1: together a national network of these same sites. They were

850
00:47:27,200 --> 00:47:31,640
Speaker 1: going public with Goldman and they felt that their their

851
00:47:31,760 --> 00:47:33,879
Speaker 1: their I p O would be much stronger if they

852
00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 1: bought the competitor. So so we didn't know. They misled

853
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:42,360
Speaker 1: us on their size, where they paid his three million

854
00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:46,759
Speaker 1: dollars cash for the deal. They misled us on their

855
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:48,680
Speaker 1: size and where they were. They were, as you know,

856
00:47:48,840 --> 00:47:52,919
Speaker 1: bankrupt in six months, you know, post following. So that's

857
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:55,080
Speaker 1: like the peak of the What year would that have been,

858
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 1: like roughly didn't this that was the Was that two

859
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 1: thousand than in three or four? Right as the dot

860
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 1: com boom starts to kind of go up in the

861
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: like all these different companies, the pets dot coms of

862
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:11,279
Speaker 1: the universe are starting to finally run into reality. Yeah,

863
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:13,720
Speaker 1: but you know they're their reality was they were spending

864
00:48:14,239 --> 00:48:17,960
Speaker 1: six million a month and generating twenty dollars in revenue.

865
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:20,759
Speaker 1: So you didn't have anything to do with you know,

866
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:22,520
Speaker 1: they like to blame it on the dot com. It

867
00:48:22,560 --> 00:48:24,279
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the dot com. It was

868
00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:27,840
Speaker 1: just it was the worst run, worst manage company in

869
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:30,959
Speaker 1: the history of the Internet. I'm convinced. So you sell

870
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:35,120
Speaker 1: to the worst run God, thank god. You sell like

871
00:48:35,200 --> 00:48:37,520
Speaker 1: you guys get around you. I mean, you get seven figures, right,

872
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:40,160
Speaker 1: you're you're a young guy. You get seven figures. Then

873
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:44,279
Speaker 1: Rivals tanks and you think, man, we need to try

874
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 1: to buy this out of bankruptcy. That's your game plan

875
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 1: at that time. Absolutely so UM the company called the

876
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:56,760
Speaker 1: company Rivals, existing board hired a company as Sherwood Capital

877
00:48:56,760 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 1: Partners to liquidate the assets. So I called UM called

878
00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:05,759
Speaker 1: Sherwood to buy my noncompete. That's all I wanted, I mean,

879
00:49:06,440 --> 00:49:08,680
Speaker 1: you know, see any value and buying Arrivals at the time,

880
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:13,120
Speaker 1: and so they refused to negotiate that they wanted to

881
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:16,480
Speaker 1: sell any parts of the of the asset. We didn't

882
00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 1: make a bid, and then several months later called back

883
00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:22,440
Speaker 1: and they said make a bid, and we ended up

884
00:49:22,440 --> 00:49:26,720
Speaker 1: making a bid for five thousand dollars for the entire asset.

885
00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:28,400
Speaker 1: And they I think they had raised money at a

886
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:33,680
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty billion evaluation. UM, we were the only

887
00:49:33,719 --> 00:49:37,200
Speaker 1: bid at five k. So we ended up buying Rivals

888
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:41,839
Speaker 1: out of bankrupts for bankruptcy for five dollars. So were

889
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:43,799
Speaker 1: you a disbelief that you got the company for five

890
00:49:44,160 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: thousand dollars or were you nervous that you would all?

891
00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:48,120
Speaker 1: I mean, like, how confident were you that you knew

892
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:52,040
Speaker 1: what to do about million percent? I mean there was

893
00:49:52,080 --> 00:49:57,319
Speaker 1: no it was I mean that that was easy. There

894
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 1: there was no chance of screwing that up. U And

895
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:01,759
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say on the air again, they

896
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:04,239
Speaker 1: were just it was easy. I mean, that's that's what

897
00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: you know. We were trained, we were ready for that.

898
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:09,839
Speaker 1: You know, I had gone through enough life experiences at

899
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: that point to be a pretty good leader, and the

900
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:16,879
Speaker 1: strategy was already proven and tested on Alliance Sports. So

901
00:50:17,280 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 1: we raised two million dollars um or two I'm sorry,

902
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:27,239
Speaker 1: we raised two five um total and we went out.

903
00:50:27,520 --> 00:50:30,360
Speaker 1: We went at it. I think I want to say

904
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:33,400
Speaker 1: the first full year we bought it half year. The

905
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:35,720
Speaker 1: first full year we did about seven million in sales.

906
00:50:36,600 --> 00:50:39,320
Speaker 1: I think the business lost money for maybe two months.

907
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:42,560
Speaker 1: I don't know, it was. There was never a date

908
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 1: a day that it was a concern. When we sold

909
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 1: it to Yahoo, you know, years later we were approaching

910
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:51,640
Speaker 1: thirty million in sales and it was wildly profitable. So

911
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:54,279
Speaker 1: why do you think you guys were the only people

912
00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: who saw the existing latent value. A lot of people

913
00:50:56,600 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: out there who are going to be listening now who

914
00:50:58,120 --> 00:51:01,440
Speaker 1: get involved in business and taking at risk is dangerous

915
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:04,279
Speaker 1: taking that opportunity. There's a lot of people out there

916
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:06,399
Speaker 1: who now in retrospect can say, hey, there's a lot

917
00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:09,000
Speaker 1: of fans that want to be served uh in these

918
00:51:09,040 --> 00:51:13,440
Speaker 1: fans site related communities. Yet this huge asset of Rivals,

919
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:14,839
Speaker 1: which I mean, look, there were a lot of people

920
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:16,880
Speaker 1: who saw the business potential there because they had had

921
00:51:16,880 --> 00:51:19,280
Speaker 1: a asset raised at a hundred and fifty million dollars

922
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:22,400
Speaker 1: or whatever it was, is sitting there and nobody else

923
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:25,520
Speaker 1: is even circling it. You yourself, if there had been

924
00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: other bidders, might not have jumped in and made the opportunity,

925
00:51:28,200 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 1: made the bid that you did. Why do you think

926
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:33,359
Speaker 1: you guys saw the opportunity and others didn't. Well, here

927
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:37,600
Speaker 1: here's one of the here's an totally unforgotten fact that

928
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:42,800
Speaker 1: everyone that likes to claim their their power of rivals forget.

929
00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:46,920
Speaker 1: We bought Rivals out of bankrupts. See, we shut it

930
00:51:46,960 --> 00:51:52,160
Speaker 1: down for two years, so we didn't turn on one

931
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:57,719
Speaker 1: single server, We didn't honor a single contract. Um, we

932
00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:02,239
Speaker 1: didn't have a credit card, we wey sickly took it

933
00:52:03,400 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 1: and shut it down and bought it and paid that

934
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:11,120
Speaker 1: five have no competitors. So we launched Alliance Sports back

935
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:14,319
Speaker 1: for two years. And the reason we did there were

936
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:18,200
Speaker 1: so many skeletons in the closet, you know, from data

937
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:23,479
Speaker 1: centers to vendors to unpaid publishers. I mean, that thing

938
00:52:23,560 --> 00:52:28,279
Speaker 1: was a It was an epic disaster, and so we

939
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:32,680
Speaker 1: didn't want to be dealing with we're CBS Sports, We're

940
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:35,719
Speaker 1: JBS Sports. We have nothing to do with that, you know.

941
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:38,279
Speaker 1: In my old school country ways, I'm like, you know,

942
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:42,759
Speaker 1: screw it, right, And so we relaunched Alliance Sports. I

943
00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:47,000
Speaker 1: didn't rename it back to Rivals until I felt comfortable

944
00:52:47,440 --> 00:52:51,480
Speaker 1: that risk had subsided. And and the reason I did it,

945
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 1: quite honestly, was Rivals was a hell of a lot

946
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:58,920
Speaker 1: better domain name than than Alliance Sports. So so that

947
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:03,080
Speaker 1: was the first. Second thing. The second thing was that

948
00:53:03,200 --> 00:53:08,240
Speaker 1: was a time of endemic communities, passion plays and serving

949
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:11,279
Speaker 1: the Internet around a specific service where you had to

950
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:14,839
Speaker 1: be authentic and true. And we were trained in that

951
00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:18,080
Speaker 1: discipline because we ran that business for four or five years,

952
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:22,520
Speaker 1: and so bigger brands, big business running it from the

953
00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:26,640
Speaker 1: top down. You know, they wouldn't understand as much as that,

954
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:30,000
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't see the large scale opportunities that existed.

955
00:53:30,040 --> 00:53:33,760
Speaker 1: And I will say this, the Rivals model. The reason

956
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:38,880
Speaker 1: we sold it to Yahoo wasn't because of the million

957
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:43,719
Speaker 1: dollar payout. We could have gotten evaluation greater than that

958
00:53:43,880 --> 00:53:46,960
Speaker 1: and sold any amount we wanted recapped and kept going

959
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:51,480
Speaker 1: the Rivals model. When we sold that thing in two

960
00:53:51,560 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 1: thousand and seven or whenever the heck we sold it again,

961
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 1: I'd not good with dates it was over. It had

962
00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:04,440
Speaker 1: no more growth potential unless I completely blew the model up.

963
00:54:04,880 --> 00:54:09,440
Speaker 1: And so yeah, so I yeah, go ahead. No, I

964
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:11,160
Speaker 1: was gonna say so for people out there who don't

965
00:54:11,239 --> 00:54:13,640
Speaker 1: understand the Rivals business model, and I may be wrong,

966
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:16,520
Speaker 1: you can explain this or correct me. There were a

967
00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:20,400
Speaker 1: lot of independent contractors that ran their own Rivals sites,

968
00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:22,239
Speaker 1: right Like, so, if you were a fan of an

969
00:54:22,280 --> 00:54:25,880
Speaker 1: Alabama team, the guy who ran the Rivals Alabama site

970
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:29,320
Speaker 1: owned that site. It wasn't owned by the larger Rivals network.

