March 20, 2024
Noah Lack
Which means another wave of college athletes are going to gain large followings across their social media platforms. A couple will leverage this to lucratively maximize their NIL, few will play in NBA, some will play overseas, but MOST will stop playing basketball a couple of years from now.
Long after the hype of March, you will see these same athletes be brave enough to become entrepreneurs yet will struggle to funnel their most devout followers to the product they create.
So the million dollar question is aside from endorsements, how can they leverage the audience they will acquire this March for the next 10+ years regardless of how their basketball careers pan out?
One framework they should consider is using Late Checkout CEO Greg Isenberg’s A.C.P. Business Model.
A- Audience. Make content, have an objective with whatever content you are making, and build an audience of 10k or more followers on a particular platform.
C-Community. Vet the top ~10% of your audience that loves you and throw them into a private space (Whatsapp group, Slack, Discord, etc.).
P-Product. Build a product, and ideate with them on it. What are you going to build that this community can help with? Do not let them dictate, but allow them give you feedback on what you’re building to help iterate faster.
Athletes are tailor-made to thrive with this framework because they have a head start on audience.
It’s not easy to make content that attracts an audience but athletes over the years have built the A that can help get to the C and the P faster.
Notice I said head start, not advantage. It takes more than an audience to build something people want. Nevertheless, some athletes will cash in on NIL and career earnings to bootstrap their company in a way many other founders can’t.
Melissa Ortiz recently came on Athletes & Assets™.
Who: Melissa Ortiz is an Olympian, Former Professional Soccer Player, current TV Broadcaster and Entrepreneur.
What: Melissa is the founder of Kickoff Coffee, a coffee brand that’s geared towards the niche of soccer fans who wake up early to watch soccer that’s being played across the pond.
A- Audience. Melissa makes content every day geared towards her lifestyle and coffee brand across her Instagram (132k followers) and Tik-Tok (216k followers). She’s built a large audience.
C- Community. Melissa uses her creator profile link to filter the fans into her newsletter. I would challenge her to actually get more personal and make a Discord or a Whatsapp chat if she hasn’t already. Nevertheless, newsletters are great for marketing and make things a little more intimate.
P-Product. The coffee is the product. I can’t speak for Melissa, but anyone can email me off of my newsletter. Every newsletter offers an open line of communication on product updates. Regardless, her community is trying her coffee, and she can get feedback in real time.
Melissa has leveraged her athletic career to lean in to content creation, has found a niche community that resonates with here, and is building a product the she can directly sell to them. ACP.
Her community is showing up early morning to the pubs to watch soccer games. They are not drinking beer, they are drinking coffee. Melissa makes coffee, and money. Brilliant.
It’s a process that takes refinement and something we’re going through right now, but the ACP model makes total sense for many athletes turned entrepreneurs. I hope the heroes of March see this newsletter a couple of years from now, they are going to need it. In the meantime, you can get ahead of the curve and join the community.
