Max McCusker--From Rugby Player to Rugby Gear Entrepreneur

This podcast features an interview with fellow University of Mary Washington student Max McCusker, a former competitive rugby player who transitioned into entrepreneurship following a career ending injury. Although he was no longer able to compete, his passion for the sport remained strong. Motivated by his continued involvement in the rugby community, Max identified a gap in the US rugby equipment market. Many young athletes and teams rely on mismatched gear sourced from various overseas companies, resulting in inconsistencies in quality, branding, and team identity. Recognizing this need, Max founded Zip Rugby, a company focused on providing high quality, uniform, and customizable rugby gear to teams across the United States. In this interview, Max discusses the experiences that led him to start his business, the challenges he encountered in transitioning from athlete to entrepreneur, and his vision for improving access to cohesive and professional rugby equipment for developing teams.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Hey, this is the Spark Team Adventure Podcast, and I'm Aiden Ramirez. And this is my co-host, Tony Ramarez. And our interviewee.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hi, nice to you. Max McCoska.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Alright. Now we have a couple questions for you here. What motivated you to begin your entrepreneurial journey?

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me on. So my entrepreneur journey started when my rugby career finished. So I came to EMW as a D1 rugby recruit at the age of 17, so I was easily the youngest on the team. I was very passionate about professional rugby, and after Mary Washington, I wanted to go professional in the stage here.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

What caused your rugby career to end?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah, so unfortunately it happened in a cold rainy day in New York in my sophomore year. We were late coming off the bus and we didn't really get the best shoulder warm-up in. Anyways, the first tackle that I took, I just felt my first shoulder just completely go. And then my coach looked at me, saw that I was on the floor, and was like, Can you play on Max? And he kind of gave me that look was like, This is your one chance. Like if you come off now, like kiss bye bye, first team rugby. So in that position, I was like, you know what, I've got another shoulder, let's just tackle with that. Um, and I ended up doing that shoulder as well. So um I got grade two ligament damage in both my shoulders and had to get a double shoulder surgery.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

So I'm sorry to hear that.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

So good, but they are pretty mad.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Um wow, that is quite the scar.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Yeah, I've got a double them here. Um so that took me out of rugby for a complete year um recovery time, not even talking about rehab, building up strength again. So I was completely out for a year. Um losing, you know, the the abilities in both your shoulders, like pretty much making you disabled for about two and a half weeks, really makes you make your mind go a bit crazy. I could be honest, being able to move it, and you know, with all your best mates still playing rugby every single day, and you not be able to do the thing that you came to this country for, it really yeah, it really messes with you. Anyways, so when I was out and down and out right first couple of days, um I really thought about you know my first experience at Mary Washington, and I realised um, you know, we are such a big rugby team. When I first came here, none of the kit arrived until six months later. And it was like one day you get your socks, two weeks later you get your hoodies. Um as a 17-year-old freshman, I was really excited and really enthusiastic about American rugby kit. You know, we all want to represent our teams and stuff like that to a high level, and I was just a bit shocked that you know American Rugby is on the rise. You know, we're hosting the Rugby World Cup in 2032, and we don't have a home rugby brand, it doesn't exist. Um every rugby team in the States outsources to Europe, Australian markets, and and it's not only damaging American rugby, but it's costing teams a fortune, and the shipping times were awful. So I kind of looked at that problem when I was down and out and thought, you know what, if I don't make America's first rugby brand, someone else will. Guaranteed, no doubt about it, especially with the World Cup coming up the next 10 years. So I just took it by the horns and didn't really look back in that way. So I yeah, pretty much channeled all my first team energy, all that passion that I have for rugby into the business side of the sport.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

That's great.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

Sounds awesome. So, how exactly are you working with collecting your money and networking your your brand?