971
00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:32,279
Speaker 1: The larger Rivals network was. You can explain it better

972
00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:34,880
Speaker 1: than I can, I think, but that's my understanding. And

973
00:54:34,920 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 1: so the flaw that you saw there was you had

974
00:54:37,719 --> 00:54:39,960
Speaker 1: maybe a lot of catch you're trying to heard, but

975
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:44,640
Speaker 1: also you didn't necessarily own much tangible real estate. Well,

976
00:54:45,320 --> 00:54:48,960
Speaker 1: here's the key, that's not We owned all the user data,

977
00:54:49,080 --> 00:54:51,359
Speaker 1: and we owned all the credit card data, okay, And

978
00:54:51,440 --> 00:54:55,680
Speaker 1: so so what Rivals did so well was we would

979
00:54:55,760 --> 00:54:59,480
Speaker 1: put two entities in one market, okay, and in some

980
00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:01,960
Speaker 1: cases three entities in the market. And that was our

981
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:05,040
Speaker 1: strategy Bobby and I had early on. In the event

982
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:08,359
Speaker 1: that one entity wanted to go to a higher deal,

983
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:12,040
Speaker 1: it didn't hurt us because we still had two publishing arms,

984
00:55:12,600 --> 00:55:15,279
Speaker 1: and so we gave up a little margin to have

985
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:21,839
Speaker 1: ultimate insulation towards, you know, get losing our business. So

986
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:26,680
Speaker 1: we could have easily started chopping and and not really

987
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:31,320
Speaker 1: hurt our growth business. I did not want to start

988
00:55:32,920 --> 00:55:36,560
Speaker 1: killing deals. You know, at the time, I looked at Rivals.

989
00:55:37,080 --> 00:55:39,080
Speaker 1: I looked at it as a legacy and as a

990
00:55:39,120 --> 00:55:42,320
Speaker 1: family more than I did a business. You know, in hindsight,

991
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:45,040
Speaker 1: knowing the way that some of those those guys have

992
00:55:45,120 --> 00:55:48,600
Speaker 1: acted like jackasses since we left, I would have showed

993
00:55:48,640 --> 00:55:52,120
Speaker 1: them who the real deal was. But didn't you know,

994
00:55:52,239 --> 00:55:53,640
Speaker 1: at the time, I didn't want to go in there

995
00:55:53,640 --> 00:55:57,600
Speaker 1: and butcher those deals. And so I thought, Okay, we're young.

996
00:55:58,560 --> 00:56:00,799
Speaker 1: I really want to scale Rival. But to scale it,

997
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:04,279
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to cut half the population. Let's

998
00:56:04,320 --> 00:56:07,719
Speaker 1: just sell it and then we'll revisit any business in

999
00:56:07,760 --> 00:56:11,920
Speaker 1: the future if an opportunity presents itself. And so that

1000
00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:16,799
Speaker 1: was it all aligned to sell at that moment rather

1001
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:19,840
Speaker 1: than reinvented. I knew how to reinvent it. We knew

1002
00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:22,080
Speaker 1: what we wanted to do, you know, but we had

1003
00:56:22,239 --> 00:56:29,040
Speaker 1: maximized the endemic passionate base. We needed to go towards

1004
00:56:29,080 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 1: more of the agnostic fan that still followed a team.

1005
00:56:33,719 --> 00:56:38,080
Speaker 1: So you sell the you sell Rivals to Yahoo. Yeah,

1006
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:42,640
Speaker 1: you are then coming into Yahoo to work. Uh what

1007
00:56:42,800 --> 00:56:45,879
Speaker 1: happened then? So you go from basically I mean you're

1008
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:47,400
Speaker 1: kind of running this thing from the seat of your

1009
00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:52,239
Speaker 1: pants to a big, top down organization like Yahoo. What

1010
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:55,279
Speaker 1: happens when you sell Rivals to Yahoo? Yeah? So, so

1011
00:56:55,480 --> 00:56:58,800
Speaker 1: Rivals was in I'm sorry, Yahoo was in complete turmoil

1012
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:01,879
Speaker 1: at the time. Um, you know, even during the year

1013
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:06,440
Speaker 1: due diligence phase of the acquisition. You know, I think

1014
00:57:06,440 --> 00:57:08,479
Speaker 1: they've gone through two c e O s at the time,

1015
00:57:09,239 --> 00:57:13,400
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of different strategic changes. So Yahoo

1016
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:17,200
Speaker 1: was kind of kind of not stable. I mean, it

1017
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:20,320
Speaker 1: was the Jip crown jewel of Silicon Valley media, and

1018
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:24,439
Speaker 1: then you know, I was beginning to tarnish. And then

1019
00:57:25,000 --> 00:57:28,880
Speaker 1: Yahoo also wanted to build its own sports editorial initiatives,

1020
00:57:29,760 --> 00:57:35,080
Speaker 1: and I think those editorial initial initiatives, UM conflicted in

1021
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, was what I wanted to do

1022
00:57:37,240 --> 00:57:44,040
Speaker 1: at seven Sports. Now during my two years there, Um,

1023
00:57:44,080 --> 00:57:48,280
Speaker 1: great things happen for Rivals, and terrific things happened for

1024
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:53,360
Speaker 1: Yahoo's sports. Um under the leadership of Patara, Jimmy you

1025
00:57:53,400 --> 00:57:57,760
Speaker 1: know who runs head got to ESPN. Jimmy did a

1026
00:57:57,840 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 1: phenomenal job of of building Yahoo Sports. If you if

1027
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:05,320
Speaker 1: you go back and and and and giving me to

1028
00:58:05,640 --> 00:58:08,160
Speaker 1: giving me the latitude to do what I needed to

1029
00:58:08,200 --> 00:58:11,240
Speaker 1: do at Rivals. But you could see if you really

1030
00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:15,360
Speaker 1: looked closer, you could you could see that if Jimmy

1031
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:19,160
Speaker 1: was at the CEO of Yahoo, there was no way

1032
00:58:19,800 --> 00:58:22,880
Speaker 1: he was a rising star in media. There was no

1033
00:58:22,960 --> 00:58:26,360
Speaker 1: scenario he was going to be running Yahoo Sports very long.

1034
00:58:27,120 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 1: And Yahoo essentially was imploding in so many ways. So, um,

1035
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:37,080
Speaker 1: you know they're really I'm not really a guy that's

1036
00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:41,120
Speaker 1: going to fight upward. You know, I'm just not that guy.

1037
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:44,680
Speaker 1: So here's our strategy, here's the numbers, here's the thesis.

1038
00:58:45,320 --> 00:58:47,800
Speaker 1: You know, here's here's what it's gonna look like. Get

1039
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:50,480
Speaker 1: out of my way and let me execute. If I've

1040
00:58:50,520 --> 00:58:53,920
Speaker 1: got to run a bunch of initiatives, you know, for

1041
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:56,320
Speaker 1: approval to a lot of people with less experience, it's

1042
00:58:56,360 --> 00:58:59,760
Speaker 1: just not my game. And Yahoo was becoming more of

1043
00:59:00,440 --> 00:59:03,959
Speaker 1: more of that type of consensus organization and I wanted

1044
00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:07,840
Speaker 1: no part of it. So out the door. So you

1045
00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:10,840
Speaker 1: make a good chunk, uh And I think honestly, your

1046
00:59:10,880 --> 00:59:14,600
Speaker 1: story hasn't been told that much because you've I'll get

1047
00:59:14,640 --> 00:59:18,320
Speaker 1: to seven here now. But to sell a company from

1048
00:59:18,600 --> 00:59:21,480
Speaker 1: you basically nothing for a hundred million dollars in the

1049
00:59:21,520 --> 00:59:23,960
Speaker 1: world of sports, and then to come back, you have

1050
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: to sit out for a little while, right. You have

1051
00:59:25,560 --> 00:59:29,840
Speaker 1: a noncompete with the Rivals acquisition one year one year.

1052
00:59:30,080 --> 00:59:33,040
Speaker 1: I had a two year noncompete, and then I had

1053
00:59:33,040 --> 00:59:36,920
Speaker 1: a one year employment tale, which I honored. You know,

1054
00:59:36,960 --> 00:59:40,720
Speaker 1: I'm proud to say that all the worry sports occurred

1055
00:59:40,760 --> 00:59:45,200
Speaker 1: and started the day that that one year tale expired.

1056
00:59:45,400 --> 00:59:48,160
Speaker 1: So so a lot of people when they make You

1057
00:59:48,240 --> 00:59:50,080
Speaker 1: made a lot of money, right, Like, you could have

1058
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:52,240
Speaker 1: cashed in, you could have chilled, you could have done

1059
00:59:52,280 --> 00:59:55,080
Speaker 1: nothing else. But you were already thinking, like, I want

1060
00:59:55,120 --> 00:59:57,480
Speaker 1: to go back into this universe. You like what you're doing.

1061
00:59:57,520 --> 01:00:00,600
Speaker 1: I think earlier you said, uh, your parents are competitive.

1062
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:04,040
Speaker 1: You're competitive. You knew, having worked at Alliance and having

1063
01:00:04,120 --> 01:00:06,800
Speaker 1: worked at Rivals, that there was an opportunity still to

1064
01:00:06,880 --> 01:00:09,280
Speaker 1: kind of take another bite at the apple and maybe

1065
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:12,320
Speaker 1: finally get the company right. And so you decide to

1066
01:00:12,360 --> 01:00:17,400
Speaker 1: do and create now seven sports. What goes into that?

1067
01:00:17,520 --> 01:00:19,400
Speaker 1: What do you have to do and what's the game

1068
01:00:19,400 --> 01:00:21,480
Speaker 1: plan that's different than what you had done so far?

1069
01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:25,240
Speaker 1: What did you learn? Here's here's it in a nutshell.

1070
01:00:25,320 --> 01:00:28,880
Speaker 1: So if you look at the universe, let's say there's

1071
01:00:28,920 --> 01:00:32,120
Speaker 1: four million online or whatever, the number is two and

1072
01:00:32,120 --> 01:00:37,760
Speaker 1: a half million online Alabama fans okay, Rivals version of

1073
01:00:37,760 --> 01:00:42,960
Speaker 1: it was only targeting that of Die Hearts, okay. And

1074
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:46,960
Speaker 1: what what we saw was we wanted to be all

1075
01:00:47,080 --> 01:00:51,040
Speaker 1: things for all Alabama fans, all things for all Tennessee fans,

1076
01:00:51,040 --> 01:00:55,320
Speaker 1: Ohio State, Michigan and so forth. Rivals wasn't built for that.

1077
01:00:56,040 --> 01:00:59,920
Speaker 1: And so I wanted to reach the more agnostic team

1078
01:01:00,080 --> 01:01:03,080
Speaker 1: fan that maybe they weren't season ticket holders, maybe they

1079
01:01:03,080 --> 01:01:05,840
Speaker 1: didn't watch every game, maybe they just used their sports

1080
01:01:05,880 --> 01:01:10,000
Speaker 1: team and their degree a social collateral, professional collateral. We

1081
01:01:10,040 --> 01:01:13,960
Speaker 1: wanted to build that engine. Now we knew when we

1082
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:17,959
Speaker 1: started seven spots, we weren't compete. We weren't really even

1083
01:01:18,080 --> 01:01:21,440
Speaker 1: focused on Rivals, to be honest with you. It was

1084
01:01:21,520 --> 01:01:24,960
Speaker 1: let's go build, you know, let's do twenty stories a

1085
01:01:25,040 --> 01:01:28,160
Speaker 1: day for the Alabama fan, not three, and let a

1086
01:01:28,160 --> 01:01:31,200
Speaker 1: lot of them be just the commodity news, and let's

1087
01:01:31,200 --> 01:01:33,960
Speaker 1: go win search, you know. And at that time social

1088
01:01:34,040 --> 01:01:36,720
Speaker 1: wasn't as big. It was more about search starting to

1089
01:01:36,760 --> 01:01:41,480
Speaker 1: take off. So we were instead of the five million uniques,

1090
01:01:41,560 --> 01:01:45,760
Speaker 1: you know, there's a hundred ninety million sports fans online

1091
01:01:46,440 --> 01:01:49,280
Speaker 1: and Rivals would breach at that time, you know, we're

1092
01:01:49,360 --> 01:01:52,920
Speaker 1: somewhere between five to eight million. We knew there was

1093
01:01:52,960 --> 01:01:56,919
Speaker 1: a good thirty million, forty million that we're on college.

1094
01:01:57,360 --> 01:01:59,800
Speaker 1: We wanted to go own that market. That was our play.

1095
01:02:00,080 --> 01:02:05,560
Speaker 1: So it was completely different. But I remember we and

1096
01:02:05,600 --> 01:02:08,520
Speaker 1: I got this Facebook message from this guy who was

1097
01:02:08,600 --> 01:02:11,640
Speaker 1: a who was a part time writer for the Rivals

1098
01:02:12,120 --> 01:02:15,520
Speaker 1: Alabama site, and here was some dip shit I don't

1099
01:02:15,560 --> 01:02:17,360
Speaker 1: I don't remember, I don't even I didn't know who

1100
01:02:17,360 --> 01:02:20,360
Speaker 1: he was. But he gave me this ethical lecture about

1101
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:24,800
Speaker 1: how I was a disgrace for going and competing against

1102
01:02:24,840 --> 01:02:27,880
Speaker 1: the business that I just sold. And and he wrote

1103
01:02:27,920 --> 01:02:32,480
Speaker 1: this well written two page You're gonna burn in hell

1104
01:02:32,520 --> 01:02:35,280
Speaker 1: and this thing's gonna crash and burn, and I'm gonna celebrate.

1105
01:02:35,320 --> 01:02:39,040
Speaker 1: I'm gonna celebrate you your failures and why did lips

1106
01:02:39,080 --> 01:02:42,160
Speaker 1: come teach you? And I'll never forget showing that to

1107
01:02:42,240 --> 01:02:46,880
Speaker 1: my wife. And that one anonymous note I read. I

1108
01:02:46,880 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 1: remember going to bed that night and said, you know what,

1109
01:02:50,720 --> 01:02:54,160
Speaker 1: f him, I'm gonna go kick rivals assid and that

1110
01:02:54,320 --> 01:02:59,080
Speaker 1: one note, for some reason, just hit me the wrong way.

1111
01:02:59,400 --> 01:03:02,800
Speaker 1: And then started reaching out some of the rivals, people

1112
01:03:02,880 --> 01:03:05,560
Speaker 1: that that were more mid level talent at the time,

1113
01:03:06,680 --> 01:03:12,080
Speaker 1: and you know, they I didn't feel they were very respectful. Um,

1114
01:03:12,160 --> 01:03:14,880
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think that that. I just didn't

1115
01:03:14,880 --> 01:03:19,280
Speaker 1: feel they were very respectful considering you know, our relationship

1116
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:21,600
Speaker 1: in the past, and so that that fueled some fire,

1117
01:03:22,520 --> 01:03:25,760
Speaker 1: and you know, then we just pretty much went to work.

1118
01:03:25,880 --> 01:03:28,280
Speaker 1: It wasn't a you know, It wasn't like I was

1119
01:03:28,280 --> 01:03:30,880
Speaker 1: out there to beat rivals. I was out there, you know,

1120
01:03:31,240 --> 01:03:34,360
Speaker 1: trying to build you know something I've tried out there,

1121
01:03:34,360 --> 01:03:37,880
Speaker 1: trying to build the top five sports site. And so

1122
01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:39,240
Speaker 1: you go out and you start making a lot of

1123
01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:41,479
Speaker 1: hires and everything else. How much money do you raise

1124
01:03:41,560 --> 01:03:47,800
Speaker 1: to start? The model was six point four debt and equity.

1125
01:03:48,000 --> 01:03:51,200
Speaker 1: We ended up at a point eight, so we overshot.

1126
01:03:52,080 --> 01:03:55,800
Speaker 1: We overshot about two and a half million dollars. It

1127
01:03:55,880 --> 01:04:00,280
Speaker 1: was all private money from existing former rivals sharehold there's

1128
01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:04,280
Speaker 1: and and myself, and then we took on. We took

1129
01:04:04,320 --> 01:04:06,959
Speaker 1: on kind of a who's who of some local big

1130
01:04:06,960 --> 01:04:11,200
Speaker 1: money people in Nashville, uh, and then a really wealthy

1131
01:04:11,240 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 1: person in Dayton. So we had a really tight group

1132
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:19,200
Speaker 1: that controlled the equity of the company. And you base

1133
01:04:19,280 --> 01:04:21,520
Speaker 1: it in Nashville, and you start with how many employees,

1134
01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:24,080
Speaker 1: how much of a and how long was your burn rate?

1135
01:04:24,120 --> 01:04:25,760
Speaker 1: How long did you think it would take you to

1136
01:04:26,000 --> 01:04:29,160
Speaker 1: actually turn profitable and start to start to be able

1137
01:04:29,160 --> 01:04:32,840
Speaker 1: to actually make some money in the business. The model

1138
01:04:33,000 --> 01:04:36,120
Speaker 1: was the model was two years before, you know, because

1139
01:04:36,160 --> 01:04:38,680
Speaker 1: we had we had a lot of we had, you know,

1140
01:04:38,720 --> 01:04:42,000
Speaker 1: to go compete at the level. This wasn't a small play,

1141
01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:45,400
Speaker 1: it was a big play. We had three high priced

1142
01:04:45,560 --> 01:04:50,800
Speaker 1: tech um engineers, developers, non developers, no engineers, but really

1143
01:04:50,840 --> 01:04:54,440
Speaker 1: product leads on staff. You know. Our our model was

1144
01:04:54,480 --> 01:04:56,400
Speaker 1: to go build the best tech in the space, the

1145
01:04:56,440 --> 01:05:00,320
Speaker 1: best recruiting database, the best message boards and really beat

1146
01:05:00,720 --> 01:05:03,600
Speaker 1: you know, and win that endemic audience through those products,

1147
01:05:04,200 --> 01:05:06,400
Speaker 1: and then you know, spend a lot of money on

1148
01:05:06,440 --> 01:05:09,440
Speaker 1: search and social uh to win to win that. So

1149
01:05:09,520 --> 01:05:12,919
Speaker 1: we I think after a year two we were still

1150
01:05:12,960 --> 01:05:15,760
Speaker 1: losing about two or fifty grand a month. So you know,

1151
01:05:15,960 --> 01:05:19,800
Speaker 1: we lost a lot of money early on getting the

1152
01:05:19,920 --> 01:05:23,480
Speaker 1: infrastructure in place. After three years, you know, we probably

1153
01:05:23,520 --> 01:05:27,560
Speaker 1: had sixty seventy employees. And were there ever any point

1154
01:05:27,600 --> 01:05:29,200
Speaker 1: where you thought I've been off more than I can

1155
01:05:29,240 --> 01:05:31,360
Speaker 1: chew here? Or were you always confident that things are

1156
01:05:31,400 --> 01:05:34,200
Speaker 1: going to turn out well A new things would turn

1157
01:05:34,240 --> 01:05:37,800
Speaker 1: out well, But but I thought it would take longer.

1158
01:05:38,760 --> 01:05:40,960
Speaker 1: I thought it would take longer. I thought it was

1159
01:05:40,960 --> 01:05:43,280
Speaker 1: going to take longer than I had modeled and take

1160
01:05:43,320 --> 01:05:46,560
Speaker 1: more money than I had modeled early on, and uh,

1161
01:05:47,080 --> 01:05:51,160
Speaker 1: and it really there we only had one setback. The

1162
01:05:51,240 --> 01:05:55,800
Speaker 1: only setback was ESPN entering our space in a in

1163
01:05:55,880 --> 01:05:59,760
Speaker 1: a startup. So ESPN long story short, and I'll try

1164
01:05:59,760 --> 01:06:03,120
Speaker 1: to con this this. I approached Bobby Burne and I

1165
01:06:03,160 --> 01:06:09,720
Speaker 1: approached ESPN about building seven sports together and a co

1166
01:06:09,880 --> 01:06:15,280
Speaker 1: investment deal. Um. We flew um to Bristol. We made

1167
01:06:15,280 --> 01:06:18,480
Speaker 1: the pitch. They were all in and so for six

1168
01:06:18,520 --> 01:06:22,160
Speaker 1: months we went through extensive due diligence and strap planning

1169
01:06:22,200 --> 01:06:25,720
Speaker 1: with ESPN. ESPN was going to be our partner building

1170
01:06:25,720 --> 01:06:29,120
Speaker 1: the business. They kept moving the deal into the point

1171
01:06:29,120 --> 01:06:33,720
Speaker 1: where they just offered us lucrative employment agreements. We told

1172
01:06:33,760 --> 01:06:37,280
Speaker 1: them to go pound sand and then within days they

1173
01:06:37,320 --> 01:06:40,760
Speaker 1: had launched a brand called Sports Nation and they launched

1174
01:06:40,800 --> 01:06:43,200
Speaker 1: their version of Rivals. So they took all of our

1175
01:06:43,240 --> 01:06:49,400
Speaker 1: intellectual knowledge and relationships and they started hiring. They hired

1176
01:06:49,480 --> 01:06:52,840
Speaker 1: somewhere around thirty something people that we had told them