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Yeah. So to start collecting capital as a small company, um, you need to start selling your vision to other people. So for me, the elevator speech is very important. Um I've had some great success speaking to coaches with my 30-second speech and they love it. So that is very important. Um, but in terms of raising capital, raising money, you need to start small. You know, thankfully, um this is a very untapped market, you would say, because we are entering as America's first rugby brand. Um, there was a lot of demand straight away, but obviously we don't have the funding, you know, to start creating really high-quality hoodies and jumpers straight away. So we started small. We started actually with grip socks. Grip socks are really easy to get into the market because it's a very low cost. So for myself, um to manufacture 50 pairs of socks, it costs me$3 per pair. And then I then sold those socks for$8 per pair. And yeah, we started just growing it by there, starting off with university deals for grip socks, telling teams like, look, all your different players they wear grip socks, but they don't wear a unified grip sock. And that's where I kind of came in and gave teams a custom unified grip sock that all the players can wear. And at the moment we've got about 500 uh grip sock sales. That's impressive. So that was nice.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

So you're doing business-to-business transactions right now. Are you planning on selling to consumers at any point in the future?

SPEAKER_00 6:00

100%. Um we've seen the biggest demand right now and biggest problem through business to business, through speaking to coaches. Um, but obviously, when your players start wearing those kits that the coaches give them, that starts to build up traction, anyways. So that means you know the players, you know, they love the kit, they want to learn more about our brand zip, so they'll follow us on social media, and then it's just a snowball effect from there. Um, so we've built up a small community, about 600 on our social media, but um our exposure has been 50,000 people some months.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Wow. Significant.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

So I would love to create a business to consumer website in the future. However, just uh with my crazy semester schedule, trying to play a wee bit of rugby on the sides and just trying to graduate this semester, um, setting up that website process, you know, because it is a process of you know creating the website at the start, creating um like interfaces that will agree with consumers so they can easily find the buy now button. So turning those website searches into conversion cells that's a very important part. And then how do we ship the product off to the player, to the consumer? So there's loads of steps uh that I will definitely be doing after graduation and be hitting that side of it.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Are you the sole employee or do you have employees?

SPEAKER_00 7:40

So at the moment um I am a sole trader, and it is only me that does it. Um I've had friends in my rugby team, you know, put inputs in, or we like that quality, we don't like that text, you know, so it's good getting those um suggestions from other players in the market. That's really valuable information. And in the future, when I graduate, I'm actually gonna be setting up two internships. Um, you know, people in Scotland or in America, they can apply for it. I'm just gonna set it up in LinkedIn and see what happens. So I'm excited about that for the future. But in terms of running the business day-to-day, yeah, it's just myself at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

Right, it's impressive.