1177
01:06:52,880 --> 01:06:57,000
Speaker 1: to go higher. And so we got pushed back two

1178
01:06:57,080 --> 01:07:02,640
Speaker 1: years by having to are a lower grade rider to

1179
01:07:02,760 --> 01:07:06,520
Speaker 1: start with than what we had originally planned and having

1180
01:07:06,560 --> 01:07:12,120
Speaker 1: to pace more in wages because we were now competing

1181
01:07:12,120 --> 01:07:15,800
Speaker 1: with Rivals, Scout and Est and there were four players

1182
01:07:15,800 --> 01:07:20,560
Speaker 1: in that space. Um, you know, VFN eventually shut down

1183
01:07:20,560 --> 01:07:24,480
Speaker 1: their team based business shut down Sports Nation, Scout went

1184
01:07:24,600 --> 01:07:30,560
Speaker 1: bankrupt yet again. Rivals basically flew to irrelevance, and you know,

1185
01:07:30,560 --> 01:07:33,920
Speaker 1: about four or five years seven hit hockey sticks. So

1186
01:07:34,600 --> 01:07:39,000
Speaker 1: the rest is history. But those first three years we

1187
01:07:39,000 --> 01:07:42,240
Speaker 1: were in a day to day fist fight with four competitors,

1188
01:07:42,520 --> 01:07:47,320
Speaker 1: which moved our economic model too far down to too

1189
01:07:47,640 --> 01:07:51,080
Speaker 1: too far. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk

1190
01:07:51,160 --> 01:07:53,880
Speaker 1: lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at

1191
01:07:53,880 --> 01:07:57,240
Speaker 1: Fox sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart

1192
01:07:57,360 --> 01:08:00,680
Speaker 1: Radio app search f s are to listen love. I

1193
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:02,560
Speaker 1: know there's gonna be a lot of writers and people

1194
01:08:02,560 --> 01:08:06,280
Speaker 1: who are in sports media listening. How do you value

1195
01:08:06,360 --> 01:08:10,840
Speaker 1: a writer when you are starting? Because I feel I'm

1196
01:08:10,920 --> 01:08:13,000
Speaker 1: a little bit of a rarity and that I enjoyed

1197
01:08:13,040 --> 01:08:15,640
Speaker 1: the business side of what I do too. I feel

1198
01:08:15,640 --> 01:08:18,000
Speaker 1: like a lot of writers just want to produce content

1199
01:08:18,120 --> 01:08:20,479
Speaker 1: and they don't really think about the value of the

1200
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:23,719
Speaker 1: content that they produce. How do you value a writer

1201
01:08:23,880 --> 01:08:29,120
Speaker 1: from a CEO perspective who is running a sports media company? Yeah, true,

1202
01:08:29,160 --> 01:08:33,120
Speaker 1: It's it's actually really simple. The number one value is

1203
01:08:33,200 --> 01:08:36,040
Speaker 1: do you own a chunk of the news in which

1204
01:08:36,040 --> 01:08:40,799
Speaker 1: you're covering? If you're not if you are not breaking

1205
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:44,519
Speaker 1: news part A and then part be adding to the

1206
01:08:44,680 --> 01:08:51,719
Speaker 1: narrative with with exclusive content supporting the breaking news through

1207
01:08:52,280 --> 01:08:56,080
Speaker 1: solid sources. You better really be good in a lot

1208
01:08:56,080 --> 01:09:00,760
Speaker 1: of other areas. And so you know what happened was

1209
01:09:01,960 --> 01:09:07,879
Speaker 1: so many reporters lost their way in that world because

1210
01:09:08,479 --> 01:09:14,240
Speaker 1: league sites and league news started, uh, team news, team

1211
01:09:14,280 --> 01:09:18,879
Speaker 1: sites at the college level started. People guide on social

1212
01:09:18,880 --> 01:09:22,240
Speaker 1: media to break their own news, and the world of

1213
01:09:22,320 --> 01:09:27,439
Speaker 1: breaking news are having sources just really slipped down to

1214
01:09:27,560 --> 01:09:31,080
Speaker 1: just a few people. And so you know a lot

1215
01:09:31,120 --> 01:09:34,639
Speaker 1: of reporters cry today that there aren't any great jobs. Listen,

1216
01:09:34,640 --> 01:09:36,519
Speaker 1: there are great jobs if you want to go do

1217
01:09:36,600 --> 01:09:40,360
Speaker 1: the work. They're just not a lot of people out

1218
01:09:40,360 --> 01:09:44,599
Speaker 1: there bringing the work. So so when we first look

1219
01:09:44,680 --> 01:09:47,560
Speaker 1: for someone, do you own the news? Are you the

1220
01:09:47,640 --> 01:09:50,760
Speaker 1: number one boss in your market? Are you number two?

1221
01:09:50,760 --> 01:09:52,680
Speaker 1: Are you number three? And do you contribute to it?

1222
01:09:53,400 --> 01:09:55,880
Speaker 1: If you don't check those boxes, you go to the

1223
01:09:55,920 --> 01:10:00,680
Speaker 1: next box. And that is what type of influence social influence,

1224
01:10:01,120 --> 01:10:04,720
Speaker 1: peer influence, which is more important than social influence to me.

1225
01:10:05,280 --> 01:10:08,760
Speaker 1: Are your peers in in in sports media? Do they

1226
01:10:08,800 --> 01:10:10,600
Speaker 1: source you, do they cite to you? Do they have

1227
01:10:10,760 --> 01:10:14,439
Speaker 1: you on their TV shows, the radio shows there, their blogs,

1228
01:10:14,479 --> 01:10:18,320
Speaker 1: their podcast, et cetera. And then the third box we

1229
01:10:18,439 --> 01:10:21,040
Speaker 1: check is are you a multi tool player? You know?

1230
01:10:21,160 --> 01:10:24,720
Speaker 1: Can you do you are you really good at at assignment?

1231
01:10:24,800 --> 01:10:27,960
Speaker 1: Do you know? You know? Can you create the stories,

1232
01:10:28,040 --> 01:10:30,680
Speaker 1: build the stories that are interesting to people. You may

1233
01:10:30,680 --> 01:10:32,519
Speaker 1: not be breaking the news, but can you write the

1234
01:10:33,080 --> 01:10:35,760
Speaker 1: stuff that are interesting? Are you good on video? Are

1235
01:10:35,800 --> 01:10:39,240
Speaker 1: you good on radio? Um? You know? Are you a

1236
01:10:39,280 --> 01:10:42,160
Speaker 1: team player? So those are the three buckets I look for.

1237
01:10:42,680 --> 01:10:44,200
Speaker 1: So it's fascinating you. I want to I want to

1238
01:10:44,280 --> 01:10:46,599
Speaker 1: unpack a little bit about there it used to be

1239
01:10:46,640 --> 01:10:49,160
Speaker 1: and you and when you first started that getting in

1240
01:10:49,200 --> 01:10:51,760
Speaker 1: the room meant that you could get a job. And

1241
01:10:51,800 --> 01:10:53,559
Speaker 1: what I mean by that for people out there listening

1242
01:10:53,640 --> 01:10:55,439
Speaker 1: is if you could be there sitting in front of

1243
01:10:55,520 --> 01:10:57,679
Speaker 1: Nick Saban or whoever the coach was at the time,

1244
01:10:58,200 --> 01:11:00,679
Speaker 1: you can write an article about what Nick Saban says,

1245
01:11:00,840 --> 01:11:03,200
Speaker 1: and there might only be fifteen people in the room

1246
01:11:03,200 --> 01:11:06,600
Speaker 1: who have access to that information. Therefore, all fifteen of

1247
01:11:06,600 --> 01:11:08,760
Speaker 1: those people are going to be able to provide some

1248
01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:11,600
Speaker 1: value to their audience. Right, And that was sort of

1249
01:11:11,600 --> 01:11:15,519
Speaker 1: a cloistered universe. And then everything starts going where you

1250
01:11:15,600 --> 01:11:19,040
Speaker 1: got video from from from a statement that's gonna be made.

1251
01:11:19,360 --> 01:11:23,360
Speaker 1: Everything is out almost immediately and the ability to and

1252
01:11:23,600 --> 01:11:24,880
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is used to be able

1253
01:11:24,920 --> 01:11:26,559
Speaker 1: to walk out to your front porch, you open up

1254
01:11:26,600 --> 01:11:30,160
Speaker 1: the newspaper, and it was hard to know whether somebody

1255
01:11:30,240 --> 01:11:32,559
Speaker 1: was doing a great job at their local newspaper because

1256
01:11:32,560 --> 01:11:34,519
Speaker 1: they were one of fifteen people in that room who

1257
01:11:34,560 --> 01:11:36,680
Speaker 1: was writing. But they didn't have anybody else they were

1258
01:11:36,680 --> 01:11:39,760
Speaker 1: competing with necessarily in that market in the same way. Right,

1259
01:11:40,040 --> 01:11:42,640
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, everybody's competing and you

1260
01:11:42,640 --> 01:11:44,040
Speaker 1: have to be able to take it to the next

1261
01:11:44,160 --> 01:11:47,639
Speaker 1: level and either have incredible analysis or an incredible idea

1262
01:11:47,680 --> 01:11:49,720
Speaker 1: of where things are going next. Right. I mean, that's

1263
01:11:49,760 --> 01:11:54,439
Speaker 1: where you start to create the value. That's it, and

1264
01:11:54,640 --> 01:11:58,040
Speaker 1: that transition. What it did, in my experience is the

1265
01:11:58,080 --> 01:12:01,400
Speaker 1: people who had that value made lot more money. But

1266
01:12:01,520 --> 01:12:03,720
Speaker 1: the people who didn't, who were still just in that

1267
01:12:03,840 --> 01:12:07,719
Speaker 1: room saying, hey, Alabama's gonna know rewriting whatever the press

1268
01:12:07,760 --> 01:12:10,400
Speaker 1: release was, they don't really have much value because the

1269
01:12:10,400 --> 01:12:15,920
Speaker 1: information they have has already been commodified everywhere. Yeah. Um,

1270
01:12:16,040 --> 01:12:18,839
Speaker 1: And that's the transition. That was a transition that tappened

1271
01:12:18,840 --> 01:12:22,840
Speaker 1: over the past decade with the advent of the proliferation

1272
01:12:22,880 --> 01:12:26,559
Speaker 1: of search and social yes and so, and that looked

1273
01:12:26,600 --> 01:12:28,280
Speaker 1: like it was gonna be a challenge for your business.

1274
01:12:28,280 --> 01:12:30,840
Speaker 1: But that's where the community aspect of your message boards

1275
01:12:30,840 --> 01:12:33,920
Speaker 1: and everything else comes in so strong, right, because everybody

1276
01:12:33,960 --> 01:12:36,320
Speaker 1: knows what the news is, but where do they want

1277
01:12:36,320 --> 01:12:38,479
Speaker 1: to go talk about it as soon as the news happens,

1278
01:12:38,680 --> 01:12:42,280
Speaker 1: boom on your message board. Yeah, it looks we built

1279
01:12:42,960 --> 01:12:47,360
Speaker 1: the beauty and the genius seven Sports was we built

1280
01:12:48,040 --> 01:12:53,000
Speaker 1: a multi tier distribution model and a multi tier revenue model.

1281
01:12:53,600 --> 01:12:59,880
Speaker 1: You know. We we make money from video, from from advertising,

1282
01:13:00,400 --> 01:13:04,559
Speaker 1: and from subscriptions, and we get traffic from a series

1283
01:13:04,560 --> 01:13:09,559
Speaker 1: of six or seven major distribution place We're the only

1284
01:13:09,680 --> 01:13:13,439
Speaker 1: business model that does that. Of the I feel the

1285
01:13:13,520 --> 01:13:17,720
Speaker 1: only strategic error and we've We've had tons of execution

1286
01:13:17,760 --> 01:13:22,280
Speaker 1: heres and I've made mistakes. I feel that the largest

1287
01:13:22,320 --> 01:13:26,360
Speaker 1: and really the only strategic area error that I made

1288
01:13:26,400 --> 01:13:29,519
Speaker 1: with seven Sports is I should have been at the

1289
01:13:29,560 --> 01:13:32,920
Speaker 1: forefront of podcast, you know, a couple of years ago,

1290
01:13:33,600 --> 01:13:37,439
Speaker 1: because that was that fourth for me. That would have

1291
01:13:37,439 --> 01:13:42,640
Speaker 1: been my my fourth revenue stream and another huge distribution.

1292
01:13:43,760 --> 01:13:46,200
Speaker 1: But I think all that I think podcast was blowing

1293
01:13:46,320 --> 01:13:49,960
Speaker 1: up at the time, you know, I was integrating more

1294
01:13:49,960 --> 01:13:51,840
Speaker 1: into CBS and they're just there were a lot of

1295
01:13:51,840 --> 01:13:56,320
Speaker 1: factors you know that that made me an idiot, you know,

1296
01:13:56,360 --> 01:13:59,320
Speaker 1: as it relates that I questioned sometimes whether I look,

1297
01:13:59,360 --> 01:14:01,840
Speaker 1: I'm in the audio business, and I question, one reason

1298
01:14:01,840 --> 01:14:05,280
Speaker 1: we're doing this podcast is I do three hours every morning. Uh.

1299
01:14:05,320 --> 01:14:07,719
Speaker 1: And you mentioned how that's a huge opportunity of local

1300
01:14:07,800 --> 01:14:10,120
Speaker 1: radio to advertise the brands that you have grown in

1301
01:14:10,160 --> 01:14:13,200
Speaker 1: their different respective markets. But I question that all the time.

1302
01:14:13,240 --> 01:14:16,360
Speaker 1: Where is the audio universe going. I don't want to

1303
01:14:16,360 --> 01:14:19,200
Speaker 1: get left behind and be the dinosaur who's doing local

1304
01:14:19,400 --> 01:14:21,960
Speaker 1: you know, who's doing radio on a M and FM

1305
01:14:22,040 --> 01:14:24,320
Speaker 1: dial when every single person is getting in their car

1306
01:14:24,360 --> 01:14:26,479
Speaker 1: and they're just saying, hey, I want the most recent

1307
01:14:26,520 --> 01:14:29,080
Speaker 1: thing Clay Travis has done, and boomages shows up on

1308
01:14:29,120 --> 01:14:33,400
Speaker 1: their dash or their phone or wherever they are. Yeah, exactly.

1309
01:14:33,800 --> 01:14:39,840
Speaker 1: So sports is is it's it's built to last, It's

1310
01:14:39,880 --> 01:14:43,759
Speaker 1: built you know there. We'll we'll add revenue and distribution

1311
01:14:43,800 --> 01:14:48,200
Speaker 1: along the way. But CBS Sports has done a phenomenal job. Um,

1312
01:14:48,240 --> 01:14:50,919
Speaker 1: you know, we're We're a fifty million dollar year revenue

1313
01:14:50,920 --> 01:14:55,679
Speaker 1: business that is from a margin perspective, is three times

1314
01:14:55,680 --> 01:14:58,679
Speaker 1: more profitable than then and I can't disclose those numbers

1315
01:14:59,040 --> 01:15:03,240
Speaker 1: than rivals every was. I mean, it's it's a behemoth.

1316
01:15:03,280 --> 01:15:05,880
Speaker 1: And you know, while I'm here, you know, I would

1317
01:15:05,880 --> 01:15:08,439
Speaker 1: love to grow my portfolio to a hundred million dollars

1318
01:15:08,479 --> 01:15:10,600
Speaker 1: and that's you know, that's my goal. I don't know

1319
01:15:10,640 --> 01:15:13,200
Speaker 1: that I can do that. But for people who don't know,

1320
01:15:13,320 --> 01:15:17,439
Speaker 1: you sold seven to CBS and you're now part of

1321
01:15:17,439 --> 01:15:21,000
Speaker 1: the CBS Sports Digital Network and everything else there. How

1322
01:15:21,000 --> 01:15:24,000
Speaker 1: did that come about? And you said you raised initially

1323
01:15:24,000 --> 01:15:26,240
Speaker 1: I think cost you eight million dollars to go in.

1324
01:15:26,320 --> 01:15:28,639
Speaker 1: You ended up returning a pretty good, pretty good return

1325
01:15:28,680 --> 01:15:31,120
Speaker 1: to the people who bought in. Yeah, that was that

1326
01:15:31,160 --> 01:15:35,520
Speaker 1: was a huge win UM for our investors UM CBS.

1327
01:15:35,720 --> 01:15:39,040
Speaker 1: UM was an initial investor. It's a very small piece

1328
01:15:39,880 --> 01:15:44,879
Speaker 1: in the business, and we started having discussions with them

1329
01:15:44,920 --> 01:15:49,439
Speaker 1: about potentially an acquisition. They were growing UM and they

1330
01:15:49,479 --> 01:15:54,280
Speaker 1: saw the value of being number two in sports behind ESPN. UM.

1331
01:15:54,400 --> 01:15:57,280
Speaker 1: We we were, you know, doing a lot of really

1332
01:15:57,320 --> 01:16:01,559
Speaker 1: good things in search and social UM and and you

1333
01:16:01,600 --> 01:16:05,679
Speaker 1: know CBS, what are they the NFL, College sports and

1334
01:16:05,800 --> 01:16:10,400
Speaker 1: UM and UM. You know Augusta outside of fantasy, so

1335
01:16:10,439 --> 01:16:13,280
Speaker 1: it made a lot. There were just a lot of synergies,

1336
01:16:13,280 --> 01:16:17,639
Speaker 1: not to use a cliche word, So it was really easy. UM,

1337
01:16:17,680 --> 01:16:21,880
Speaker 1: it was an easy courtship. They already knew. They saw

1338
01:16:21,960 --> 01:16:25,559
Speaker 1: the whole thing unfold, They saw the moment. You know,

1339
01:16:25,680 --> 01:16:28,160
Speaker 1: I gave them guidance about a year before hockey Stick

1340
01:16:28,640 --> 01:16:31,680
Speaker 1: and I said, you better get ready. And because you know,

1341
01:16:31,760 --> 01:16:33,800
Speaker 1: we had run enough tests, we knew it was about

1342
01:16:33,840 --> 01:16:37,960
Speaker 1: to happen. And when when our growth hit like I

1343
01:16:38,240 --> 01:16:41,200
Speaker 1: like we saw and predicted, you know, that was an

1344
01:16:41,200 --> 01:16:45,160
Speaker 1: easy courtship. When we you know, we moved the business over.

1345
01:16:45,439 --> 01:16:48,880
Speaker 1: We had two successful years. UM I was an owner

1346
01:16:48,880 --> 01:16:51,599
Speaker 1: and founder of pop culture dot com and comic book

1347
01:16:51,640 --> 01:16:54,960
Speaker 1: dot com started communicating kind of the same things about

1348
01:16:55,000 --> 01:16:59,680
Speaker 1: that brand. UM and then CBS I, which has an

1349
01:17:00,000 --> 01:17:04,800
Speaker 1: alievable entertainment and news portfolio, UH saw the opportunity in

1350
01:17:04,880 --> 01:17:08,639
Speaker 1: those categories, in those brands, and they acquired those that

1351
01:17:08,680 --> 01:17:14,400
Speaker 1: business from from us UH April seventeen. So you have

1352
01:17:14,479 --> 01:17:18,000
Speaker 1: sold three businesses that started basically at nothing for a

1353
01:17:18,080 --> 01:17:22,599
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars or more? Is that accurate? How many people?

1354
01:17:22,600 --> 01:17:23,960
Speaker 1: And I don't know the answer to this. You may

1355
01:17:24,000 --> 01:17:27,000
Speaker 1: know how many people in the world of the Internet

1356
01:17:27,280 --> 01:17:31,000
Speaker 1: have created three different media businesses and sold each of

1357
01:17:31,000 --> 01:17:34,160
Speaker 1: them for a hundred million dollars or more. Oh, I

1358
01:17:34,680 --> 01:17:36,800
Speaker 1: have no idea, you might. I mean, what I'm getting

1359
01:17:36,840 --> 01:17:38,880
Speaker 1: at is, in the world of sports, there's been a

1360
01:17:38,880 --> 01:17:40,800
Speaker 1: lot of talk about who's gonna make money off of

1361
01:17:40,840 --> 01:17:44,000
Speaker 1: the Internet, right, maybe SB Nations gonna do it. Bleacher

1362
01:17:44,040 --> 01:17:46,439
Speaker 1: Reports sold for a decent amount of money. We'll see

1363
01:17:46,439 --> 01:17:48,519
Speaker 1: what ends up happening with bar Stool. There have been

1364
01:17:48,880 --> 01:17:52,200
Speaker 1: relatively few brands that have actually hit You've hit for

1365
01:17:52,240 --> 01:17:54,960
Speaker 1: two over a hundred million in sports plus and we

1366
01:17:54,960 --> 01:17:56,960
Speaker 1: haven't even hardly talked about this. The pop culture and

1367
01:17:57,000 --> 01:17:59,680
Speaker 1: the comic book dot com that universe as well. There

1368
01:17:59,720 --> 01:18:02,600
Speaker 1: can't be very many people in your in your neighborhood. No,

1369
01:18:02,840 --> 01:18:05,800
Speaker 1: just to clarify, pop culture and comic book was an

1370
01:18:05,840 --> 01:18:09,000
Speaker 1: amazing return on investor and our best deal we've had.