SPEAKER_03 8:27

Um, so what obstacles have you faced along your journey?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Obstacles, you know, it's hard. I don't see them as obstacles, I see them as speed bumps, to be honest, because I'm so goal-driven and I really see this vision of zip. Any obstacle in my way to me is a speed bump. Let's if we run at it a million miles an hour, you know, we'll hit a little bump. You know, we might go flying a wee bit, but we'll be we'll be back on the ground, you know. But if we take it slow and you know, we work through it, no problem at all. So speed bumps. I would say I can't I can't say commitment because I've put all my commitment into this instead of rugby. I would say trying to convince my family, actually, that this is what I want to do, and this is what I see my vision. Um, my parents they've invested a lot of money into me, um, and they kind of have an expectation that I'll go corporate sports marketing. That's kind of always been they thought was my goal. Um my father owned a graphic design company, um he still does, and I turned down the opportunity to work there instead of going to university. And by the age of by the age of 25, I would have been the head of marketing of that company, and I kind of turned that down because I don't want a corporate lifestyle, I don't want to work 95, to be quite honest. Totally really. So convincing my family that this is real and this has got traction, like that's a speed bump in the way, to be honest. And unfortunately, when I graduate um this semester, I'll still have to go back home to Scotland and look for a corporate marketing job, at least for the next year, just to keep the family happy. So that's definitely one speed bump. Um another speed bump is working very limited to what you can, and especially in Eagle, right now. There's some great resources around U and W, but there's also some backdraws as well, like my schedule is so hectic, um, and there's just limited hours in the day. And I'm on 21 credits right now. So trying to balance that as well, is trying to run my own company as well as rugby. You know, obviously got to keep a social life as well in there, you know. So yeah, speed bumps at the moment is definitely graduation and 21 credits, but that's something we'll get past in the next couple months.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Yeah, time is always a big obstacle.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Definitely consistency. Um I don't really care for motivation, to be honest, because if you're motivated one day, you can have the best day ever. But the next day you've looked at yesterday and went, you know what, I've had such a great day, I'm gonna take today easy. Like that for me, that's a killer. If you can just do 50% of that motivated day every single day, that that's so much better than motivation. So consistent consistency is key, definitely. Um maybe a bit of delusion as well as an entrepreneur is very needed. Um you need to kind of just back yourself completely and tell yourself that you are the right person for this job. So I mean, no one else can do this but you. No one else sees this vision. Um and you're gonna get friends, you're gonna get colleagues, girlfriends, tell you like they don't really like they'll step they'll say to your face, like, oh yeah, yeah, zip, like I love it, I love it. But sometimes they will be looking at with an evil eye and will be not wanting your best interest at heart, yeah, because they're not doing that, they've not got their own business. So as an entrepreneur, keeping your wits about you is definitely important. Not telling every single one of your mates, oh my gosh, this con I had this conversation today, oh my gosh, like this person, like I've got this sale, maybe. Because if it's not 100% confirmed, and you're telling other people like it's already existed, like finalized, done deal, in your mind, that kind of shows that it's hard to explain, but if you tell someone like, oh, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, and not keeping it a secret towards you, um that can be costly. So keeping your wits to yourself, not telling your mates every single conversation that's happened, um you know, just keeping you know CEO information to the CEO. Um what other points? Uh definitely public speaking as an entrepreneur as well. You need to be confident, um, you need to be got to new people, you need to sell your dream to new people, which is a skill in itself, trust me. Um so you need to be charismatic, you need to look them in the eye, you need to sound serious but not too serious. You know, there's so many different levels um things that you need. So that comes into the elevator speech as well. Um but I would say that's an essential skill for an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah, those all sound like super great advice.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

So, talking about advice, what is something that you would tell undergraduate students who want to start their own business too? What should they follow and what can help them succeed in their life journey?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

For anyone that wants to start their own business and they're starting from zero, like not even knowing what industry they want to go in, you want to look for a problem, right? A problem in the world, and think of a solution that's that you can create and put your own twist onto it, like put your own branding onto it. Um so look for that problem, create the solution, but then just back yourself, you know, it's it's easy, like there's so many thinkers in the world, there's so little doers in the world, like even with me working with zip, I had the thought of zip for so long in my head, even before I was out injured. I already kind of knew like that there is no American brand. Like I knew that. And yeah, just back yourself, consistency is really important. Even though I had this idea of zip for ages, you don't know how long it actually took me to get the courage to make the Instagram. Like honestly, making the Instagram is such a big step forward. Um and please don't get AI to you to create your logo as well. That's definitely um yeah, you can just identify it so quickly and it just kills your business straight away, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Um so yeah, get the Instagram out straight away. I know it might sound cringy, but people, everything's cringy until it works. Let's look at it like that. You know, a person making TikToks, right, their face in front of the camera, right? They've got a hundred followers, right? It's a bit cringy. But imagine that exact same content, they've got two million followers. Like all of a sudden it's no longer cringy. All of a sudden brands are now interested and want to engage with this platform. So everything's cringy until it's successful. And then those people that thought it was cringy, right? They'll actually a couple years' time be like, oh my gosh, I went to uni with that guy. Like it's like honestly, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:45

I love that. That's great advice.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Thank you for sharing your entrepreneurial journey. Um, is there any socials you'd like to plug here?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Um maybe my LinkedIn, just Maximilian McCoska. Um my business Instagram is zip underscore rugby. So yeah, if you would follow that, that'd be greatly appreciated. But nonetheless, thanks for having me, guys.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

All right, guys, keep an eye out. Maybe you'll see the uh business to consumer sales coming on soon. 100%