1371
01:18:09,400 --> 01:18:11,400
Speaker 1: But it wasn't close to a hundred millions, So I

1372
01:18:11,439 --> 01:18:14,960
Speaker 1: can't just plose yeah, just just to be clear on that,

1373
01:18:15,160 --> 01:18:18,960
Speaker 1: but uh, it was from a return on investment at

1374
01:18:19,000 --> 01:18:22,560
Speaker 1: the r R was the highest that we've had UM,

1375
01:18:22,640 --> 01:18:25,920
Speaker 1: even higher than um than than rivals it was a

1376
01:18:25,960 --> 01:18:30,679
Speaker 1: huge win for our shareholders and and honestly, I think

1377
01:18:30,800 --> 01:18:32,960
Speaker 1: both of those two brands are going to be enormous

1378
01:18:33,000 --> 01:18:37,439
Speaker 1: successful stories for CBS down the road. I'm I probably

1379
01:18:37,479 --> 01:18:40,760
Speaker 1: have as much, if not more passion running those two

1380
01:18:40,800 --> 01:18:45,200
Speaker 1: brands during the day. But not to hijack your your conversation,

1381
01:18:45,880 --> 01:18:50,800
Speaker 1: um or your comment, UM. I'm incredibly proud of of

1382
01:18:51,240 --> 01:18:55,560
Speaker 1: the work that the return that we've given our investors

1383
01:18:56,120 --> 01:18:59,519
Speaker 1: at Rivals, at seven Sports and then that comic book

1384
01:18:59,520 --> 01:19:03,800
Speaker 1: Pop Culture. I am also incredibly proud of the careers

1385
01:19:04,720 --> 01:19:09,400
Speaker 1: and and the talent that we've developed in the organization.

1386
01:19:09,439 --> 01:19:13,759
Speaker 1: I mean, I've hired well over a thousand people, and

1387
01:19:13,760 --> 01:19:16,200
Speaker 1: and I've you know, I've been doing this for twenty

1388
01:19:16,240 --> 01:19:19,960
Speaker 1: five years. There's not a lot of bad stories in

1389
01:19:20,000 --> 01:19:25,120
Speaker 1: the organization. There's babies being born, career changes. I think

1390
01:19:25,160 --> 01:19:29,920
Speaker 1: we've got a really good um template for building talent,

1391
01:19:30,080 --> 01:19:33,599
Speaker 1: developing talent and building businesses. And it's and it's and

1392
01:19:33,640 --> 01:19:38,360
Speaker 1: it's it's proven by our revenue, our profits, and our

1393
01:19:38,439 --> 01:19:41,920
Speaker 1: our success. How much time do you spend looking at

1394
01:19:42,000 --> 01:19:46,160
Speaker 1: data all day, all time? How do you decide what

1395
01:19:46,360 --> 01:19:49,519
Speaker 1: the data is that matters? Basically, the difference between the

1396
01:19:49,560 --> 01:19:52,479
Speaker 1: seal and the noise. You know. Here's here's the thing.

1397
01:19:52,720 --> 01:19:55,160
Speaker 1: I've been in so many corporate meetings and I've read

1398
01:19:55,240 --> 01:19:59,559
Speaker 1: so much. The way you've got to look at data

1399
01:20:00,200 --> 01:20:04,040
Speaker 1: is you've got to use data to disprove your theory

1400
01:20:04,479 --> 01:20:08,720
Speaker 1: to you till you're just can't be disproven. And the

1401
01:20:08,800 --> 01:20:13,000
Speaker 1: corporate world and so many people use data to support

1402
01:20:13,080 --> 01:20:17,640
Speaker 1: their argument. And so I have a I have a

1403
01:20:17,800 --> 01:20:23,599
Speaker 1: belief that data is a debunker of your theory until

1404
01:20:24,280 --> 01:20:28,680
Speaker 1: it then itself is proven. And so you know, I'm

1405
01:20:28,680 --> 01:20:31,840
Speaker 1: not I'm not trying to be a contrarian, but I've

1406
01:20:31,840 --> 01:20:35,320
Speaker 1: been in so many meetings where that you slight the

1407
01:20:35,400 --> 01:20:38,959
Speaker 1: data and it actually doesn't prove what the person presenting

1408
01:20:38,960 --> 01:20:41,639
Speaker 1: it is. And so we've always looked at it as

1409
01:20:42,160 --> 01:20:45,400
Speaker 1: bring me all of it and let me let me

1410
01:20:45,520 --> 01:20:49,720
Speaker 1: make sure I'm not making a mistake. And so that's

1411
01:20:49,720 --> 01:20:51,760
Speaker 1: just our view on it. That's the way we use it.

1412
01:20:52,320 --> 01:20:55,639
Speaker 1: I look at everything. There's there's very pieces of very small,

1413
01:20:55,720 --> 01:20:58,479
Speaker 1: small pieces of our business I'm not intimately aware of.

1414
01:21:00,400 --> 01:21:02,720
Speaker 1: I've seen you with the numbers the Google analytics, like

1415
01:21:02,760 --> 01:21:04,839
Speaker 1: I've been to your office and I've seen you following

1416
01:21:04,840 --> 01:21:07,719
Speaker 1: it on a minute by minute basis. I wanna now

1417
01:21:07,800 --> 01:21:11,160
Speaker 1: kind of get into quickly here, how much do you work?

1418
01:21:11,240 --> 01:21:12,880
Speaker 1: Because one of the things that I know, you have

1419
01:21:12,960 --> 01:21:15,599
Speaker 1: four kids, one of the things that I am instilling

1420
01:21:15,600 --> 01:21:17,439
Speaker 1: to my kids all the time. And I think there

1421
01:21:17,479 --> 01:21:19,160
Speaker 1: are a lot of people out there listening who who

1422
01:21:19,320 --> 01:21:21,960
Speaker 1: need to hear this as well. It's one thing to

1423
01:21:22,040 --> 01:21:24,360
Speaker 1: be good at something. You said you were good at basketball.

1424
01:21:25,080 --> 01:21:27,040
Speaker 1: A lot of people are good at things. There's a

1425
01:21:27,120 --> 01:21:29,040
Speaker 1: lot of people listening to us right now who have

1426
01:21:29,160 --> 01:21:31,639
Speaker 1: individual talents and lots of different things. And you may

1427
01:21:31,640 --> 01:21:34,280
Speaker 1: be better than of people. You may be better than

1428
01:21:34,360 --> 01:21:37,200
Speaker 1: nine of people. I have yet to meet somebody who

1429
01:21:37,320 --> 01:21:40,800
Speaker 1: ends up being successful that doesn't grind their ass off

1430
01:21:40,920 --> 01:21:42,960
Speaker 1: in order to be good. Maybe there are people out

1431
01:21:43,000 --> 01:21:45,280
Speaker 1: there who really are incredible at what they do and

1432
01:21:45,280 --> 01:21:47,559
Speaker 1: they only have to work fifteen or twenty hours a week.

1433
01:21:47,600 --> 01:21:50,760
Speaker 1: I've never met him. Uh. Has that been your experience

1434
01:21:50,880 --> 01:21:53,439
Speaker 1: in the success that you have had, that there is

1435
01:21:53,479 --> 01:21:57,559
Speaker 1: no substitute for grinding? You know, there's no substitute. And

1436
01:21:57,840 --> 01:22:01,200
Speaker 1: you know, my issue is what I've learned over the

1437
01:22:01,320 --> 01:22:04,280
Speaker 1: last say twelve years, is that I've learned to be

1438
01:22:04,360 --> 01:22:08,360
Speaker 1: incredibly more efficient than I am working. Okay, And so

1439
01:22:08,600 --> 01:22:13,320
Speaker 1: there's a difference between like as far as thinking and

1440
01:22:13,479 --> 01:22:19,000
Speaker 1: planning and strategizing and and dreaming. You know, if I'm

1441
01:22:19,000 --> 01:22:23,360
Speaker 1: not sleeping or I'm not perfectly engaged with my wife

1442
01:22:23,439 --> 01:22:27,680
Speaker 1: or kids, you can pretty much bet that I am

1443
01:22:27,720 --> 01:22:31,800
Speaker 1: doing that. Okay. As far as like physically working, I

1444
01:22:31,840 --> 01:22:34,960
Speaker 1: don't work here as much as I used to. Um,

1445
01:22:35,000 --> 01:22:38,960
Speaker 1: But the strategy part, I try to be engaged. I'm

1446
01:22:39,000 --> 01:22:42,720
Speaker 1: not a high I don't have hobbies. I play basketball

1447
01:22:42,760 --> 01:22:46,439
Speaker 1: four times a week, um, you know, and I watched

1448
01:22:46,840 --> 01:22:49,559
Speaker 1: Netflix or some stupid TV before I go to bed.

1449
01:22:49,800 --> 01:22:52,680
Speaker 1: But I don't very social. No, I don't have a

1450
01:22:52,720 --> 01:22:56,679
Speaker 1: lot of hobbies. I'm not very fun. You know what

1451
01:22:56,680 --> 01:22:58,559
Speaker 1: what's fun to me is to try to line up

1452
01:22:58,560 --> 01:23:02,000
Speaker 1: and kick your ass. And and the only way I'm

1453
01:23:02,000 --> 01:23:04,120
Speaker 1: going to be able to do that is it starts

1454
01:23:04,120 --> 01:23:07,639
Speaker 1: with the foundation of trying to outwork you. And that's

1455
01:23:07,680 --> 01:23:11,599
Speaker 1: just the way I was raised. In my mind, It's

1456
01:23:11,640 --> 01:23:14,080
Speaker 1: the only way I'm going to be able to be successful.

1457
01:23:14,240 --> 01:23:18,560
Speaker 1: Probably not going to do it through charisma or connections.

1458
01:23:18,880 --> 01:23:21,200
Speaker 1: For being smarter than you. Be sure to catch live

1459
01:23:21,320 --> 01:23:24,240
Speaker 1: editions about kicked the coverage with Clay Travis week days

1460
01:23:24,280 --> 01:23:27,759
Speaker 1: at six am Eastern, three am Pacific on Fox Sports

1461
01:23:27,840 --> 01:23:30,680
Speaker 1: Radio and the I Heart Radio. I So you wake

1462
01:23:30,800 --> 01:23:33,160
Speaker 1: up like your general day now, and I know it's

1463
01:23:33,200 --> 01:23:35,599
Speaker 1: evolved over the years. You wake up at what time?

1464
01:23:35,680 --> 01:23:37,760
Speaker 1: Walk me through a typical day? And again, I know

1465
01:23:37,840 --> 01:23:40,280
Speaker 1: every day is different, but in your life, what is

1466
01:23:40,280 --> 01:23:44,719
Speaker 1: your typical day? Right? So I wake up, um, anywhere

1467
01:23:44,720 --> 01:23:47,240
Speaker 1: between four thirty and five every day, no matter what

1468
01:23:47,320 --> 01:23:50,400
Speaker 1: I've been with an alarm or that's just natural. I

1469
01:23:50,800 --> 01:23:52,920
Speaker 1: mean I have alarm, but I don't turn it off

1470
01:23:52,920 --> 01:23:55,400
Speaker 1: for it before it turns out I don't have I

1471
01:23:55,439 --> 01:24:00,960
Speaker 1: don't use snoozes. I pop up at four thirty, four

1472
01:24:01,120 --> 01:24:07,000
Speaker 1: thirty every day Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I play basketball. Um.

1473
01:24:07,040 --> 01:24:11,320
Speaker 1: Starting the game starts at six, it's over at seven. UM.

1474
01:24:11,360 --> 01:24:15,160
Speaker 1: Those three days, I come back shower real quick. And

1475
01:24:15,280 --> 01:24:17,400
Speaker 1: one of those three days I'll take my kids to school.

1476
01:24:17,479 --> 01:24:19,559
Speaker 1: If I don't take him to school, I'll come straight

1477
01:24:19,600 --> 01:24:23,799
Speaker 1: to the office. Um. Then I'll work those three days Monday, Wednesday,

1478
01:24:23,800 --> 01:24:29,640
Speaker 1: Friday to about three thirty or four UM, and then

1479
01:24:29,720 --> 01:24:35,280
Speaker 1: I'll probably work out for like twenty or thirty minutes. Uh,

1480
01:24:35,320 --> 01:24:39,240
Speaker 1: and then head home, um, or don't do anything until

1481
01:24:39,280 --> 01:24:42,080
Speaker 1: the kids go to bed. Kids go to bed seven

1482
01:24:42,120 --> 01:24:47,720
Speaker 1: thirty or eight. My younger kids, I'll catch up very briefly.

1483
01:24:48,120 --> 01:24:53,920
Speaker 1: And I'm in bed every night Tuesdays and Thursdays same time,

1484
01:24:53,960 --> 01:24:56,599
Speaker 1: get up and come straight to the office and then

1485
01:24:56,720 --> 01:25:00,960
Speaker 1: work straight until four o'clock. And that's been Are you

1486
01:25:01,000 --> 01:25:03,080
Speaker 1: a creature of having I mean that sounds pretty detailed.

1487
01:25:03,120 --> 01:25:05,160
Speaker 1: So you you, during the work week have a pretty

1488
01:25:05,200 --> 01:25:09,680
Speaker 1: set schedule. Yeah. I don't change anything. I wouldn't. I

1489
01:25:09,680 --> 01:25:11,920
Speaker 1: wouldn't know how why do you think getting into the

1490
01:25:11,960 --> 01:25:15,800
Speaker 1: office matter so much that early? I don't have any

1491
01:25:15,920 --> 01:25:20,960
Speaker 1: people distractions. Um. And I dictate my day. Um, so

1492
01:25:21,120 --> 01:25:23,080
Speaker 1: all the work. I do a lot of data work

1493
01:25:23,160 --> 01:25:25,400
Speaker 1: and a lot of writing and a lot of communication.

1494
01:25:26,479 --> 01:25:31,599
Speaker 1: And you need uninterrupted time to do that. UM. I

1495
01:25:31,640 --> 01:25:35,240
Speaker 1: think for whatever reason, I'm incredibly aware and much more

1496
01:25:35,280 --> 01:25:38,040
Speaker 1: acute at that point in time of the day than

1497
01:25:38,040 --> 01:25:42,519
Speaker 1: I am later in the afternoon. UM. And it's really

1498
01:25:42,520 --> 01:25:45,760
Speaker 1: more of a you know, I don't want to have

1499
01:25:45,800 --> 01:25:49,280
Speaker 1: the anxiety of having to get something done, and so

1500
01:25:49,320 --> 01:25:53,240
Speaker 1: if you get in you knocked that stuff out. UM.

1501
01:25:53,280 --> 01:25:57,040
Speaker 1: It really gives you a peace of mind to then

1502
01:25:57,120 --> 01:25:59,800
Speaker 1: start dealing with the ship that hits hits the fan

1503
01:26:00,640 --> 01:26:04,160
Speaker 1: as the day starts transpiring. And so if you're dealing

1504
01:26:04,200 --> 01:26:07,280
Speaker 1: you know, look, every day is an obstacle, every day

1505
01:26:07,320 --> 01:26:09,360
Speaker 1: is a fist fight, and every day is a mess.

1506
01:26:10,120 --> 01:26:16,320
Speaker 1: What's your physical, emotional and mental health and state when

1507
01:26:16,320 --> 01:26:18,559
Speaker 1: you're dealing with those. I've been in tears of my

1508
01:26:18,600 --> 01:26:22,360
Speaker 1: life where I've gone through some some stuff where I

1509
01:26:22,439 --> 01:26:26,760
Speaker 1: didn't make good decisions, and so I feel to make

1510
01:26:26,880 --> 01:26:30,200
Speaker 1: good business decisions and good life decisions, you've got to

1511
01:26:30,200 --> 01:26:34,280
Speaker 1: have your health and your emotional state and good order,

1512
01:26:34,960 --> 01:26:37,599
Speaker 1: you know, or you'll start making a series of bad mistakes.

1513
01:26:38,439 --> 01:26:42,040
Speaker 1: And so you take that down to the very micro level.

1514
01:26:42,479 --> 01:26:45,519
Speaker 1: You get up, you take care of your business, you

1515
01:26:45,600 --> 01:26:50,000
Speaker 1: clean your plate. You then have the You then are

1516
01:26:50,120 --> 01:26:53,920
Speaker 1: better prepared to deal with all of the obstacles and

1517
01:26:53,960 --> 01:26:57,320
Speaker 1: the craft that hits that day. You probably this last

1518
01:26:57,400 --> 01:26:59,160
Speaker 1: question for you. I want this for people to be

1519
01:26:59,200 --> 01:27:01,599
Speaker 1: able to listen to it for years. So I'll say

1520
01:27:01,640 --> 01:27:05,000
Speaker 1: this right now. We're talking in so if you're listening

1521
01:27:05,040 --> 01:27:09,639
Speaker 1: in or four, I hope you're enjoying it, and I

1522
01:27:09,680 --> 01:27:12,639
Speaker 1: bet that the advice will still carry through I get

1523
01:27:12,680 --> 01:27:15,240
Speaker 1: asked all the time by people. It's as if they

1524
01:27:15,280 --> 01:27:18,120
Speaker 1: think that I have some sort of magic gift that

1525
01:27:18,160 --> 01:27:20,559
Speaker 1: I'm going to be able to bestow upon them. Hey,

1526
01:27:20,640 --> 01:27:24,040
Speaker 1: here's how you make a living in the world of sports,

1527
01:27:24,040 --> 01:27:27,439
Speaker 1: in media in this universe. I'm sure you get asked

1528
01:27:27,439 --> 01:27:30,439
Speaker 1: it all the time too. What do you tell people

1529
01:27:31,040 --> 01:27:33,160
Speaker 1: that are out there that are right now, that are

1530
01:27:33,200 --> 01:27:35,800
Speaker 1: sixteen or seventeen years old, that are listening to us

1531
01:27:36,200 --> 01:27:39,040
Speaker 1: and they want to one day be the next Shanon Terry?

1532
01:27:39,080 --> 01:27:41,200
Speaker 1: What do you tell them they should be doing? And

1533
01:27:41,240 --> 01:27:43,679
Speaker 1: maybe they're twenty five, maybe they're thirty five, what would

1534
01:27:43,720 --> 01:27:46,160
Speaker 1: you tell them? How do you end up doing what

1535
01:27:46,240 --> 01:27:50,000
Speaker 1: you do? No? What I what I would say to

1536
01:27:50,120 --> 01:27:53,040
Speaker 1: anyone is I'm a little different than a lot of

1537
01:27:53,080 --> 01:27:57,679
Speaker 1: the new millennial mod movement. I don't think everybody should

1538
01:27:57,680 --> 01:28:01,200
Speaker 1: be entrepreneurs. I think only a you a few people

1539
01:28:01,240 --> 01:28:05,800
Speaker 1: actually should take those kind of risk um even risk

1540
01:28:05,840 --> 01:28:09,280
Speaker 1: at early ages where the you know, where the you know,

1541
01:28:09,360 --> 01:28:13,880
Speaker 1: the the really bad that could happen. Isn't that that

1542
01:28:13,880 --> 01:28:17,559
Speaker 1: that bad um? You know? But for those that want

1543
01:28:17,560 --> 01:28:22,240
Speaker 1: to be entrepreneurs, that want to be you know, trend

1544
01:28:22,280 --> 01:28:25,679
Speaker 1: setters and move I would say, work in your passion.

1545
01:28:25,840 --> 01:28:29,679
Speaker 1: Find things that you're passionate about. Um. You know, because

1546
01:28:29,720 --> 01:28:33,559
Speaker 1: I've tried a few things before, UM that I really

1547
01:28:33,640 --> 01:28:36,280
Speaker 1: wasn't that good at because I just didn't have a

1548
01:28:36,280 --> 01:28:38,360
Speaker 1: passion for it. I tried to pretend to have a

1549
01:28:38,360 --> 01:28:40,879
Speaker 1: passion for it. You know. I did a women's lifestyle

1550
01:28:40,920 --> 01:28:43,680
Speaker 1: play for a while and it was okay, but I

1551
01:28:43,960 --> 01:28:46,599
Speaker 1: didn't have a passion for it. So I didn't make

1552
01:28:46,640 --> 01:28:50,400
Speaker 1: good decisions because there they weren't innate. So number one

1553
01:28:50,720 --> 01:28:53,799
Speaker 1: is find your passion. Work and your passion. Well, everyone's

1554
01:28:53,800 --> 01:28:57,320
Speaker 1: gonna say I have a passion for freaking sports. Okay,

1555
01:28:57,400 --> 01:29:01,040
Speaker 1: Well who doesn't. That's not necessarily what I mean. You

1556
01:29:01,120 --> 01:29:05,439
Speaker 1: need to find a passion for something in sports. Um.

1557
01:29:05,479 --> 01:29:08,480
Speaker 1: Some of my best workers aren't watching games on Saturdays

1558
01:29:08,479 --> 01:29:12,280
Speaker 1: and because they're too tired. Uh, you know they'll they'll

1559
01:29:12,400 --> 01:29:16,519
Speaker 1: they're not sports holics, you're not sports freaks. We're interviewing people.

1560
01:29:17,479 --> 01:29:20,719
Speaker 1: How big a fan you are isn't even a question

1561
01:29:20,760 --> 01:29:24,320
Speaker 1: that we ask. We don't really care. But you need

1562
01:29:24,400 --> 01:29:29,880
Speaker 1: to be passionate about some service or some differentiator in sports. Um,

1563
01:29:29,920 --> 01:29:33,240
Speaker 1: and you've gotta like it. Um. And then the second

1564
01:29:33,280 --> 01:29:36,840
Speaker 1: thing I would say. And this is where the whole

1565
01:29:36,840 --> 01:29:39,880
Speaker 1: equation either is gonna look really pretty or fall apart.

1566
01:29:40,800 --> 01:29:48,400
Speaker 1: Um does does that passion align with an economic opportunity?

1567
01:29:48,640 --> 01:29:51,600
Speaker 1: And so many things are well, I can do this,

1568
01:29:51,840 --> 01:29:53,920
Speaker 1: have a passion for it, but it's not don't make

1569
01:29:53,960 --> 01:29:59,000
Speaker 1: any money. That's bullshit. And so you know, don't get

1570
01:29:59,040 --> 01:30:03,280
Speaker 1: caught up in these will will build users, UM will

1571
01:30:03,320 --> 01:30:06,960
Speaker 1: build users, will figure it out or who cares. I'm

1572
01:30:07,000 --> 01:30:09,639
Speaker 1: not in this for money. Now. If you are in business,

1573
01:30:09,920 --> 01:30:12,320
Speaker 1: you're in business to generate cash flow. And at the

1574
01:30:12,360 --> 01:30:14,760
Speaker 1: end of the day, all business is their valued on

1575
01:30:14,920 --> 01:30:18,320
Speaker 1: cash flow UM and how much money can be returned

1576
01:30:18,320 --> 01:30:21,000
Speaker 1: to investors. And so you've got to find a passion

1577
01:30:21,479 --> 01:30:24,599
Speaker 1: and you've got to find an economic driver that aligns

1578
01:30:24,640 --> 01:30:27,559
Speaker 1: with that passion. And if you if you can check

1579
01:30:27,640 --> 01:30:30,840
Speaker 1: both of those boxes with a good idea, are good

1580
01:30:30,880 --> 01:30:33,280
Speaker 1: opportunity and have to be entrepreneurial, can be going to

1581
01:30:33,360 --> 01:30:36,040
Speaker 1: work for an enterprise where you get to do what

1582
01:30:36,080 --> 01:30:38,599
Speaker 1: you want to do and they're gonna pay the bills,

1583
01:30:39,520 --> 01:30:41,519
Speaker 1: then go forward with it. But if you can't check

1584
01:30:41,560 --> 01:30:45,200
Speaker 1: both those boxes, keep selling insurance or doing whatever you've

1585
01:30:45,200 --> 01:30:47,519
Speaker 1: gotta do to provide for you, you know, you and

1586
01:30:47,560 --> 01:30:51,000
Speaker 1: your family. UM. That would be my advice to anyone

1587
01:30:51,640 --> 01:30:55,200
Speaker 1: you know that's thinking of of of doing anything remotely

1588
01:30:55,280 --> 01:30:58,120
Speaker 1: similar to the things that I've done. Last question, I

1589
01:30:58,120 --> 01:31:00,200
Speaker 1: know I said last question Bell legitimate. Do you think

1590
01:31:00,240 --> 01:31:03,280
Speaker 1: that you will ever start another company? Or having had

1591
01:31:03,320 --> 01:31:06,400
Speaker 1: the success that you have in the space that you had,

1592
01:31:06,640 --> 01:31:09,639
Speaker 1: do you feel like that part of your life is over?

1593
01:31:12,080 --> 01:31:15,120
Speaker 1: I am. I am a I'm a business builder, I'm

1594
01:31:15,120 --> 01:31:18,960
Speaker 1: a creator, I'm an originator um, and I'm I'm a

1595
01:31:19,000 --> 01:31:22,600
Speaker 1: control freak. And I can honestly say I don't have

1596
01:31:22,640 --> 01:31:26,880
Speaker 1: any ideas brewing. I don't have any concepts. I don't

1597
01:31:26,880 --> 01:31:29,920
Speaker 1: have any plans to leave CBS. I love it here

1598
01:31:30,600 --> 01:31:34,760
Speaker 1: um and will be here for the foreseeable future, you know.

1599
01:31:35,000 --> 01:31:38,400
Speaker 1: But I dream about the day you know that I can,

1600
01:31:39,160 --> 01:31:42,200
Speaker 1: you know, take a lot of these experiences that I've learned,

1601
01:31:42,800 --> 01:31:46,320
Speaker 1: go in disrupt something and get up every day with

1602
01:31:46,400 --> 01:31:50,240
Speaker 1: the sole purpose of kicking a competitor's ass. So, you know,

1603
01:31:50,360 --> 01:31:53,120
Speaker 1: I look forward to that day. It's not now. I'm

1604
01:31:53,160 --> 01:31:57,519
Speaker 1: not ready emotionally physically. UM. I like what I'm doing.

1605
01:31:57,520 --> 01:31:59,240
Speaker 1: I like what I'm a part of. I like the

1606
01:31:59,280 --> 01:32:02,400
Speaker 1: people that I'm working with, and I have unfinished business

1607
01:32:02,400 --> 01:32:06,439
Speaker 1: with seven, Comic Book in pop culture, but I pray

1608
01:32:06,680 --> 01:32:09,920
Speaker 1: there will come a day, uh when I get to

1609
01:32:09,960 --> 01:32:14,080
Speaker 1: get up at four thirty with that feeling that I've

1610
01:32:14,080 --> 01:32:17,160
Speaker 1: had for two and a half decades where I raced

1611
01:32:17,200 --> 01:32:22,160
Speaker 1: out the door with the sole purpose, you know, of

1612
01:32:21,880 --> 01:32:27,120
Speaker 1: of doing something disruptive, because there's no feeling like it,

1613
01:32:27,320 --> 01:32:32,160
Speaker 1: that adrenaline, that competitive fire. I felt it, and I

1614
01:32:32,200 --> 01:32:35,240
Speaker 1: want to feel it again someday. Shannon Terry, where can

1615
01:32:35,280 --> 01:32:37,040
Speaker 1: they find you on Twitter if they want to come

1616
01:32:37,120 --> 01:32:40,160
Speaker 1: react to this at at at sp Terry, I think,

1617
01:32:41,040 --> 01:32:44,680
Speaker 1: is that right? That's it? At sp R, I'll be

1618
01:32:44,720 --> 01:32:48,760
Speaker 1: hanging out there outstanding stuff is always man. Good luck

1619
01:32:48,800 --> 01:32:51,639
Speaker 1: in the future, and thanks for the time today. Thanks Clay,

1620
01:32:51,640 --> 01:32:54,880
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Thanks to Shannon Terry again he

1621
01:32:54,960 --> 01:32:58,080
Speaker 1: has killed it with rivals, with seven Sports, with pop

1622
01:32:58,080 --> 01:33:00,400
Speaker 1: culture dot Com, and with Comic book dot Com. If

1623
01:33:00,400 --> 01:33:03,000
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this podcast, you can reach out to him

1624
01:33:03,040 --> 01:33:06,840
Speaker 1: at sp Terry seven on Twitter. Let him know you

1625
01:33:06,960 --> 01:33:09,479
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I'm Clay Travis And by the way, that

1626
01:33:09,560 --> 01:33:11,880
Speaker 1: does make a difference for everybody out there. Jason Whitlock

1627
01:33:11,960 --> 01:33:13,960
Speaker 1: told me, you guys reached out to him like crazy

1628
01:33:14,000 --> 01:33:16,439
Speaker 1: with our first podcast. If you listen to this and

1629
01:33:16,479 --> 01:33:18,800
Speaker 1: you enjoy it, it really does make a difference if

1630
01:33:18,840 --> 01:33:20,200
Speaker 1: you go reach out to the people who were the

1631
01:33:20,200 --> 01:33:22,800
Speaker 1: subjects and gave us their time, uh and energy and

1632
01:33:22,800 --> 01:33:25,439
Speaker 1: effort to be able to spend here with you guys

1633
01:33:25,439 --> 01:33:28,479
Speaker 1: and me on Wins and Losses. Next one upcoming got

1634
01:33:28,520 --> 01:33:30,519
Speaker 1: us a lot of awesome people lined up. I think

1635
01:33:30,520 --> 01:33:32,200
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna love this series, but thank you

1636
01:33:32,280 --> 01:33:35,040
Speaker 1: so far for jumping on. Were two episodes in If

1637
01:33:35,080 --> 01:33:37,080
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to Jason Whitlock, do it now. That

1638
01:33:37,120 --> 01:33:39,559
Speaker 1: was Shannon Terry. I'm Clay Travis and this has been

1639
01:33:39,680 --> 01:33:43,200
Speaker 1: Wins and Losses. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports

1640
01:33:43,200 --> 01:33:46,000
Speaker 1: talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows

1641
01:33:46,040 --> 01:33:49,280
Speaker 1: at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the I

1642
01:33:49,360 --> 01:33:52,320
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app. Search f s R to listen live.